| 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. Watch the video via YouTube → |
| 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. Full story via Slice of MIT → | |
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| 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. Full story via MIT News → |
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| Introducing Scratch 3.0 The new version of the popular free coding platform builds on a robust community of kid coders. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| How writing technology shaped classical thinking Stephanie Frampton’s new book explores the written word in the Roman world. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| Controllable fast, tiny magnetic bits MIT researchers make nanoscale magnetic quasi-particles known as skyrmions for spintronic memory devices. Full story via MIT News → | |
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| 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.” Full story via Forbes → |
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| 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. Full story via Nature → |
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| 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. Full story via TechCrunch → |
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| 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. Full story via The Washington Post → |
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Thanks for reading, and enjoy your weekend!
—Kathy, MIT News Office |
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