Topics

winter 2011

Bioengineering in Bloom:
Novel systems, novel approaches
Daniel Needleman, his hair in a
long blond ponytail, sits behind
his desk in the Northwest labs.
Physics is where he got his start
— in fact, everyone in his lab is
a physicist—but you really have
to call him a bioengineer.
Because that’s what he does:
He uses approaches from physics
to understand and engineer cells.
 Topics | Winter 2011

Daniel Needleman studies

complex biological systems
—such as the mitotic
spindle—using analytical
approaches from physics
and engineering.

eliza grinnell
The Assistant Professor of Applied Physics makes
a quick gesture to the physics books crowding the
shelves behind him. The field has achieved “great
things over the past century,” he says, “but today
it’s hard to imagine finding something that’s really
new. In biology, you have that opportunity.”

The greatest source of excitement for Needleman

is that biological processes are genetically driven.
We’ve gotten to know quite a lot about genes, he
says, but we still lack any nuanced understanding
of how they work together.

“In cell biology,” says Needleman, “the molecules

can be extremely complicated. Certain phenomena
require thousands of proteins getting together to
do something.”

And while physics has a solid track record for under-

standing how things work, to use physics alone as
the scientific base for engineering is to turn a blind
eye to the fascinating complexity of the system.

Needleman’s lab uses analytical approaches drawn

from engineering and physics to study the dynamics
of self-organizing subcellular structures. It’s basic
science—more about the general quest for under-
standing than any immediate, practical application
—but the potential applications are breathtaking.
In Parti
needleman has focused on the spindle, which plays a
vital role in cell division. in images of dividing cells,
the spindle looks like twin elliptical arrays of fibers
that pull the chromosomes apart.

Needleman studies the mitotic spindle, which guides and

separates the chromosomes during cell division.

If this microtubular assembly fails, the resulting

daughter cells can end up with the wrong number
of chromosomes. Chromosomal abnormalities of
this sort occur in about 1 out of every 160 live births.
The most common is an extra copy of chromosome
21, a condition known as trisomy 21, which pro-
duces Down syndrome. Some cancer cells also have
internet encyclopedia of science

abnormal numbers of chromosomes. And certain

medical treatments—chemotherapy, for instance
—can interfere with cell division.

“If we really understood the process of cell division,

it could have a profound impact on health,”
Needleman says. “That’s grand vision number one.”

Grand vision number two has to do with the design
of the spindle itself. “It’s totally different from tools
that we can build. If we really understood how it
worked, we might be able to borrow from the design
in fashioning devices of our own.”
Needleman and colleagues have used cells from
the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis), which has
some of the largest cells known to science—and in
developing from fertilized egg to tadpole, those cells
vary in size by as much as two orders of magnitude.
One might expect spindle dimensions to increase
proportionally with cell size, and at smaller cell sizes,
they do—more or less. But something changes at
the far end of the scale. There seems to be an upper
limit for spindle architecture (about 60 microns).
So, Needleman asks, what does this mean? Is spindle
size perfectly optimized to function in cells of differ-
ent sizes, and if so, what makes that scaling optimal?
Or do the observed variations reflect some sort of
nonadaptive process?
“What interests me most is how the kind of things
that biology shows us can lead to new principles.

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icular,
Topics | Winter 2011

Right now is a very exciting time to be working Venky laid the foundations of SEAS bioengineering
in this area,” he says. “A lot of advances have been a decade ago, and he has good reason to be pleased
made, and many of the necessary tools have been with the results. Bioengineering has put down roots
produced. We don’t have the answers yet, but we and grown. Between 2001 and 2010, the number of
have the tools to get there. And I think we will— new Ph.D.s in engineering sciences grew robustly
very quickly.” from 71 to 137, and bioengineers now make up
about 13 percent of SEAS graduate students overall.
When people think about bioengineering (especially
And this fall Harvard College, in collaboration with
biomedical engineering), they tend to jump to the
SEAS, introduced a new undergraduate concentra-
bottom line, the practical applications: “What’s it
tion in biomedical engineering as part of the Life
going to cure?” “What’s it going to fix?” “What’s
Sciences cluster.
it going to replace?” But as former SEAS Dean
Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti explains: Before the new millennium, however, Harvard’s
applied sciences program had focused on two
Bioengineering can mean many things. In the
disciplines: applied physics and applied math. This
early days, it mainly referred to prostheses and
new field of bioengineering had very different roots,
devices—for example, replacement hips, stents
emerging at the locus of engineering, biology, and
to keep cardiac arteries open, etc. Bioengineer-
chemistry. In 2000, when he began to build up
ing was about hardware that improved people’s
SEAS’ bioengineering capability, Venky realized
lives, but it wasn’t really connected with the
that the school first needed to invest in chemistry
living system. Today, it’s much more than that.
and chemical engineering.
There’s a growing realization that engineering
can learn things from biology, and vice versa.
Indeed, biology has far more in common with
engineering than with physics. Physics is a
reductive science—nano- and everything else—
but biology, like engineering, is about systems.

3
 Under Venky’s guidance, SEAS systematically hired people
with chemical engineering backgrounds—including
David Edwards, David Mooney, Vinny Manoharan, Debra
Auguste, Kit Parker, and Joanna Aizenberg—building its
nascent bioengineering program to focus on molecules,
the common ground between chemistry (and chemical
engineering) and molecular biology.
eliza grinnell

Former Dean Venkatesh “Venky”

Narayanamurti planted the seeds
of bioengineering at SEAS.

The potential for a strong bioengineering program At its heart, Venky explains, bioengineering is a
also hinged on the synergy of developments in other basic science. Speaking with SEAS faculty who focus
disciplines, including physics, engineering, and on bioengineering makes that clear. SEAS research
computer science. focuses on basic understanding: how the body
works, how genes work, how muscles work.
“But the key,” Venky declares, “was getting the very
best people.” “For us,” Venky says, “the excitement lies in this
deeper connection between biology, the applied
He also notes the powerful benefits of being part of
sciences, and engineering—especially chemical
the larger University. “With a great medical school
engineering but also applied physics and the
and various biology and applied sciences programs
computer sciences. With our open structure,
around us, there are great opportunities for collabo-
we can embrace its fundamentally collaborative
ration. And not being saddled with a lot of the more
nature. That way we can not only advance
traditional bioengineering baggage, we can start at
biomedical engineering but also do something
the next phase of the evolution.”
deeper: biologically inspired engineering.”
How will SEAS accomplish that? Venky believes that
bioengineering at SEAS has a number of advantages.
“We don’t have much in the way of the traditional
biomedical engineering—designing prosthetics.
These things are important. But for us, they’re really
a different field. That’s not where SEAS has targeted
its energies.”

4
courtesy of harvard microrobotics lab Topics | Winter 2011

Inspired by the biology of a bee and the insect’s hive behavior, researchers
on the Micro Air Vehicles Project are developing tiny robotic insects. The
NSF-funded project could have applications in search-and-rescue missions,
military surveillance, and high-resolution weather and climate mapping.
The brain do
a seatbelt.
Kevin Kit Parker, the Thomas D. Cabot Associate
Professor of Applied Science and Associate
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, specializes
in disease biophysics and hails from Tennessee. He
also happens to be a major in the U.S. Army and
has completed two tours of duty in Afghanistan.
At SEAS, he declares, “We’re not generating people
to populate the herd.”
“Here,” he says, “the expectation is that you should
be a leader, run out in front of the herd—on the
cutting edge, where no one’s been before.”
Parker sees incredible opportunities for people
like himself—folks who thrive on the far edge of
the known. New fields, he says, are less burdened
by accumulated wisdom, so the potential for novel
approaches and discoveries is greater.
“When you come in with fewer cultural or disci-
plinary constraints, you have fewer restrictions,”
he says. “Fields are constrained by their customs,
and many times the really interesting stuff happens
on the interfaces between fields—like biology and
engineering.”
The absence of departments at SEAS also fits Parker
perfectly. “If you don’t have all those tribal boundar-
ies,” he says, “then you can roam around. That’s the
special mojo that Harvard has.”
6
Collaborations are essential to the work that Parker
does here. He leads the Disease Biophysics Group
(DBG) at SEAS, works with the Harvard Stem Cell
Institute, and is a member of the Systems Biology
Program across the river at Harvard Medical School.
On top of all that, he’s a core faculty member at the
Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
at Harvard. At Wyss, researchers are not interested
in merely building on top of what biology has
provided; they want to go right to the heart of the
matter, figure out nature’s own design principles,
and emulate that in the lab. Their work produces
fishnet-like fabrics made entirely out of proteins,
new ice-repellent materials, and tiny electronic
models of human organs.
Parker’s own interests are varied. One area that’s
long fascinated him involves the scaling properties
of the heart. When, he asks, do changes at the cellu-
lar level actually translate into—manifest themselves
as—disease in an organ or an individual?
“I don’t know that you can show me a diseased cell
in the heart,” he says, “but put a bunch of abnormal
cells together and you can show me the disease.
So at what spatial scale does that disease emerge?
And isn’t that where we should be targeting our
therapeutic agents?”

oesn’t wear
rose lincoln/harvard news office
Kit Parker’s Disease Biophysics
Group studies the neurological
effects of traumatic brain injury.
One goal of Parker’s lab is to understand how the
heart builds itself—how cardiac muscle cells are
organized, created, and replaced—with the goal
of using that knowledge as a springboard to regen-
erative medicine, and ultimately, perhaps, creating
replacement cardiac tissue.
His group also works at the interface between the
biotic and abiotic, developing new protein-based
fabrics, for example. Such protein textiles might
one day find use as wound dressings for burn
victims. Beyond that, textiles that are strong, that
don’t trigger an immune response, and that can
be absorbed by the body once they’ve served their
therapeutic function could have important surgical
applications.
It’s fair to say that Parker’s DBG lab likes to shake
things up—particularly tissues. Another project
his team is pursuing investigates the neurological
effects of traumatic brain injuries, such as those
experienced by soldiers caught in IED explosions.
Topics | Winter 2011
The brain doesn’t wear a seatbelt. When something
shakes the human body hard enough—whether
it’s an explosion, a car accident, or a collision on
the football field—the soft and delicate brain slams
against the inner walls of the skull. The trauma sets
off a whole cascade of neurological damage that,
if not treated immediately, could manifest itself 10
years later as dementia, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s
disease.
Parker’s team simulates the force of impact on live
cells in the lab and then watches what happens over
the first 30 seconds, the first 10 minutes, the first
hour, from the level of the proteins up to the whole
tissues. If researchers can develop a treatment that
can be administered to a patient within that first
10 minutes—what Parker calls “the platinum 10”
—perhaps more soldiers will make it home without
the threat of developing a neurodegenerative disease
whose genesis was on the battlefield.
7
 In academia, we c
about big things,
the world. That’s
eliza grinnell

David Mooney designs materials

that, when implanted in the body,
could help program healthy cells
to fight disease.

But, David Mooney cautions, even in new scientific
realms the “eureka moments” are often few and far
between—more often found in cartoons of mad
professors with wildly tousled hair than in the slow,
step-by-step march of real science. Mooney, the
Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering
at SEAS, says:
You get excited about the advances, but many
of the things we’re working on are years away
from any practical application. I’ll publish a
paper, and hundreds of people will call or e-mail,
saying, “I’m sick.” “My mom’s sick.” “Can you
help us?” Often, it’s not so much that I think,
“Another couple of years, and we could save
that person.” I don’t know when it’ll be. But
every day, I hope my contribution will help
move things forward.
Mooney, 45, is the youngest of eleven children.
His parents didn’t go to college, but in raising their
children, they instilled the idea that everyone has
an obligation to give something back, to help make
the world a better place. His siblings are social work-
ers and teachers, therapists, nurses, and medical
workers. While Mooney does basic research, he very
much sees himself upholding that family tradition.
“In academia,” he says, “we can dream about
big things, about changing the world. That’s really
our job.”
The Mooney Laboratory for Cell and Tissue Engi-
neering focuses on how cells receive information
from the materials they come into contact with.
Using the tools of engineering and concepts from
cell and molecular biology, the lab studies the
mechanisms by which cells can sense and respond
to chemical or mechanical signals. If we understand

8

can dream
, about changing
really our job.
that, Mooney says, we may be able to use the knowl-
edge as engineers—to build things. But he goes one
step further: he wants to build inside the body.
Mooney is working on ways to attract and program
cells to fight disease. One potential application:
cell-based cancer therapies. Mooney and his team
have designed small polymer scaffolds that can be
placed in the body. These scaffolds are “painted”
with compounds that attract potential cancer-
fighting cells and then—via another set of chemical
signals—program those cells to target cancer cells.
The lab has shown that the programmed cells will
then home in on lymph nodes where cancer cells
have congregated.
Topics | Winter 2011
“Designing materials that can program cells inside
the body, that’s the premise,” Mooney says. “That’s
my quest.” He believes in the premise and the quest.
And working inside the body would allow him to
do the most good: in experiments using mice, the
Mooney lab has shown that the results are improved
when the entire process is done in vivo, rather than
partly outside the body.
Mooney believes in the potential of bioengineering.
“A lot of us go into academia to have freedom and
not be bounded,” he observes. “In a field like
bioengineering, there aren’t many walls to be bound
by. And Harvard belongs here. We have this huge
amount of clinical activity across the river. It’d be
almost criminal for us not to be a leader in
bioengineering.”
9
 Sharad Ramanathan
eliza grinnell

Sharad Ramanathan’s research

earned him the prestigious NSF
CAREER Award in 2010.

Sharad Ramanathan’s research focus involves “dramatic
decisions.” He explains that cells and organisms make
all kinds of decisions—for example, how to allocate
resources, whether to go to the left or right or forward
or backward, and whether to become part of your skin
or bones.
“I want to understand that underlying decision-making
process,” he says. “How does it work? What’s its evolu-
tionary history?”
By looking at multiple systems, Ramanathan, 38,
hopes to find patterns in the way cells and organisms
interpret their environment and to better understand
the role of past experiences in that interpretive process.
“How do yeast cells respond to starvation? They can
go quiet. They can make spores. Or they can make
long filaments and dig in. Evolutionary fitness hinges
on making the right decision. So how does a cell make
that decision?”
Ramanathan, an assistant professor of molecular and
cellular biology, is a theoretical physicist by training but
considers himself a biologist. He, too, works at the un-
settled borders of bioengineering. Among other things,
he studies the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
“It’s a virtually transparent worm,” he explains, “and
has only 302 neurons, but it can do whatever it wants.”
C. elegans has a long history of use as a model organ-
ism in biology. In 1998, it became the first multicellular
organism to have its genome fully sequenced.
Ramanathan has found that optical stimulation of
specific roundworm neurons will produce characteristic
avoidance behavior.
“Can you imagine?” he says, “We’ve figured out how
to activate and deactivate those neurons using light!”
Ramanathan says. “If I could go back in time just five
years and describe our experiments, everyone would
think I was crazy.” More importantly, by exciting indi-
vidual neurons while monitoring others, he ultimately
hopes to map out the organism’s entire neural circuitry.
“The goal is to go right into C. elegans’ brain and
study its neural network with optical tools. Just 302
neurons makes it sound simple. But it’s not as easy
as it sounds. Still, even if we fail, it’ll be interesting.
Failure can be very informative.”

10
 Topics | Winter 2011

Neel Joshi
is relatively new in town, having just arrived in january to
join the seas bioengineering faculty. he’s never been to the
harvard museum of natural history before. but he’s long
known about oxford street, home to many of the heroes of
his youth, the big guns of past scientific revolutions. and
the redbrick buildings along oxford street still hold the
vast collections they squirreled away.

“The word ‘interdisciplinary’

is in vogue nowadays,” says
Neel Joshi, “but we’ve taken
it to an entirely new level.”
eliza grinnell

Joshi explores the museum like a scientist, which “Nature has two big advantages over us—a vast amount
means that he’s systematic and observant as he walks of biodiversity and huge chunks of time to select for
down the aisles. It also means that he breaks off sen- given traits. Our ability to cram population-level diver-
tences in mid-thought when something particularly sity into the lab is pretty limited. But we have figured
catches his eye: the glass flowers that can’t possibly be out ways to speed up the selection process,” he says.
made of glass, the massive specimens in the Hall of
“We have figured out ways to physically link a protein
Mammals, or a display of bats.
to the gene that encoded it for billions of proteins si-
“Every time I see bats, I’m amazed by them,” he says, multaneously. Then we can select for the proteins that
giving them his full attention. “Amazed because they we want and extract out the genetic information. By
learned to fly independently of birds and insects. doing this iteratively, we can mimic the natural process
The fact that nature could discover flight on separate of evolution—so what may have taken many genera-
independent occasions is remarkable…” tions to happen in nature, we might be able to do in a
few weeks.”
His voice trails off as he continues walking, lost in
thought. Joshi, 30, is an Assistant Professor of Chemical
and Biological Engineering at SEAS, as well as a Core
Member of the faculty at Wyss. He grew up in Northern
California; he used to have corn-rows and ride a motor-
cycle. He likes things that are cool, and right now it’s
hard for him to imagine anything cooler than bioengi-
neering. In his lab, he’s trying to mimic the process of
evolution. Modeling and replicating evolution—even
on a micro scale—is challenging, to say the least.

11
Nature has two big advantages over us
—a vast amount of biodiversity and huge
chunks of time to select for given traits.

Time feels like a good topic in this building. The As a chemist, Joshi has always been fascinated by the
museum is a sort of glass-case monument to the past, a border between things that are living and those smaller
time when scientists were spectators on the outside of components that aren’t. But what’s surprising, he says,
biology. But things have changed. Molecular biology is that the smaller components may not do much on
identified the constituents of the body’s machinery. their own but often can work together to do some truly
The genomic revolution has opened the genetic incredible things.
components to analysis, en masse. Nano- and micro-
Another of his research interests involves developing
technology are solving the problems of access. Now
tools to aid in building bio-mimetic systems from the
Joshi and his colleagues have an opportunity that would
bottom up. Assembly—how biology uses the smaller
have been impossible a few years earlier: they can go
building blocks to make “something much cooler than
into those living components as engineers—studying
its parts”—is a major preoccupation. When he gave his
the clockwork, building new things, and making their
first seminar on the subject, he used Transformers to
own selections.
get his point across.
One part of Joshi’s work involves tissue engineering,
Joshi thinks that SEAS is just the right place for him.
synthesizing protein scaffolds to support cell growth,
Like others, he points to the school’s openness, its lack
which can then be implanted into the body to repair or
of departments. If he’d gone into a straight chemistry
replace a patient’s diseased or damaged tissues. Joshi’s
department at some other school, he says, he’d be
postdoctoral work focused on developing complex
spending most of his time rubbing elbows with chemists.
dendrimeric macromolecules to serve as scaffolds for
But at SEAS, the horizons—and his colleagues’ back-
the creation of cartilage tissue.
grounds and range of interests—are far broader.
He explains that he can now generate billions of
“The word ‘interdisciplinary’ is in vogue nowadays,”
protein variants and select only the ones he wants. In
he says, “but we’ve taken it to an entirely new level.”
other words, he can mimic nature. “The selection phase
is the most important,” he says, giving the bats one last
look. “You get what you select for.”

12

Maurice Smith
eliza grinnell
Maurice Smith’s research on neuromotor
control combines practical engineering
with the human side of medicine.
Maurice Smith, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering,
sits in the cafeteria of the Northwest Lab. On the table
next to him are salt and pepper shakers, and a bottle
of hot sauce. With his left hand, he moves them slightly.
Smith is another of the young scientists who are probing
the interstices between fields. And what he studies, he
concedes, are “the most boring movements you could
make and still call them movements.”
As director of the Harvard Neuromotor Control Lab,
Smith gives every new grad student “the talk.” He tells
them, “I really appreciate that you came, but what we
do here is incredibly boring. The experiments that we
work on really aren’t all that interesting.”
He wants to lower expectations from the get-go. He’s
trying to build knowledge from the bottom up because
when it comes to understanding how the brain controls
movement, we’re still pretty clueless.
Smith’s mother is a neonatologist, and growing up, he
could see the emotional price it exacted. Every baby
that didn’t make it took a personal toll. He viewed
medicine as a potential profession but found that by
nature he’s an engineer. As a student, he took a winding
road to get there, earning both an M.D. and a Ph.D.
and doing rotations in a couple of labs. Ultimately, he
found his true path, drawn to bioengineering’s promise
of melding practical, how-it-works engineering and the
human side of medicine.
The work he does is aimed at understanding the algo-
rithms the human brain uses to control movement—in
particular, how you modify that control through practice
and learning. The results could have major implications
for patient therapy. As a graduate student, he studied
how certain disorders and neurological diseases cause
movements to go awry.
Topics | Winter 2011
“In the process, I learned just how little we know
about when things are working right, when they’re
normal. You need to understand how a motor system
works—and learns—at an overview level. Today, there’s
nothing smart in how people go about neuro-rehab.
Very little science goes into it. It’s not that they ignore
the science; there just isn’t all that much available.”
So in the Neuromotor Control Lab they work backwards,
trying to understand the basics of simple motor pro-
cesses. The ultimate goal, he says, is to learn enough
to be able to improve the way motor learning—and
recovery—takes place.
“Take stroke patients,” he says. “In general, people
tend to recover. That’s fantastic. But even if you look
at two people with equivalent or comparable strokes,
you’ll find differences in how quickly they recover.
There’s no reason to believe that what we’re seeing to-
day is the fastest that people can recover from strokes.”
Smith moves the hot sauce again. It’s boring, he says.
Simplistic. But it’s a beginning, a foundation that will
let the next generation, standing on his shoulders,
achieve bigger things. He sees it happening already
in his lab. It’s the best part of his day, he says, the
intellectual give-and-take with the next generation
—his grad students and post-docs.
“‘Discussion’ is putting it mildly. ‘Arguments’ comes closer,”
he says. “And that’s what I want. If you restrict yourself
to talking about stuff you agree on, you’re not talking
about anything. But if you take things to the edge?
That’s how you get to something really interesting.”
13
 Taking Research to the Edge
Bioengineering today represents an exceptionally researchers are interested in not just incremental,
interesting “edge.” And at SEAS an exceptional lot short-term progress, but transformative change.
are making that edge their own. SEAS Dean Cherry
And that’s the attitude that has carried bioengineering
Murray emphasizes the crucial need for what she calls
at SEAS from that glint in Venky’s eye to this exuberant
“T-shaped people,” scientists whose knowledge is
adolescence.
deep in a given field but who can also relate broadly
—across scientific disciplines as well as to a wider So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the field
public. SEAS bioengineers are doing that and more. shares more than a few traits with flesh-and-blood
Creative, charismatic, maybe a bit combustible, they’re adolescents: a willingness to grapple with big questions,
upping the ante—spiking Murray’s “T” with a little TNT skepticism about the received wisdom, and irrepressible
all their own—and proud of their part in something spontaneity.... You might well ask, what’s next? There’s
that’s come so far. no way to tell, but it’ll probably be something that—
right now—sounds flat-out impossible.
Bioengineering has become integrated and institu-
tionalized across Harvard’s sprawling campus—not
just at SEAS, but also at the Wyss Institute and the
Medical School. Throughout the University, the

Bio + Engineering + Harvard

SEAS, of course, does not have a lock on the field of bioengineering. That’s a good thing. The
school’s success is, in part, thanks to the recent crop of related programs that span the University.

WYSS INSTITUTE

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
The Wyss Institute aims to discover the engineering
principles that nature uses to build living things and to
harness this knowledge to create biologically inspired
materials, devices, and control technologies for medical
and non-medical applications. Eight SEAS faculty serve
as core members of the institute and Director Donald
Ingber holds a faculty appointment at SEAS.
Systems Biology (Faculty of Arts and Sciences
and Harvard Medical School)
Systems biology aims to explain how higher-level
properties of complex biological systems arise from the
interactions among their parts. At the medical school in
Boston, students can pursue a Ph.D. in systems biology
in collaboration with the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences. The FAS counterpart in Cambridge, which grew
out of the Bauer Center for Genomics, provides shared
facilities and expertise.

The Harvard Stem Cell Institute

As the largest collaborative of its kind, the Harvard
Stem Cell Institute is a truly unique scientific enter-
prise—a gathering place for a whole community of
scientists and clinical experts in stem cell science
seeking to bring new treatments to the clinic and new
life to patients with a wide range of chronic illnesses.
 Topics | Winter 2011

courtesy of the
aizenberg lab

Once thought to be blind, the brittlestar (an

echinoderm closely related to the starfish shown
at left) uses its entire skeleton as a compound
eye. A series of microlenses (above) work to-
gether to generate amazing optical performance,
besting any human-made technologies.
Harvard’s engineers and applied scientists take
inspiration from nature every day, particularly in
the lab of Joanna Aizenberg, Amy Smith Berylson
Professor of Materials Science at SEAS and a
core member of the Wyss Institute.
Aizenberg, a pioneer in the field of biomimetics,
has studied the intricately latticed glass skeleton
of the Venus flower basket sea sponge; porous,
Rose Lincoln/Harvard News Office

self-assembling materials that imitate bone;

and water- and ice-repellent surfaces that are
inspired by the hairy legs of a water strider, a
mosquito’s eyes, and even a bacterial biofilm.

To read more about research in the Aizenberg

lab, visit the SEAS e-Newsletter online, at

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/topics.
Around Oxford Street

Community Highlights

From mayonnaise to meat glue

This fall, faculty members Dave Weitz and Michael Brenner teamed up with more than a dozen
culinary experts to create a new General Education course, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine
to the Science of Soft Matter.” Created through a partnership with the Alícia Foundation, headed by
acclaimed chef Ferran Adrià, the highly popular course uses food and cooking to explicate fundamental
principles in applied physics and engineering. Tasty topics include: olive oil and viscosity, gelation,
browning and oxidation, and even meat glue. The series earned coverage in The Boston Globe, The New
York Times, El País, Business Week, and NBC’s The Feast.
Worked up an appetite? The “Science and Cooking” ancillary public lectures are available online
at www.seas.harvard.edu/cooking.

Enhancing applied computational science

SEAS established a new Institute for Applied Computa-
tional Science this fall, with Efthimios (Tim) Kaxiras,
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied
Physics, as Director. The plan is to collaborate with
departments across Harvard to enhance existing courses
and to make new ones available for all science and
engineering graduate students. In the long term, IACS
might offer formalized certificate programs and potentially
new Master’s and Ph.D. degrees. Kaxiras uses sophisticated
computation techniques in his research to spur advances
with biomedical applications.

All hands, year two

Cocoa-mobiles, robotic bees, and Le Whif
SEAS faculty lit up the tube in August and September with
appearances on the Food Network and the New England
Sports Network (NESN). Kit Parker, Associate Professor
of Biomedical Engineering, served as a guest judge on
Food Challenge as four chefs competed to create delicate
moving vehicles out of chocolate. Parker, a U.S. Army
Major, also appeared on NESN’s Shining City to discuss his
work on preventing long-term neurological damage from
concussions in soldiers and athletes. The show, hosted by
former Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Kerry Healey ’82,
“celebrates science, technology, and innovations in the
New England area.” Subsequent episodes of Shining City
featured other SEAS faculty members: Robert J. Wood,
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering; David A.
Edwards, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Bio-
medical Engineering; and John Briscoe, Gordon McKay
Professor of the Practice of Environmental Engineering.
Couch potatoes: check out the SEAS e-Newsletter for links
to the Shining City segments on YouTube, and for more
information visit: www.seas.harvard.edu/shiningcity.
On September 10, Dean Cherry A. Murray kicked off the
new year with her fourth All Hands Meeting. Emphasiz-
ing the School’s commitment to interdisciplinary study,
breadth and depth of understanding, and collaborative
research, she presented the new SEAS academic structure.
With the appointment of area deans, Murray hopes to
strengthen the core disciplines, enhance teaching and
learning, and enforce program consistency, while continu-
ing to support the interdisciplinary nature of faculty and
student research.
Missed the meeting? Watch the video at:
http://intranet.seas.harvard.edu/administration/all-hands.
Cleanup crew
In June, President Barack Obama appointed Dean Murray
to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon
Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The seven members of the
Commission are investigating the causes of the April 2010
oil spill, providing recommendations for avoiding similar
disasters in future, and collaborating on a public report
due in January.

For more information on the Commission’s work, visit:

www.oilspillcommission.gov.

16
 Select Awards
eliza grinnell
eliza grinnell
Rabin wins $1 million Dan David Prize
Michael O. Rabin, Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Com-
puter Science, was honored at Tel Aviv University in May,
in the presence of the President of the State of Israel, for
massively influential achievements over the course of his
career. He shared the honor with fellow computer scientists
Gordon Moore and Len Kleinrock; the other winners
included Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and authors
Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood.
courtesy of sOccket
hasse ferrold, iic
sOccket ball wins Breakthrough Award
An eco-friendly soccer ball that charges a battery during
game play has won Popular Mechanics’ annual Break-
through Award. Jessica Lin ’09, Jessica O. Matthews ’10,
Julia Silverman ’10, and Hemali Thakkar ’11 created the
sOccket as undergraduates at Harvard College, with help
from the engineering course ES 147, “Idea Translation.”
The ball can provide up to three hours of LED light to
people living in areas without reliable electricity.
Five students named 2011 Siebel Scholars
Five computer science students will each receive a
$35,000 award for their final year of graduate studies at
SEAS. Karim Atiyeh (M.S. candidate), Michael Lyons
(Ph.D. candidate), Geoffrey Mainland (Ph.D. candidate),
Rohan Murty (Ph.D. candidate), and Yinan Zhu ’11
(joint A.B./S.M. candidate) were honored at a reception
with Dean Murray on October 7. Their innovative
research explores subjects including facial recognition,
CPU brains, and novel wireless networks.
Hau named World Dane 2010
Lene Vestergaard Hau (above left), Mallinckrodt Professor
of Physics and of Applied Physics, was named World Dane
2010 by global network Danes Worldwide at Kronborg
Castle in Elsinore, Denmark, on August 1. The title, which
has been awarded only twice before—to a soccer star and a
pianist/composer—was given to Hau “for emphatically and
persistently placing Denmark on the World map.”
Four faculty members win prestigious
NSF CAREER Awards
Shriram Ramanathan, Assistant Professor of Materials
Science, Yiling Chen, Assistant Professor of Computer
Science, Sharad Ramanathan, Assistant Professor of
Applied Physics and of Molecular and Cellular Biology,
and Stephen Chong, Assistant Professor of Computer
Science, all won the National Science Foundation’s Faculty
Early Career Development (CAREER) Award this past year.
The honor is considered one of the most prestigious for
up-and-coming researchers in science and engineering.
17
 Around Oxford Street

Research Briefs

With password security, popularity is everything

Unpopular passwords instead of strong ones can provide a better defense against
statistical guessing attacks.

Who: Michael D. Mitzenmacher, Area Dean and Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science
at SEAS, and Microsoft researchers Cormac Herley and Stuart Schechter.
How it works: Forcing users to choose unpopular passwords instead of “strong” ones can provide a
better defense against a type of attack known as statistical guessing.
What’s next: For organizations with millions of users, such as email providers, the researchers propose
a system that would count how many times any user on the service chooses a specific password. When
more than a few users picked the same password, that password would become banned for others.
harvard microrobotics lab

adam w. feinberg, ph.d.

Shape-shifting sheets automatically fold Protein nanofabrics stretch the limits of materials
into multiple forms A new protein matrix simulates the elasticity of living
Researchers have devised flat sheets of programmable tissue, offering applications in regenerative medicine
matter that can fold themselves like origami. and high-performance textiles.

Who: Robert J. Wood, Assistant Professor of Electrical
Engineering and Core Member of the Wyss Institute;
Hiroto Tanaka, Postdoctoral Fellow at SEAS; and Elliot
Hawkes ’09 (S.B.); with collaborators from MIT.
How it works: The sheets, thin composites of rigid tiles
and elastomer joints, are studded with thin foil actuators
(motorized switches) and flexible electronics. A shape
is produced by triggering the proper actuator groups in
sequence.
What’s next: The long-term aim is to make programmable
matter more robust and practical, leading to materials that
can perform multiple tasks. Besides medical applications,
the team envisions creating “smart” cups that could adjust
based upon the amount of liquid needed or even a “Swiss
army knife” that could reform into numerous tools.
Who: Kevin “Kit” Parker (Thomas D. Cabot Associate
Professor of Applied Science and Associate Professor of
Bioengineering at SEAS, a core faculty member of the
Wyss Institute, and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell
Institute), with Postdoctoral Fellow Adam W. Feinberg
(now an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University).
How it works: The new fabric is made from the same
proteins as normal tissue; thus, the body can degrade it
with no ill effects once it is no longer needed. The material
may help heal wounds and regenerate damaged tissues
and organs.
What’s next: By altering the type of protein used in the
matrix, researchers will be able to manipulate thread
count, fiber orientation, and other properties to create
fabrics with extraordinary capabilities.

Visit www.seas.harvard.edu to watch a flat sheet fold itself

into a boat and then a plane.

18
 New Faculty Hires
courtesy of yue m. lu
eliza grinnell
Katia Bertoldi, Assistant Professor
of Applied Mechanics
Bertoldi’s research involves the use of continuum
mechanics and applied mathematics to model the
mechanical behavior of novel materials at the small scale,
such as nano-composites and biological composites.
eliza grinnell
eliza grinnell
Neel S. Joshi, Assistant Professor of
Chemical and Biological Engineering
Joshi uses his research background in protein chemistry
and polymeric materials synthesis to develop new methods
for controlling the spatial and temporal arrangement of
self-assembling systems..
Faculty News
David Brooks and Matt Welsh have been granted
tenure and are now Gordon McKay Professors of
Computer Science.
Gu-Yeon Wei has been granted tenure and named
Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science.
Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School Professor
and leading scholar on the legal and policy issues
surrounding the Internet, now holds a joint appointment
as Professor of Computer Science at SEAS—the first
such HLS–SEAS partnership.
Michael Brenner, Glover Professor of Applied
Mathematics and Applied Physics, has been awarded
a Harvard College Professorship in recognition of his
outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching,
advising, and mentoring.
Yue M. Lu, Assistant Professor of
Electrical Engineering
Lu’s teaching and research interests are in the area of
mathematical signal processing. He explores the broad
themes of representation, sampling, and processing of
multidimensional signals, with applications ranging from
wireless communications to sensor networks and computa-
tional imaging.
Chad D. Vecitis, Assistant Professor
of Environmental Engineering
Vecitis’ research investigates the environmental chemistry
of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). He is current-
ly studying the SWNT anti-microbial mechanism, as well as
engineering SWNT-based structures for water treatment.
Alumni Aiming High
Stephanie D. Wilson ’88, a member of the Harvard Board
of Overseers, launched into space for the third time this
past April on the space shuttle Discovery. Wilson joined
NASA in 1996 and flew her first mission a decade later. She
is the second African-American woman ever to fly in space.
Hank Chien ’96, a plastic surgeon in Queens, NY, jumped
and climbed his way to a record 1,061,700 points in the
Donkey Kong arcade game in February. Chien’s dazzling
feat was confirmed by Twin Galaxies, the official score
keeper of electronic games.
19
Around Oxford Street
Recent Gifts
The Applied Math Innovation Fund, established by an
anonymous donor, will enable SEAS to address the growing
demand for the applied math discipline by augmenting
advising staff and hiring the most innovative and highly
effective teachers.
The Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard
(TECH) received donations from Tom McKinley (A.B.
’74); Michael Cronin (A.B. ’75, M.B.A. ’77); Robert Kristoff
(A.B. ’74); Thomas Quirk (A.B. ’74, M.B.A. ’78); Michael
Noble (A.B. ’74); and Walter (A.B. ’74) and Cathy Isaacson.
Herbert “Pug” Winokur (A.B. ’65, A.M. ’65, Ph.D. ’67) and
his wife, Deanne, established a current-use fund that will
be used to support fellowships for graduate students.
Discover More Online
Meet other bioengineers!
Debra Auguste
View the SEAS e-Newsletter : www.seas.harvard.edu/topics
Video: Kit Parker discusses his research
on NESN’s Shining City
Building a bioengineer from the ground up
Q&A with alumna Amy Kerdok (Ph.D. ’06)
A closer look at Joanna Aizenberg’s inverse opals
A gift from R. Martin Chavez (A.B. ’85, S.M. ’85) will be
used to support fellowships for graduate students who are
working at the intersection of economics and computer
science.
SEAS also received flexible-use annual gifts from Andrew
Garman (A.B. ’80); David Lloyd Gilmour (A.B. ’80, S.M.
’82, M.B.A. ’84) and Anula K. Jayasuriya (A.B. ’80, M.D.
’84, Ph.D. ’91); Gwill York (A.B. ’79, M.B.A. ’84) and Paul
Maeder (M.B.A. ’84); Bob (A.B. ’76, S.M. ’76, M.B.A. ’79,
J.D. ’80) and Susie Case (A.B. ’79, S.M. ’79, M.B.A. ’83);
and Kathryn Ann Hopkins (A.B. ’80, M.B.A. ’84).
Amy Kerdok Radhika Nagpal
Become a fan of SEAS
http://www.facebook.com/hseas
http://twitter.com/hseas
http://digg.com/HarvardSEAS
http://HarvardSEAS.tumblr.com
End Note

eliza grinnell
Innovation doesn’t
just happen by itself. Dean Cherry A. Murray

The evolution of bioengineering at SEAS, as explored As an engineering school, we have the opportunity to
in this issue, is a perfect case in point. address a number of demands:

More than a decade ago, my predecessor, Venkatesh
“Venky” Narayanamurti took a major risk in ramping
up faculty and resources to explore the realm where
physics and chemistry meet biology.
His aim was not to outdo the world’s existing bioengi-
neering programs on sheer scale or to beat those
already dominant in the medical device arena.
Instead, he began to hire a different kind of researcher
—one like Daniel Needleman, a physicist who studies
the mechanics of living cells. His research sits comfort-
ably between departments and across schools.
As a result, bioengineering has found a growing
niche at SEAS, and it has grown precisely because we
have focused on finding common ground between the
disciplines and viewing entire biological systems in a
new light.
Consider the last few years: the RoboBees NSF grant.
The creation of the Wyss Institute for Biologically
Inspired Engineering at Harvard. The debut of a new
dedicated, undergraduate biomedical engineering
concentration this past fall.
Our success in bioengineering—achieved by taking the
unconventional route and hiring as much for passion as
for expertise—leads me to consider how we can apply
that same attitude today. How do we train our students
to be willing to take risks like that?
• F ostering creativity in the classroom, particularly
when every fact is just a search-engine click away.
•  alancing the spirit of freewheeling innovation with
B
structured teaching. After all, we prefer our student
entrepreneurs to stick around long enough to get
their degrees!
•  ringing Harvard’s professional schools into the
B
lives of our students.
•  reating an environment in which our graduate
C
students and faculty feel safe taking risks in their
research.
•  nd ultimately, helping our faculty and students
A
to translate an entirely new idea into something
tangible and meaningful.
In short, while we need to guide students with
expertise, we also need to inspire them to be adaptive
and creative. With the launch of a new Innovation Lab
based at Harvard Business School, we are going in the
right direction.
Just as the Innovation Lab will connect entrepreneurial
teams from across the University, we need to continue
to find ways to break down the rigid barriers between
academic departments.
And nurturing bioengineering at SEAS is a great way
to do that.

Cherry A. Murray
Dean, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Professor of Physics

camurray@seas.harvard.edu
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