| Reaching for the Stars | | | | | | Kavya Manyapu SM ’10 (above left) and Celena Dopart SM ’14 (above right) are both engineers working on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which will be used to access low Earth orbit and travel to the International Space Station. “I literally have my fingerprints on what is going to fly to space,” Manyapu says. “We’re all on the edge of our seats waiting to launch,” Dopart adds. Full story via Slice of MIT → |
| 3 Questions: Historian Elizabeth Wood on election interference How do we understand Russia’s multi-layered interference in the 2016 elections? A Russia expert and professor of history analyzes Russia’s motives. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| A new process could make hydrogen peroxide available in remote places An MIT-developed method may lead to portable devices for making the disinfectant on-site where it’s needed. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Meet the 2019 tenured professors in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences SHASS faculty members Nikhil Agarwal, Sana Aiyar, Stephanie Frampton, Daniel Hidalgo, and Miriam Schoenfield were recently granted tenure. Full story via MIT News → |
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| Putting the “bang” in the Big Bang Physicists have simulated a critical “reheating” period that kickstarted the Big Bang in the universe’s first fractions of a second. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| New vending machines expand fresh food options on campus Now at the Student Center and Building 16, Fresh Fridge offers healthy options for eating on the go. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Why spacesuit design choices — not women’s physiques — delayed the first all-female spacewalk // The Verge Professor Dava Newman discusses her work developing a new type of spacesuit that would accommodate women and men. “It’s a different design approach fundamentally,” says Newman. Full story via The Verge → |
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| The doctor behind a revolutionary cancer test says it all started with the support of her refugee parents // Upworthy Professor Sangeeta Bhatia relates how a visit to MIT as a child “really captured my imagination, the idea that you could build instruments for a medical intervention to impact human health.” Full story via Upworthy → |
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| Art by the numbers // The New York Times Origami sculptures by Professor Erik Demaine and technical instructor Martin Demaine are on display at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City. Full story via The New York Times → |
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| The ethics of artificial intelligence: What happens when humans can’t agree on what is “right?” // The Wall Street Journal “The dialogue on these matters must be started now, by creators of the science, by business leaders responsible for its uses, and by society which will have to live with the consequences,” writes Professor Stuart Madnick. Full story via The Wall Street Journal → |
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| | | The scenic MIT quad formerly known as North Court was recently renamed Hockfield Court, in honor of Susan Hockfield, president of MIT from 2004 to 2012. The new moniker was bestowed in an Oct. 4 ceremony celebrating Hockfield and her contributions to the Institute. As MIT’s 16th president, and the first woman to serve in the role as well as the first life scientist, Hockfield focused MIT’s strengths on a range of important problems, from cancer research to advanced manufacturing. “I have confidence that MIT will continue to open, and hold open, new windows of opportunity,” Hockfield, a professor of neuroscience, said, “so that ... MIT can be the dream of every child who wants to make the world a better place.” Full story via MIT News → |
Monday marked the 69th birthday of the late NASA astronaut and physicist Ronald McNair PhD ’77. An accomplished jazz saxophonist, McNair was the second African-American to fly to space and one of the first astronauts to play a musical instrument in low-Earth orbit. (He’s seen here during the 1984 mission STS 41-B). He planned to play a sax solo during his second spaceflight for an album to be released by composer Jean Michel Jarre. But McNair and the six other members of the STS 51-L crew died shortly after liftoff in the 1986 Challenger tragedy. As a tribute, the last track on Jarre’s album was titled, “Last Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece) - Challenger.”
Listen to the song | Learn more via MIT Black History → |
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| | | “One of the beautiful things about modular synths, I think, is they don’t do anything when you turn them on,” says MIT Professor Joseph Paradiso of the giant modular synthesizer he created, in a short film by Gizmodo. “It forces you to be creative, to really try to think of something new because you are starting with nothing.” Watch the film → |
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