| Fusion Breakthrough | | | | | On Sunday, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet at MIT reached a field strength of 20 tesla — paving the way for the creation of practical carbon-free power, project leaders say, by surmounting a key hurdle to a fusion power plant. Full story via MIT News | Watch the video → |
| Reflecting on September 11, 20 years later Steven Simon, the Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies and an expert on U.S. strategy and the war on terror, weighs in on the events of 9/11 and where we can go from here. |  |
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| How safe are outdoor activities now? MIT Medical provides the latest guidance on outdoor activities with Delta as the predominant SARS-CoV-2 variant in the U.S. |  |
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| A new hub for MIT innovation and entrepreneurship InnovationHQ in Kendall Square is home to several entrepreneurial support organizations and features space for startup activities, networking, and education. |  |
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| MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2021-22 A record number of honorees will engage in the life of the Institute through teaching, research, and other interactions with the MIT community. |  |
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| A universal system for decoding any type of data sent across a network New chip eliminates the need for specific decoding hardware, could boost efficiency of gaming systems, 5G networks, the internet of things, and more. |  |
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| Opinion: Why nation-building failed in Afghanistan // Project Syndicate “In viewing nation-building as a top-down, ‘state-first’ process, U.S. policymakers were following a venerable tradition in political science,” writes Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu of why the U.S. and its allies never reconsidered a top-down state-building strategy in Afghanistan. “The assumption is that if you can establish overwhelming military dominance over a territory and subdue all other sources of power, you can then impose your will. Yet in most places, this theory is only half right, at best; and in Afghanistan, it was dead wrong.” |
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| Opinion: Good news: There’s a labor shortage. // The New York Times Professor David Autor explores how the current labor shortage provides a chance to improve the quality of jobs in the U.S. “The period of labor scarcity, then, is an opportunity to catalyze better working conditions for those who need them most,” Autor writes. |
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| Texas cold crisis early this year linked to melting Arctic sea ice // New Scientist A study led by visiting scientist Judah Cohen finds climate change is likely causing more extreme winter weather in North America and Eurasia. “This is an unexpected impact from climate change that we didn’t appreciate 20 years ago,” Cohen says. |
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| How Covid-19 changed MIT’s global hackathon program and others for the better, forever // Forbes Postdoc Freddy Nguyen, former co-director of the MIT Hacking Medicine hackathon, discusses how transitioning to virtual programming during the Covid-19 pandemic shed light on how to improve hackathons going forward. |
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| | | Despite the pandemic, the MIT community has continued teaching, learning, and supporting the Institute’s mission, and investigating the world and finding new ways to make it better. To those arriving on campus for the first time, and to those returning: Welcome home. |
| 1,184 | | Number of students in the MIT Class of 2025, representing 48 U.S. states and 66 countries |
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| | | The newly renovated Hayden Library and Building 14 courtyard are now open to the MIT community. The spaces were re-envisioned to provide areas for collaborative work, exploring collections, a teaching and event space, a new cafe, and areas to unwind, surrounded by greenery and natural light. “So much of our vision for libraries has been given new urgency by the pandemic — the need for equitable digital access to information, adapting to hybrid modes of teaching and learning, and the essential role of physical space, including outdoor space, on a campus,” says MIT Libraries Director Chris Bourg. “With this renovation, the design and features of Hayden and the courtyard meet that new urgency with an almost uncanny prescience.” |
| | | Walking around the MIT campus, you might come across a plaque marking Danny Lewin Square at the corner of Main and Vassar Streets. The honor commemorates Danny Lewin SM ’98, who was one of nearly 3,000 people who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Lewin was killed onboard American Airlines Flight 11, and is credited with trying to stop the plane from crashing into the World Trade Center. Although his life was cut short at 31, Lewin made an indelible mark on the field of computer science. He was co-founder of Akamai Technologies and a doctoral candidate at MIT at the time of his death. His master’s thesis included some of the fundamental algorithms that make up the core of Akamai’s services, which revolutionized the way internet content is delivered. In 2017, Lewin and his Akamai cofounder, MIT Professor Tom Leighton, were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for applying algorithms to solve web congestion. “He was a very, very bright fellow, and a great leader, inspirational fellow, and really a unique human being,” Leighton told MIT News in 2011. “Anyone that extraordinary when they’re lost you never replace that.” |
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