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Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

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Where scholarship and innovation meet.
Official account for the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. #HarvardGriffinGSAS

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When faced with the possibility of an HIV diagnosis, sometimes the best initial prescription is support from a trusted friend — someone who might offer not just emotional guidance, but also critical, practical health resources.

A Harvard research team thinks artificial intelligence has a role to play in that process.

Led by SEAS Professor Milind Tambe, the researchers are testing whether AI could enhance a digital health intervention program aimed at generating peer referrals for HIV services, especially among populations that have been traditionally harder to reach. South Africa has about 8 million people living with HIV – the highest of any country in the world.

A field trial now underway in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa is part of HIV-LIFT – Leveraging Innovation and Friendships to Improve HIV Testing — a Gates Foundation-funded initiative that includes Wits University in South Africa, Harvard’s Teamcore research group led by Tambe, partners at the World Health Organization, and others.

The trial focuses on Coach Mpilo, a free, confidential AI health coach and chatbot available through WhatsApp. Within the Coach Mpilo app is a financial incentive for existing users to send referrals to others who might also need HIV services. The field trial will seek to answer the question: When a program only has the financial resources to encourage a limited number of people to recruit their friends and other contacts, whom should it prioritize?

The Harvard team that includes Davin Choo and Akseli Kangaslahti has developed a machine-learning and optimization approach intended to improve the process of referrals by more intentionally targeting existing users to be “nudged” with an incentive to recruit others. Their AI model discerns which users are most likely to refer people in underserved groups, including men and adolescents.

#HarvardSEAS #Harvard #Harvardengineering #engineering #computerscience #artificialintelligence #HIV #AI #HIV #HIVawareness #HIV #healthcare #research #SouthAfrica #research Akseli Kangaslahti, Professor Milind Tambe, and Davin Choo.

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Fall Study Group: How Should Democracies Govern Scarce, Life-Saving Resources? The Case of Organ Transplantation

Although a donated organ can save a life, not everyone who needs a transplant can receive one. This study group examines transplantation as a governance and democracy issue, asking how institutions allocate scarce resources, who has a voice and what makes the process legitimate.

#HarvardFellows @harvardashcenter
@harvard @harvardkennedyschool @harvardextension @harvardmed @harvardchansph @harvardgsas @harvardalumni

https://ash.harvard.edu/events/fall-study-group-how-should-democracies-govern-scarce-life-saving-resources-the-case-of-organ-transplantation-october-14/

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Arya Rao’s commitment to medicine began in the small farming community of Big Rapids, Michigan, where she watched her parents, both physicians and immigrants from India, dedicate their lives to caring for their neighbors. Now an MD-PhD student at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Griffin GSAS, and MIT, Rao is combining that same commitment to patient care with cutting-edge research that could make medicine more precise and personalized.

At the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Rao uses artificial intelligence (AI) and evolutionary genetics to identify potential therapeutic targets and engineer synthetic DNA sequences that control where and how strongly genes are expressed. Her research could help advance gene therapies for diseases such as malaria and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, addressing challenges that have limited the effectiveness and safety of existing treatments. By learning from the genetic adaptations shaped by natural selection, Rao hopes to uncover new possibilities for treating disease.

For Rao, the ultimate goal is to bring scientific discovery back to the patient. She hopes to become a reconstructive surgeon specializing in pediatric care, bridging molecular research and clinical practice to improve outcomes for children. “Patient care is what drives me,” she says. “I love the science, and I’m interested in how we can make interventions more precise at every scale. But at the end of the day, I want to be a physician who can bring that work back to the person in front of me.”

#HarvardMed #HarvardGSAS #PhysicianScientist A person in a lab coat with "Broad Institute" written on it stands confidently with arms crossed in a laboratory setting. Shelves and scientific equipment are visible in the background.

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Five Harvard SEAS computer science graduate students have been named 2027 Siebel Scholars.

Congratulations to Prashanth Amireddy, Tian (Sunny) Qin, Paula Rodriguez-Diaz, Itai Shapira and Kevin Zhang.

Their groundbreaking research explores:
• Computational complexity and pseudorandomness
• Data-centric AI and public-sector decision-making
• AI alignment and human values
• Large-scale model training and reinforcement learning
• Software security and vulnerability discovery

Each scholar will receive a $35,000 award for their final year of graduate studies and join a global community of more than 2,000 Siebel Scholars, researchers and entrepreneurs.

#Harvard #SEAS #HarvardSEAS #ComputerScience #SiebelScholars

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From student organizations and cultural groups to events, activities, and opportunities to connect, Engage makes it easy to discover what’s happening across our community.

Explore student activities, find groups that interest you, and get involved at Harvard Griffin GSAS!

👉 Check out Engage through the link in our bio.

#findyourcenter

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On a rainy Monday, stop by Lehman Hall to warm up, grab a coffee, or enjoy a hot rice bowl. Stay cozy!

#findyourcenter

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More than a billion people worldwide live with migraine, a debilitating neurological disorder associated with intense head pain, sensory sensitivity, and other complex symptoms that can last hours, days, or even weeks.

AJ Schick, a sixth-year Harvard Griffin GSAS PhD student in the chemical biology program at Harvard Medical School, who is working with HMS Professor Stephen Haggarty at Massachusetts General Hospital, aims to better understand the molecular mechanisms behind the condition and improve treatment options for patients.

By testing existing medications and other compounds in cell models, he hopes to identify the proteins and biological pathways that regulate the secretion of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), a molecule that causes many migraine symptoms. These discoveries could help move migraine treatment beyond trial and error toward therapies that more precisely target the disease’s underlying biology, offering relief to hundreds of millions of sufferers, including Schick’s own mother.

#HarvardGSAS #HarvardMed #migraine

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With the rapid rise of artificial intelligence in daily life, software coding has become increasingly automated, with powerful AI systems known as coding agents able to write and revise computer programs almost autonomously.

But what happens when an AI agent must contend not just with digital command lines, but with the physical world of robotics?

A team led by Harvard SEAS Professor Na Li and Professor Bo Dai at Georgia Tech have developed an evaluation tool known as a benchmark that tests how well AI coding agents can perform the challenging task of engineering an actual, physical robot.

The benchmark, called RLE-Bench, is like a standardized test for an AI robot learning engineer — a role that combines machine learning, robotics, control, software, and hardware.

The new benchmark contains 48 tasks for general-purpose coding agents, ranging from developing control and perception algorithms to designing robot hardware and interfaces.

“Benchmarks are important because they give the field a common measuring stick, allowing us to compare systems under the same conditions and identify where important capability gaps remain,” Li said. “Robotics already has many valuable benchmarks, but many focus primarily on learning and evaluating control policies. RLE-Bench takes a broader view. Can an AI system perform the range of engineering tasks required to make a robotic system actually work?”

The team includes Harvard graduate student Haitong Ma, and Chenxiao Gao and Rushi Qiang at Georgia Tech.

#HarvardSEAS #Harvard #computerscience #engineering #robotics #benchmark #software #codingagent #machine learning #artificialintelligence #AI #automation

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From modeling persistent pollutants to supporting climate policy, Charlotte Wagner uses quantitative tools to help address complex environmental challenges.

As a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Wagner works on models related to energy systems, agriculture, forests, water resources and resource resilience. The tools she has helped develop have been used by 34 countries to assess and plan how to meet their climate commitments.

“Models and tools are really the instruments that we can use to explore different policy pathways and think about which one is the most beneficial to take,” she said. “The core work is energy modeling, but I see myself in a lot of the greater goals that the program has: supporting sustainability, working with countries around the world, in particular lower- and middle-income countries, doing hands-on modeling, and working in lots of different topics as well.”

Her work brings together environmental science, policy and data-driven decision-making to help build a more sustainable and resilient future.

#Harvard #SEAS #HarvardSEAS #EnvironmentalEngineering #Stockholm #Institute #climate #environment #modeling Harvard SEAS alum Charlotte Wagner

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HBS PhD: Voices in Research spotlights the mentor-mentee relationships that drive innovation and shape future leaders.

Meet Professors Elie Ofek and Shunyuan Zhang and PhD student Magie Cheng from the joint HBS/Harvard Griffin GSAS program in Marketing, who are exploring the intersection of digital marketing, content marketing, and generative AI, studying how new AI-driven tools and methods are changing the way brands and consumers connect.

Learn more about this and other doctoral programs at HBS at the link in bio!

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Fitness landscape design (FLD) is a reality!
Thank you to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences! Read more at link in bio!

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Great to see faces old and new at our welcome evening info session and pizza social! Gotta carb load and then burn it all on the water 🔥 💪🏻 🍕

#harvard #boston #rowing #connecting

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