Computing Science

COVID-19 has now forced most of us into our homes for weeks. A recent study highlighted the importance of staying at home in these crucial times, even if you’re feeling well: people with mild, limited or even no symptoms at all were estimated to have…

A machine learning algorithm trained using 500,000 genetic profiles can predict the height of an individual within about one inch based solely on their genes. Such an algorithm shows great promise for accurate risk assessment of complex diseases and…

As kids, we are taught about the existence of prime numbers: numbers that are only divisible by themselves and one. The first few are easy to recognize just by counting: two, three, five… But the larger the counting goes, the less obvious the prime. The…

We cannot predict how long we each live, but can our genes? For as long as longevity has been a desirable good, it has never been equally distributed across humanity, not even within families. The role of heritable traits in longevity is still debated.…

Qubits, the quantum analog of a digital bit, are envisioned as the building blocks of the future of computation. The quantum bit is special because of its ability to be in simultaneous values of 0 and 1, while digital bits can only be a 0 or a 1, not…

This is a short video of a robot in the Kishony and Springer labs at Harvard Medical School. We often conduct experiments that require watching what happens to microbes in a variety of conditions over time. This custom configured and programmed machine…

Presented by Anjali Tripathi How many planets are there? What are they like? In this lecture, we will talk about the variety of planets that are found beyond the Solar System. These so-called exoplanets have been discovered near and far, throughout…

Presented by Jessica Kunke, Lei Zhu, Stephen Portillo The natural world is so complex and unpredictable that it might seem math could never be a sufficient tool to understand it.  Our lecture aims to widen this view of math and explore how mathematical…

Presented by Diego Munoz, Michael Long, and Amanda Peters Randles Scientific evidence indicates that the laws of physics are the same in systems throughout the entire Universe – whether those systems be microscopic, or intergalactic. Thus, the same…

The Turing Centenary Conference was held this June at Cambridge University. Cambridge had special significance for Alan Turing, as he spent his formative undergraduate years there and returned there shortly after his PhD. The conference brought together…