About Harvard Impact Labs

Harvard Impact Labs is a University-wide initiative launched in 2025 to support Harvard faculty in developing solutions to pressing social problems in collaboration with government, nonprofits, and the private sector.

Impact Labs are collaborations between scholars and practitioners to design, test, and scale solutions with the goal of solving a significant social problem. Like other academic research centers, they produce cutting-edge research published in top journals, but their ultimate goal is to have an impact at scale that improves people’s lives. Each lab will focus on a specific societal challenge, such as local economic development, affordable housing, educational achievement, high-quality healthcare, or public safety. The close collaboration between scholars and practitioners on these topics both deepens our collective understanding of the problem and increases the likelihood that identified solutions are effective, replicated, scaled, and sustained.  

Harvard Impact Labs was launched after a three-year planning process involving more than 20 faculty from across the University. It was also inspired by the work of Stanford Impact Labs, co-founded by Jeremy Weinstein, who is now dean of Harvard Kennedy School, where Harvard Impact Labs is housed. We collaborate with scholars and staff at Stanford and other universities across the country who are conducting solutions-focused research. Building a community of scholars doing this work will strengthen the individual labs and lead to more rapid progress on the meta problems of solutions-focused research in the social sciences, such as how to spread successful innovations and how to build capacity for organizations to continue to innovate on their own. 

Our Goals:  

• Accelerate the development and deployment of scalable solutions to important social issues
• Build increased capacity for solutions-focused research at Harvard
• Advance social science and collaboration across disciplines through rigorous and engaged scholarship
• Increase student interest in studying, researching, and addressing social problems by offering avenues for real-world impact
• Enhance Harvard’s culture of public service among faculty, students, and staff 
   

Harvard Impact Labs is overseen by the Deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Graduate School of Education, and Kennedy School. It has three faculty co-directors and is advised by a distinguished group of faculty from across the University.