A team of Harvard researchers recently identified a gene that may play a direct role in developing aggressive prostate cancer—a discovery they said could lead to a more accurate technique to test for the disease.

Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas A. Christakis and economics professor David I. Laibson ’88 each received a grant of about $1.5 million from the National Institute on Aging to implement research geared toward enhancing the quality of life.

Harvard Medical School announced yesterday that William B. Chin has been appointed executive dean for research, a position responsible for managing the school’s interdisciplinary research efforts.

Writing not long after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, art historian and biographer Giorgio Vasari described the late master’s “Mona Lisa,” placing special emphasis on the lady’s uncanny simper. “And in this work of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvelous, since the reality was not more alive,” he wrote.

Acclaimed epidemiologist Christos S. Mantzoros has been promoted to at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Early last year, Harvard Medical School professor Timothy Mitchison pulled aside two scientists employed in his lab. Without more funding soon, Mitchison told them, he would have to let them go.

Harvard Catalyst, an interdisciplinary health research organization, will launch a competition soliciting insights related to type 1 diabetes from all across the campus—an endeavor that organizers say will hopefully lead to diverse perspectives on the disease and its treatment.

Following an unsuccessful four-month investigation of the Aug. 26 poisoning at a Harvard Medical School laboratory, the Harvard University Police Department is no longer actively working on the case.

A medical malpractice suit brought against two doctors at a Harvard-affiliated hospital on behalf of a deceased Harvard professor was resolved Friday, ending in the exonerations of the doctors and awarding no damages to the plaintiff after nearly five years of legal battles.