Virtues for Well-being: A Seminar with Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas
On Wednesday, March 11th, 2026, from 1-1:50 PM in FXB G13 and online, all are welcome to join us for the fifth installment in our Virtues for Well-being seminar series.
Speaker Biography
Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she directs the GGSC’s research fellowship program, is a co-instructor of its Science of Happiness and Science of Happiness at Work online courses and runs key study initiatives like Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude. Emiliana is a leading expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and other prosocial skills that bolster human happiness. She earned her doctorate in Cognition Brain and Behavior at UC Berkeley, where her dissertation used behavioral and neuroscience methods to examine how unpleasant emotions influence thinking and decision-making. During her postdoc, Emiliana shifted to studying the origins and effects of prosocial states like love of humanity, compassion, and awe. Before joining GGSC in 2010, Emiliana served as Associate Director/Senior Scientist at CCARE (the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University), focusing on how compassion benefits health, well-being, and psychosocial functioning.
Today, Emiliana’s work spotlights the science that connects health and happiness to social affiliation, caregiving, and collaborative relationships, as she continues to examine the potential for – as well as the benefits of – living a more meaningful life.
Speaker Information
Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas
Organizers
On Thin Ice: stories of trust (and mistrust) in Arctic research and policy
The Office of Field Education and Practice is pleased to host the first Community Engaged Learning Seminar with colleagues from the Harvard Arctic Initiative.
Moderated by Sappho Gilbert, postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Chan School and research fellow at the Arctic Initiative, this panel will explore the role of trust in research and policy with Arctic communities, focusing on how it is built, sustained, and at times lost and rebuilt. Drawing on examples from knowledge co-production and community engagement, governance, health care, food systems, and infrastructure, panelists will detail the risks of broken trust and the potential of lockstep, community-centered partnerships. Panelists include Harvard Chan student and Rose Service Learning Fellow, Kenzo Kimura and Fulbright Scholars at the Arctic Initiative, Alexandra Middleton, Hans Peder Kirkegaard and Juho Kähkönen.
Register for the in-person event here.
Attend via Zoom
Organizers
The Role of Plumbing Biofilms in Healthcare Acquired Infections
Title Talk
The Role of Plumbing Biofilms in Healthcare Acquired Infections
THIS SPEAKER WILL BE IN PERSON IN FXB 301.
The event will be hybrid.
Speaker Information
Plumbing systems provide ideal growth conditions for polymicrobial biofilms that often contain health-relevant microorganisms. In hospitals, where 1 in 31 patients contracts a healthcare acquired infection, biofilm control is of the utmost importance for infection prevention. In this seminar, Hannah Greenwald Healy, Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Exposure Science, will present research from several sampling campaigns at Yale New Haven Hospital. Using a combination of metagenomic and culture-based methods, she and her team investigated plumbing biofilms throughout water systems, with broad implications for infection prevention and wastewater surveillance.
Metabolic flexibility and healthy aging with William Mair, PhD
Please join the Harvard Chan NIEHS Center for Environmental Health and the Department of Environmental Health for a talk by William Mair, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Mair will discuss “Metabolic flexibility. and healthy aging.”
This event will be held in person (HSPH Bldg. 1, 1302) and via Zoom. Register here
About the speaker
Dr. William Mair is a Professor of Molecular Metabolism at Harvard, and Director of the Harvard T.H. Chan Healthy Aging Initiative. He received his BSc in Genetics and PhD in Biology from University College London, and completed his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA. The Mair lab studies mechanisms that mitigate the risks of aging, with a focus on metabolism and how changes to food intake can impact the aging process. They are defining how nutrient and energy sensors in cells become dysfunctional with age, leading to metabolic inflexibility and accelerated aging. Dr. Mair’s work aims to develop therapeutics that maintain healthy metabolic function, thereby enabling our bodies to process the food we eat effectively as we age to prolong healthy aging. Dr. Mair has won numerous awards for his work on aging and geroscience, including the American Federation Breakthrough in Gerontology Award, the Glenn Medical Foundation for Medical Research Scholar Award and the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Research Award. He is co-founding director of the MBL Biology of Aging Summer Research Course, and organizes several international conferences on geroscience and aging biology.
Speaker Information
Organizers
Center Member Research Presentation: Peng Gao, PhD
Join us for a Center Member Research Presentation by Dr. Peng Gao on Mapping the human exposome: From population pattern to cellular resolution. Following a brief presentation, there will be time for all participants to engage in a cross-disciplinary discussion with Dr. Gao and each other.
Summary: This presentation will explore cutting-edge approaches in environmental health that integrate chemical exposomics with multi-omics technologies to understand how environmental exposures influence human health. Dr. Gao will discuss our recent work on precision environmental health monitoring, including longitudinal profiling of personal exposomes and their connections to disease outcomes, with particular emphasis on applications in cancer, neurodegeneration, and respiratory health research. The talk will highlight opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration in advancing exposome science across scales, from population-level patterns to individual monitoring and down to molecular and cellular mechanisms.
About the speaker: Dr. Peng Gao is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health and Exposomics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research focuses on characterizing the human exposome, the totality of environmental exposures and their biological responses, and understanding its role in chronic disease development. Dr. Gao’s lab develops and applies advanced analytical chemistry and computational approaches to measure chemical and biological exposures in environmental and biological samples, integrating these with multi-omics data to investigate disease etiology. Before joining Harvard, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and completed his postdoctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine.
This event will be held in person in HSPH Bldg. 1, 1302 and via Zoom. Register here
Speaker Information
Organizers
How to get into public health content creation: Advice from leading creators
What does it take to turn your expertise into meaningful, high-impact content? In this dynamic panel, leading health creators Dr. Judith Joseph, Dr. Courtney Tracy, Emma McAdam, and Victoria Browne will share how they built influential platforms that translate complex ideas into accessible, engaging storytelling. From choosing your niche to navigating platforms, partnerships, and public scrutiny, this conversation will offer practical insights, lessons learned, and encouragement for anyone curious about stepping into the world of public health content creation. This event is part of the Center for Health Communication’s Creators Summit on Mental Health.
Lunch will be served.
This event is co-sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Department.
Speakers will share their own perspectives; they do not speak for Harvard.
Speaker Information
Dr. Judith Joseph
Dr. Courtney Tracy
Emma McAdam
Victoria Browne
Organizers
Pressure Points is a webinar series co-hosted by The Studio and Executive and Continuing Education at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health bringing you inside the business of health care.
With its transformative power, AI already has changed the business of health care — but not without challenges and concerns. Join leaders in technology, health care, and academia for a transparent conversation about where AI is delivering real impact, where it’s falling short, and what the future may hold.
Register for free to submit your questions.
An on-demand video will be posted after the event.
Designed for professionals navigating today’s evolving health care landscape, Pressure Points explores the industry’s most urgent challenges—from workforce shifts and financial pressures to leadership, technology, and innovation. Join leading experts for timely conversations on what’s shaping the business of health care now—and what lies ahead.
Speakers
Moderator
Trishan Panch
About the Organizers
The Harvard Chan Studio is the hub for the School’s premier in-person and live-streamed events. We convene global leaders in health policy, advocacy, industry, and research for insightful conversations about public health’s most pressing challenges and most promising solutions.
Executive and Continuing Education
Strengthen your expertise and build new capabilities to address pressing healthcare and public health challenges. Learn from industry experts and esteemed Harvard faculty and join a global community of peers driven to creating a healthier world.
Brown Bag Seminar: Thyroid cancer prevention in radiological emergencies
Yoshitaka Nishikawa, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist, Takemi Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and associate professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine. His work focuses on developing and disseminating health information to protect people from disasters and diseases, particularly cancer and gastrointestinal diseases. He leads two reporting guidelines: CAST-D (case studies in public health and medicine related to disasters) and WATER (wastewater analysis and tracking in epidemiological reporting). His Takemi project examines stable iodine implementation after radiological emergencies at individual, community, and national policy levels.
Speaker Information
Yoshitaka Nishikawa
Organizers
Brown Bag Seminar: The air we share: Lessons from a career in pulmonary and global health research
William Checkley is a physician-scientist and global health expert whose research focuses on chronic respiratory diseases, particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). He is a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University with joint appointments in International Health and Biostatistics, and he directs the Center for Global Non-Communicable Disease Research and Training. He has authored >400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with more than 24,000 citations and an h-index of 77.
Checkley’s work addresses the global burden of COPD, which disproportionately affects LMICs. His work spans a wide spectrum—from observational cohort studies identifying risk factors such as household air pollution and low lung growth and development, to randomized controlled trials testing interventions to improve disease outcomes in real-world settings. In collaboration with international partners, Checkley has led studies like the Global Excellence in COPD Outcomes (GECo) trial, which evaluates the effectiveness of community health worker-delivered self-management interventions for COPD in Nepal, Peru, and Uganda. These studies aim to improve COPD care in underserved populations. He has also developed and validated simple, cost-effective screening tools for COPD to facilitate early diagnosis and management in resource-limited settings.
Checkley is also committed to building research capacity in LMICs. He co-leads Fogarty International Center-funded training programs in Peru and elsewhere, focusing on environmental exposures and chronic pulmonary diseases, to mentor the next generation of researchers in these regions. Through his work, Checkley aims to reduce the global burden of chronic respiratory diseases by developing scalable, evidence-based interventions and fostering international collaborations.
Speaker Information
William Checkley
Organizers
Harvard Pop Center Social Demography Seminar: A demographic perspective on energy transitions: Linkages between population, land use, and economic dynamics in Malawi
Kate Beach, PhD, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presents “A demographic perspective on energy transitions: Linkages between population, land use, and economic dynamics in Malawi.”
The Social Demography Seminar (SDS) series at the Center for Population and Development Studies provides a lively forum for scholars from across the university to discuss in-progress social scientific and population research. Social demography includes work that uses demographic methods to describe and explain the distribution of social goods across populations. The hybrid series offers presentations on a wide variety of topics such as family, gender, race/ethnicity, population health—including mortality, morbidity, and functional health—inequality, immigration, fertility, and the institutional arrangements that shape and respond to population processes.
With the aim of disseminating scholarly research, The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies hosts a diverse array of speakers. They do not represent or speak for the Center, the School or the University, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.