The night sky is now a little clearer.

With the ultimate goal of creating a comprehensive map of the universe, the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time project passed a major milestone in October when its testing camera at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory captured its first images of the night sky.

“With on-sky images obtained with our engineering camera, Rubin Observatory demonstrated that the Simonyi Survey Telescope and Rubin software frameworks are operational,” said University of Washington Professor Željko Ivezić, the observatory’s construction director.

As the team makes regular updates, its members are “excited about our next milestone: integrating our main camera, the largest astronomical camera ever constructed, with the telescope,” Ivezić said.

That main imager is the much larger LSST Camera, which will be capable of obtaining images 21 times bigger than the test camera’s. Work is now ongoing to prepare this camera for installation on the Chile-based telescope with the aim of having it up and running by the end of January. A commissioning period of approximately six months will follow, with the first public release of astronomical images expected in mid-2025.

The LSST camera’s size and resolution are needed for “cosmic cinematography,” said Harvard Professor of Physics and of Astronomy Christopher Stubbs, who is currently working with the telescope’s team in Chile and was Rubin’s inaugural project scientist.

Explaining the project, which was conceived roughly 30 years ago, he said: “Astronomers had built large-aperture telescopes, which collect a lot of light to look at things that are faint. Astronomers had built wide-field telescopes that can look at a lot of things at the same time. The idea here was to put those two things together and make a wide-field, large aperture telescope that can look at lots of faint things all at once.”

By scanning the sky every few nights for 10 years with such a powerful telescope and camera, the observatory will garner “a time-lapse image of the sky every single night and look for everything that changes or moves,” Stubbs said.

The project, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, breaks ground on two fronts. The first, said Stubbs, is philosophical, as the team plans to “make all the data immediately available to the entire community of scientists, [with] education outreach for K through 12th grade, and participating countries and institutions.”

“The idea of completely wide-open data set is a new way of doing business,” he said.

The project is revolutionary in another way as well, said Stubbs, author of “Going Big: A Scientist’s Guide to Large Projects and Collaborations.” Previously, “people would point the telescope at their favorite object,” a particular galaxy or star. The wide field of the new telescope and its camera makes such a tight focus unnecessary. “The same stream of images will serve a wide span of scientific appetites, ranging from finding potentially hazardous killer asteroids in the solar system to mapping out the structure of our Milky Way to finding exploding stars halfway across the universe” he said.

The breadth and duration of this 10-year project may help unlock other secrets, such as the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter, Stubbs said, is the name we give to “90 percent of the mass of the Milky Way.”

“We infer its existence from its gravitational effect on things,” said Stubbs. So far, however, scientists have been unable to exactly define dark matter. Dark energy is a similar catch-all term for a force not yet identified, but which is making the universe expand “faster and faster and faster,” he said.

“With this instrument and system, which can do a super-precise job on calibration, we’re optimistic about our ability to look at dark matter and dark energy with unprecedented resolution.”

Ideally, the project will shed light on these mysteries and more. “This is the first instrument that we’ve really engineered from scratch to maximize our ability to study open questions in fundamental physics with astrophysical tools,” Stubbs said.

“The initial plan is to collect data for a 10-year period and process that through computer centers in California and in France, and then disseminate those results as broadly as we possibly can and empower both the formal astronomical community and informal education to make the most of this data set.”

Starting a new job can be intimidating and stressful — what are the unwritten rules, whom can I ask for help? Similarly, the first day of school can be both exciting and a little daunting — will I do well, where will I sit at lunch? Combine the two and you have a sense of what newly elected members of Congress are experiencing right now.

Every two years since 1972, the Institute of Politics has attempted to ease that transition by inviting first-year lawmakers to Harvard Kennedy School for an intensive three-day briefing about what they can expect once they’re sworn into office.

This year’s program, held Dec. 8-10, offered 37 new members from both parties an opportunity to talk to current and former lawmakers and hear from Harvard faculty on key domestic and international policy topics such as economics, national security, and artificial intelligence. The event included an address by Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein, who also took questions.

The institute’s director, Setti Warren, said that fostering bipartisanship is one of the conference’s main objectives.

“Bringing people from across the aisle together … is extremely important to us, giving them an opportunity to forge relationships in a place that’s not Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Veteran lawmakers such as Republican Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Democrat Cheri Bustos of Illinois (who held office from 2013 to 2023) provided new members guidance on media coverage, effective messaging, and how to manage relationships with their new “classmates.”

“One of the things that was particularly important … was the message that that we heard time and time again from current and former members about the importance of kindness and collegiality toward our colleagues on the other side of the aisle,” said Representative-elect Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat.

The first openly transgender woman elected to Congress, McBride was the focus of national news coverage when Speaker Mike Johnson changed House rules at the urging of some Republican lawmakers to restrict restrooms to biological sex.

“Just as Americans every single day go into workplaces with people with different backgrounds and different perspectives but find a way to work together with kindness and collaboration,” said McBride, “we too should summon that basic common sense and basic common decency to work with our colleagues, regardless of our party affiliation or ideology in ways that reflect the kind of diversity of thought and diversity of experience that we see in workplaces across the country.”

Representative-elect Michael Baumgartner, M.P.A./I.D. ’02, a Republican in Washington state’s 5th district, said that while he’s “really proud” to be an HKS graduate, he was hesitant to publicize that he was attending because of what he called the School’s “unwelcoming reputation” on the right when it comes to conservative viewpoints.

“And so, I was really pleased to hear the dean recommit to viewpoint diversity and intellectual diversity and to making sure that conservative Republicans feel like they have a place at the Kennedy School, too,” he said.

While looking forward to Republican control of Congress and the White House, Baumgartner noted the party’s razor-thin margin in the House and also the temporary nature of political victories.

“So, even though we’re going to be in charge this session, it may not always be that way,” he said. “And I hope some of the contacts and relationships that I made at the Harvard orientation will be helpful in the event that we’re not in the majority.”

Representative-elect Janelle Bynum, a Democrat who flipped a Republican-held seat in Oregon’s 5th district to become the state’s first Black member of Congress, said that there were two panels she found “very helpful.”

“The first was the one on AI. That just spun up a lot of different thoughts like moral authority and who gets to participate in that research or in that ecosystem; the financial impact of what’s being developed in AI.

“I’m always thinking, ‘How can we use a technology that may not be being deployed to our benefit right now, but how can we shift that or how can we [get it to] do more good than it is doing?” said Bynum, who also credited a talk about polls and Gen Z voters with John Della Volpe, the IOP’s director of polling.

Asked about her hopes for the new Congress, Bynum said, “The key word that has been emerging for me is governance. I hope Democrats and Republicans take seriously the need to govern” rather than squabbling or attention-seeking.

“Like, do the work.”

In 2021, the city of Evanston, Illinois, established a program to make reparations to Black residents for historic housing discrimination. The first phase of the project gave 16 residents $25,000 each for home repairs or property costs.

The Evanston program was one topic explored at the recent Center for Race, Inequality, and Social Equity Studies symposium “Are Reparations the Answer?” in which experts across disciplines explored the case for restitution to Black Americans legally, economically, and ethically.

Daniel Fryer, an assistant professor of law and philosophy at the University of Michigan and a speaker at the forum, praised the Evanston example because it targeted a specific injustice that the city was trying to repair. Fryer argued that practitioners must consider the different avenues to attain justice.

“An essential question is, what are we trying to repair?” said Fryer, who also serves as a board member for the Board of Commissioners’ Advisory Council on Reparations in Washtenaw County in Michigan. “In order to repair something, we need to know what’s broken, and it also helps to know why it’s broken.”

Christopher Lewis, an assistant professor at Harvard Law School, also called for a need to clarify the distinctions between different types of reparations — under either compensatory justice or utilitarian justice, a moral principle that considers the greater good for the greatest number of people.

Lewis, along with Assistant Professor of Sociology and of Social Studies Adaner Usmani, has conducted research on what is owed to the estates of formerly enslaved people for their forced, unpaid labor. Using historic data on government bond yields, they arrived at a “conservative” estimate of the amount due for unpaid slave labor. The number reached into the quadrillions.

“It’s more wealth than exists in the entire world. That can tell you something about the scope and size of the injustice,” he said. These results prompted Lewis to consider other ways to look at the issue of reparations, including those shared by Duke University’s William Darity Jr., and museum curator Kirsten Mullen, who gave the keynote address earlier in the conference.

Darity and Mullen, founder of Artefactual, co-authored “From Here to Equality,” which focused on how to close the racial wealth gap, suggesting an intraracial redistribution of $16 trillion, with Black American families receiving at least a million dollars each.

Raj Chetty analyzed empirical patterns in Black-white economic disparities in a panel. The William A. Ackman Professor of Economics and director of Opportunity Insights discussed his research on how income evolves across generations for Black children versus white children.

Black children who come from high-income families tend to trend downward in terms of economic mobility as adults, compared to their white counterparts, who tend to remain at the top, he said. “In my view, this is really fundamental to understanding how to close the persistence of racial disparities in the U.S.,” he said.

The economist acknowledged that when conducting this research he had expected racial disparities for communities of color would narrow if individuals had sufficient income. The data proved him wrong, he said. “Understanding what’s happening there strikes me as really crucial to make progress, and addressing those disparities is really fundamental,” Chetty said.

As you walk past the columns of the Harvard Art Museums and step into the bright light of Calderwood Courtyard, you see a group of 16 people dressed in white. They are arranged in various positions, some standing, some sitting, some using wheelchairs or crutches. They all are wearing garments made of zip ties — plastic spikes protruding at different angles. The forms drape around each performer’s arms, shoulders, legs. The only sounds to break the silence are the low murmurs from visitors who wend between the performers, watching intently, photographing, taking video. Moment by moment the performer’s movements change, gentle shifts in their body, each gesture intuitively executed slowly and thoughtfully.

Founded in 2015, the durational performances of “On Display Harvard” create living sculpture parks that the audience is invited to wander through, viewing each performer up close.

“By exposing the general public to our widely diverse sculpture courts, we are expanding what inclusion looks like,” states the “On Display” website.

The sculptural garments worn during this year’s “On Display Harvard”  were created by Harvard Graduate School of Design ’24 alumni Pin Sangkaeo and Benson Joseph, collectively known as (snobs._). Collaborators since they met at the School of Architecture at Syracuse University, for the past three years (snobs._) has created one-of-a-kind wearables for “On Display Harvard.” On its statement, (snobs._) explained that to build the garments for each performer “you have to create something that is universal, but at the same time has the capability to be adaptable. Zip ties are the way that we did the wearables. We pre-model a series of implied poses and where they can be put, and then we lay the pictures out on the wall, and we let [the performers] pick and … we modify it to fit the person better. It’s like sketching at full scale.”

Using more than 8,000 zip ties and taking more than a year and a half to complete, the wearables are part of an ongoing, ever-evolving project for (snobs._). Collaborating with the performers of “On Display” allows the creative team to see and understand their work more profoundly. After the event the performers and designers sat together in the greenroom sharing their performance experiences.

“The feedback is the most important part. There’s a validation that comes in when other people offer all the insights of things that maybe you weren’t thinking about … it’s not possible to do that kind of work without feedback,” noted (snobs._).

A new analysis of nearly 200,000 adults shows that those with a clean result on their first colonoscopy may not need another for longer — perhaps significantly longer — than the current recommendation of 10 years.

The result is a bit of good news about a cancer whose increasing rates in younger patients has worried experts, including the Harvard Chan School’s Mingyang Song, for several years. Colorectal cancer is the nation’s second-deadliest after lung cancer, killing an estimated 52,550 in 2023. While rates among older patients have been declining, younger patients — those 40 to 49 — have seen cases rise 15 percent between 2000 and 2026. Experts aren’t sure of the cause, but in 2021, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force lowered the recommended age of first screening to 45 from 50. They also recommend that those with average risk get screened 10 years afterward.

Song, an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition at the Chan School, said that the increase in screenings has also increased appointment wait times.

“Especially with the lowered age, the clinic is overwhelmed,” said Song, also an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “It was overwhelmed before, now it’s even worse.”

In the work, published last month in JAMA Oncology, Song and colleagues examined colorectal cancer screening results and colorectal cancer incidence among 195,453 participants in three long-running studies: the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II, and the Health Professionals Followup Study. They compared incidence between two groups: those who received negative results in their initial colorectal cancer screening — meaning no polyps or cancer — and those who had not yet been screened.

They found that the risk of developing colorectal cancer was significantly lower among those who had received a negative cancer screening than those who had not yet been screened. The research team, led by first author Markus Knudsen, a postdoctoral fellow in Song’s lab, then divided the negative screening result group according to lifestyle risk factors for colorectal cancer. The work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.

The results showed that, among individuals with a negative screening result, it took 16 years for those with an intermediate-risk profile to have the same colorectal cancer incidence of the high-risk group at 10 years, and those with a low-risk profile — including maintaining a healthy diet and exercise — didn’t reach the 10-year cancer incidence of the high-risk group until 25 years from their negative screening.

The results, Song said, show that cancer screening should be individualized and discussed between patient and physician. While it is likely that additional evidence will be needed before national screening guidelines are changed, those with a negative screening result may be able to safely extend the screening interval beyond the recommended 10 years and, for those also living a low-risk lifestyle, perhaps as long as 20 years.

What this more tailored approach would do, Song said, is spare those who might get little benefit from a colonoscopy while focusing increasingly scarce resources where they’re most needed: on people who’ve never been screened — only about 70 percent of eligible U.S. adults have been screened — on disadvantaged groups with historically lower screen rates, and on those whose lifestyle or family history puts them at increased risk.  

“What we have seen generally is that the more advantaged groups of individuals are more likely to receive colonoscopy, whereas those who are disadvantaged and who actually have a higher risk of developing colon cancer are less likely to receive colonoscopy,” Song said. “We’ve tried to correct this mismatch and improve colonoscopy delivery at the population scale.”

Three Harvard students will take their passions for journalism, health equity, and education equity to the United Kingdom next year as members of the 2025 Marshall Class. Ryan Doan-Nguyen, John Lin, and Laila Nasher are among 36 students nationwide to receive 2025 Marshall Scholarships, which support two years of study at a U.K. college or university.

Ryan Doan-Nguyen

Joint concentration in History & Literature and Government, with a secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights

Doan-Nguyen ’25, of Westborough, Massachusetts, strives to bridge research, writing, and advocacy in journalism and history. Having grown up listening to his family’s stories about fleeing the Vietnam War as refugees, he is passionate about amplifying marginalized voices in his work. His senior thesis includes oral history interviews with 40 Vietnamese refugees impacted by imperialism.

“There’s so much knowledge and innovation and ways of thought and approaching the world that are excluded because of the way in which we value certain voices more than others,” Doan-Nguyen said. “I’m trying to help break that down in the work that I do.”

The night the Mather House resident learned that he had been named a Marshall Scholar, he ran straight to his roommate to share the good news. Then he called his family and his closest mentors.

“It’s the chance of a lifetime, and I did not expect to receive it in the slightest,” Doan-Nguyen said. “I just remember receiving the call and being so overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Doan-Nguyen is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, an editor for The Harvard Crimson, and co-founder of a Harvard chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. He served previously on the JFK Jr. Forum Committee at Harvard Kennedy School and on the board of the Harvard Vietnamese Association.

Doan-Nguyen plans to attend the University of Oxford, where he will study global and imperial history the first year and U.S. history the second year.

John Lin

Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology; secondary in Global Health and Health Policy

Lin ’25, of Boston, wants to know what different rare diseases have in common, and what factors link them together.

As a member of the Greka Lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Lin studies how cells harness cargo receptors to recognize, degrade, or trap misfolded proteins. He has investigated how cargo receptors regulate disease severity in a rare kidney illness and is applying his findings to other rare diseases.

“We’re finding that if you target these cargo receptors, you can clear misfolded protein in each of these diseases, suggesting that these different misfolded proteins are trapped through this common mechanism,” Lin said. “Just by targeting these common pathways, you can resolve many different rare diseases.”

Lin is also interested in using science journalism to make information more accessible to the general public. The Currier House resident said he became passionate about health equity after seeing his parents, working-class immigrants from China, face linguistic and economic barriers in accessing care.

“Even though I was really interested in solving these diseases and at the most direct level through research, I realized through observing my family’s experiences that it’s not just discovering the science that’s important but also getting the science to the people who are impacted by it every day,” Lin said.

Lin was swimming in the Malkin Athletic Center pool when the call came that he had been named a 2025 Marshall scholar.

“I was really surprised,” said Lin, who immediately phoned his mom to share the news. “I’m very, very grateful for the opportunity.”

Lin is co-president of the Harvard Global Health Institute’s Student Advisory Committee and an associate magazine editor for The Crimson. He also works for the Harvard Ed Portal mentoring youth from Allston-Brighton.

Lin plans to spend his first year as a Marshall Scholar studying biological sciences at the Wellcome Sanger Institute for genomics research at the University of Cambridge, and his second studying medical anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Laila Nasher 

History and Anthropology; secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights 

Nasher ’25 wants education to be a protected American right for all students. A first-generation college student, Nasher said that coming to Harvard after attending public school in her low-income neighborhood in Detroit fueled her desire to make change. 

“For me it was the question of, why not us?” said Nasher. “Why did I and why did the people in my community never have these types of educational opportunities that are and should be the norm?” 

A joint concentrator in History and Anthropology, with a secondary in Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, Nasher found her passion for history in her first year in a course on the modern Middle East that “completely opened” her mind to a subject matter that felt “so much bigger” than herself. A Truman Scholar and a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Nasher focuses in her research on the history of feminism in South Yemen before and after independence from the British, and after unification with North Yemen. 

Nasher was in her Mather House dorm room when she got the call that she had received a Marshall, and immediately celebrated the news with her roommate. 

“I was just in shock and very, very grateful,” Nasher said.

On campus, Nasher founded the First-Generation Low-Income Task Group, served on the board of Primus, and was co-director of diversity and outreach for the Institute of Politics. Off-campus, she interned with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the Tawakkol Karman Foundation in Istanbul, and organized with the Michigan Education Justice Coalition.  

She’ll spend her first year as a Marshall Scholar studying education at the University of Oxford, where she plans to do a comparative study on how primary and K-12 education systems in the U.K. and the U.S. shape the experiences of people in low-income, urban Yemeni communities.

Planning a holiday meal and need inspiration? The Schlesinger Library at Harvard Radcliffe Institute has you covered. It holds the papers of the late celebrity chef Julia Child, author of the iconic cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and personality behind the long-running PBS television series “The French Chef.” She famously hosted other cooking shows from the kitchen of her Cambridge home. Radcliffe curators helped pull together the following recipes for festive desserts drawn from their vast collection, which includes correspondence, documents, books, photos, audio, and videotapes.

Apple turnover

Soufflé au chocolat

Peanut brittle

Plum pudding

Chocolate and almond cake 

Smoking has declined in the U.S., but 49.2 millions Americans, about 20 percent, still use tobacco products. And the tobacco wars rage on, with rates rising globally even as they’re falling in many developed countries. Tobacco companies have created new active compounds to replace cooling menthol and mimic addicting nicotine in an end run around state laws seeking to reduce the harm tobacco products do. Those steps forced California in September to pass legislation closing loopholes in laws banning menthol and regulating nicotine. The Gazette spoke with Vaughan Rees, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, about the increasing sophistication of the tobacco battlefield. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tobacco companies have developed new formulations of nicotine and menthol, sparking an argument as to whether the new compounds can be regulated by current laws. How big a loophole is this?

It could be an enormous loophole, and tobacco manufacturers have exploited it in some states. For example, in Massachusetts, when a ban on the use of methylation went into effect, tobacco manufacturers came up with an analog product that functions like menthol, that imparts a cooling sensation, and that was not technically banned under the Massachusetts law. So tobacco manufacturers continued to sell products that looked, tasted, and functioned almost exactly like mentholated cigarettes.

That subverted the intention of the law, which was to prevent consumers from being misled about the health risks of smoking and to prevent young people from starting smoking, in part because of menthol’s cooling sensation.

How big a problem is the substitution of ingredients to circumvent restrictions? Is this a blip and once lawmakers understand the strategy, they can get ahead of it? Or is this potentially opening a new front in the tobacco wars?

Relatively few jurisdictions in the United States have put product standards like this in place. Massachusetts and California are leaders in that area with bans on methylation, and a ban on the use of synthetic nicotine compounds is about to go into effect in California. So tobacco manufacturers haven’t really had to do much, in a wider way, in terms of subverting those laws.

If a federal ban did go into effect, tobacco manufacturers would very likely seek to introduce menthol or nicotine analogs. Better-crafted regulations should eliminate the opportunity for tobacco manufacturers to substitute analog chemicals for menthol or nicotine. But it’s been a long-term theme of tobacco manufacturers to subvert the intention of laws put in place to protect the health of the public.

Another example was the adoption of clean indoor air laws. There was a lot of pushback from tobacco manufacturers or allies of tobacco manufacturers. The owners of hospitality venues argued that they could create smoking sections in pubs or restaurants, for example, that would  meet the needs of all of their customers. But the science doesn’t support that. When people are smoking in one part of a room or building, the smoke infiltrates other areas, exposing nonsmokers and workers to secondhand smoke.

In the end, public health and science prevailed, but it took some effort to ensure that public venues were 100 percent smoke-free. Tobacco manufacturers have prevailed in other parts of the world, though. In other countries, laws have been put in place that allowed smoking if portions of the building are open-air.

1% Or less of Massachusetts high school students smoke cigarettes

Are there other significant developments on the tobacco-control scene?

Nicotine is the constituent that causes or promotes addiction, so there’s a rationale for thinking about reducing the nicotine in tobacco products below the level at which those products can be considered addictive. That is something that the FDA has proposed as a potential strategy to reduce harm associated with tobacco products.

The idea is that tobacco manufacturers might one day be required to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products that have such low levels of nicotine that people would never become addicted to them. Those products would still produce smoke that contains carcinogens and other dangerous constituents, but consumers wouldn’t be addicted, and the product couldn’t satisfy anybody’s nicotine dependence.

How far along are plans for this new, low-nicotine cigarette?

The FDA issued a proposed federal rule in 2018. The FDA has regulatory authority for tobacco products and can issue regulations around the way products are designed, formulated, sold, and marketed.

A few years ago, the FDA issued what is called “an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking” to seek public comment and input from stakeholders — which includes public health agencies and tobacco manufacturers — to guide a proposed final rule.

We haven’t seen any further action on that from the FDA, so this is something that could be taken up by states such as California, who have the prerogative to advance those kinds of rules themselves. Regulating product standards is an important strategy, but we have seen less come to fruition in that area.

“Among the lowest-income populations in the United States, we’ve seen little decline in the rate of smoking over the past 30 years.”

Where we’re seeing a lot of impact is around the accessibility of tobacco products: Four years ago, the legal age to purchase tobacco products went from 18 to 21.

Another thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is a dramatic decrease in the use of traditional combusted cigarettes, particularly among youth. Kids who might have smoked 15 or 20 years ago now are vaping instead. That’s not a perfect outcome but presents a lower health risk for those individuals than might have been the case. So we’ve seen a dramatic change in the tobacco landscape with regard to the products used and preferred by young people.

Does that mean the tobacco companies are still making profits with e-cigarettes?

Yes and no. Not all cigarette manufacturers have found a way to pivot to the sale of e-cigarettes — at least in the United States. But the bigger companies, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, for example, seem to be increasingly attracted to the idea that nicotine vaping products are the way forward, at least in countries like the United States. In low- and middle-income countries, there’s relatively little interest in moving in that direction. The evidence suggests they’re selling more cigarettes in those countries than they’ve ever sold in the past.

What is the broad trend right now? My understanding is that smoking is down in the U.S.

In the United States and many developed countries, we’re seeing year-over-year declines in the prevalence of smoking, most particularly among younger populations. In Massachusetts, 1 percent or less of high school students smoke cigarettes — that doesn’t include those vaping.

But among the lowest-income populations in the United States, we’ve seen little decline in the rate of smoking over the past 30 years. People who live in federally subsidized housing, for example, smoke at perhaps four times the rate of the general public. People with substance use disorders and mental health disorders smoke at a vastly greater prevalence than the general population. People who’ve been historically oppressed — for example, people of gender and sexual minority — smoke at much greater rates than the general population.

In other parts of the world, it’s very different. We haven’t seen the same impact from tobacco control interventions. There are higher rates of smoking among men in some countries, among both men and women in others.

Optimistically, we may see improvements in many global regions in the near future, as tobacco control initiatives are put in place, as high excise taxes are implemented, as clean indoor air laws are implemented, as restrictions on marketing and advertising go into effect. These all reduce demand for tobacco. So regulations really do matter. These battles need to be fought until the public is no longer being harmed by these products.

Amid news coverage of the 2023 Women’s World Cup, researchers with Harvard’s GenderSci Lab spotted a familiar narrative concerning rampant ACL tears.

There was an immediate attribution of women athletes’ disproportionately high injury rates to biological sex differences, remembered Sarah S. Richardson, Aramont Professor of the History of Science and professor of studies of women, gender, and sexuality. “Do women’s hormonal cycles mean that their ligaments are more likely to tear? Does their hip structure mean that their knees are not meant for a certain level of activity?”

In a new study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Richardson and her co-authors cast doubt upon explanations that rely solely on sex-linked biology. The researchers specifically homed in on “athlete-exposures,” a metric widely used in the field of sports science — and repeated without question by many journalists covering women’s higher rates of ACL injury. The popular measure embeds bias into the science, the researchers say, because it fails to account for different resources allotted to male and female athletes. They find women may face a greater risk of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury because they play on smaller teams and spend a greater share of time in active competition.

“We knew from previous research that the real story is usually a complex entanglement of social factors with biology,” said Richardson, who founded the GenderSci Lab in 2018. “Our goal was to elevate the consideration that social factors can contribute to these disparities — and to show that it matters quantitatively in the numbers.”

Sports science literature reviewed by the research team included a recent meta-analysis, which arrived at an ACL injury rate 1.7 times higher for female athletes. Most of the 58 studies cited by the meta-analysis calculated athlete-exposures rather simply: the number of athletes on a given team multiplied by total number of games and practices. Exposure was rarely calculated at the individual level. Nor was weight given to time spent in active competition, when injuries are up to 10 times likelier to occur.  

A systematic analysis revealed the folly of this approach. “For every match that a team plays, a women’s team will, on average, train less compared to men,” explained co-author Ann Caroline Danielsen, a Ph.D. candidate studying social epidemiology at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “This is significant not only because injuries are more likely to happen during matches. It’s also true that optimal conditioning helps prevent injuries from happening in the first place.”

Underinvestment in women’s sports also means lower rates of participation, with playing time distributed among smaller numbers of athletes. “If you look at one individual woman ice hockey player, for example, her risk of injury is going to be larger than a man who’s playing on a much larger team,” noted co-author Annika Gompers ’18, a former Crimson runner now pursuing her Ph.D. in epidemiology at Emory University. “At the same time, the actual rate of injury per unit of game time is exactly the same.”

Recommendations for more accurately calculating ACL injury risk include careful considerations of structural factors. “We wish, for example, there was more systematic data on inequities in the quality of facilities,” said Gompers, noting the high-profile example of the NCAA’s 2021 March Madness basketball tournament. Also helpful would be better numbers on each player’s access to physical therapists, massage therapists, and coaching staff.

But the co-authors also call for improving the very metric used to calculate ACL injury rates. That means disaggregating practice time from game time and specifying each player’s training-to-competition ratio. It means gauging athlete-exposures at the individual level. It also means controlling for team size.

The paper is the first in the GenderSci Lab’s Sex in Motion initiative, a new research program promising thorough investigations into how sex-related variables interact with social gendered variables to produce different outcomes in musculoskeletal health. Its fourth co-author is U.K. sports sociologist Sheree Bekker, who led a 2021 paper that called for greater attention to social inequities in approaching ACL injury prevention.

“There’s a deep story here, and a nice case study, of how gender can be built into the very measures that we use in biomedicine,” Richardson said. “If the athlete-exposures construct is obscuring or even effacing those gendered structures, we’re not able to accurately perceive the places for intervention — and individuals are not able to accurately perceive their level of risk.”

Notre-Dame Cathedral re-opened to worldwide acclaim last weekend after a massive fire ravaged the Parisian landmark in April 2019. French authorities still have not been able to pinpoint an exact cause for the fire, but a new analysis may provide insights into how to avoid such a catastrophe.

The beloved Gothic cathedral, built from wood, limestone, iron, and lead in 1163 along the banks of the Seine, was long the city’s top tourist attraction and the site of many iconic events in French political and literary history. Reconstruction and restoration, from spire to sanctuary, cost an estimated ₵700 million, or about $740 million.       

While an official cause has yet to the determined, a new Harvard Business School case study examines the complicated series of mishaps and operational breakdowns that allowed a small roof fire to become a catastrophic blaze. The Gazette spoke to Amy Edmondson, co-author of the case study and Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at HBS, about what the fire has to teach us about preventing such disasters. Interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Why were you interested in the Notre Dame fire for a case study?

Jérôme Barthelemy, a professor at ESSEC Business School in France, reached out to me to ask whether I was interested in co-authoring a case on the fire with him. I said yes, because, for me, this was a quintessential complex failure. I just wrote a book called “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well” in which I identify three kinds of failure — basic, complex and intelligent.

The “right kind of wrong” refers to intelligent failures, which are the undesired results of thoughtful experiments. But complex failures are a fact of life, and they are a phenomenon that when we are at our very best as individuals, but more importantly, as organizations, we can prevent. My research is about what more can we do to prevent tragic events like this, failures like this.

You delineate a number of poor decisions and troubling actions that may have contributed to the fire’s size and destruction. Five years later, why do you think French authorities still have no definitive answer on the cause?

I don’t know for sure. I know only what we could learn from published sources. With that in mind, I think the cause will likely remain elusive, because multiple factors — multiple culprits, if you will — were present. Multiple deviations from best practice are highlighted in the case — everything from workers smoking to a confusing fire code system to a built-in 20-minute delay between a call and the arrival of firefighters in the best of circumstances.

As with all complex failures, contributing factors interacted in complex ways. Identifying a single cause is rarely the best way to think about these kinds of failures. Every one of the small factors, like the workers smoking on the roof or storing electrical equipment near very old wood or doing hot work in the vicinity of the rafters, the way the fire alarm and warning system was set up, and the built-in delay is a potential contributing factor.

I can say confidently that it was devastating to all of those involved, both inside and outside the organization. So, they should be motivated to make changes, but identifying a definitive answer is unlikely.

Given that complex failures are caused by a set of contributing factors, rather than one factor, it can be difficult to motivate change. What I argue in the book is that complex failures are on the rise because of the complexity of our systems. But they are theoretically and practically preventable. And the only way to prevent them is through vigilance — absolute commitment to best practices, a dedication to getting the little things right, all of them.

This is not as expensive or laborious as it might sound. It is about a habit of excellence, driven by the belief that rules and procedures matter, and deviations can escalate in dangerous ways. It’s far more expensive and laborious to clean up a failure like this than to run a tight ship, so to speak.

Could the fire have been avoided or done far less damage if one or two of these particular things had not occurred?

Yes, and that’s characteristic of complex failure. Often, all you need is to remove one or two of these contributing factors, and the failure is prevented. For example, if you didn’t have the fire department showing up 20 minutes after the call, you’d probably catch the fire before it turns into a devastatingly large fire. If you had very strict rules about where the electrical equipment goes, where smoking happens, etc. Take out any one of these factors, and it might have been a different outcome. I can’t tell you which, because we don’t really know.

More than 30 years ago, I was studying DuPont, which conducted multiple high-risk manufacturing activities but nonetheless had an extraordinary safety record, to understand how it worked. And I discovered that people in the company wouldn’t let an executive walk down the stairs without holding the banister; if you did that, you’d get reprimanded. You couldn’t walk around with an open coffee cup. No one at any level would put their key in the ignition of the car until they heard the click of each seatbelt. It was almost second nature.

Now, these seem downright silly. But their belief was: “Watch out for the little stuff.” If you apply that logic to the factory, if you aspire to have everything as close to excellent as possible, you can avoid the tragic perfect storms that cause complex failures.

You study leadership. Was this a failure of leadership?

Yes. By definition, leaders are accountable for the whole. Even if you could say, “Well, I didn’t do it; I didn’t smoke in the rafters.” Well, that is not quite right. As a leader, you did do it. You led in a way that allowed such deviations to occur. Sins of omission are every bit as important as the actual acts that may have contributed to the fire.

What issues do you want students to grapple with from this case study?

Exactly what we’re talking about. First, I want them to understand the difference between a basic failure — with a single, simple cause — and a complex failure, and then to take a close look at the organizational factors, which means managerial factors that allow such failures to happen. And then, I want them to think about what the leader’s role is: what they need to put in place to run an excellent operation. The lesson is that leaders can insist on the discipline and the vigilance needed to prevent complex failures.

Improbably, the building has been carefully restored in record time. Do you think anything else positive can come out of this situation or this tragedy?

Yes. The thing that’s positive that will, I hope, come out of it is that other important landmarks will be less vulnerable. This tragedy was a wake-up call for anyone who has responsibility for an important and fragile landmark, or any public good like a national park or even human safety in a complex operation. The insights do not apply only to ancient cathedrals.

Anytime you are leading or in charge of an important resource, especially anything related to human life, you have a responsibility for being vigilant and thoughtful, and encouraging voice, and for stress-testing your hypotheses rigorously. I think there’s a lot of prevention insight that comes from this case, and because of the emotional nature of that loss, it gets people’s attention and could make a difference in that way.

For Ayodele Casel, tap dancing is like a second language — or third, for the woman who grew up both in the Bronx and Puerto Rico. 

“It is a very improvisational form that is informed by your lived experience … where you grew up, the music you grew up listening to, the music that you respond to, the languages that you speak,” said Casel, 49, a renowned actress and dancer as well as a former Radcliffe fellow. “It’s power to communicate across like barriers of other languages or cultures.” 

Casel’s new production, “Diary of a Tap Dancer,” will have its premiere run Dec. 12-Jan. 4 at the American Repertory Theater. The play weaves together Casel’s unique brand of rhythmic tap with song and a narrative that traces her career as well as those of often forgotten female dancers throughout history. 

Casel recalls the first time she saw a tap performance. One of her high school teachers showed her video of a performance by Hollywood dancing legend Ginger Rogers alongside her equally famed partner Fred Astaire. 

“I just remember tunnel vision, like all of a sudden everything went away. And I was just looking at them float through the screen,” she said. “I thought, ‘Man, that is so cool!’”

Casel was hooked. She began immersing herself in classic movies that featured the form. 

But it wasn’t until she was at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts that she actually tried it. In her sophomore year, she began studying tap under veteran dancer Charles Goddertz. She also befriended Baakari Wilder, a hoofer who would become famous for his starring role in the Tony-nominated musical “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk.” 

As she watched hoofers like Wilder, she found herself increasingly drawn to it. Hoofing is a style of tap developed in African American communities that uses makes greater use of stomps and stamps to create unique and more expressive percussive rhythms. 

Casel says she was so taken with hoofing that she took the advice of other dancers and went to a construction site to get a piece of discarded plywood to use as a dancing surface so she could hear her rhythms more distinctly. (Cassel still recalls the hassle of getting her board on the subway to take it home.) 

The style still deeply influences Casel, who won the Hoofer Award from the American Tap Dance Foundation in 2017. 

In 2019, Casel brought her talents to Cambridge for the first time, becoming the 2019–2020 Frances B. Cashin Fellow at Radcliffe. At Harvard, Casel worked to put together an earlier version of “Diary” — one that was a one-woman history of female tappers. 

“The project I submitted was this idea of creating a theatrical work that centered the lives of the Black women tap dancers from the ’30s to the ’50s, whose stories aren’t widely known, and whose stories were almost really completely lost to history,” she said. 

“I just felt like as a woman of color in these tap shoes, that it was my responsibility to bring them with me so that as folks get to learn about me, they also inevitably learn about them,” she added. 

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, echoed the importance of uncovering the legacies of those history has forgotten. 

“It was here at Radcliffe that an early version debuted in February 2020,” she said. “More than just a theatrical work, ‘Diary’ contributes to a more complete history of a remarkable American art form by centering the lives of unnamed women within a broader context. I am eager to join so many others in the audience at the A.R.T. to celebrate this history and Ayodele’s considerable talent.” 

After seeing Casel’s Radcliffe presentation, A.R.T. Director of Artistic Programs Ryan McKittrick asked her to develop the project for their stage. Since then, it has come to include an ensemble cast of actors and dancers, directed by longtime Casel collaborator Torya Beard. 

And although Beard herself has a history as a dancer and choreographer, she wants to be clear that the show’s story about the lives of Casel and the other women tappers lies at the heart of the project.

“‘Diary’ is really rooted in personal narrative, and there is embodied storytelling. [But] when we’re talking about like an Ayodele Casel project, I don’t think it exists without music, and perhaps, at least right now, it doesn’t exist without tap dancing, but this is not a dance concert.” 

Find tickets and more information on “Diary of a Tap Dancer” online here. 

Both campaigns agreed the presidential election was unprecedented with only an extremely narrow slice of the electorate up for grabs and the Democrats having to retool strategy and organization for a new candidate in the final stretch. And the thing that may have made the biggest difference was how and where you talked to undecided voters.

Senior staff from the Harris and Trump campaigns gathered at Harvard Kennedy School Friday to explain their thinking at critical junctures during the 2024 election. The postmortem, organized by the Institute of Politics, has been held after every presidential election since 1972.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, who had managed President Joe Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns before taking the helm of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign after Biden dropped out in July, acknowledged the considerable difficulty they faced trying to shift a political operation built for one candidate to another with a little more than three months left in the race.

“But when the call came and the president said he was getting out, we really did flip the whole thing without knowing exactly how to do it,” she said. “And then the vice president was so strong out of the gate that I think it made momentum a little bit easier for us to pick up on and gave us a little bit of space to figure out the stuff we hadn’t worked out yet.”

The Harris team said they knew from the start that they would be facing significant headwinds because the economy was emerging as a top issue, and voters felt the Biden-Harris administration had not done enough to address the inflation rate.

Beyond that, the Harris campaign leaders walked through other challenges they faced.

They pushed back on the accusations by pundits that they took certain demographic groups, like Black and Latino men, and younger voters, for granted, assuming that Harris’ race and gender would override economic or national security concerns.

“We weren’t running this campaign as an identity politics campaign,” said Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for Harris. “We came out of the gate talking to everyone. If you think the economy sucks, it doesn’t get better if there’s a Black candidate.”

At the same time, Fulks said, “It didn’t help that the Trump campaign was obviously targeting these voters and making them feel … whether it be through [an anti-] trans ad, ‘She’s for they/them and Trump is for you,’ they were making her seem as if she was out of touch and out of line with their issues.”

Where the Harris team saw the biggest shift in support was among third-party voters, particularly those who had been dissatisfied with both Biden and Trump. Once Harris got in the race, however, “those voters snapped back very quickly” to the Democratic side, said Harris pollster Molly Murphy. Surprisingly, older voters, a group that Biden had always done well with, ended up being much more supportive of Harris than the campaign expected.

Responding to a common complaint from progressives that Harris’ elevation to the top of the ticket without a primary process was undemocratic, Fulks noted there were just 107 days left after Biden dropped out in which to identify a new candidate, unify the party, and launch an entirely new campaign before Election Day.

To hold an open primary and bypass Harris, Biden’s preferred choice, would have risked alienating Black women, a key Democratic Party voting bloc, and meant fielding a lesser-known candidate with no infrastructure, he said.

“I hear your concern, and I’m not saying that … open primaries are not important, but I also think [the campaign was] such an anomaly [that] it would have almost been virtually impossible to have an open primary of any success that would have put the Democratic Party in a position to be able to defeat Donald Trump,” he said.

The Trump team said that early on one of their biggest challenges involved negative impressions of Project 2025, a collection of conservative policy proposals pushed by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups.

Voter concern started to gain traction while Biden was still in the race, especially on TikTok, and it caught the Trump team by surprise. That worry grew to alarm after seeing persuadable voters start to move in response to reports about it and Trump blowing up in anger over news stories tying the document directly back to him, they said.

“Obviously, we recognized that it was an issue, and we needed to kill it quickly,” said Chris LaCivita, co-manager of the Trump campaign.

In fact, Project 2025 was one issue where Democrats had a leg up on the Trump team, but by the time the Harris campaign began to focus on it, noted Tony Fabrizio, a veteran Republican pollster, the race had evolved, and that earlier stickiness and momentum was very hard for Harris to reclaim.

Both sides agreed that communication strategies may have made the biggest difference in 2024. The Republicans proved more effective at crafting and amplifying messages that resonated with 2024’s undecided voters. With so few up for grabs this election, finding and persuading those folks was critical.

Seeing that these voters were part of a larger, growing cohort of Americans who had unplugged from network and cable television, the Trump campaign invested heavily in targeting “streamers” (those who exclusively used streaming services), fans of internet-only programs, and listeners of entertainment podcasts, Fabrizio said.

And it’s why candidate Trump did unconventional things like attend mixed martial arts fights to show those voters he understood them and was reaching out, LaCivita added.

The media asymmetry turned out to be a decisive advantage for Republicans this year, but maybe not for much longer, Fabrizio said.

“Republicans were always more distrustful of what we’ll call the mainstream media than Democrats or independents. And so, what happened is, when the technology became available for alternative sources of information, Republicans were the first ones to flock to it because they weren’t happy. It’s the reason why Fox [News]exploded, it’s the reason why so many online sites are right-of-center sites,” he said. 

There are signs the left is also becoming disillusioned with mainstream media after controversies over endorsements at The Washington Post and The LA Times led to the cancellation of more than 250,000 subscriptions, and plummeting ratings at CNN and MSNBC post-election. Younger voters now turn increasingly to TikTok and other online platforms for news, an arena in which the Trump campaign conceded that the Harris team outplayed them. Most importantly, a recent Gallup poll shows only 31 percent of Americans still trust the media.

“That means there’s a chunk of Democrats that don’t trust the media anymore,” Fabrizio said. “As that distrust grows across the partisan spectrum, you’re going to see a greater proliferation of news sources and information sources, both on the right and the left. It’s just going to take a little bit more time for the left to get to where the right has been for several years about the news media.”

The roads, walkways, and collections throughout Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum bear the names of influential local philanthropists, landowners, and politicians. A new name, Flora, now joins the ranks of those being honored for their roles in shaping the history of the region.

In October, the city of Boston approved changing Bussey Street, named after merchant Benjamin Bussey, to Flora Way in honor of an enslaved woman who lived on an area estate in the 18th century.

Bussey, a sugar, coffee, and cotton merchant in the late 1700s and early 1800s, built much of his wealth through the trans-Atlantic trade of products produced by enslaved workers. He eventually retired from that business and turned his attention to farming.

“He accumulated all these small farm holdings and put it together into what is the Jamaica Plain side of the Arnold Arboretum,” Ned Friedman, director of the Arboretum, said. Friedman is the Faculty Fellow of the Arnold Arboretum and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

In 1842 Bussey donated to Harvard College his estate, which was combined in 1868 with land donated by New Bedford whaling merchant James Arnold for the creation of the Arboretum.

Bussey is one of several philanthropists identified in the University’s 2022 Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery report as a beneficiary of enslavement. Friedman said the Arboretum has been actively considering how best to acknowledge its past while looking to the future.

“We have a Bussey Hill; we have a Bussey Brook Meadow. We want to honor Benjamin Bussey for his philanthropy, because I feel personally that writing him completely out of history removes the historical context,” said Friedman of Bussey’s complex legacy.

The idea to remove his name from the street, he said, didn’t originate with the Arboretum. Last spring, a group of neighbors across Jamaica Plain and Roslindale came together to suggest the change. They came up with five alternatives to Bussey. The list included Flora and two other enslaved people, Dick Welsh and Cuffe, along with transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, who wrote fondly of the hemlocks and pines on the site, and botanist Shiu-Ying Hu, Ph.D. 1949, a highly respected emeritus senior research fellow at the Arboretum.

“I would have been happy with any of the five names that they suggested,” Friedman said. “I just stepped back and let the community do their business.”

Ultimately, organizers reached a consensus to select Flora — a woman enslaved by William Dudley, the son of Gov. Joseph Dudley.

The Dudley estate was located in current-day Roslindale on Weld Street and included a small commercial farm. Flora was one of four people enslaved on the property, and the only woman.

Not much is known about Flora, other than records that detail her purchase price of 40 pounds and the fact that Dudley bought shoes and an apron for her. The only other record of Flora is a probate file showing her sale by Dudley’s estate, again for 40 pounds.

“Flora was connected to what is now the Arnold Arboretum, a place that holds a commitment to public health and accessibility and is intentional about creating equitable access to urban green space,” said Sara Bleich, the University’s inaugural vice provost for special projects in charge of the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative at a renaming ceremony at the end of October.

The name change signifies not only Harvard’s acknowledgment of the past, but also a promise to strive for a better future.

“Flora Way is just part of a bigger set of conversations we’re having here about justice, about equity,” Friedman said.

The Arboretum, which is free and open to the public and receives millions of visitors each year, is surrounded by several “environmental justice” communities, where 40 percent or more of the residents are people of color and median incomes fall below city averages.

City-run entrances to the park from those neighborhoods have fallen into disrepair, with gates welded shut and stone walls covered in graffiti. Friedman, and Harvard, have been advocating for their renovation, and in some cases, pledging to support efforts financially.

“Access is really important,” Friedman said. “Because that’s part of what I think matters a great deal about whether people feel welcome.”

Of the nine entrances to the park, five are slated for renovation, including Poplar Gate at the intersection of the new Flora Way and South Street, which is set to be completed within the next month or two.

“Renaming this street to Flora Way makes a powerful statement that Flora mattered,” Bleich said. “Reckoning with past history gives us a fuller view of what came before us, the injustices done that society needs to be held accountable for, and how this should shape our future for the better,” she added.

Since the release of the Legacy of Slavery report, efforts continue across the University to implement recommendations and continue digging into the past. To learn more, a historical tour of 10 stops around Cambridge that explore the University’s connections to slavery is available, and the full report is online.

The Arnold Arboretum is open every day from sunrise to sunset.

Alan Garber was installed as Harvard’s 31st president in a celebration attended by colleagues, University leaders, and family and friends Saturday at the Harvard Art Museums.

Provost for almost 13 years, Garber was named president in August, after serving as interim leader since January, and has navigated the University through a period of extraordinary challenges and intense scrutiny. Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, pointed to Garber’s character and experience in praising him for meeting the moment.

The University’s new president “is a person of deep learning, strong values, bedrock integrity, and a fierce commitment to academic excellence,” she said.

Garber, an economist, physician, and health policy scholar, opened his remarks by thanking those in attendance, including his wife and children, for preparing him for his new role. Among those gathered for the ceremony were past Harvard presidents Larry Summers, Drew Faust, Larry Bacow, and Claudine Gay.

“Nothing fortifies quite like a room full of colleagues and dear friends, including my partners in the work and my predecessors in the Holyoke chair,” he said. “This is, in some ways, an inverted lecture. Each of you has taught me important lessons that have guided me to this point.”

He went on to note that the University is facing uncertain times that will require both robust collaboration and an unwavering commitment to integrity and excellence, including in its pursuit of the research and teaching that define its mission. Success will depend in part on embracing risk, he said.

“An excessive aversion to risk is a risk in and of itself. We must keep in mind, always, that the mistakes we have made — individually and collectively — may have been plentiful, but we have our long history to celebrate because they have not been fatal. Assuming that this trend continues, our history demands that we plan — boldly — for a very long future. We need to think not only in years and decades, but also in centuries.”

He added: “We forfeit opportunities when we feel as though the University cannot make a move without considering every possible ramification, without fully understanding every possible consequence. In a world that confronts us with challenges and opportunities more frequently than ever before, we will need to move forward with greater alacrity — and to correct course more quickly — than has been our custom.”

Faust, who as president named Garber provost in 2011, recruiting him from Stanford University, described a colleague whose hunger for knowledge is deep and inspiring.

“Alan is interested in everything, curious about everything … he is an intellectual and a practitioner, a thinker and a doer,” she said, nodding to Garber’s experience in medicine, economics, and policy, as well as his love for the arts and humanities. “At a time when trust in institutions generally, and in higher education in particular, has eroded so markedly, Alan radiates trustworthiness.”

William F. Lee, who preceded Pritzker as senior fellow of the Corporation, praised Garber as a leader of “unflappability and humility” who has demonstrated a “fundamental and unwavering determination to advance the best interests of the institution and the broader Harvard community.”

Vivian Y. Hunt, president of the Board of Overseers, said that Garber’s long record of contributions to the University reflects his strengths as a person and a leader.

“Since being formally elected to this presidency this summer, you continued to carry the mantle of leadership with humility, heart, spirit, humor, resilience, and resolve,” Hunt said.

The ceremony included the presentation by Garber’s predecessors of several insignia of the office. Dating to the 17th century, the insignia are traditionally given to each new Harvard president. Faust said that the tradition was not just an opportunity for Garber to pledge his leadership to the community, but also for the community to pledge its support to him.

“It’s a ritual that encompasses all of us, not just the man of honor,” said Faust, the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor. “We affirm our support for Alan as he embarks on his presidency, and as he navigates through change and through storm. And we pledge our commitment to doing all we can to ensure that Harvard thrives and the pursuit of veritas prevails in the decades and the centuries to come.”

The impact of that commitment extends far beyond campus, Garber noted, citing the promise of young scientists, pioneering research by recent Nobel laureates, and the service of Harvard veterans.

“The work done at Harvard — the good it does in the world — the good it will do in the world — is wonderfully abundant,” he said.

The ceremony concluded with a benediction by Rabbi William G. Hamilton of Congregation Kehillath Israel and the singing of “Fair Harvard” by Carolyn Y. Hao ’26.

Ceramicist Roberto Lugo shared his work and his best advice with students who dropped by his residency at the Office for the Arts in mid-November.

“I really want to demystify that idea that art is only for people who have those gifts or people who have historically had access to it,” Lugo said in an interview. “For me, art is for everyone. One of the most satisfying parts about art is seeing someone figure out something that they offer that they didn’t think they did.”

The Puerto Rican artist, activist, and educator, whose pots can be found in a growing number of museum collections, worked with more than a dozen undergraduates — most of them women of color — over two days of campus workshops. Each visitor was offered a chance to work on cups or tiles, with Lugo providing generous coaching on everything from perfecting patterns to painting over gray clay. He even opened up about his Philadelphia upbringing and the inspiration he draws from hip-hop.

“During each workshop with undergraduates, Roberto inspired students to think about their lives and cultural backgrounds as a starting point and an indicator of what makes them unique,” observed Kathy King, director of the Ceramics Program and Visual Arts Initiatives at the OFA. “He then asked them to think about the words that came to mind, creating a visual vocabulary to decorate both cups and tiles with florals, text, and colorful patterns, among other things.”

Institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art  have acquired Lugo’s work in recent years. Tiffany Onyeiwu ’25, who has a concentration in film and visual studies, is a frequent visitor to these spaces and was excited to meet the artist behind some of her favorite pieces.

“It’s been really inspiring to see an artist who has such a significant part of themselves embedded in their work,” said Onyeiwu, who attended both of the workshops Lugo offered. “Contemporary ceramics is becoming more prevalent in American culture, which is something that I’m excited and grateful for.”

Lugo also engaged with the community during a packed public lecture Monday evening at Harvard’s Ed Portal in Allston.

The event opened with performances by Salome Agbaroji ’27 and Elyse Martin-Smith ’25, social studies concentrators who delivered rhymes loaded with clever pottery references. Martin-Smith commemorated the 19th-century work of David Drake, a Black potter who produced a body of vessels while enslaved in South Carolina. Agbaroji, the 2023 National Youth Poet Laureate, captured attention with witty lyrics that cautioned listeners to “just stay out of the kiln” if they can’t “take the heat.”

“I was trying to write something that was very accessible and engaging to honor what pottery is and also honor the hip-hop culture that is so heavily infused in Roberto Lugo’s work,” said Agbaroji.

Lugo’s presentation covered some of his most popular artwork as well as the people, music, and life events that affected his creative process. While most of Lugo’s art takes inspiration from European and Asian ceramic practices, he is also deeply influenced by Mexican and Peruvian ceramics as well as the textile traditions of Indigenous communities of the Americas.

“One of the specific things that is a challenge for me is that a lot of those communities are still struggling for representation of their own culture,” he said. “Even though I’m inspired by it and some of my work is influenced by it, I quite often stick to formats that are in many ways tropes or familiar visual elements from ceramics history. I try to be very thoughtful with where I borrow from, because I don’t want to replace a culture.”

Another of Lugo’s trademarks is pottery that incorporates portraits, from historical figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. to influential musicians like Biggie Smalls and Erykah Badu. Lugo linked his penchant for portraiture to growing up amid Philadelphia’s great mural scene, with walls featuring people of color.

“Since I didn’t have any art history in school, that was really my perception of what art was,” Lugo said.

More recent works mix traditional methods with broader representative narratives. His “Orange and Black” series, for example, plays on ancient Greek glazed terracotta with modern depictions of city life.

Back at the Ceramics Program studio, Lugo shared a testament of the connective powers of artwork. “As an artist, there’s many different ways to engage with people outside of your own body,” he said. “One of them is through the physical artwork itself. There’s the display of the artwork and how it interacts and engages with people. There’s the educational facet to it, which is giving people the autonomy to make their own artwork. And then there’s the conversations that get created through both education and art-making. For me, that’s where the magic happens.”

Penny Pritzker ’81, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, reflected on a year of transition and challenge for the campus community and outlined her plans for the year ahead in a recent conversation with the Gazette. Pritzker touched on engagement efforts underway at the Corporation, including a new approach to inform the next presidential search, and shared her perspective on ongoing work across the University to advance constructive dialogue and bring the community together.

A leader in business and philanthropy and former U.S. secretary of commerce, Pritzker joined the Harvard Corporation in 2018 and was elected senior fellow in 2022. She also served on Harvard’s Board of Overseers from 2002 to 2008.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

We’re coming toward the end of the semester and the end of a difficult year for Harvard and for higher education. How do you reflect on where we are now and how you and the Corporation are thinking about the year ahead?

Let’s not sugarcoat it — it’s been a painful and challenging year for Harvard, and I believe it’s important to acknowledge that even as we’ve begun to build for the future. We’ve faced relentless scrutiny about every aspect of the University, from stakeholders inside and outside the institution. We’re dealing with deep divisions that have emerged in our community due to the war in the Middle East. We are addressing longstanding challenges related to constructive dialogue on our campus and beyond, and we are cognizant of the need to ensure that a wide range of opinions and perspectives can be heard on campus. All of us on the Corporation are grateful to President [Alan] Garber and his team for charting a path through these difficult challenges. I feel optimistic that we are making progress, at the same time as all parts of the University are driving forward remarkable progress and excellence in our teaching and research mission.

Reflecting on the year, what are the lessons that the Corporation is taking on board and how are you planning to respond to those?

There are many lessons. We’ve certainly sought to listen and learn from the community. We have heard the community’s desire for greater transparency. We’ve heard concerns that the Corporation hasn’t engaged with the community sufficiently — and that feedback has informed our approach. We have made an intentional commitment to strengthen engagement and communication. My fellow Corporation members and I have participated in faculty town halls, regular dinners, and small group meetings with faculty members, meetings with the various task forces, and robust engagement with alumni on campus, locally and through virtual events around the country. In the last few weeks I met with the co-chairs of the Presidential Task Forces on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias, and I have been on campus often to meet with faculty, students, administrators, including at events around the Harvard-Yale game.

It is important to ensure we have the pulse of the community and that we are listening intently to the stakeholders in our community so that we understand how to best support Alan and his leadership team in advancing the priorities of the University. We understand that for the well-being of all our students, our community, and our mission, we need to be more open. So, our engagement will continue particularly as we approach discussions around advancing key academic or other priorities, as well as, importantly, the next presidential search. We know in such a dynamic institution that neither the Corporation nor the administration has all the answers. That is why listening, engaging, and taking advice are so critical.

On the presidential search, you recently announced a new committee to look at the process moving forward. How is the Corporation thinking differently about the next search?

The new Presidential Search Process Committee will provide advice to the Corporation about best practices for the search for the 32nd president of Harvard, which will begin in late spring of 2026. The work this committee is undertaking, including engagement across our community and externally, will inform how we ultimately undertake that search. Everything from who should be on the search committee, to how faculty and the broader community are engaged. What kind of external support do we need to undertake the search? The mandate for this committee is broad and our interest in advice is sincere.

I will say that our last search was both robust and wide-ranging. We consulted extensively and considered a wide range of candidates before selecting Claudine Gay, who was unanimously selected as the right choice at that time. But we recognize circumstances have changed and we need to think about the search with that in mind and how we best proceed from where we are. We approach this with a lot of humility and a determination to get the right leadership for an institution we all care about so deeply.

Can you say more about the new committee?

In the months ahead, this committee will engage our community to hear thoughts and considerations on how we undertake the next presidential search. They will also continue to gather information on how other institutions conduct these types of searches and look broadly for best practices. The membership is made up of three members of the Corporation — Biddy Martin, Ken Frazier, and Diana Nelson — and three members who will bring perspectives from outside the Corporation: Sylvia Burwell, who is on the Board of Overseers and was president of American University; Patti Saris, who is a former president of the Overseers and federal judge; and Brad Bloom, who has been a successful business leader. All three are alums who have contributed a wide range of other service to the Harvard community.

Alan Garber has been widely praised for his leadership during a tough period. How would you reflect on his presidency so far?

I believe Alan Garber is doing an outstanding job. He has been thoughtful and intentional in advancing our mission and priorities, as well as leading in ways to heal and strengthen our community during a very challenging period. This isn’t just my view, as I also hear this from faculty, alumni, and other leaders. He has helped the community come together, set in motion important initiatives to tackle hate and to encourage and foster open inquiry and constructive dialogue, and all the while helped move forward our incredibly important teaching and research mission.

What would you say has been the hallmark of his leadership to this point?

What we hear from people within Harvard and from many outside is that Alan engages with authenticity and without defensiveness. He is willing to acknowledge that Harvard is not perfect and that of course we have more work to do. I believe Alan is well-positioned to bring the community along with him as we address these challenges.

A great example of this is the work he set in motion on constructive dialogue and open inquiry. In this area, Alan has encouraged deans and faculty to create opportunities for debate and discussion across difference. He and Provost [John] Manning deserve huge credit for that and for leading the work on institutional voice and open inquiry. The report of the working group led by Tomiko Brown-Nagin and Eric Beerbohm brought into sharp focus the problem of students and faculty self-censoring and the implications of that for an academic community.

At the same time, Alan and the entire Corporation are deeply dedicated to ensuring that we center academic excellence in Harvard’s teaching, learning, and research mission. As chief academic officer when he was provost and now as president, Alan firmly believes in the work that happens in classrooms and labs as the core of our mission. So, you see, we can strengthen our community, bridge the divides that exist, and model the very forms of constructive dialogue that are vital to a place like Harvard, while simultaneously celebrating and advancing the teaching, learning, and scholarship that are core to our mission.

How should the University be considering engaging with the new political landscape in Washington?

While we don’t know precisely what proposals that affect higher education will look like, we believe that engaging with leaders in Washington is critical. Harvard and institutions of higher education across the country must continue to make a strong case for the effective and strong partnership between higher education and the federal government. We cannot take it for granted. This is a partnership that has offered considerable return for the American people in the form of medical discoveries and treatments, insights and innovations that provide personal opportunity for so many in our country, and research and extraordinary innovations that power the U.S. economy as well as improve U.S. competitiveness in critical industries and across the globe.

Fundamentally, in this time of great change I believe that higher education can do more to expand opportunity for many, whether that’s economically or from a well-being standpoint.

Alan has been in Washington on six occasions in the last year, and I know he is planning to continue his advocacy for this partnership in research funding, financial aid, and other areas. This is work that has my support as well as that of all the other fellows.

It’s been widely discussed that the portrayal of Harvard from some outside the University bears little resemblance to the day-to-day experience of those living, working, studying, and researching within the community. Do you feel that some things get lost in the noisy swirl around higher education right now?

Yes, it is frankly striking to be on campus and to speak with hundreds of students, faculty, and others over the course of the last year. The focus here remains — as it has always been — on the pursuit of excellence on every front. Supporting that campus environment is something the fellows take incredibly seriously, and several times throughout this semester — so far — we’ve been reminded of what is possible here at Harvard.

This includes the eight Harvard College students selected as Rhodes Scholars in recent weeks. Harvard Medical School Professor Gary Ruvkun was named a Nobel laureate. Earlier this semester, we had the announcement of a new AI-driven cancer diagnostics tool developed by HMS researchers. Just last month, we saw the launch of the Lavine Learning Lab at the A.R.T., with support from Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine, which will strengthen engagement between public high schools and the A.R.T.’s groundbreaking theatrical programming.

These are all exciting developments and recognitions. They are also powerful examples of how our community provides the opportunity for our students and faculty to pursue excellence, and along the way impact lives well beyond the boundaries of our campus.

Advancing excellence is where President Garber is focused and the Corporation is fully supportive. Together, we are listening and learning. The University is on the right track and making progress under Alan’s leadership. Of course, we will face hurdles and challenges. But let’s step back. Harvard is a special place and a special community. All of us are committed to the mission of excellence in teaching, learning, and research, as well as to the goal of ensuring the well-being of all members of our community — students, faculty, staff, and more.

Every week, Harvard Medical School neuro-oncologist Annie Hsieh treats patients with gliomas — the most common type of brain cancer, including the deadliest, glioblastoma.

After Hsieh’s neurosurgeon colleagues remove a glioma surgically, it often looks like none of the cancer is left behind, she says. Radiation and other treatments may follow. Yet gliomas tend to come back, not just at the original site but in distant parts of the brain, threatening neurological harm and, in some cases, death.

What happens in the brain to encourage these tumors to regrow there, while only rarely appearing in other parts of the body? The question has stumped scientists for decades and made gliomas one of the hardest-to-treat cancers. It’s also a mystery that physician-scientist Hsieh has long wanted to solve.

Now, she and HMS collaborators have filled in a piece of the puzzle by providing the first look at the types of neurons in the brain that connect to gliomas. 

The team’s findings were reported Wednesday in PNAS.

Profiling the identities and properties of such glioma-innervating neurons in mice provides new insights into what drives these cancers’ formation and spread in the brain. The findings can also help researchers devise new treatment strategies to stop these tumors from coming back. 

“This is a first step that provides a visual explanation for why the tumors can be everywhere in the brain,” said Hsieh, first author of the study and HMS instructor in neurology at Mass General Hospital. “We can now see where the connected neurons originate, study how they integrate with gliomas, and look for opportunities to interrupt growth.”

The study overcomes a long-standing obstacle to visualizing and analyzing the neurons that link with gliomas and demonstrates a way to advance the study of interactions between tumors and the nervous system more broadly.

Hsieh conducted the work when she was a research fellow in neurobiology in the lab of Bernardo Sabatini and in cell biology in the lab of Marcia Haigis in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. Haigis and Sabatini are co-senior authors of the study.

How gliomas hack the network

Gliomas arise from glia, cells that perform essential functions in sculpting and maintaining neural circuits. Scientists already knew that neurons form synapses onto glioma cells, but they couldn’t see where the other ends of those neurons (the cell bodies) are in the brain. That obscured the neurons’ identities.

Hsieh and team successfully traced the glioma-innervating neurons back to their sources using a rabies virus engineered to infect only specific cells of interest and to light up those cells when it gets in. The virus travels from the tumor cell back through the neuron that connects to it.

The researchers injected human glioma cells into the brains of mice and waited for neurons to connect with the tumors. They then applied the rabies virus to light up cells of interest. Soon, they had a picture illuminating the mouse brains showing all the glowing neurons that led to the glioma.

The maps revealed that the gliomas hook into existing patterns of neuronal wiring.

“The wires are already there; the gliomas just connect to them,” Hsieh said. “They hijack what’s already in place rather than forming their own arbitrary connections.”

And those neurons originate from across the brain, the researchers observed.

“They come all the way from the interior part of brain to go to the tumor,” Hsieh said. “It’s fascinating how the neural network functions and how these super-scary tumors integrate with and infiltrate the entire nervous system.”

Unmasking neurons’ secret identities

The team found that most of the glioma-innervating neurons extending from the far reaches of the brain are the type that makes glutamate, a major brain chemical that excites neurons. This finding aligns with previous observations that neuronal excitation stimulates glioma growth, and that neuron-glioma communication involves glutamate.

Subsets of the far-reaching glioma-innervating neurons, though, showed signs that they make both glutamate and another chemical called GABA, which inhibits neuronal activity. In some brain areas, glioma-innervating neurons from near the tumor site appeared to be largely GABAergic.

The results suggest that neurons that interact with glioma cells are more diverse than currently appreciated. The implications of this for tumor growth and spread are not yet known.

“We see that the tumor is connected to everywhere. Whether these connections provide a path for them to go everywhere is something we need to study,” Hsieh said.

The team probed the electrical properties of the glioma-innervating neurons and found certain differences between them and similar neurons in brains without glioma. Such variations between normal and glioma-innervating neurons or between neuron-neuron and neuron-glioma interactions offer valuable clues to researchers like Hsieh, who seek ways to intervene in cancerous processes while preserving normal function.

The need to develop glioma treatments is urgent, Hsieh said. Researchers have tried to treat gliomas with drugs that work for other types of cancers, but most of them have failed, she noted. 

“By unraveling the drivers of glioma-neuron interactions and identifying unique mechanisms, we can explore strategies to interrupt them, potentially stopping the tumors in their tracks and preventing their return,” Hsieh said.

Although she knows it will be many years before discoveries made in the lab translate into therapies for her patients with glioma and others around the world, Hsieh remains optimistic that these latest insights can help move the field forward.

“It’s not close to the clinic yet,” she said, “but it’s one inch forward.”

Additional authors include Sanika Ganesh, Tomasz Kula, Madiha Irshad, Emily A. Ferenczi, Wengang Wang, Yi-Ching Chen, Song-Hua Hu, Zongyu Li, and Shakchhi Joshi.

This work was supported the National Institutes of Health (including National Cancer Institute award K12CA090354), Howard Hughes r Institute, Lubin Family Foundation Scholar Award, American Academy of Neurology, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Ludwig Center at HMS, and Glenn Foundation for Medical Research. Confocal images were acquired at the Core for Imaging Technology & Education at HMS, and fluorescence in situ hybridization was performed by the Neurobiology Imaging Facility at HMS.

Haigis received research funding from Agilent Technologies and ReFuel Bio; serves on the scientific advisory boards of Alixia, Minovia Therapeutics, and MitoQ; is on the editorial boards of Cell Metabolism and Molecular Cell; and is a consultant and founder of ReFuel Bio.

For Jo Keefe, the trembling hands and trouble walking were bad, but it was the nausea that was truly debilitating.

“For two or three years, I was having nausea for several hours every day,” said Keefe, a retired lawyer living in New Hampshire who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. “I’d wake up in the morning feeling sick and I couldn’t make any plans at all. Fortunately, I was retired, but I wasn’t planning on this for my retirement.”

Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disorder affecting cells that control movement. Patients and the doctors who treat them have long known that severe gastrointestinal issues — nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation — are a feature of the condition, in some cases preceding neurological dysfunction by decades. But in recent years research around the disease has started to point to a connection that is more than incidental. The gut, experts say, may be where Parkinson’s starts.

Such a model, if supported by future research, would revolutionize our understanding of the nation’s second most common neurodegenerative disorder, opening a path for specialists to help patients like Keefe before neurological symptoms appear. It would also have the potential to inform treatment of other neurodegenerative disorders, including some of the most devastating in human health.

“Everyone’s goal is to find an early biomarker for Parkinson’s and our hope is that we can find one in the gut,” said Trisha Pasricha, a specialist in neurogastroenterology and director of clinical research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Institute for Gut-Brain Research. “What if you were able to get your screening colonoscopy and be told there’s a sign that you’ll progress to Parkinson’s unless we intervene now? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a way to intervene now? There are many steps that need to happen, but that’s the goal.”

Central to Pasricha’s vision is the gut’s enteric nervous system, which contains as many neurons as the spinal cord and presides over digestive processes that function as the body’s intake department: proteins, carbohydrates, alcohol, drugs, fiber, agricultural pesticides, hormones given to livestock, chemicals used in food processing, bacteria, viruses, and on and on. The system processes signals about what we’ve consumed and how to respond: throw it back up or move it along; speed it up or slow it down.

Also key: a focus on the two-way nature of the gut-brain connection. Stress caused by the perception of potential danger can cause digestive ills, for example, while signals from the gut’s own nervous system, the enteric nervous system, can spur the brain into mobilizing the body via hunger, cravings, nausea, and pain.

“The enteric nervous system is this large network that runs throughout the gut,” Pasricha said. “It’s constantly signaling, influencing our mood, our wants, our needs. Some of the earliest animals had an enteric nervous system well before anyone developed a brain, well before anyone developed a central nervous system, because we all had to eat. It’s like the OG of our bodies.”

The gut-brain connection goes both ways. Stress caused by the perception of danger can cause digestive ills, for example, while signals from the gut’s enteric nervous system can spur the brain into mobilizing the body via hunger, nausea, and pain.

The gut is also home to the microbiome, a symbiotic community of thousands of species of bacteria and other microbes whose chemical byproducts promote health by protecting against pathogens and regulating immunity. Except, that is, when the balance fails, and symbiosis turns to “dysbiosis,” in which the chemicals released by our microbial companions interfere with healthful processes. Researchers have only scratched the surface of the microbiome’s complexity, but they’ve identified shifts in the gut microbial community — some bacteria populations rise and others fall — not only in Parkinson’s but in Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

“Parkinson’s disease is very well known and that galvanizes a lot of research,” Pasricha said. “What we often find in science is that when we understand mechanisms behind one disease, it teaches us lessons that we can apply to the other diseases too.”

Theories of the case

There is some variation in Parkinson’s disease, which affects nearly 1 million Americans, but the most common form of the condition, sporadic Parkinson’s, is believed to stem from a complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors.

The disease develops over decades and is caused by a misfolded protein — alpha-synuclein — accumulating in dopaminergic neurons, which play a key role in regulating movement, cognition, and emotion. This process leads to the disease’s characteristic tremors, followed by slowed movements, altered gait, and impaired balance. The impact on neck and facial muscles slurs speech. Patients can experience difficulty swallowing, leading, in later stages, to the need for a feeding tube. The degeneration can spread to other types of neurons and, in some cases, contribute to dementia.

In 2016, researchers examined samples of gut tissue taken from Parkinson’s patients before they developed symptoms. They found alpha-synuclein present in the gut as early as two decades before it appeared in the brain. Additional studies have offered clues to how the protein might travel to the brain, showing that peptic ulcer patients who underwent vagotomies — severance of the main nerve connecting the gut and the brain — experienced significantly lower incidence of Parkinson’s disease.

These findings have led some scientists to embrace the idea that alpha-synuclein appears first in the gut in some forms of Parkinson’s. There, the protein — or changes associated with it — may create disturbances in the enteric nervous system, causing severe constipation, gastroparesis, and other hallmark Parkinson’s gut symptoms. It then moves up the vagus nerve to the central nervous system, where it begins the assault that leads to neurodegeneration.

Some researchers think alpha-synuclein, a protein associated with Parkinson’s, first appears in the gut and then travels the vagus nerve to the central nervous system, leading to neurodegeneration.

In September, Pasricha and colleagues added to that emerging picture, linking damage to the mucosa that lines the upper small intestine to Parkinson’s disease. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that among more than 9,000 patients with no signs of Parkinson’s when they were examined, those with mucosal damage experienced a dramatically increased risk — 76 percent — of later developing the disease.

Subhash Kulkarni, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and co-author on the paper, cautioned that while the results are intriguing, much work remains. Scientists still don’t know for sure what alpha-synuclein does in the gut, he noted, and the protein has also been found in the skin and salivary glands.

“These are initial forays,” Kulkarni said. “The relevance of these proteins in the gut to Parkinson’s is still not well understood.”

Beyond Parkinson’s

Laura Cox arrived at Brigham and Women’s in 2019 for postdoctoral studies on the microbiome, focusing on multiple sclerosis, a neurodegenerative condition in which the immune system attacks the myelin insulation that sheathes nerve cells. She worked in the lab of Howard Weiner, the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology, who kept a plaque on his desk that read “Cure as many diseases as possible.” She took that admonition to heart.

“We said, ‘If we’re going to do the microbiome and MS, we’re going to work with our neighbors across the hall,’” said Cox, today an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham’s Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases. “A really important thing that’s emerging is that there is clear evidence that the gut microbiome can influence neurologic disease.”

In addition to MS, Cox’s lab works on Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS, trying to decipher how gut microbes influence diseases that a few decades ago were thought to be confined to the brain and central nervous system. What she and other experts have found is that “dysbiosis” — shifts in the microbiome favoring one species of bacteria over another — occurs in each condition. And some of the same names keep popping up: Bacteroidetes, Akkermansia, Blautia, and Prevotella, among others.

Neurologist Laura Cox works on MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Part of her aim is to illuminate how these conditions might be affected by gut microbes.

One area of intense focus is “dysbiosis,” shifts in the microbiome favoring one species of bacteria over another, and some of the same names keep popping up: Bacteroidetes, Akkermansia, Blautia, and Prevotella, among many others.

These bacteria ingest and secrete metabolites that protect or harm health as they live, reproduce, and die, and can trigger neurodegeneration in two major ways, according to Cox. They can interfere with immune function that otherwise might remove harmful proteins such as the amyloid beta that accumulates in Alzheimer’s disease. They can also boost inflammation, an important contributor to the neurological damage in Parkinson’s disease.

“What we found in Alzheimer’s was that Bacteroidetes drove immunosenescence and it blocked this important repair process in which microglia go into the brain and clear out plaques,” Cox said. “In Parkinson’s there’s really strong evidence that the gut microbiota contribute to disease by driving inflammation.”

There are three routes through which gut metabolites affect the brain, according to Francisco Quintana, a professor of neurology at the Brigham whose lab studies the gut-brain axis and neurodegeneration. As in Parkinson’s, they can travel via the nervous system and the vagus nerve. They can also move directly to the brain via the bloodstream, crossing the blood-brain barrier. Third, they can activate immune cells in the gut that travel to the brain and release signaling molecules called cytokines. Those molecules can also cross the blood-brain barrier and trigger the brain’s own immune cells into action.

“I don’t know if it is cause or consequence, but if we model that gut flora, there might be effects on central nervous system pathology — and I think that’s extremely exciting,” Quintana said. “The gut affecting our central nervous system health, our brain health, gives us a unique opportunity to track the brain.”

Forward thinking

In 2020, Aaron Burberry was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of then-Harvard Professor Kevin Eggan, who had developed a strain of mice that replicated the rare but fatal neurological disease ALS.

Burberry and Eggan created a second population of mice for a lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. These animals were genetically identical to the first set and exposed to similar environmental conditions — same food, same light-dark cycles — but they never developed the ALS-like immune response and nervous system inflammation of their predecessors. That divergence sparked a scramble to understand the difference between the two populations, with the evidence eventually pointing to the microbiome. Some microbes present in the guts of Harvard mice were absent in the Broad Institute mice, the researchers discovered.

Burberry and Eggan also found that manipulating the microbiome with antibiotics or fecal transplants from the Broad mice improved or prevented ALS symptoms in the Harvard mice. Burberry, now a professor at Case Western Reserve University, has built on those results, recently identifying a protein produced by immune cells in response to gut microbes that drives up an immune factor called Interleukin 17A, which triggers inflammation in the genetically engineered mice. The FDA has already approved a drug targeting IL-17A, for psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis, that potentially could be repurposed for ALS. In addition, human trials testing fecal transplant in early ALS patients have begun in Europe.

Work toward gut-based therapeutics for other brain diseases is also moving forward. Rudy Tanzi, an Alzheimer’s specialist and the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Child Neurology and Mental Retardation at Harvard Medical School, is developing a “synbiotic” to boost microbiome health. The synbiotic combines probiotics — healthy bacteria — and prebiotics, high-fiber compounds that encourage their growth. Meanwhile, Quintana is using the tools of synthetic biology to engineer microbes — bacteria, yeast, and viruses — to deliver medication that tamps down inflammation before it becomes a problem.

“We might never be able to tell whether it is actually the microbiome exacerbating it or whether it is just reacting to a deeper perturbation in the body,” Quintana said. “But we can look: Is there something in the microbiome that I can use as a biomarker? Can we exploit the microbiome, or perturbations in the microbiome, to develop novel therapies?”

Technically, when doing something nice for another person you’re not supposed to think about what’s in it for you. Yet it turns out putting others first is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself. In “The Biology of Kindness: Six Daily Choices for Health, Well-Being, and Longevity,” Harvard’s Immaculata De Vivo and co-author Daniel Lumera explore the scientific evidence that prosocial behavior can unlock longer, healthier, happier lives. We asked De Vivo — who holds posts at Radcliffe, the Medical School, and the Chan School of Public Health — to help us develop the following quiz based on her book.

1. What are telomeres?

Brain signals that light up when a person is engaging in prosocial behaviors

DNA structures at the ends of chromosomes that protect chromosomes and keep the genetic material of a cell intact

2. Which of the following protect telomeres, according to research? Choose all that apply.

Fiber

Sleep

Meditation

Walking

Being in nature

All of the above

3. Having happy friends can make you happy. True or false?

True

False

4. Kindness — in the form of altruism, compassion, empathy, generosity, and selflessness — can be helpful in which of the following health outcomes? Choose all the apply.

Cancer treatment

Cardiovascular disease

Phobic anxiety

All of the Above

5. According to a 2010 study, which of the following can lead to premature death at the highest rate compared to other factors?

Being obese and sedentary

Having weak social ties

Smoking 15 cigarettes a day

6. Which common ingredient in diets of “Blue Zone” regions — geographic areas where people have longer life expectancy — is key to protecting telomere length, according to research?

Plant-based foods high in fiber

Red wine

Fresh bread

Seafood

7. What is LKM?

Longterm kinetic meditation

Loving-kindness meditation

8. Research suggests people with higher levels of gratitude sleep better and experience less pain. True or false?

True

False

Δ

In his new book, Edwin Frank ’82 charts the history of the 20th-century novel through 32 key works, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” and H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” and W.G. Sebald’s “Austerlitz.”

The Gazette interviewed Frank — founder and editorial director of the publishing house New York Review Books — about “Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel,” including why he selected certain titles, controversial omissions, and his hopes for the future of the art form. This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Your book traces the trajectory of the 20th-century novel through 32 titles. What made, in your view, those works and authors exemplary of that century?

The authors in the first and largely the second part of the book are authors who represent new beginnings and new ways of thinking about the novel. H.G. Wells invents a certain kind of popular fiction. André Gide invents a certain kind of art novel that stands apart from the popular 19th-century novels. Kipling and Colette are looking at what it is to be at the start of a new century and to be young people, and what it means to hope for a new world or to be impatient with the old world. I include Gertrude Stein and Machado de Assis because they represent new ways of writing that emerge in the New World, which of course, has a shorter history of producing novels. Most of those writers were at the beginning of the last century young people, and I wanted to map the new terrain, and these writers serve to do that.

In a way, the book has behind the scenes a single character: the 20th-century novel. You could say that at the beginning she dresses Edwardian style, not always happily, and by the end, she’s wearing a bomber jacket. I wanted to explore the changes that took place over the course of a lifetime of the novel as literary form.

In the second part of the book, the novelists are dealing with issues having to do with the conclusive destruction of the Victorian ways of life by World War I. They know they live in a new world altogether, one where all sorts of old codes have been destroyed, and the question is how to chronicle this new world.

Were you worried that many of the novels you chose are not well known and that those that are well known are not even read by many people?

I thought that the book should be introducing people to wonderful writers who are less well known to the Anglosphere and suggesting ways in which books that sometimes seem daunting to read — let’s say Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities” — are entirely engageable books and still very much alive. I saw that as being, frankly, part of my own story of expanding publication and translation of books from different parts of the world so that readers learn to read across barriers that once seemed challenging.

You include American authors Ralph Ellison, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway. Why not William Faulkner or others that some may see as glaring omissions?

The conception of the book was international, and the presence of American writers had to be circumscribed. And even so, certainly the largest contingent of writers in the book reflects my own linguistic competence. I speak briefly about Faulkner and state his importance. Several people said that the omission of Dos Passos is, just from the point of view of the international novel, perhaps the most glaring one because along with Faulkner and Hemingway, Dos Passos is undoubtedly the single most influential American writer on writers abroad in the last century. The panoramic novel he invents is a major genre, and I’m very fond of Dos Passos. It was with some regret.

With Stein, I wanted to suggest that she does pass on to, certainly Hemingway and Faulkner, a sense of American literature as posing a question of scale; what kind of sentence can be big or small enough for the almost unimaginable uncertainties that the new world opens up. We often forget how provisional a country America was, and perhaps still is. Stein realized how an open form could particularly address that situation. As she famously said, “There is no there there.” That is Stein’s sort of peculiar genius. Even if we don’t think of her as having written a book that is as beloved as any of those writers’ books, she made a remarkable contribution.

There are other novels I wrote about, but they ended up on the cutting-room floor. For example, Naguib Mahfouz’s “The Cairo Trilogy,” which looks back to 19th-century European novels, but also introduces a heady, lyrical, almost fantastical dream narrative that he takes from the ancient tradition of Arabic writing. And then there is also the surrealist Louis Aragon, who didn’t make the cut. I regret that because I wanted to bring out how surrealism, largely neglected or seen as a visual art in the Anglophone world, was a major contributor to the novel in the 20th century. Magical realism came out of surrealism.

What influence, if any, did the novels written in the 18th and 19th centuries have in this literary form in the 20th century?

The novel is a popular form starting really in the 18th century. But in the 19th century, it becomes truly popular, and the growth of literacy and industry allows novels to be produced on a larger scale for a larger audience. In a way, the 20th-century novel is impatient with the novel’s success. It’s impatient to prove that the novel is a fully serious form of art and not just a popular form of art. The novel is also skeptical of the political and social arrangements that have emerged in the 19th century; wanting more freedoms for individuals, sexual freedoms, artistic freedoms, and freedom to talk about the whole range of lived experience. If the 19th-century novels tend to balance the claims of self and society, saying that that balance is the precondition for a life of, as Freud would say, “ordinary unhappiness,” or even perhaps a happy life, in the 20th century, that balance becomes suspect, and the novel explores the ways in which things can be set out of balance.

What do Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” or Elsa Morante’s “History,” which are in the last part of the book, say about the end of the century?

The last part was the part where books surprised me most often. I didn’t quite know how I was going to end the book. I thought it should end the way a pop song ends, by fading out, but you have to fade out on a strong chorus. As it happened, the book was writing me as much as I was writing the book. Those post second World War books end up as a person does: entering middle age and looking back at a history that is in many ways already set. There are novels that stand as models of innovation, but they are now older novels. You get to a book like “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” whose very title announces itself as a book of a century, though it never mentions the 20th century, but it is a book, in some sense, about what is the meaning of these 100 years that we have lived through. And that struck me a good deal. Books like Georges Perec’s “Life: A User’s Manual” or Elsa Morante’s “History,” or García Márquez’s novel have a quality of trying to sum up, and I hadn’t really anticipated that. I was getting to the end of my book, and I suddenly realized that, in fact, a lot of books from the last part of the century were about summing up; they were about ending.

What are your hopes and concerns about the future of the novel and its place in the cultural conversation?

I would worry that the novel becomes a sort of a special property of the educated classes, that it becomes a little precious and loses its connection to the larger life of society and to a whole range of different kinds of people who have emerged in modern societies.

It strikes me that here in America we are living through changing times, and it’s remarkable to me how few novels there are that deal with — as Dickens, a brilliant stylist in his own right — financiers, scallywags and shameless politicians and what you will. I hope that those novelists do emerge. People always talk about how people no longer have the stamina to read long books, but then you have George Martin’s books, which are very long indeed, and people seem to gobble them up. Those books have a range of characters and events that shows an appetite to be comprehensive. And recently, Karl Ove Knausgård’s “My Struggle” too. I think, to some extent, that the literary novel is still a little overshadowed by the sheer range of accomplishment in the previous century and is struggling to find a new footing, a new sensibility and a new way of responding to the new world that we inhabit.

Shriya Srinivasan danced with precise steps, using graceful flicks of her wrists to depict a heroine holding a mirror and applying makeup and perfume, her expressions lit by hope and excitement. Behind her, centuries-old Indian watercolors depicted similar heroines.

The assistant professor of bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences was performing a bharata natyam dance about a common archetype in Indian paintings and dance — a vasakasajja nayika, or heroine eagerly preparing to meet her lover — for a recent event at the Harvard Art Museums. Before the dance, she explained to the audience how the brain’s prefrontal cortex heightens feelings of excitement and anticipation in love by tapping into memories and activating reward centers.

“As a dancer, I aim to enter the emotional and physiological state of the character I am playing, inducing a faster heart rate or slowing the breath, to simulate anxiety or deep loss, for example,” she said. “Mirror neurons in the viewer then assimilate these cues and allow them to resonate with the emotional experience and catharsis of the character.”

Srinivasan combines her passions for science and dance as director of Harvard’s Biohybrid Organs and Neuroprosthetics Lab and co-founder and artistic director of the Anubhava Dance Company, an Indian classical dance ensemble that performs nationally.

A recent collaboration between the lab and Anubhava led to the creation of an app that allows audience members to feel dancers’ movements through a smartphone’s vibrations, a project featured last month on the PBS Nova docuseries “Building Stuff.”

“The scientific question at hand was: How can we enhance the experience of dance, reaching beyond just audio and visual input into tactile or other forms of sensory input?” Srinivasan said.

Her research and development team, which included Isabella Gomez ’24 and Krithika Swaminathan, Ph.D. ’23, developed custom sensing devices that are placed on the ankles of Anubhava dancers to capture and classify their complex footwork into patterns. A smartphone app transmits the movements into audience members’ hands. Srinivasan says the technology has the potential to make dance performances more accessible for the lay viewer, as well as visually- or hearing-impaired people.

To make the haptic feedback stimuli convey the feel of the footwork, researchers set the vibrations to different intensity levels. Light, flowing movements were represented by vibrations targeting surface-level mechanoreceptors in the skin, while more intense, punchier movements penetrated to deeper skin layers, Srinivasan explained. The project culminated in a dance titled “Decoded Rhythms” for an audience at the ArtLab, where Srinivasan did a 2023-2024 faculty residency.

“For me, dance and engineering are similar in process,” Srinivasan said. “Choreographing a piece is akin to designing a system — both involve carefully crafting elements to achieve a specific effect. Just as engineers design a system to meet certain requirements, dancers create choreography to evoke a particular emotion or reaction from the audience. It’s about problem-solving and design.”

Srinivasan, who grew up dancing bharata natyam under the tutelage of her mother Sujatha Srinivasan, established Anubhava in 2015 with co-founder Joshua George in the hopes of creating a space for Indian forms in the American dance world while also merging arts, science, and humanities onstage.

“There’s a high level of rhythmic and mathematical complexity that goes into the choreography that we produce that might not always translate to an audience if they’re not familiar with the style of music that we utilize, or if they’ve not been trained in the dance form,” George said.

Since this collaboration, Srinivasan said Anubhava has been diving deeper into neuroscience, psychology, and mental health, incorporating portrayals of emotions such as fear and anxiety, which she said are not commonly explored in Indian classical dance tradition, into their recent performances.

“I find it immensely fulfilling to engage in work at the intersection of disciplines,” Srinivasan said. “Exploring a problem from different perspectives can help you envision solutions that aren’t visible from traditional silos.”

Srinivasan is especially interested in further research on how physiological changes in the body of a dancer portraying emotions onstage might evoke a similar response in audience members.

“There are vast opportunities to study why the world makes us feel the way we do. When I experience art, it evokes a certain emotional response in me. Understanding why is deeply fundamental to the work of an artist, but doing so with the lens of science gives me this tangible way to say, ‘OK, if I modulate ABC, I can get somebody to feel XYZ.’ To me, that’s nuanced insight.”

In 1981, fresh out of medical school, physician-scientist Bruce Walker began his internship at Massachusetts General Hospital. One day, a young patient showed up with an unusual cluster of infections and cancers. Baffled and powerless to treat him, Walker and his colleagues could only watch as the patient quickly succumbed to the mysterious condition.

“I distinctly remember the first case we saw at Mass General,” said Walker, who is the Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard. “The attending physician said that although we didn’t know what this condition was, we probably would never see another case like it.”

Two weeks later, another patient came in with the same set of symptoms. It quickly became clear to Walker and his colleagues that they weren’t dealing with a rare disease — it was the beginning of a new epidemic.

The baffling condition was acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) — the most advanced stage of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which attacks and destroys infection-fighting immune cells. By 1993, HIV had become the leading cause of death in Americans aged 25-44 years.

In the 40-plus years since it was identified, scientists have made notable progress against HIV, transforming the infection from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition, one that affects some 1.2 million people in the United States and nearly 40 million worldwide.

This decades-long quest for a cure for HIV has also yielded broader insights that have implications for the treatment of COVID-19, cancer, and other diseases.

From molecular insights to frontline medicines

Since the identification of HIV as the cause of AIDS, basic science and animal research have played a critical role in illuminating the virus’ complex behavior.

Some of the pivotal studies toward unraveling the structure, biology, and behavior of HIV have emanated from labs across Harvard Medical School. Using a range of imaging techniques, Stephen Harrison’s lab has identified key portions of HIV and studied the evolution of HIV antibodies, which is critical to understanding how the immune system interacts with the virus. The work of Joseph Sodroski, Bing Chen, and Alan Engelman has elucidated how HIV enters host cells and interacts with cell receptors, studying the structure and behavior of the virus’ protein envelope during this process.

This research has illuminated how HIV integrates its genetic material into host cell DNA, a crucial step in the virus’ life cycle. These insights have enhanced vaccine and therapeutic development by revealing how broadly neutralizing antibodies work and guiding the design of new immune-targeting strategies.

Early analyses of patient samples revealed that HIV is a human retrovirus — a type of virus that converts its RNA into DNA upon infecting a host cell. This tricks the host cell into copying the virus’ genetic material into its DNA as part of the cell’s normal replication cycle. The maneuver enables it to use the host cell machinery to make more viruses. HIV specifically goes after CD4 T lymphocytes or so-called helper T cells. These white blood cells coordinate immune response by signaling other immune cells to fight invaders. The virus begins by hijacking the cells’ molecular machinery to assemble thousands of viral particles, which go on to infect other CD4 T cells, spreading the pathogen throughout the body.

Today, the standard treatment for HIV is antiretroviral therapy (ART) — a combination of HIV medications, typically taken daily, that disrupt the virus’ replication cycle. When taken consistently, ART can lower the amount of actively replicating virus in the body — or viral load — to undetectable levels, lowering risk of transmission and allowing people with HIV to live nearly as long as uninfected individuals.

ART has also proved to be useful as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) — an approach that can prevent up to 99 percent of sexually transmitted HIV infections from developing after exposure. Notably, a new class of medicines has raised hopes as a game-changer in HIV prevention. Two recent clinical trials of more than 7,500 cisgender men and transgender and nonbinary people showed that twice-a-year injections with the long-lasting drug lenacapavir prevented HIV infections in nearly all participants.

Yet, millions around the world are already infected. Once inside the body, HIV persists because of its remarkable ability to hide within healthy CD4 T cells, where it can lie dormant for years without triggering an immune response, said Daniel Kuritzkes, HMS Harriet Ryan Albee Professor of Medicine and chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Although these latent reservoirs of HIV do not actively produce new virus particles, they can reawaken at any time, leading to active HIV infection. This chronic immune activation among infected people — even when the virus is kept at bay — can amplify the risk for several chronic conditions.

“People living with HIV often have elevated markers of inflammation,” Kuritzkes said. “This chronic immune activation can predispose people to long-term complications, including cardiovascular illness.”

Indeed, research has shown that people with HIV have a somewhat elevated risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and certain types of cancer. Now, the latest research from Advancing Clinical Therapeutics Globally — a global network of experts conducting HIV research — has found that daily use of statins could reduce risk of cardiovascular disease in people living with HIV by 35 percent. This pivotal work was conceived by and led by Steven Grinspoon, HMS professor of medicine and director of the Metabolism Unit at Mass General Hospital.

While this offers a path toward managing HIV-related complications, Kuritzkes emphasizes that the ultimate quest of research efforts remains achieving sterilizing immunity through a vaccine that halts the virus in its tracks, preventing infection from taking hold in the first place.

The roadmap to a vaccine

With some 1.3 million new infections a year, a vaccine remains the best way to end the HIV epidemic, said Dan Barouch, the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at HMS and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“We should use all of our prevention and treatment tools, including education and pre-exposure prophylaxis with antiretroviral drugs, to prevent HIV, but to really end the epidemic, we need a vaccine,” Barouch said.

Despite great strides with PrEP, Barouch notes, it will only reach high-risk individuals, and as many as half of new HIV infections occur in people who are not designated as high risk. Thus, Barouch notes, even if PrEP were available for free and accessible to everyone in the world, which is far from reality, it would still invariably reach a ceiling of population efficacy.

Yet, after 40 years of effort, the HIV vaccine field is at a crossroads. Since the dawn of HIV research, there have been hundreds of attempts at vaccine design, and dozens have made it to early-stage clinical trials, but only five have been tested in large-scale clinical trials.

“There is a lot of exciting basic, preclinical, and early clinical research, but currently no vaccine candidate has a clear trajectory for advanced clinical development,” Barouch said.

Why?

First, the ability of the virus to shapeshift within the host and across the population. The virus mutates rapidly, resulting in an astonishing genetic diversity not seen with any other virus.

“With HIV, you are not targeting a single virus, you’re targeting millions of different viruses,” said Barouch.

Another problem is the fact that the virus integrates itself into the host genome quickly — within days following infection — then goes into hiding, establishing a latent reservoir that can reactivate at any time. This means that a vaccine needs to induce rapid immune response that counters viral maneuvers very rapidly. No other virus seeds reservoirs so quickly, and no other vaccine has been capable of inducing such rapid defense.

Finally, the virus is cloaked in an envelope of sugar molecules — or glycans — that render it largely impervious to antibodies. There are only three or four targets on HIV that render it vulnerable to antibodies. Thus, for antibodies to work, they must be hyperprecise to latch on to these hotspots in order to disrupt the viral shield. This, Barouch notes, may be one of the greatest hurdles to developing a potent enough vaccine.

Among the most recent efforts was a vaccine developed by Barouch and Johnson & Johnson that was tested in Africa and in South and North America. The approach used a so-called “mosaic” platform optimized using computational biology to target multiple strains of the virus.

The researchers used computer design to create a mosaic antigen in the lab. The trial, which concluded in 2021, showed the vaccine had great safety but low efficacy — around 14 percent. A vaccine needs to be at least 50 percent effective, but ideally 70 percent or more, Barouch noted, meaning that it would have to prevent at least seven out of 10 infections.

Despite the disappointing results, Barouch said, the findings helped refocus the field of HIV vaccine research on the importance of neutralizing antibodies — the types of immune proteins that are capable of disabling rather than merely recognizing the virus.

To that end, Barouch and team have redoubled their efforts to design vaccines that create precisely such broadly neutralizing antibody response as well as spark a robust T cell response, thus activating both major arms of the immune system.

Lessons from elite controllers

In the early 1990s, researchers noticed a tiny subset of HIV-infected patients who were living healthy and symptom free without medication. These patients, who came to be known as elite controllers, had undetectable viral levels in their bodies. Their immune systems were powerful enough to naturally keep the virus from replicating. Between 0.15 and 1.5 percent of HIV-infected individuals are estimated to be elite controllers.

“In these individuals, the immune system is able to suppress HIV replication,” said Yu, whose lab focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind this remarkable immune response, with the hope of harnessing these insights to develop new antiretroviral treatments for HIV. “And in a rare subgroup, the immune system may even eliminate all cells infected with replication-competent HIV, curing the infection entirely.”

When Gaurav Gaiha, then a first-year student in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, learned about elite controllers, he was captivated by the concept of using insights from these unique individuals to develop an HIV vaccine.

At that time, a prevailing scientific theory was that elite controllers had an exceptionally powerful T cell response to HIV. However, when Gaiha began comparing the T cell responses in elite controllers to that of people living with progressive HIV, he discovered something surprising: While T cell function in elite controllers was important, there was another important piece to this biological riddle. Gaiha therefore shifted his focus and instead began to zero in on the specific regions of the virus that these T cells were targeting.

In a 2019 study, Gaiha, Walker, and colleagues applied network theory to tackle this question. They treated each amino acid in the viral proteins as a node in a network, allowing them to quantify how central each amino acid was to the protein’s function. Their findings offered a breakthrough: T cells in elite controllers consistently targeted critical regions of the virus protein network — areas that were essential for its survival and losing or mutating them would significantly hinder the virus’ ability to replicate.

“It’s similar to key players in a network,” said Gaiha, now an assistant professor of medicine at HMS and a principal investigator at the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard. “Key players keep the network connected, while others may be more on the periphery. If T cells target key player amino acids from these critical regions of viral proteins, you may have a chance to control the virus for a long period of time without therapy.”

These insights, Gaiha noted, have implications beyond HIV — they helped guide COVID-19 vaccine developments that stimulate T cells and induce a robust and long-lasting immune response.

Encouraged by promising results in humanized mice, Gaiha and Walker are now collaborating with two biotech companies to translate these insights into a viable HIV vaccine. The group’s viral vector-based vaccine candidate is set to enter a first in human clinical trial in Zimbabwe and South Africa in early 2025, while a second RNA-based vaccine trial is meant to begin in 2026 at Mass General.

“I am hopeful that we will see good outcomes from these initial vaccine trials,” said Gaiha. “But more importantly, I am looking forward to learning key lessons that will guide us, so we can continue to refine. We’re in this for the long haul.”

Ripple benefits beyond HIV

The search for a cure continues, but the sinuous 40-plus-year journey has fueled advances well beyond HIV.

For starters, many of the successes in the identification, testing, and treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that ignited the COVID-19 pandemic, were built on knowledge and hard-earned experiences with HIV.

“Research on HIV really paved the way for the advances that were made with COVID, by laying the platforms for vaccine development that, in particular, the vectors that were used to generate immune responses, the mechanisms for rapid diagnostics, the understanding of viral pathogenesis — all were really contributed by work that had been done on HIV,” Walker said.

“If it wasn’t for the decades of HIV research, we would not have had the COVID-19 vaccines so rapidly,” Barouch said.

HIV research also equipped scientists with the tools and know-how to unravel viral structures and monitor the behavior of viruses inside their hosts. This work also led to the development of animal models that allow researchers to study how the body responds to vaccines and treatments and laid the foundation for the modern-day infrastructure needed to conduct clinical trials.

HIV research has catalyzed understanding of immune system function in myriad ways. For example, recent advances in gene therapy and CAR T cells were heavily influenced by research conducted in HIV infection.

“Fundamental mechanisms of how the immune system can recognize, engage, and target virally infected cells were first discovered in the context of HIV infection, and a lot of this progress has subsequently been translated to alternative disease contexts,” said HIV researcher Xu Yu, professor of medicine at HMS and a principal investigator at the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard.

For example, gene therapy uses lentiviruses as vectors to deliver therapeutic genes into the target cells.

“These lentiviruses are very similar to HIV, and a deeper understanding of HIV allowed researchers to use lentiviruses for therapeutic gene transfer,” Yu said.

HIV research also helped advanced the field of CAR T-cell therapy, which uses genetically engineered immune cells for the treatment of blood cancers. One of the first CAR T-cell studies was done in the context of treating HIV infection, more than 20 years ago.

“Experience gained with CAR T cells in this setting was instrumental in advancing them for oncologic indications,” Yu said.

Gund Hall, it is safe to say, was overdue for an update after weathering 50 Cambridge winters.

The iconic Quincy Street home of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is open after a major renovation this year, its most significant since the building opened in 1972. While the changes may not be readily apparent, the need was.

The hall’s concrete-and-glass stepped exterior, which encloses GSD’s beloved five-story, central studio area known as “the trays,” had badly deteriorated over the years, allowing moisture and cold air to seep in, and heat to escape. The space was so inefficient, it consumed nearly half of the building’s total energy. Before rainstorms, students covered their desks with tarps.

“The main purpose of this work is to get rid of the leaks once and for all. This building, for the 52 years it has been open, has always leaked. When it rains hard, you see the buckets everywhere,” said David Fixler, a lecturer in urban planning and design at GSD who chairs the faculty building committee, which has been advising on this first phase of what will be a multiyear project.

Other improvements include boosting the amount of natural light coming into the trays and making the adjacent outdoor terraces wheelchair-accessible for the first time.

For decades, the building’s unique design, as well as its historic and educational importance to GSD, have presented major obstacles to undertaking any substantive restoration that would fix these persistent problems without compromising the look and feel of the original design by Australian architect John Andrews, March. ’58.

“When John Andrews was originally tasked to design a new facility for the Departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning and Design, he surprised his clients with a unique building that was at once solid and transparent and that prioritized the student body, united within an enormous, light-filled, single space,” Sarah M. Whiting, dean and Josep Lluis Sert Professor of Architecture at GSD, said in a statement. “Though much has changed since Gund Hall first opened in 1972, the careful rehabilitation of the structure underscores the school’s commitment to this same priority: our students.”

Gund, like other examples of mid-century Brutalist architecture, was constructed before the 1973 global “oil shock” and widespread awareness of climate change. It features large surfaces of exposed concrete, many windows, and is not well-insulated, all of which make it less than well suited to the harsh climate of New England.

“Philosophically, one of the compelling things about brutalism is the structure is the building. What you see is what it is. There’s nothing hidden,” said Fixler, an architect who specializes in mid-20th century building conservation. That means “sometimes they fail spectacularly, and they’re hard to fix.”

Nearly all of the original windows were badly degraded and couldn’t be salvaged. Above, clerestory windows on the roof were replaced with triple-glazed windows.

The curtain walls on each end of the building now have windows made from custom vacuum-insulated glass, a state-of-the-art material not widely used in North America. They provide energy efficiency and noise reduction comparable to traditional triple-glazed windows without the bulk, allowing the new windows to hew very closely to the original window profiles and glass sizes, while delivering two to four times better energy performance than standard glass. They will yield future savings in both carbon and dollars spent on utilities.

The project takes an aging facade that “had the problems of its time to a facade that is the best-performing glazing system anywhere,” said project architect George Gard, MAUD ’14, of Bruner/Cott Architects. The firm has restored other mid-century buildings at Harvard, including Smith Campus Center and Peabody Terrace.

With so many Brutalist-era buildings around the country now confronting similar challenges because of age, the School hopes the project serves as a model for others, by identifying innovative technology, techniques, and materials and helping define best practices.

“We see a lot of future potential as it becomes more common. And we hope that, this project being a high-profile building on Harvard’s campus, can be part of a growing acceptance of this technology,” said Gard.

Given the project’s unique complexity, Fixler, a conservation architect for many decades, has been incorporating the renovation into his teaching.

“What I find heartening is that [among] the students, there’s a growing understanding that it’s a really responsible thing to do to recycle old buildings, whether you like them or not, and to use that opportunity to test new ideas to make them more resilient, make them more sustainable,” he said.

Not everyone appreciates Brutalist behemoths like Gund Hall or Boston City Hall, often called one of the country’s ugliest buildings, or thinks they’re worth preserving.

“One of the biggest challenges, frankly, is getting people to understand why these are good, interesting buildings, and getting people to love them — because so many people hate them,” he said.

“There are a lot of people, especially younger people of the generation that I’m teaching now and my kids, [who] think these buildings are cool. But an awful lot of people of my generation just don’t.”

Gazette photographer Stephanie Mitchell has been conducting a bit of an experiment inspired by her own college years — specifically the address by Nora Ephron to Wellesley’s Class of 1996 expressing, “You are not going to be you, fixed and immutable you, forever.” She met with a group of Harvard students during their first year and sophomore year, photographed them, and asked them to describe themselves in three words. The students, now juniors, participated in the exercise once again. The three words they chose appear below in gray (2022), dark gray (2023), and black (2024).

Free. Independent. Friendly.

Independent. Free. Possibility.

Free. Independent. Creativity.

When we first spoke to Chavez in 2022, the student from Hidalgo, Mexico, noted that she was “learning how to be independent for the first time, leaving home and my country.”

This year, she said: “I’m growing. I’m an adult. I have the freedom of choosing my own path, making decisions, making mistakes, and learning from them.”

In all three of her interviews, Chavez described herself as “free” and independent.” She added a new descriptor this year: creativity. “It gives you the tools to solve problems, not only academically, but in your life.”

As a first-year, she listed women’s and gender studies and sociology as academic interests. By the fall of her sophomore year, she was leaning toward a government concentration in the law and justice track with a secondary in economics. Chavez has since declared a government concentration with a language citation in French. She is considering a senior thesis in political theory and a career in law.

“As a perfectionist or overachiever, you always want to have things in control,” said Chavez, but lately she is happier because “I don’t think about those expectations anymore, only my own.”

God-loving. Adventurous. Passionate.

God-loving. Adventurous. Kind.

God-loving. Grateful. Composed.

Two years ago, Zimbabwe native Chinhara characterized himself as an “adventurous” person with “diverse interests,” from electrical engineering to rugby to playing the marimba. He credited Christianity and love of family as guiding forces.

“I still pray every day. I still love my religion,” said Chinhara. He’s added two new descriptors this year.

“Grateful, because I wake up every day, and I realize that I go to Harvard, which was one of my biggest dreams growing up. … Grateful for my mom. She passed away, but she lived a beautiful life. … And then composed, because I’m a junior now. I know how things work. I’ve made mistakes, and I’ve learned from them. I’m now at a point where I know what I want. I know how to pursue it.”

Chinhara’s interest in computer science hasn’t wavered as he tilts toward tech entrepreneurship and product management. In 2023, he launched a software development startup. He said he will declare a secondary in economics and is considering business school.

Last spring, he “started reaching out more, talking to more people, going to office hours.”

“It dramatically improved my academic life, my social life, my mental health.”

Fun. Kind. Excited.

Grateful. Motivated. Hopeful.

Energized. Grateful. Inspired.

“Building relationships is the most important thing to me,” said Bhathena in her first-year interview. That theme continues today. She feels energized, she said, “reflecting on the people who have gotten me here.”

“It brings me back to my family — my grandparents, my parents, my siblings. I was lucky to spend the end of the summer with a lot of them, and they always ground me.”

Bhathena has completed many foundational requirements for her economics concentration and is turning to her secondary in global health and health policy. Interning at Boston Children’s Hospital doing research this past summer has only reaffirmed her pre-med track. “I am really excited to dedicate my career to medicine and to caring for people.”

She has moved into mentorship roles in clubs and the classroom, for example serving as a Teaching Fellow for EC10. “I love teaching, and I’m excited to meet new freshmen in the class who are just as nervous and scared as I was.”

This year, “I am a more balanced person,” Bhathena said. “Time has given me more freedom to just be myself and take some deep breaths and enjoy my last two years here.”

Friendly. Excitable. Ambitious.

Approachable. Adaptable. Vibrant.

Evolving. Ambitious. Present.

Omoloja spent the summer back home in Wisconsin. “I had a lot of time to think and contemplate my priorities. There’s so much I need to do and that I want to do in this life.”

In her first Gazette interview Omoloja said she was most looking forward to “immense personal discovery that everyone mentions when thinking about college.”

Now a junior cognizant of how quickly time is passing, she said, “In the past, I spent so much time looking down, be that at my phone, or as I walk, looking at the floor, because I’m thinking about how all these people are seeing me. But now, I really want to pay attention, to be present. Every time I look around, I think, ‘Wow, this world is so pretty, and I want to just take that in more.’”

Reflecting on last year, Omoloja said, “I learned to advocate for myself more. … My biggest lesson was although it is important to show kindness and to have community, it shouldn’t go at the expense of your personal comfort and happiness. … I’m more comfortable in my identity this year. I’m very happy to be me.”

“Ambitious,” a word she used to define herself in 2022, re-emerged as she studies for the MCAT and takes the courses “Medicine and Health in America” and “Therapeutic Rationalities,” concrete steps toward becoming a doctor.

Adventurous. Ambitious. Authentic.

Excited. Fun. Adventurous.

Excited. Relaxed. Melancholy.

Wang describes himself as both excited and relaxed this year. “I think believing in yourself and having confidence is really important,” and when things become hectic “it’s good to be relaxed and Zen.”

Rejuvenated from a summer of seeing friends and family, doing genetic computational research at the Medical School, and volunteering at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, Wang also feels a bit melancholic.

“I looked down at my Pset, and I look up, and it’s already junior year. It went by really quickly … I’m looking forward to the second half.”

Since his last interview, the Canada native has declared his concentration in chemical and physical biology with a secondary in computer science and has continued to find ways to break out of his comfort zone, a goal he emphasized in previous years.

Ringing the Lowell House bells every Sunday has been “super fun.” He shares the recruitment joke for the bells, known for waking up students at the bright hour of 1 p.m. on Sundays: “If you feel like you’re too well liked, feel free to join!”

Creative. Passionate. Fun.

Enthusiastic. Creative/Artistic. Natural.

Creative. Mellow. Open.

Creativity has been a constant for Gone over the past three years. “It’s a great way for me to engage with the world and understand what people think and feel.”

This year, “I’m not as worried about what’s going to happen. I’m just living in the moment. I am really trying to put myself out there and try new things. Now is such a formative time in my life.”

Gone has declared a concentration in women, gender, and sexuality with a secondary in psychology, and is currently taking a history class about the relationship between guns, property, and power, as well as a First Amendment seminar. “I’m in my amendment era, one might say.”

Last year Gone helped stage-manage for the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club musical “Jekyll and Hyde” and the musical comedy “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” and continues this year with the musical “Pippin.”

A key lesson from sophomore year: how to find balance and take breaks between time commitments.

Excited. Determined. Outgoing

Excited. Passionate. Ambitious.

Growth. Excited. Passionate.

Softball continues to be a focus for Flynn, a rise ball and curveball pitcher who was named Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 2023. While athletics can be time-consuming, she enjoys the camaraderie while traveling the country with her teammates.

Last season, Flynn underwent elbow surgery. “I’m finding my way, working through rehab, and my team has been great through all of that, supporting me and helping me. I should be able to play in the spring.”

What else has changed? “My first years were definitely more about exploring, and this year, I have found things that I am passionate about, whether it’s making friends, playing sports, what I’m studying, and I’m definitely going to go deeper into that in the next two years.”

She’s delving into her concentration in human developmental and regenerative biology with a neuroscience secondary, taking courses in organic chemistry and psychopharmacology.

“I feel that I’ve found my place here and now it’s more about growing in order to continue finding people and places that I love.”

Whether examining animal ethics, combating AI bias, or weighing the values essential to a functioning democracy, Harvard’s newest Rhodes Scholars have made their mark across a wide expanse of disciplines. These eight seniors, representing four countries and several U.S. states, will continue their academic pursuits at the University of Oxford next year. They shared their plans, accomplishments, and what it was like to receive the news of their award.   

Matthew Anzarouth was at home with family in Montreal when he got the phone call that he had won a Rhodes Scholarship for Canada. Anzarouth was one of two recipients from the region that includes Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime provinces.

“I felt a mix of shock, excitement, and profound gratitude,” Anzarouth said. “This opportunity is an extraordinary privilege, and I’m really keen to make the most of it.”

Anzarouth is currently writing a thesis on Canadian federalism and multiculturalism, with an emphasis on language policy in Quebec and Indigenous self-determination. The Mather House resident is using political theory to examine the challenge of reconciling universal individual rights with group rights specific to Canada’s national minorities.

“I’m using political theory as a way of understanding — and hopefully better resolving — the challenge of coexistence in a culturally diverse federation,” Anzarouth said. “The thesis work has helped me stay engaged with my country’s politics and reflect on how I want to contribute.”

On campus, Anzarouth is an undergraduate research fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and an editor and podcast host for the Harvard Political Review. 

At Oxford, he hopes to continue his studies of political theory, focusing on questions of how to balance competing claims for cultural preservation and how to balance power between legislative and judicial bodies of government. He hopes to eventually attend law school.

The summer after her first year on campus, Lena Ashooh worked as a research assistant in Puerto Rico, studying the impacts of natural disaster and trauma on the behavior of a colony of free-ranging macaque monkeys. It was a pivotal moment for the Kirkland House resident, who said it felt like observing an “extremely sophisticated society of individuals.”

“That was where I initially had the idea that, were the conditions that animals are in to change completely, they might behave in ways that we never imagined,” Ashooh said. “This led me, in philosophy, to working out how we might wrong animals in the beliefs we have about them and to be interested in how we’re managing land, the decisions we’re making about who has access to land, and who should be involved in the decision-making process.”

Ashooh designed a special concentration in animal studies, combining political philosophy, government, and animal psychology. She is an undergraduate fellow at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics, has written for the Harvard Review of Philosophy, and co-founded Harvard College Animal Advocates. Off-campus, she works as a lab manager in animal cognition scientist Irene Pepperberg’s parrot lab at Boston University.

“I say that to study animal studies is to study social injustice and gives us a new way of understanding how oppression and violence occurs, and how moral complacency and inaction occur,” said Ashooh, who is planning to eventually attend law school. “One of the key questions that animal studies allows us to address is: How is it that people can be led to look at suffering and decide not to act on it?”

Ashooh hopes to study philosophy next year, focusing on the question of what it means to treat and respect an animal as an individual.

As an undergraduate researcher in different Harvard labs, Shahmir Aziz has analyzed the impact of physical exertion on the glycolytic levels of diabetes patients and has investigated nano-lipids as potential drug delivery vesicles. As an intern at Novo Nordisk, he has focused on optimization of drug-delivery processes. 

He wants to keep working on the cutting edges of biotechnology, and he wants to help others do so as well, in his native Pakistan. 

“In the long run, I hope to help start a culture of startups and biotech in Pakistan, so that students and other innovators can grow out their ideas,” said the Adams House resident named one of two Rhodes Scholars for Pakistan.  

A first-year course in quantitative physiology taught by Linsey Moyer solidified Aziz’ chosen field of study. He also took courses in government and political philosophy, feeding an equal passion for international relations. 

At Oxford, Aziz plans to pursue a master’s in bioengineering, followed by a second degree in diplomacy and global governance — arenas in which he’s also made meaningful contributions on campus.

A member of the leadership team of Harvard’s International Relations Council, Aziz helped the University’s Model United Nations team win two major intercollegiate competitions. “The opportunity I have cherished most at Harvard has been to interact with students from all extremes and opposites of background, pursuing all nature of subjects, and dreaming all ranges of noble dreams,” Aziz wrote in his scholarship application. 

Some of those interactions have come in his four years playing Harvard Club Tennis, as a sports editor with The Harvard Crimson, and as a course assistant in the Department of Mathematics. 

Tommy Barone wants to understand what people believe, and why.

Barone currently is studying what he calls a “crisis of liberalism,” or the philosophical values essential to healthy democracy. In particular he’s interested in how best to understand the beliefs of people engaging in illiberalism in democratic societies.

“It’s so easy to create a narrative about why something important or worrying or disruptive in society is happening that serves your ends,” Barone said. “I think it’s a civic obligation that we listen to what people have to say and try to understand them. If you are trying to theorize something that involves people without speaking and listening to the people who are part of that phenomenon, you’re going to be missing something.”

Barone said that when he learned he had been named a Rhodes Scholar, all he could do was start “breathing heavily.”

“I didn’t cry until I called my parents,” Barone recalled. “Then I cried. Then I had to get it together to talk to the judges afterward.” 

The Currier House resident, who hopes to pursue journalism in the future, is co-chair for the editorial board at The Crimson. Their coverage won first place for editorial writing in collegiate journalism in the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2023 Mark of Excellence Awards.

“I’ve had the unique challenge, but also the really educational, enriching experience, of being tasked with bringing people together to have difficult discussions in one of the most challenging years on campus in decades,” said Barone, who plans to study history at Oxford. “I’ve had the privilege to publish a really broad diversity of perspectives on a range of important issues on campus.”

From watching her mother commute several hours a day for work in Maryland to biking throughout her community, Sofia Corona learned early on that how people move is fundamental to the human experience. 

Helping people get where they need to go — within cities, towns, and systems that benefit all — has become her life’s work. “I’m interested in how communities are engaged in infrastructure planning, especially when the benefits of that infrastructure are collective and widespread, but the burdens are localized,” said Corona, a Currier House resident graduating in December. 

Corona, who hopes to work in the transportation sector, thinks seismic shifts toward sustainable modes of transportation are possible. “At the same time, our transportation networks are often superimposed on inherited, segregated landscapes, both racially and socioeconomically,” she said. “We can’t be agnostic to that.” 

At Oxford, Corona’s master’s coursework will contextualize mobility systems within broader economic development and sustainability frameworks. At Harvard, she worked in the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, conducting research on inclusive decision-making in renewable energy projects. She also spent time in the MIT Transit Lab. Her professional experience includes internships at Uber, BMW, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and McKinsey & Co. 

Her interests have taken her all over the world, from working on carbon dioxide pricing for the Chilean Ministry of Finance to collaborating with researchers at the Technical University of Munich on a tool that advises local transit agencies. 

The Colombian American was a walk-on on Harvard’s varsity sailing team and is an avid mountaineer with the summits of Denali and Kilimanjaro among her feats, and she has run the Boston, New York, and Berlin marathons. Among her most cherished moments at Harvard have been as a dog-walker to Currier House dogs Huckleberry and Ari.  

Waiting in a room with other Rhodes Scholar finalists, Aneesh Muppidi did a homework problem set and chatted about South Asian politics, having already made peace with not winning. 

“In my head I thought, ‘This has been an amazing process, but now it’s time to go back to the real world,’” the Lowell House resident said. 

Then, he heard his name.   

“I called my little brother first,” he said, followed by his parents and two best friends. 

Muppidi has spent time mulling the question Alan Turing famously posed in 1950: Can machines think? He’s come to believe that understanding human intelligence — and computationally scaling up that intelligence — can solve some of the world’s biggest problems, such as diagnosing complex medical conditions or giving personalized tutors to every child in every classroom. 

At Harvard, he’s immersed himself in the power and promise of artificial intelligence through projects on deep reinforcement learning in Assistant Professor Heng Yang’s Computational Robotics Lab; particle filter machine learning algorithms with the Fiete Lab at MIT; and autonomous agent detection with Professor Sam Gershman’s Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab.

Outside the lab, Muppidi is equally passionate about AI policy and ethics. Ensuring technologies are developed safely is a cornerstone of Muppidi’s research, which he plans to continue while pursuing master’s coursework in computer science and public policy at Oxford. 

Muppidi served as president of Harvard Dharma and as president of the Harvard Computational Neuroscience Undergraduate Society. He includes among his mentors Sanskrit instructor Nell Shapiro Hawley, now at Vassar College, with whom he took two years of the ancient language of India. “How she taught had a very beautiful effect on my life, in the sense that I was able to get closer to my spiritual identity, who I am as a person, and what I believe in.” 

When Ayush Noori was 7, his grandmother, Munira Brooks, was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurodegenerative disease that slowly robbed her of the ability to speak, move, or breathe. Assisting in her care and witnessing her long struggle inspired Noori to pursue science and medicine. “My mission is to give people with neurological disease more time with their loved ones,” said Noori.

Noori has championed this mission for nearly a decade. Since the age of 12, working or volunteering in various labs, he has conducted research at the intersection of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and precision medicine, seeking to develop new AI-enabled diagnostic and treatment options for patients with neurological disorders.

As an undergraduate, Noori has authored 25 peer-reviewed publications — including seven as first author — in scientific journals including Cell, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Aging, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, and NBD, and his work has been featured at more than a dozen international conferences. He has been advised by professors including Marinka Zitnik at Harvard Medical School; George Church at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Materials; and Sudeshna Das, Alberto Serrano-Pozo, and Bradley T. Hyman in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He plans to do graduate study in clinical neurosciences at Oxford next year. 

The recipient of more than a dozen fellowships at Harvard and a Roberts Family Fellow at Harvard Business School, the Goldwater Scholar and Adams House resident is also devoted to teaching and mentorship as co-founder of the Harvard Undergraduate OpenBio Laboratory and as a peer adviser at Harvard College.

“I have an immense debt of gratitude toward Harvard because I’ve studied and trained here since I was a teenager,” he said. “The College, SEAS, MGH, and Harvard Medical School have enabled me to contribute to the global fight against neurological disease and given me hope for a healthier future, for my loved ones, and for the world.”

Laura Wegner, Currier House resident and Germany Rhodes Scholarship recipient, wants to address patients’ fragmented medical records and revolutionize healthcare technology to improve patient outcomes.

It’s a cause driven by personal experience. While in high school, Wegner, formerly a competitive swimmer, had to undergo surgery for a knee injury. Doctors used the “wrong surgical method,” Wegner said, due to not having access to her full medical history, including information about a pre-existing health condition, leaving her unable to continue swimming.

“That was a personal experience where I thought, ‘Wow, parts of my patient data are stored in so many different places, and I wish they were together somehow.’”

To improve experiences for future patients, Wegner co-founded the startup Mii in 2022, a patient healthcare passport that securely stores patient data so patients can bring their medical history from doctor to doctor, around the world. 

Wegner has taken Harvard courses in health economics, privacy and technology, and entrepreneurship, and has worked as a fellow with the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Eager for global perspectives, Wegner has studied digital healthcare systems in the U.S., Germany, and Australia, and she is writing her thesis on systems in Estonia and Lithuania.

Looking forward to improving her technical skills at Oxford with the hope of continuing her work in healthcare technology, Wegner says she loves both the creative and technical sides of entrepreneurship.

“It’s just about having an idea and then immediately being able to build a prototype, test it out, and see where it goes. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring any idea to life, and hopefully have it improve people’s lives.” 

The Democrats got it wrong.

It wasn’t threats to national security or democracy, and it wasn’t the U.S. Supreme Court’s undoing of Roe v. Wade. What voters cared most about this election was “safety, affordability, fairness, and education,” said Republican operative Kellyanne Conway during a sometimes testy 90-minute talk at the JFK Jr. Forum about the 2024 election and what to expect from the incoming Trump administration. 

That’s why ads and other messaging about crime, inflation, immigration, student loan forgiveness, and school choice proved so effective in the campaigns of President-elect Donald Trump and several other Republican candidates, she told Setti Warren, director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. 

Trump won by running up the numbers of voters already predisposed to vote for him and “peeling off” some support among “core Democratic” Party constituencies, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, union households, Jewish, and younger voters, improving on his own 2016 and 2020 numbers, said Conway, who managed the final months of Trump’s 2016 campaign and served as an adviser during his first term.

Conway said she thinks Democrats underestimated how motivating the issue of K-12 education was to many across the political spectrum, particularly women, who did not support Harris as robustly as they had Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Trump was seen as “authentic” and a proven commodity who had already done the job and ran a “joyful” and “forward-looking” campaign, she said, pointing to Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s franchise, rallies at concert venues, and his garbage truck ride. 

Conway credited the campaign’s embrace of “new, new media” like TikTok, podcasts, and social media influencers, as a strategic move that paid real dividends in the final weeks reaching young men and low propensity voters. Also important was the campaign’s under-reported effort to educate disengaged voters about the many ways they could cast a ballot before Election Day, which also helped the former president prevail. 

Over the past two weeks, Trump has announced more than two dozen nominees for White House and Cabinet positions, primarily top campaign staffers and high-profile business executives.

“What they all have in common is they know him; he knows them; and they are fluent in the America First agenda, meaning: This is what we’ve been elected to do,” Conway said. “So he’s got people who are willing to work with alacrity and energy to get that agenda through.”

At times, Conway flashed the quick and cutting fast-talk that has made her a polarizing figure on the left, sparring with student questioners.

She called for students to try to bring their friends who suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome” back to their senses.

“You all know someone afflicted by it. … It wrecks the nervous system. It addles the brain. There is no vaccine, cure, or therapeutic, but you all have a role to play in helping people at least unwind a little bit from it” by not canceling those who have a different point of view. 

“I certainly hope that the new government that’s forming can rely upon, if not all of you right away, most of you along the way, to help in any way, shape, or form that you possibly can,” she said.

For many Crimson football fans, devotion can be measured by consecutive years of attendance at the Harvard-Yale game. But Saturday’s showdown will be a first for the man who now leads their beloved program.

“All the time I was playing at Princeton, and coaching at Princeton, I was kind of jealous of Harvard-Yale,” said Andrew Aurich, Thomas Stephenson Family Head Coach for Harvard Football. “I’m really excited to experience it.”

The first-time head coach, who came to Harvard from Rutgers University, has led the Crimson to an impressive 8-1 record. The team clinched at least a share of the Ivy League title with a dramatic win over the University of Pennsylvania last weekend, making Aurich the first head football coach in Harvard history to win a league title in his first season.

We caught up with Aurich to learn more about preparations for one of the biggest dates on the Crimson calendar. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Crimson are having a great season under your leadership. To what do you attribute your early success?  

Former head coach Tim Murphy played a big part in what’s happening this year. When I got here, it was very clear these players were already training to win a championship. They are very tough mentally. We’ve had some close games where our ability to focus at the end, and really execute, has allowed us to win.

Tell me about your leadership style.

One of the core parts of our culture is 100 percent honesty; the players are always going to get 100 percent honesty from me. Whether or not they like what they hear, they should know it’s coming from a good place. I expect the same from them. If there’s a better way to do something, I want to find a way to do that.

What changes have you brought to the program?

My plan all along was to get an Ivy League head coaching job. But my experiences outside the league helped me see there were opportunities to help these young men become better players and a better team overall. If you ask them, they’ll say there’s a little more emphasis on sports science, whether it’s in the weight room or the emphasis we’re putting on nutrition, hydration, and sleep.

You said something interesting just now — that you always wanted to be a head coach in the Ivy League. Say more about that.

I knew I wanted to get into coaching when I was playing at Princeton. My dad had been my high school football coach, so I went back to St. Paul, Minnesota, and coached with him for a year and confirmed that I loved it. I ended up at a small Division 3 school in Pennsylvania for two years, and then I got the opportunity to go to Rutgers for my first stint as a defensive assistant.

From there I got the running backs coaching job at Princeton. My experience with the student-athletes there was so enjoyable. They’re just so driven and fun to be around. The next year I went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with my former boss at Rutgers, coach Greg Schiano. But as soon I got to the NFL, I immediately thought: “The Ivy League is where it’s at, I’ve got to do everything I can to become an Ivy League head football coach.”

What happened next?

I ended up back at Princeton. I was there for a long time, but saw that I needed something more than just Ivy League experience. When coach Schiano got the head coaching job at Rutgers again, I knew that working for him would help prepare me for success.

Landing the top job at Harvard must have felt like a dream fulfilled.

I was on the road recruiting with coach Schiano as the whole hiring process was underway. He doesn’t know the Ivy League all that well, so he was trying to get some perspective. “What is it like?” he wanted to know. I told him: “Coach, this is like being at Ohio State or [University of] Michigan in the Big Ten.” The entire time I was at Princeton — whether I was a player or a coach — I saw Harvard as top dog in the Ivy League.

How are you preparing for Yale?

Well, there’s definitely a different kind of energy right now. My job is to make sure our players are going about their business the same way they have been for the last nine weeks. This game means a lot to a lot of people. Even the level of the interest from the outside, including the number of media requests, is completely different from previous weeks. But ultimately, I can’t get caught up in it. Because if I am, I know the players are.

The Crimson fell to the Bulldogs in 2022 and ’23, but you’re the favorite this year. What do you hope to see on the field Saturday?

I want to see a team that is protecting the football on offense, that is taking the ball away in defense. I want to see a team that is executing 11 guys every play. I want to see a team that’s on the attack every single play. That’s how we define ourselves as a football program.

Will you get to participate in any of the fun stuff this weekend?

Hopefully the fun stuff I’ll be doing is celebrating a win.

In a passage from “Lovely One,” Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ’92, J.D. ’96, is a Harvard College first-year drawing a smiley face in her notes for the course “Justice.”

“I want to laugh at the way my mind spins as I listen to the opinions being expressed,” she writes in a College essay excerpted in the new memoir. “I want to know the answers. I glimpse that there are no answers. Yet to wonder is not enough. We must never stop asking the questions.”

On Tuesday, Jackson was met by 800-plus smiles — and a standing ovation — as she returned to visit a course that proved influential in her life. Welcoming her at Sanders Theatre was Michael J. Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, who has taught “Justice” since 1980. Jackson credits Sandel’s Gen Ed offering with building her confidence while instilling a passion for healthy debate.

“I felt myself expanding and growing more visible to myself as I engaged the great philosophical conundrums,” she writes in the book. “The animated discussions about open-ended ethical dilemmas made me come completely alive.”

Seated with Jackson under the bright stage lights, Sandel invited students to engage with the issue of affirmative action while drawing on insights from influential philosophers, ancient and modern. Primary readings this semester include works from Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Rawls. But the syllabus also features the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting affirmative-action policies at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina.

Some students lined up to share responses to Jackson’s dissent in the UNC case. (She recused herself in the case of Harvard, having served on its Board of Overseers.) Jackson may have been a quiet participant in “Justice” three decades ago, as she notes in the book. But she was much less so on her return to the two-hour lecture as she laid out her legal and moral reasoning on affirmative action. The whole exchange was off the record.

Taking the stage to address the class for the final 45 minutes of the session was Margaret Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, former chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Sandel assigned students to read her 2003 opinion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, which established the right to same-sex marriage for the first time in U.S. history. Sandel said that Marshall’s opinion is a rare piece of legal writing with the resonance of prayer. It has found second life as a popular reading at weddings nationwide.

At the Ketamine Clinic for Depression at Massachusetts General Hospital, patients make their way each day to receive intravenous infusions of the powerful anesthetic that has become an alternative therapy for treatment-resistant depression. 

Many of the clinic’s patients have not been helped by traditional treatments, including psychological counseling, antidepressant medication, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and electroconvulsive therapy. With its rapid antidepressant effects, ketamine is sometimes the only option that provides relief, said clinic founder and director Cristina Cusin, who has been researching depression and mood disorders for the past 25 years.  

“We don’t have good weapons to treat some severe forms of depression, just like we don’t have treatments for advanced-stage cancer,” said Cusin, who is also an associate professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “We’re always looking for the next thing so that we can continue to offer hope to patients who don’t respond to standard treatments.”

In 2000, after a study reported that small doses of IV ketamine rapidly reversed symptoms of depression while standard antidepressants often took several weeks to have an effect, ketamine became the next new thing. In 2019, based on years of research, the FDA approved a nasal spray medication, derived from ketamine, to be administered under medical supervision.

Depression is a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of sadness and hopelessness, that affects 18 percent of Americans. One-third of those diagnosed with depression don’t respond to standard treatments, with acute consequences to their personal and professional lives. The stigma associated with depression makes it harder for people to seek treatment, said Cusin. 

“In our society, if you suffer from depression, you may be told to ‘try harder,’ ‘stop complaining,’ ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps,’ and so on,” Cusin said. “But there are some forms of depression that have a strong biological component; there are neurocircuits in the brain that are not functioning right. In many cases, it’s not for lack of trying.” 

Patients follow a strict protocol to be admitted to the MGH Ketamine Clinic; not only do they have to be referred by their primary prescribers, but also prior treatments for depression must have failed. Ketamine therapy is integrated with other treatments and is done in the clinic under medical supervision and in coordination with patients’ primary medical teams. The clinic doesn’t admit self-referred patients or those with active substance use disorders or a history of psychosis. Ketamine produces hallucinogenic effects and dissociation, which can exacerbate psychotic symptoms. 

Other risks associated with ketamine are the possibility of developing addiction and a host of medical problems, but for patients who experience rapid relief from their symptoms of depression after treatment, ketamine is a game-changer, said Cusin. “Our patients have failed other treatments, so they don’t have a lot of other options,” she said. “If this is the only thing that works, they keep coming.” 

Scientists continue researching ketamine’s antidepressant effects on treatment-resistant depression. A recent clinical trial found that ketamine was as effective for non-psychotic treatment-resistant depression as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which has long been the gold standard for hard-to-treat depression.

Conducted by Amit Anand, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the study found that 55 percent of those receiving ketamine and 41 percent of those receiving ECT had at least a 50 percent improvement in their self-reported depression symptoms. Anand co-authored the pivotal 2000 study that revealed the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine.

Encouraged by his recent study’s results, Anand is conducting a follow-up clinical trial comparing ketamine and ECT treatments among patients with suicidal depression. If ketamine can affect suicidal thoughts, it could be lifesaving. “What we’re trying to see is that if ketamine can cause a very rapid reversal of the troubling kind of depression leading to suicidality,” he said. “People are suffering, and even if it is for a short time, it is beneficial to provide a rapid change.”

Even though doctors and researchers are hopeful regarding the promise of ketamine, there is growing concern about the proliferation of private ketamine clinics, which began to crop up around the country after restrictions on telemedicine relaxed during the pandemic. These clinics offer IV ketamine infusions, with prices ranging from $600 to $800 per infusion. 

Most ketamine private clinics operate in a gray zone, with almost no oversight, and function as for-profit businesses, said Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician, educator, and cannabis specialist at MGH. 

“The end result is that now our population has broad access to ketamine, and it’s a little bit of an uncontrolled experiment,” said Grinspoon. “Whether it’s going to alleviate many people’s depression or whether it’s going to get a lot of people addicted to ketamine is going to be an open question. We don’t know how much it is going to help or harm things.”

Ketamine is not nearly as addictive as alcohol or opioids, but its use as a recreational drug poses serious risks. Actor Matthew Perry died last year of “acute effects of ketamine.” His autopsy also found opioids in his blood, but the level of ketamine found was equivalent to the amount that would be used during general anesthesia. 

The other troubling issue for Grinspoon is affordability. “I work as a primary care doctor in an inner-city clinic,” he said. “None of my patients can afford six $800 injections. … The last thing we need is for ketamine to be another treatment for just the well to-do. … This has got to be affordable.”

At the MGH clinic, patients receive low doses of ketamine in long intervals and have mixed experiences. While some report feeling relaxed, others find it unpleasant, but most said their symptoms of depression improve and don’t interfere with day-to-day functioning. Still, 

Cusin warns that ketamine should not be a first-option treatment for depression. 

“If someone is depressed or suicidal, there are alternatives out there,” said Cusin. “There are 50, 80 different treatments to consider. It’s rare that somebody has tried everything. Usually, there are entire classes of medications or treatments that have not been considered. There is always hope.”