all Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study stories

Radcliffe’s Fay Prize awarded to Norman Yao for pioneering research

50443248 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:25:41 -0400

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has named Harvard math and physics concentrator Norman Yao ’09 the winner of its 2009 Captain Jonathan Fay Prize. Yao was selected for the quality and potential impact of his senior thesis, which describes a breakthrough scientific technique he developed to measure the properties of neurofilaments, a family of proteins found in the neurons that constitute mammalian nervous tissue.

Scholar makes robots that detect land mines

50443248 — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:29:33 -0400

On Oct. 10, 2005 — he remembers the date exactly — Thrishantha Nanayakkara was driving down a country road, headed for a science workshop at Jaffna Central College, a high school in the far north of Sri Lanka. The event was designed to distract potential child soldiers from the allure of war.

His cell phone rang. It was a government official, with a tip-off. “Turn back,” the caller said, in so many words, “or you will be killed.”

‘Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine’

50443248 — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:31:02 -0400

What happens when a Buddhist monk visiting the United States is hospitalized, terminally ill with liver cancer? Does religion interfere with his medical care? What about his Buddhist brethren, unable to join him bedside? Who will provide the appropriate services and ceremonies? Well, says Wendy Cadge, that’s where hospital chaplains come in.

Life in the universe? Almost certainly. Intelligence? Maybe not

50443248 — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:56:00 -0400

We are likely not alone in the universe, though it may feel like it, since life on other planets is probably dominated by microbes or other nonspeaking creatures, according to scientists who gave their take on extraterrestrial life at Harvard recently.

Speakers reviewed how life on Earth arose and the many, sometimes improbable steps it took to create intelligence here. Radio astronomer Gerrit Verschuur said he believes that though there is very likely life out there — perhaps a lot of it — it is very unlikely to be both intelligent and able to communicate with us.

Fijian girls succumb to Western dysmorphia

50443248 — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:55:00 -0400

In 1982, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Anne E. Becker was still an undergraduate at Radcliffe when she traveled to Fiji for a summer of anthropology fieldwork.

Cancer chemotherapy: An unfolding story

50443248 — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:10:11 -0400

To launch his lecture on cancer chemotherapy, Luke Whitesell ’79, RI ’06 displayed an image of an origami crab: a double visual metaphor. The crab is the traditional symbol of cancer. And Whitesell, a senior research scientist at the Whitehead Institute, has focused on how the artful folding of proteins in cells may offer clues to more effective, less toxic treatments. His November 17 talk — part of the Radcliffe Institute’s Lectures in the Sciences series — richly conveyed what he called “the most interesting subject in the world: the drug treatment of cancer.”

Carol Robinson: Pushing a technology’s boundaries

50443248 — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:17:36 -0400

The distinguished chemist Carol Robinson has used mass spectrometry throughout her career to tackle increasingly complex problems in biology. When she delivered the Radcliffe Institute’s first Lecture in the Sciences of the academic year, last Oct. 6, she chose the title “Reading Between the Spectral Lines,” referring to the jagged lines of data produced by the mass spectrometer.

This technology allows scientists to analyze the chemical structure of a sample by determining the precise mass (or size) and charge of particles in it.

A collaboration with a long lifetime

50443248 — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:34:10 -0400

It was a crisp, classic fall day in Cambridge, but little of the golden afternoon sunlight trickled down to Cynthia Friend’s laboratory in the basement of the Harvard chemistry building.

Yet sunlight and gold are key to an intriguing research project taking shape here, combining the expertise of Friend, a professor of chemistry and materials science, and Katharina Al-Shamery RI ’09, a German scientist who spent the fall semester of 2008–2009 in Friend’s lab on a Radcliffe Institute fellowship.

Skin biology illuminates how stem cells operate

50443248 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:13:51 -0400

As a girl, Elaine Fuchs borrowed her mother’s old strainers and mixing bowls to collect polliwogs, an activity she credits for her present-day career as a biologist.

It also helped that her father was a geochemist who studied meteorites, her aunt a radiation expert, her older sister a neuroscientist.

Going on to study science “was almost a no-brainer,” said Fuchs, who did her Ph.D. at Princeton University.

Computer science pioneer Barbara J. Grosz awarded Allen Newell Award

50443248 — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:19:11 -0400

Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, was awarded the Allen Newell Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)/Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The Newell Award recognizes career contributions that have breadth within computer science or that bridge computer science and other disciplines.

From Bipolar Darkness, the Empathy to Be a Doctor

50443248 — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:45:20 -0400

First Suzanne Murray Professor named

50443248 — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:37:42 -0400

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has named Nancy E. Hill, a leader in the study of cultural influences on parenting and adolescent achievement, the first Suzanne Murray Professor. Hill has also been appointed a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), where she has served as a visiting associate professor. Both appointments are effective July 1, 2009.

The Murray professorship allows a newly tenured Harvard faculty member to spend four semesters as a Radcliffe Fellow during her or his first five years at Harvard. In addition, Hill’s research ideally positions her to collaborate with Radcliffe faculty leaders on the institute’s new policy studies initiatives as well as other academic activities.

Genes Offer New Clues in Old Debate on Species’ Origins

50443248 — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:22:11 -0400

Bacteria have more to say than previously thought

50443248 — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:17:16 -0400

Bacteria are the oldest living organisms, dating back 4 billion years. So it is only logical that they have evolved ways to communicate.

Yet scientists are just starting to explore the secret languages of these primitive single-cell organisms, whose abundant numbers form most of the Earth’s biomass, and who — depending on species — can both cause and prevent disease in plants, animals, and humans.

One of the pioneer scientific explorers of cell-to-cell bacterial communication is Princeton University microbiologist Bonnie Bassler. The one-time MacArthur Fellow brought an overview of her work to Harvard this week (Feb. 23) in a fast-paced lecture she called “Tiny Conspiracies.”

Researchers control the assembly of nanobristles into helical clusters

404132862 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:10:16 -0500

From the structure of DNA to nautical rope to distant spiral galaxies, helical forms are as useful as they are abundant in nature and manufacturing alike.