phd biotechnology harvard university

Biotechnology

Students enrolled in the Master of Liberal Arts program in Biotechnology will gain insight into the latest biotechnology discoveries and trends, and develop a solid foundation in research and innovation.

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MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences

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A joint degree that blends science, business & ethics

A joint degree with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Students are affiliated with Harvard Medical School through the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

The 21st Century will be the century of transformational discoveries in the life sciences. To bring these discoveries to patients, the world needs business leaders working at the intersection of science and society, with deep understanding of biotechnology, life sciences, and management. To meet this need, the MS/MBA Biotechnology: Life Sciences Program at Harvard University builds upon students’ existing biotech and life sciences knowledge and equips them with the latest business and scientific insights. This empowers them to lead transformative organizations that will advance new drug discoveries and therapeutics.

The curriculum emphasizes developing effective business models in the life-sciences, leading life sciences companies, understanding the ethical implications of new therapeutics, and the importance of equitable access to these discoveries. It leverages the entire resources of Harvard University and works closely with the Greater Boston area, one of the largest biotech clusters in the world.

Key organizations comprising the Harvard health and life science community include, the HBS Health Care Initiative (HCI), HBS Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship, the Harvard Biotech Club, the HBS Health Care Club (HCC), the Harvard Health Innovation Network (HHIN), and the Pagliuca Harvard Life lab, among many others. Watch this webinar to learn more about the joint degree program.

Overview  

Curriculum  , faculty & advisors  , admissions & financial aid  , frequently asked questions  .

The MS/MBA Biotech program is part of a larger community of health care interested students, faculty and alumni at HBS; around the University; and in the greater Boston area, which is one of the largest biotech clusters in the world. Through courses like the Life Sciences, Ethics, and Management seminar, students interact with industry leaders, who discuss challenges they have faced in their various roles.

Key organizations comprising the health and life science community at Harvard include:

• HBS Health Care Initiative (HCI) – The Initiative fosters and promotes faculty research, supports the development of high-impact educational programs and creates an interconnected HBS health care community.
• HBS Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship - The Fellowship offers HBS alumni and Harvard-affiliated postdocs the opportunity to create new ventures around promising life science technologies while developing their leadership talents.
• Harvard Biotech Club – This student organization is on a mission to bridge the gap between industry and academia and provide the education, skills, and network for students to become future leaders in biotech.
• HBS Health Care Club (HCC) – One of the largest student clubs at HBS, the HCC plans an annual conference and numerous networking events for students interested in all industries in this sector.
• Harvard Health Innovation Network (HHIN ) – HHIN’s mission is to promote health care innovation and entrepreneurship across the Harvard ecosystem including its schools and hospitals.
• Harvard i-Lab and Pagliuca Harvard Life Lab – Harvard i-Labs are part of an innovation ecosystem that exists to support Harvard students and select alumni in their quest to explore the world of game-changing entrepreneurship.
• HBS Health Alumni Association (HBS HAA) – The equivalent of the HCC, but for alumni, the HBS HAA has regional programing around the world to help alums stay connected with the school and each other.

Prospective students should be fascinated by the intersection of biotech, pharma, and business. Successful candidates for the program will hold an undergraduate degree in biology (or another life science) and/or have significant workplace experience in biotechnology or life sciences. Candidates with advanced degrees such as an MS, MD, or PhD are warmly welcomed to apply.

If you are unsure whether your background has prepared you sufficiently, consider your familiarity with the topics covered in Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et al. Students are expected to be knowledgeable with that level of material. Additionally, students should be comfortable engaging with primary scientific literature.

MS/MBA News  

Bridging Science and Business: My Summer Internship at Eli Lilly

• 12 Dec 2023
• MBA Admissions Blog

African American Student Union Spotlight on Joint Degrees

• 09 Mar 2023

Q&A with the HBS Armed Forces Alumni Association, MBA Class of 2023

• 27 May 2022

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Biotechnology Management Graduate Certificate

Gain skills to effectively lead teams working in the field biotechnology.

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No Application Required

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Number of Required Courses

What You'll Learn

• Build knowledge in timely topics in the life sciences, such as biomedical product development, clinical trial research, tissue engineering, nanotechnology, targeted drug delivery, monoclonal antibodies, and biomaterials.
• Develop an understanding of foundational business topics necessary for success in biotechnology management, such as leadership, project management, strategy, risk, entrepreneurship, marketing, and finance.
• Gain insight into life science industry practice, including experimental or case study design, scientific data analysis, writing and communication, ethical practices, and effective collaboration.
• Understand the strategies for research and development management, business maintenance and expansion, licensing, generic versus brand-name proprietary drug business, mergers and acquisitions, and entrepreneurship within the biotechnology and biopharma industries.

Our Community at a Glance

Join a community of biotechnology management faculty and peers and gain the skills to advance your career.

Pursued Certificate to Deepen Expertise or Advance Career

Working Full Time

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Certificate Courses

The professional graduate certificate in Biotechnology Management requires four courses:

• Biotechnology course (choose one course from select group)
• Management course (choose one course from select group)
• Elective (choose one course from select group)
• Application of knowledge and skills course (choose one course from select group)

Search for Courses

You can browse courses by term — fall, spring, or summer — in the DCE Course Search & Registration platform.

Upcoming Term: Summer 2024

Summer course registration is open through June 20. Learn more about how to register →

Fall 2024 courses and registration details will be live in June.

Earning Your Certificate

To meet the requirements for the certificate, you must:

• Complete the  four certificate courses for graduate credit .
• Earn at least a  B grade  in each course.
• Complete the courses within three years .

Learn more about  pursuing a certificate  and the process of  requesting your certificate .

I leave not only with a master’s degree and certificate, but also a business plan and the knowledge, experiences, and resources that allow me to take this idea I had and turn it into something that can help others.

Affordability is core to our mission. When compared to our continuing education peers, it’s a fraction of the cost.

This graduate certificate stacks to the following degrees:

• Biotechnology Master’s Degree Program

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

Electrical Engineering PhD

The Electrical Engineering PhD program studies systems that sense, analyze, and interact with the world. You will learn how this practice is based on fundamental science and mathematics, creating opportunities for both theoretical and experimental research. Electrical engineers invent devices for sensing and actuation, designing physical substrates for computation, creating algorithms for analysis and control, and expanding the theory of information processing. You will get to choose from a wide range of research areas such as circuits and VLSI, computer engineering and architecture, robotics and control, and signal processing.

Electrical engineers at SEAS are pursuing work on integrated circuits for cellular biotechnology, millimeter-scale robots, and the optimization of smart power groups. Examples of projects current and past students have worked on include developing methods to trace methane emissions and improving models for hurricane predictions.

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PhD in Electrical Engineering Degree

Harvard School of Engineering offers a  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)  degree in Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering , conferred through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). Prospective students apply through the Harvard Griffin GSAS. In the online application, select  “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select " PhD Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering ​."

The Electrical Engineering program does not offer an independent Masters Degree.

Electrical Engineering PhD Career Paths

Graduates of the program have gone on to a range of careers in industry in companies such as Tesla, Microsoft HoloLens, and IBM. Others have positions in academia at the University of Maryland, University of Michigan, and University of Colorado.

Admissions & Academic Requirements

Prospective students apply through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Harvard Griffin GSAS). In the online application, select  “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your program choice and select "PhD Engineering Sciences: Electrical Engineering​." Please review the  admissions requirements and other information  before applying. Our website also provides  admissions guidance ,   program-specific requirements , and a  PhD program academic timeline .

Academic Background

Applicants typically have bachelor’s degrees in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, or engineering. In the application for admission, select “Engineering and Applied Sciences” as your degree program choice and your degree and area of interest from the “Area of Study“ drop-down. PhD applicants must complete the Supplemental SEAS Application Form as part of the online application process.

Standardized Tests

GRE General: Not Accepted

Electrical Engineering Faculty & Research Areas

View a list of our electrical engineering  faculty  and electrical engineering  affiliated research areas , Please note that faculty members listed as “Affiliates" or "Lecturers" cannot serve as the primary research advisor.  

Electrical Engineering Centers & Initiatives

View a list of the research  centers & initiatives  at SEAS and the  electrical engineering faculty engagement with these entities .

Graduate Student Clubs

Graduate student clubs and organizations bring students together to share topics of mutual interest. These clubs often serve as an important adjunct to course work by sponsoring social events and lectures. Graduate student clubs are supported by the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin School of Arts and Sciences. Explore the list of active clubs and organizations .

Funding and Scholarship

Learn more about financial support for PhD students.

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Learn more about how to apply  or review frequently asked questions for prospective graduate students.

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As part of Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the  PhD Program in Biological Sciences in Public Health (BPH) , established in 1993, trains students in individual fields of biological research with a focus on understanding, preventing and treating diseases affecting large populations. Students in the BPH program obtain a broad interdisciplinary knowledge of both mechanistic and quantitative approaches to biomedical research.

Major Areas of Investigation include:

• The Metabolic Basis of Health and Disease
• Immunology and Infectious Diseases
• Gene-Environment Interactions
• Inflammation and Stress Responses

All of these areas are studied with an emphasis on biochemical, cell biological and genetic approaches to delineating disease mechanisms.  Our research, whether basic or translational, is relevant to human health. Students apply cutting-edge research technologies toward the improved understanding, treatment and prevention of  human diseases with the greatest current impact on global populations . Our program embraces the idea that progress in a given disease area is optimally promoted by a close interaction between scientists from diverse disciplines, including genetics, cell biology, biochemistry, physiology, and systems biology.  Core quantitative disciplines like biostatistics and epidemiology are also fundamental to analyzing large datasets, such as those generated from “omics” approaches, and for assessing the broad impact of health problems, allowing us to look beyond individuals to entire populations.  With our roots in biology, we are able to confront the most pressing diseases of our time, gaining insights into their underlying mechanisms and uncovering novel therapeutic opportunities.

Current research within BPH laboratories includes, but is not restricted to, the following diseases or disease risk factors (see our Health and Diseases page for more information):

• ATHEROSCLEROSIS
• CHAGAS’ DISEASE
• ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE TO TOXINS
• INFLAMMATORY DISEASES
• KIDNEY DISEASE
• METABOLIC SYNDROME
• TUBERCULOSIS

The BPH program is rooted in the rich and diverse environment of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, dedicated to advancing the public’s health through learning, discovery, and communication. The field of public health is inherently multi-disciplinary and so, too, are the interests and expertise of the School’s faculty and students, which extend across the biological, quantitative, and social sciences. From advancing scientific research to training national and international leaders, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has been at the forefront of efforts to benefit the health of populations worldwide. Shaping new ideas in our field and communicating them effectively will continue to be priorities of the BPH Program in the years ahead as we serve society’s changing health needs.

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From public servant to public health student

Exploring the intersection of health, mindfulness, and climate change

Conference aims to help experts foster health equity

Building solidarity to face global injustice

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Biotechnology Advocacy and Communication with BIO [hosted by the GSAS Harvard Biotech Club]

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Graduate Students and Postdocs:

“Join us to learn about biotech advocacy with Dr. Ted Love, Chair of the Board of Directors at the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), and Rich Masters, Chief Public Affairs & Marketing Officer at BIO.”

Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) Website

Note: This is a career-related event (not hosted by MCS) shared because it is open to Harvard students.

Tags: Employer Events , Other Harvard Events , Engage with Employers , Life Sciences & Health , Life Sciences, Biotech, Pharma , Technology & Engineering

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Suspended MIT and Harvard protesters barred from graduation, evicted from campus housing

CAMBRIDGE — Dan Zeno’s suspension from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last week for participating in an unauthorized encampment protesting the war in Gaza had a swift impact on his family’s life. The graduate student has not only been barred from classes, he was also evicted from campus housing, along with his wife and 5-year-old daughter, with just one week to find another place to live.

“My daughter is the most important thing,” said Zeno, 35, an Air Force veteran enrolled in MIT’s Sloan School of Management MBA program. He is scrambling to find alternative housing in Cambridge, where Zoey attends kindergarten. “We’re trying to keep a sense of normalcy for her.”

Yet, even as the suspension has upended his family’s life, Zeno said he remains “fully committed, without reservation” to the student-led effort to compel MIT to cut research contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense amid the brutal war.

“The level of risk we are taking on is nothing compared to what Palestinians are going through in Gaza,” Zeno said. “Children are being intentionally starved as a military strategy. This is a super urgent situation.”

Zeno, who helped organize MIT’s “Scientists Against Genocide” encampment on April 21, said he’s horrified by daily images being livestreamed from Gaza and is on “a deeply spiritual journey” to speak out against injustice.

Some suspended students won’t be graduating as planned, others have lost income with their fellowships canceled, and some have had their research projects halted. Yet, they vowed to continue protesting.

Demonstrations have erupted at campuses across the country since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, triggering a massive attack on Gaza by Israel. More than 34,000 people have died in Gaza, two-thirds of whom are women and children, according to local health officials .

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Colleges have been cracking down on encampments with disciplinary action against students and arrests.

On Wednesday, two days after MIT warned protesters they would face discipline if they did not vacate the encampment on Kresge Lawn, administrators sent a flurry of suspension notices to some of those who were participating. A spokesperson declined to say how many students were suspended, but protest organizers said there were at least two dozen.

Sally Kornbluth, MIT’s president, wrote that the encampment was a “ high-risk flashpoint ,” drew “outside threats,” and endangered the broader campus community. She said repeated attempts to negotiate with the protesters failed, leaving the university with few options as tensions appeared to heighten.

“I hoped these measures could be avoided through our efforts to engage the students in serious good-faith discussion,” Kornbluth wrote in a campus-wide letter last week , which outlined the discipline. “But recent events, and my responsibility to ensure the physical safety of our community, oblige us to act now.”

Safiyyah Ogundipe, a chemical engineering senior at MIT and organizer of the encampment, said she received an email Wednesday notifying her of her suspension. She is barred from taking final exams or walking with her graduating class at the end of the month. She, too, faces eviction from student housing, effective Wednesday.

“My family is not too pleased about it — that’s an understatement,” said Ogundipe, 21, of Virginia.

“It does feel very weird to come to the very end and not feel like I came over that finish line,” she said during an interview Thursday. “But I think we’ll find a way out.”

She remained hopeful MIT’s Committee on Discipline will overturn her suspension after a hearing, paving the way for her graduation. “I just have to take it day by day.”

Still, even as her academic future is unclear, Ogundipe said her commitment to the pro-Palestinian protest movement is not.

“This has been one of the most tumultuous years that I’ve been through at MIT, but also the most rewarding,” she said.

Early Friday, police dismantled the MIT encampment and arrested 10 students, including Ogundipe, making MIT the third Boston-area college — following Emerson College and Northeastern University — where protesters were forcibly removed from encampments and charged, mostly for trespassing.

Although Zeno was not among the MIT students arrested Friday, he was arrested two weeks ago outside Emerson when police cleared that school’s encampment from a public alley, detaining more than 100. Zeno’s charge of disorderly conduct was dismissed in exchange for his agreement to perform 40 hours of community service.

Zeno said he believes the disciplinary action taken by the school is probably more severe for people than an arrest. But, the protesting students feel strongly about the fight, which he compared to the student anti-Vietnam protests and anti-apartheid movements decades ago.

On Friday, Harvard University, the site of the last pro-Palestinian encampment in the Boston area, began suspending protesters who refused to leave the area of makeshift tents. Those suspended were told they can’t sit for exams or participate in commencement or other school activities, and they will be evicted from student housing.

In a letter to the university community last week, Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said the encampment’s place in the center of campus had forced activities, including exams, to be relocated. Garber said some students have reported feeling disrupted and, at times, intimidated by the protesters, and he believed that their continued presence could affect the commencement ceremony later this month.

Kojo Acheampong, a Harvard sophomore studying computer science and an organizer of the school’s encampment, was among those suspended.

“Obviously there’s a moment of shock. It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s actually happening.’ You’re making calls to your family members and they’re going crazy,” Acheampong said. But, as an organizer, he said, he expected to be targeted and to have to make sacrifices.

“It fits into a legacy that I’m proud of,” Acheampong said. “I’m proud of the history of organizers who fought against South Africa, Vietnam, proper liberation of all people. So this type of repression means that we’re doing our job.”

The suspension from Harvard means “you’re essentially booted out, and you can’t come back to the yard or any buildings or things like that until after” the suspension, Acheampong said. He said he was told toleave campus by noon Saturday.

He said he “got lucky” because he finished his finals before being suspended, but his parents are upset at both him and the university and were asking about the impact the suspension may have on his future.

“I take seriously the fact that I’m an organizer and I take seriously the fact that that comes with certain sacrifices that have to be made for the movement,” Acheampong said. “I mentally prepared myself for what can happen. And this is what fulfills me. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

As for the possibility that he could be arrested, Acheampong said, “I’m genuinely not worried, because I know that we’re on the right side of history.”

Globe correspondents Ava Berger and Daniel Kool contributed to this report.

Shelley Murphy can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @shelleymurph . Alexa Coultoff can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @alexacoultoff . Madeline Khaw can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @maddiekhaw .

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George Whitesides became a giant of chemistry by keeping it simple

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Leaders at Harvard in and out of the classroom tell their stories in the Experience series.

When George Whitesides started as a teenage technician in his father’s Kentucky lab in the early 1950s, the bond was immediate — and lasting.

Today one of the world’s most influential chemists , Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Research Professor, has worked on a wide array of scientific problems, shifting focus periodically to uncharted territory. Over the course of his long career — Harvard College, Cal Tech, MIT, and more than four decades as a researcher and teacher back at Harvard — he’s explored nuclear magnetic spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly, soft robotics, unconventional data storage, microfabrication, nanotechnology, and the origin of life. He has published more than 1,200 scientific articles and holds more than 100 patents, and his many honors include the National Medal of Science. He’s also known for his ability to spin discoveries into new companies, including biotech giant Genzyme, purchased in 2011 by Sanofi.

In a conversation with the Gazette, Whitesides looked back on his life and career. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Your interest in chemistry starts in your father’s lab?

I don’t know where it came from. It was always interesting to me that the world was made of atoms and how those atoms combined, and I was a good chemist from the very beginning, so studying chemistry seemed like a sensible thing to do. I assumed I would end up working in the chemical industry.

It must have been a cut above the typical teenage summer job.

It was much more boring than that. I measured the pour-point viscosity of coal tar. You heat it up and put it in a cup. The cup has a hole of calibrated size in it and this very thick liquid dribbles out of the hole. You measure how long it takes for a given amount of liquid to dribble out and record that, then you can calculate from those data pour-point viscosity. It was part of the process of producing a standardized product and was boring to do, but it was also satisfying and something a high school student could manage.

You were at Phillips Andover before enrolling at Harvard. How was that experience?

I enjoyed Andover. I had a couple of teachers who were very good. I learned how to study and I certainly learned some chemistry. It was pretty standard for students who’d done well in prep schools to get early admission to Harvard, which I got. But I was not a star student. I got advanced placement in one course, maybe analytical chemistry. I took the first hour exam and got an F. I took the second hour exam and got an F. That same thing happened for the third hour exam. I don’t remember exactly how long the string went on, but I went to the teacher and said, “What do I do to salvage this? It’s going really badly.” And he looked at me very briefly and said, “Learn the material.” That was a very useful lesson. So I went away and learned the material.

What was Harvard like in the late 1950s?

It was the usual undergraduate experience. I knew it mostly from the collection of courses that I took. I had a good time while I was here but most of the good time came from courses I took and people who took the same courses. The one woman I met would eventually become my wife, Barbara. Her brother was my roommate, arbitrarily assigned at some point.

After Harvard, you headed to Cal Tech.

I ended up in the lab of a guy named Jack Roberts, who turned out to be a perfect fit for me. He was in physical organic chemistry, which made sense. You looked at previous reactions and you learned how they went. Then, if you had a new reaction or a new process, you asked “What is it analogous to?” And you predicted that if all the pieces were the same, the reaction would probably go roughly the same way. And it often did, which made it a pretty logical discipline.

The nice thing about Roberts was that, unlike many research directors, he never told me what to do. I would come up with an idea and do the research. Then I would write a draft of a paper and send him the draft, and he would look at it, correct it — largely the grammar but sometimes the chemistry — and give it back to me. After I’d done the necessary work, I’d give it back to him. This would usually go on for a couple of cycles and then we’d send it off to the journal.

It’s easy to look back at a career and imagine that one step led to another. But when you’re living it, the next step is often not clear. Were there times when you wondered whether you should be doing something other than chemistry?

No. I thought chemistry was pretty straightforward, very general, very interesting, and a good thing to do. I was enjoying it and making some progress.

“I prefer to think that, to the extent that we’ve been successful, it’s because we do stuff that’s simple and useful and solves problems.”

Your focus has shifted periodically from one major area to another. Were those shifts intentional, evolutionary, or accidental?

It was intentional. My central point of instruction to students is this: If somebody else is working on something, don’t work on it. There’s an old saying in chemistry that if somebody else has developed something and you work on it, you are working for them. If you produce an idea and someone else works on it, they’re working for you.

An example of where this has succeeded is in something called self-assembled monolayers. There is a very highly developed chemistry focused on making and observing the smallest causal structures: nanostructures. This fits in a peripheral way with the general importance of nanoscience in making electronic components. But if there are billions of dollars being spent by industry making electronic components, why should a little university research group do that?

So we worked on an alternative way to do this without expensive equipment. We worked out a technique in which you basically take a gold film and dip it in a solution of appropriate chemical. You reliably get a monolayer film one molecule thick. That can then be manipulated using the tools of physical organic chemistry to give you very, very small structures. We’ve made structures that are a couple of angstroms wide and connected in various ways. The reason that’s important is it makes it possible for organic chemists, inorganic chemists, and biochemists to use this technique to enter nanoscience. It’s a technique that everybody can use. I’m a believer in problems and a believer in easy.

You gave a TED talk on the importance of simplicity. With so much science focused on complex problems, how did you come to that view?

Something that’s simple is easier to work with than something that is complicated, and you’re going to make more rapid progress with a simple technique than a complicated one. I don’t like competition just for the sake of competition, but in a sense it’s obvious that if you work on something somebody else is working on, then it’s a competition and you want to be making more rapid progress. But I don’t choose to compete. I choose to work on problems because I think they’re interesting and important.

Is there a philosophy there?

Yes. Do things that are easy to do rather than things that are complicated. You’ll find our laboratory is just like ordinary chemistry laboratories, while a physical chemistry laboratory that works on nanostructures has elaborate equipment that sometimes takes years to build. I don’t want to build elaborate equipment — that’s not my skill.

Is this approach part of the reason you’ve been successful?

Success is in the eye of the beholder. I prefer to think that, to the extent that we’ve been successful, it’s because we do stuff that’s simple and useful and solves problems.

You also do it frugally. You’ve talked in the past about the importance of frugal science in an era when the price tag for science is rising.

You don’t need much more than an evaporator and a beaker. You buy the chemicals you need or you make them yourself because they’re easy to make. And then, the underlying principles are the principles of physical organic chemistry, which makes it relatively easy to predict outcomes and which contributes to the simplicity. What we do is apply physical organic chemistry through techniques that we develop to solve complicated problems, problems that in other hands require complicated equipment or complicated ideas.

Receiving the National Medal of Science from President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Courtesy of George Whitesides

How does idea-generation work in your lab?

We make a list of the 10 most important things we can think of. I’ll suggest specific problems and the students will come up with ways of attacking them. The initial ideas may be mostly mine, but the important ideas are often mostly the students’. The scientist is not in the business of following instructions. Students should experience coming up with an idea and pursuing it themselves.

What do we work on now? We work on the origin of life. We work on “what is magnetism” and what can you do with it? We work on a series of problems related to small structures. And we work on soft robots. Those are all areas that are important, for one or another reason, to some community in the technical world.

You’ve said that the real product of your lab is the students. Your team has generated 1,200 papers, more than 100 patents, and several commercial enterprises. Why is teaching more important than the generation of knowledge?

They’re both important, but the students go out themselves and teach, so there’s an amplification there. Students come to the group and learn a particular style — or develop their own variant of that style. Then they go off and many get academic jobs. They have students, who they teach in their own way, and it goes on from there.

“One of the wonderful things about science is it gives you an enormous scope in not only what you do, but also how you want to do it.”

You’ve had a hand in starting a number of companies and have clearly put an emphasis on making sure things get commercialized. Do you help launch a company and then step back or do you stay involved?

It’s not straightforward. You have to have an idea, you have to have a market, and you have to have people who can deal with the exigencies of a small company.

One thing that’s never been quite clear is how you take bright young people and teach them to be entrepreneurs. You may have a technology but you won’t know whether it has an application until people take your technology and pay you — or the company — to use that product. That’s not what universities do particularly well, but it is what CTOs, CFOs, and CEOs — the people who run the company — do well. So there’s an entirely different part of the story that’s important, which concerns the identification and recruitment of people who can make a small company prosper. And it can take a long time for that to happen.

There are many variables in that process. Is one more important than the others?

People ultimately run the company, but it’s as complicated a problem as doing the research. Often at a small company that is succeeding you find a good application, a good product identification, and a good CEO. And the CEO may often be the one who comes up with a product identification and all the rest. Money is also critical.

And in the end it’s important — with respect to guiding principles — that since funding for your work comes from your neighbors, a benefit goes out to them in some way?

In jobs, which provide income, or in some other way. People generally don’t like just giving away money if they’re going to get nothing in return. We have a system of taxation — and we could argue about its fairness or lack of fairness — but the fact of the matter is people prefer to see something come from their money.

Lecturing at Harvard in 2005.

File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Students are sometimes told that failure is good for learning. Do you agree?

Certainly, a failure is good for instruction. If you look at the companies we’ve started that have done well, you would find an equal number that have not prospered. Those failures often come from a bad understanding of how the market works.

We recently developed a method for storing information that doesn’t involve electronics but instead uses dyes. That was based on my sense that information storage is an extremely important area but consumes a lot of energy and is subject to hacking. I thought that if you could provide an alternative which didn’t use energy and was not subject to hacking, people would be very interested in finding applications for it. I have so far been wrong. Nobody has shown an appropriate level of interest.

Might that take time to find its application, or is it just a miss?

A lot of small companies don’t go anywhere for quite a while after they get started. When they finally do, what changed is never entirely clear.

A big question you’re working on that has resisted explanation is the origin of life. Why is this problem so difficult?

For starters, you’re not going to make bugs in a test tube, so how do you tell whether you’ve succeeded or not?

The “RNA world” is a leading hypothesis for a plausible way of going from random chemicals — basically generated in outer space and then raining on the Earth — to the components of a living organism. A prime proponent, John Sutherland , thinks that RNA came first, then the RNA somehow propagated the DNA, and you go from there. It makes perfectly respectable sense on paper but you don’t know that it actually happened that way.

We do know, though, that you can make an RNA that way. If you have pools that are acidic and have sulfur in them — because they’re near volcanic fumaroles — and then it rains on them, the rain forms other chemicals. If these pools sit on hot rocks so that there’s heat to do chemistry with, then chemistry will occur and some of it may well produce RNA. But does that mean that that’s the origin of life? Does that mean that that’s the right hypothesis? No, it doesn’t.

These are very legitimate questions and they’re good scientific questions, but there’s a difference between something that could plausibly happen and something that probably did happen.

Do you have a favorite theory?

We’re working on an approach where our preferred source of energy is lightning and we’re learning all sorts of things about chemistry going on in lightning. Instead of making lightning, we make sparks that are energetic, very hot, and have curious things associated with them. A lot of lightning strikes occur over oceans and all around the ocean there are cavities in rocks, which if they get hot, are good places to think about chemistry happening. Now, whether that is the solution to the origin of life is another question.

“My central point of instruction to students is this: If somebody else is working on something, don’t work on it.”

Have your teaching methods changed over the course of your career?

No. We do our own approach and the students, whether they’re graduate students or undergraduate students, are free to say, “I think that is an interesting way of doing things” or “That’s not for me, that’s not the kind of problem I want to solve.” One of the wonderful things about science is it gives you an enormous scope in not only what you do, but also how you want to do it.

Let’s close with the areas of science you find most interesting right now.

You can make a list of maybe 10 or 15 problems and you’ll find that each requires separate ideas to solve. I won’t make any broad generalization about what’s more interesting and what’s less interesting, but I don’t think I want to leave to my grandchildren a world which is significantly hotter than it is now. I do think that it’s a good thing to think about whether the countless stars with planets around them also have countless intelligences on them. There are a wide variety of problems that can make the list. They’re all interesting but they’re all different and it’s not obvious how to solve or even contribute to many of them.

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Harvard graduate student suing university for 'rewarding antisemitism,' ignoring pleas of Jewish students

A Harvard graduate student is suing the university over its handling of anti-Israel agitators and the rise in antisemitism on campus, which he describes as a "feature" of the Ivy League school.

Harvard Divinity School student Shabbos Kestenbaum addressed the university's "out-of-control" antisemitism in a scathing op-ed , where he accused the university of dismissing safety concerns of Jewish students while caving to an anti-Israel mob that has expressed anti-democratic, anti-American, anti-capitalist and antisemitic views.

JERRY SEINFELD MOCKS HARVARD UNIVERSITY DURING DUKE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH

"It's a damning condemnation, and it's also a damning indictment that for a Jewish American in 2024 to receive equity, equality or justice, they have to go to Congress, and they have to file lawsuits because we are not able to get that at our own university," Kestenbaum said Wednesday on "America Reports."

The Orthodox-Jewish student made the comment moments before testifying in front of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government about his allegations against the school. 

He told Fox News that interim President Alan Garber has failed to meaningfully enforce any policy or hold people accountable for antisemitism and has repeatedly looked the other way as hundreds of students violated an unprecedented number of school policies in the past several weeks.

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

"If Harvard wanted to change, if they wanted to combat antisemitism, they would’ve done it already," Kestenbaum said. "There is nothing preventing them today from implementing policies that will combat antisemitism and discipline antisemitic students and professors, but time and time again, they’ve shown they are either unable or unwilling to do anything to help their Jewish students."

Kestenbaum accused the school of having a double standard when it comes to protecting its Jewish students. On Tuesday, Harvard announced that it had agreed to some concessions for anti-Israel agitators in return for them dismantling the protest encampment ahead of the upcoming commencement ceremony. 

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ACCEPTED TO COLUMBIA SAYING 'NO THANK YOU' DUE TO ANTISEMITISM: COLLEGE CONSULTANT

Garber said that in keeping with his "commitment to ongoing and reasoned dialogue," he planned to meet with students to hear their perspectives on "academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East." 

Kestenbaum said he finds it "absurd" that the school is "rewarding bad behavior" while the voices of Jewish students continue to be ignored by school faculty. He previously told Fox News Digital that administrators have not responded to a single one of his several dozen emails and have refused to meet with Jewish students.

"We had these Harvard Hamas homeless shelters on campus for the past three weeks where students violated school policy chanting calls of ethnic genocide against Jewish people, vandalizing school property," he said. "And Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, just yesterday said that he's going to negotiate with them and he's going to give them a seat at the table so that they can talk about divesting from Israel, they can talk about having a Palestinian study center at Harvard."

"As a Jewish student, I've been wanting for months to talk with the president, to talk with my dean, Marla Frederick. So I guess the only way that I can be heard, and I can be seen is if I violate school policy… "

"They are rewarding antisemitism," Kestenbaum continued. "It is so unacceptable."

In his op-ed, Kestenbaum wrote how he never expected to be taking legal action against the same Ivy League university he was once eager to attend.

"Never would I have imagined that I'd need to fight for my right to exist on campus. Never would I have thought that I'd have to sue Harvard to be treated as an equal," he wrote.

He told Fox News co-anchor John Roberts that his experience and that of Jewish students on campuses across the United States has made him fearful about the future of the country.

"Harvard purports to train the next generation of American leaders: presidents, politicians, thought leaders," Kestenbaum said. "If my classmates, if my professors are those next-generation leaders, we are at a very, very scary point in our country, because it’s not just antisemitism — they're anti-American." 

Harvard filed a motion in April to dismiss the suit. Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton told the Harvard Crimson at the time that "Harvard is committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring that our Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni know they are safe, valued, and embraced in our community." 

Original article source: Harvard graduate student suing university for 'rewarding antisemitism,' ignoring pleas of Jewish students