Of Harvard and war: Engineering professor astride two worlds

Q. How did you come to Harvard?

A. I was hired to be a professor here in 2002. I knew I was having to deploy, but I couldn’t tell anybody because it was classified, so I came up here and asked them to hold the job because I had to go fight.

Q. What is it like to straddle two very different worlds – the military and the ivory tower?

A. Sitting in the airport after kissing my wife and child good-bye -- that was worse than anything I faced in combat. And then the transition back here -- one day you’re getting shot at and the next day you’re at a Starbucks listening to some guy yelling about his latte and you look through the paper and see a guy you know listed among the casualties and you just want to scream.

Q. What about your research on cardiac tissue engineering and nanotechnology?

A. Taking care of my students and civilian occupation was a tremendous amount of stress. I built this research group knowing it could function when I went away. We had to have a very regimented way of doing things because if I leave and the system breaks down, then it’s every man for himself. Six, seven months away is rough. But after 12 months, you start talking about losing your science mojo.

Lessons learned from both endeavors support each other. You learn how to manage people in the army. You learn how to do dynamic problem solving quickly. In the sciences, you build hypotheses and learn how to look for ways to test it. In a counterinsurgency, the things you do are experimental as well.

Q. What are your thoughts on Harvard’s ban on ROTC?

A. The dirty work of maintaining a democracy is every American’s business. Offering one’s young to help do this dirty work is important. Harvard doesn’t do that. At Harvard, there are many people who aspire to make history. My warrior brethren in Iraq and Afghanistan are at the cusp of history, regardless of how you feel about the wars. By not having ROTC, we are not making a statement that we are willing to earn our first amendment rights that we as academics vigorously consume.

Q. What were you doing in Afghanistan?

A. Part of my job was remodeling the army. Doctrine cannot change as fast as some of the threats on the battlefield. My job was to roam around and look for interesting things we needed to institutionalize within the Army. I went on a variety of missions -- from looking for IEDs to how combat leaders mentor the governors of different provinces to training the Afghan army and police.

Q. What is the hardest part of being in the Army?

A. On the battlefield everyone thinks about the physical danger you’re in, but rarely do you hear about the moral jeopardy that you’re in. When you carry a gun for a living, it changes the way you see everything. You can’t walk through Harvard square and not see it differently because you train yourself to be constantly assessing threats.

Your assessment of threats can put you in very precarious positions. You only have to stare though the barrel of a rifle one time at a child to feel the chill of moral jeopardy. You are constantly assessing everybody you see on a counterinsurgency battlefield. I don’t have nightmares about people I might have shot at on the battlefield. I have nightmares about people I didn’t shoot and what if I had. Moral jeopardy.

Q. Of being at Harvard?

A. Everything at Harvard is hard. It’s a great place to be from but it’s a hard place to be. If I come in at 5 or 6 in the morning, I am not the first person in. And if I leave at midnight, I am not the last person here. We crank. When you are trying to push the envelope, when you are trying to be at the cutting edge of your field, life is not comfortable. The dean hired me to solve problems that nobody else on the planet can solve. Living up to that expectation of excellence is difficult. That’s no different at Harvard than it is in the Army. If you’re pushing the envelope in science or kicking a door in Afghanistan and you don’t know what’s on the other side, that’s hard.

Q. What is your research about?

A. My lab was primarily set up to understand how the heart builds itself. Then I got interested in traumatic brain injury the first time someone tried to kill me with an IED. Now we have a growing effort in traumatic brain injury too. The Defense Advance Research Project Agency asked me to look at tissue engineering techniques.

Q. Are you home for good now?

A. I hope that was my last rodeo. The unit I left is still there. Leaving them was and still is brutal. We lost a lot of guys in the last part of my time there and they’ve lost several guys since I left. You read this in the newspaper and you just feel awful. You’re here, they’re there. I’ve accomplished nearly everything I want to do in the army, but it’s not about me so that’s why I’m staying in the National Guard. I’m not going to get out when things are tough. I said from the very beginning, this is not going to be a war, this is going to be a lifestyle, and unfortunately, I was correct.