Origins Faculty member David Johnston awarded the Geological Society of America's 2013 Outstanding Contribution Award in the Geobiology and Geomicrobiology Division.

Read more at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences website.

Packing the Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history into a two-foot-by-three poster—roughly three-quarters of a billion years per square foot—is no easy task. Yet scientists from Harvard and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, Maryland, have teamed up to do just that with “Earth Evolution: The Intersection of Geology and Biology”—a graphic display (opposite) of how geological and biological processes have dynamically shaped and molded the world we inhabit.

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"How did life begin" Are we alone in the Universe? We are the first generation in history to ask those as scientific rather than philosophical questions says Andrew Knoll, professor of natural history at Harvard. The question: How did life begin on Earth is one of the big unsolved questions humanity has always asked. Biology has been very good at describing how living organisms work, but not very good at answering what life is or how it could emerge from a non-organic, non-living world.

Are the inhabitants of Earth the only life forms in the universe, or could life exist elsewhere? As astronomers rapidly identify exoplanets—those beyond our solar system—the question has been transformed from a science-fiction trope to one discussed in scientific journals and conferences.

And it quickly leads to another question: How did life start here on Earth? That question, says Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy and director of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard, “is one of the big unsolved questions humanity has always asked.” And yet for various reasons it has...

Awarded the 2012 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research for his co-discovery with Dr. Victor Ambros of microRNAs as central regulators of gene expression and development

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Named by the Sloan Foundation as a recipient of a 2013 Sloan Research Fellowship, recognizing “early-career scientists and scholars who represent the very best that science has to offer.”

Read more at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences web site.

Received the AAS’s 2013 Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award for his book, “How Did the First Stars and Galaxies Form?

Read more at the Department of Astronomy web site.

Awarded the 2013 Gast Lectureship bestowed by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society

Read the full EAG Article.

In this video interview with Bio-IT World editor Kevin Davies, Jack Szostak discusses his current research interests and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Read the full BioITWorld Article

NASA announced a problem on Wednesday that threatens to cripple one of its highest-profile missions, the Kepler Space Telescope, an instrument dedicated to finding Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has found 130 planets orbiting other stars and 2,500 planet candidates requiring further investigation. The space telescope has pulled back the veil on the true nature of the Milky Way, showing it to be a galaxy rich with planets, and potential homes for life outside of Earth.

Gazette staff writer Alvin Powell discussed the problem with one...

George M. Whitesides, and Robert S. Langer, were awarded the distinguished Industrial Research Institute Medal on May 22, as part of IRI’s 75th anniversary celebration in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in technological innovation that have contributed broadly to the development of industry and the benefit of society. Whitesides and Langer each received a gold medal.

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