In fall 2008, Wyss’s first record-breaking donation led to the renaming of the Harvard Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in his honor. Wyss, who received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1965, also gave a $25 million gift to the Business School in 2004.

“Mr. Wyss is extraordinarily generous, and we are deeply grateful that he has expanded his support of multidisciplinary research at Harvard,” University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement. “This additional gift will enable the Institute’s continued success and create new opportunities to improve people’s lives and the world in which we live.”

Wyss, who has a net worth of $8.7 billion, is currently ranked 123rd on Forbes magazine’s list of billionaires. He focuses on land conservation and education philanthropy through the Wyss Foundation, which he founded in 1998.

Born in Switzerland, Wyss made a fortune as an entrepreneur and businessman. He served as chief executive for Synthes, Inc., a Swiss-based medical device maker which was sold for more than $20 billion to Johnson and Johnson in June of last year.

“I could not have dreamt of the Institute’s remarkable discoveries thus far, and am proud and excited to help them continue to build, explore, and improve lives,” Wyss said in a statement.

The Wyss Institute, which exists as a consortium of Harvard University, Harvard-affiliated hospitals, Boston University, Tufts University, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, aims to “transform healthcare, industry, and the environment by emulating the way nature builds,” according to its website. The collaboration currently consists of more than 350 staff members spread out over Harvard’s Longwood and Cambridge campuses.

The aim of the Wyss Institute is to incorporate existing designs in nature into modern engineering solutions. Since its founding, Wyss faculty members have built devices including an artificial lung to simplify drug testing, robotic insects capable of flight, and vibrating insoles to ease walking for the elderly.

“Four years ago, we were tasked with developing an entirely new model for innovation, collaboration, and technology translation that more effectively bridges academia and industry, and that is precisely what we did,” Wyss founding director Donald E. Ingber said in a statement.

“Mr. Wyss’s additional gift—for which we are beyond grateful—ensures that our adventure in high-risk research and technology translation will continue,” he added.

—Staff writer Brian C. Zhang can be reached at brianzhang@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @brianczhang.

The Nieman Foundation of Journalism has named 24 journalists from across the globe to the 2013-2014 class of Nieman Fellows, who will take temporary leaves from their journalism careers to study at Harvard.

The mid-career fellowship gives journalists with at least five years of professional experience the opportunity to engage in a specific area of research, audit courses from across the University, and participate in various seminars for 10 months starting in the fall.

“It’s an intensity that is not focused on producing a story for tomorrow’s newspaper or magazine or radio station. It’s a chance to focus on skill-building and intellectual pursuits,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation.

The Nieman Foundation selected 12 U.S. journalists and 12 international journalists as Fellows, and received 136 U.S. applications and 136 international ones.

“It’s a chance for me to step back from a daily pressure and sit back and think about some of the bigger questions of trends I’ve been covering,” said Jeffrey R. Young, one of the 2013-2014 Nieman fellows, who covers technology as a senior editor and writer from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

While at Harvard, Young will study the impact of massive open online courses on higher education. Young said in an interview that he is specifically excited to be researching this issue at Harvard, where he will have the opportunity to connect with people from the Berkman Center, the Graduate School of Education, and EdX—Harvard and MIT’s joint online education venture.

“This new idea of doing online education in this way has raised a lot of questions and there are a lot left unanswered,” Young said. “I feel very much like a new student coming in.”

Tammerlin Drummond, another Nieman fellow and a metro columnist for the Bay Area News Group, said she is interested in engaging with professors at the School of Public Health to study gun violence as a public health issue.

“In order to get a full view of it, you have to take a step back from the day-to-day, going from the funerals and the homicide days,” Drummond said.

Dina Temple-Raston, a counterterrorism correspondent for National Public Radio, is the first to receive the Murrey Marder Nieman Fellowship in Watchdog Journalism, named in memory of Murrey Marder, a former Nieman Fellow who passed away in March.

Lipinski had been conversing with Marder last year about the future of watchdog journalism and how to integrate his interests with the Foundation.

“It’s great that [Temple-Raston is] a Washington journalist. I think Murrey would have liked that,” Lipinski said.

In addition to the individual projects, Nieman fellows will have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with each other. While 24 Nieman Fellows were picked for the coming class, Lipinski said she and the other members of the selection committee thought with 25 in mind.

“The 25th [fellow] is the character of the class. We want them very much connected to each other and finding opportunities in each other’s work,” Lipinski said.

For the 2012-2013 Nieman Fellows, crowdsourcing was a popular topic of collaborative study. Many of the fellows focused on the huge presence of social media in the coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings, Lipinski said.

“The extent to which their working together in teams has been part of what makes a class coming together, I see a lot of potential for that from the incoming class,” Lipinski said.

Many of the fellows are looking into the future of the journalism industry and how to take advantage of digital platforms. Tyler Cabot, a new Nieman Fellow and an article editor at Esquire, said he will explore long-form journalism.

“It’ll be great to trade notes with the other people in magazine. And in the end, we’re all doing storytelling in different ways,” Cabot said.

The Nieman Foundation will be celebrating its 75th anniversary in the fall, where the newest class will be able to participate in reunion programming.

—Staff writer Kerry M. Flynn can be reached at kflynn@college.harvard.edu.

Evelynn M. Hammonds has been in negotiations about a possible departure from her position as Dean of Harvard College and is expected not to return to the post in the fall, a person with direct knowledge of the situation confirmed Friday.

The confirmation follows six weeks of speculation about the embattled dean’s future as the head of Harvard University’s flagship school.

The departure would draw to a close a five-year term marred of late by the College’s largest cheating case in recent memory and revelations that University administrators authorized two rounds of secret email searches, one of which explicitly broke the Faculty of Arts and Sciences email privacy policy.

In an emailed statement to The Crimson on Friday, Hammonds wrote, “I have not been asked to resign as dean, nor have I offered. I am dean of Harvard College and I think speculation to the contrary is unproductive.”

Her statement did not rule out the possibility that she could depart in the near future, either through a resignation or the expiration of her contract. When asked Friday evening whether she was preparing to step down as dean or whether she has been pressured to resign, Hammonds did not provide a direct response. Jeff Neal, a spokesperson for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an email that Hammonds's statement earlier Friday answered both of those questions.

Ali S. Asani ’77, chair of the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department who said he had no direct knowledge of the negotiations, said Friday the email searches likely led to a “loss of trust” between members of the faculty and the Administrative Board.

“I am sure it has affected her relationship with these resident deans who are so core to the College, and under the circumstances, it would make her job very difficult,” Asani said.

Even if Hammonds departs from University Hall, Asani warned that issues of trust among faculty and students will not simply disappear.

The action comes after nearly two months of scrutiny over those email searches that were covertly executed on the accounts of resident deans last fall. The Boston Globe first reported those searches on March 9. Two days later, on March 11, Smith and Hammonds released a joint statement saying that the searches had been targeted, meta-data queries of the resident deans’ administrative email accounts.

However, that statement contained a number of incorrect details, and on April 2, Hammonds informed faculty gathered for their monthly meeting that she had personally authorized a second round of searches on a single resident dean’s administrative and faculty email accounts. Though Hammonds said she consulted with the University Office of the General Counsel, she did not get Smith’s authorization and therefore broke the faculty email policy. Taking responsibility for the second round of searches, Hammonds told faculty that she had “failed to recollect” them when making the March 11 statement.

Faust has tasked Boston attorney Michael B. Keating with investigating the searches and preparing a report that, according to Harvard Corporation member William F. Lee ’72, will be shared with the Harvard community.

Administrators have said that those email searches were intended to plug leaks of information related to another scandal that has clouded Hammonds’ tenure—cheating allegations that implicated approximately 125 students in Government 1310: “Introduction to Congress.” The unprecedented Ad Board case ultimately required roughly 70 undergraduates to withdraw from the College.

Many have criticized the handling of the Government 1310 case, which took more than six months to adjudicate and included an unprecedented review of all students enrolled in the course, including many who were not initially suspected to have cheated.

As Dean of the College, Hammonds is the head of the Ad Board. All resident deans also sit on that board alongside select faculty members.

Hammonds was named Dean of the College in June 2008, becoming the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. She has spent much of her five-year tenure overseeing Harvard’s ongoing House Renewal project and working to expand the College’s social spaces. Early in her term, she also helped implement the College’s new General Education program.

While some undergraduates have questioned Hammonds’s visibility as dean, Asani said he believes Hammonds has done a “very good job” making the College administration more responsive to the needs of students during her time in the role.

Hammonds became dean after a two-year stint as Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity. She is a tenured faculty member of both the History of Science and the African and African American Studies departments. It is likely she will return to those positions in the fall even if she leaves her role as Dean of the College this summer.

As recently as Monday, Robert D. Reischauer, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation—the University’s highest governing body—told The Crimson he had not heard that Hammonds would be leaving her post as dean. He declined to comment on Hammonds’s future Friday afternoon.

—Staff writer Nikita Kansra contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Nicholas P. Fandos can be reached at nicholasfandos@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @npfandos.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at sweinstock@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @syweinstock.