News & Announcements

Professor Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti is the Benjamin Peirce Research Professor of Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University, former dean of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and former director of the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program. The award is one of the highest honors given by the National Academy of Engineering, and recognizes an engineer who has shown dedication in science and technology as well as active involvement in determining U.S. science and technology policy.

Our colleague Calestous Juma—who passed away on December 15 at age 64 after a long illness—was a pioneering, prolific, and influential scholar/practitioner in science and technology policy for sustainable well-being. He joined Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in 1999 as Director of the Science, Technology, and Innovation Project (a joint venture of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Center for International Development) and became Professor of the Practice of International Development in 2002, a position in which he maintained his exceptional productivity and engagement with policy, despite illness, up to the time of his death.

The American Energy Society has named the Belfer Center’s Meghan O’Sullivan the 2017 “Energy Writer of the Year.” O’Sullivan, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Belfer Center's Geopolitics of Energy Project, received the prestigious award for her recently published book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power and for her New York Times commentary “How Trump Can Harness the U.S. Energy Boom.”

David S. Cohen, former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has been named a Senior Fellow with Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Cohen, who as the Agency’s second-in-command from 2015-2017 helped oversee all CIA operations, served previously as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

As a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Center’s Intelligence and Defense Project, Cohen will conduct a study that focuses on the “CIA in the Digital Age,” looking into steps the Agency can take to improve its capacity for anticipating and tackling intelligence challenges in our increasingly interconnected world.

Former Deputy Secretary of Energy Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall is joining Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a Senior Fellow, the Center announced today. Sherwood-Randall, who has served in the White House and Departments of Energy and Defense, is returning to the Center where she worked in the 1990s to help establish two pioneering projects – the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project with Graham Allison, who this month stepped down as the Center’s director, and the Preventive Defense Project with Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense who is the new Belfer Center director.