Author: Ms. R.

The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 members and 23 international members, including five faculty members from MIT. Joshua Angrist, Gang Chen, Catherine Drennan, Dina Katabi, and Gregory Stephanopoulos were elected in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Membership to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive in their career. Established in 1863 by a Congressional charter that was signed by Abraham Lincoln, the National Academy……

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J-PAL North America is embarking on a year-long planning period to advance racial equity in its work. Throughout this year, J-PAL North America will develop a strategic vision for how to effectively and intentionally prioritize research that addresses racial equity. This includes developing guidance to determine when and how randomized evaluations can advance research related to racial equity, as well as actions to increase the capacity of researchers to approach research related to racial equity by supporting inclusive research……

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Words, data, and algorithms combine, An article about LLMs, so divine. A glimpse into a linguistic world, Where language machines are unfurled. It was a natural inclination to task a large language model (LLM) like CHATGPT with creating a poem that delves into the topic of large language models, and subsequently utilize said poem as an introductory piece for this article. So how exactly did said poem get all stitched together in a neat package, with rhyming words and little morsels……

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In the countryside of northern Ghana, there is not much evidence of government in action. There are few paved roads, state buildings, or law enforcement officials. It is easy to think the state lacks the resources to control much of anything in such places.  “In the rural periphery of the developing world, we tend to think of the state as being quite absent,” says MIT political scientist Noah Nathan. “You can see there aren’t many offices, bureaucrats, or police…….

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Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin had some free advice for an at-capacity crowd of MIT students at the Wong Auditorium during a campus visit in April. “If you find yourself in a career where you’re not learning,” he told them, “it’s time to change jobs. In this world, if you’re not learning, you can find yourself irrelevant in the blink of an eye.” During a conversation with Bryan Landman ’11, senior quantitative research lead for Citadel’s Global Quantitative……

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The MIT Center for Constructive Communication (CCC) and the closely affiliated nonprofit Cortico today announced the launch of a broad-based effort that draws on expertise in face-to-face human dialogue, digital networks, and machine learning to develop safe and trusted spaces for meaningful, nonpolarizing human connection and civic impact. This effort has attracted commitments of $21 million from philanthropic individuals and organizations, including a foundational gift from the international nonprofit Project Liberty. Of the total commitments, $8.5 million is directed to……

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Antibodies that can disarm a virus, known as neutralizing antibodies, are key to the body’s ability to fight off infection. MIT chemists have come up with a new way to identify these neutralizing antibodies in a blood sample, by analyzing how antibodies interact with sugar molecules found on the surface of a viral protein. The new test could help to reveal whether someone has neutralizing antibodies against viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that the researchers focused on in……

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A group of 20 MIT students and postdocs from various departments traveled to Washington from March 27-29 to advocate for increased federal funding of scientific research for the 2024 fiscal year. The trip was part of the Congressional Visit Days program, organized by MIT’s Science Policy Initiative, a student-run organization that introduces the scientists of tomorrow to the policymakers of today. The visit aimed to raise awareness about the importance of funding science research and the role that federal……

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In July 2022, Professor Per Urlaub joined MIT as the new director of Global Languages. A prolific researcher in second-language studies and on the role of technology in language and humanities education, he holds a teaching appointment in MIT’s literature section. He came to MIT after having served in a variety of faculty and leadership roles at the University of Texas at Austin and Middlebury College. Urlaub spoke with the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences communications team……

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MIT senior Pam Stark and alumni Bhav Jain and Sreya Vangara are recipients of this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholarship awards. The fellowship funds graduate studies for up to three years in any field at Stanford University. The Knight-Hennessy Scholars program aims to develop emerging leaders who have a strong multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective, a commitment to the greater good, and the tools needed to drive meaningful change. Along with their graduate studies, scholars participate in workshops and training to help……

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Imagine sitting on a park bench, watching someone stroll by. While the scene may constantly change as the person walks, the human brain can transform that dynamic visual information into a more stable representation over time. This ability, known as perceptual straightening, helps us predict the walking person’s trajectory. Unlike humans, computer vision models don’t typically exhibit perceptual straightness, so they learn to represent visual information in a highly unpredictable way. But if machine-learning models had this ability, it……

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