Renewal and Growth
Faculty. SEAS has expanded its faculty from around 50 in AY ’98 to more than 70 in AY ’08 (with 87 total participating faculty). This was directed at renewing and strengthening traditional and foundational disciplines such as applied mathematics and applied physics; building capacity in areas such as electrical engineering and computer science; and nurturing emerging areas such as bioengineering and nanotechnology. SEAS has also significantly increased faculty diversity in terms of both racial and ethnic background as well as country of origin.
Education. Over the past decade, undergraduate enrollments in SEAS’s three concentrations—Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering Sciences—have ranged from 300 to 400. . The graduate student population grew from ~150 to over 350 during 1998–2008. The number of applications to graduate level programs has nearly tripled over a shorter period, from 454 in 1997–1998 over 1300 in 2007–2008. Among all national graduate engineering programs, SEAS has become one of the most selective, admitting about 13 percent of applicants.
Research. Sponsored research has increased more than 60 percent from FY 1998 ($20.6M) to FY 2007 ($37.5M). Grants have ranged from government awards for interdisciplinary initiatives, such as the NSF-sponsored Materials Research Engineering Center (MRSEC) and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), to Harvard-initiated efforts like the seed-funded Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). Recent foundational gifts include those from the Gates Foundation in 2005 ($7.6M) to support research on needle-free vaccination and from the Kavli Foundation in 2006 (over $7M) to support an initiative in bionano science and technology.
Industry and entrepreneurship. Monies generated from partnerships with industry have increased from slightly over $100,000 in 1998 to ~$2.5M in 2007. Several faculty-based start ups, including SiEnergy, a spin-off that aims to commercialize solid oxide fuel technology, have received initial funding during the past two years. In 2007 the BASF Advanced Research Initiative (more than $20M over five years) was established to pursue projects in areas such as materials science. Finally, the SEAS-based Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH) sponsored its first university-wide entrepreneurship competition.
Development and infrastructure. Pledges, outright gifts, and matches to SEAS from alumni, friends, and support from corporation and foundations, have totaled nearly $100M over the past decade. Of particular note was the completion of the $45M SEAS Challenge Fund in 2005-6. The current SEAS endowment stands at $1 billion. Today the SEAS campus comprises almost 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2) of classrooms, teaching and research labs and research centers, and administrative space—approximately double the amount of a decade ago. The 95,000 sq ft (8,800 m2) Laboratory of Integrated Science and Engineering (LISE), completed in the fall of 2007 and the 500,000+ sq. foot Northwest Building (due for occupancy in the fall of 2008), both have strong ties to SEAS-related activities.
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