The Harvard University Origins of Life Initiative is an interdisciplinary center unlike any other in the world. It studies everything from planet formation and detection to the origin and early evolution of life. The Initiative's research forms a natural bridge between the physical and the life sciences and has become a focus for integrative undergraduate and graduate student science education at Harvard.

From the 2010 Decadal Survey New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, conducted by the National Research Council:

"This decade of dedicated preparatory work is needed so that, one day, parents and children could gaze at the sky and know that a place somewhat like home exists around "THAT" star, where life might be gaining a toehold somewhere along the long and precarious evolutionary process that led, on Earth, to humankind. And perhaps it is staring back at us!"

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