There are a couple of things that are very interesting about Harvard. One of them is that the students here are truly fantastic.
You can never tell what the source of innovation
will be from someone at Harvard.
It could come from medicine, it could come from the sciences, it could come from politics, it can come from nearly any direction.
The objective here is to try to put together
a system in which
smart kids come in
and they actually learn how to be independent scientists. We've developed a style in the group in which-
I describe it by saying that they don't work for me: I work for them.
The whole idea of professional schools is a uniquely Harvard idea.
It started with preachers training preachers to be preachers. It ended with businesspeople teaching businesspeople to be businesspeople.
With lawyers and doctors in the middle. The real product of the group
is the students. They see the world as it is and and they want to change it into what they hope it will be.
What they can do is just
staggering. It's really astonishing. If you look at the history of Harvard,
you're looking at the history of innovation.
My name is Radhika and I'm a professor of computer science at Harvard. All throughout
nature we see the power of groups.
Bees, cells, ants, fish, even humans.
A single termite is tiny and weak.
But a colony of termites can construct amazing structures that are skyscrapers
to themselves and
no one is in charge. Each of the termites does their part and somehow together
they're all able to do the right thing. Technologically we can apply the same
principle.
So we can design very simple small robots that can cooperate to achieve complicated
tasks like build structures that we need in the environment. This research is
really exciting.
Ask anyone in the group!
Something in our body called telomeres
is what helps ourselves to regenerate and heal. But as
telomeres become weaker
deterioration begins. Aging. My housemaster just published a study. It shows that
by increasing the levels of a certain enzyme
telomeres stay healthier.
This has actually reversed the symptoms of aging.
This project has eternal benefits.
Just over a decade ago I myself was an undergraduate at the college
quite wary of taking a course called CS50. Fast forward to 2011 and I'm somehow at the helm of that same course. For the first time this fall in Fall 2010, the number one reason for taking CS50 among our five hundred students was
simply as an elective. It isn't just applicable to those who want to pursue a
computer sciences vocation but rather students go off into the sciences, to the
social sciences, even to the humanities. So we try particularly hard in computer
science to make sure that on day one they can in fact step into the classroom
and then three months later step out having succeeded in that new field.
And exit,
even from these introductory courses whether in computer science, physical sciences or beyond,
and then return to their own fields, return to their own
concentrations and use some of those new ideas, those new skills. For instance, programming
skills and savvy to tackle new and unfamiliar problems in their own domain.
We have a tremendous ability to solve the world's health problems. The mission of
the FXB center
is to promote their welfare and well-being
of children the most difficult circumstances worldwide. Health care in
general has been reactive in the past. Someone's sick and we react to that and try to make them better.
We're trying to anticipate treatment
before it's needed and ideally prevent the need. What we're trying to do is to create material systems
of small pieces of plastic that we can place in the body and move all the biology that is now done in a lab into the human body.
So this is an enormous advance. Now instead of studying things in animals, we
animals we can study the right cell
in the right organisms. The real challenge of our generation and of the next century
is how
to get those things to the people that need them.
Global health now is recognized as a
crucial input to
world survival. Harvard not only has the intellectual power across the university
but we also have the glue
that helps to connect
the various parts of the
university that can use that intellectual power much more collaborative and
interactive way.
As the first private college in the new world
Harvard is responsible for the first intercollegiate athletic event, the creation of the
first automatic digital computer
the first urban superintendents program,
the first baseball catcher's mask, the first theory of presidential power,
the first introduction of insulin into the United States, the first university law
school in the United States. Some of the first breakthroughs in the
understanding of AIDS, the first iron lung. You know, this could go on for quite some time.
The first nonsectarian of theological school in the country. The first MBA.
The first external pacemaker.
The first designated driver campaign in the US and the first artificial skin.
The first successful kidney transplant. The first executive education program.
The first to discover that deer ticks carry lyme disease. The first use of case method.
The first university school of dentistry.
As a member of the Harvard community
feel free to add to the list.
You won't be the first. You won't be the last.
We call it "Vertigrow." Vertigrow is a vertical gardening device that allows families to
grow food on the walls
of their homes and on their roofs.
We thought that with Vertigrow we could design design a structure that would conserve
water that could actually reinforce unstable housing structures and maximize growing
space. The bottom line is that Vertigrow solves two major problems:
rapid urbanization
and malnutrition.
My job is about creating an environment. I create an environment for innovation. To create an environment where ideas are celebrated.
One the biggest challenges i have a uh... as a professor here: it's taking that straight-A student and pulling them outside the box.
I mean, they were raised in the classroom. They get straight A's. And then you put them in the lab
and you're asking them to tear apart everything they know, everything about their safe zone.
I know the demographic from eighteen to thirty years of age. I know them on the battlefield and I know them in the laboratory.
In both situations they're trying to push and achieve something extraordinary.
I have seen what they can do in these environments. I know what they are capable of, and I know there's no limit.
Innovators don't follow the rules. The rules are for the herd.
At Harvard, we're trying to train people not to be scientists and engineers, but to be
leader scientists and engineers.
They're in front.
And there's no substitute for the kinds of work that I have to do
to build resources, to build a team, and encourage people to think outside the box, outside their comfort zone.
I'm into history. And I'm into technology.
Because countless books have recently digitized, we have a
digital fossil record of human culture. So we developed a way to make it searchable
and we called it "culturomics". Computer-aided analysis can yield undiscovered
trends in history, culture, language and thought. This tool is easy to use, and it's available to everyone.
It's a new way to look at the past and a great
way to learn new questions. And that's what I'm doing at Harvard.
Me too.
One of the world's most famous archaeological sites is the Giza plateau.
Today the artifacts are scattered museums all over the world so we are
building realtime interactive 3D model of the entire site.
Enter a decorated tomb chapel.
Descend down a burial shaft
to view the sarcophagus,
five thousand-year-old wall reliefs, paintings, inscriptions come to life
in a 3D environment based on sound archaeology
and linked to the original archival records.
As a teaching tool it breaks new ground
As a research tool
it allows us to pose new questions we could never have asked before.
It gives us a perspective on Giza that no one has had
for nearly five thousand years.
Worldwide
twenty five percent of kids grow up without electricity.
In africa ninety five percent of people have to go without.
In my engineering class we made a unique soccer ball.
We put an inductive coil inside.
So playing with the ball generates energy which is captured by charging LEDs and batteries.
Just fifteen minutes of play can provide three hours of light.
So no matter who's playing
everybody wins.
My team lives at the intersection of art and science. We're using innovative technology to
preserve
medieval illumniated manuscripts, antiquarian maps, rare illustrations and
over eight million vulnerable and aging photographs. It's all part of special
collections of the Harvard library and it's going to be around forever because that's what I'm doing at Harvard.
I'm Diane Paulus. I am the artistic director at the American Reparatory Theater.
So often at the theater we think theater is an auditorium. You come, you sit in a chair and it's bolted to the
floor. The lights go down. You're quiet. You watch a play. When it's over
the usher asks you to leave. You know, we think, that's what theater is. But no, actually we have to request ion it, redefine it, change it.
And people think change is scary and think, I want to see the
Shakespeare play the way I want to see it. But I am convinced that
if Shakespeare was alive today he'd be playing with
technologies, language, Twitter, you know... are you kidding?
he'd be all over that. You know, my mission here at the ART is if I can make every undergraduate
that comes through Harvard experience a transformative experience in
theater,
I am making them understand the necessity in value of the arts.
We are developing
new sources of hydroelectric energy. We are improving dental health worldwide.
We are repairing the cells that cause infectious diseases.
We are teaching bacteria to digest toxic gas.
We're launching the careers for the next generation of journalists.
We're developing new multimedia approaches to historical research and curation.
We carry out economic analyses of environmental policies.
We're studying deep brain stimulation to
cure Parkinson's. We're interested in the mobility of cultures.
We're finding a way to restore lost brain cells.
We're using documentary film to eliminate social injustice.
We are teaching over thirty African languages and impacting the future of the continent.
We are harvesting the power of the sun to create cleaner and more affordable energy.
We are changing the art of performance.
We're discovering life from the depths of the oceans to the edge of the
universe.
We're using dance to improve health care in the inner city. We are using computer-generated light to
restore modern masterpieces.
We are using complex mathematics build more profound architecture. We are reinventing
television.
We're developing a turbine
on the ocean floor.
We are working on the development of new materials and new technologies based on biological strategies.
We are studying how lasers altered properties of matter.
We're working on a wireless network of sensors to coordinate maritime trade.
We are developing the leaders who will transform public education in America.
For every discipline
For every school.