Think innovation, think Harvard engineering and applied sciences

The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is an epicenter of innovation, where finding practical solutions to real-world problems is at the heart of every degree program and research lab.  

At SEAS, researchers led by Conor Walsh have made and commercialized wearable robots that can help stroke survivors regain mobility and independence. Materials scientist and 3D printing expert Jennifer Lewis and her team have pioneered programmable assembly of functional and living matter, enabling printed electronics, vascularized human tissues and more. Steven Wofsy’s group developed spectroscopic imaging technology to power the world’s most advanced methane-tracking satellite, now orbiting Earth. And Joanna Aizenberg’s team has developed new materials inspired by nature, enhancing buildings with bio-inspired fluidic windows, and creating a building “skin” that can control indoor climate.

Fifteen years ago, Federico Capasso’s lab was seeking to disrupt centuries of lens-making technology and reported their first key insights into metasurface optics, a field that reimagines the reading and manipulation of light. Their breakthrough invention, the metalens, is a perfectly flat, thin lens composed of subwavelength nanostructures  that promises to replace or enhance conventional lens-based optics in cameras, sensors and mobile devices today.

SEAS’ culture of innovation existed long before its establishment in 2007 as a standalone Harvard school.

Among inventions associated with SEAS or its predecessors:

Keeping time: George Washington Pierce, who received his Harvard Ph.D. in 1900 and later taught here, is credited with inventing the quartz-crystal Pierce oscillator, which is the timekeeping element of quartz wristwatches. The device was also used to improve radio technology, greatly stabilizing radio transmissions and solving the problem of frequency drift, and it made multiple phone calls over a single line possible.

Wireless comms: Ronold W.P. King joined the Harvard engineering faculty in 1938. He is the designer of the inverted F-antenna, which he originally intended for missile telemetry, but today is the most widely used antenna in wireless communications and mobile phones.  

MRI: Physicist Edward Mills Purcell, who got his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1938 and later taught here, shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance in liquids and solids. In experiments with Robert Pound, Nicolaas Bloembergen and others, he demonstrated how the spinning nuclei inside atoms could be manipulated with an external magnet and used to read out chemical information. This fundamental breakthrough is the basis of today’s magnetic resonance imaging, which generates images from inside the body using radiation.

Virtual reality: Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Ivan Sutherland invented one of the earliest virtual reality headsets in 1968 with graduate student Bob Sproull. Sutherland is widely considered the father of computer graphics and went on to teach and mentor the likes of Edwin Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, and John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems.

Reeldown: During the early 1980s, SEAS atmospheric chemistry professor James Anderson led a groundbreaking project called Reeldown, a high-altitude balloon experiment that measured minute concentrations of ozone-depleting, human-made chemicals in the Earth’s stratosphere. His work led to the U.S. joining the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty banning chlorofluorocarbons.

For more on these and other inventions from SEAS, visit the school’s history and innovation timeline.