With touches of technical wizardry, MIT holds its first online Commencement

In an unprecedented online version of MIT’s annual Commencement exercises, necessitated by the departure of most people from the campus because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Institute added some innovative touches — including a surprise appearance from the International Space Station — to the unusual but festive occasion.

The online ceremony opened with a rousing musical performance by the MIT Wind Ensemble. Recorded individually and edited together, the musicians played “To The Light, To The Flame,” by composer Jamshied Sharifi ’83, which had its world premiere at MIT a few years ago.

This year’s Commencement speaker, Admiral William McRaven, said that in light of the pandemic, he had changed the speech he had intended to deliver. “The fact that I am standing here alone, and that you are isolated somewhere at home, is proof enough that the world has changed,” he said.

“But there is a part of the speech that I retained,” he continued. “It was the part about heroes, and how after all these years I came to realize that the heroes we need are not the heroes I had been searching for,” like the superheroes of comics and movies. Instead, he said, “If we are going to save the world from pandemics, war, climate change, poverty, racism, extremism, intolerance, then you, the brilliant minds of MIT — you are going to have to save the world.”

But, he stressed, intelligence and knowledge alone are not enough. Equally essential are courage, humility, perseverance, a willingness to make sacrifices, a sense of integrity, and compassion. None of this will be easy, he said, “because you are not men and women of steel, you are not cloaked in a suit of armor, you are not infused with unearthly powers — you are real heroes. And what makes real heroes are their struggles and their ability to overcome them.”

Charging the new graduates to go out and solve the world’s problems, McRaven said “Promise me that you will be the last class to miss a commencement because of a pandemic. The last class to miss a commencement because of war. The last class to miss a commencement because of climate change, unrest, tyranny, extremism, active shooters, intolerance, and apathy.”

Expressing his confidence that the graduates are up to the challenge, he said “Go forth and be the heroes we need you to be.”

Another musical performance, featuring the voices of over 800 members of the MIT community, followed McRaven’s remarks. Called “Comusica” and conceived by professor of the practice Eran Egozy along with Professor Evan Ziporyn, who wrote the music, and Professor Isaac Chuang, who built the infrastructure and image-processing algorithms, the project involved recording each participant singing a single note. These were arranged into a mosaic to create a unique song and video “portrait” of the Class of 2020.

Representatives of the graduate and undergraduate classes then offered their thoughts. “I know that I’m speaking to all of you in a very strange time,” said Peter Su, president of the graduate student council. “A time where the spontaneity that we so cherish from on-campus interactions, isn’t possible. A time where the celebrations that we were all looking forward to, have been cancelled or postponed.”

But, Su added, “what the coronavirus cannot take away, though, is all that we have gained from our time at MIT.” And one lesson learned from this experience, he said, is “that MIT really is a bubble, that real life is significantly more complicated and less forgiving. … If we’re going to shape the future and build a better world, we’ll need to take those complications and inequalities into account, and work to eliminate them.” And, he added, they have what it takes: “You all are equipped to lead us through these times to a better future,” he said.

Nwanacho Nwana, president of the Class of 2020, spoke of regrets about the things he and his classmates missed experiencing during their last weeks of MIT. But, he added, “Even if we had those last few months together, we would all likely still leave MIT with numerous regrets of what could have been and what we could have done. This period has been a harsh reminder that time is not only limited, but the limits on that time are uncertain and we never really know when our time will be up.”

So, he said, “I urge you all, Class of 2020, to live the rest of your lives with the mindset that you likely had when you were told we had a week left in our college careers. Take risks, go all in, shoot your shot, and find the things that will make you feel fulfilled every day.” Nwana then asked graduates to join him in turning over their class rings, a longstanding MIT Commencement ritual.

A message from space was next on the program. U.S. astronaut Christopher Cassidy SM ’00 spoke from the International Space Station where he is currently serving as station commander. Cassidy, a former Navy Seal and a veteran of two previous space missions, joked from his perch hundreds of miles above the Earth, “How’s that for social distancing?”

As he recalled standing in Killian Court 20 years ago to receive his MIT degree, Cassidy said, he had no idea where his life might lead, no idea what might come next. “Life will take you places you never imagined,” he said. The key is to hold onto the kind of basic values that MIT instills, he said.

Next, MIT President L. Rafael Reif gave the traditional charge to the graduating students.

“Today, though you are scattered across nearly every time zone, everything we value about MIT is embodied in you,” Reif said. “Physically, I cannot see any of you. But I would like you to know that, in the deepest sense, I do see you. I see the extraordinary range of ways that you, and your families, have struggled and endured these past 11 weeks, weeks that have tested all of us.”

“I see how you have done your best to recreate, remotely, what you love most about MIT,” he said. “I see your pain in losing those sweet weeks of spring, of saying goodbye to MIT, and to each other.”

Despite the difficult current circumstances, he said, “I am inspired by your curiosity, imagination, self-discipline and drive — and by your willingness to plunge into what may be the most intense and demanding course of study anywhere.”

Going forward, he said, “Please help us respond to this brutal pandemic with wisdom, foresight, compassion, and science. Help us rebuild the habits of trust, empathy, precise language, and thoughtful listening that are so essential to a healthy society. And please help us all succeed in remembering our common humanity.”

Following these remarks, Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and recent Nobel laureate, gave a salute to students receiving their graduate degrees. Acknowledging that it is easy to feel discouraged about the vast challenges of solving the world’s problems, she offered an alternative perspective.

“My conviction is that it is possible to make significant progress by focusing on small manageable issues and addressing each of these issues as rigorously as possible,” she said. “So, pick your issue, and go for it with all your heart, all your mind, and all your knowledge. Be nimble, be ready to pivot; no issue is too small, no issue is too specific, as long as you can learn from it, and as long as you hold yourself to the highest standard when you are trying to solve it.”

Following the online graduation ceremony, the names of all 3,512 degree recipients were scrolled online. Then, in a typically MIT show of technical prowess, a specially designed app was made available to all the graduates. This allowed each graduate to individually simulate through virtual reality the experience of walking across the Commencement stage, shaking hands with President Reif, and receiving their degree.

Reif stressed that this unusual kind of graduation would not be the end of the process. “This is not the Commencement Day that any of us could have imagined,” he said. “At some safe time in the future, we will hold one of these for you — in person — right back here at MIT.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) · Podcast: A tale of two classes 50 years apart

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Professor Esther Duflo's salute to the advanced degree recipients

Below is the text of the salute to the advanced degree recipients, by Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT, for the Institute's 2020 Commencement, held online May 29, 2020.

My fellow graduates, women and men from MIT, I salute you, I congratulate you, and I honor you. It is a bittersweet occasion, graduating in these very unique circumstances. We are missing the chance to be all together on this special day. You’ve missed your last few months on campus, your opportunity to forge a bond with your cohorts, which will last you a lifetime.

But remember, you are the lucky ones. You get to graduate having done most of your work here at MIT, and you are as equipped as anyone to deal with the challenges that await us. If you are like me, you might feel a bit intimidated by this luck. How can I repay this huge debt I have to the world? To have had a chance to graduate from MIT with an advanced degree, when others’ lives got cut short, or were profoundly disrupted.

Faced with that, it is tempting to look for a magic bullet, to solve the whole problem at once. Or if you realized that it is not possible, to get despondent, to get discouraged, to get depressed, or to just do something else. And this is what I want to talk to you about today, using, as appropriate, some high minded literary quotations.

Since you are busy with your graduate work, you may have missed one of the important developments in children’s literature, which is the last installment of Dave Pilkey’s excellent series, called Dog-Man. At the end of this book, Flippy, a biomechanical fish, who might as well have been invented at MIT, forgoes the opportunity to go live with his best friend, L’il Petey and his family, and instead decides to take care of 22 tadpoles, who through a series of unfortunate events, have found themselves orphaned. L’il Petey and his dad leave the fish in the pond, and they go home and discuss. I’m going to read you part of that discussion.

“Papa, I told you how Flippy was a good guy.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“He’s changing the world.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I mean come on, what he’s really doing is looking after a few baby tadpoles. That’s not really going to change the world.”

“Maybe not, but it will change their world.”

Remember that. Like the war on cancer, the war on Covid is not going to be won in one major battle. Instead, it will take thousands of small victories, and no doubt many, many setbacks along the way. And this is true not just for Covid, but for the fight against poverty, the war against climate change, for finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, or indeed for any of the challenges that await us.

On any of these topics, my conviction is that it is possible to make significant progress by focusing on small manageable issues, and addressing each of these issues as rigorously as possible.

So pick your issue, and go for it with all your heart, all your mind, and all your knowledge. Be nimble, be ready to pivot; no issue is too small, no issue is too specific, as long as you can learn from it, and as long as you hold yourself to the highest standard when you are trying to solve it.

It will take patience, and effort.  Progress will be slow, but it is inevitable. It will take thousands of people, working on different aspects of the problem, building on each other’s victories.

So get some rest graduates, and then get started. There is a lot of work in front of us.

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President L. Rafael Reif's charge to the class of 2020

Below is the text of President L. Rafael Reif's Commencement remarks, as prepared for delivery. The Institute's 2020 Commencement was held online today.

Good afternoon! And to Chris Cassidy – thank you so much for your very kind words, and for the powerful example of your life and your service. May the global family of the International Space Station be our inspiration!

To the MIT graduates of 2020 – Congratulations!

As you can see, I’m speaking to you from Killian Court. 

Kind of…

In fact, I am keenly aware that I am not there –and that all of you are not here.

Without you, I am finding this experience pretty lonely. I thought perhaps we could find a way to fix it.

But it turns out that nothing can possibly replace the sense of being connected, in one joyful time and place, with 3,500 freshly minted MIT graduates – and the people who helped them get there.

In a typical year, we spend many weeks before Commencement worrying about the weather. But it turns out that, in all the most important ways, the day is always beautiful ­– because our graduates are sparkling with accomplishment and possibility, and their families are radiant with pride.

Everyone looks fantastic – even in those clear plastic rain ponchos.

In fact, at MIT, Commencement is the very best day of the year. It is a day of warm hugs and huge smiles, champagne and strawberries, hundreds of strange and colorful academic hats, and thousands of handshakes (Remember those?) A day when absolutely no one still has to finish a pset. And a day when the entire purpose, meaning and mission of the Institute are embodied in our new graduates.

Today, though you are scattered across nearly every time zone, everything we value about MIT is embodied in you.

Physically, I cannot see any of you. But I would like you to know that, in the deepest sense, I do see you. I see the extraordinary range of ways that you, and your families, have struggled and endured these past eleven weeks, weeks that have tested all of us. (I also see that some of you might need a haircut! Me too…)

I see how you have supported and encouraged one another through all the dislocation and disruption. I see how you have done your best to recreate, remotely, what you love most about MIT. I see your pain in losing those sweet weeks of spring, of saying goodbye to MIT, and to each other.

And I see, and feel, your uncertainty about the future.

But I also see what you accomplished in the time before we knew the word “Covid.”

Right before World War Two, my parents escaped from Eastern Europe. And for the rest of his life, my father would say to me, “Invest in your education – because if you ever have to leave in a hurry, education is the only thing you can take with you.”

To a spectacular degree, all of you have invested yourselves in your education – in our classrooms and laboratories, on our playing fields and stages, and in all the places you call home at MIT.  I am inspired by your curiosity, imagination, self-discipline and drive – and by your willingness to plunge into what may be the most intense and demanding course of study anywhere.

Recently, you had to leave your familiar MIT lives in a great hurry. But I know that you have equipped yourselves extremely well for whatever will come next.

At this moment, I also see quite a few small children out there who are eager for me to stop talking. So I believe it is time to deliver my “CHARGE” to you.

I have always believed that, as members of the great global family of MIT, we must do everything in our power to help make a better world. 

In that spirit, I’m going to use a word that feels very comfortable at MIT – although I know it has taken on a troubling new meaning elsewhere. But I also know that our graduates will know what I mean.

As you begin your next chapter, I want to ask you to hack the world – until you make the world a little more like MIT: More daring and more passionate. More rigorous, inventive and ambitious. More humble, more respectful, more generous, more kind.  

And because the people of MIT also like to fix things that are broken, as you strive to hack the world, please try to heal the world, too. Please help us respond to this brutal pandemic with wisdom, foresight, compassion and science. Help us rebuild the habits of trust, empathy, precise language and thoughtful listening that are so essential to a healthy society. And please help us all succeed in remembering our common humanity.

MIT is now sharing with the world 3,500 new graduates who are ready for this timely and timeless problem set. 

You came to MIT with exceptional qualities of your own. And now, after years of focused and intense dedication, you leave us, equipped with a distinctive set of skills and steeped in our community’s deepest values: A commitment to excellence. Integrity. Meritocracy. Inclusion. Boldness. Humility. An open spirit of collaboration. A strong desire to make a positive impact. And a sense of responsibility to make the world a better place.

So now, go out there! Join the world! Find your calling! Solve the unsolvable! Invent the future! Take the high road. And you will continue to make your family, including your MIT family, proud.

Now, this is not the Commencement Day that any of us could have imagined.  At some safe time in the future, we will hold one of these for you – in person – right back here at MIT.

But for today, I have to give you something much more important than my advice: Your diplomas! So, here goes:

By virtue of the authority delegated by the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and on the recommendation of the Faculty, I am delighted to announce the awarding of degrees.

For those of you who elected to receive a digital diploma, your degree has been delivered to the Blockcerts Wallet on your mobile device.

And for all of you, the launch will commence in … 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – NOW!

• Bachelor of Science in all Schools and departments
• Master’s degrees in all programs
• Doctoral degrees in all programs

On this wonderful day, I am proud of all of you. To every one of the members of the graduating Class of 2020: Please accept my best wishes for a happy and successful life and career. Congratulations!

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William McRaven's Commencement address

Below is the text of the Commencement address, as prepared for delivery, by Admiral William H. McRaven, retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral and former chancellor of the University of Texas system, for the Institute's 2020 Commencement, held online May 29, 2020.

Thank you very much for that kind introduction. President Reif, distinguished guests, members of the faculty and of course, the MIT graduating class of 2020. It is truly an honor for me to have the opportunity to address you today.

I had an entirely different speech prepared for this afternoon. It was a nice little speech. It was about how you, the brilliant men and women of MIT are like the Navy SEALs of academia. I made some good analogies. I had some cute little antidotes and some lessons from my career. But somehow, that speech just didn’t seem right in light of all that has happened in the past five months. The fact that I am standing here alone, and that you are isolated somewhere at home, is proof enough that the world has changed.

But there is a part of the speech that I retained. It was the part about heroes and how after all these years I came to realize that the heroes we need—are not the heroes I had been looking for. When I was a young boy growing up in the 50s and 60s, I always envisioned myself as the hero. I always wanted to be Superman, with his powers to fly, with his invulnerability, with his super strength. A hero who saved the world every day from some catastrophe. Or Batman, Spiderman, the Black Panther, the team of the X-men and the Fantastic Four and my favorite of all—Aquaman. I so wanted to ride on the back of a seahorse and fight evil underwater.

But as I grew up and travelled the world, and as I saw more than my share of war and destruction—I came to the hard truth that Captain America isn’t coming to the rescue. There is no Superman, no Batman, no Wonder Woman, no Black Widow, no Avengers, no Justice League, no Gandolf, no Harry Potter, and no Aquaman. If we are going to save the world from pandemics, war, climate change, poverty, racism, extremism, intolerance—then you, the brilliant minds of MIT—you are going to have to save the world.

But, as remarkable as you are—your intellect and talent alone will not be sufficient. I have seen my share of real heroes, on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the hospitals fighting COVID 19, on the streets keeping America safe and open—and I know that there are other qualities necessary to be today’s hero. So, if you will bear with this old sailor for a minute or two, I would like to offer some thoughts on the other qualities you will need to help save the world.

First, you must have courage. Winston Churchill once said that courage was the most important quality of all because it guaranteed all the rest. He was not just talking about the physical courage to charge the hill, run into a burning building, or stop a madman with a gun. He was also talking about moral courage. The courage to stand up for your convictions. Physical courage has long been the hallmark of a great warrior, but I would offer that the moral courage to stand up for what’s right has an equal place in the pantheon of heroes.

If you hope to save the world you will have to standby your convictions. You will have to confront the ignorant with facts. You will have to challenge the zealots with reason. You will have to defy the naysayers and the weak-kneed who have not the constitution to stand tall. You will have to speak truth to power.

But if your cause is good and decent and worthy and honorable and has the possibility of saving even one of God creatures, then you must do what all heroes do. You must summons the courage to fight and fight hard for your convictions. You must yell them from the mountaintop. You must shout them from the lectern. You must write in bold, cursive and underlined phrases. You must bring your convictions out from the darkness and the subtly of your heart—into the light of day. They must be made public and challenged and confronted and argued.

There will always be those who don’t want to hear your convictions. Particularly if they are true.

Speaking the truth can be dangerous at times. But those that came before you, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Madam Curie, Grace Hooper and Katherine Johnson—those brilliant minds, those tellers of truth, who made the world a more knowledgeable place, a more compassionate place, a more livable place, they had courage. If you are going to save the world, you will need courage.

If you are going to save the world, you will need to be humble. In my career I have been blessed to be around some great minds. I have seen how the brilliant men and women have helped eradicate disease, reduce poverty, create technological masterpieces but, conversely I have seen how the misguided geniuses, filled with conceit and convinced of their own righteousness have tampered with nature, built apocalyptic machines, dehumanized social interaction and tilted toward tyranny. If you do not approach the world with humility, it will find a way to humble you quickly.

I found in my time in the military, that no experience on earth was more humbling than combat. The crucible of war teaches you everyday that you are not invincible—that the enemy in bare feet and carrying only Kalashnikovs can sometimes defeat the best soldiers and the best technology in the world.

And if you believe for a moment that you are superior, you will be humbled quickly. But if you approach every mission with a decent respect for the mountains, the rivers, the oceans and the enemy—you are more likely to succeed.

In Plato’s great rendition of Socrates Apology, Socrates defends the charges against him by telling the jury of Athenian nobles that he is the wisest man in the world—far wiser than any of the robed men sitting in judgment. When questioned about how he could be so bold as to make this statement, Socrates says, that he is the wisest because he knows so very little of the world. To solve the world’s problems you will have to realize how little you know. You must be able to look to the stars, peer through a microscope, gaze at the ocean—and be humbled.

To believe for even a moment that you have all the answers, that you know the truth of the universe, that you are wiser than all the men and women who came before you is the tale of every great man and woman—who amounted to nothing. Only when you are humble, only when you realize the limits of your understanding, the shortfalls of your knowledge, the boundaries of your intellect—only then can you find the answers you are seeking.

If you are going to save the world you must persevere through the difficult times. Life as a SEAL is all about perseverance. Can you make it through SEAL training without ringing the bell? Can you make it through the long family separations, the exhausting deployments, the loss of a fellow warrior in combat? Sometimes saving the world is just about holding on. Never quitting no matter what obstacles face you.

A good friend of mine and a fellow Longhorn from the University of Texas, graduated in 1969 and pursued a career in medicine. His mother had died of Lymphoma when he was eleven and he was obsessed with finding a cure. For decades he pursued an idea that most in the medical field dismissed as fantasy. Could the human body really use its own immune system to fight cancer. He never gave up on his pursuit and in 2018, Dr. Jim Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

There are the occasional great men and women of science who changed history at an early age, but most discoveries, most achievements, most triumphs are the product of a long and painful process and only the most resolute, the ones that can persevere through the failure, the rejection, the ridicule, the emotional and physical strain of time—those are the ones most likely to save the world.

If you hope to save the world, you must be prepared to sacrifice. The special operation forces are filled with memorials of remarkable men and women who gave their all in the defense of the nation. Medal of Honor recipients like Mike Murphy, Mike Monsoor, John Chapman and Robby Miller. Remarkable women like Ashley White and Jennifer Moreno. The heroes of helicopters Turbine 33 and Extortion 17—SEALs and soldiers who answered the call and never returned. All great Americans who sacrificed their lives so that their teammates might live.

But, there is a more mundane, yet still essential sacrifice, that is required if you want to want to save the world. As SEALs we train every day. Long tortuous hours of hard physical pain, ruck sac marches, open ocean swims, miles of running and hours of calisthenics. They are all sacrifices necessary to be ready—when the world needs you.

In his time, Thomas Edison developed 1,500 patents. From the electric light, to the phonograph, to the movie camera, to the vacuum diode and the carbon microphone. He saved the world from darkness. But in doing so it required him to work 20 hour days, his home front was often strained, his other business ventures struggled to survive and his health always seemingly in jeopardy.

It would be easy to stand up here and tell you that there is wondrous place where you can be great at both work… and life, where your efforts to make a difference in the world come easy—but I have never found that place. In the end, if your goal is a noble one, then your sacrifice will be worth it. And you will be proud of what you have accomplished.

To save the world, you will have to be men and women of great integrity. Always trying to do what is moral, legal and ethical. It will not be easy and I dare say, you will fail occasionally. You will fail because you are human. You will fail because life often forces you into a seemingly untenable position. You will fail because good and evil are always in conflict.

And when you fail to uphold your integrity, it should make you sick to your stomach. It should give you sleepless nights. You should be so tortured that you promise yourself never to do it again. You see, being a hero will not be easy. It will not be easy because, you are not men and women of steel, you are not cloaked in a suit of armor, you are not infused with unearthly powers—you are real heroes. And what makes real heroes are their struggles and their ability to overcome them.

But no matter how mightily you might struggle, the world will believe in you, follow you, allow themselves to be saved—if they know you to be honest, trustworthy, of good character and good faith. Men and women of integrity.

Finally, to save the world, you must have compassion. You must ache for the poor and disenfranchised. You must fear for the vulnerable. You must weep for the ill and infirmed. You must pray for those who are without hope. You must be kind to less fortunate. For what hero gives so much of themselves, without caring for those they are trying to save.

As we sign off from this virtual commencement, I want you to promise me one thing.

Promise me that you will be the last class—the last class to miss a commencement—because of a pandemic. The last class—to miss a commencement—because of war. The last class—to miss a commencement—because of climate change, unrest, tyranny, extremism, active shooters, intolerance and apathy.

Batman and Superman are not coming to save the world. It will be up to you. But never, never in my life, have I been so confident that the fate of the world is in good hands. Go forth and be the heroes we need you to be.

Thank you and congratulations!

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Machine learning helps map global ocean communities

On land, it’s fairly obvious where one ecological region ends and another begins, for instance at the boundary between a desert and savanna. In the ocean, much of life is microscopic and far more mobile, making it challenging for scientists to map the boundaries between ecologically distinct marine regions.

One way scientists delineate marine communities is through satellite images of chlorophyll, the green pigment produced by phytoplankton. Chlorophyll concentrations can indicate how rich or productive the underlying ecosystem might be in one region versus another. But chlorophyll maps can only give an idea of the total amount of life that might be present in a given region. Two regions with the same concentration of chlorophyll may in fact host very different combinations of plant and animal life.

“It’s like if you were to look at all the regions on land that don’t have a lot of biomass, that would include Antarctica and the Sahara, even though they have completely different ecological assemblages,” says Maike Sonnewald, a former postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Now Sonnewald and her colleagues at MIT have developed an unsupervised machine-learning technique that automatically combs through a highly complicated set of global ocean data to find commonalities between marine locations, based on their ratios and interactions between multiple phytoplankton species. With their technique, the researchers found that the ocean can be split into over 100 types of “provinces” that are distinct in their ecological makeup. Any given location in the ocean would conceivably fit into one of these 100 ecological  provinces.

The researchers then looked for similarities between these 100 provinces, ultimately grouping them into 12 more general categories. From these “megaprovinces,” they were able to see that, while some had the same total amount of life within a region, they had very different community structures, or balances of animal and plant species. Sonnewald says capturing these ecological subtleties is essential to tracking the ocean’s health and productivity.

“Ecosystems are changing with climate change, and the community structure needs to be monitored to understand knock on effects on fisheries and the ocean’s capacity to draw down carbon dioxide,” Sonnewald says. “We can't fully understand these vital dynamics with conventional methods, that to date don’t include the ecology that’s there. But our method, combined with satellite data and other tools, could offer important progress.”

Sonnewald, who is now an associate research scholar at Princeton University and a visitor at the University of Washington, has reported the results today in the journal Science Advances. Her coauthors at MIT are Senior Research Scientist Stephanie Dutkiewitz, Principal Research Engineer Christopher Hill, and Research Scientist Gael Forget.

Rolling out a data ball

The team’s new machine learning technique, which they’ve named SAGE, for the Systematic AGgregated Eco-province method, is designed to take large, complicated datasets, and probabilistically project that data down to a simpler, lower-dimensional dataset.

“It’s like making cookies,” Sonnewald says. “You take this horrifically complicated ball of data and roll it out to reveal its elements.”

In particular, the researchers used a clustering algorithm that Sonnewald says is designed to “crawl along a dataset” and hone in on regions with a large density of points — a sign that these points share something in common. 

Sonnewald and her colleagues set this algorithm loose on ocean data from MIT’s Darwin Project, a three-dimensional model of the global ocean that combines a model of the ocean’s climate, including wind, current, and temperature patterns, with an ocean ecology model. That model includes 51 species of phytoplankton and the ways in which each species grows and interacts with each other as well as with the surrounding climate and available nutrients.

If one were to try and look through this very complicated, 51-layered space of data, for every available point in the ocean, to see which points share common traits, Sonnewald says the task would be “humanly intractable.” With the team’s unsupervised machine learning algorithm, such commonalities “begin to crystallize out a bit.”

This first “data cleaning” step in the team’s SAGE method was able to parse the global ocean into about 100 different ecological provinces, each with a distinct balance of species.

The researchers assigned each available location in the ocean model to one of the 100 provinces, and assigned a color to each province. They then generated a map of the global ocean, colorized by province type.  

“In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, there’s burgundy and orange colors that are shaped how we expect them, in these zonal streaks that encircle Antarctica,” Sonnewald says. “Together with other features, this gives us a lot of confidence that our method works and makes sense, at least in the model.”

Ecologies unified

The team then looked for ways to further simplify the more than 100 provinces they identified, to see whether they could pick out commonalities even among these ecologically distinct regions.

“We started thinking about things like, how are groups of people distinguished from each other? How do we see how connected to each other we are? And we used this type of intuition to see if we could quantify how ecologically similar different provinces are,” Sonnewald says.

To do this, the team applied techniques from graph theory to represent all 100 provinces in a single graph, according to biomass — a measure that’s analogous to the amount of chlorophyll produced in a region. They chose to group the 100 provinces into 12 general categories, or “megaprovinces.” When they compared these megaprovinces, they found that those that had a similar biomass were composed of very different biological species.

“For instance, provinces D and K have almost the same amount of biomass, but when we look deeper, K has diatoms and hardly any prokaryotes, while D has hardly any diatoms, and a lot of prokaryotes. But from a satellite, they could look the same,” Sonnewald says. “So our method could start the process of adding the ecological information to bulk chlorophyll measures, and ultimately aid observations.”

The team has developed an online widget that researchers can use to find other similarities among the 100 provinces. In their paper, Sonnewald’s colleagues chose to group the provinces into 12 categories. But others may want to divide the provinces into more groups, and drill down into the data to see what traits are shared among these groups.

Sonnewald is sharing the tool with oceanographers who want to identify precisely where regions of a particular ecological makeup are located, so they could, for example, send ships to sample in those regions, and not in others where the balance of species might be slightly different.

“Instead of guiding sampling with tools based on bulk chlorophyll, and guessing where the interesting ecology could be found with this method, you can surgically go in and say, ‘this is what the model says you might find here,’” Sonnewald says. “Knowing what species assemblages are where, for things like ocean science and global fisheries, is really powerful.”

This research was funded, in part, by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Letter regarding Minneapolis, our nation and our community

The following letter was sent to MIT's community today by President L. Rafael Reif.

To the members of the MIT community,

At MIT, Commencement is the most beautiful day of the year. Even in this strange pandemic moment, this afternoon’s graduation celebration will offer us all the opportunity to celebrate the wonderful spirit, character and accomplishments of our newest graduates.

That joy is and should be perfect and untouchable.

But I write with a heart that is also full of anguish – because it is impossible to face this particular day without an overwhelming sense of concern for our nation.

The death of George Floyd and the events unfolding in Minneapolis are deeply disturbing in themselves. And of course, they come on the heels of highly charged incidents, from Georgia to New York, that highlight yet again the tragic persistence of racism and systemic injustice in the United States.

I know that the pain of these events is especially intense for certain members of our community, beginning with those who are African American and of African descent, though certainly not ending there. And I know that, in this time of tension around the pandemic and rising strains in US-China relations, others in our community are also suffering distinctive forms of harassment and discrimination.

I imagine that you may share my urgent desire to help, while feeling an awful powerlessness to do so. At this moment, let’s do what we can. I believe a place to begin is by cherishing and seeking to strengthen our dear MIT community. Imperfect, certainly. But a community with an essential commitment to facing hard facts, thoughtfully striving to correct our errors – and working together to address humanity’s greatest challenges. A community where we aspire always to treat one another with sympathy, humility, decency, respect and kindness.

Let us treasure and care for that community – and let us work to make it better.

In the days and months to come, I would like us to find meaningful ways to come together to work on these challenges, for ourselves and for our society. I have asked John Dozier, our Institute Community and Equity Officer, to guide us in this effort. You may reach him directly at jdozier@mit.edu.

For now: I take hope in turning my thoughts to the new graduates we share with the world this afternoon. Today is our beloved Commencement day, a day when we honor the achievements of our graduating students and charge them with helping to heal the world. That charge will be all the more meaningful now, grounded in the very present struggles for our nation and for the world.

With great love and concern for our community and our nation,

L. Rafael Reif

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Mathematics department recognized for STEM student enrichment program

As the MIT community moved to remote learning in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a math outreach program was moving online — and developing a project to allow high schoolers to help research the disease.

The Program for Research in Mathematics, Engineering and Science (PRIMES) pairs high school students with MIT graduate students and postdocs to investigate unsolved problems in mathematics, computer science, and computational biology.

This year, one of those unsolved problems is Covid-19. MIT mathematics doctoral candidate Younhun Kim has already signed up to mentor two high school juniors as they research mathematical modeling of SARS-CoV-2 host protein interactions.

"This was a late addition to our program," says PRIMES director and Department of Mathematics Lecturer Slava Gerovitch. "As we were moving our PRIMES program online to promote social distancing, we also decided to view the pandemic as an intellectual challenge. We hope that this project may contribute valuable Covid-19 research." This project and others will culminate in a presentation at the PRIMES conference in October and, hopefully, a submitted publication in December. 

Recently, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) announced that the MIT Department of Mathematics was selected for the 2020 Award for Exemplary Program or Achievement in a Mathematics Department. The award, given annually to “a department that has distinguished itself by undertaking an unusual or particularly effective program of value to the mathematics community, internally or in relation to the rest of society,” honors the PRIMES program. PRIMES also recently received an AMS Epsilon grant, for rigorous summer programs for mathematically talented youth.

Conceived by Gerovitch and mathematics Professor Pavel Etingof in 2010, MIT PRIMES is a free outreach program for high school students with a particular focus on increasing the representation of women and under-served minorities in mathematics research. The program’s goal is “to allow students to discover the beauty of being a research mathematician,” according to Etingof.     

With seed money from the mathematics department, the program initially sought out local students to spend an entire year to create mathematical and computer models that address real-world problems, such as cancer, internet security, traffic control, autonomous driving, refugee migration, brain research, laser engineering, and now Covid-19, among many others.

“We were initially afraid that we wouldn’t get enough applications for the 10 slots,” says Gerovitch. “We ended up with 100 applications, many of which were very strong, and we decided to double the initial size of the program.”

What started out as an experiment with just 21 local participants grew more than fivefold in 10 years. Since 2011, over 600 students have participated in the various MIT PRIMES and MathROOTS programs, and more than 130 PRIMES alumni have matriculated at MIT.

Over the years, the PRIMES initiative has expanded into sub-programs that target different student audiences, nationally and internationally. Each is designed to build collaborative teams with mathematics members to promote partnership and wider outreach in the mathematical sciences community.

"It is very gratifying that our outreach efforts are recognized by AMS," says Michel Goemans, head of the mathematics department. "It is an important part of our educational activities, which not only gets young students interested in mathematics but is also an enriching experience for our many graduate student mentors."

In 2013, the initial PRIMES program added PRIMES-USA, offering long-distance mentoring for high school juniors nationwide, and PRIMES Circle for Boston-area high school students from underserved groups and underserved communities. Affiliate program PRIMES STEP (which stands for Solve, Theorize, Explore, and Prove) is open to Boston-area middle schoolers interested in after-school math enrichment. PRIMES also assisted the National Centre of Competence in Research "The Mathematics of Physics — SwissMAP” with PRIMES-Switzerland, a guided math reading program at the University of Geneva and ETH in Zürich.

After the success of these programs, the MIT mathematics department launched MathROOTS in 2015, an outreach initiative to encourage diversity at the high school level. This free annual two-week math summer camp aims to engage its 20 U.S.-based participants in creative problem-solving, expose them to beautiful yet accessible mathematics, and immerse them in an academic and cross-cultural community of scholars. Participants also attend fun group activities, such as a Red Sox game, swing dancing, and a talent show.

“MathROOTS has proven remarkably successful, not only in empowering students to take on more challenging and engaging mathematics, but also drawing many to more seriously consider applying to MIT and other top schools,” says Etingof. “This is at the crux of what diversity outreach is all about.”

Now entering its sixth summer, MathROOTS is adapting to the realities of social distancing by transitioning online. Students will meet their peers and mentors via Zoom, but the program will not lose its fun and engaging spirit. Math-infused games, virtual tours of MIT and Boston, Massachusetts sights, and extensive social programming will complement online math lectures and problem-solving sessions.

PRIMES’ shift online is not new to the organizers. “PRIMES is an ongoing experiment in different research formats,” says Gerovitch. “For many of our students and mentors, the transition to online learning and research was made easier due to the experience gained in remote research supervision in PRIMES-USA and CrowdMath.” CrowdMath is a platform that has been employed for years to enable massive collaboration between high school and college students around the globe on a single research project, moderated by PRIMES mentors. “The entire PRIMES program is run remotely now, and the projects are moving forward at full speed,” he says.    

"There is something special about having mentors who are excited to teach, students that are excited to learn, and a group of people who want to share the 'Aha!' moments of clarity and understanding with each other," says former PRIMES Circle student Makena Binker Cosen. "My experience in MIT PRIMES Circle has allowed me to appreciate mathematics from a new perspective and become fascinated by how beautifully simple a complex idea can become."

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MIT Corporation elects 12 term members, three life members

The MIT Corporation — the Institute’s board of trustees — elected nine full-term members, who will each serve for five years, three partial-term members, and three life members, during its quarterly meeting yesterday. Corporation Chair Robert B. Millard ’73 announced the election results; all positions are effective July 1.

The nine full-term members are: Wesley G. Bush ’83; R. Erich Caulfield SM ’01, PhD ’06; Heather Cogdell ’89; Orit Gadiesh; Jeffrey S. Halis ’76, SM ’76; Michelle K. Lee ’89, SM ’89; Adrianna C. Ma ’96, MEng ’96; Indra K. Nooyi; Adedoyin Olateru-Olagbegi ’20. The three partial-term members are: Drew Gilpin Faust; Janet C. Wolfenbarger SM ’95; and Mark S. Wrighton. The three life members are: Victor J. Menezes SM ’72; Phillip T. Ragon ’72; and Jeffrey L. Silverman ’68.

The Corporation also announced Charlene C. Kabcenell ’79 as the 2020-2021 president of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT, effective July 1. She succeeds Caulfield, who will return to the Corporation for a five-year term.

As of July 1, the Corporation will consist of 75 distinguished leaders in education, science, engineering, and industry. Of those, 24 are life members and seven are ex officio. An additional 37 individuals are life members emeritus.

The nine full-term members are:

Wesley G. Bush, former chairperson and chief executive officer, Northrop Grumman Corporation

Bush received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 1983. He has worked in the aerospace and defense industry since starting at COMSAT Labs under MIT’s co-op program. After graduation, Bush first worked at The Aerospace Corporation, then became a systems engineer at TRW’s Space Park facility in 1987. Prior to Northrop Grumman’s acquisition of TRW in 2002, Bush led numerous space program activities, served as vice president of TRW Ventures, and was the president and chief executive officer of TRW’s U.K.-based Aeronautical Systems business. At Northrop Grumman, he served as the president of the company’s space technology sector, then as its chief financial officer. He became president of the company in 2006. He served as chief executive officer from 2010 through 2018 and became chairman in 2011. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

R. Erich Caulfield, founder and president, The Caulfield Consulting Group

Caulfield received a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from Morehouse College. He obtained his master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 2001 and 2006, respectively. After beginning his professional career as at McKinsey and Company, Caulfield was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as a White House Fellow in 2010, working at the White House Domestic Policy Council. He was part of the senior leadership team that developed and launched the White House Strong Cities, Strong Communities (SC2) Initiative, which was a new partnership between the federal government and pilot cities across the country. In 2011, Caulfield assumed the role of New Orleans Community Solutions Team Lead for the SC2 Initiative. In 2013, he founded The Caulfield Consulting Group, a New Orleans-based management consulting firm. In 2018, he went on to serve as the chief policy advisor to Cory Booker, then Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and to the city’s business administrator.

Heather Cogdell, principal business process engineer, MITRE Corporation

Cogdell received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1989. She received her MBA in decision sciences from the Wharton School of Business and master’s degree in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. Cogdell is a principal business process engineer at the MITRE Corporation. She joined MITRE in 2008 and has supported the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Internal Revenue Service, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Working across that sponsor landscape, she provided expertise in problem identification, source analysis, and solution development and implementation. She is currently working at the Census Bureau to develop the future data repository vision. Her past projects include performing independent verification and validation of new Medicare Card Project systems for the CMS Office of Information technology.

Orit Gadiesh, chairperson, Bain and Company Inc.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Gadiesh completed her compulsory service in the Israel Defense Forces and studied at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating in 1975 with her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1977 and was also awarded the Brown prize for the most outstanding marketing student. Gadiesh joined Bain and Company in 1977 after graduating from Harvard Business School and has been the chairperson since 1993. A world-renowned expert on management and corporate strategy, she has advised a multiplicity of CEOs and senior executives of major international companies on strategy development and the implementation of change. She has counseled top level management on structuring and managing portfolios, developing and implementing global strategy, executing turnarounds, improving organizational effectiveness, and designing both cost reduction and growth programs.

Jeffrey S. Halis, president, Tyndall Management, LLC

Halis received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Sloan School of Management in June 1976. He is president and chief executive officer of Tyndall Management, an investment firm specializing in publicly traded securities that he founded in 1991. Prior to establishing Tyndall, he held positions in the finance and investment industry working for Citibank, Merrill Lynch, and Sabre Associates. A New York native, Halis currently resides with his wife, Nancy L. Halis, in Manhattan. They have two daughters, Laura and Jenny, who reside in Boston and Manhattan.

Michelle K. Lee, vice president, Machine Learning Solutions Lab, Amazon Web Services

Lee studied electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 1989. She received her JD from Stanford Law School in 1992.  Lee is vice president of the Machine Learning Solutions Lab at Amazon Web Services. Prior to joining Amazon, Lee was the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School from 2017 to 2018. Lee also served as the under secretary of commerce and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 2015 to 2017 and was the first woman to serve in this role in the country’s history. Additionally, Lee was the deputy general counsel at Google Inc. and a partner with Fenwick and West LLP.

Adrianna C. Ma, managing partner, Haleakala Holdings LLC

Ma received a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 1996. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2000. Ma is the managing partner of Haleakala Holdings LLC, her personal investment and advisory firm. Previously, she was a managing partner of Fremont Group, a single-family investment firm, where from 2015 to 2019 she oversaw a portfolio that consisted of actively managed funds as well as directly owned public and private securities. Prior to joining Fremont Group, Ma was a managing director of General Atlantic, where from 2005 to 2015 she invested in and served on the boards of directors of technology-enabled growth companies globally. Before joining General Atlantic, she was an investment banker from 2000 to 2005 in Morgan Stanley's mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring department. Previously, she was a project manager at the network server division of Hewlett-Packard Company, from 1996 to 1998.

Indra K. Nooyi, chairperson and CEO (retired), PepsiCo

Nooyi received a bachelor’s degree from Madras Christian College in 1974, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta in 1976, and a master’s degree in public and private management from Yale University in 1980. Nooyi served as the chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2019. In this role, Nooyi was the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo’s pledge to do what’s right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world around us. She directed the company’s global strategy for more than a decade. Prior to becoming CEO, Nooyi served as president and chief financial officer beginning in 2001, when she was also named to PepsiCo’s board of directors. Before joining PepsiCo in 1994, Nooyi spent four years as senior vice president of strategy, planning and strategic marketing for Asea Brown Boveri, a Zurich-based industrials company.

Adedoyin Olateru-Olagbegi, student, MIT

Adedoyin Olateru-Olagbegi is a senior at MIT studying computer science, economics, and data science. Next year, she will complete a master’s degree in global affairs at Beijing’s Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. Afterward, Olateru-Olagbegi plans to focus on using digital health tools to improve health care quality and access globally. She has worked at a range of organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, Google, Bain and Company, and most recently, 1upHealth, a digital health startup. Adedoyin has enjoyed traveling while at MIT, studying race and migration in Brazil, co-designing technologies with coffee farmers in Colombia, and taking a class on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

The three partial-term members are:

Drew Gilpin Faust, president emerita and Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University

Faust received her bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College in 1968 and her master’s degree and PhD in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and 1975. As president of Harvard from 2007 to 2018, she expanded financial aid to improve access to for students of all economic backgrounds and advocated for increased federal funding for scientific research. She broadened the University’s international reach, led a successful capital campaign, updated university governance, and raised the profile of the arts on campus, among other achievements, while also guiding the university through a period of significant financial challenges. Faust previously served as founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, from 2001 to 2007. Before coming to Radcliffe, she was the Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of six books and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Faust will serve a two-year term with the Corporation.

Janet C. Wolfenbarger, general (retired), U.S. Air Force

Wolfenbarger earned a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1980, a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT in 1985, a master’s degree in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1994, and an honorary doctoral degree from Wright State University in 2013. She retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2015, culminating a distinguished 35-year career as the Service’s first female four-star general.  She commanded Air Force Materiel Command, which employs 80,000 people and manages a $60 billion annual budget. The command is responsible for executing the critical mission of warfighter support through leading-edge science and technology, cradle-to-grave life cycle weapons system management, world-class developmental test and evaluation, and world-class depot maintenance and supply chain management. Since retirement she has served as a board director for two entities and volunteers in a number of other capacities. Wolfenbarger will serve a three-year term with the Corporation.

Mark S. Wrighton, chancellor emeritus and professor of chemistry, Washington University

Wrighton received his bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in 1969 and his PhD in chemistry from Caltech in 1972. He joined the faculty of MIT’s Department of Chemistry that year, and from 1981 until 1989 held the Frederick G. Keyes Professorship in Chemistry, followed by the Ciba-Geigy Professorship in Chemistry. He was head of the department from 1987 to 1990 and served as MIT’s provost from 1990 to 1995. He then moved to Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as chancellor and CEO until 2019. He now continues full time at Washington University as a professor and chancellor emeritus. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, he has participated in numerous governmental panels and has been a consultant to industry. Wrighton will serve a one-year term with the Corporation.

The three life members are:

Victor J. Menezes, senior vice chairperson (retired), Citigroup Inc.

Menezes received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 1970 and a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1972. He was senior vice chair of Citigroup Inc. and retired in 2005 after a 32-year global career in the company. He served previously as chair and CEO of Citibank and was head of Citigroup’s emerging markets business, with responsibility for the corporate and consumer businesses and global product responsibility for e-business and global securities services. In 1995 he was named chief financial officer of Citicorp and Citibank. Previously, he headed Citibank’s businesses and lived in India, Hong Kong, and Europe. He also chaired Citi’s India Advisory Board from 2011 to 2013.

Phillip T. Ragon, CEO, founder, and owner, InterSystems Corporation

After earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT in 1972, Ragon went on to found InterSystems in 1978, leading the company to worldwide prominence in the database, interoperability, and health care application markets. He is a trustee of the Mass General Brigham health system, as well as a trustee of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he also served as honorary co-chair of the MGH Campaign. He is on the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows. In 2008, he helped create the Ragon Institute, a joint research center of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. The vision of the Ragon Institute is to “harness the immune system,” and its immediate objective is the creation of a vaccine for HIV. Ragon is also a signatory to The Giving Pledge.

Jeffrey L. Silverman, chairperson, Agman Partners

Silverman, who earned a bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1968, is the founder and chair of Agman Partners, a multistrategy private investment firm that invests both directly and through partnerships across asset classes and stages of development. During his career, he incorporated an evolving game theory approach to applied economics as an independent commodity futures trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he also served as a director. He has supported the MIT Evergreen Energy Fund, which resulted in a substantial savings in energy for MIT while leading the way for other institutions. He also provided initial funding for MIT's “Just Jerusalem” competition envisioning peace in the Middle East. Currently, he supports the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research through a communications outreach project as part of their ongoing fundraising.

President of the Association of Alumni and Alumnae of MIT:

Charlene C. Kabcenell, vice president (retired), Oracle Corporation

Kabcenell received her bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1979 and began her career as a software developer at Xerox Corporation, where she was involved in the development of the Star workstation, the first commercial system that incorporated technologies familiar to Macinotsh and Microsoft Windows users today. She joined Oracle Corporation in 1987 as a group product manager. During her tenure, she managed projects involving product software, software development tools, and internationalization. She retired as a vice president of software development in 1997. Kabcenell now devotes her time to a range of charitable and volunteer activities, including managing her family foundation. She joined the MIT Corporation in 2011 and has been a life member since 2013.

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Robert Art retires as director of the Seminar XXI Program

Robert Art will step down from his role as the director of the Seminar XXI Program effective June 30. Art is a senior fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP) and the Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations, Emeritus at Brandeis University. He has directed the Seminar XXI program at the Center for International Studies since 2000.

The Seminar XXI Program is one of the most successful and competitive post-graduate education programs in the national security arena. It links policymaking and academia by bringing together military and civilian executives with scholars from MIT and beyond. 

Since its inception as an MIT program in 1986, it has inspired its graduates to apply the compelling insights of social science to the most pressing challenges of our times. It currently boasts 2,530 alumni, who serve or have served in high-ranking positions in government organizations, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Department of Defense. 

“I consider it an honor and a privilege to have been affiliated with Seminar XXI for two decades because of the quality of the people I worked with: the staff — Tisha Gomes and Jen Kempe; the many faculty at MIT and other universities, here and abroad; and, of course, the fellows from the U.S. military and the senior civilian ranks of the U.S. government, whose dedication, integrity, and patriotism I deeply respect. Seminar XXI immeasurably enriched my life and for that I am profoundly grateful," says Art.

Under Art’s leadership, the United States — and U.S. security — faced several of the greatest challenges in living memory, including 9/11 and Covid-19. Through it all, his steadfast commitment and dedication to the mission of Seminar XXI ensured the program's continuing success. His guidance and coordination of the fellows, alumni, faculty, and staff have cultivated a diverse and enduring network of professional relationships.

“Few can chair a panel discussion that blends scholarship and policy analysis in national security, and which ensures the participation of speakers and audience, as well as Bob. Most of what I know about chairing such meetings I learned from him. All of us are grateful for his long tenure as Seminar XXI director,” says Barry Posen, Ford International Professor of Political Science, director emeritus of SSP, and a member of Seminar XXI’s executive board.  

Posen added that Art has made prolific contributions to the field of security studies. Art’s co-edited book, “The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics” — a compendium of analysis by influential thinkers—is a boon to young faculty. Art also served on the founding editorial team of the Cornell University Press Security Affairs series.

On July 1, Art will pass the stewardship of Seminar XXI to Kenneth Oye, a professor of political science in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and a professor of data systems and society in the School of Engineering. Oye also directs the Program on Emerging Technologies at CIS.

A long-standing executive board member of the program, Oye is well-known to generations of Seminar XXI fellows and faculty. He will serve as the program’s interim director for one year. 

Beginning in July 2021, Kelly Greenhill PhD '04, a professor of political science at Tufts University — and a Seminar XXI veteran and an executive board member — will become a visiting professor at MIT, a senior fellow at SSP, and the director of the Seminar XXI Program.

Greenhill received her PhD from the MIT Department of Political Science and is currently a member of SSP.

“The impact of Art’s leadership of the program — for the faculty and for the program’s participants — will long endure. He leaves Seminar XXI in a strong position for continued success, and all of us at CIS thank him for his dedication and service to this most impactful of our many programs,” says Richard Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science, director of CIS, and a member of the Seminar XXI executive board. 

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Giving soft robots feeling

One of the hottest topics in robotics is the field of soft robots, which utilizes squishy and flexible materials rather than traditional rigid materials. But soft robots have been limited due to their lack of good sensing. A good robotic gripper needs to feel what it is touching (tactile sensing), and it needs to sense the positions of its fingers (proprioception). Such sensing has been missing from most soft robots.

In a new pair of papers, researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with new tools to let robots better perceive what they’re interacting with: the ability to see and classify items, and a softer, delicate touch. 

“We wish to enable seeing the world by feeling the world. Soft robot hands have sensorized skins that allow them to pick up a range of objects, from delicate, such as potato chips, to heavy, such as milk bottles,” says CSAIL Director Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the deputy dean of research for the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. 

One paper builds off last year’s research from MIT and Harvard University, where a team developed a soft and strong robotic gripper in the form of a cone-shaped origami structure. It collapses in on objects much like a Venus' flytrap, to pick up items that are as much as 100 times its weight. 

To get that newfound versatility and adaptability even closer to that of a human hand, a new team came up with a sensible addition: tactile sensors, made from latex “bladders” (balloons) connected to pressure transducers. The new sensors let the gripper not only pick up objects as delicate as potato chips, but it also classifies them — letting the robot better understand what it’s picking up, while also exhibiting that light touch. 

When classifying objects, the sensors correctly identified 10 objects with over 90 percent accuracy, even when an object slipped out of grip.

“Unlike many other soft tactile sensors, ours can be rapidly fabricated, retrofitted into grippers, and show sensitivity and reliability,” says MIT postdoc Josie Hughes, the lead author on a new paper about the sensors. “We hope they provide a new method of soft sensing that can be applied to a wide range of different applications in manufacturing settings, like packing and lifting.” 

In a second paper, a group of researchers created a soft robotic finger called “GelFlex” that uses embedded cameras and deep learning to enable high-resolution tactile sensing and “proprioception” (awareness of positions and movements of the body). 

The gripper, which looks much like a two-finger cup gripper you might see at a soda station, uses a tendon-driven mechanism to actuate the fingers. When tested on metal objects of various shapes, the system had over 96 percent recognition accuracy. 

“Our soft finger can provide high accuracy on proprioception and accurately predict grasped objects, and also withstand considerable impact without harming the interacted environment and itself,” says Yu She, lead author on a new paper on GelFlex. “By constraining soft fingers with a flexible exoskeleton, and performing high-resolution sensing with embedded cameras, we open up a large range of capabilities for soft manipulators.” 

Magic ball senses 

The magic ball gripper is made from a soft origami structure, encased by a soft balloon. When a vacuum is applied to the balloon, the origami structure closes around the object, and the gripper deforms to its structure. 

While this motion lets the gripper grasp a much wider range of objects than ever before, such as soup cans, hammers, wine glasses, drones, and even a single broccoli floret, the greater intricacies of delicacy and understanding were still out of reach — until they added the sensors.  

When the sensors experience force or strain, the internal pressure changes, and the team can measure this change in pressure to identify when it will feel that again. 

In addition to the latex sensor, the team also developed an algorithm which uses feedback to let the gripper possess a human-like duality of being both strong and precise — and 80 percent of the tested objects were successfully grasped without damage. 

The team tested the gripper-sensors on a variety of household items, ranging from heavy bottles to small, delicate objects, including cans, apples, a toothbrush, a water bottle, and a bag of cookies. 

Going forward, the team hopes to make the methodology scalable, using computational design and reconstruction methods to improve the resolution and coverage using this new sensor technology. Eventually, they imagine using the new sensors to create a fluidic sensing skin that shows scalability and sensitivity. 

Hughes co-wrote the new paper with Rus, which they will present virtually at the 2020 International Conference on Robotics and Automation. 

GelFlex

In the second paper, a CSAIL team looked at giving a soft robotic gripper more nuanced, human-like senses. Soft fingers allow a wide range of deformations, but to be used in a controlled way there must be rich tactile and proprioceptive sensing. The team used embedded cameras with wide-angle “fisheye” lenses that capture the finger’s deformations in great detail.

To create GelFlex, the team used silicone material to fabricate the soft and transparent finger, and put one camera near the fingertip and the other in the middle of the finger. Then, they painted reflective ink on the front and side surface of the finger, and added LED lights on the back. This allows the internal fish-eye camera to observe the status of the front and side surface of the finger. 

The team trained neural networks to extract key information from the internal cameras for feedback. One neural net was trained to predict the bending angle of GelFlex, and the other was trained to estimate the shape and size of the objects being grabbed. The gripper could then pick up a variety of items such as a Rubik’s cube, a DVD case, or a block of aluminum. 

During testing, the average positional error while gripping was less than 0.77 millimeter, which is better than that of a human finger. In a second set of tests, the gripper was challenged with grasping and recognizing cylinders and boxes of various sizes. Out of 80 trials, only three were classified incorrectly. 

In the future, the team hopes to improve the proprioception and tactile sensing algorithms, and utilize vision-based sensors to estimate more complex finger configurations, such as twisting or lateral bending, which are challenging for common sensors, but should be attainable with embedded cameras.

Yu She co-wrote the GelFlex paper with MIT graduate student Sandra Q. Liu, Peiyu Yu of Tsinghua University, and MIT Professor Edward Adelson. They will present the paper virtually at the 2020 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

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3 Questions: Seychelle Vos on detangling DNA

Seychelle Vos arrived in September 2019 as the Department of Biology’s newest assistant professor. Her lab in Building 68 uses cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), X-ray crystallography, biochemistry, and genetics to study how DNA and its associated proteins are organized inside the cell. Vos received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and completed her postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Germany. She sat down to discuss her structural biology research, and why it’s so important to understand DNA as a physical structure.

Q: Your research is on the proteins that compress DNA so it can fit inside a cellular organelle called the nucleus. How does the genome organize itself in different shapes to perform different functions in the cell, and why is this an important process for us to understand?

A: If we take all the DNA inside of one human cell and stretch it out end to end, it extends 2 meters in length. But it needs to fit into the nucleus, which is only a few microns wide. It's essentially like stringing a fishing line from here to New Haven and trying to put it in a soccer ball. That's not an easy thing to do. There are lots of proteins that compact the genome either by wrapping the DNA around themselves or by forming loops in the DNA.

In order to replicate DNA or transcribe it to make a protein, the cell’s molecular machinery needs to be able to access and read it. Depending on how the DNA is wrapped and organized, different genes will be more accessible than others. In a stem cell, essentially any gene can be turned on. But as cells begin to differentiate into kidney cells, liver cells, and so on, only the genes specific to those functions can be turned on. Every cell has its own set of proteins that make it special, and most of that regulation happens at the level of RNA expression.

Our lab wants to understand how DNA organization impacts gene expression at the atomic level. This gets to the crux of how a stem cell becomes a specific cell type, and what happens when those programs go wrong. Without the right kind of compaction you can have cancer phenotypes, because things get turned on that shouldn't be, or a cell thinks it's a stem cell again and divides really fast. Many of the proteins we study are involved either in developmental disorders or cancers. If we don't understand their basic biology, it's very hard to come up with reasonable ways of treating these diseases.

Q: What was it about structural biology that hooked you during your early career?

A: When I started my PhD at UC Berkeley, I didn't have much of an interest in structural biology. I thought that I wanted to study the immunology of nucleic acids, and I did my first lab rotation with Jennifer Doudna, one of the biochemists who was instrumental in developing CRISPR-Cas9 as a gene-editing tool. She might seem like a funny first person to do a rotation with if you were doing immunology, but CRISPR is essentially a bacterial immune system, and I went to her lab just to see a completely different way of viewing immunology. During that rotation, I fell in love with crystallography. What's so beautiful about this technique is that it shows us how different atoms are communicating with each other, and how one molecule might be engaging with another molecule.

For the rest of my rotations as a graduate student, I did research in biochemistry and structural biology labs, and ended up joining James Berger’s lab, which did a combination of both. I worked on a class of enzymes called topoisomerases that bind to DNA and uncoil the DNA when it gets tangled. I was able to solve a number of very interesting structures, and do biochemistry and genetics all at the same time.

During my postdoc I studied RNA polymerase II, the enzyme that makes all the RNAs that turn into proteins in the cell and determine the cell’s identity. I wanted to know how it is regulated after the initiation stage of transcription. One of the proteins I was working with wouldn’t crystallize, and we had to come up with some other ways of seeing it. So we turned to cryo-EM, which had just become a very high-resolution technology — we could actually see the atoms touching each other! That was a game-changer for me. If you told me at the beginning of my PhD that these technologies could become central to my research, I would have told you there's no way that would happen. But life has surprises.

Q: How does your expertise in genetics and biochemistry help you solve structural problems?

A: I'm definitely not your average structural biologist — I use structural tools to advance the genetics I want to do. My lab uses genetics to inform which protein complexes we want to look at, and then we use cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography to understand how those proteins actually affect RNA polymerase II. With what we learn about the structure, we can go back and use targeted genetic approaches to remove those proteins from the genome and see what happens to gene expression in particular cells. I also have projects where we’ll do a genetic screen first, and then use structural biology and chemistry techniques to get more information. The research is like a giant feedback loop. You need all of those perspectives to really understand the whole system.

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New technology enables fast protein synthesis

Many proteins are useful as drugs for disorders such as diabetes, cancer, and arthritis. Synthesizing artificial versions of these proteins is a time-consuming process that requires genetically engineering microbes or other cells to produce the desired protein.

MIT chemists have devised a protocol to dramatically reduce the amount of time required to generate synthetic proteins. Their tabletop automated flow synthesis machine can string together hundreds of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, within hours. The researchers believe their new technology could speed up the manufacturing of on-demand therapies and the development of new drugs, and allow scientists to design artificial proteins by incorporating amino acids that don’t exist in cells.

“You could design new variants that have superior biological function, enabled by using non-natural amino acids or specialized modifications that aren’t possible when you use nature’s apparatus to make proteins,” says Brad Pentelute, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the study.

In a paper appearing today in Science, the researchers showed that they could chemically produce several protein chains up to 164 amino acids in length, including enzymes and growth factors. For a handful of these synthetic proteins, they performed a detailed analysis showing their function is comparable to that of their naturally occurring counterparts.

The lead authors of the paper are former MIT postdoc Nina Hartrampf, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Zurich, MIT graduate student Azin Saebi, and former MIT technical associate Mackenzie Poskus.

Rapid production

The majority of proteins found in the human body are up to 400 amino acids long. Synthesizing large quantities of these proteins requires delivering genes for the desired proteins into cells that act as living factories. This process is used to program bacterial or yeast cells to produce insulin and other drugs such as growth hormones.

“This is a time-consuming process,” says Thomas Nielsen, head of research chemistry at Novo Nordisk, who is also an author of the study. “First you need the gene available, and you need to know something about the cellular biology of the organism so you can engineer the expression of your protein.”

An alternative approach for protein production, first proposed in the 1960s by Bruce Merrifield, who was later awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on solid-phase peptide synthesis, is to chemically string amino acids together in a stepwise fashion. There are 20 amino acids that living cells use to build proteins, and using the techniques pioneered by Merrifield, it takes about an hour to perform the chemical reactions needed to add one amino acid to a peptide chain.

In recent years, Pentelute’s lab has invented a more rapid method to perform these reactions, based on a technology known as flow chemistry. In their machine, chemicals are mixed using mechanical pumps and valves, and at every step of the overall synthesis they cycle through a heated reactor containing a resin bed. In the optimized protocol, forming each peptide bond takes on average 2.5 minutes, and peptides up to 25 amino acids long can be assembled in less than an hour.

Following the development of this technology, Novo Nordisk, which makes several protein drugs, became interested in working with Pentelute’s lab to synthesize longer peptides and proteins. To achieve that, the researchers needed to improve the efficiency of the reactions that form peptide bonds between amino acids in the chain. For each reaction, their previous efficiency rate was between 95 and 98 percent, but for longer proteins, they needed it to be over 99 percent.

“The rationale was if we got really good at making peptides, we could expand the technology to make proteins,” Pentelute says. “The idea is to have a machine that a user could walk up to and put in a protein sequence, and it would string together these amino acids in such an efficient manner that at the end of the day, you can get the protein you want. It’s been very challenging because if the chemistry is not close to 100 percent for every single step, you will not get any of the desired material.”

To boost their success rate and find the optimal recipe for each reaction, the researchers performed amino-acid-specific coupling reactions under many different conditions. In this study, they assembled a universal protocol that achieved an average efficiency greater than 99 percent for each reaction, which makes a significant difference when so many amino acids are being linked to form large proteins, the researchers say.

“If you want to make proteins, this extra 1 percent really makes all the difference, because byproducts accumulate and you need a high success rate for every single amino acid incorporated,” Hartrampf says.

Using this approach, the researchers were able to synthesize a protein that contains 164 amino acids — Sortase A, a bacterial protein. They also produced proinsulin, an insulin precursor with 86 amino acids, and an enzyme called lysozyme, which has 129 amino acids, as well as a few other proteins. The desired protein has to be purified and then folded into the correct shape, which adds a few more hours to the overall synthesis process. All of the purified synthesized proteins were obtained in milligram quantities, making up between 1 and 5 percent of the overall yield.

Medicinal chemistry

The researchers also tested the biological functions of five of their synthetic proteins and found that they were comparable to those of the biologically expressed variants.

The ability to rapidly generate any desired protein sequence should enable faster drug development and testing, the researchers say. The new technology also allows amino acids other than the 20 encoded by the DNA of living cells to be incorporated into proteins, greatly expanding the structural and functional diversity of potential protein drugs that could be created.

“This is paving the way for a new field of protein medicinal chemistry,” Nielsen says. “This technology really complements what is available to the pharmaceutical industry, providing new opportunities for rapid discovery of peptide- and protein-based biopharmaceuticals.”

The researchers are now working on further improving the technology so that it can assemble protein chains up to 300 amino acids long. They are also working on automating the entire manufacturing process, so that once the protein is synthesized, the cleavage, purification, and folding steps also occur without any human intervention required.

Pentelute is a co-founder of a company called Amide Technologies that has licensed aspects of the peptide synthesis technology for possible commercial development. The research was funded by Novo Nordisk, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and an MIT Dean of Science Fellowship.

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Algorithm quickly simulates a roll of loaded dice

Making nuclear energy cost-competitive

Nuclear energy is a low-carbon energy source that is vital to decreasing carbon emissions. A critical factor in its continued viability as a future energy source is finding novel and innovative ways to improve operations and maintenance (O&M) costs in the next generation of advanced reactors. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) established the Generating Electricity Managed by Intelligent Nuclear Assets (GEMINA) program to do exactly this. Through $27 million in funding, GEMINA is accelerating research, discovery, and development of new digital technologies that would produce effective and sustainable reductions in O&M costs.

Three MIT research teams have received APRA-E GEMINA awards to generate critical data and strategies to reduce O&M costs for the next generation of nuclear power plants to make them more economical, flexible, and efficient. The MIT teams include researchers from Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory. By leveraging state-of-art in high-fidelity simulations and unique MIT research reactor capabilities, the MIT-led teams will collaborate with leading industry partners with practical O&M experience and automation to support the development of digital twins. Digital twins are virtual replicas of physical systems that are programmed to have the same properties, specifications, and behavioral characteristics as actual systems. The goal is to apply artificial intelligence, advanced control systems, predictive maintenance, and model-based fault detection within the digital twins to inform the design of O&M frameworks for advanced nuclear power plants.

In a project focused on developing high-fidelity digital twins for the critical systems in advanced nuclear reactors, NSE professors Emilio Baglietto and Koroush Shirvan will collaborate with researchers from GE Research and GE Hitachi. The GE Hitachi BWRX-300, a small modular reactor designed to provide flexible energy generation, will serve as a reference design. BWRX-300 is a promising small modular reactor concept that aims to be competitive with natural gas to realize market penetration in the United States. The team will assemble, validate, and exercise high-fidelity digital twins of the BWRX-300 systems. Digital twins address mechanical and thermal fatigue failure modes that drive O&M activities well beyond selected BWRX-300 components and extend to all advanced reactors where a flowing fluid is present. The role of high-fidelity resolution is central to the approach, as it addresses the unique challenges of the nuclear industry.

NSE will leverage the tremendous advancements they have achieved in recent years to accelerate the transition of the nuclear industry toward high-fidelity simulations in the form of computational fluid dynamics. The high spatial and time resolution accuracy of the simulations, combined with the AI-enabled digital twins, offer the opportunity to deliver predictive maintenance approaches that can greatly reduce the operating cost of nuclear stations. GE Research represents an ideal partner, given their tremendous experience in developing digital twins and close link to GE Hitachi and BWRX-300 design team. This team is particularly well position to tackle regulatory challenges of applying digital twins to safety-grade components through explicit characterization of uncertainties. This three-year MIT-led project is supported by an award of $1,787,065.

MIT Principal Research Engineer and Interim Director of the Nuclear Reactor Lab Gordon Kohse will lead a collaboration with MPR Associates to generate critical irradiation data to be used in digital twinning of molten-salt reactors (MSRs). MSRs produce radioactive materials when nuclear fuel is dissolved in a molten salt at high temperature and undergoes fission as it flows through the reactor core. Understanding the behavior of these radioactive materials is important for MSR design and for predicting and reducing O&M costs — a vital step in bringing safe, clean, next-generation nuclear power to market. The MIT-led team will use the MIT nuclear research reactor's unique capability to provide data to determine how radioactive materials are generated and transported in MSR components. Digital twins of MSRs will require this critical data, which is currently unavailable. The MIT team will monitor radioactivity during and after irradiation of molten salts containing fuel in materials that will be used in MSR construction. Along with Kohse, the MIT research team includes David Carpenter and Kaichao Sun from the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, and Charles Forsberg and Professor Mingda Li from NSE. Storm Kauffman and the MPR Associates team bring a wealth of nuclear industry experience to the project and will ensure that the data generated aligns with the needs of reactor developers. This two-year project is supported by an award of $899,825.

In addition to these two MIT-led projects, a third MIT team will work closely with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) on a new paradigm for reducing advanced reactor O&M. This is a proof-of-concept study that will explore how to move away from the traditional maintenance and repair approach. The EPRI-led project will examine a “replace and refurbish” model in which components are intentionally designed and tested for shorter and more predictable lifetimes with the potential for game-changing O&M cost savings. This approach is similar to that adopted by the commercial airline industry, in which multiple refurbishments — including engine replacement — can keep a jet aircraft flying economically over many decades. The study will evaluate several advanced reactor designs with respect to cost savings and other important economic benefits, such as increased sustainability for suppliers. The MIT team brings together Jeremy Gregory from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Lance Snead from the Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, and professors Jacopo Buongiorno and Koroush Shirvan from NSE. 

“This collaborative project will take a fresh look at reducing the operation and maintenance cost by allowing nuclear technology to better adapt to the ever-changing energy market conditions. MIT's role is to identify cost-reducing pathways that would be applicable across a range of promising advanced reactor technologies. Particularly, we need to incorporate latest advancements in material science and engineering along with civil structures in our strategies," says MIT project lead Shirvan.

The advances by these three MIT teams, along with the six other awardees in the GEMINA program, will provide a framework for more streamlined O&M costs for next-generation advanced nuclear reactors — a critical factor to being competitive with alternative energy sources.

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