January 12, 2019
Greetings! Here’s the latest roundup from the MIT community.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Welcome to IAP
Each January, a collection of opportunities and activities appears across MIT. Over four weeks, the rigors of academia take a back seat, and relaxed but impassioned creativity takes the lead. This is Independent Activities Period, and IAP 2019 began this week. Activities change each year but the goal remains the same: to experience something new and learn about one’s fellow students, colleagues, and friends.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Top Headlines
Debunking the Princess Leia lie
Like many alumni, Daniel Smalley ’05, MEng ’06, SM ’08, PhD ’13 is a Star Wars enthusiast. But when he watches the first episode in the Star Wars series, Smalley is academically miffed.
MIT Heat Island
School of Engineering welcomes new faculty
With specialties ranging from novel microscopy techniques to intelligent systems and mixed-autonomy mobility, 11 new professors are joining the MIT community.
Introducing Scratch 3.0
The new version of the popular free coding platform builds on a robust community of kid coders.
MIT Heat Island
How writing technology shaped classical thinking
Stephanie Frampton’s new book explores the written word in the Roman world.
MIT Heat Island
Controllable fast, tiny magnetic bits
MIT researchers make nanoscale magnetic quasi-particles known as skyrmions for spintronic memory devices.
MIT Heat Island
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
#ThisIsMIT
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In the Media
The must-read brain books of 2018 // Forbes
Professor Alan Jasanoff’s book, “The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are,” is named one of the must-read brain books of 2018. “Rather than being another assessment of what the brain does, this one is about what it is — and more interestingly what it is not.”
How ‘magic angle’ graphene is stirring up physics // Nature
“I haven’t seen this much excitement in the graphene field since its initial discovery,” says ChunNing Jeanie Lau, a professor at Ohio State University, about research by Professor Pablo Jarillo-Herrero.
MIT researchers are now 3-D-printing glass // TechCrunch
An MIT team has developed a system for 3-D printing glass that makes clear structures that can be used for decorating or building.
China lands spacecraft on the far side of the moon, a historic first // The Washington Post
Professor Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, discusses the significance of China successfully landing a spacecraft, called Chang’e 4, on the far side of the moon.
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—Kathy, MIT News Office
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