Reconnect with friends, colleagues, and mentors at Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni Day on Saturday, April 18, 2026. This annual event brings together alumni, faculty, students, and friends to participate in conversations with some of the world’s leading scholars, engage with alumni across various disciplines, and hear from Dean Emma Dench. Between talks and activities, network with your fellow alumni and recapture the magic of being back on campus with friends, both old and new.
Full program and session details will be available in late February. Registration will open in early March 2026.
Registration Fees
- Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni and Guests: $65
- Recent Harvard Griffin GSAS Graduate (’21-’24): $25
- 2025 Harvard Griffin GSAS Graduate: Free
Tentative Schedule
Saturday, April 18
Events will take place at Emerson Hall and the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge. All times are in Eastern Time.
8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
Check-In and Registration
8:30 a.m.
Breakfast Reception
Harvard Faculty Club
9:45 a.m.–10:30 a.m.
Welcome and Conversation with the Dean
Emerson Hall
10:30 a.m.–11:45 a.m.
Keynote Panel: AI Impact in Medicine, Education, and the Economy
Jason Furman, PhD ’04, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University
Teddy Svoronos, PhD ’16, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; co-Founder of Teachly and PingPong
Marinka Zitnik, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Faculty at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Affiliated Faculty at the Harvard Data Science Initiative.
Emerson Hall
11:45 a.m.
Celebrating Milestone Anniversaries
Honoring alumni celebrating 50, 25, or 10 years since their graduation from Harvard Griffin GSAS.
Emerson Hall
Noon–1:30 p.m.
Lunch
Harvard Faculty Club
Afternoon Sessions with Harvard Faculty and Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni
1:45 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Session 1A: The Quantum Revolution
Evelyn Hu, Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering, Harvard University; co-Director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative
Emerson Hall
Session 1B: Democratic Backsliding, Dictatorial Drift, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
Grzegorz Ekiert, PhD ’91, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University and senior scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
3:15 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Session 2A: Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
Rebecca Henderson, PhD ’88, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University
Session 2B
Speaker and session details forthcoming
Emerson Hall
4:45 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Closing Reception
Harvard Faculty Club
Questions about this event? Please contact the Harvard Griffin GSAS Office of Alumni Relations.
Harvard University and the Graduate School Alumni Association encourage people with disabilities to participate in their programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please let us know in advance by emailing gsaa@fas.harvard.edu.
Locations & Parking
Parking for Alumni Day is available at the Broadway Garage located at 7 Felton St, Cambridge, MA 02138. Please inform the parking attendant that you are attending the Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni Day event.
Emerson Hall
29 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Harvard Faculty Club
20 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Speakers
(in order of appearance on schedule, some bios still forthcoming)
Emma Dench
Emma Dench was born in York, grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, and studied at Wadham College, Oxford (BA Hons Literae Humaniores) and at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (DPhil in Ancient History). Before taking up a joint appointment in the Departments of the Classics and of History at Harvard in January 2007, she taught classics and ancient history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has been a Craven Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Rome Scholar and a Hugh Last Fellow at the British School of Rome, a Cotton Fellow, a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Visiting Professor of the Classics and of History at Harvard, and a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellow.
Dench is the author of From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines and Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian. She is currently completing “Imperialism and Culture in the Roman World” for the Cambridge University Press series Key Themes in Ancient History. Other current projects include a study of the retrospective writing of the Roman Republican past in classical antiquity.
While at Harvard, Dench received a Harvard College Professorship in recognition of “outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, mentoring, and advising,” a Marquand Award for Excellent Advising and Counseling, and an Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award for her mentorship of graduate students.
Jason Furman
Jason Furman, PhD ’04, is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Furman engages in public policy through research, writing, and teaching in a wide range of areas, including US and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets, and competition policy. He co- teaches Ec10 “Principles of Economics,” the largest course at Harvard University.
Previously, Furman served for eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, serving as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. During this time, Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration. Furman also served under President Clinton.
Furman is a member of numerous organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of Thirty, and the Economic Strategy Group. He also serves as a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and on the advisory boards for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Bund Summit, the Hamilton Project, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is a regular contributor to the New York Times and Project Syndicate and the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Teddy Svoronos
Teddy Svoronos, PhD ’16, is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), where he teaches courses on quantitative methods, generative AI, and evidence-based policy. His work focuses on leveraging technology to scale small, interactive classrooms to learners around the world. His research involves the intersection of pedagogy, technology and the adoption of evidence.
Teddy is a co-founder of Teachly, a web application focused on creating effective and inclusive learning environments, and PingPong, a platform leveraging generative AI to create custom bots and other unique learning experiences. At HKS, he serves as the Faculty Lead for the Evidence for Decisions area of HKS’ online Public Leadership Credential and the school's Faculty Liaison for Pedagogy and Digital Learning. Teddy received his PhD in health policy from Harvard University and his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University.
Marinka Zitnik
Marinka Zitnik is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Faculty at Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, and Associate Member at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Zitnik investigates foundations of AI that contribute to the scientific understanding of medicine and therapeutic design, eventually enabling AI to learn and innovate on its own. Her research won best paper and research awards, including the Kavli Fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences, Kaneb Fellowship award at Harvard Medical School, NSF CAREER Award, awards from the International Society for Computational Biology, International Conference in Machine Learning, Bayer Early Excellence in Science, Amazon Faculty Research, Google Faculty Research, Roche Alliance with Distinguished Scientists, and Sanofi iDEA-iTECH Award. Zitnik founded Therapeutics Data Commons, a global open-science initiative to access and evaluate AI across stages of development and therapeutic modalities, and she served as the faculty lead of the AI4Science initiative. She is the recipient of the 2022 Young Mentor Award at Harvard Medical School.
Evelyn Hu
Evelyn Hu is the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, and a professor of Arts and Sciences at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. She also serves as a co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. Her research involves the design, fabrication, and study of nanoscale photonic devices and emitters, which may be the basis of new quantum mechanical bits, with applications for new quantum information technologies. Hu received her PhD in Physics from Columbia University in 1975 and her BA in physics from Barnard College in 1969.
Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she was the scientific co-director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and a professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, developing microfabrication and nanofabrication techniques for high-performance superconducting and semiconducting devices and circuits. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Academica Sinica of Taiwan. She was named a Harvard College Professor (2015-2020), has been named the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentorship and Advising, is a recipient of an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar award, and an AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award. She was awarded the 2020 Andrew Grove Award given by the IEEE, the 2021 IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal, and the 2026 APS Mildred Dresselhaus Prize in Nanoscience or Nanomaterials. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Notre Dame, ETH Zurich, and the City University of Hong Kong.
Grzegorz Ekiert
Grzegorz Ekiert, AM ’87, PhD ’91, sociology, is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University and senior scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (2012-2024) and chair of social studies undergraduate concentration (2000-2006). His research and teaching interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society and social movements and East European politics and societies. He is the author and editor of several books and special issues of academic journals including: Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements (co-editors Elizabeth J. Perry and Yan Xiaojun), Cambridge University Press, 2020; Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (co-editor Stephen Hanson), Cambridge University Press, 2003; Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland (co-author Jan Kubik, Rutgers University), University of Michigan Press, 1999; The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe, Princeton University Press, 1996. His papers appeared in numerous social science journals in the US, Europe, and Asia, and in edited volumes. He was the advisory board member of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (2016-2024), External Examiner in Politics, Public Administration and Global Studies at the University of Hong Kong (2012-2018), and is a member of several advisory boards in social science research institutions and NGOs.
Rebecca Henderson
Rebecca Henderson, PhD ’88, is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also has more than 25 years of major public board experience. Rebecca’s research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy. Her publications include Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors (University of Chicago Press), Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective (Oxford University Press) and Political Economy and Justice (University of Chicago Press). She is also the author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire which was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year Award.
Reconnect with friends, colleagues, and mentors at Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni Day on Saturday, April 18, 2026. This annual event brings together alumni, faculty, students, and friends to participate in conversations with some of the world’s leading scholars, engage with alumni across various disciplines, and hear from Dean Emma Dench. Between talks and activities, network with your fellow alumni and recapture the magic of being back on campus with friends, both old and new.
Full program and session details will be available in late February. Registration will open in early March 2026.
Registration Fees
- Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni and Guests: $65
- Recent Harvard Griffin GSAS Graduate (’21-’24): $25
- 2025 Harvard Griffin GSAS Graduate: Free
Tentative Schedule
Saturday, April 18
Events will take place at Emerson Hall and the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge. All times are in Eastern Time.
8:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.
Check-In and Registration
8:30 a.m.
Breakfast Reception
Harvard Faculty Club
9:45 a.m.–10:30 a.m.
Welcome and Conversation with the Dean
Emerson Hall
10:30 a.m.–11:45 a.m.
Keynote Panel: AI Impact in Medicine, Education, and the Economy
Jason Furman, PhD ’04, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University
Teddy Svoronos, PhD ’16, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; co-Founder of Teachly and PingPong
Marinka Zitnik, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Faculty at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, Associate Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Affiliated Faculty at the Harvard Data Science Initiative.
Emerson Hall
11:45 a.m.
Celebrating Milestone Anniversaries
Honoring alumni celebrating 50, 25, or 10 years since their graduation from Harvard Griffin GSAS.
Emerson Hall
Noon–1:30 p.m.
Lunch
Harvard Faculty Club
Afternoon Sessions with Harvard Faculty and Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni
1:45 p.m.–3:00 p.m.
Session 1A: The Quantum Revolution
Evelyn Hu, Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering, Harvard University; co-Director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative
Emerson Hall
Session 1B: Democratic Backsliding, Dictatorial Drift, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
Grzegorz Ekiert, PhD ’91, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University and senior scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
3:15 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Session 2A: Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire
Rebecca Henderson, PhD ’88, John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University
Session 2B
Speaker and session details forthcoming
Emerson Hall
4:45 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Closing Reception
Harvard Faculty Club
Questions about this event? Please contact the Harvard Griffin GSAS Office of Alumni Relations.
Harvard University and the Graduate School Alumni Association encourage people with disabilities to participate in their programs and activities. If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please let us know in advance by emailing gsaa@fas.harvard.edu.
Locations & Parking
Parking for Alumni Day is available at the Broadway Garage located at 7 Felton St, Cambridge, MA 02138. Please inform the parking attendant that you are attending the Harvard Griffin GSAS Alumni Day event.
Emerson Hall
29 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Harvard Faculty Club
20 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Speakers
(in order of appearance on schedule, some bios still forthcoming)
Emma Dench
Emma Dench was born in York, grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, and studied at Wadham College, Oxford (BA Hons Literae Humaniores) and at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (DPhil in Ancient History). Before taking up a joint appointment in the Departments of the Classics and of History at Harvard in January 2007, she taught classics and ancient history at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has been a Craven Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Rome Scholar and a Hugh Last Fellow at the British School of Rome, a Cotton Fellow, a Member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Visiting Professor of the Classics and of History at Harvard, and a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellow.
Dench is the author of From Barbarians to New Men: Greek, Roman, and Modern Perceptions of Peoples from the Central Apennines and Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian. She is currently completing “Imperialism and Culture in the Roman World” for the Cambridge University Press series Key Themes in Ancient History. Other current projects include a study of the retrospective writing of the Roman Republican past in classical antiquity.
While at Harvard, Dench received a Harvard College Professorship in recognition of “outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, mentoring, and advising,” a Marquand Award for Excellent Advising and Counseling, and an Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award for her mentorship of graduate students.
Jason Furman
Jason Furman, PhD ’04, is the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Furman engages in public policy through research, writing, and teaching in a wide range of areas, including US and international macroeconomics, fiscal policy, labor markets, and competition policy. He co- teaches Ec10 “Principles of Economics,” the largest course at Harvard University.
Previously, Furman served for eight years as a top economic adviser to President Obama, including as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, serving as both President Obama’s chief economist and a member of the cabinet. During this time, Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama Administration. Furman also served under President Clinton.
Furman is a member of numerous organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Group of Thirty, and the Economic Strategy Group. He also serves as a Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation and on the advisory boards for the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, the Bund Summit, the Hamilton Project, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
In addition to articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is a regular contributor to the New York Times and Project Syndicate and the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Teddy Svoronos
Teddy Svoronos, PhD ’16, is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), where he teaches courses on quantitative methods, generative AI, and evidence-based policy. His work focuses on leveraging technology to scale small, interactive classrooms to learners around the world. His research involves the intersection of pedagogy, technology and the adoption of evidence.
Teddy is a co-founder of Teachly, a web application focused on creating effective and inclusive learning environments, and PingPong, a platform leveraging generative AI to create custom bots and other unique learning experiences. At HKS, he serves as the Faculty Lead for the Evidence for Decisions area of HKS’ online Public Leadership Credential and the school's Faculty Liaison for Pedagogy and Digital Learning. Teddy received his PhD in health policy from Harvard University and his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University.
Marinka Zitnik
Marinka Zitnik is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Faculty at Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, and Associate Member at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Zitnik investigates foundations of AI that contribute to the scientific understanding of medicine and therapeutic design, eventually enabling AI to learn and innovate on its own. Her research won best paper and research awards, including the Kavli Fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences, Kaneb Fellowship award at Harvard Medical School, NSF CAREER Award, awards from the International Society for Computational Biology, International Conference in Machine Learning, Bayer Early Excellence in Science, Amazon Faculty Research, Google Faculty Research, Roche Alliance with Distinguished Scientists, and Sanofi iDEA-iTECH Award. Zitnik founded Therapeutics Data Commons, a global open-science initiative to access and evaluate AI across stages of development and therapeutic modalities, and she served as the faculty lead of the AI4Science initiative. She is the recipient of the 2022 Young Mentor Award at Harvard Medical School.
Evelyn Hu
Evelyn Hu is the Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, and a professor of Arts and Sciences at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard. She also serves as a co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative. Her research involves the design, fabrication, and study of nanoscale photonic devices and emitters, which may be the basis of new quantum mechanical bits, with applications for new quantum information technologies. Hu received her PhD in Physics from Columbia University in 1975 and her BA in physics from Barnard College in 1969.
Prior to her appointment at Harvard, she was the scientific co-director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and a professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories, developing microfabrication and nanofabrication techniques for high-performance superconducting and semiconducting devices and circuits. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Academica Sinica of Taiwan. She was named a Harvard College Professor (2015-2020), has been named the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentorship and Advising, is a recipient of an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar award, and an AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award. She was awarded the 2020 Andrew Grove Award given by the IEEE, the 2021 IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal, and the 2026 APS Mildred Dresselhaus Prize in Nanoscience or Nanomaterials. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Notre Dame, ETH Zurich, and the City University of Hong Kong.
Grzegorz Ekiert
Grzegorz Ekiert, AM ’87, PhD ’91, sociology, is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Government at Harvard University and senior scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He was director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (2012-2024) and chair of social studies undergraduate concentration (2000-2006). His research and teaching interests focus on comparative politics, regime change and democratization, civil society and social movements and East European politics and societies. He is the author and editor of several books and special issues of academic journals including: Ruling by Other Means: State-Mobilized Movements (co-editors Elizabeth J. Perry and Yan Xiaojun), Cambridge University Press, 2020; Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe: Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (co-editor Stephen Hanson), Cambridge University Press, 2003; Rebellious Civil Society: Popular Protest and Democratic Consolidation in Poland (co-author Jan Kubik, Rutgers University), University of Michigan Press, 1999; The State Against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe, Princeton University Press, 1996. His papers appeared in numerous social science journals in the US, Europe, and Asia, and in edited volumes. He was the advisory board member of the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (2016-2024), External Examiner in Politics, Public Administration and Global Studies at the University of Hong Kong (2012-2018), and is a member of several advisory boards in social science research institutions and NGOs.
Rebecca Henderson
Rebecca Henderson, PhD ’88, is one of 25 University Professors at Harvard, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also has more than 25 years of major public board experience. Rebecca’s research explores the degree to which the private sector can play a major role in building a more sustainable economy. Her publications include Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors (University of Chicago Press), Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective (Oxford University Press) and Political Economy and Justice (University of Chicago Press). She is also the author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire which was shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year Award.