Recent Discoveries
- In the lab of applied physicist Lene Hau, a light pulse disappeared from one cold cloud then was retrieved from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted into matter then back into light.
- A research team led by SEAS' Mike Aziz and Earth and Planetary Sciences’ Kurt House invented an engineered weathering process that might mitigate climate change.
- Bioengineers, including David Edwards and public health researchers at the School of Public Health developed a novel spray-drying method for preserving and delivering a tuberculosis vaccine that could help prevent the related spread of HIV/AIDS in the developing world.
- Working with a team of Dutch researchers and software developers, SEAS computer scientists used a novel peer-to-peer video sharing application to explore a model for e-commerce that uses bandwidth as a global currency.
- Rob Wood's team launched (literally into the air) a robotic fly that could be used in everything from surveillance to chemical sensing.
- MIT's Technology Review named the creation of light-focusing optical antennas (that could lead to DVDs that hold hundreds of movies) as one of their Top 10 emerging technologies for 2007.
- In an innovative marriage of living cells and a synthetic substrate, the lab of Kit Parker found that a rubberlike, elastic film coated with a single layer of cardiac muscle cells can semi-autonomously engage in lifelike gripping, pumping, walking, and swimming.
- In collaboration with Ralph Weissleder and his post doctor Hakho Lee at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Donhee Ham, the Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics, with his two graduate students, Nan Sun and Yong Liu, built what may be the smallest complete nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system to date. The system delivers 60 times more sensitivity than a 120-kilogram commercial machine costing $70,000.
- With the aid of kitchen mixers, engineers, including Howard Stone whipped up, for the first time, permanent nanoscale bubbles---bubbles that endure for more than a year---from batches of foam made from a mixture of glucose syrup, sucrose stearate, and water.
- Engineers and applied physicists demonstrated the first room-temperature electrically pumped semiconductor laser source of terahertz (THz) radiation, also known as T-rays. The breakthrough in laser technology has the potential to become a standard terahertz source to support applications ranging from security screening to chemical sensing.
- A team composed of Harvard students and alumni was among the winners of the World Bank’s Lighting Africa 2008 Development Marketplace competition, held in Accra, Ghana. The innovation, microbial fuel cell-based lighting systems suitable for Sub-Saharan Africa, netted the group a $200,000 prize.
- In collaboration with SiEnergy Systems, materials scientists at SEAS have demonstrated the first macro-scale thin-film solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC).
Read more about this topic: Harvard School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences, Research Highlights
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