February 18, 2023
Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.
 
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Tracking Stolen Bikes
Rows of bikes are parked near a canal in beautiful Amsterdam.
   
Amsterdam is one of the most bike-friendly major cities in the world. It’s also a happy hunting ground for thieves, who steal tens of thousands of bikes per year. Where do the stolen bikes go? A new study shows the vast majority remain in the local area.
Top Headlines
MIT efforts support earthquake relief for communities in Turkey and Syria
Students, faculty, and staff have responded quickly in the wake of the disaster.
MIT Heat Island
Inside two MIT students’ historic BattleBots runs
PhD students Lucy Du ’14, SM ’16 and Ginger Schmidt are crushing the competition — and gender barriers — in the world of televised robot combat.
MIT Heat Island
Priscilla King Gray, co-founder and namesake of the Institute’s public service center and wife of former MIT president Paul Gray, dies at 89
For more than 50 years, Gray helped build a sense of community at MIT.
MIT Heat Island
Learning challenges shape a mechanical engineer’s path
Recent alumnus James Hermus wants to help others overcome barriers to accessibility and full participation.
MIT Heat Island
“MIT Illuminations,” a colorful installation and introduction to creative computation, is now open in Kendall Square
Located in the new MIT Welcome Center in Building E38, the installation expresses the dynamic, vibrant culture of MIT through the medium of programmable light.
MIT Heat Island
#ThisisMIT
Instagram video still showing the final stretch of an indoor track race. Text via @mitathletics: If you're wondering what it's like to run a mile in 3:55:29 and set the [NCAA Division 3] National Record, well we have the video for you as Ryan Wilson from [MIT Track, Field, and Cross Country] did just that on Saturday night in Boston! Video by Matthew Schofield
In the Media
Scientists made a mind-bending discovery about how AI actually works // Motherboard
A study co-authored by MIT researchers finds AI models that can learn to perform new tasks from just a few examples create smaller models inside themselves to achieve these new tasks.
Opinion: Accelerating astrophysics with the SpaceX Starship // Physics Today
Professor Sara Seager and her colleagues write about how the SpaceX Starship could help transform astrophysics missions. “Assuming it is successful, Starship will dramatically enhance our space capabilities in ways that will qualitatively alter how astrophysics missions can be built,” they explain.
What Boston’s former Little Syria neighborhood tells us about immigrant life in the city today // Radio Boston
Postdoc Lydia Harrington and Boston University postdoc Chloe Bordewich discuss their exhibit at the MIT Rotch Library on Boston’s former Little Syria neighborhood. “We want to show very positive things that Syrians brought with them, as well as their contributions to Boston,” says Harrington.
Surfacing the stories hidden in migration data // Metropolis
Associate Professor Sarah Williams discusses the Civic Data Design Lab’s “Motivational Tapestry,” a large woven art piece that uses data from the United Nations World Food Program to visually represent the individual motivations of 1,624 Central Americans who have migrated to the U.S.
Making Beautiful Music
Sharon Horovitch and Jim Muller play bass fiddle and guitar, respectively, on a small stage
An MIT love story: Jim Muller SM ’82, PhD ’83 and Sharon Horovitch PhD ’80 came to the Institute to get their doctorates but left with much more. They got married while at MIT, and they started a bluegrass band, Southern Rail, that has been playing for audiences around the country ever since. ❤️
Did You Know?
An individual wearing glasses shakes hands with an MIT Student with a whiteboard and 4 chairs in the background.
The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) at MIT, founded by Professor Lee Perlman in 2017, is dedicated to providing transformative learning experiences for both incarcerated individuals and MIT students. Through co-learning opportunities, TEJI aims to improve the quality of life and future prospects of incarcerated people through education, while simultaneously raising students’ social consciousness. TEJI also manages the Massachusetts Prison Education Consortium, which works to build and sustain a strong foundation in the humanities that begins during incarceration and continues into the community. In recognition of its continued impact, TEJI was recently awarded a grant from the New England Patriots players’ social justice fund.
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A few days before graduation, we passed each other in the Infinite Corridor and said our goodbyes and wished each other the best of luck. Who would have thought that we would again bump into each other in Maryland two years later and end up married four years after graduation?! Truly, it all happens for a reason, and we will always be grateful to MIT.
—Jenny Lee Chen ’95, in a new article on couples who met at MIT
#ThisisMIT
Twelve microbial fuel cell towers that resemble barbed wire with a metal top dangle from the ceiling and connect to an electric orb by wire.
Symbionts: Contemporary Artists and the Biosphere” is a current exhibit at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that brings together more than a dozen artists whose work prompts viewers to reexamine our human relationships to the planet’s biosphere through the lens of symbiosis, or “with living.” Curated by professor of architecture Caroline Jones and the MIT List’s Natalie Bell and Selby Nimrod, with assistance from former curatorial research fellow Krista Alba, the exhibit showcases critical interactions that give shape to our world and its interspecies entanglements. View the exhibit now through Feb. 26.
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