Harvard award funds four high-risk, high-reward projects
Research administration services at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last week named nine Harvard researchers as the 2019 winners of the Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research. The Harvard researchers selected for awards were Benjamin de Bivort, James Crall, Jennifer Hoffman, Noel Michele Holbrook, David Keith, Boris Kozinsky, Samuel Myers, Ann Pearson, and Joost Vlassak. The award provides seed money for high-risk, high-reward research that is unlikely to be funded through traditional grant programs in the physical, life, and social sciences because it is seen as too novel or risky. “It’s important to do something that provides the opportunity to do more, to think differently, to take risks, [and] to do innovations that aren’t right at the edge of ongoing normal science, but that open the door for a bigger potential leap,” said Lawrence Bobo, the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences and dean of social science, at the award...