The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is the

engineering school Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve systems. Modern engineering comprises many subfiel ...

within

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offering degrees in engineering and applied sciences to graduate students admitted directly to SEAS, and to undergraduates admitted first to

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

. Previously the Lawrence Scientific School and then the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Paulson School assumed its current structure in 2007. David C. Parkes has been its dean since 2023. SEAS is housed in Harvard's Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) in the Allston neighborhood of Boston directly across the

Charles River The Charles River (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ), sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles, is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Hopkinton to Boston along a highly me ...

from Harvard's main campus in Cambridge and adjacent to the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

and

Harvard Innovation Labs Harvard Innovation Labs (i-Lab) is an institution which aims to promote team-based and entrepreneurial activities among Harvard students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and members of the Allston and Greater Boston communities. The i-Lab has incubated ...

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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) and was constrained by the uncertain views about its role and status by the long-serving Harvard President

Charles William Eliot Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, the longest term of any Harvard president. A member of the prominent Eliot family (America), Eliot fam ...

. 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 Gordon McKay (1821–1903) was an American businessman and philanthropist. An important figure in the mechanization of the shoe industry, his most lucrative idea was to lease his "McKay machines" rather than selling them outright, collecting a ...

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

and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and it ceased to exist as an independent entity.

Re-establishment

In 1914, a merger of

and Harvard's Applied Science departments was formally announced and 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 Abbott Lawrence Lowell (December 13, 1856 – January 6, 1943) was an American educator and legal scholar. He was president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933. With an "aristocratic sense of mission and self-certainty," Lowell cut a large ...

moved to establish the Harvard Engineering School independently instead.President's Reports for 1917-18 In 1934, the School began offering graduate-level and professional programs in engineering. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Harvard participated in the

V-12 Navy College Training Program The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1946, more than 125,000 participants were enrolled in 131 colleg ...

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 James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard in 191 ...

created what was known as "Conant's Arsenal", a research hub for defense-related engineering projects including

radar jamming Radar jamming and deception is a form of electronic countermeasures (ECMs) that intentionally sends out radio frequency signals to interfere with the operation of radar by saturating its receiver with noise or false information. Concepts that blan ...

, night vision, aerial photography,

sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances ( ranging), communicate with or detect objects o ...

, explosives, napalm, and

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission or atomic bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear weapon), producing a nuclear expl ...

research. One notable project from this era was the

Harvard Mark I The Harvard Mark I, or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), was one of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers used in the war effort during the last part of World War II. One of the first programs to run on th ...

computer; one of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on March 29, 1944, by

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

, who worked on the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

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 The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is the largest of the ten faculties that constitute Harvard University. Headquartered principally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and centered in the historic Harvard Yard, FAS is the only faculty respo ...

. It was renamed several times: Division of Applied Science (1951), Division of Engineering and Applied Physics (1955), Division of Applied Sciences (1975), Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (1996). 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 (SEAS). In 2015, Francis J. Doyle III, former director of the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, was appointed dean. That year, the school was also renamed the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences following a $400 million gift by

alumnus John A. Paulson.

Academic overview

Undergraduates can pursue programs in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

(AB and as a secondary field), engineering sciences (AB and SB), biomedical engineering (AB), electrical engineering (SB), environmental science and engineering (AB), mechanical engineering (SB), and

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

(AB and as a secondary field). SB options for environmental science and engineering as well as biomedical engineering are also available through the engineering sciences program; ABET accreditation is offered for all of the traditional engineering disciplines. Prospective undergraduates must apply to

(Harvard's undergraduate college encompassing all concentrations): 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 Biological engineering or bioengineering is the application of principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible, economically viable products. Biological engineering employs knowledge and expertise from a number ...

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, stru ...

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of the operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials ...

, computational science and engineering, computer science,

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, design engineering, applied computation, environmental science and engineering, as well as

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

and

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...

. In addition, graduate students may pursue collaborative options such as Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (with Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology) and Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology (with

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

). As of January 2020, the School had 148 faculty members. The faculty has particularly close ties (including joint appointments) with the FAS departments of Physics, Earth and Planetary Science, as well as Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The campus provides of interconnected labs, classrooms, clusters, and offices in six buildings. SEAS is expected to expand into the new Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) under construction in Allston, across the Charles River from Harvard's main location in Cambridge. The SEC will be adjacent to the Enterprise Research Campus in synergy with

and

to encourage technology- and life science-focused startups as well as collaborations with mature companies. 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 (PhD, 1900), 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 A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Januar ...

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

to develop an atomic bomb. *1944 – Howard Aiken '37 (PhD) developed the

Mark I Mark I or Mark 1 often refers to the first version of a weapon or military vehicle, and is sometimes used in a similar fashion in civilian product development. In some instances, the Arabic numeral "1" is substituted for the Roman numeral "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 The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of the Hughes Tool Company. The company produced the Hughes H-4 Hercules air ...

, and won the National Medal of Honor in Technology. *1952 –

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are disturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...

(NMR), the scientific foundation for MRI (used in modern medical imaging systems), was pioneered by

Nicolaas Bloembergen Nicolaas Bloembergen (March 11, 1920 – September 5, 2017) was a Dutch- American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a ...

, Edward Purcell, and Robert Pound. Purcell won the 1952

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

for this discovery.

1995 to 2006

*Stopping light –

Lene Hau Lene Vestergaard Hau (; born November 13, 1959) is a Danish physicist and educator. She is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics at Harvard University. In 1999, she led a Harvard University team who, by use of a Bose–E ...

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 Michael Oser Rabin (; born September 1, 1931) is an Israeli mathematician, computer scientist, and recipient of the Turing Award. Biography Early life and education Rabin was born in 1931 in Breslau, Germany (today Wrocław, in Poland), th ...

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 Unilever PLC () is a British multinational consumer packaged goods company headquartered in London, England. It was founded on 2 September 1929 following the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie with British soap maker Lever B ...

makes precisely controlled double

emulsion An emulsion is a mixture of two or more liquids that are normally Miscibility, immiscible (unmixable or unblendable) owing to liquid-liquid phase separation. Emulsions are part of a more general class of two-phase systems of matter called colloi ...

s in a single step. Double emulsions, or droplets inside droplets, could be useful for encapsulating products such as drugs, cosmetics, or food additives.

2007 and beyond

*Applied physicist

caused a light pulse disappeared from one cold cloud then was retrieved from another cloud nearby. In the process, light was converted into matter then back into light. *A research team led by Mike Aziz and Earth and Planetary Sciences' Kurt House invented an engineered weathering process that might

mitigate climate change Climate change mitigation (or decarbonisation) is action to limit the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. Climate change mitigation actions include energy conservation, conserving energy and Fossil fuel phase-out, repl ...

. *Bioengineers including David Edwards collaborated with public health researchers at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

to develop a novel spray-drying method for delivering a

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

vaccine that could help prevent the related spread of

HIV/AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

in the developing world. *Working with a team of Dutch researchers and software developers, SEAS computer scientists used a novel peer-to-peer video sharing application to explore a model for e-commerce that uses bandwidth as a global currency. *Rob Wood's team launched a robotic fly that could be used in everything from surveillance to chemical sensing. *MIT's ''

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'' named the creation of light-focusing optical antennas (that could lead to DVDs that hold hundreds of movies) as one of their Top 10 emerging technologies for 2007. *Kit Parker's lab found that an elastic film coated with a single layer of cardiac muscle cells can semi-autonomously engage in lifelike gripping, pumping, walking and swimming. *Nan Sun and Donhee Ham built what may be the smallest complete nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system to date in a package. *Engineers and applied physicists demonstrated the first room-temperature electrically pumped

semiconductor laser The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD or semiconductor laser or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a diode p ...

source of terahertz (THz) radiation, also known as T-rays. *A team composed of Harvard students and alumni was among the winners of the World Bank's Lighting Africa 2008 Development Marketplace competition, held in Accra, Ghana. The innovation,

microbial fuel cell Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a type of bioelectrochemical fuel cell system also known as micro fuel cell that generates electric current by diverting electrons produced from the microbial oxidation of reduced compounds (also known as fuel or ele ...

-based lighting systems suitable for Sub-Saharan Africa, netted the group a $200,000 prize. *In collaboration with SiEnergy Systems, materials scientists at SEAS have demonstrated the first macro-scale thin-film solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC). *An interdisciplinary research effort investigated digitized

text corpus In linguistics and natural language processing, a corpus (: corpora) or text corpus is a dataset, consisting of natively digital and older, digitalized, language resources, either annotated or unannotated. Annotated, they have been used in corp ...

es containing about 4% of all books ever printed in English, between 1800 and 2000. It was co-founded and co-directed by Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, whose prototype was instrumental in creating

Google Ngram Viewer The Google Books Ngram Viewer is an online search engine that charts the frequencies of any set of search strings using a yearly count of ''n''-grams found in printed sources published between 1500 and 2022 in Google's text corpora in English, ...

Notable alumni

Howard H. Aiken Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a pioneer in computing. He was the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I, the United States' first programmable computer. Biography ...

(AM '37, PhD '39) - computer scientist and designer of the

* Hardy Cross (MCE '11) - American structural engineer and developer of the moment distribution method for

structural analysis Structural analysis is a branch of solid mechanics which uses simplified models for solids like bars, beams and shells for engineering decision making. Its main objective is to determine the effect of loads on physical structures and their c ...

statically indeterminate In statics and structural mechanics, a structure is statically indeterminate when the equilibrium equations force and moment equilibrium conditions are insufficient for determining the internal forces and reactions on that structure. Mathemati ...

structures * Howard Wilson Emmons (PhD '38) - mechanical engineer considered "the father of modern fire science" for his contribution to the understanding of flame propagation and fire dynamics, helped design the first

supersonic wind tunnel A supersonic wind tunnel is a wind tunnel that produces supersonic speeds (1.2

, identified a signature of the transition to

turbulence In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers with no disruption between ...

boundary layer In physics and fluid mechanics, a boundary layer is the thin layer of fluid in the immediate vicinity of a Boundary (thermodynamic), bounding surface formed by the fluid flowing along the surface. The fluid's interaction with the wall induces ...

flows (now known as "Emmons spots"), and was the first to observe

compressor stall A compressor stall is a local disruption of the airflow in the compressor of a gas turbine or turbocharger. A stall that results in the complete disruption of the airflow through the compressor is referred to as a compressor surge. The severity o ...

in a gas turbine compressor *

Simon Newcomb Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadians, Canadian–Americans, American astronomer, applied mathematician, and autodidactic polymath. He served as Professor of Mathematics in the United States Navy and at Johns Hopkins ...

(SB 1858) - Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and a leader in mathematical astronomy *

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...

(SB 1862) - known as the "father of

pragmatism Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics� ...

" *

Trip Adler John R. "Trip" Adler III is an American tech executive who has served as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Created by Humans since 2024. Previously, he co-founded Scribd in 2007, where he seved as the CEO until 2023. Early life and educatio ...

(AB '06) -

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

and co-founder of digital library and document sharing platform

Scribd Scribd Inc. (pronounced ) operates three primary platforms: Scribd, Everand, and SlideShare. Scribd is a digital document library that hosts over 195 million documents. Everand is a digital content subscription service offering a wide selectio ...

* Robert Berger (PhD '65) - invented the first

aperiodic tiling An aperiodic tiling is a non-periodic Tessellation, tiling with the additional property that it does not contain arbitrarily large periodic regions or patches. A set of tile-types (or prototiles) is aperiodic set of prototiles, aperiodic if copie ...

Fred Brooks Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing development of IBM's System/360 family of mainframe computers and the ...

(PhD '56) -

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in the fi ...

winner, managed the development of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

family of computers and the

OS/360 OS/360, officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System, is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer, announced in 1964; it was influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB a ...

software support package, and wrote about the process in the well-regarded book ''

The Mythical Man-Month ''The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering'' is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a s ...

'' *

Don Coppersmith Don Coppersmith (born 1950) is a cryptographer and mathematician. He was involved in the design of the Data Encryption Standard block cipher at IBM, particularly the design of the S-boxes, strengthening them against differential cryptanalysis. ...

(SM '75, PhD '77) - developed Coppersmith-Winograd algorithm for rapid

matrix multiplication In mathematics, specifically in linear algebra, matrix multiplication is a binary operation that produces a matrix (mathematics), matrix from two matrices. For matrix multiplication, the number of columns in the first matrix must be equal to the n ...

* Danny Cohen (PhD '69) - internet pioneer, developed the first real-time visual flight simulator and the Cohen-Sutherland

line clipping In computer graphics, line clipping is the process of removing ( clipping) lines or portions of lines outside an area of interest (a viewport or view volume). Typically, any part of a line which is outside of the viewing area is removed. There ...

algorithm * E. Allen Emerson (PhD '81) -

winner for developing

model checking In computer science, model checking or property checking is a method for checking whether a finite-state model of a system meets a given specification (also known as correctness). This is typically associated with hardware or software syst ...

* John Fawcett (AB '99) - entrepreneur and co-founder of

hedge fund A hedge fund is a Pooling (resource management), pooled investment fund that holds Market liquidity, liquid assets and that makes use of complex trader (finance), trading and risk management techniques to aim to improve investment performance and ...

software companies Tamale Software and Quantopian * Danielle Feinberg (AB '96) -

cinematographer The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the recording of a film, television production, music video or other live-action piece. The cinematographer is the chief of the camera ...

and Director of Photography for Lighting at

Pixar Animation Studios Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney S ...

* Shih Choon Fong (PhD '73) - founding president of the

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; ') is a Private university, private research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 2009, the university provides research and graduate training programs in English ...

* Paul Graham (SM '88, PhD '90) -

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

cofounder, introduced the Blub paradox * Jesse Grupper (born 1997) - Olympic

rock climber Rock climbing is a climbing sports discipline that involves ascending routes consisting of natural rock in an outdoor environment, or on artificial resin climbing walls in a mostly indoor environment. Routes are documented in guidebooks, and ...

* Martha Crawford Heitzmann (PhD '97) - former head of research at French

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

conglomerate

Areva Areva S.A. was a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power, active between 2001 and 2018. It was headquartered in Courbevoie, France. Before its 2016 corporate restructuring, Areva was majority-owned by the French state through t ...

, senior vice president of research at

L'Oréal L'Oréal S.A. () is a French multinational personal care corporation registered in Paris

Tony Hsieh Anthony Hsieh ( ; December 12, 1973November 27, 2020) was an American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He retired as the CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos in August 2020 after 21 years. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsi ...

(AB '95) - internet entrepreneur and

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

of online shoe and clothing shop

Zappos Zappos.com is an American online shoe and clothing retailer based in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. The company was founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn and launched under the domain name Shoesite.com. In July 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos in an ...

* Marco Iansiti (AB '83, PhD '88) - microelectronics engineer and

professor * Kenneth E. Iverson (PhD '54) -

winner for developing the

APL programming language APL (named after the book ''A Programming Language'') is a programming language developed in the 1960s by Kenneth E. Iverson. Its central datatype is the multidimensional array. It uses a large range of special graphic symbols to represent m ...

* Richard M. Karp (AB '55, PhD '59) -

winner for contributions to the theory of

NP-complete In computational complexity theory, NP-complete problems are the hardest of the problems to which ''solutions'' can be verified ''quickly''. Somewhat more precisely, a problem is NP-complete when: # It is a decision problem, meaning that for any ...

ness * Iris Mack (PhD '86) - applied mathematician in

quantitative finance Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling in the financial field. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that requ ...

, MIT professor, and author *

Marvin Minsky Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist, cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ...

(AB '50) -

winner for co-founding the field of

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

Robert Tappan Morris Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet. Morris was prosecuted for releasing th ...

(AB '87, SM '93, PhD '99) - creator of the

Morris Worm The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, is one of the oldest computer worms distributed via the Internet, and the first to gain significant mainstream media attention. It resulted in the first felony conviction in the US under the ...

, the first

computer worm A computer worm is a standalone malware computer program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. It often uses a computer network to spread itself, relying on security failures on the target computer to access it. It will ...

on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

and first person convicted under the

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Prior ...

, co-founded Y-Combinator, professor at MIT *

Dennis Ritchie Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (September 9, 1941 – October 12, 2011) was an American computer scientist. He created the C programming language and the Unix operating system and B language with long-time colleague Ken Thompson. Ritchie and Thomp ...

(AB '63, PhD '68) -

winner, created the

C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

and Unix operating system * Don Ross (PhD '53) - recipient of the

Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award {{infobox military award , name = , image = DON Distinguished Civilian Service.png , image_size = 100px , caption = Department of the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal , presenter = Depart ...

, made important developments in reduction of submarine noise *

Donald Rubin Donald Bruce Rubin (born December 22, 1943) is an Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, where he chaired the department of Statistics for 13 years. He also works at Tsinghua University in China and at Temple University in Philad ...

(SM '66, PhD '70) - statistician known for the

Rubin Causal Model The Rubin causal model (RCM), also known as the Neyman–Rubin causal model, is an approach to the statistical analysis of cause and effect based on the framework of potential outcomes, named after Donald Rubin. The name "Rubin causal model" was ...

Steven Salzberg Steven Lloyd Salzberg (born 1960) is an American computational biologist and computer scientist who is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, where he is al ...

(PhD '89) - computational biologist who made significant contributions to gene finding and

sequence alignment In bioinformatics, a sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein to identify regions of similarity that may be a consequence of functional, structural biology, structural, or evolutionary relationships between ...

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

algorithms, notably

GLIMMER In bioinformatics, GLIMMER (Gene Locator and Interpolated Markov ModelER) is used to gene prediction, find genes in prokaryotic DNA. "It is effective at finding genes in bacteria, archea, viruses, typically finding 98-99% of all relatively long ge ...

MUMmer Mummers were bands of men and women from the medieval to early modern era who (during public festivities) dressed in fantastic clothes and costumes and serenaded people outside their houses, or joined the party inside. Costumes were varied and mi ...

, and

Bowtie The bow tie or dicky bow is a type of neckwear, distinguishable from a necktie because it does not drape down the shirt placket, but is tied just underneath a winged collar. A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also ...

Alfred Spector Alfred Zalmon Spector is an American computer scientist and research manager. He is a Professor of Practice in the MIT EECS Department and was previously CTO of Two Sigma Investments. Before that, he was Vice President of Research and Special Ini ...

(AB '76) - co-founder of

Transarc Transarc Corporation was a private Pittsburgh-based software company founded in 1989 by Jeffrey Eppinger, Michael L. Kazar, Alfred Spector, and Dean Thompson of Carnegie Mellon University. Transarc commercialized the Andrew File System (AFS), ...

, former vice president of research at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, and CTO of

Two Sigma Investments Two Sigma Investments, LP is an American hedge fund headquartered in New York City. It uses a variety of technological methods, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and distributed computing, for its trading strategies. The fir ...

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

(AB '74) - founder of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

* Guy L. Steele Jr. (AB '75) - made significant contributions to the design and documentation of several

programming languages A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features ...

Marius Vassiliou Marius Vassiliou (born 1957) is an American computational scientist, geophysicist, and aerospace executive. He is also an authority on the history of petroleum. Vassiliou is of Greek Cypriot descent and was educated at Harvard University and t ...

(AB '78) - computational physicist known for introducing Rokhlin's

fast multipole method __NOTOC__ The fast multipole method (FMM) is a numerical technique that was developed to speed up the calculation of long-ranged forces in the ''n''-body problem. It does this by expanding the system Green's function using a multipole expansion, ...

to computational electromagnetics * An Wang (PhD '48) - invented

magnetic core memory In computing, magnetic-core memory is a form of random-access memory. It predominated for roughly 20 years between 1955 and 1975, and is often just called core memory, or, informally, core. Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magneti ...

Stephanie Wilson Stephanie Diana Wilson (born September 27, 1966)Laura Woodmansee, ed. ''Women Astronauts.'' (2002). Burlington, Ont.: Apogee Books. . p. 131. is an American engineer and a NASA astronaut. She flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions a ...

(SB '88) -

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a List of human spaceflight programs, human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spa ...

*Jane Willis (AB '91, JD '94) - member of the MIT Blackjack Team *Tai Tsun Wu (SM '54, PhD '56) - physicist known for significant contributions in high-energy nuclear physics and statistical mechanics *Harold Zirin (SB '50, PhD '53) - astrophysicist known as "Captain Corona"

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Harvard School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences Engineering universities and colleges in Massachusetts Universities and colleges established in 1847 Harvard University schools, Engineering Universities and colleges in Cambridge, Massachusetts University subdivisions in Massachusetts 1847 establishments in Massachusetts Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer science institutes