Earlier in the year, IBM’s engineers had risen to a big challenge, creating Watson, an intelligent machine that competed with (and ultimately beat) the top two human Jeopardy! players.

Many said it was just a publicity stunt, but I applaud IBM’s vision. The same artificial intelligence that went into playing the game may now be used to create smarter medical health systems and earth system simulations, and even teach us something about how the brain works.

As we head into a capital campaign for the University, I think all of us at SEAS, and especially our alumni, are eager to get behind something grand, life-changing, and exciting.

As the newest, nimblest, and—I think—the coolest place on campus, SEAS will commit to doing just that.

Investing in Our Future

We have to balance our aggressive ambitions, however, with financial realities. As you will read in this annual report, to maintain our momentum as the newest “start-up” school at Harvard, we are spending down our reserves, or, as I like to think of it, investing in our future. This may strike some as risky—but it is far, far riskier not to grow to critical mass.

Over the years, my predecessors built up considerable reserves for SEAS. Moreover, our staff and faculty continue to make wise financial decisions, building state-of the-art labs that are friendly on both the environment and the wallet, and finding innovative ways to keep overall costs under control.

I am pleased to report that the fiscal year (FY) 2010–2011 actuals were better than those originally budgeted in core expenses and on a consolidated basis (including sponsored research, gifts, and endowment income).

Looking ahead to FY12, we will continue to spend down our reserves to invest in educational programs, grow faculty research, and enhance the teaching and administrative infrastructure.

From Seeds to Fruit

Now that I’ve been dean at SEAS for two years, I am happy to report that many of the seeds sown in our academic planning process have taken root and are coming to fruition.

With our new academic structure in place, design and experiential learning are much more integrated into the curriculum. We have boosted advising, expanded our instructional lab staff and space, and, more recently, restructured the administration, creating the position of Executive Dean for Education and Research to oversee all of these activities.

Nearly 5,000 students across Harvard (a record high) were enrolled in a SEAS course during the past academic year. The word is getting out about SEAS. The number of prospective students interested in our undergraduate programs continues to rise, and the overall student population has grown.

We also expect that as we begin to reimagine our graduate programs, create more interdisciplinary courses with the Medical School, the Business School, and others, and make joint faculty appointments like those already in engineering and law, government, and public health, we will bring a more intellectually diverse graduate and professional population to SEAS.

Converging on Convergence

We are working hard to ensure that every Harvard student is profoundly touched by engineering and the engineer’s mindset, that our faculty can readily leap across intellectual boundaries, and that our alumni and the broader community are engaged.

Such convergence is happening in surprising and exciting ways, changing the way we teach and do research.

For example, one of our graduate students is using techniques she learned in astronomy to model human arteries, helping to predict and prevent heart attacks. A course we taught in the spring paired engineering students with doctors at Harvard’s affiliated hospitals, challenging them to solve a real-world problem with a new medical device. Likewise, our faculty members work with colleagues at the Business School to understand trends in online markets; seek expertise from the Law School when exploring data security; and collaborate with neuroscientists in visualizing terabytes of data about the brain.

This September, we celebrated the Robobees project, part of the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing program. The success of the project, which aims to create a swarm of tiny robotic insects, requires advances in intersecting fields, from mechanical engineering to computer science to biology. The NSF considers this ambitious endeavor a model for funding modern research.

More than that, though, it’s a model for the way success in one field can—and should—translate into success for another field, so that the strength of SEAS contributes to the strength of the University overall, and vice versa.

Open Access

Our investments in pedagogy and research are clearly being noticed within Harvard, but to truly be successful, we must engage beyond the campus.

At Harvard, we have an incredible opportunity—and I think an obligation—to bring together the best minds from around the world. I co-hosted a conference on genetics and data privacy in April (see our latest newsletter, Topics). An international group of lawyers, computer scientists, geneticists, journalists, and members of the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences all gathered here to discuss one very complex issue.

We did that because I agree with the NAE: the engineering community needs to cultivate a culture of open access, one of inclusion.

Another way to do this is to reach people earlier. In the spring, we hosted a science and engineering fair for local 8th graders, drawing the superintendent of the Cambridge Public Schools and Harvard President Drew Faust. The young students built a wide variety of robots, explored topics in food science, and displayed their projects publicly.

Through our Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, more than 75 college students annually, from across the United States, work in our labs alongside faculty. Many students have reported that this experience changed not just their academic plans but their entire lives.

Social Networking

In October 2010, my Dean’s Advisory Group once again emphasized the need to heighten the visibility of the school.

Thanks to social networking, our accomplishments have been increasingly “going viral.” For example, when Les Valiant won the 2010 ACM Turing Award, the news went global in a matter of seconds. Some eye-catching articles about faculty research have received waves of new interest, thousands of views, months after the original release.

We are engaging members of the public through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and just about every other social site under the sun. Our new videos on YouTube let prospective applicants hear first hand about the student experience at SEAS, and through our library on iTunes U, more than 100,000 people have tuned into our Science and Cooking public lectures.

Through more conventional media relations efforts, our faculty and students have appeared in all forms of news coverage: CNN and MSNBC; Wired, The Guardian, and The New York Times; Gizmodo and Slashdot; and BBC Radio and NPR, to name just a few.

Integrating Innovation

So can we live up to Meyerson’s call to arms and take on something immensely important and nearly impossible? I think we can, by collaborating across all parts of the campus. And I think the University’s renewed focus on innovation will be what brings everyone together.

Thus, entrepreneurial thinking, and supporting a University-wide drive toward innovation, with focus on the Innovation Lab (i-Lab) at Harvard, will be two of my top priorities. That doesn’t mean just creating start-ups and new products, but rather encouraging social entrepreneurship and innovating the way we teach and produce knowledge. SEAS will be both a leader and a connector for this push.

In research as in society, things are moving at lightspeed. It is impossible for any one person or institution to learn everything or take on every problem. It is more important to learn how to think and communicate—to determine the validity of others’ arguments or data, understand risk and probabilities, parse ill-defined problems into solvable parts, figure out what may fit within cultural or ethical values, and recognize when you do not know something and need help from others.

That is what engineering and the applied sciences have always done. As dean of SEAS, I see my task as “leading sideways,” convincing others in disparate disciplines to collaborate and learn from each other.

Every member of SEAS has the job of helping the Harvard community, and the public, understand the profound value proposition of investing in engineering and applied sciences at Harvard. Investment in SEAS is good for Harvard, good for the globe, and, in the words used in some recent TEDx talks by SEAS affiliates, just plain awesome.

Cherry A. Murray
October 2011