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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Professor Tom Eagar, renowned metallurgist and admired...
Thomas W. Eagar, professor of materials engineering and engineering systems, post-tenure, in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and an internationally recognized expert in welding, died Oct. 9 at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts. He was 72. An outspoken scholar and admired teacher, Eagar had a reputation for saying, as he put it, “provocative things,” about MIT and research and academia in general, often rooted in deeply held principles about integrity and truth. “Professor Eagar was as...

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Philanthropist provides $10 million gift to Graduate...
Daniel J. Riccio, an advisory board member for the School of Engineering’s Undergraduate Engineering Leadership Program, has made a gift of $10 million to expand MIT’s Graduate Engineering Leadership Program, which will be renamed in recognition of the support. The gift will allow the program to grow and sustain its operations for years to come and was first announced by Riccio and the School of Engineering during a meeting of program supporters on Oct. 5. The Daniel J. Riccio...

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Studying floods to better predict their dangers
“My job is basically flooding Cambridge,” says Katerina “Katya” Boukin, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at MIT and the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s resident expert on flood simulations.  You can often find her fine-tuning high-resolution flood risk models for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, or talking about hurricanes with fellow researcher Ipek Bensu Manav. Flooding represents one of the world’s gravest natural hazards. Extreme climate events inducing flooding, like severe storms, winter storms, and tropical cyclones,...

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Professor Michel DeGraff named a fellow of...
Professor Michel DeGraff of MIT Linguistics has been elected as a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA), the highest academic honor within the field of linguistics, in recognition of his dynamic and impactful scholarship in Creole studies with a focus on Haitian Creole (or “Kreyòl,” as it’s called in Haiti). DeGraff’s scholarship into the history and linguistics of Haitian Creole goes hand-in-hand with his long-standing activism for full recognition of Kreyòl as a perfectly normal language in all sectors...

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Building the self-flying future
Leon Villegas SM ’08, MBA ’08, a graduate of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations program, works on the cutting edge of autonomous aviation. At Wisk Aero, an advanced air mobility company dedicated to delivering safe, everyday flight for everyone, Villegas is responsible for the production of aircraft for a new market just coming into existence. As production system vice president, he is leading a team to design, deploy, and execute the production system of a new all-electric vertical...

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MADMEC winner identifies sustainable greenhouse-cooling materials
The winners of this year’s MADMEC competition identified a class of materials that could offer a more efficient way to keep greenhouses cool. After Covid-19 put the materials science competition on pause for two years, on Tuesday SmartClime, a team made up of three MIT graduate students, took home the first place, $10,000 prize. The team showed that a type of material that changes color in response to an electric voltage could reduce energy usage and save money if...

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Today’s postdocs, tomorrow’s mentors
Laura Maiorino arrived in Cambridge in late 2019, one of more than 1,400 postdoctoral scholars from around the world who join MIT each year to launch their careers in the company of other outstanding researchers. Within months, of course, the pandemic struck: labmates were working in shifts and taking meetings over Zoom. “Even connecting within your research group was hard, and trying to find a network and community beyond your group was almost impossible,” Maiorino says. For many, the...

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Professor Danna Freedman receives 2022 MacArthur Fellowship
Danna Freedman, the F.G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and Moriba Jah, a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar, have been named recipients of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship. Often referred to as “genius grants,” the fellowships come with a five-year, $800,000 prize, which recipients are free to use as they see fit. Freedman, who found out about the award in early September, before it was publicly announced, said she was “completely in shock” after hearing that she had...

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Celebrating 20 years of discovery, Picower Institute...
If ever there was an event that would seem designed for dwelling on the past, it would be the anniversary celebration of an institute centered on the study of memory, but the first of many insights offered by the 20th Anniversary Exhibition of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT Sept. 22 was that memory is all about the future. Ever since University of California at Berkeley psychology professor David Foster was a postdoc in the Picower...

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Where Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stands
Editor’s note: Since this event was held on Oct. 7, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has continued to evolve, including airstrikes on Ukrainian cities following an explosion that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to Crimea. More than seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the battlefield map has shown recent progress for Ukrainian forces — and yet, the war remains destructive within the country and perilous for the world, with few signs that a rapid end to the conflict is...

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MIT system “sees” the inner structure of...
A growing number of people are living with conditions that could benefit from physical rehabilitation — but there aren’t enough physical therapists (PTs) to go around. The growing need for PTs is racing alongside population growth, and aging, as well as higher rates of severe ailments, are contributing to the problem.  An upsurge in sensor-based techniques, such as on-body motion sensors, has provided some autonomy and precision for patients who could benefit from robotic systems to supplement human therapists....

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3Q: Why Europe is so vulnerable to...
This year saw high-temperature records shattered across much of Europe, as crops withered in the fields due to widespread drought. Is this a harbinger of things to come as the Earth’s climate steadily warms up? Elfatih Eltahir, MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering and H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, and former doctoral student Alexandre Tuel PhD ’20 recently published a piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists describing how their research helps explain...

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Ben Bernanke PhD ’79 awarded a share...
Ben S. Bernanke PhD ’79, an economist who applied his scholarly experience to his work as chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve during the economic and financial-sector crisis of 2008-2009, has been awarded a share of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced today. Bernanke, who received his doctorate from MIT’s Department of Economics, has won the award along with Douglas W. Diamond, an economics professor...

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MIT releases financials and endowment figures for...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) announced today that MIT’s unitized pool of endowment and other MIT funds generated an investment loss of 5.3 percent during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, as measured using valuations received within one month of fiscal year end. At the end of the fiscal year, MIT’s endowment funds totaled $24.6 billion, excluding pledges. MIT’s endowment is intended to support current and future generations of MIT scholars with the resources...

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New system designs nanomaterials that conduct heat...
Computer chips are packed with billions of microscopic transistors that enable powerful computation, but also generate a great deal of heat. A buildup of heat can slow a computer processor and make it less efficient and reliable. Engineers employ heat sinks to keep chips cool, sometimes along with fans or liquid cooling systems; however, these methods often require a lot of energy to operate. Researchers at MIT have taken a different approach. They developed an algorithm and software system...

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