Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is the engineering school of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.
It offers degrees in engineering and applied sciences to graduate students admitted directly to SEAS, and to undergraduates admitted first to Harvard College. Previously the Lawrence Scientific School and then the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the school assumed its current structure in 2007. The school was renamed after John Paulson in June 2015 following his US$400 million gift.
SEAS is housed in Harvard's Science and Engineering Complex in the Allston neighborhood of Boston directly across the Charles River from Harvard's main campus in Cambridge and adjacent to the Harvard Business School and Harvard Innovation Labs. The SEC was named "one of the healthiest lab buildings" with its LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge Petal Certification.
History
Lawrence Scientific School
Harvard's efforts to provide formal education in advanced science and engineering began in 1847, when Massachusetts industrialist Abbott Lawrence gave Harvard $50,000 to form what became known as the Lawrence Scientific School. In making his gift, Lawrence asked:James Emmanuel Jr. was the first dean of the school, which hosted astronomers, architects, naturalists, engineers, mathematicians, and even philosophers.
By the late 19th century, the School faced increasing competition from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was constrained by the uncertain views about its role and status by the long-serving Harvard President Charles William Eliot. Eliot was involved in at least five unsuccessful attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. As a result of such uncertainty, the Lawrence Scientific School became less of an independent entity, losing its influence and students to other parts of the university.
In 1891, the industrialist Gordon McKay designated the Lawrence Scientific School his primary beneficiary; there are now 40 McKay professorships.
In 1906, the Lawrence School's scientific and engineering programs were incorporated into Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and it ceased to exist as an independent entity.
Re-establishment
In 1914, a merger of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard's Applied Science departments was formally announcedand was to begin "when the Institute will occupy its splendid new buildings in Cambridge." However, in 1917, the merger with MIT was canceled due to a decision by the State Judicial Court, so Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell moved to establish the Harvard Engineering School independently instead.
In 1934, the School began offering graduate-level and professional programs in engineering. During World War II, Harvard participated in the V-12 Navy College Training Program to provide training for commissioned officers. In 1942, the undergraduate Department of Engineering Sciences changed to the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics to reflect an increased emphasis on applied physics. Harvard President James Bryant Conant created what was known as "Conant's Arsenal", a research hub for defense-related engineering projects including radar jamming, night vision, aerial photography, sonar, explosives, napalm, and atomic bomb research. One notable project from this era was the Harvard Mark I computer; one of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on March 29, 1944, by John von Neumann, who worked on the Manhattan Project at the time, and needed to determine whether implosion was a viable choice to detonate the atomic bomb that would be used a year later.
By 1945, Harvard income from government contracts was $33.5 million, the third highest among U.S. universities.
Later history
Between 1946 and 1949, the Graduate School of Engineering merged its faculty with the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Physics into the Division of Engineering Sciences within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It was renamed several times: Division of Applied Science, Division of Engineering and Applied Physics, Division of Applied Sciences, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. It was often informally called The Division.In 2007, the Harvard Corporation and Overseers voted for the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences to become the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
In 2015, Francis J. Doyle III, former director of the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, was appointed dean. In June 2015, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences was renamed the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences following a US$400 million gift by Harvard Business School alumnus John A. Paulson.
In 2020, the Science and Engineering Complex opened, expanding the school's floor space to over. Its location adjacent to the Enterprise Research Campus in synergy with Harvard Business School and Harvard Innovation Labs was intended to encourage technology and life science-focused startups as well as collaborations with mature companies.
Academic overview
Undergraduates can pursue programs in computer science, engineering sciences, biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, environmental science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and applied mathematics. BS options for environmental science and engineering as well as biomedical engineering are also available through the engineering sciences program; ABET accreditation is offered for engineering sciences, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering. Prospective undergraduates must apply to Harvard College : once enrolled, Harvard College students may declare a SEAS concentration in their sophomore year.At the graduate level, the School offers master's and PhD degrees in areas including applied mathematics, applied physics, bioengineering, data science, chemical engineering, computational science and engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, design engineering, applied computation, environmental science and engineering, materials science, and mechanical engineering. In addition, graduate students may pursue collaborative options such as medical engineering and medical physics and systems, synthetic, and quantitative biology.
The faculty has particularly close ties with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences departments of Physics, Earth and Planetary Science, Chemistry, and Chemical Biology. Areas of significant research focus include applied mathematics, applied physics, bioengineering, geophysics, computer science, electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering, and computational neuroscience.
Research highlights
Early 20th century
- 1919 – George Washington Pierce, Rumford Professor of Physics and director of Harvard's Cruft High-Tension Electrical Laboratory invented an oscillator that enabled a given radio station to stay "fixed" at a proper frequency and allowed multiple telephone calls to occur over a single line.
- 1938 – A cyclotron was constructed at the Graduate School of Engineering's Gordon McKay Engineering Laboratory to support research in biology and medicine as well as physics. It was projected to be the world's largest such facility. In 1942, it was sent to Los Alamos for work on the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb.
- 1944 – Howard Aiken '37 developed the Mark I series of computers, the first large-scale automatic digital computer in the U.S. Around the same time, a new generation of technically trained students began to share their knowledge well beyond Harvard's campus. Alumnus and donor Allen E. Puckett SB '39, SM '41 created an endowed professorship at SEAS, went on to define modern aerodynamics, served as CEO of Hughes Aircraft Company, and won the National Medal of Honor in Technology.
- 1952 – Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, the scientific foundation for MRI, was pioneered by Nicolaas Bloembergen, Edward Purcell, and Robert Pound. Purcell won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery.
1995 to 2006
- Stopping light – Lene Hau and her colleagues created a new form of matter, a Bose-Einstein Condensate, to slow light to 17 meters per second and later to bring a light beam to a complete stop, then restart it again.
- Unbreakable hyper-encryption – Michael O. Rabin embedded messages in rapidly moving streams of random digital bits in ways that cannot be decoded, even with unlimited computing power.
- Black silicon – Eric Mazur's group created a new material that efficiently traps light and has potential use in solar cells, global warming sensors and ultra-thin television screens.
- The mathematics of nature – L. Mahadevan and colleagues discovered how the Venus flytrap snaps up its prey in a mere tenth of a second by actively shifting the curved shape of its mouth-like leaves.
- Atmospheric modeling – Loretta J. Mickley, Dan Jacob and colleagues found that the frequency of cold fronts bringing cool, clear air out of Canada during the summer months declined by about 20 percent. These cold fronts are responsible for breaking up the hot, stagnant air that builds up regularly in summer, generating high levels of ground level ozone pollution.
- High speed nanowire circuits – Donhee Ham and Charles Lieber made robust circuits from minuscule nanowires that align themselves on a chip of glass during low-temperature fabrication, creating rudimentary electronic devices that offer performance without high-temperature production or high-priced silicon.
- Double emulsions – A new microfluidics-based device made by David A. Weitz and colleagues at Harvard University and Unilever makes precisely controlled double emulsions in a single step. Double emulsions, or droplets inside droplets, could be useful for encapsulating products such as drugs, cosmetics, or food additives.