When visual artist Azadeh Akhlaghi began staging photographs of pivotal moments in Iranian history, she thought that with enough research, she could uncover the truth of each moment. 

By the end, she wasn’t so sure. 

“I found so many contradictions in the records. In interviews, people censor themselves. There are historical documents from the secret police of the Shah that even now the government wouldn’t give me,” Akhlaghi said. “You can never really find the truth.”

An exhibit of Akhlaghi’s work, “From Iran: A Visual Testimony,” opened early this month at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and runs through March 21. 

The staged photographs cover a period from 1908, when the Russian-led Cossack Brigade bombarded Iran’s parliament during the Constitutional Revolution, to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Drawing from archival research, interviews, and her background in cinema, Akhlaghi recreated 11 incidents from Iranian’s tumultuous 20th-century history at a panoramic scale — the largest of the images spans 3 feet by 15 feet. 

Akhlaghi was the 2019 recipient of the Peabody Museum’s Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography, which supports an established photographic practitioner producing a major project “on the human condition anywhere in the world.” Born in Shiraz, Iran, she studied computer science in Australia before returning to Iran to work in the film industry. She later turned to staged photography. Her 2012 work, “By an Eyewitness,” has been exhibited internationally. 

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, Akhlaghi shared her inspiration for the work and how it feels to launch the exhibit amid the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. 

What was your inspiration for this body of work? 

This came after my previous project, “By an Eyewitness.” That project started in 2009 after the Green Movement in Iran, when there were these big demonstrations in Tehran. People died in the streets, and among those was a girl, Neda Agha-Soltan, whose death was captured by a video. 

After I saw that video, I thought about all these people who had died in a similar manner, but there was no camera to capture the moments of their deaths. 

“By an Eyewitness” contained 17 images, each reconstructing the moment of the death of an Iranian freedom fighter, writer, or journalist who died in a suspicious or tragic way, and where there was no camera available to capture the moment of their death. I reconstructed those moments based on documents and interviews. 

This new project depicts some of the turning points in Iranian history between the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In each image, I reconstruct some of the repeating themes we experienced in this time: military coups, national resistance, suppression, and moments of victory that then led to a new cycle of suppression and tyranny. I really wanted to focus on this vicious cycle. And I wanted to focus on the unknowns, the people who are only a line in the history books. 

Can you talk about one image in more detail? 

In the 1910s, Iran had a very strong women’s movement alongside movements in the U.S. and Britain. My image “The First Iranian Women’s Movement” was inspired by just a couple of lines in a book called “The Strangling of Persia” (1912) by W. Morgan Shuster, an American who was invited to be the treasurer-general of Iran and was later forced out by the Russians. He wrote that he witnessed 300 women with guns come to Parliament, warning that if Iran capitulated to Russian demands, they would kill their husbands, their sons, and the members of Parliament — basically threatening to take over Parliament. 

I wanted to know more about that moment. Who were those women? How did they organize such a thing? I found out that they had organized through six or seven societies that met in secret to talk about their demands. They published a newspaper, Danesh, which means “knowledge.” The woman who ran the paper was also Iran’s first female ophthalmologist, and the paper was run out of her clinic. You can find her at the center of the image, as well as other figures, like the first Iranian singer to perform without a hijab in front of men.

My piece imagines the Danesh offices, moments before these women march on Parliament. 

How does your work play with the notion of truth in photos that are staged recreations of moments both deeply researched and imagined? 

When I started this project, I thought I could figure out what really happened in the past and depict it. But now I’m not sure that’s ever possible. I found so many contradictions in the record. In interviews, people censor themselves. There are historical documents from the secret police of the Shah that even now the government wouldn’t give me. You can never really find the truth. 

That’s why I always put myself somewhere in these images, in a red scarf, to say that this is my imagination of what happened — and it’s why I wanted to make the images as big as possible. I wanted to fit in so many stories and people. I wanted them to feel like the huge history paintings like you might see in the Louvre. These are not photojournalistic images: They’re not real. They’re art. 

Why did you choose the time period you did?  

I focused on events between 1906 and 1979 because I was interested in moments that shaped contemporary Iran. Yet history often echoes itself. Even when an image refers to an earlier historical moment, viewers sometimes recognize connections across different periods and bring their own interpretations to it. 

You began this project long before the current war. But I’m curious what it means to you to have this exhibit launching at this heightened political moment. 

I’m really honored to have received the Robert Gardner Fellowship and to have the first exhibit of this work be at the Peabody Museum. But I’m also sad, because I wanted to have my first show in Tehran — I worked on this project for 14 years; I had many actors, a big team there. But that’s impossible now. Even my father, who lives in Iran, can’t see my images because they don’t have internet. I’m very worried about the future. 

But I hope people take away this idea of the vicious cycle of Iranian history. Iran has just been repeating the same thing since the Constitutional Revolution, and it’s getting worse. And I hope people can see that even though my work is about Iranian people, it’s really about all people. A mourning mother is the same everywhere.

On any given day in the past year, Grier Wilt may have been, quietly, the most interesting person in Cambridge.

Not yet 40, Wilt has worked and studied on four continents. By now she’s an advanced speaker of French and Russian, and currently studying Arabic and Japanese. She’s certified as both a private pilot and an open-sea diver, with degrees or coursework in mechanical engineering, national security, business, and ethnomusicology.

And weeks after Wilt receives her latest diploma — her master’s in public administration, following a whirlwind year at the Harvard Kennedy School — she’ll resume the life-or-death responsibilities she holds at NASA: as a capsule communicator, spacewalk flight controller, and astronaut instructor.

You’d never know it, her teachers note.

Kessely Hong, who taught Wilt in a class last fall on negotiations, will remember her as “incredible … insightful and generous” — and, for a lifelong space obsessive — “very down to earth.”

“She’s just an amazing human with an amazing background,” agreed Eric Rosenbach, who taught Wilt in a survey course on emerging technologies this spring. “And she has this humility, despite all that, that’s unusual at Harvard.”

Wilt says she’s just following through on a childhood commitment. Seeing a comet in the skies over her Central Pennsylvania hometown, she asked her father how she could go.

“He said, ‘Become an astronaut,’ probably not thinking anything of it,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Now I know what I’m doing for the rest of my life.’”

Wilt’s neighbors still remember her as their town’s “space girl.” She realized only recently that her first contact with NASA came when she was just 7, when she participated in monthly science classes it funded. A first-generation college student, her first official NASA job was a 2004 internship.

Taking a year off to study public administration just as human space exploration is reaching new heights, Wilt admitted, may not “seem like a very logical step.”

But as Wilt’s responsibilities have grown, she’s realized there’s more to NASA’s work than rocket science. “We’re working in teams, we’re working internationally,” she said. “There’s a lot of decision-making, a lot of leadership involved.”

Every launch, for example, involves a difficult negotiation. To reach escape velocity, a spacecraft must strike a delicate balance between its thrust — the power of its engines — and the weight of what’s on board.

Inevitably, she said, that means all of the various teams at NASA — among them human health, engineering, safety, and operations — “have to give up something” they had hoped to include to ensure the overall safety or functionality of the final vessel.

Classes like Hong’s gave Wilt a new perspective on how to read “the different positions, the overlapping interests … how you can come to a consensus collaboratively.”

For over a decade Wilt’s primary NASA role has been as an EVA flight controller and instructor: in short, preparing astronauts for spacewalks. While a given “Extra-Vehicular Activity” is inevitably limited in duration — spacesuits hold only 6½ hours of oxygen — Wilt said her preparation for each one can take as long as two years.

She guides astronauts through their tasks, both in “neutral-buoyancy” underwater rehearsals and in virtual reality. The job involves both rote learning and creativity: imagining surprises, including worst-case scenarios. “You’re planning down to every single operation. What happens if a bolt breaks, or if it’s not turning? What contingencies, what tools do you want to have in place?” she said.

Unsurprisingly, another favorite course this year was “Thinking Analytically,” taught by Dan Levy.

“It’s about what to do when you don’t have all the information — and how to think probabilistically,” Wilt said. “It gave me a different framework to look at the things that I was already doing, and to be more comprehensive.”

Finally, her work has come to require precise communications. Wilt became a “capsule communicator,” or CAPCOM, in 2022. In that seat, she serves as the intermediary between a crew in space and mission control at the Johnson Space Center. “If you’ve heard the expression, ‘Houston, we have a problem’? My call sign is Houston,” Wilt said with a smile.

When she got the job, she remembers a veteran colleague telling her, “You have to be a sponge”: keeping earthbound anxieties from affecting the astronauts, and vice-versa, “just absorbing the emotion,” and passing along information only when it is practical.

The Midcareer M.P.A. aims to build up just that kind of intangible capability, said Hong, who also serves as its faculty chair.

“As people rise to higher and higher positions of leadership, it becomes important to go beyond the technical skills — to understand what’s motivating people, to integrate competing priorities, to move forward with everyone’s full support.”

Wilt admits she occasionally felt some “internal conflict” sitting next to classmates who run Indian police forces or fight famine in the Horn of Africa, “working on these really important humanitarian issues.”

But she came away recommitted to her path: not just as a source of knowledge but as a common cause for a divided planet.

Ambitious space exploration has typically been motivated by great-power competition — Wilt noted that it is no coincidence that the Artemis program coincides with the Chinese National Space Administration’s own moon mission.

But at Harvard she was impressed anew by a mission’s tendency to escape the terrestrial conflicts that motivated it.

As classmates expressed their fondness for her employer, Wilt said, she “realized how much soft power NASA still has abroad. To them, it’s not just the U.S. doing something, it’s, like, humanity … It made me proud to work there.”

If it weren’t for her enrollment at the Kennedy School, Wilt might have been a supporting CAPCOM during the recent Artemis II mission, bearing four astronauts she helped train. She didn’t even use a pass to observe the April 1 launch in Florida — she had class.

“It was a little bittersweet,” she said, to miss out on the first crewed flight to the moon since 1972.

But some 1,100 miles north of the Kennedy Space Center, she and Rosenbach arranged the next-best thing on JFK Street: a launch-night watch party during the middle of his course’s unit on space.

“There were, like, 40 students who showed up in their own time, on a Wednesday night,” he said. “And Grier walked us through everything that the astronauts, and that NASA, were doing and thinking … It was one of those totally iconic Kennedy School moments.”

After Commencement, Wilt will have a rare break — one she may use to visit the far-flung friends she made in the past year.

She’ll also take a couple of weeks, she said, “to let it all settle in, to reflect.” She expects to be back in Houston by early July, where the lengthy preparations for future Artemis missions are already underway.

With Artemis IV set to include a crewed return to the moon as early as 2028, Wilt is overseeing a U.S.-Japan effort to develop a pressurized rover to facilitate the first long-distance travel on the lunar surface.

Her growing responsibilities leave little free time for Wilt to fulfill her original childhood dream: to go to space herself (though she hasn’t given up on the idea).

Rosenbach concluded that it would be unwise to set any limits on Wilt’s future trajectory.

“I know she’d like to be up there on a spacewalk herself, and she could certainly do that,” he said. But when he looks at his student from NASA, he comes away “almost certain” that she’ll end up running the place.

More than 20 years ago, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology got a call from a photographer named Roger Marshutz. 

He wondered if the museum would like more than 3,000 photos he’d taken in Pusan, South Korea, at the end of the Korean War. 

Not sure what to make of the inquiry, Rubie Watson, the first Howells Director of the Peabody Museum, reached out to Carter Eckert, then the Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History at Harvard University. 

“He explained what an extraordinarily valuable contribution this would be to the Harvard Museums, as well as to Korean studies at Harvard,” said Sean Kim, co-author of “The Forgotten Home Front: Roger Marshutz’s Photographs of Pusan, South Korea, 1952-1954.”

The book makes Marshutz’s photos available in a new format and shares context on what has been called America’s “forgotten war.” 

“Roger Marshutz is one of the best photographers you’ve probably never heard of,” said Kim’s co-author, Ilisa Barbash, curator of visual anthropology at the Peabody Museum.

Despite 37,000 Americans losing their lives in the Korean War, Barbash said, “It’s called forgotten because it’s sandwiched temporally between World War II and the Vietnam War, and received a lot less attention, ultimately, in the history books.” 

The war also profoundly shaped the Korean economy, its politics, and its culture. It is estimated that about 3 million Koreans — about one-tenth of the total population — were killed, wounded, or went missing during the three years of the conflict. Another roughly 5 million were displaced, fleeing north or south, with many becoming separated from family members and in some cases never to see them again. Many of those who fled south found relative safety in the southeast port city of Pusan, known today as Busan, in the region that was the only part of the country not captured by North Korean forces. 

Conditions in Pusan’s improvised refugee communities were cramped and impoverished, but Koreans went about life there as best they could, often without much privacy. The conditions allowed Marshutz, who was an outsider and who spoke no Korean, to access intimate moments of their lives. 

The photos, Barbash said, “were not about what you really think about when you think about war. Instead, they were about the collateral damage of war.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1929, Marshutz was best known as a Hollywood photographer, capturing iconic images of the luminaries of the mid-20th century: Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman. But he honed his skills as an Army photographer in Pusan. When he wasn’t performing his official duties photographing Brig. Gen. Richard S. Whitcomb, Marshutz wandered the streets, capturing the port city in a remarkable moment of transition. He was also drawn to scenes of children, and to the fast integration of American culture and imports into Korean life. 

Barbash and Kim noted that Marshutz, who died in 2007, was working at a time when photographers were less likely to get permission to photograph their subjects or take down their names. They hope the book, which is available in English and Korean, helps reunite people with photos of their relatives or even of themselves.

“The photos reveal a country that is just beginning to recover from the ravages of war,” said Kim, who holds a Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard and is now a professor of history at the University of Central Missouri. “There are heartbreaking scenes of refugee camps and orphan shelters. But in spite of the bleak circumstances of wartime Pusan, there’s a vitality, an energy that comes through the photos. From the hustle and bustle of the markets to the children at school and at play, Korean daily life resumed as the war drew to a close. And Roger Marshutz, with his camera, captured these images of vitality and hope for the future in a way that no words ever could.”

Raymond J. Lohier Jr. ’88, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, has been elected president of the Harvard University Board of Overseers for the 2026-2027 academic year. Sheryl WuDunn, M.B.A. ’86, an author, management consultant, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, will serve as vice chair of the board’s executive committee for the same term.

“Raymond Lohier and Sheryl WuDunn are distinguished alumni whose devotion to the University shines through their service,” said President Alan Garber. “They share a deep commitment to the well-being of our students, as well as a keen interest in strengthening our visitation process. I appreciate their work on behalf of our community. I am eager to see the ways in which their leadership will advance the efforts of the board.”

The larger of Harvard’s two governing boards, the Board of Overseers is composed of and elected annually by Harvard degree holders. Overseers play an integral role in the governance of the University and direct the visitation process, the primary means for regular external assessment of Harvard’s Schools and departments. Through its array of standing committees, and the roughly 50 visiting committees that report to them, Overseers examine the quality of Harvard’s programs and assure that the University remains true to its charter as a place of learning.

Drawing on its members’ diverse experience and expertise, the board also provides counsel to Harvard’s leadership on priorities, plans, and strategic initiatives. It also has the power of consent to certain actions, such as the election of members of the Corporation, Harvard’s other governing board. 

“This is about giving back,” said Lohier. “It’s a privilege to serve on a board of dynamic, committed, and extraordinarily talented people of all backgrounds and experiences who offer their time, expertise, and thoughtfulness to the task of advising the University. No matter the circumstances, the board is committed to ensuring that Harvard’s departments and Schools continue to deliver the best education and academic scholarship in the country and the world.”

Lohier has served as a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since December 2010. After earning his undergraduate degree from Harvard College in 1988 with a concentration in philosophy, and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1991, Lohier began his legal career as a clerk to Judge Robert P. Patterson Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before becoming an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York. He later served as a senior trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and as assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he led the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force, among other roles.

Alongside his judicial responsibilities, Lohier has held leadership positions at a number of professional and academic institutions, including at the Judicial Conference of the United States, the American Law Institute, and the board of trustees of New York University School of Law. He also recently co-chaired an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

As a Harvard Overseer since 2021, he has chaired both the standing committee on arts and humanities and the elections working group. He also serves on the executive committee, the committee on institutional policy, the subcommittees on visitation and governance, and the governing boards’ joint committee on alumni affairs and development. He has also played a key role in University visiting committees, including those for classics, philosophy, and Harvard Law School.

WuDunn, the first Chinese-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is the co-author of five books and the co-founder and principal of consulting firm FullSky Partners. She previously served as a vice president in the private wealth investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co., and held a range of roles at The New York Times, both as an executive and as a journalist. WuDunn holds a B.A. from Cornell, an M.P.A. from Princeton, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

“It is a tremendous honor to serve as vice chair alongside Ray Lohier, all my dedicated fellow Overseers, and in partnership with President Garber and leaders across the University,” said WuDunn. “At a moment when higher education faces extraordinary challenges and scrutiny, I believe the role of the Overseers in helping safeguard the University’s academic excellence, integrity, and long-term mission has never been more important.”

WuDunn is a member of the board of directors of BayFirst Financial Corp., and a trustee at Oregon Public Broadcasting and the Oregon Journalism Project. She is also a former member of the boards of trustees at Princeton University and Cornell University and has been a Hauser Visiting Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School.

As a Harvard Overseer, WuDunn serves on the executive committee; the committees on humanities and arts and Schools, the College, and continuing education; the elections working group; the subcommittee on visitation; and the advisory committee on honorary degrees. She has also served on the committee on social sciences and the governing boards’ joint committee on alumni affairs and development, and has been engaged on visiting committees for Harvard Business School, Harvard University Information Technology, and Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Lohier and WuDunn will take up their roles after Commencement, succeeding outgoing Overseers president Sylvia Mathews Burwell ’87 and executive committee vice chair Monica Bharel, M.P.H. ’12.

That Lael Ayala chose a time-saving device makes sense.

The mechanical engineering concentrator and softball outfielder’s senior thesis project is an autonomous robot that can detect and collect softballs in the outfield after hitting drills.

“What stood out to me most was that the project was directly connected to her passion for her sport, and she was very motivated to use her engineering background to address a real-world problem,” said Professor Seymur Hasanov, Ayala’s thesis project adviser.

Shagging balls may seem mundane, but it is time-consuming, and Ayala ’26 had little to spare.

When she wasn’t running drills with her Crimson teammates on Soldiers Field, she was either in the lab, hip-deep in engineering homework, or doing coursework for Army ROTC. The little discretionary time she had left was taken up by meetings for Harvard Athlete Ally or giving tours at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“If I was to be an athlete at any other school, I wouldn’t have the time to pursue my engineering goals” and other interests, said Ayala, a native of Atlanta. “Our coaches and the Ivy League allow us to develop so many different interests and ideas while still competing at a high level.”

When it came time to come up with her thesis project, Ayala was pleased to be able to merge her two major passions.

“I built a robot that can shag balls, almost like a Roomba, out in the outfield during practice,” she said. “To be able to combine both of my worlds is truly special.”

Ayala began work on her project in the fall, employing machine learning to train her SoftBot, using hundreds of photographs, to recognize softballs.

This spring, she combined all the systems to create a cart-like robot that could collect, on average, 6.5 softballs per testing session. A horizontal roller would take in the softballs, and a ramp would slide them down into the onboard storage.

“Over the course of the thesis project, Ayala grew significantly as an engineer and designer. With each iteration, she became more confident in making technical decisions, testing her ideas, and improving the robot based on what she learned,” Hasanov said.

In ROTC, Ayala gained useful leadership and tactical skills that translated to other areas of her life.

“I think the skill that transfers the most between softball and ROTC is building camaraderie. All the things you do within the military are highly challenging, and you have to find ways to stick together during those difficult moments,” Ayala said. “The same applies to softball. When you’re down in the seventh, how do you build that camaraderie to make the comeback and win? Having that fortitude translates to both.”

After graduation, Ayala will attend cadet summer training and be commissioned as an Army officer. She plans to also continue working on her startup, Gander Robotics, a company that is developing autonomous underwater drones that use sonar to find victims in maritime search and rescue missions.

Blake Lusty grew up sure of two things: He wanted to serve his country in the Navy, and he would always fight for what he believed in. A late-stage cancer diagnosis at age 20 only steeled his resolve.

The first in his family to pursue a college education, Lusty was raised by his mother in St. Petersburg, Florida.

“Mom worked incredibly hard to make ends meet, often working multiple jobs,” he said. Through it all, she encouraged him to consider the wider world, saying, “Think about the time we have and how we can make a difference.”

Lusty volunteered at a Veterans Administration hospital near his home as a teen and spent a lot of time with his grandfather, who as a Canadian farm boy had worked on early iterations of reconnaissance aircraft used in World War II. Those experiences convinced Lusty that military service was his calling.

He had set his sights on the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, but with no special connections, let alone resources, it was a longshot given the institution’s storied history. However improbable, the decision turned out to be “divine intervention.”

“It’s one of those things in my heart that I knew that was the right step for me,” Lusty said.

“I absolutely loved it. I loved the structure, the shared mission. I really loved the idea of putting your values into an organization that’s bigger than yourself.”

In 2010, Lusty’s sophomore year, tragedy struck. He was diagnosed with late-stage cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes and lungs. Determined not to let it derail his education, Lusty juggled classes and exams while undergoing aggressive chemotherapy treatments at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

“After some deep reflection in that first week of chemo, I didn’t know how much time I had left, but I wanted to go down fighting for what I believe in,” said Lusty, who will graduate from Harvard Business School with a master’s in business administration later this month.

A cancer diagnosis, particularly one that’s advanced, is often a disqualifier for military service. Because Lusty remained cancer-free and graduated from the Academy in 2012, he persuaded the Navy to take a chance on him, securing a commission as an intelligence officer with his first assignment at the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Serving in a combat unit was Lusty’s dream. In April 2015, after reaching the all-important five-year cancer milestone, Lusty received some welcome news. He could transfer to a Navy destroyer, the USS Forrest Sherman, to serve as a surface warfare officer. On the day he received the approval letter, routine test results showed a new tumor.

“I could see this dream job just flash away from me in a second,” he said.

But after another round of chemotherapy and surgery in the fall, he again was cleared for duty. Lusty returned to serve and went on to complete four combat deployments, including to South America at the height of the pandemic, the Western Pacific, the Arctic, and later to the Middle East.

After seeing the operational safety challenges that sailors regularly confronted while at sea, and the slow tempo of Navy acquisitions systems, Lusty started to think about how he could help bridge the gap between national defense capabilities and the business world.

In 2022, within weeks of promotion to special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, D.C., doctors once again found a dangerous tumor, this time on his heart. Days later, Lusty underwent open-heart surgery.

“That moment was the first time that I had thought about maybe writing a letter or making a video for my kids in case they didn’t grow up seeing me,” he said.

Realizing it was time for the next chapter, Lusty was retired from the Navy in June 2024 with the final rank of lieutenant commander. Two months later, he started a new chapter at the Business School.

“Blake is one of the most impressive young men I have ever known,” said Chip Bergh, a senior lecturer at HBS. “Throughout his life and career and his time at HBS, Blake has shown incredible tenacity and drive, not letting anything stop him from pursuing his dream of serving his country and community.” 

“His dedication to learning and making the most of every day here were an inspiration, both to his peers and his faculty,” said Edward Berk, who teaches private equity finance at HBS.

Friends and colleagues also marvel at Lusty’s resilience and determination to forge ahead, no matter how daunting life became.

“I’ve been trying to not let cancer write my story. I’ve been trying to always find creative ways to continue, not letting it define me, not to let it be my whole life,” Lusty explained.

After Commencement, Lusty, his wife, Lauren, a cybersecurity expert, and their young daughters, Emerson and Harper, will return to the D.C. area, where he will be joining Bain & Co. and continuing to explore new ways to bring entrepreneurial energy and investment to the defense industry.

“Going through all this, it’s just doubled down on my conviction that you have to live a life where you don’t live with regrets, as much as you can, because even if things are going really well, things can change in a moment’s notice,” he said.

It was DNA replication that first captured Isaac Witte’s scientific imagination as a high school student in Overland Park, Kansas. “It’s this orchestration of so many different proteins and molecules that come together to do this core element of life,” he said. It always stuck with him how evolution could generate such a complex system that works — and that our cells run all the time.

It wasn’t just the discovery that intrigued Witte — who this month will receive his Ph.D. in biological and biomedical sciences from Harvard Griffin GSAS — but the experiment behind it, “the most beautiful experiment in biology.” By growing generations of E. coli with a heavy isotope of nitrogen and then allowing the bacteria to divide in a solution with a lighter isotope, Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl found that the new DNA was of an intermediate weight, proving Watson and Crick’s semiconservative replication hypothesis.

In the summer after his first year at the University of California, Berkeley, Witte began a research fellowship at Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research, where he learned about RNA interference — depleting certain genes in a cell and seeing how the changes affected regeneration. Depending on the genetic pathway he manipulated in flatworms, they could end up with a couple of heads or tails.

His interest in RNA interference led Witte to the lab of like-minded Jennifer Doudna when he returned for his sophomore year, a few years before Doudna received a Nobel Prize for her developments in CRISPR technology. Though Witte was interested in the gene-editing tool’s promise for humans, he was more interested in studying the naturally occurring mechanism behind it.

“There’s a huge diversity within CRISPR systems,” a product of bacteria defending themselves against invading DNA sequences, like phages, and other mobile sequences called transposable elements, Witte said. He began studying CRISPR systems beyond the popular Cas9 mechanism, well-known for its simplicity and efficiency. Some CRISPR systems cut not DNA, but RNA. Others didn’t seem to cut anything at all.

One of the achievements of his undergraduate research was developing a small CRISPR system that bound to DNA and then began indiscriminately cutting other sections. Conducted in a test tube, the system could be useful for diagnostic tests, revealing the presence of certain DNA species. Witte dug deeper into the technology for a company run by former members of Doudna’s lab, seeking to improve the system’s ability to detect dangerous pathogens and viruses that might be present in a patient’s sample. He also discovered a new mechanism for how a Cas protein could modify CRISPR RNA.

Witte came to Harvard to study a different tool: phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE). The process, developed by Witte’s adviser, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences David Liu, allows scientists to accelerate by more than 100-fold the evolution of proteins, nucleic acids, and other biomolecules.

Witte found that PACE could help solve a long-standing problem with gene editing. Researchers had recently discovered a CRISPR system in nature that didn’t have to cut DNA to insert new DNA; bacteria simply searched for a target site and latched on. While many CRISPR applications make one edit at a time, the newly discovered mechanism had the potential to perform many more sequence changes at once.

The mechanism had major potential for treating a wide swath of genetic disorders that require tens or even hundreds of genetic mutations. Instead of targeting each mutation individually, the process could insert an entirely healthy version of the gene.

The problem that Witte had to solve was that the naturally occurring CRISPR system rarely functioned in human cells. He and his collaborators decided to use PACE to evolve the system toward higher activity.

The process was challenging. The researchers were performing a directed evolution campaign in bacteria — but, in the end, they really wanted the higher activity to take place in human cells. Determining which traits to evolve the bacteria toward would dominate Witte’s Ph.D. career. Ultimately, he figured out which of the seven protein components the team wanted to increase and which they didn’t.

Co-evolving all the proteins together didn’t work. Boosting the presence of a transposase protein called TNSB had the strongest effect, as it was responsible for joining the new DNA to the target site. Over months, Witte and his collaborators boosted the rate of the process by more than 100 times in human cells.

The results were published in Science, which detailed the potential for the new technique to correct complex disease-causing mutations all at once, without the need for regulatory approval of each specific change.

There was no single “Aha!” moment in Witte’s research. The process was incremental; in each evolution campaign, a certain protein might be five- or 10-fold more present than before. Then he would run another campaign — and that would take several months, as well. “It really was this progress of many incremental advances that amounted to these large improvements,” he said. “I think that was the most surprising and encouraging result.”

Witte’s mechanism could help treat a variety of loss-of-function diseases, especially ones that affect the liver, which has a cell type that’s relatively easy to target with Witte’s CRISPR technique. There are still years until the invention can be used in therapies; though it’s worked in a cell line, it hasn’t yet translated into cell types in the body. Many scientists, including Witte, will try to bridge this gap.

Even as he and others work to apply and optimize this new technology, Witte wants to make sure he has plenty of time to explore new ideas — the reason he got into science in the first place. “The curiosity-based focus is something I’d like to do long-term as a scientist,” he said. As he’s discovered, it’s curiosity, combined with persistence, that has led to the biggest scientific breakthroughs.

When stress affects the gut, the stomach tightens, digestion slows. For some, these symptoms resolve quickly. For others — particularly people with constipation-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-C) and related conditions — they don’t.

In a new study, investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) show how stress hormones directly interfere with gut function, slowing digestion through a newly defined pathway. In preclinical models, the findings point toward a potential way to treat stress-associated constipation.

Led by corresponding author Subhash Kulkarni, Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine and principal investigator in the Division of Gastroenterology at BIDMC, the study’s findings are published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The researchers’ work centers on the enteric nervous system (ENS), often called the “second brain” of the gastrointestinal tract. This network of nerves in the gut controls how food moves through the digestive system, and can coordinate digestion on its own, without input from the brain or spinal cord. However, the ENS is connected to the rest of the nervous system and does receive signals from the outside world, meaning the stressors big and small can override its normal functions.

Scientists already knew that stress hormones can disrupt ENS signaling and had demonstrated a disrupted signaling pathway in patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). What was not clear was exactly how that disruption happens or whether it could be reversed. In the new study, the researchers show exactly how stress interferes with the pathway and demonstrate that restoring it improves gut function in preclinical models, identifying it as a promising target for new IBS treatments.

Specifically, Kulkarni and colleagues found that stress hormones suppress the gut’s cell-to-cell communication, leaving GI movement slowed and increasing the risk of persistent constipation. The team traced this breakdown to a specific chemical signaling pathway in the gut — involving a molecule called BDNF and its receptor, TrkB — that helps keep digestion responsive.

When the researchers activated this pathway using a compound that stimulates the TrkB receptor, they were able to restore normal gut movement in experimental models of stress.

“This study identifies both the basic biology for why stress slows down your gut and creates a platform through which novel therapeutics can be generated and tested for treating stress-associated constipation,” said Srinivas N. Puttapaka, an HMS research fellow in medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess, who led the study with co-lead author Jared Slosberg, a doctoral candidate at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“By pinpointing how stress disrupts this pathway and showing that its function can be restored, we’ve identified a clear and actionable target for developing new treatments for IBS,” said Puttapaka.

This work was funded in part by the National Institute on Aging; a Pilot grant from the Harvard Digestive Disease Core to Subhash Kulkarni; the Walter Benjamin Fellowship the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Philippa Seika; Diacomp Foundation; with additional support from Harvard Catalyst and the National Institutes of Health.

David Battat ’91 has built a career on curiosity and service to his communities — as a healthcare CEO, a leadership instructor, a first responder, and a longtime Harvard volunteer. On July 1, he will bring this same approach to a new role as the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) president.

“David brings thoughtful, steady leadership to the HAA,” said outgoing HAA President Will Makris, Ed.M. ’00. “He’s someone who listens carefully, asks questions, and invites a wide range of voices into the conversation. Over many years of service to Harvard, he’s shown a deep commitment to bringing people together, and I know he’ll help our alumni community stay engaged with one another and the University.”

Battat describes his Harvard undergraduate years as “an extraordinary period of discovery and intellectual exploration,” shaped by professors and classmates who encouraged him to explore all the opportunities the University has to offer.

That spirit stayed with him long after leaving campus, taking him from clerking for then-U.S. District Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to a career in criminal defense and eventually to a medical device company focused on cardiovascular care and oncology. Never forgetting the barriers his former clients faced after their sentences ended, Battat, as the company’s leader, established re-entry programs at its manufacturing facilities.

Throughout, he remained deeply connected to Harvard, volunteering with the HAA in a range of roles, serving on the advisory board of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and as co-chair of Harvard’s largest undergraduate admissions alumni interviewing committee.

“Volunteering has been rewarding in ways I never anticipated — giving me an even greater appreciation for the groundbreaking research of faculty and fellows, and the opportunity to see the extraordinary talent of Harvard applicants.”

A volunteer firefighter, Battat was a first responder at Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, an experience that led him to co-found the Harvard Alumni Disaster Preparedness and Response Shared Interest Group, after discovering a large community of alumni working in emergency response and public safety. Several New York City police officers who graduated from Harvard Kennedy School encouraged him to become an instructor in a leadership course for newly promoted captains. “As a former criminal defense lawyer, the last thing I ever thought I’d do is teach culture change at the NYPD.”

“David’s many years of dedicated volunteer service to Harvard, along with his thoughtful alumni outreach and community-building efforts, have prepared him well for this role,” said Sarah Karmon, executive director of the HAA. “We look forward to working alongside him while we continue to engage, support, and bring together volunteers and alumni around the world.”

As he steps into the presidency, Battat’s priority is to foster constructive alumni dialogue and active participation in the alumni community. For Battat, building the alumni community is not about achieving consensus. “The passion behind our disagreements is proof of how deeply Harvard has shaped us — and that shared depth of feeling is what holds us together.

Battat will serve as HAA president for the 2026-27 academic year, taking up the office on July 1. He will welcome the graduating College Class of 2026 to the alumni community at Harvard’s College Class Day celebration on May 27.

Cancer treatment plans are many and varied, but research is beginning to show there is one element that can benefit virtually all patients: a greater focus on nutrition.

“Cancer patients have increased nutritional needs due to cancer itself or due to treatment-related nutrition impacts symptoms, such as fatigue, nausea, vomiting, which place them at high risk of malnutrition,” said Fang Fang Zhang, who specializes in cancer epidemiology and nutrition.

Zhang, a professor and chair of the division of nutrition epidemiology and data science at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, recently spoke on campus as part of the weekly Monday Nutrition Seminar Series at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Zhang explained that up to 85 percent of all cancer patients, especially those undergoing treatment or diagnosed with late-stage disease, are at risk of malnutrition. This can lead to increased inflammation, weight loss, decrease in muscle mass, and weakened immune function, all of which can negatively affect a patient’s ability to tolerate treatment and can lead to more hospitalizations.

For this reason, nutrition-based interventions may provide ways to not just increase the quality of life for patients but also reduce billions of dollars in direct medical costs each year nationwide that occur due to these issues, said Zhang, who is also a faculty member of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts.

Zhang explained that there are three main Food Is Medicine programs that provide nutritional support to patients with diet-sensitive conditions.

The first is through medically tailored meals, designed for the specific needs of individual patients and delivered to their home. This might include high-protein and high-calorie menus for patients experiencing substantial weight loss, texture-modified meals for those with  swallowing difficulties, or carbohydrate- and sodium-controlled foods for individuals with diabetes or hypertension.

Second, there are medically tailored groceries that come in the form of food boxes or meal kits. And finally, “produce prescriptions” can be redeemed at grocery stores in the form of vouchers or electronic benefits cards.

“All of these programs include nutrition education as an essential component,” Zhang said, noting “quite consistent evidence that these programs can reduce food insecurity, can improve dietary intake, and can support mental health.”

Zhang and her colleagues evaluated the effects of a Food Is Medicine program on patients with lung cancer. Those in the control group received printed nutritional education materials only, while those in the intervention group additionally received home-delivered medically tailored meals and remote nutrition counseling from dietitians.

The intervention group exhibited statistically significant improvement in their nutrition as measured by the Healthy Eating Index.

The findings “are still limited,” Zhang said. “There are new studies that have currently been conducted in the space of Food Is Medicine and cancer, so hopefully in the next year or few years from now, we’ll receive more evidence evaluating these programs for cancer.”

But there are barriers, she explained. There is inadequate screening for malnutrition for patients with cancer; standard oncology care offers limited nutrition support; and lack of access to quality, affordable, nutritious food is a hurdle for many patients. 

“Food insecurity occurs in more than half the cancer patients with low income,” Zhang said. “To address these system-level barriers, we need system-level approaches to integrate food and nutrition into healthcare.”

Massachusetts was one of the first states to gain approval for Food Is Medicine programs under the Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration waiver.

To date, 13 states have approved waivers, with three additional states pending, which allow states to experiment with innovative approaches to care. As these programs become more common, Zhang is hopeful that we will better understand their real-world efficacy and how to best implement them to help patient outcomes.

“The overall research direction, I think, for future research is not only to answer the question does it work?” she said. “But also, how does it work in the real world? And ultimately, how do we make it work everywhere?”

When Rosie Rines graduated from Boston’s Roslindale High School in 1964, college didn’t seem like an option. But later this month, at 79 years old, she’ll don a cap and gown and receive her undergraduate degree from Harvard Extension School — with her daughters cheering her on.

“At that time, you either got married and had children or you had a job,” Rines said. “But if you had a job, you still lived at home. I didn’t know I could just say, ‘I’m 18, I’m going to do what I want.’”

Rines is proof that it’s never too late to pursue an education. She married young, moving cross-country to California with her 3-year-old twin daughters. Throughout her 20s and early 30s as a single mother, Rines balanced making ends meet through court transcription work and secretarial jobs while carting her kids to school and field trips and practices and recitals.

She returned to the East Coast when the girls were 7 and a little more independent. It was then that Rines started the long road to becoming a college graduate. At 36, she started taking classes at the local Quincy College. But still juggling full-time work, she stopped at her associate degree.

After another long hiatus, she restarted her studies in 2013, this time at Harvard Extension School. Then life got in the way again. Two years later, following the death of her mother, for whom she had been the primary caretaker, Rines was tired.

“By then so much was going on with school and my mother and family, I needed a break,” she said. “As much as I knew I wanted to finish, it had to come to me.”

In 2022, something shifted. She can’t put her finger on exactly what, but something compelled Rines to return to the Extension School, where she finally finished the coursework needed to walk at Commencement this spring. She will receive a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies.             

Rines’ daughter Karen McCabe, an academic adviser at the Extension School, remembers wanting her mom to finish, but not wanting to push.

“She’s a very stubborn person. So when she said, ‘I’m not coming back,’ there’s no pushing her until she was ready,” McCabe said. “But then she was ready, and it’s really exciting, because I feel like she got a lot out of her whole education, especially the past few years when she had the time and the mental space to do her reading and to do her papers and to engage with her classmates.”

McCabe said that the accomplishment is especially noteworthy because of how strongly her mom urged her and her sister to seek the educational experience she had missed out on.

“She’s been telling us ‘You will go to college’ since the day we were born,” McCabe said. “We never thought about other options.”

Rines added that her belief in the power of education precedes her own missed opportunities.  

“My mother was a seamstress, and she taught sewing at night at the high school,” she said. “But because she didn’t have a college education, they wouldn’t give her a raise. My mother was so qualified yet was kind of pushed aside. I didn’t want that for my daughters.”

Her return to school, Rines said, has made her daughters proud.

“They love education. They love learning,” she said. “So I think that was a big kick for them to see me going back and talking about different things that maybe I would have never either understood or knew was out there.”

The one thing they might not have gotten a kick from, she joked, was helping her navigate the technology needed for classes.  

“I know I drove them crazy, but that’s OK,” Rines said. “I was so afraid to hit the wrong button, because I’m not used to this. I didn’t grow up with the technology. So that’s where I depended on them.”

And while Extension School students range in age — the average being in their 30s and 40s — most of the students in Rines’ classes were significantly younger than her.

“I always felt like I was the oldest, and at first I wasn’t very sure of myself,” she said. “But I did put myself out there during the discussion posts, and it was very affirming to me when someone would respond and say, ‘Wow, I never thought of it that way,’ or ‘What a great point.’”

Now that she’s done with school, Rines said she’s looking forward to continuing to volunteer and take classes at her local senior center, including a dance class and a writing class. She and her daughters are also planning a cross-country road trip to celebrate. 

What can Beyoncé teach students about public policy?

A lot more than you might think, says Ayushi Roy, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School who teaches students how to use digital technology to better provide government services.

The pop superstar’s 2024 album, “Cowboy Carter,” highlights the historically overlooked contributions of Black artists to the evolution of country music and presents an unexpected but relatable framework for Roy’s students as they consider the actual effectiveness of government policies.

The course, “Ameriican Requiem: Beyoncé, Benefits and the Gap Between Promise and Delivery,” asks students to go deep into the nation’s social safety net to figure out how and why good intentions can fall short.

“She frames the album as a conversation about the erasure of African American people from country music,” said Roy. But after seeing Beyoncé perform, “You realize that she’s actually making a commentary about Black erasure from ‘country,’ the body politic, not country as a genre of music, and that really inspired me.”

The 35-time Grammy Award winner tells a story of an America where the experiences of women and other marginalized people were overlooked in the official record in much the same way the perspectives and needs of the users of government-assistance programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program get overlooked in the design and delivery of services, said Roy.

“My hope is that I help the next generation of policymakers think more expansively about the kinds of input that define good policy,” so that they can identify potential administrative, operational, and implementation hurdles before they become a hurdle.

In one recent class, while Beyoncé’s “Protector,” a song about motherhood, played quietly in the background, students heard from practitioners, including a former secretary of health and human services for California, about the state’s child welfare system and the Byzantine process that parents must navigate to be reunited with children who’ve been removed from their care.

To better understand the obstacles, a student team built a child reunification simulation program that takes users through the types of conflicting demands and difficult decisions that families often confront. For instance, court hearings that run long could jeopardize a parent’s job, or required parenting classes at inconvenient times or distant locations could wreak havoc on family budgets and work shifts.

The program offers recommendations for ways to ease or eliminate some of the system’s intrinsic frictions.

“A lot of the way the Kennedy School teaches policymaking is based on economics classes, econometrics classes, statistics classes. That’s a really heavy part of the M.P.P. and M.P.A. core curriculum,” said Roy. 

“What is often unspoken is that data, when aggregated and anonymized, isn’t really capturing both the commonplace as well as distinct experiences of the American public. And that is really what makes the difference between [delivering] good policy and standard policy,” said Roy, who would like to see more emphasis on teaching of government implementation, so graduates are better prepared to work on the delivery side of programs and services.

Solving these structural challenges, so that those drafting social safety net policy and those charged with ensuring those in need of assistance do, in fact, benefit, requires a lot more than new apps or fourth-generation AI chatbots in government offices, Roy said.

“I do know as a practitioner, having served in the government for over a dozen years, that the building of technology is the easy part; managing the political feasibility and the implementation is the hard part,” she said.

“Applying private sector technology practices in government is not the solve. It’s really about building this incredibly well-versed student and student professional base of people that think about implementation critically.”

The first James Bond book that Thomas Beale read was not a Bond book at all. It was a fake — a parody titled “Alligator” written by members of The Harvard Lampoon. By the time he realized that, he’d already made significant headway into the text.

“That’s the art of a good parody,” he said. “You don’t quite realize you’re getting spoofed until halfway through.”

A high-schooler at the time, Beale was inspired. He started a humor column for his school newspaper, and when he arrived at Harvard, he joined the Lampoon itself. There, he met his people — a cohort with a “certain personality type,” who find their way to the 150-year-old humor publication.

More than 100 alumni of the magazine gathered in the Harvard University Archives on a recent Saturday morning for a pop-up exhibit highlighting the publication’s history, part of a multiday celebration of the group’s sesquicentennial.

“The 250th of the U.S. is going to pale in comparison,” joked one alumnus.

In addition to the nearly 100 items displayed by University archivists, staff also displayed private collections from the alumni. It was in this section that Beale, a Cambridge resident and longtime treasurer of the group, showed off a parody issue of USA Today that featured a picture of his two young daughters (they’re now grown adults) and the family dog.

Archivists split the items into five categories: early history; rivalries; parodies; celebrations; and art of the Lampoon and ephemera.

Some pieces from the collection were easy to explain to outsiders, such as architectural drawings of the Harvard Lampoon Castle, which was designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright.

Others required some context. “Gripping a .50-caliber machine gun, John Wayne rode an armed personnel carrier into Harvard Square yesterday, in what was billed as an assault on the Eastern Liberal Establishment,” began coverage of a 1974 article. It was one of the many displayed publications covering Wayne’s attempt to defend his honor after Lampoon members had dubbed him the “biggest fraud in history.”

In the parodies section, visitors had the opportunity to read examples over three centuries — from an 1892 faux-Greek trilogy called “The Little Tin Gods-on-Wheels” to the group’s 2013 edition of “The Wobbit.” In between, the group took aim at publications both on campus and off.

The table featured letters to the Lampoon from Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, who thought the group could find a better cover model for their mock issue and suggested some headline changes. “I’m enclosing the September issue of COSMO so you can see how few of our own cover lines are sexy,” she wrote.

The lampooning was not always one-sided. The Advocate, The Crimson, and the Spy Club of 1721 (the name is a long story) took turns parodying the Lampoon — and even took their rivalries off the page. Curators displayed a photograph of the 1946 Crimson/Lampoon annual baseball game and a 1910 postcard invitation to the same event. One scrapbook held an invitation to a 1907 inter-paper track meet between the Lampoon, Advocate, and Crimson. Surely human athleticism peaked that day.

While the Lampoon is perhaps best known today for its pipeline into TV writers’ rooms, the showcase revealed the relatively unsung work of the organization’s artists, whose hand-drawn and -painted work filled the pages of nearly every publication.

Curators acknowledged that some of the work had almost been lost to history. Collection development archivist Alexandra Dunn explained that the artwork by Henry Russell Wood, a 1927 College graduate, had been donated by his daughters, who found his art under a bed in a leather suitcase. The long-buried work included a pen-and-ink sketch from a Harvard football game and a colorful medieval-style folio featuring the Lampoon’s Ibis mascot.

Mac Whatley, a 1977 graduate of the College, was glad that so much of the Lampoon work had survived and that Archives is still looking to preserve more. He recalled classmates periodically cleaning out the castle and simply throwing old work out.

“There are things I rescued from the street because I couldn’t bear to throw them away,” he said. He’s held on to them until now, “but this is a much better place to look after stuff.”

If Grandpa occasionally dozes off in front of the TV or squeezes in a power nap after lunch, it’s probably no big deal. But if he can’t keep his eyes open at the breakfast table, even after a full night of sleep, that could be a red flag, according to researchers at Mass General Brigham.

In a new study published in partnership with Rush University Medical Center, excessive napping by older adults is linked with higher mortality rates, signaling a possible connection to underlying disease.

“We know that older people tend to nap a lot. And we do a lot of work on age-related diseases, so we were thinking napping could predict mortality in older adults,” said Chenlu Gao, a researcher in the MGB Department of Anesthesiology, and lead author of the study. Gao is also a research fellow in the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“We had this great opportunity to collaborate with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, who have a comprehensive data set,” said Gao. “Using this data set, we found that there is a connection between daytime napping and mortality in older adults.”

The Rush Memory and Aging Project, which began in 1997 as a cohort study looking at the cognition and neurodegeneration of older adults in northern Illinois, proved invaluable to Gao’s research. In 2005, the Rush project began having participants wear wrist monitors for 10 days to measure rest-activity data — allowing researchers to extract extensive information on nap length, frequency, timing, and day-to-day variability.

“What is great about this study is that it objectively measured daytime napping patterns, not just via self-report,” Gao said.

At baseline, there was little connection between mortality and subjects who napped within or below the “average” amount for their age group — just under an hour for participants in this study whose ages fell mostly in the early 80s range.

“Short naps, or within one hour per day of napping, are most likely benign or not associated with additional risks,” Gao said. “Our participants, on average, nap about 50 minutes per day, and they take on average about two naps per day.”

By 2025, researchers had access to as much as 19 years’ worth of follow-up statistics from 1,338 total participants — all in retirement and older than 56. They found that both longer and more frequent naps were associated with higher mortality in the age group observed. Notably, each additional hour of daytime napping per day was associated with a roughly 13 percent higher mortality risk while each extra nap per day was associated with a 7 percent higher mortality risk.

Gao wants to make one thing clear: These findings do not suggest that the naps cause poor outcomes, but rather that they may serve as a warning sign for underlying disease.

“We think naps are more like a reflection of health conditions,” she said. “If you think about when you get the flu, you tend to be very tired during the day. Maybe you take several naps, but you also have other visible symptoms, so you know the nap is because of the flu. For some older adults who nap a lot during the day, their conditions may not have those very visible symptoms, so they don’t know they have the conditions causing them to feel really tired.”

And while the study is limited in determining a causal relationship between napping and health, Gao said there could be other factors that explain the associations between the two.  

“I would imagine that those who are socially more active and also physically more active tend to be less depressed, less anxious, would be napping less,” said Ruixue Cai, another researcher at the MGB Department of Anesthesiology and the second author of the paper. “And just anecdotally, when we talk to older adult participants in our other studies, a lot of them say that they were really lonely and bored during the day because they’re retired, and so they would go take a nap.”

The data revealed another red flag to researchers — napping in the morning.

“Because for a healthy person, after a night of sleep, they should feel pretty refreshed and able to stay awake in the morning hours, but for people who are not so healthy, they may struggle with sleepiness even in the morning hours,” Cai said.

According to the study, morning nappers had a 30 percent higher mortality risk compared to those who nap in the early afternoon.

However, the occasional napper — regardless of age — should not be alarmed when they feel like getting some quick shut-eye, Gao said.

“I think those are fine,” she said. “We usually suggest limiting the naps to 20 minutes, and finish before 2 or 3 p.m., just so it doesn’t affect nighttime sleep.”

Gao emphasized this new data is no substitute for clinical advice.

“There are studies that try to implement long-term nap interventions to see if that will influence health. This is a really good future direction,” she said. “Findings from these studies would tell us how long-term nap habits influence health and inform clinical nap guidelines, beyond our current findings.”

Educators should teach students how to use AI tools but with an emphasis on the ethics, social impact, and potential biases of the tech, experts said Thursday during a conversation sponsored by Harvard Education Press. 

Stephanie Smith Budhai and Marie Heath, who co-authored “Critical AI in K–12 Classrooms,” told Teddy Svoronos, senior lecturer of public policy at the Kennedy School, that responsible use of AI requires a healthy dose of skepticism. In other words: Resist the hype by asking hard questions. 

“Does this really align with our visions of education?” said Heath, associate professor of learning design and technology at Loyola University Maryland. “Does this serve communities, as opposed to the folks who are developing this technology and telling us it’s going to be transformative?”

Budhai, associate professor of educational technology at the University of Delaware, said that teacher education programs should include training on how to help students examine the effects of AI inside and outside the classroom, including its environmental impact. A sort of critical AI literacy is needed, she said. 

“We’re not saying we have to be anti-tech,” said Budhai. “We’re saying: Let’s think about the bigger questions. … Students need to build a critical consciousness around the ways we interact with AI and understand how it works.” She added: “They need to really understand the harms of it.”

Educators are concerned about students’ over-reliance on AI and its possible impact on critical thinking, problem-solving, and relationships, the authors noted. The threat is not just to skills students might lose as they outsource essays and other assignments to machines, they said. It runs deeper. 

“Students don’t know how to write a topic sentence because they’re asking AI for the topic sentence,” said Budhai. “They’re ‘never-skilling,’ which is even scarier than ‘deskilling,’ which is losing the skills they had because they’re over-relying on AI. Never-skilling means they’ve never learned the skill because they are using AI for everything, so they don’t even have foundational skills.”

Heath, a former high school social studies teacher, worries about the impact of AI on social interactions and civic life. 

“I think about the ways that these technologies, particularly generative AI, allow us to be frictionless in our activities, and it sort of reduces the need for human interaction,” she said.

“For democracy to function, we need to be able to sit in discomfort, and we need to know what it feels like to disagree and to be disagreed with. One of the things that we give up when we turn to this technology is the ability to sit in discomfort and practice being uncomfortable.” 

The authors also zeroed in on the problem of biases, explicit and implicit, in AI tools. In researching “Critical AI in K–12 Classrooms,” they asked AI for book recommendations for Black and white high school students, and they found that the lists and even the feedback had implicit biases, with the books for Black students disproportionately about crime and poverty.

In a separate research project, Heath detected biases when AI provided feedback on students’ written work.

“AI is laden with all the biases of society,” she said. “If it perceives that the student is either from a higher socio-economic class or white, the feedback it gives is very conversational in tone, like, ‘Have you thought about XYZ?’ If AI perceives that the student is either socio-economically disadvantaged or is a Black or brown student, it uses a very direct, authoritative tone.” 

The message from the tool, Heath said, is, “‘I know what’s right’ and ‘You should do this this way.’”

Sharing takeaways from their findings, Budhai and Heath urged educators to pause over a simple question — why? — before deploying AI the classroom.

“For people who train teachers to use technology, it’s really important to have a framing where anytime you’re using technology, it’s for a purpose,” said Budhai. “We call it ‘purposeful technology use.’ I tell students, ‘How does this help meet the learning objectives?’ Because if it’s not actually doing it, why are we using it?”

When Alison Farrar was in high school in southern California, she volunteered at a local hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. In the tiniest babies, she saw reflections of herself.

“I had been born very prematurely so I had this connection with the patients that we were serving,” said Farrar, who was born two months early after her mother developed sepsis. “I always heard stories growing up about being born so small. When I was born, I was really sick, my mom was really sick.”

The East Los Angeles hospital took care of many disadvantaged families. And as Farrar held the babies and talked with the parents, she saw how some families were struggling to make ends meet, and some babies’ difficulties didn’t end with being premature.

“We took care of a lot of babies waiting to go into the foster care system,” Farrar said. “A lot of it was holding the babies and talking with the families. I got to practice my Spanish and support people going through that emotionally difficult time. I felt that was special work.”

That special work launched Farrar onto a path that led to Alabama, Boston and Harvard Medical School, Oxford, and back. Along the way, she hasn’t wavered in her vision of using medicine to help others, but has taken a broad view, one that embraces physics and math and saw her contributing to research into drug resistance while staffing an overnight crisis hotline — and one that will have her marking her HMS graduation this spring with classmates as she anticipates a career in psychiatry.

That early hospital experience also helped Farrar see the importance of technology. She had heard how risky her own entry into the world was, and how decades earlier it would have been unlikely that she survived.

“I saw how technology had the ability to make a difference. Babies who wouldn’t have survived 20 years ago, we were sending home,” Farrar said. “I realized this was something I really wanted to contribute to.”

Farrar attended the University of Alabama to study physics and mathematics, hoping to apply those skills in medical research. She volunteered at a free clinic, running the diagnostic lab there, where she tested blood and urine samples and even drew blood herself, perfecting the art of relaxing people while standing with a needle in her hand. As with the urban poor she had seen in East LA, most of the Alabama patients were underinsured, and Farrar could see the struggles common between the two populations, even though their daily circumstances were at times starkly different.

“One patient was late for his appointment because his horse was sick. He’d been planning to ride his horse and had trouble getting another ride,” Farrar said. “Things were very different, but it still reinforced the same passion about how to use technology to improve care for people who are underserved.”

Farrar was accepted into the Harvard/MIT M.D.-Ph.D. program, and in 2018 arrived on campus for her first two years of study. When the time came to choose her Ph.D. program, however, she chose to study at Oxford University, where, from 2020 to 2024, she earned a D.Phil. in interdisciplinary bioscience. At Oxford, she worked in the lab of biophysicist Achilles Kapanidis. Among other projects, Farrar worked to develop a rapid test for antibiotic resistance that used the altered distribution of cellular ribosomes, tiny protein factories inside the cell.

Earlier work showed that ribosomes shift within the cell after exposure to antibiotics. Farrar and colleagues first made the ribosomes fluorescent, then exposed the cells to antibiotics, which shifted the ribosomes in a predictable way. The patterns were evaluated using an AI deep learning algorithm.

Published in the journal Communications Biology in 2025, the study, with Farrar as first author, showed that the process was highly sensitive: 99 percent effective at detecting drug resistance after examining just two cells. That finding, researchers wrote, had the potential to dramatically decrease processing time — from days to as little as 30 minutes — by eliminating the need to culture cells in order to have enough for analysis.

Farrar’s varied academic background — blending math, physics, and her medical training at HMS — gave her a unique, multidisciplinary perspective among the team, Kapanidis said.

“She’s versatile, fearless, and very, very motivated,” Kapanidis said, adding that much of the work was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which added its own challenges and complexities. “She has this spirit of looking forward, being very positive not only as a scientist but as a person, a lab citizen.”

Despite the lab work, Farrar didn’t forget about the people experiencing challenges in their lives. She coordinated the Oxford Nightline, an overnight hotline staffed seven days a week for people in crisis. And there were plenty, she said, with the pandemic taking its toll on mental health, on campus and beyond.

“That was a really meaningful part of my time at Oxford, and I think led me to psychiatry,” Farrar said. “The seeds were sown when I was working in the NICU, but working with Nightline, people were calling in situations of mental health crisis and we were helping them through those moments.”

After earning her D.Phil. in 2024, Farrar returned to HMS for her last two years of medical school, time dominated by the clinical rotations that expose students to different medical specialties. Key clerkships for Farrar were at McLean Hospital’s psychosis unit, on Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s consult psychiatry team, and, in the months leading up to Commencement, in Massachusetts General Hospital’s emergency psychiatry unit.

With both an M.D. and a D.Phil. under her belt, Farrar, who is entering the psychiatry residency research track at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is looking forward to beginning her career as a doctor and continuing her training, which combines clinical training and research.

“I definitely want to continue doing a mix of research and treating patients,” Farrar said. “I’m really interested in digital mental health, wearable devices, and how those can be used in psychiatry research. I’m really looking forward to the next chapter and seeing where my clinical experiences and interests lead me.”

Using the sun to power oxygen delivery in Africa, developing AI to mitigate risks on construction sites, and curing chronic inflammatory diseases with novel small molecules are a few many winning ideas from the 2026 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge.

“I love this event,” said President Alan Garber. “Turning an idea into a pitch, a pitch into a contender, a contender into a finalist, and a finalist into a prize winner. The excitement is palpable. Congratulations to all of you. Your curiosity and drive moved you to action, and we are eager to see where your ambition leads.”

The President’s Innovation Challenge is Harvard University’s flagship venture competition for students across Harvard’s 13 Schools as well as select alumni and affiliates. In the weeks leading up to the May 6 awards ceremony, finalists presented their ventures to a panel of judges who selected the winners in advance. During the ceremony in Klarman Hall, founders showcased their work to a global audience of in-person and virtual attendees. Winners received a share of more than $500,000 in non-dilutive funding, made possible by a generous gift from the Bertarelli Foundation, co-founded by Ernesto Bertarelli, M.B.A. ’93.

“I’ve been fortunate to meet finalists from this year’s President’s Innovation Challenge — all of them have demonstrated an entrepreneurial energy which I’m confident will leave the world a better place,” said Bertarelli. “It remains an honor for the Bertarelli Foundation to be able to help them develop their incredible and innovative ventures.”

The winning ventures represent 10 Harvard Schools and are working on ideas spanning multiple industries and disciplines.

$75,000 award recipients

Adalat AI (Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School): Building India’s first end-to-end justice technology platform to address systemic inefficiencies in the judicial system.

Overture Therapeutics (Harvard Business School): Creating better, healthier weight-loss intervention therapies for treating obesity and its co-morbidities by targeting emerging biological pathways.

Promakhos Therapeutics (Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School): Developing oral, non-immunosuppressive small molecules to cure chronic inflammatory disorders.

Refine Technologies (Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Developing AI peer review for research papers to create reviewer-grade feedback in minutes instead of months.

Winko Solar (Harvard Kennedy School): Delivering solar-powered oxygen to hospitals in Africa, with plans to expand globally.

“This will help us build one of the best applied AI teams in the world,” said Yann Calvó López, CEO and co-founder at Refine Technologies when asked how the President’s Innovation Challenge funding will help his venture.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Akonkwa Mubagwa, CEO and co-founder of Winko Solar, after receiving $75,000 in funding. “This prize will help us standardize our deployment so we can deploy faster.”

$25,000 award recipients

Colombiando (Harvard Graduate School of Education): Creating a new rural education model with multigrade teachers, turning hard-to-reach, one-room schools into learning hubs.

Enlaye (Harvard Business School): Helping construction teams identify, quantify, and mitigate risk across the entire project lifecycle with an AI-native platform.

FIND Neuro (Harvard Medical School): Revolutionizing drug-resistant epilepsy surgery with an FDA-path clinical decision support platform.

Revolv (Harvard Business School): Turning organic waste into affordable animal feed and fertilizer that boosts farmer incomes and nutrition.

Stenoa (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health): Building the operating system for mission-critical care.

Ingenuity award winners

Bite By Byte (Harvard School of Dental Medicine): Developing an AI-powered, custom night guard that continuously measures bite force, frequency, and duration in real time.

CryoFab (Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Building a 3D ice printer that uses water as a sacrificial material to create internal channels for tissue engineering.

ReMine (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health): Converting toxic abandoned mines into geothermal energy systems that power communities for generations.

VitaLoop (Harvard Medical School): Shifting dialysis care from centralized supply chains to point-of-care manufacturing with low-cost, on-demand production of dialysis fluid using local water and non-grid-dependent energy.

“More than 3,000 students have participated in Harvard Innovation Labs programming this year,” said Jill Kravetz, Bruce and Bridgitt Evans Executive Director of the Harvard Innovation Labs. “The President’s Innovation Challenge finalists aren’t just part of our innovation ecosystem. They’re helping to shape it and strengthen it.”

Immigrant physicians have quietly supported healthcare in underserved portions of urban and rural America for about six decades amid the rise of government-sponsored medical programs and a nationwide shortage of primary care providers.

And they have not always been welcomed.

Eram Alam chronicled their story in her 2025 book, “The Care of Foreigners: How Immigrant Physicians Changed U.S. Healthcare.” The associate professor in the history of medicine detailed her findings as part of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs’ fifth annual International Book Blitz on Monday.

Starting in the 1960s, she said, professionals from foreign countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, were recruited to work in the U.S.

“Lawmakers feared that these emergent post-colonial Asian and African nations would get seduced by the communist sphere of influence instead of joining the United States,” she said.

This fear coincided with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the desegregation of hospitals due to the Civil Rights Movement, compounding the need for physicians. The result: “For the last 60 years, roughly a quarter of the physicians in the United States have been immigrants who disproportionately work as primary care providers in America’s neglected urban and rural communities.”

However, these medical professionals faced racism from a medical establishment “weary of these non-white professionals with accented English who were claiming the status and authority of a physician.”

Examining both the individual experience of such caregivers and the larger social movements that have both bolstered and sought to exclude them, Alam said that her book makes the case for “bold, coordinated, comprehensive reform of both healthcare and immigration to secure reliable medical care for everybody in this country.”

Bruno Carvalho was next up at the blitz, a celebration of current and former Weatherhead affiliates whose books were published within the last 12 months.

The professor of Romance languages and literatures and of African and African American studies spoke about his January 2026 work, “The Invention of the Future: A History of Cities in the Modern World.” The book moves from 1755 Lisbon, which was rebuilt after an earthquake to become a center of the Enlightenment, through post-World War II Lagos and Brasilia.

Carvalho, who also serves as co-director of the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, said that in the 1700s people began for the first time to imagine a future that “would no longer be predetermined by divine or supernatural forces” but be “built by humans.”

He said his aim was to “rethink the history of the modern world as a set of competing visions over what the future ought to be like.”

Drawing on everything from official records to oral histories, or “data and deities, statistics and stories,” the book also traces how urban planning is “full of unintended consequences,” he said.

He noted how population density in cities came to be viewed as a public health issue in past centuries. But today some urban planners argue increasing density — building higher and allowing more infill development — may actually help ease today’s national housing crisis.

“Sometimes conversely, yesterday’s problems can become today’s solutions,” he said.

Describing “Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge,” Ian Kumekawa began by saying that his book was a COVID-era project.

During lockdown, the Anniversary Fellow at the Center for History and Economics became fascinated by the fact that his wife, a public defender, was working with clients who were incarcerated on “The Boat,” as it was called: a jail barge anchored in New York’s East River that was the last remaining prison ship in the U.S.

“My own training is in British imperial history,” he said, explaining that this floating prison brought to mind “the British carceral system in centuries gone by.”

With the luxury of time that COVID provided, he began researching the ship and found it had replaced an earlier prison barge.

“Unprepossessing” and painted “a very dull grey,” the flat-bottomed, steel-hulled boat had five layers of what are essentially shipping containers, he said. Technically classified as a “dumb pontoon,” the barge was built in Sweden and first served to house offshore oil workers, then moved to the Falklands, where it housed British soldiers, and then to Germany, for workers in a VW plant.

Following the boat to New York, Nigeria, and ultimately back to New York, Kumekawa began to see it as a player in a larger movement: the rise of offshore industries and global trade.

“Over the years, as it moved around, it became involved in almost every aspect of the offshore world” and globalization, he said.

This allowed him to write a “a global microhistory” of “these unbelievably transformative, important, economic transformations that have shaped our world over the last 50 years,” from a “barge-eye view.”

Gabrielle Oliveira introduced her book “Now We’re Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education and Dreams for a Better Life,” by reading from it.

Quoting a 15-year-old from Brazil, she read: “When people ask me, ‘Why did you come here?’ I tell them, ‘That’s the wrong question. The right question is, ‘Do I have the right to have a good life to dream?’”

That excerpt, said Oliveira, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and of Brazil Studies, embodied the theme of her work, stressing the ordinary respect and dignity that children and families deserve, no matter their origins.

Based on three years of ethnographic research, the book weaves together stories of parental sacrifice and children’s experiences of migration and the difficulties of crossing the border. Speaking of these experiences, she illustrated how trauma lasts, influencing the experience of families who simply seek a better life and education for their children.

“Adriana, the 15-year-old I quote in the beginning, knew this. She was asking whether she had the right to dream and to ask for better education,” said Oliveira. “She gave us the answer, ‘Yes, unconditionally.’ And this work bears witness to the families who have been living that truth quietly, daily, powerfully all along.”

Daniel Lord Smail, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of History, closed the event by discussing “Magdalena Coline: A Life Beyond Slavery in Mediterranean Europe.”

“Magdalena Coline” grew out of research that Smail, also the interim chair of the history department, was doing in Marseille in 1998. He was exploring court records from around the year 1400 when he came across “this utterly amazing case.” The case files, which ran to 300 pages, involved a formerly enslaved African woman who was suing her former enslaver over a small debt.

He set the project aside, and in the intervening years, he said, scholars’ views on the history of slavery shifted. Previously slavery in Europe had been dismissed as relatively minor. It has since become understood as part of a longer and larger global trade. In this context, his discovery of those records made more sense.

“We now know that the scale of the slave trade in the later Middle Ages was anything but insignificant,” he said.

It was also complicated, with links to the Mongol empire. Starting around 1300, he said, many enslaved people came from the Black Sea area they controlled, and their trade accelerated in the 1350s following civil war in part of the empire known as the “Golden Horde.”

“This flooded the market with a dramatically increased population of slaves,” he said, “And it created a context that was navigated by the protagonist of my story” — Coline, who dared to sue her enslaver. In her, Smail said, he found a lens to explore the trade and resale trade of enslaved people in the period.   

“You have to imagine interconnections sending enslaved people, almost invariably women, multiple times from city to city, all over the Western Mediterranean basin,” he said.

Seeking to enhance relationships between academia and industry, the Office of the Provost in 2024 introduced the Catalyst Professorship: a distinguished senior faculty role aimed at fostering collaboration with the private sector. Three prominent Harvard faculty have now been appointed Catalyst Professors: Doug Melton, a stem cell scientist; Boaz Barak, a theoretical computer physicist; and Michael Brenner, a scholar of applied mathematics.

“The Catalyst Professorships offer an important new approach to supporting academic excellence,” said President Alan M. Garber. “They acknowledge the ambitions of outstanding faculty who seek to drive progress across many fronts as they contribute to the fulfillment of our mission. Doug, Boaz, and Michael are distinguished teachers and researchers who have long inspired Harvard students and scientists. I am eager to see what they achieve in their new roles.”

“The Catalyst Professorship provides a terrific, innovative model for making our research ecosystem more porous and collaborative,” said provost John F. Manning. “The three distinguished inaugural professors provide an extraordinary proof of concept.”

“As the first opportunity of its kind at Harvard, the Catalyst Professorship offers a unique arrangement for exceptionally distinguished faculty to engage in external opportunities while maintaining their teaching commitments and contributions to Harvard’s academic mission,” said Judy Singer, senior vice provost for faculty.

The professorship is open to individuals of the highest academic distinction who have demonstrated excellence, experience, and integrity as researchers, teachers, mentors, and University contributors. It is open to all disciplines, including emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, renewable energy, and quantum technologies, where alliances between academia and industry are especially critical for advancing research and addressing global challenges. Catalyst Professors will not only further scientific exploration but also prepare students for success in a rapidly evolving professional landscape.

“This professorship is truly a groundbreaking opportunity that has the potential to lower the barriers between academic insight and industry innovation, positioning Harvard for even greater real-world impact across disciplines,” said senior vice provost for research John Shaw. “I look forward to welcoming more Catalyst Professors over time who will further advance academic scholarship and teaching toward societal impact.”

Learn more about Harvard’s three Catalyst Professors below.

Doug Melton

Melton, who has been the Xander University Professor and co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), was appointed a Catalyst Professor in 2024. In addition to his teaching and research at Harvard, he is a distinguished research fellow at Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

“I am very grateful to Harvard and Vertex for this special opportunity, one which recognizes the shared interests in teaching, advancing science, and developing new medicines,” said Melton. “Connecting these and similar institutions in the Boston biomedical ecosystem has the potential to significantly advance discoveries for patients and benefit student education.”

Melton’s career has been marked by groundbreaking contributions to diabetes research, following the diagnosis of own children, Sam and Emma, with Type 1 diabetes. Through his pursuit of a cure for Type 1 diabetes, Melton became a leader in the field of embryonic stem cell research. In 2001, his lab created a series of human stem cell lines and distributed them free of charge to scientists pursuing research around the world; in 2008, he and colleagues made major discoveries in reprogramming embryonic stem cells into different types of cells. In 2014, his team produced for the first time large quantities of functional pancreatic islets that contained beta cells making human insulin. He founded Semma Therapeutics — named for his children, and acquired by Vertex in 2016 — to advance the therapy.

Prior to his current appointment as Catalyst Professor, Melton held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School and within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He founded and co-chaired what would become the first cross-School department, between HMS and FAS, the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. He and his wife, Gail, also served as Eliot House faculty deans for 10 years.

Melton earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Illinois. As a Marshall Scholar, he earned a B.A. in history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in molecular biology at Trinity College and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He was also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a founder of Gilead Sciences, and a scientific advisory board member of several biotech companies.

Boaz Barak

Barak, who has been a professor of computer science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), was appointed a Catalyst Professor in fall 2025. Barak balances his Harvard work with a role on the technical staff at OpenAI, where he works on safety and alignment in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“These are both exciting and daunting times when it comes to artificial intelligence,” said Barak. “I value the opportunity to combine industry and academic perspective, and in particular, to use this learning to teach AI safety to extremely talented and motivated Harvard students.”

Barak’s research broadly explores theoretical computer science, with a particular focus on cryptography, algorithms, computational complexity, quantum computing, and machine learning. Recently, he has focused on the foundations of machine learning, seeking to understand the capabilities and limitations of deep learning systems based on the resources they have access to and the best ways of building safety mechanisms into artificial intelligence systems.

In addition to his work as a professor and at OpenAI, Barak is a member of the Harvard SEAS Theory of Computing Group and the Harvard Machine Learning Foundations Group. He is an associate faculty member at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence and a member of the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid in Harvard College, and he was a member of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. He served on the editorial boards of the Theory of Computing Journal and the Electronic Colloquium of Computational Complexity and on the scientific advisory boards for Quanta Magazine and the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. He is a board member and co-organizer of AddisCoder and JamCoders, nonprofit organizations dedicated to teaching algorithms and coding to high-school students in Ethiopia and Jamaica.

Prior to his time at Harvard, Barak worked as a principal researcher at Microsoft Research New England and an associate professor at Princeton University. He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. in computer science from the Weizmann Institute of Science, and he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

Michael Brenner

Brenner, who has been the Michael F. Cronin Professor of Applied Mathematics and Applied Physics and professor of physics at SEAS, was appointed a Catalyst Professor in fall 2025. He also works as a principal scientist at Google Research, where he leads Science AI.

“Rapid changes in generative artificial intelligence have deep implications for accelerating scientific research but also have deep implications for the way we teach and what students need to learn,” said Brenner. “Having a foot both in industry and academia makes it possible to be at the vanguard of this transformation, bringing these lessons to our students with a unique perspective.”

Brenner’s research uses applied mathematics principles to address real-world problems in science and engineering. His lab explores a range of topics where applied mathematics can help explain or predict the behavior of complex systems. Areas of focus include self-assembly, or how simple components with programmable interactions can reliably organize into complex structures — and, building on these principles, the emerging field of molecular computing, which uses machine learning and engineering advances to design molecular systems that can solve complex computational issues.

His lab has also focused on turbulence and fluid mechanics, looking at various phenomena such as the movements of atmospheric molecules, the aerodynamics of whale flippers, and the splashing of water droplets to understand and establish theoretical mathematical principles. He co-developed “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science,” which explores the scientific phenomena behind the cooking process and has become a wide-reaching online course. His work at Google Science as an applied mathematician focuses on exploring the interface between machine learning and science.

Brenner holds a B.Sc. in physics and mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago. Prior to joining Harvard in 2002, he held a faculty position in mathematics at MIT.

Having the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society host an event together would be asking for disaster.

At least that was ChatGPT’s sentiment when Kristi Jobson, the assistant dean for admissions at Harvard Law School, asked the chatbot how to arrange campus groups for a student event. It even advised seating the traditionally conservative and progressive law societies on opposite sides of the room — otherwise the result “could be really combustible.”

American Constitution Society event chair Abbott LaPrade laughed about AI’s prediction as he introduced panelists for the recent event titled “Is the Roberts Court Legitimate?”

The talk was part of the “From Dissent to Dialogue” series, one of eight student-led projects funded by the President’s Building Bridges Fund across six graduate Schools and the College. It brought together law scholars from differing ideological perspectives to debate the provocative question about the nation’s highest court.

It was, in Law School Dean John C.P. Goldberg’s words, “exactly what was envisioned” for the fund — “getting people together who disagree to learn from each other, to see where they really agree and where they really disagree.”

In opening remarks as moderator, Goldberg introduced a distinction made by renowned former Law School Professor Richard Fallon, who died last year: the difference between legal legitimacy — the legal validity of the Court’s decision-making — and its moral legitimacy. Are the Court’s decisions just?

Given polls that show the Supreme Court’s lowest favorability rating from the public in at least 50 years, he asked whether the Court was experiencing a crisis of legitimacy.

Derek Muller, a Federalist Society invitee and professor of law at Notre Dame, said that in the sense that the court is making law, issuing decisions, and rendering judgments, “It is quite obviously legitimate.” The deeper, more fraught questions, he said, are sociological. Does the public accept the Court’s decision-making?

He said all the panelists likely believe that the Court appears bound by the Constitution and precedent. “If we say the court is illegitimate, this starts to raise very significant questions for us,” he said. “Do we have a duty to obey an illegitimate authority or even to impeach these judges because we think they are illegitimately promulgating the law? What are the steps that will be required to save the court from illegitimacy?”

Nancy Gertner, senior lecturer on law at HLS and a former judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, said that legitimacy is too low a bar. “We certainly expect more of a court than that they say they’re following the law, that they’re wearing robes, that they’re in front of a flag,” she said. “We expect not every division in the court to be a partisan division. We expect that longstanding precedent is not eliminated whole.” Issues with the court need to be thought about on a fundamental level: how the country selects judges, whether they’re held to the ethical standards to which others must abide.

Addressing the Court’s public approval, Garrett West, a law professor at Yale, said he doesn’t think the Supreme Court should necessarily be driven by opinion polling. The Court is not particularly well-equipped to gauge public opinion, he said, and the public often doesn’t have strong opinions on decisions the Court is making.

If opinions of the Supreme Court fell to such a point that political actors no longer treated the Court’s opinions as legitimate, that would be a problem, he said. “I don’t think we’re quite there yet, in particular because presidents of the last two administrations have generally acquiesced in the judgments of the Supreme Court.”

When it came to the Court’s legitimacy, Nikolas Bowie, Louis D. Brandeis Professor at HLS, said it helps to have a sense of what people think the Court should be doing. He draws inspiration from the Congress of Reconstruction following the American Civil War, a body interested in the broader question of how to “reconstruct the country as a multiracial democracy in the wake of a clear breakage in the constitutional order.”

He believes that the problems that plague the Supreme Court today, and that have led to its low standing with the public, is the act of horizontal review — deciding whether laws passed by Congress are constitutional.

“The government we have now is one that appears broken, in part,” he said, “because of the laws that Congress has passed over the years to protect democracy are being invalidated or undermined by the Court,” including the Voting Rights Act, campaign finance laws, laws protecting civil servants from being fired, and laws protecting the peaceful transfer of power.

Gertner criticized the Supreme Court’s overruling of past decisions, especially since 2018. She charges some of these reversals didn’t result from new evidence and facts, but for less substantial reasons: “I just thought the other guy was wrong.”

Muller disagreed with Gertner’s characterization. He pointed to research that said the Court is overturning precedents at a much lower rate than the Warren Court (1953-1969) — though he acknowledged that a debate could be had about the significance of the precedents. He also argued that decisions to overturn federal statutes such as Roe v. Wade or Regents of the University of California v. Bakke were not “fly-by-night” decisions, but rather the conclusion of long legal campaigns that created a “robust body of doctrine” that led to their reversals.

Gertner, who served on former President Joe Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court, expressed support for traditional Court reform, saying, in response to one audience question, “I can’t think of any circumstance under which Court reform can be seen as a bad thing.”

West pushed back, asking whether she thought the Trump administration would more likely defy the Supreme Court if Biden, for example, had added six new justices to the Court during his last term. Muller joked that the Supreme Court should expand to 535 members, divided into two chambers. He said that partisan reforms were doomed to failure, though he was open to the case for age limits for justices, among others.

Bowie agreed that when thinking about reform, it’s important to think of what you’re reforming the Court to do. “What matters for me,” he said, “is a democracy.”

It might come as a surprise that scrapbooks — mundane, somewhat old-school arrangements of photographs, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, and other ephemera — are worth archiving. But the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library houses more than 600 of them among its collections.

Scrapbooks can help researchers fill in gaps of history with insights into the lives of ordinary people — sometimes people for whom there is little or no public record. This aspect of the collections is particularly important for the Schlesinger as the country’s leading center for women’s history, because so much of it was thinly documented in official sources.

“Scrapbooks are unique because there never is one singular formula,” says Victor Betts, curator for collections on ethnicity and migration at the library. “They’re a great way to introduce and tell people about hidden and unknown histories.”

Jenny Gotwals, the Johanna-Maria Fraenkel Curator for Gender and Society, said the collection has drawn significant interest among students and scholars doing research for projects, papers and dissertations.

Last spring, Betts co-taught “Asian American Women’s History in the Schlesinger Library,” an embedded course for which students worked with the library’s primary source materials.

Paired with the course was Schlesinger’s recent exhibition, “Illuminate: Contextualizing Asian American Women’s Stories through the Archives,” curated by Betts, which brought to light many marginalized histories.

The exhibition featured a display about the history of Japanese American incarceration, showcasing pages from scrapbooks, autograph books, and photo albums. Each item offers a close look into the lives depicted on the page, lived experiences that are too often forgotten.

“There is an autograph book from Crystal City, one of the camps in Texas, with sketches and signatures and messages from various people who were incarcerated in camps, in English, Japanese, of course, and then Spanish,” Betts said. “Why is there Spanish in this autograph book? There were actually Japanese Latin Americans whose governments, in cooperation with the U.S. government, shipped them to Crystal City; that’s a part of history not a lot of people know about.”

Rooted in the recordkeeping tradition of family Bibles and commonplace notebooks,  scrapbooks have been around since the mid-19th century. Although the format has evolved somewhat over the centuries, few rules govern the contents of scrapbooks.

“The Schlesinger has traditionally called volumes that are just photos photo albums, and volumes that have multiple types of things scrapbooks,” explains Gotwals. But, “what can be in a scrapbook is anything.”

When considering scrapbooks for acquisition, Gotwals and her colleagues ask what can be learned from each item, what histories might be revealed or re-examined.

“Can we tell who made it? Are people [featured] named? Are there dates, titles, a menu from a restaurant? What is it that we can use to build a life story?”

Some scrapbooks and photo albums come to Schlesinger via donation as part of a larger collection, often from a notable source. Many others are one-offs, periodically from less well-known authors, purchased from rare book dealers who find them in thrift stores, estate sales — even dumpsters.

Sometimes, the most valuable insights gleaned from a collection involve what isn’t there.

The scrapbook of Maggie Neyland Chatman, for example, is dedicated to social events like cotillion programming, debutante balls, weddings, and funerals that her family attended between 1940 and 1965. One clipping Chatman saved shows her daughter and two peers, primly dressed and smiling. On the flip side is part of an article, the headline fully visible in bold type: “Is Malcolm X The Real Leader Of The Black Muslims?”

Though the family, who lived in San Francisco, was African American, Chatman’s scrapbook reflects little interest in the Civil Rights Movement — or the Nation of Islam, for that matter (in fact, there were some Christmas cards in the collection). Yet the wider historical backdrop was there nonetheless.

“What’s interesting about an archive isn’t always about what the person does,” says Gotwals. Just as illuminating, if not more, is the narrative they attempt to create.

“What do we make in our life, and what can we learn from it?” Gotwals said. And for researchers: “How do we build knowledge out of these primary sources?”

Archivists like Jess Purkis, librarian/archivist for digital programs at the Schlesinger, give researchers broader access to primary sources through digitization. Each scrapbook brings new challenges: brittle paper, disintegrating newsprint, envelopes pasted to the page with letters still inside.

“Scrapbooks are notoriously difficult [to digitize] because they are so layered,” Purkis said. “There might be a giant bow that’s covering up a bunch of stuff. There might be five greeting cards weighing the entire page down, and you can’t pick it up because it’s so heavy, you’re afraid it’s going to break the page.”

In circumstances like these — which, when it comes to scrapbooks, are extremely common — archivists and digitization assistants prepare materials to be imaged by technicians at Widener Library who use photography and large-format scanners to preserve the material.

The more complex the page, the more complex the instructions. In one project, Purkis had to request that a scrapbook with about 125 pages be imaged 404 times, asking technicians to “[photograph] it as many times as it takes to make visible all of the things on the page that might not be visible if there was just one shot.”

“One of my favorite parts of archiving is when the little foibles or the little bits of personality seep through the cracks of what is formally arranged,” Purkis said. “People are usually putting forth a specific version of themselves in their archives. That’s just human. But every once in a while, you come across something that someone has either kept, or scrawled something on the side of, that’s different.”

The official record can only do so much to describe the texture of a life at a specific point in time. “That’s where a scrapbook and a diary, and love letters come in,” Gotwals says. “They document an experience and a life.”

To honor the legacy of the late Susan Wojcicki ’90, a trailblazing technology leader and former CEO of YouTube, Harvard dedicated the Susan Wojcicki Library at the Science and Engineering Complex earlier this spring. The event brought together President Alan Garber, other University leaders, faculty, students, and the Troper Wojcicki family.

Named in her memory through a $20 million gift from the Troper Wojcicki Foundation, the library’s location — at the heart of the complex — is designed as a space to foster cross-disciplinary exchange and collaboration. The gift also provides flexible discretionary funding to the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to support early-stage faculty research, graduate students, and investments in computing and laboratory resources, fueling work in areas such as artificial intelligence; climate, energy, and sustainability; and engineering solutions that improve human health.

At the dedication, Garber reflected on Wojcicki’s ties to Harvard and the significance of the Troper Wojcicki Foundation’s gift.

“I can’t imagine a more fitting expression of [Susan’s] connection to the University and her commitment to changing and improving lives and making a difference in the world,” he said.

This gift builds on Wojcicki and her husband, Dennis Troper’s, legacy of philanthropic support across Harvard, which includes seed grant funding for the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, fellowships through the Harvard Data Science Initiative, and graduate fellowships in computer science at SEAS.

He noted that the Troper Wojcicki Foundation’s support will help students and faculty at the complex and across SEAS address some of the greatest challenges facing society today. “We are so deeply grateful to you, Dennis, and to the entire Troper Wojcicki family,” Garber said.

“Here, Susan’s legacy will be visible to future generations of students who will use this space to solve problems, collaborate, and develop the skills they need to become the next generation of leaders in science and technology,” said dean of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences David Parkes. “I want to thank Dennis and the Troper Wojcicki family very much for their transformational support of the work we do and the community we foster here at [SEAS].”

University Librarian Martha Whitehead underscored the importance of this legacy. “The Susan Wojcicki Library, like Susan herself, is a connector,” said Whitehead. “Situated in the middle of the SEAS community, it serves as a doorway into the world’s largest academic library and collections that will spark new ideas and fuel innovation.”

Wojcicki graduated from Harvard College with a concentration in history and literature, but her time at Harvard was marked by a curiosity that extended beyond any single field. She worked in Widener Library as an undergraduate and, as a senior, enrolled in “Introduction to Computer Science” — the only humanities concentrator in the class. Her instinct to cross disciplinary lines would define both her career and her vision for what technology could make possible. At Google and YouTube, she rose to become one of the industry’s most influential leaders, guided by a conviction that great ideas emerge at the intersection of different ways of thinking. She was also known for recognizing the promise of new ideas and creating pathways for opportunity.

Wojcicki remained closely connected to the University throughout her life, serving on the Global Advisory Council, the Committee on University Resources, and the University Task Force on Science and Engineering. Her service reflected a longstanding commitment to bringing people together across areas of expertise and expanding opportunity for the next generation.

In his remarks, Troper shared his reflections on Wojcicki, their life together, and why the library is such a fitting place to bear her name.

“It is so moving that this space is now the Susan Wojcicki Library. May this library be a sanctuary for the bold, a lab for the curious, and serve as a reminder to every student here that no matter what your major is, you have the power to change the world.”

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued that civic education could help reduce polarization and strengthen citizenship during a forum at the Ed School last month.

“We are in sort of a period where people seem to be arguing quite a lot and disagreeing,” Breyer, who is now Byrne Professor of Administrative Law and Process at Harvard Law School, said in a conversation with Martin West, academic dean and Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, on April 21. “I think in the longer run, the only possible solution is to restore 12th-grade civics.”

Breyer, who served on the court from 1994 to 2022, spoke about his own civic education in San Francisco public schools, which helped spark his interest in public service and taught him the value of civic participation in a democratic government.

“We used to get in a bus and go to Sacramento,” said Breyer. “We’d see the legislature in session, and we’d have ‘Youth in Government Day,’ where everybody took on the position of somebody in San Francisco’s government, so that the kids knew by the time they graduated that they’d better participate in that government — that it’s their government.”

Throughout his career, Breyer has highlighted the role of public education, among other institutions, in strengthening democracy. His books include “Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View.” In 2021, he wrote an 8-1 decision supporting student free speech off-campus, arguing that “America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy.”

When asked about the role of the Supreme Court in civic education, Breyer said that justices should write in a clear way to ensure that citizens understand both the complexities and the practical impact of a ruling. To underline his point, he recalled a meeting between the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and several Supreme Court justices.

“When the Dalai Lama came to the Supreme Court … he asked, ‘What do you do when you have to decide a case that is under the law but immoral?’ We all said, ‘Well, you try to prevent that …’ And if you actually can’t prevent it because it is in the law, you do your best to explain it.”

When asked for advice on how to foster constructive dialogue, Breyer brought up his service as chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1970s — specifically the example set by the committee’s chair, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Kennedy, a Democrat, sought to reach across the aisle, said Breyer, paraphrasing the senator’s message to his staff when it was time to negotiate with Republicans: “Go talk to them, but don’t talk too much. Listen. If you listen long enough, very often, not always, but very often, they will say something that you genuinely agree with.”

Breyer praised the work of several foundations and organizations that are promoting civic education among middle- and high-school students. He noted his own work with the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Classroom, which offers free lessons on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.

He said that he remains optimistic about young people’s efforts to participate in civic life and pursue careers in public service.

“They’re interested in what they might do to cure some of these problems in front of us,” he said. “And it’s the look in their eyes that makes me optimistic.”

Climbing Mount Everest is getting safer, a new study shows, though the world’s highest peak remains dangerous enough that almost one in 100 who try it don’t make it home.

The work, led by Paul Firth, an experienced mountaineer and associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, builds upon his earlier research into high-altitude deaths on the mountain since the first recorded summit attempt, George Mallory’s expedition of 1921.

Firth and colleagues want to better understand what happens to the human body at high elevations to guide efforts to make climbing safer. That initial research, published in 2009, found that cerebral edema likely played a role in many more high-altitude deaths than was previously understood.

The condition develops in regions of low oxygen like Everest’s “death zone” above 26,200 feet, or five miles up. Fluid leaks into the brain, causing headaches, extreme fatigue, coordination problems, and impaired judgment, any one of which presents a hazard in conditions where a single mistake can cost your life.

“Contrary to perceptions and media reports, things are actually safer now, but still very dangerous,” Firth said.

The current research, published in The Journal of Physiology in late April, showed that death rates during climbing expeditions fell by half between the initial period — 1921 to 2006 — and more recent years, 2007 to 2024, with the mortality rate falling from 1.4 percent to 0.7 percent.

Firth and colleagues credited a number of changes in recent years with lowering the death rate.

Most attempts today occur along known, standard routes, which feature fixed ropes. In addition, weather forecasting has improved greatly, as have communication systems, allowing much freer flow of information about what awaits higher up on the mountain.

And advances in logistics, clothing, nutrition, hydration, and oxygen delivery systems have each lowered the risk to climbers from cold, hunger, thirst, and thin air.

“The data are that fewer people are involved in falls, and fewer people are getting isolated, left behind, and dying alone,” Firth said. “We speculate that teamwork has improved and that everything being roped the whole way has helped markedly, but there are many other things that could have contributed which we weren’t able to measure.”

Climbing Everest has always been a life-threatening endeavor.

The first recorded summit was by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary in 1953. Other parties had not been so successful.

Two died on the first expedition in 1921, though their deaths were en route to the mountain. An avalanche claimed the lives of seven porters on the second expedition in 1922.

Four died in the third attempt, in 1924, including George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, who disappeared on the first known attempt to reach the summit and whose remains were only found in recent decades.

A total of 426 have died in Everest expeditions as of 2024.

According to the current work, a portion of which was funded by the MGH Anesthesia Department, just over half of the deaths occurred in the “death zone.” The air at the summit holds just a third of the oxygen at sea level.

Firth said that most deaths now occur on good-weather days due to lack of oxygen and the extreme cold at that altitude. Improved forecasting has reduced losses directly related to bad weather.

The new work highlights the increased popularity of climbing in recent decades, with 1,921 summits through the 85 years up to 2006, and 9,823 summits in the 18 years since.

Though the mortality rate has fallen, climbers still die almost yearly on the mountain, and many years have seen multiple lives lost.

One such year was 2004, when seven people died on Everest, several during a day when Firth himself was leading a small expedition to the top.

Luckily, Firth’s interest in the physiological effects of high-altitude climbing had primed him to recognize warning signs after his oxygen equipment malfunctioned. He started to fall behind, so he called a halt and brought the group together.

He sent one climber up with adequate oxygen while Firth and the others continued down.

There were no deaths among his team and the climber sent on the second push made it to the top without incident — the first Norwegian woman to summit Everest.

The study highlighted disparities between deaths of climbers and the native sherpas who provide professional porter and guide services.

Three-quarters of deaths among climbers occur high on the mountain, on “summit day” — the last push to the top — or on the way down. The vast majority of sherpa deaths, by contrast, happen lower on the mountain, as they prepare the route for their clients.

Firth was disappointed at not having summited, but he has no doubt now that turning around was the right decision, one reinforced by the deaths on the mountain that day and by his research since.

He’s also content that his two studies of Everest deaths have contributed significantly to the climbing community.

“To me, actually doing the study gave me more of a sense of achievement than climbing Everest,” Firth said. “This was my, ‘Hey, I didn’t climb Everest, but I did the study instead.’ It’s my personal Everest in research.”

Inspired by the trailblazing female politicians of her native Costa Rica, which elected its second woman president earlier this year, Daniela Solis ’26 arrived at Harvard with a dream to run for office.

“I’ve always wanted to become president since I was a little kid,” said Solis. “I always wanted to study government to serve my country better.”

Then an arts class in her junior year opened her eyes to an entirely new calling she never would have predicted.

“What I experienced doing art was something I had never experienced before,” Solis said. “When I was painting, it felt like time stopped. Nothing else exists.”

The government concentrator with a secondary in Theater, Dance & Media said that after graduation she plans to pursue a master’s degree in fine arts. Politics is still on her horizon, she said, but studying the arts has made her a more well-rounded person better equipped to lead others.

“I have been able to find myself through art,” said Solis. “I had never expected that I would become an artist. I have learned that every day gives you the opportunity to change and be a better version of yourself.”

Karthik Pandian, associate professor in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, taught the class that made Solis fall in love with art. He said Soltis stood out from the beginning for her “openness” to the “process-driven ways of making art” and her “commitment” to creativity.

Many students, Pandian said, approach assignments with an eye toward the professor’s goals to get a good grade. But in his class, he said, assignments are open-ended, and students are encouraged to be open to serendipity, which can be frustrating to some.

“With Daniela, I got the sense that she was seeking a space like this throughout her studies at Harvard,” said Pandian, “and when she found it in the studio in the Carpenter Center, she leapt through the portal, so to speak, into her own very deep well of creativity and embraced the unknown. She constantly surprised me throughout the semester.”

Since taking Pandian’s class — in which students use materials such as cardboard, charcoal, and found objects to create art — Solis has produced more than 40 pieces. She sometimes spends five hours a day working on art projects. This past winter, she painted a mural in her high school in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose. On her website Her Reset, which displays some of her work, she writes that “art [is] a way of expanding consciousness and returning to what is most authentic within us.”

Solis’ ability to embrace a path she hadn’t foreseen when she first arrived at Harvard can be traced back to the example set by her mother. “She inspired me to be myself, and to care for others. I learned that even when no one is looking at you, you should always choose to do what’s right.”

A single parent, Solis’ mother worked as a real estate agent to provide for her daughter and secure her a good education at a small private high school in San Jose, while also getting involved in local politics. Influenced by her mother, but also by her country’s female politicians, Solis dreamed of running for office. A country of 5.2 million people, Costa Rica has had two female presidents: Laura Chinchilla in 2010, and Laura Fernández Delgado, who was elected in February. At present, female lawmakers represent the majority in Costa Rica’s legislative assembly.

For Pandian, Solis’ felicitous encounter with art is an example for all students. Many professors lament that students spend their undergraduate years preparing for a career path and a high-paying job after graduation, instead of exploring the humanities, the arts, and social sciences.

“There are many ways that you can make an impact in this world, not just through the most clear and visible forms of power,” said Pandian. “Through art, culture and transformation of consciousness, we can do great things as well.”