Events

    2023 Oct 13

    Future of Cities: Extreme Heat

    4:00pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Graduate School of Education, Askwith Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge

    2023 is on track to be the hottest year on record. What do we do next?

    Rising air temperatures are now a fact of life in the world's cities, with major implications for public health and urban design. Join a panel of global experts, innovators, and practitioners to learn more about the impacts of extreme heat on our bodies, our buildings, and our cities–and what individuals and institutions can do to prepare.

    ...

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    2023 Oct 05

    Seeing in Art and Medicine: A Conversation

    6:00pm to 7:15pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

    Join us for a lively conversation about the exhibition Seeing in Art and Medicine and the museums’ medical humanities program that inspired it. Presenters include the program’s founders, Hyewon Hyun and David Odo, and exhibition curator Jen Thum. The talk will also include interactive segments based on the work of the program.

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    2023 May 10

    Building Our Resilient Future: Education Driving Hope, Innovation, and Action

    10:00am to 2:00pm

    Location: 

    Askwith Hall, Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge

    In conversation with national and local leaders, we'll highlight an action-oriented agenda for the education sector with innovation and engagement as drivers for climate resilience and mitigation. We'll show how schools and communities are already making an impact in confronting climate change — altering our use of resources, creating exciting learning opportunities, and advancing equity in community approaches. We'll explore ways to accelerate progress, to spur collective effort, and to act with urgency. And we'll ask participants to share stories of where they are finding hope and...

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    2023 May 08

    Climate, Health & Equity: Toward a Sustainable Future

    1:00pm to 6:30pm

    Location: 

    Spangler Center, Harvard Business School Campus

    Climate change is actively harming human health — not in some distant future, but now, in communities around the globe. The more we understand these harms, the better we can confront and overcome them. That’s the goal of this symposium.

    We’re bringing together leading scientists, policy makers, and activists to examine our most urgent challenges and explore the most promising solutions. The audience will include professionals from a wide array of disciplines engaged in issues of climate, health, and environmental justice. We expect the afternoon to inform and inspire, to spark...

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    2022 Nov 17

    Panel Discussion: In Search of Thoreau's Flowers

    6:00pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Harvard Museum of Natural History, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    How can an imaginative fusion of art and science help us reach a meaningful understanding of the relationship between our actions, climate change, and diminishing biodiversity? This panel features the artists and scientists who collaborated in developing In Search of Thoreau’s Flowers, an exhibition now on view at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The inspiration for this project was a set of 648 plant specimens in the Harvard University Herbaria that were collected by Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond...

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    2022 Sep 13

    Harvard Science Book Talk: "What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions"

    7:00pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Sanders Theatre, 45 Quincy St., Cambridge

    The author of the beloved web comic xkcd, as well as bestselling books "What If?" and "How To," answers more of the weirdest questions you never thought to ask!

    Cost: $34-$44, copy of the book included

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    2022 Mar 04

    Next in Climate Change: The Ethel and David Jackson Next in Science Program

    2:00pm to 4:30pm

    Location: 

    Online or at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

    The speakers in “Next in Climate Change” will discuss emerging scientific research and multi-dimensional implications of climate change for people, society, and our planet. The program will focus on five critical areas of inquiry and the connections among them: extreme weather and its impacts on communities, infrastructure, and the environment; economic effects of climate change, as well as economic opportunities; consequences of climate change on global health, ranging from cancer to pandemics; impacts on particularly vulnerable populations; and approaches to mitigation for the...

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    2019 Oct 25

    Making the Cut: Promises and Challenges of Gene Editing

    9:00am to 5:00pm

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden St., Cambridge

    Gene editing holds extraordinary promise but also raises serious legal and ethical issues. In this science symposium, leading scientists, clinicians, and ethicists will explore case studies of particular therapies and the legal and bioethical implications of gene editing.

    ...

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    2019 Apr 23

    Film Screening: Lobster War: The Fight Over the World's Richest Fishing Grounds

    6:00pm to 8:00pm

    Location: 

    Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge

    Lobster War is an award-winning documentary film about a conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War. The disputed 277 square miles of sea known as the Gray Zone were traditionally fished by U.S. lobstermen. But as the Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than nearly any other body of water on the planet, the area’s previously modest lobster population has surged. As a result, Canadians have begun to assert their sovereignty, warring with the Americans to claim the bounty.

    Directed...

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    2018 Nov 05

    Next in Evolution

    2:30pm to 5:30pm

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

    The Next in Science series provides an opportunity for early-career scientists whose creative, cross-disciplinary research is thematically linked to introduce their work to one another, to fellow scientists, and to nonspecialists from Harvard and the greater Boston area. The focus of this year’s program is in the study of evolution. In this program, two leading researchers will explore the genetic impact of Neanderthal interbreeding with modern humans and consider how people migrated, adapted, and mixed over the course of human history. Two...

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    2018 Oct 26

    The Undiscovered

    9:00am to 5:00pm

    Location: 

    Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Knafel Center, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA

    To paraphrase Louis Pasteur, sometimes luck favors the prepared mind, as when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by noticing that mold growing accidentally in his lab seemed to kill bacteria. This 2018 Radcliffe Institute science symposium will focus on how scientists explore realities they cannot anticipate. Speakers from across the disciplines of modern science will present personal experiences and discuss how to train scientists, educators, and funders to foster the expertise and open-mindedness needed to reveal undiscovered aspects of the world around us.

    ...

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