From MIT to Burning Man: The Living Knitwork Pavilion
Set against the vast and surreal backdrop of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Burning Man is an annual gathering that transforms the flat, barren expanse into a vibrant playground for artistic and creative expression. Here, “Burners” come to both witness and contribute to the ephemeral Black Rock City, which participants build anew each year. […]
How to Get Unstuck introduces to 50+ graduate students to support structures
Last month Beth Marois, Assistant Dean for Graduate Support and Advising, presented at an event at Warehouse put on by Claudia and Dave Darmofal and the rest of the residence hall leadership team. Entitled “How to Get Unstuck,” the event included dinner, a giveaway, and an introduction to various support structures on campus including GradSupport […]
Organizing “spaghetti” software so it can be easily modified
As a software engineer, Dan Sturtevant SM ’08, PhD ’13 had jobs where making a small change to a codebase was easy — and jobs where a similarly small change would cause other, seemingly random parts of the codebase to break down or malfunction. Making these changes could remind Sturtevant what he liked about being […]
Nathaniel Hendren wants to understand the conditions of opportunity
The U.S. is a land of opportunity, but it’s a complicated thing. People in the workforce today are much less likely to earn more than their parents did, compared to people born around 1940. Some parts of the country generate much more economic mobility than others. And even with other matters being equal, there are […]
With Psyche, a journey to an ancient asteroid is set to begin
If all goes well, on Thursday morning a NASA mission with extensive connections to MIT will be headed to a metal world. Psyche, a van-sized spacecraft with winglike solar panels, is scheduled to blast off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket tomorrow at 10:16 a.m. Eastern Time. Psyche’s destination is a potato-shaped asteroid by the […]
Twelve with MIT ties elected to the National Academy of Medicine for 2023
The National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members to join their esteemed ranks in 2023, among them five MIT faculty members and seven additional affiliates. MIT professors Daniel Anderson, Regina Barzilay, Guoping Feng, Darrell Irvine, and Morgen Shen were among the new members. Justin Hanes PhD ’96, Said Ibrahim MBA ’16, […]
One of MIT’s “best-kept secrets” offers an outlet for creative writing
They gather every Monday at noon from disparate corners of MIT. The group includes faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, alumni, and even spouses. Their discussions revolve around mythical dystopias, half-remembered dreams, and gripping personal dramas. An outsider overhearing fragments of conversation might not know what to make of the eclectic group. Given MIT’s […]
A reciprocal relationship with the land in Hawaiʻi
Aja Grande grew up on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, between the Kona and ʻEwa districts, nurtured by her community and the natural environment. Her family has lived in Hawaiʻi for generations; while she is not “Kanaka ʻŌiwi,” of native Hawaiian descent, she is proud to trace her family’s history to the time of the […]
MIT SHASS Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship Program welcomes 2023-24 class
The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship program recently welcomed its 2023-24 class. The purpose of the program is to enhance diversity in SHASS and to provide fellows with additional professional support and mentoring as they enter the field. The fellowships are intended to support scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, […]
Photos: Moungi Bawendi’s first day as a Nobel laureate
Today, MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi won a share of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his role in developing quantum dots — nanoscale particles that can emit exceedingly bright light. Bawendi, a professor of chemistry who has been on the MIT faculty since 1990, told MIT News this morning that he felt “surprise and […]
Celebrating Indigenous voices at MIT
In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, we want to highlight recent scholarship at MIT celebrating Indigenous knowledge and identities. Please read about the exceptional work of graduate students, visiting scholars and MIT programs celebrating Indigenous culture. Steven Gonzalez, PhD candidate in HASTS, has published his first book, “Sordidez,” a science fiction novella on rebuilding, healing, […]
MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi shares Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Moungi Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry at MIT and a leader in the development of tiny particles known as quantum dots, has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2023. He will share the prize with Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology, Inc. The researchers were honored for […]
“A whole world of potential learners and potential knowledge to gain”
When Aya Khalifa came to MIT from Egypt for her master’s degree in chemical engineering, she adapted well to a new educational system thanks to class 10.MBC (Math Boot Camp for Engineers). This online resource was developed by the MIT Digital Learning Lab (DLL) and the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering for first-year graduate students […]
Improving accessibility of online graphics for blind users
The beauty of a nice infographic published alongside a news or magazine story is that it makes numeric data more accessible to the average reader. But for blind and visually impaired users, such graphics often have the opposite effect. For visually impaired users — who frequently rely on screen-reading software that speaks words or numbers […]
Finding solidarity in the teachers’ lounge
In the United States, social institutions from church organizations to sports leagues occupy key roles in shaping political life, with unions perhaps the most familiar player, affecting change in realms from protest movements to elections. But while these civil society institutions draw little notice in a democracy, they turn heads in settings where political […]
One scientist’s journey from the Middle East to MIT
“I recently exhaled a breath I’ve been holding in for nearly half my life. After applying over a decade ago, I’m finally an American. This means so many things to me. Foremost, it means I can go back to the the Middle East, and see my mama and the family, for the first time in […]
MIT announces 2023 Bose Grants for daring new research
MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart has announced three Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grants to support bold research projects across diverse areas of study including engineering, animal behavior, and human movement. This year’s recipients are Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the d’Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering; Canan Dagdeviren, associate professor and […]
Giving students the computational chops to tackle 21st-century challenges
Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain […]
Re-imagining the opera of the future
In the mid-1980s, composer Tod Machover came across a copy of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel “VALIS” in a Parisian bookstore. Based on a mystical vision Dick called his “pink light experience,” “VALIS” was an acronym for “vast active living intelligence system.” The metaphysical novel would become the basis for Machover’s opera of the […]
How I turned into a college journalist and met John David Washington
One of the first things that comes to my mind when I think of entertainment is, without a second thought, movies. As a child, I pestered my parents to take me to the cinemas for every new release in town. I like to call myself an empathetic person, and true to the quality, I am […]
MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2023-24
Established in 1990, the MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program at MIT welcomes outstanding scholars to the Institute for visiting appointments. MIT aspires to attract candidates who are, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.” The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending […]
Five MIT faculty members named 2023 Simons Investigators
Five MIT professors have been selected to receive the 2023 Simons Investigators awards from the Simons Foundation. Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Vinod Vaikuntanathan are both professors in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and principal investigators in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Aram Harrow and Leonid Mirny are professors […]
HASTS Prospective Student Visit Day
The MIT Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) is pleased to announce that our Prospective Student Visit Day 2023 will be held on Friday, October 13, 2023. Prospective applicants who would like to know more about our program and the application process are encouraged to attend the HASTS Prospective Student Visit […]
3 Questions: A new PhD program from the Center for Computational Science and Engineering
This fall, the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE), an academic unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, is introducing a new standalone PhD degree program that will enable students to pursue research in cross-cutting methodological aspects of computational science and engineering. The launch follows approval of the center’s degree program proposal at […]
School of Science welcomes new faculty in 2023
Last spring, the School of Science welcomed seven new faculty members. Erin Chen PhD ’11 studies the communication between microbes that reside on the surface of the human body and the immune system. She focuses on the largest organ: the skin. Chen will dissect the molecular signals of diverse skin microbes and their effects on […]
Nicole Wilson: The politics of a shifting middle class in Nigeria
Before her time at MIT, Nicole Wilson worked as a research assistant for two graduate students studying informal trade in Lagos, Nigeria. She was quickly captivated by the nation’s vibrant commercial center, with its population of nearly 22 million. “I had never spent more than a week or two out of the country, but I […]
On the hunt for sustainable materials
By the time she started high school, Avni Singhal had attended six different schools in a variety of settings, from a traditional public school to a self-paced program. The transitions opened her eyes to how widely educational environments can vary, and made her think about that impact on students. “Experiencing so many different types of […]
James Fujimoto, Eric Swanson, and David Huang win Lasker Award
The Lasker Foundation has named James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor in Electrical Engineering and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), a recipient of the 2023 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his groundbreaking work on optical coherence tomography. Fujimoto shares the award with Eric Swanson SM […]
School of Engineering welcomes Songyee Yoon PhD ’00 as visiting innovation scholar
Songyee Yoon PhD ’00, an entrepreneur, innovator, investor, and leader in AI and the gaming industry, has been appointed as a School of Engineering visiting innovation scholar for the 2023-24 academic year. Yoon, who is as a member of the MIT Corporation, serves as president and chief strategic officer of NCSOFT, a world leader in […]
Bringing design justice to the classroom and workplace
Whether you’re building a home or programming a robot, design is a human-centered activity, making it essential to teach design in a way that focuses on equity, justice, and ethics. That’s one of the messages that was shared at a workshop offered by members of MIT’s Design Justice Project at the International Design Engineering Technical Conferences […]
Ode to Cambridgeport
I have lived in Cambridgeport for only a short two years, but as my time here draws to a close, it only feels right to eulogize this wonderful neighborhood. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting, Cambridgeport is MIT’s pentagonal neighbor to the Northwest. Cambridgeport is bounded by the Charles River […]
2023-2024 Accenture Fellows advance technology at the crossroads of business and society
The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has selected five new research fellows for 2023-24. Now in its third year, the initiative underscores the ways in which industry and research can collaborate to spur technological innovation. Through its partnership with the School of Engineering, Accenture provides five annual fellowships awarded to graduate […]
Mariama N’Diaye’s design-led approach to governance
Mariama N’Diaye, a design fellow at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), works to transform the public sector through design thinking and innovation. With a diverse background in urban planning and business administration — she’s pursuing a dual master’s degree at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and the MIT Sloan School […]
MIT scholars awarded seed grants to probe the social implications of generative AI
In July, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart issued a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of generative AI.” Over the next month, they received an influx of responses from every school at MIT proposing to explore generative AI’s potential applications and […]
Mechanical engineering with a twist: Pursuing a passion for robotics with customized major
A photo of students in colorful hardhats running across Killian Court is what first drew Sharmi Shah ’23 to the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), but a desire to make the world a better place is what inspired her to pursue studies in the field and to focus on robotics. “Coming in, I thought I […]
Mikhail Ivanov wins 2024 New Horizons in Physics Breakthrough Prize
Assistant professor of physics Mikhail Ivanov will receive the 2024 New Horizons in Physics Prize, which he will share with Marko Simonović from the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) at the University of Florence, and Oliver Philcox from Columbia University and the Simons Foundation. The New Horizons Prize, which is given to promising early-career physicists […]
