Return of the President’s Challenge
President Drew Faust today launched the 2013 President’s Challenge, inviting Harvard students and postdoctoral candidates to create entrepreneurial solutions to pressing societal problems and introducing a new category, the arts. The President’s Challenge was created last year in conjunction with the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) to encourage students from across the University to find important high-impact solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems and to provide support and guidance as student teams develop their projects. In its second year, the challenge is offering a broader set of topics — learning, energy and environment, health, disaster preparation and relief, and the arts — to which student teams can apply their minds, diverse passions, and creativity in developing project proposals. “Harvard is a place of extraordinary creativity. The knowledge created in our classrooms and laboratories sparks ideas that generate innovative solutions with real-world impact,” Faust said. “The second President’s Challenge broadens the opportunity...