TBA

Towering icebergs, adrift in the polar oceans, have long captured our imagination: from the ominous iceberg that sank the Titanic to idioms of a large, hidden part, “the tip of the iceberg”. But are icebergs so mysterious? In this seminar we look at icebergs through the lenses of oceanographers, glaciologists, paleoclimatologists, artists and Arctic people.

We live in a world that is shaped by science and technology. As a modern citizen who will lead the U.S. and the world in the coming generation, we should be aware of the rapidly changing landscape of science and technology and be ready to participate in the decision-making processes for deploying these life-changing developments to the masses. In this freshman seminar, we will learn and debate contemporary topics that we encounter every day and use them as motivating examples to explore the underlying science, math, and engineering principles. Some of the issues that we will discuss include, but are not limited to, COVID-19 pandemic, the prosecutor’s fallacy, coronavirus pandemic, climate change, information technology, quantum technology, genomics revolution, and brain-machine interfaces. We will learn basic concepts in statistics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, information science, biomedical engineering, and nano-bio interfaces through these discussions. In this seminar course, the students will be asked to give presentations and participate in discussions and debates.

This seminar is clickbait vaccine to boost your critical thinking. It is designed to help you identify and refute misinformation, disinformation, and BS rampant on the internet. It will help you recognize sensationalism when science is communicated in the press. It will familiarize you with the main logical fallacies that students and scientists themselves are prone to. As a framework for discussion, we use Bergstrom and West's book "Calling Bullshit” along with supplemental readings.

The purpose of this course is to provide cognitive and heuristic tools to public health practitioners to be well prepared to plan for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the impact of health disasters precipitated by a variety of threats. The course will provide learners with an awareness of the wide-ranging collaborative processes necessary among public health and medical service providers, as well as cross sectoral dependencies on others such as energy, transportation, public safety, etc.

This course will challenge your assumptions about the world’s populations as you discover surprising similarities and unexpected differences between and within countries.

This course will examine major issues of water resources (i.e. water sources, supply, quality, treatment, use, distribution and storage, policy) in the developing world at various geographic locations and scales.

People and the Planet is a one-semester course with lecture, discussion, and engagement components primarily for second- and third-year Harvard College students seeking to understand the social side of climate change. Understanding the social side of climate change means shifting our attention from particles to people. We address such questions as: What is it about modern social life that has caused climate change? Why have societies responded so slowly to the climate crisis? What do social movements for environmental justice and climate justice contribute to climate mitigation and adaptation? How can people use social processes and organizations to adapt to life on a changing planet?

This winter session travel course will introduce students to the intersections of climate change, air quality and health for populations in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Students will apply epidemiological tools to examine environmental exposures and health vulnerabilities that are unique to this region.

In this course, we will explore the development of our modern food production and distribution system and its effects on our environment and planet. To explore the opportunities for and challenges to achieving a sustainable food system, we will critically review published studies and other assessments that evaluate the environmental and social impact of food-related products and processes.

This course examines the past, present, and future of the international humanitarian response system.

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the complexities of and best practices for community engaged/action research and collaboration. Students will integrate skills and knowledge from their environmental health training to address community interests/needs.