Events

Designing Living Things

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge

Biology can be a design medium: scientists can now “write” DNA and manipulate microbial behavior. In the future, they could also reshape entire ecosystems. Christina Agapakis is a synthetic biologist, writer, and artist who collaborates with engineers, designers, artists, and social scientists to explore the many unexpected connections between microbiology, technology, art, and popular culture. In this lecture, she will discuss current and potential uses of biotechnology in various fields from agriculture and medicine to consumer goods and renewable energy.

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Twins in Space

Location:

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

Spaceflight poses unusual stressors to the human body. To ensure that astronauts can perform under daunting conditions, NASA investigators have been studying the effect of long-duration spaceflight on crew members. This lecture will present the findings of the NASA Twins Study, which evaluated twin astronauts in different environments for one year: one in space and one on Earth.

Learn more about and RSVP for Twins in...

Combating Antibiotic Resistant Superbugs across Diverse Habitats

Location:

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

Disease-causing bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to all available antibiotics, causing approximately 700,000 annual deaths globally and costing the US economy $55 billion each year.

Gautam Dantas will discuss how new genomic and computational technologies are enabling a deeper understanding of how antibiotics affect diverse microbiomes, including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistance across diverse habitats. These insights enable the design of novel diagnostics and therapeutics for maintaining healthy microbiomes and preventing and treating future...

Early Science from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

Location:

60 Garden Street, Phillips Auditorium, Cambridge, MA 02138

Sam Quinn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) began science operations in July 2018, and over the next two years will survey most of the sky in search of small planets transiting the nearest stars, the brightness of which enables studies of planetary compositions and atmospheric properties. These will likely be the planets on which we focus our search for life through the detection of biosignature gases in the planets' atmospheres. However, TESS is not just an exoplanet mission; by monitoring...

Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

Location:

Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

David Reich, Professor, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Senior Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT

Sweeping technological innovations in the field of genomics are enabling scientists to extract and analyze ancient...

Exhibition Opening: Measure

Location:

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

Anna Von Mertens is an exhibited artist who uses the structures of quilting and drawing to explore the frontiers of human understanding. Her new exhibition "Measure" explores the life and work of Henrietta Leavitt, one of the women “computers” hired to study glass-plate astronomical photographs at the Harvard College Observatory a century ago. Leavitt’s findings provided a unit of measurement for galactic distances. Reimagined in meticulous stitches and intricate graphite marks, Von Mertens examines our current understanding of the size and shape of...

Next in Evolution

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...

The Undiscovered

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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