2021 Nov 15
The Climate of Attention
7:00pm to 8:30pm
Location: 
Harvard Divinity School—Online
This conversation is part of the series "Weather Reports: The Climate of Now." The featured speaker is Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker staff writer.
Few have covered the climate crisis as deeply and as thoughtfully as Elizabeth Kolbert. Her work includes Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2007), the Pulitzer-prize winning The Sixth Extinction (2016), and her latest Under a White Sky (2021), “a book about people trying to solve problems caused by people...
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2021 Nov 10
Biogeography across Broken Continents and Sunken Islands
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
The major continents of the Southern Hemisphere—Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica—as well as India and islands in the Pacific, were once part of Gondwana, an ancient supercontinent that began to break up about 180 million years ago. How did this breakup influence the evolution of ecosystems and organisms found on modern continents and islands? This is one of the questions that biogeography, the study of how organisms are distributed across space and time, seeks to answer. Gonzalo Giribet will discuss how he uses biogeography and tiny invertebrate species to understand the...
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2021 Nov 10
The Biology of Intimacy: A Synthesis
12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
Join Steven Phelps, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas, Austin, for a discussion of his work using evolutionary neurobiology and social neuroscience to probe how and why species form attachments.
Learn more and RSVP for this virtual event.
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2021 Nov 09
After-School Animal Encounters: Teeming Tidepools
4:00pm to 4:45pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
Tidepools exist where the land meets the ocean and the amazingly resilient creatures that live there manage the challenges of both environments. From swimming and climbing to burrowing, animals in tidepools have adapted many behaviors to live in an ever-changing world. Join human museum staffers Javier and Ryan as they lead you in a 45-minute program with live ocean invertebrates. This event will be fun for the whole family so bring your questions and sense of wonder.
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2021 Nov 09
New Pathways to STEM: Increasing Access and Opportunity in Science Education
2:00pm to 3:00pm
Location: 
Harvard in the Community & LabXchange—Online
Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, or STEM, has the power to inspire and the power to change the world. But those world-changing opportunities have not consistently reached enough of our learners, and the pathway to careers in STEM has not been fully accessible to all of the talented problem solvers the world needs. Now, with online learning and new digital tools rapidly advancing, educators, learners, job seekers, and industry professionals can help to expand access to STEM education and create a more inclusive and equitable STEM workforce by embracing these new tools,...
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2021 Oct 22
Decoding AI: The Science, Policies, Applications, and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
10:00am to 4:20pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly permeating many facets of our lives, raising both hope and concern about possibilities for our future. AI is transforming domains as disparate as science, medicine, commerce, government, law, the military, and the arts, and in doing so, it is forcing us to grapple with practical, political, and philosophical questions about humans and the nature of human interaction. The Harvard Radcliffe Institute Science Symposium, featuring speakers from disparate disciplines and industries, will examine AI, its impact, and its ethics by exploring current and...
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2021 Oct 14
Observatory Night: Cosmic Explosions, from Supernovae to Tidal Disruption Events
7:00pm
Location: 
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online, Livestream
The biggest explosions in the universe dwarf any we see on Earth. In space, we regularly witness exploding stars that can shine brighter than the rest of a galaxy as a supernova, or a black hole ripping apart a star that's visible from billions of light years away in what's called a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE). In this talk, astrophysicist Yvette Cendes will discuss how we observe cosmic explosions from Earth and learn about them, from Chinese records thousands of years ago to her modern-day observations as a radio astronomer. This will include Yvette's research on supernovae, such as...
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2021 Oct 14
How Beer Made Kings in Early Egypt
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
The remains of a 5000-year-old brewery found in the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos are providing insights into the relationship between large-scale beer production and the development of kingship in Egypt. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Abydos brewery produced beer on a truly industrial scale—something unparalleled in early Egypt. Matthew Adams will share findings from recent excavations at the brewery and will consider it in context as part of a broad pattern of royal activity at the site that served to define the very nature of kingship at the beginning of Egypt’s history...
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2021 Oct 13
Did We Evolve to Exercise?
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
Exercise is a paradox: everyone knows it is healthy, but most of us struggle to do it. Further, as technology and machines increasingly replace human labor, fewer people are getting enough exercise. In this talk, Daniel Lieberman will explain how an evolutionary and anthropological perspective on exercise can help. How much exercise did we evolve to do? Is exercise really a magic bullet? Why, how, and to what extent does exercise slow aging and promote health? Is there a best way to exercise? And, most importantly, how can we help each other exercise without nagging or coercing?
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2021 Oct 13
Novel Interfaces to Support Human Intent Formation and Communication to Humans and Computers Alike
12:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
Elena L. Glassman is the Stanley A. Marks and William H. Marks Assistant Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and an assistant professor of computer science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where she specializes in human-computer interaction. Join Glassman as she discusses her work designing, building, and evaluating systems for comprehending and interacting with population-level structure and trends in large code and data corpora.
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2021 Oct 13
National Fossil Day
9:30am to 10:30am
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a paleontologist? Celebrate National Fossil Day—an event organized by the National Park Service—with Harvard paleontologists! Take a close look at museum fossils and learn how they are used to help solve mysteries about ancient life. What amazing creatures lived together in ancient oceans? How do fossil tracks, traces, and burrows help us understand how extinct animals lived? How can we reconstruct an animal from just its bones? How did dinosaurs get so big? Bring your curiosity and questions to this online event for kids and families!
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2021 Oct 05
After-School Animal Encounters: Radical Reptiles
4:00pm to 4:45pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
What might your life be like if you spent half your day on land and the other half in the ocean? How would you hunt for food if you were only a few inches long? Is one type of snake really all that different from another? Get the answers to these questions and more as human museum staffers Javier and Ryan introduce you to several live animals. Each month we will discuss a different theme while feeding and interacting with some of the museum’s incredible animals!
Reptiles have lived on Earth for millions of years and over that time have evolved some amazing characteristics and...
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2021 Sep 30
New Vistas in Astronomy: Imaging a Black Hole
7:00pm
Location: 
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian—Online
Black holes are cosmic objects so small and dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational pull. Until recently, no one had ever seen what a black hole actually looked like. Einstein's theories predict that a distant observer should see a ring of light encircling the black hole, which forms when radiation emitted by infalling hot gas is lensed by the extreme gravity near the event horizon. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global array of radio dishes, linked together by a network of atomic clocks to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope that can resolve the...
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2021 Sep 30
Saving Seahorses to Save Seas
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
Amanda Vincent, the 2021 Indianapolis Prize winner, has dedicated her career to understanding and advocating for seahorses, which serve as a flagship species for a wide range of marine conservation issues. She is credited with bringing the world’s attention to the 44 known species of seahorses and with developing a collaborative approach to marine conservation that is also improving the status of many other marine fishes, such as sharks, rays, groupers, and eels. Hear how her determination and optimism is saving not only these iconic sea creatures but also our world’s oceans.
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2021 Sep 23
Inspired by the Harvard Museum of Natural History
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
The Harvard Museum of Natural History inspires college students and life-long learners to explore a myriad of scientific and creative pursuits. In this program, a group of professionals discuss how their experiences in the museum inspired their careers in science communication and storytelling, while they share images and videos of their favorite museum specimens and stories.
Presented in collaboration with the Harvard University Chapter of Storywish, a student-run organization that empowers chronically ill children to read, write, and share their own...
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2021 Sep 19
The Fossils Are Talking!
11:00am to 11:45am
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
Are you curious about what fossils tell us about life on Earth—and how dinosaurs and other ancient animals, in turn, awaken our imaginations to create true and imagined tales? Come along on a journey to find out! The adventure will kick off with children’s book author Elizabeth Shreeve, reading and sharing surprising secrets from her newest book, Out of the Blue: How Animals Evolved from Prehistoric Seas (Candlewick Press, 2021). Elizabeth will make connections between the story of life on Earth and fossils that can be seen in the museum. Harvard College student and...
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2021 Sep 16
Testosterone: The Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us
6:00pm to 7:15pm
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
While most people agree that sex differences in human behavior exist, they disagree about the reasons. But the science is clear: testosterone is a potent force in human society, driving the bodies and behavior of the sexes apart. As Carole Hooven shows in her book T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us (Henry Holt & Company, 2021), it does so in concert with genes and culture to produce a vast variety of male and female behavior. And, crucially, the fact that many sex...
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2021 Sep 14
Afterschool Animal Encounters: Pint-Sized Predators
4:00pm to 4:45pm
Location: 
Harvard Museums of Science & Culture—Online
What might your life be like if you spent half your day on land and the other half in the ocean? How would you hunt for food if you were only a few inches long? Is one type of snake really all that different from another? Get the answers to these questions and more as human museum staffers Javier and Ryan introduce you to several live animals. Each month we will discuss a different theme while feeding and interacting with some of the museum’s incredible animals!
Predators come in all sizes. Imagine that you are only a few inches long. How would you get around, hunt for food,...
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2021 Sep 14
Gravitational Waves: A New Window to the Universe
4:00pm
Location: 
Harvard Radcliffe Institute—Online
The first-ever detections of gravitational waves from colliding black holes and neutron stars have launched a new era of gravitational wave astrophysics. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of and the Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics in the MIT School of Science, will describe the science, technology, and human story behind these discoveries, which provide a completely new window into some of the most violent and warped events in the universe and are helping to solve decades-long mysteries in astrophysics.
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2021 Sep 14
Inspiration, Empathy and Education: How Cultural Entities Are Helping People Think about Climate in New Ways
8:30am to 10:00am
Location: 
Harvard Museum of Natural History—Online
As the world has sought to understand the causes and impacts of climate change, the topic has long been situated within the domain of science. In the 21st century, data, studies, reports, and academic/technical discourses have been the central mechanisms by which we learn about and process climate change: its consequences, our roles, and possible solutions. In recent years, however, artists and cultural institutions have developed a powerful interest in the topic and begun to employ myriad strategies by which to explore, draw attention to, and process it. There is an evolving...
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