Sponsored Research (FY 2010)

Income from sponsored research showed a 22 percent increase over fiscal 2009. This is all the more remarkable as sponsored research revenues had declined in 2009 for the first time in many years.

Part of the funding increase was due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). SEAS faculty members received 12 ARRA awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Energy (DoE). These awards totaled $13,977,048 to be spent from fiscal 2010 through early fiscal 2015. The majority, though, will be spent from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2012. Even without the ARRA funding, year-over-year increase in federal funding remained very healthy at 8.2 percent.

Federally sponsored research funding was not the only source of the overall increase; funding from non-federal sources rose from $5.8 million to $8.5 million (a 47 percent increase). Federal funding represented by far the largest contributor to overall sponsored research funding and accounted for 80 percent of such revenue in 2010, down from 85 percent in 2009.  SEAS faculty submitted 216 proposals for a total funding request of $198 million. NSF continued to be the most important federal (and overall) funding source, followed by DoD, NIH, and NASA. On the non-federal side, BASF was the largest source of research funding, representing 33 percent of the total non-federal spending in fiscal 2010, followed by GlaxoSmithKline and Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC).

Awards, Honors, & Milestones

Select Awards

• Harvard College Professorships (Lewis, Mazur, Shieber, Seltzer)
• MacArthur Award (Hau, Mahadevan, Schrag)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (Mahadevan)
• King Faisal Award (Capasso)
• George Ledlie Prize (Hau, Mahadevan, Brenner)
• Technology Review TR 35 Innovators List (Ham, Tarokh, Wood)
• Turing Award (Rabin, Valiant)
• Dan David Prize (Rabin)
• Nevanlinna Prize (Valiant)
  
• Nobel Prize (Bloembergen, Van Vleck (deceased))

Academies

National Academy of Engineering (NAE), as of July 2010

• Roger W. Brockett
• Federico Capasso
• David R. Clarke
• David A. Edwards
• Barbara J. Grosz
• Yu-Chi Ho
• Evelyn L. Hu
• John W. Hutchinson
• H. T. Kung
• Prof. David J. Mooney
• Dr. Cherry A. Murray
• Venkatesh Narayanamurti
• James R. Rice
• Frans Spaepen
• Zhigang Suo

National Academy of Sciences (NAS), as of July 5, 2011

• Steven Wofsy
• David Weitz
  
• Leslie Valiant
• James Rice
  
• Michael Rabin
  
• David Nelson
  
• Cherry Murray
• Paul Martin
• Charles Lieber
  
• John Hutchinson
• Evelyn Hu
• Richard Goody
  
• Federico Capasso
• Michael Brenner
  
• James Anderson

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as of November 2010

• Frederick H. Abernathy
• James G. Anderson
• Nicolaas Bloembergen
• William H. Bossert
• Federico Capasso
• Barbara Grosz
• Lene Vestergaard Hau
• Evelyn L. Hu
• John W. Hutchinson
• Charles M. Lieber
• Paul C. Martin
• Michael B. McElroy
•  Cherry A. Murray
• Venkatesh Narayanamurti
• David R. Nelson
• Anthony G. Oettinger
• Michael O. Rabin
• James R. Rice
• Patrick Thaddeus
• David A. Weitz
• Tai T. Wu

Milestones

From the invention of baking powder to the development of one of the first electromechanical computers to the first flight of a robotic fly, engineers and applied scientists at Harvard have and are continuing to make major contributions to the field.

National Research Council Rankings

Doctoral Programs (ranked in 2010, covering data from 2001-2006, revised rankings)

The "R-rankings" are regression-based and have a reputational component. Faculty raters were asked to rank the programs they reviewed. These rankings were then regressed against the 20 key variables that went into the rating. For every program, 500 regressions were run, and 500 ordinal rankings were thus derived. The 5th percentile is the value of the ranking at that point in the distribution, as is the 95th. We can say with 90% confidence that the true ranking falls inside this interval.

The "S-rankings" are constructed differently. Faculty respondents were asked to identify the most important of every one of the 20 key variables. Weightings for every variable were derived based on that identification. Programs were then ranked on every program’s value of those 20 variables, weighted accordingly. The 5th – 95th percentile measures represent the 90% confidence interval for the true ranking of the program.

• Applied Mathematics
• R Ranking Range: 7 (5th percentile) - 21 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 2 (95th percentile) - 8 (95th percentile)
• Applied Physics
• R Ranking Range: 2 (5th percentile) - 10 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 1 (5th percentile) - 7 (95th percentile)
• Computer Sciences
• R Ranking Range: 10 (5th percentile) - 35 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 4 (95th percentile) - 28 (95th percentile)
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• R Ranking Range: 2 (5th percentile) - 12 (95th percentile)
• S Ranking Range: 1 (95th percentile) - 3 (95th percentile)

Notes: These data, while valuable, do not reflect the state of SEAS today (e.g., since the survey was completed in 2006, SEAS has had over a dozen new faculty hires; increased diversity among the student, faculty, and staff populations, and reported record-high levels of sponsored research dollars). In fact, the rankings took place before the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences transitioned to a school. Further, as SEAS does not have traditional departments and is closely tied with programs through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (with more than 30% of our faculty being joint appointments) it is wise to look at related programs (e.g., Physics, Mathematics, Biology, etc.) in addition to the programs represented above.

Access the full rankings data