RESEARCH CENTERS
We are home to multidisciplinary and innovative research centers, including two NSF-sponsored sites, and institutes. The University is also part of an integrated partnership, called the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), comprised of thirteen user facilities, led by Cornell and Stanford, that provide opportunities for nanoscience and nanotechnology research.
At Harvard, the NNIN provides expertise in soft lithography and assembly, and computation. The NNIN was funded by the NSF in January 2004.
You can learn more information about each center or institute by visiting its website.
Core Centers and institutes
Center for Nanoscale Systems
The Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), formerly known as the Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures (CIMS), was created by FAS in 1999 to assist and support the research community of Harvard University researchers and collaborators. The inclusion of CNS in the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN) in 2004 has expanded that function to include any and all other members of the larger research community both local and national, academic and non-academic who conduct research in any aspect of the large and growing field of nanoscale science. CNS is also involved in the planning and design of the Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering (LISE) new building project.Harvard Center for Microfluidic and Plasmonic Systems
The Harvard Center for Microfluidic and Plasmonic Systems (MIPS) brings together researchers in microfluidics, nanofabrication, biosensors, plasmon devices, optoelectronics, bottom-up nanofabrication and plasmonic fluorescent sensors. Recent dramatic advances in surface plasmon (SP) technologies present new opportunities in MEMS/NEMS devices such as microfluidic systems. The Harvard MIPS Center has been recently formed with support and funding from industry groups and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).Harvard Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering
The Harvard Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (HIBIE) was founded based on the recognition that boundaries between living and non-living systems are breaking down as a result of recent revolutionary advances in engineering, nanotechnology, molecular cell biology, and computer science. This convergence of engineering, the physical sciences, and the life sciences is creating exciting new possibilities for medicine and our broader industrial society. HIBIE will create an unparalleled multidisciplinary research and educational environment in order to expand our understanding of the engineering principles that nature uses to build living things, and to harness these insights to create biologically inspired materials, devices, and control technologies to address unmet medical needs worldwide.
Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology
The Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology (KIBST) seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the functioning of life and biology at the nanoscale level. The Institute: brings together a wide range of scientists, including physicists, engineers, chemists, biologists as well as HMS clinicians to address fundamental questions about the behavior and functioning of biological systems; allows biologists, engineers, and clinicians to potentially use such knowledge to foster applications and new technologies; and provides a way for the tool-developers (physicists, engineers, computer scientists) to work with the tool-users (biologists, chemists, clinicians) in the early stages of scientific inquiry and encourage scientific collaboration at the innovation stage of tool development.Materials Research Science and Engineering Center
The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Harvard is one of eleven such centers sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The Center is the focus of interdisciplinary research at the University. The participants of the MRSEC are drawn from five areas, including the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS); the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (Chemistry), Physics, Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS); and the Medical School (HMS). The center is organized into three Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGS): IRG 1: Multiscale Mechanics of Films and Interfaces, IRG 2: Engineering Materials and Techniques for Biological Studies at Cellular Scales, and IRG 3: Interface-Mediated Assembly of Soft Materials.Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center
The Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC) is a collaboration among Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the Museum of Science in Boston with participation by Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), the University of Tokyo (Japan), and Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory. This Center combines "top down" and "bottom up" approaches to construct novel electronic and magnetic devices with nanoscale sizes and understand their behavior, including quantum phenomena.
The Center for Research in Computation and Society
The Center for Research in Computation and Society (CRCS) was founded to develop a new generation of ideas and technologies designed to address some of society's most vexing problems. The Center brings computer scientists together with economists, psychologists, legal scholars, ethicists, neuroscientists, and other academic colleagues across the University and throughout the world, to address fundamental computational problems that cross disciplines, and to create new technologies informed by societal constraints to address those problems. Related Initiatives and Institutes
Harvard University Center for the Environment
The Harvard University Center for the Environment (HUCE) encourages research and education about the environment and its many interactions with human society. The Center draws its strength from faculty members and students across the University who make up a remarkable intellectual community of scholars, researchers, and teachers of diverse fields including chemistry, earth and planetary sciences, engineering and applied sciences, biology, public health and medicine, government, business, economics, religion, and the law. The most pressing problems facing our natural environment are complex, often requiring collaborative investigation by scholars versed in different disciplines. By connecting scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, the Center for the Environment seeks to raise the quality of environmental research at Harvard and beyond.
The Initiative in Innovative Computing
The Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) fosters the creative use of computational resources to address issues at the forefront of data-intensive science. Focusing on interdisciplinary collaborations that span traditional academic boundaries, the IIC fosters the flow of ideas and inventions along the continuum from basic science to scientific computation to computational science to computer science.
The Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering
The Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) is a newHarvard Science and Technology Initiative, established in 2006,supported by the Provost's Office and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Mission of the IQSE is to foster cross-disciplinary research and education in new areas at the intersection of nanoscience, atomic physics, device engineering and computer science, that in various ways seeks to apply principles of quantum mechanics to advanced technologies. The Institute is currently virtual, though plans for a home for the IQSE in the Pierce-Lyman-Cruft-LISE complex are being developed. IQSE programs include seed support for new research initiatives, a fellowship program, support for long and short term visitors, and support for conferences on related topics at Harvard.
The Microbial Sciences Initiative
The Microbial Sciences Initiative (MSI) at Harvard is an interdisciplinary science program aimed at a comprehensive understanding of the richest biological reservoir of the planet, the microbial world. Microbes are ubiquitous and have an impact on every aspect of our existence. Yet, their intrinsic invisibility has meant that they have remained largely unknown, their effects and enormous potential often unrecognized. The recent realization of the vastness of microbial diversity and the genomics revolution have propelled the microbial sciences into an exciting new era of investigation.
The Rowland Institute
The Rowland Institute at Harvard is dedicated to experimental science over a broad range of disciplines. Current research is carried out in physics, chemistry, and biology, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary work and the development of new experimental tools. The Institute is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts near the Longfellow Bridge over the Charles River, a few miles downstream from the main campus. The Institute was originally founded by the late Edwin H. Land in 1980 as The Rowland Institute for Science, a privately endowed, nonprofit, basic research organization, conceived to advance science in a wide variety of fields. Currently members of the Institute are performing research in several areas of physics, chemistry and biology.