The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery published a report on the state of global surgery in April 2015 reporting the staggering statistic that “5 billion people in the world lack access to safe, affordable surgical and anesthesia care when needed” [1]. I vividly remember working at a busy public hospital in Arusha, Tanzania where this reality was dismally clear. On the labor and delivery ward, we hoped that every patient would have an uncomplicated vaginal delivery because our options if a woman needed a cesarean section for obstructed labor or a D&C for a postpartum hemorrhage were...

Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School, was recently named a recipient of the 2017 Breakthrough Paradigm Award. The award, given by the Breakthrough Institute, "recognizes accomplishment and leadership in the effort to make the future secure, free, prosperous, and fulfilling for all the world’s inhabitants on an ecologically vibrant planet." Juma's groundbreaking research in biotechnology and innovation solidifies his position as a thought leader in the fields of science and technology. He will accept this award next summer at the Breakthrough Dialogue, a two-day conference devoted to democracy in the Anthropocene. 

Munjed Murad, a Th.D. candidate at the Harvard Divinity School, received a Jeffrey Cheah Travel Fund Grant in summer of 2016, for research in Malaysia and Indonesia. His field of study focuses on the Islamic sciences of nature. Murad describes his experience in his own words:... Read more about Student Report: Islamic Metaphysics in Southeast Asia

[The Sacramento Bee ] Lawrence Goulder and Robert Stavins: This is a critical time for California’s climate policies. Recently, Gov. Jerry Brown achieved his hope of extending California’s action beyond 2020, the termination date of Assembly Bill 32. Whereas AB 32 called for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, the newly signed Senate Bill 32 and AB 197 mandate an additional 40 percent reduction by 2030.