Author: Ms. R.

For the fourth time in the history of the annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and for the fourth year in a row, all five of the top spots in the contest, known as Putnam Fellows, came from a single school: MIT. Putnam Fellows include three individuals who ranked in the top five in previous years — sophomores Papon Lapate and Luke Robitaille and junior Brian Liu — plus junior Ankit Bisain and first-year Jiangqi Dai. Each receives an……

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During MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) this January, first-year students interested in civil and environmental engineering (CEE) participated in a four-week undergraduate research opportunities program known as the mini-UROP (1.097). The six-unit subject pairs first-year students with a CEE graduate student or postdoc mentor, providing them with an inside look at the interdisciplinary research being conducted in the department. Overall, eight labs in the department opened their doors to the 2024 cohort, who were eager to take advantage of……

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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designated three historical MIT Lincoln Laboratory technologies as IEEE Milestones. The technologies are the Mode S air traffic control (ATC) radar beacon system, 193-nanometer (nm) photolithography, and the semiconductor laser. The latter recognition is shared by Lincoln Laboratory, General Electric, and IBM. As the world’s largest technical professional organization, the IEEE’s mission is to “advance technology for the benefit of humanity.” The Milestone program commemorates innovations developed at least 25 years……

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Tamara Broderick first set foot on MIT’s campus when she was a high school student, as a participant in the inaugural Women’s Technology Program. The monthlong summer academic experience gives young women a hands-on introduction to engineering and computer science. What is the probability that she would return to MIT years later, this time as a faculty member? That’s a question Broderick could probably answer quantitatively using Bayesian inference, a statistical approach to probability that tries to quantify uncertainty……

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Benjamin Warf, a renowned neurosurgeon at Boston Children’s Hospital, stands in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. More than 3,000 miles away, his virtual avatar stands next to Matheus Vasconcelos in Brazil as the resident practices delicate surgery on a doll-like model of a baby’s brain. With a pair of virtual-reality goggles, Vasconcelos is able to watch Warf’s avatar demonstrate a brain surgery procedure before replicating the technique himself and while asking questions of Warf’s digital twin. “It’s an almost out-of-body……

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Edward B. Roberts ’58, SM ’58, SM ’60, PhD ’62, a visionary management professor who studied entrepreneurship while building a flourishing innovation ecosystem at MIT, died on Tuesday. He was 88 years old. Over a remarkable seven-decade career at the Institute, Roberts was a prolific scholar and mentor who founded what is now the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, a unique resource that has guided thousands of innovators as they have brought inventions and ideas to the market…….

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Launched in 2021, the Grant Program for Diverse Voices from the MIT Press provides direct support for new work by authors who bring excluded or chronically underrepresented perspectives to the fields in which the press publishes, which include the sciences, arts, and humanities. Recipients are selected after submitting a book proposal and completing a successful peer review. Grants can support a variety of needs, including research travel, copyright permission fees, parental/family care, developmental editing, and other costs associated with……

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The MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, co-directed by MIT professors Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson, celebrated its official launch on Jan. 22. The new initiative’s mission is to analyze the forces that are eroding job quality and labor market opportunities for non-college workers and identify innovative ways to move the economy onto a more equitable trajectory. Here, Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson speak about the origins, goals, and plans for their new initiative. Q: What was……

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Soledad Chango, a native of Ecuador and a graduate student in MIT’s Indigenous Language Initiative, began preparations for her Quechua course with a clear idea about its purpose. “Our language matters,” she says. “It’s worth studying and spreading.” Quechua at MIT, a new two-week introductory class hosted by MIT Global Languages during the Institute’s Independent Activities Period in January, introduced students to the basics of Kichwa, a Quechua variant that is the most widely spoken language in the Americas…….

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MIT graduate student Sydney Rose Johnson has never seen the steel mills in central India. She’s never toured the American Midwest’s hulking steel plants or the mini mills dotting the Mississippi River. But in the past year, she’s become more familiar with steel production than she ever imagined. A fourth-year dual degree MBA and PhD candidate in chemical engineering and a graduate research assistant with the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) as well as a 2022-23 Shell Energy Fellow, Johnson……

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