March 4, 2023
Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.
 
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MIT Battlecode
Eight pink digital robots stand left of blue line while ten blue digital robots stand right of blue line on virtual battlefield. Three pink robots, shaped as triangles, shoot towards one blue robot.
   
In MIT’s long-running Battlecode competition, student teams from around the world program huge armies of digital bots that duke it out in an epic video-game-style tournament. “The spirit of the competitors is what makes the program so great,” says junior Andy Wang.
Top Headlines
Phiala Shanahan is seeking fundamental answers about our physical world
With supercomputers and machine learning, the physicist aims to illuminate the structure of everyday particles and uncover signs of dark matter.
MIT Heat Island
Illuminating the successes and struggles of MIT Black history
The MIT Black History Project is documenting 150+ years of the Black experience at the Institute and beyond.
MIT Heat Island
MIT wins 83rd Putnam Mathematical Competition, sweeps top five spots for third consecutive year
Twenty-one of the top 25 finishers are MIT students, including the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize winner.
MIT Heat Island
New purification method could make protein drugs cheaper
MIT engineers find specialized nanoparticles can quickly and inexpensively isolate proteins from a bioreactor.
MIT Heat Island
Comedy meets mathematics in a new opera at MIT
Senior music lecturer Elena Ruehr turns Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, groundbreaking thinkers of modern computing, into crime fighters.
MIT Heat Island
#ThisisMIT
MIT women’s and men’s fencing teams pose for picture while some members wear a medal around neck. Text via @mitathletics: Congrats to the men's fencing team for winning the program's 27th New England Intercollegiate Fencing Conference (NEIFC) Championship title and the women's team for capturing fifth place on Saturday. The men's sabre squad claimed first place with a 35-4 ledger, helping it secure the Silvio Vitale Cup, which goes to the squad with the highest winning percentage. This marks the third straight NEIFC competition the Engineers have won the Vitale Cup as the foil team earned it last year and the epee team was the recipient in 2020. #RollTech
In the Media
Researchers at MIT built a mini city to test algorithms for autonomous cars // Mashable
MIT researchers constructed a mini city to safely test algorithms designed for autonomous vehicles. “The idea of the mini city is that we have lots of cars going at the same time and we can actually test out new algorithms in a safe environment,” explains graduate student Noam Buckman.
This bra tracks your vital signs // Fast Company
Through her startup Bloomer Tech, Alicia Chong Rodriguez SM ’17, SM ’18 is “dedicated to transforming women’s underwear into a health care device” to help improve the gender health gap. “Our big goal is to generate digital biomarkers,” says Chong Rodriguez.
Opinion: ChatGPT heralds an intellectual revolution // The Wall Street Journal
Dean Daniel Huttenlocher, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt explore how generative artificial intelligence “presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the beginning of the Enlightenment.”
Scientists are trying to pull carbon out of the ocean to combat climate change // Scientific American
MIT researchers developed a two-step electrochemical process to remove carbon dioxide out of seawater. The approach “cuts energy costs and expensive membranes used to collect CO2 to the point where merchant ships that run on diesel power could collect enough CO2 to offset their emissions.”
Scene at MIT
Nine mannequins on pedestals in a gallery, each wearing flowing designs in different brightly colored patterns
Science Surfaces is a collection of body coverings and accessories designed by high school students that feature prints inspired by MIT life science research labs. The exhibition, now on display in the Koch Institute Public Galleries, stems from the inaugural Peers + Pros project, a Boston Fashion Week initiative catalyzed by the Cambridge Science Festival and sponsored in part by MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “Science and technology are the new frontiers of fashion,” says Jay Calderin, Boston Fashion Week founder and lead mentor for the initiative. “This project has provided an invaluable opportunity for young fashion makers to collaborate with their peers and learn from industry professionals while exploring new ways of thinking about the design process.”
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You need to come up with this nerd posse that will support you decades into your future.
—Eileen Tanghal ’97, founder and general partner of Black Opal Ventures, speaking about her career path at the student-led Microsystems Annual Research Conference
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