Lives saved by sociologist’s fix for skin tone bias
The Monk Skin Tone scale, devised in 2019 by Professor Ellis Monk, helps create more accurate medical diagnostic tools for patients with dark skin
Engineering and Technology
Laser-focused on applied physics
Arman Amirzhan chose to study materials science as an undergraduate at Imperial College in the United Kingdom thinking he’d learn about cutting edge technology like nanomaterials. Instead, he got ceramics and metallurgy – classical areas of the field, but not his area of interest. He was worried he’d picked the wrong field of study, and because of the U.K. educational system, changing majors would be much harder than in the U.S.
Their senior project? Smart glasses for the visually impaired
Electrical engineering concentrators offered a sleek, low-profile navigational aid for visually impaired individuals. More specifically, their project aimed to track and alert users of low-hanging obstacles that are typically missed with a mobility cane.
Cancer turned her into a scientist
Diagnosis transformed Mary Cipperman ’26 into a hyperproductive student researcher with diverse interests in physics, medicine, and AI
From software engineer to design engineer
After three years as a Waymo software engineer, Luke Fiorante wanted a change. He’d been coding ever since he was a computer science major at Brown University, but the Vancouver native knew he could do more. Also interested in design and the arts, he decided to search for master’s programs focused on design and engineering.
From bionic arms to machine learning researcher
Benjamin Choi built a mind-controlled bionic arm as a high school student in Virginia, and it made him realize something critical about human brains: they’re noisy. Brains constantly send out all kinds of signals regulating everything from breathing to hunger to planning one’s daily schedule. For his prosthetic to work, it needed software that could filter out the noise and recognize the signals specifically intended to manipulate the arm.
Thesis investigates AI-image bias
With artificial intelligence quickly becoming ingrained in everyday life, psychology and government double-concentrator Gauri Sood ’26 is skeptical about non-human technologies mimicking human experiences without bias.
A gene delivery system for the human heart
Engineering Design Projects (ES 100), the capstone course at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, challenges seniors to engineer a creative solution to a real-world problem. Saron Meressi's project focused on optimizing cardiac gene delivery using adeno-associated virus (AAV) technology. She specifically designed a tunable, ventricle-specific gene delivery system that enables more precise targeting within the heart.
Interloper or interlocutor? Debating AI’s impact on social interactions
A recent event, hosted by the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics, interrogated the technology’s role in human relationships.
Bioengineering a career in cancer therapeutics
Danika Rodrigues has been researching cancer therapies since she was a biomedical engineering undergraduate and master’s student at the University of Michigan. But it was working at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, that convinced her that not only was cancer research interesting — it was what she wanted for her career.
Harvard faculty recognized by the National Academy of Sciences