Massachusetts Institute of Technology
December 14, 2016

MIT News: around campus

A weekly digest of the Institute’s community news

Apple CEO Tim Cook to deliver MIT’s 2017 Commencement address

Head of world’s largest publicly traded corporation will address the Class of 2017 on June 9.

President Reif calls for renewed national commitment to support basic science

“Invisible infrastructure” of nation’s scientific enterprise is eroding, MIT president warns in Wall Street Journal op-ed.

At home in Hong Kong

Growing MIT presence in the region energizes students, faculty, and alumni.

Nuclear engineering student advocates for change on campus and Capitol Hill

Senior Rasheed Auguste is fueled by passions for science, policy, and creating a more inclusive MIT.

DesignX selects first cohort

Eight student teams join MIT’s newest entrepreneurship accelerator.

Featured video: Tech Twinkles

Student-led project lights up campus during the holiday season.

Richard Held, professor emeritus of brain and cognitive sciences, dies at 94

Longtime professor and former department head spent a lifetime investigating the mechanisms of visual perception.

In the Media

The Atlantic spotlights MIT’s Hacking Arts event, which is aimed at igniting innovation within the creative arts, as part of their "Saturday Night in America" video series. “Something like a hackathon is releasing this pent up hunger, to stretch the imagination, to work with a lot of people, to get down and just build something,” says grad student Helen Smith, co-director of Hacking Arts.

The Atlantic

Writing for Fortune, Prof. Earl Miller makes the case that humans cannot multitask successfully and that trying to do so ruins productivity, causes mistakes and interferes with creativity. “When you try to multitask, you typically don’t get far enough down any road to stumble upon something original because you’re constantly switching and backtracking,” explains Miller. 

Fortune- CNN

Boston Globe reporter Sebastian Smee writes about the updated Arthur Ganson exhibit at the MIT Museum. Of Ganson’s kinetic sculptures, Smee proclaims that he has “yet to meet [a person] who didn’t love them,” adding that there are many “memorable works in this show — poetically conceived, superbly engineered, and patiently fabricated.”

Boston Globe

Washington Post reporter Nick Anderson writes that four MIT students - Matthew Cavuto, Zachary Hulcher, Kevin Zhou and Daniel Zuo - have been named recipients of the prestigious Marshall scholarships. The MIT group is “the largest delegation of Marshall Scholars named this year from a single school.”

The Washington Post

research & innovation

Printable electronics

New stamping technique creates functional features at nanoscale dimensions.

Study: Mobile-money services lift Kenyans out of poverty

Greater access to services raises daily spending, especially among female-headed households.

"Song of the Human": An origin story

New work by composer Pete M. Wyer draws inspiration from MIT linguistic scholar Shigeru Miyagawa's hypothesis on the origins of human language.

Measuring radiation damage on the fly

Technique could continuously assess aging of materials in a high-radiation environment, in real-time.

MIT News

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