Harvard Science Dean Stubbs Says He Does Not Know Timeline for Search for Successor

Harvard Dean of Science Christopher W. Stubbs said he does not know the status of the search for his successor, even as he is set to depart to his role at the end of the semester.

After Stubbs announced his retirement from the deanship late last semester, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra said in February that she hopes to have a successor appointed quickly to have “as much overlap as possible” with Stubbs’s tenure.

But Stubbs said he had no indication that an announcement was impending.

“I don’t know anything about the timeline,” Stubbs said.

“My boss appoints my successor,” Stubbs added. “I’d refer you to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”

During a Wednesday interview, Stubbs lauded Harvard’s newly-launched Quantum Science and Engineering Ph.D. program, which includes faculty from both the Sciences division and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, calling it a “real success story.”

Stubbs said the program has received nearly half the applicants of Harvard’s long-established Physics program, despite not yet having any graduates.

“We really hit a resonance of intellectual thirst,” Stubbs added.

Stubbs also spoke about other potential collaborations between the Sciences division and SEAS.

“I think there’s a really strong resonance between computer science, applied math, and statistics,” Stubbs said.

The relationship is already strong, according to Stubbs, as there are a “huge number of cross-appointed people” in physics and materials science.

Future administrators ought to sustain this “long, historical close relationship,” he said.

Stubs also discussed the FAS’s aging sciences facilities, noting how the division is “trying to do cutting edge sciences in buildings that are in some cases, centuries old.”

Stubbs stated that “we’re basically at saturation” with existing laboratory space. He added that a core role of the divisional office is to find new schemes to fit in all the faculty and programs.

“We’re always doing this game of optimizing,” he said.

Stubbs — who will remain as an adviser to Hoekstra on artificial intelligence — did not say whether the division had seen an increase in unauthorized AI use within the classroom, but called the technology a “seductive intellectual shortcut.”

“I’m definitely one of the people who think it’s a truly big deal and a disruptive technology,” Stubbs said.

—Staff writer Elizabeth Peng can be reached at elizabeth.peng@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Nicholas J. Frumkin can be reached at nicholas.frumkin@thecrimson.com.