As a teenager, Joan Brugge expected to become a math teacher. Then her sister developed a fatal brain tumor, and Brugge shifted to devote her career to uncovering the fundamental workings of cancer. Now a world-renowned cell biologist, Brugge investigates how cancers form, spread and become resistant to therapy. Whether she's probing the startling …

Note: This interview was recorded in 2019. For updates on Sequist's work during the COVID-19 pandemic, read our new Q&A. Traveling between New York, Albuquerque and Taos Pueblo while growing up and transitioning from computer chip engineering at Intel to enrolling in medical school, Thomas Sequist has never quite followed a straightforward path. Af…

Note: This interview was recorded in 2019. For updates on Inouye's work during the coronavirus pandemic and the link between COVID-19 and delirium, read our new Q&A. Each year, more than 7 million hospitalized people in the U.S. slide into delirium: an acute state of confusion that raises risk of serious health complications and death. Only a few d…

Neal Baer is an award-winning television writer and producer—and a Harvard Medical School-trained pediatrician (MD ’96). Through his pioneering work on hit shows such as ER and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as his leadership in connecting media producers with doctors and scientists, Baer has helped shape public perceptions of medicin…

Dentists take care of our mouths, and doctors take care of the rest of us—but it’s becoming increasingly clear that oral health and overall health are inextricably linked. In this month’s podcast, dentist and future physician Lisa Simon talks about the potential benefits and challenges of bringing dentistry and medicine back together after a 150-ye…

Staci Gruber, HMS associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Cognitive and Clinical Neuroimaging Core at McLean Hospital, describes what she and other researchers are learning about the effects of recreational and medical marijuana on brain structure, brain function and quality of life in teens and adults. Along the way, Gruber counters …

Economist and physician Anupam “Bapu” Jena, the Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy at HMS, analyzes compelling health care issues ranging from physician behavior to prescription drug abuse to the economics of medical innovation. Here, he talks about finding research questions in unusual places, what happens when a result con…

Jessica Halem, program manager of the LGBT Office within the Office for Diversity Inclusion and Community Partnership at HMS, shares some of the ways the Harvard Medical School community is working to reduce health care disparities for transgender patients. Efforts range from medical education and faculty training to research programs to environmen…

Joseph Betancourt, HMS associate professor of medicine, shares stories about the challenges of cross-cultural communication in health care, both as a doctor today and as a child from a bilingual, bicultural household who accompanied his grandmother to the doctor’s office. He also describes the progress he has seen in reducing racial and ethnic heal…

Ting Wu, HMS professor of genetics, talks about ways scientists are striving to optimize astronauts' physical and mental health—and anticipating the biomedical challenges ahead as humankind considers long-term space travel. And in this episode's abstract, a study led by Brittany Charlton at HMS and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health offe…

Reisa Sperling, HMS professor of neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, shares her family's personal connection with Alzheimer's disease and describes ongoing research into early diagnosis and intervention. And in this episode's abstract, researchers in the lab of George Church use the gene-editing tool CRISPR to inactivate retroviruses in the …

Dragana Rogulja, assistant professor of neurobiology at HMS, runs a sleep lab in which hundreds of thousands of fruit flies are studied as they snooze. Rogulja’s goal is to identify genes involved in sleep that are also conserved in human beings. And in this episode’s abstract, researchers in the HMS Department of Health Care Policy have found that…

Dominic Hall, curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum in the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, talks about how individual medical artifacts can bring to life multiple narratives and inform today’s doctors and researchers. Along the way, he explores just a few of the 15,000 objects in the 160-year-old…

Physician and poet Rafael Campo describes how medicine and poetry are interconnected at the most basic levels. According to this HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, language and metaphor reveal medical and humanistic insights into the body in ways that go far beyond data and checklists. And in this episode’s…

Robert Truog, a Harvard Medical School professor at Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the HMS Center for Bioethics, teaches doctors and nurses to become more aware of the ethical decisions they make every day—including the conscious and unconscious biases that shape the words they use and the way they frame conversations with patients and …

John Brownstein, HMS associate professor of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, explains why your most important Facebook friend might be your doctor. Brownstein, a computational epidemiologist, also describes how our online behavior forms a “digital phenotype” that says more about our health than we might think. And in this week’s abstract, …

David Reich, professor of genetics at HMS, studies modern and ancient DNA to probe human history and learn about health and disease. In this podcast, he shares his excitement about new genetic technologies and tells the story of his winding path from social studies and physics to becoming one of the world's foremost population geneticists. And in t…

For many students and young researchers today, pursuing a career in science can seem more frightening than energizing. A wealth of qualified postdocs seeking a limited number of academic positions, ever-shrinking funding, and pressure to publish all fuel a hypercompetitive atmosphere in which the quality of science can suffer. In this month's conve…

Amy Wagers, professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard and Joslin Diabetes Center, is motivated by both the prospect of treating disease and the thrill of discovery. Watch for the Winter 2013 issue of Harvard Medicine magazine for a Q&A with her.Par Harvard Medical School

Plastic surgeon Sumner Slavin has pioneered methods of tissue reconstruction for patients—including women with breast cancer—to restore body parts to a more usual appearance. After spending time in the Middle East, he also started a fellowship program to teach plastic surgeons from the region advanced techniques and procedures. Slavin is an HMS ass…

Jonathan and Christine Seidman —both professors at Harvard Medical School—run a household and a lab together. They’ve been collaborating for decades to explore the causes of hereditary heart disease, especially hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and their skills in this area complement each other perfectly. Jonathan Seidman is a PhD and geneticist while …

Medical innovations build upon basic, curiosity-driven research—that is, research done in yeast and flies and other organisms without a specific application in mind. In this podcast, four scientists argue that it is essential for labs to continue exploring how life works. After listening to the podcast, read the related feature story.…

Robert Truog—an HMS professor and a senior associate in critical care medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston—reflects on the evolving patient-doctor relationship. He recently authored a perspective piece on the topic in the New England Journal of Medicine. In addition to being a practicing physician, Truog has a master’s degree in philosophy, and h…

Last month, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case with sweeping implications for U.S. health care. Gregory Curfman, an HMS assistant professor and executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, scored a coveted ticket to the proceedings. He shared insight and analysis with faculty and students during a recent Medical Education …

Jack Szostak, an HMS professor of genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital, shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work he completed in the 1980s on telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes. But he hasn’t worked on telomeres in years. In fact, he completely shifted fields in the early 1990s. Now he’s working to…