Support on the cutting edge
“Jamie Star challenges and enables us to do something important, without being prescriptive about how it’s done,” Douglas Melton, the Xander University Professor and Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor in the Natural Sciences, said Tuesday about the Star Family Challenge for Promising Scientific Research. At the inaugural awards ceremony for the challenge, Melton, who chairs the committee behind it, related an important dinner conversation with its founder, James A. Star ’83. Melton said the two discussed the need to fund interdisciplinary research, and the result was a clear target. “We want to fund research which would not otherwise be funded, research that would be new, and that would have large potential impact,” Melton said. “This kind of research often happens when you look between fields.” The challenge was established by Star and funded at his direction with a $10 million grant. Given biannually to Harvard faculty members, the awards range from $20,000 to $200,000...