Professor Emeritus Richard Wurtman, influential figure in translational research, dies at 86

Richard Wurtman, the Cecil H. Green Distinguished Professor Emeritus and a member of the MIT faculty for 44 years, died on Dec. 13. He was 86.

Wurtman received an MD from Harvard Medical School in 1960 and trained at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining the laboratory of Nobel laureate Julius Axelrod at the National Institutes of Health in 1962. In 1967, MIT invited him to start a neurochemistry and neuropharmacology program in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science. In the early 1980s he joined the newly formed Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Wurtman was also deeply involved in the National Institutes of Health-established Clinical Research Center at MIT, which he also directed for 25 years.

His initial placement in Nutrition and Food Science was fortuitous, recalled Wurtman in a 2011 profile, because it “sensitized me to the fact that nutrients are chemicals the way drugs are chemicals. A compound like folic acid is a vitamin in foods, but when given alone in higher doses it becomes a drug that safeguards the developing nervous system.”

Wurtman’s search for new biological properties and therapeutic uses of known molecules — hormones, nutrients, or existing pharmaceuticals — was highly fruitful. His research on the pineal gland, which started when he was a medical student, led to the discovery that melatonin, the hormone made by the gland, regulates sleep. 

“Dick Wurtman was a pioneer in studying the role of neurotransmitters in the brain, and neuroendocrine regulation of normal and abnormal brain function,” says Newton Professor of Neuroscience Mriganka Sur, who served as head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences from 1997 to 2012. “His work on the impact of nutrition on neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine and on neuronal membrane synthesis laid the groundwork for later translational work on brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.”

Wurtman’s lab discovered that consuming carbohydrates increases tryptophan levels in the brain and consequently the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This led to a long collaboration with his wife Judith Wurtman, an MIT research affiliate, in which they found that carbohydrates were often consumed by individuals as a form of self-medication when they experienced changes in mood, such as late in the afternoon or when suffering from premenstrual syndrome (PMS). The Wurtmans’ research led to the development of Sarafem, the first drug for severe PMS, and a drink, PMS Escape, used for milder forms of this syndrome.

To commercialize some of his findings, Wurtman founded Interneuron Pharmaceuticals in 1988; the company was renamed Indevus in 2002 and acquired by Endo Pharmaceuticals in 2009.

Wurtman's research advanced the idea that substrate availability, and not simply enzyme activity, can control metabolic processes in the brain. He discovered that the dietary availability of neurotransmitter precursors (e.g., acetylcholine, dopamine, and GABA) can increase their levels in the brain and modulate their metabolism. Moreover, he applied this concept to synaptic structural components such as brain phosphatides and found that dietary intake of three rate-limiting precursors — uridine, choline, and the omega-3 fatty acid DHA — led to increased brain phosphatide levels, increased dendritic spine density, and improved memory performance. These findings led to the development of Souvenaid, a specifically formulated multi-nutrient drink based on the three essential phosphatide precursors of Wurtman's later research. It has been the subject of numerous clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease, and, most recently, for age-related cognitive decline.

“Dick Wurtman was a pioneer on studying how nutrients influence brain function,” says Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and director of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. “His nutrient clinical trial work and establishment of the MIT Clinical Research Center have been tremendously helpful for my own work on understanding how high doses of supplement choline could potentially help reduce certain Alzheimer’s risk, and our team’s development of clinical studies at MIT to test Alzheimer’s therapies.”

“Dick’s legacy resides within the careers of hundreds of trainees and collaborators he launched or enhanced, the 1,000-plus published research articles, his numerous patent awards, and people who benefited from his therapeutic approaches,” says former postdoc Bertha Madras, now a professor of psychobiology at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Yet, these quantitative metrics, legacies of research and mentoring, do not illustrate the charitable qualities of this remarkable man. I witnessed his deep intellect, boundless energy, enthusiasm, optimism, and generosity toward trainees, qualities that helped to sustain me during crests and troughs encountered in the adventures of a scientific career. Dr. Richard Wurtman was a creative, brilliant scientist, a mentor, a devoted husband to his beloved wife.”

“Dick was an inspiration, a motivation, and a guide to all his students and colleagues in shaping thoughts to be precise and purposeful,” says Tony Nader PhD ’89, who did his doctoral research with Wurtman. “His rigorous scientific approach and the application of his findings have contributed to make life better. His legacy is huge.”

Richard and Judith Wurtman have also made a lasting philanthropic impact at MIT. They endowed a professorship in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in honor of the late Institute Professor and provost Walter Rosenblith; the chair was held first by Ann Graybiel, who is now an Institute Professor; Nancy Kanwisher is the current Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience. The Wurtmans have also been longtime supporters of MIT Hillel.

Elazer R. Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and director of the MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, recalls that Wurtman was also supportive of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology: “He changed our school and our world — he and Judith coupled immense charity with exceptional intellect and they made us all better for it.”

Richard Wurtman is survived by his wife, Judith; daughter Rachael; son David and daughter-in-law Jean Chang; and grandchildren Dvora Toren, Yael Toren and Jacob Vider. 

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MIT community in 2022: A year in review

In 2022, MIT returned to a bit of normalcy after the challenge of Covid-19 began to subside. The Institute prepared to bid farewell to its president and later announced his successor; announced five flagship projects in a new competition aimed at tackling climate’s greatest challenges; made new commitments toward ensuring support for diverse voices; and celebrated the reopening of a reimagined MIT Museum — as well as a Hollywood blockbuster featuring scenes from campus. Here are some of the top stories in the MIT community this year.

Presidential transition

In February, MIT President L. Rafael Reif announced that he planned to step down at the end of 2022. In more than 10 years as president, Reif guided MIT through a period of dynamic growth, greatly enhancing its global stature and magnetism. At the conclusion of his term at the end of this month, Reif will take a sabbatical, then return to the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In September, Reif expressed his gratitude to the MIT community at an Institute-wide dance celebration, and he was honored with a special MIT Dome lighting earlier this month.

After an extensive presidential search, Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist and the current provost of Duke University, was announced in October as MIT’s 18th president. Following an introduction to MIT that included a press conference, welcoming event, and community celebration, Kornbluth will assume the MIT presidency on Jan. 1, 2023.

In other administrative transitions: Cynthia Barnhart was appointed provost after Martin Schmidt stepped down to become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Sanjay Sarma stepped down as vice president for open learning after nine years in the role; professors Brent Ryan and Anne White were named associate provosts, while White was also named associate vice president for research administration; and Agustín Rayo was named dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Climate Grand Challenges

MIT announced five flagship projects in its first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition. These multiyear projects focus on unraveling some of the toughest unsolved climate problems and bringing high-impact, science-based solutions to the world on an accelerated basis. Representing the most promising concepts to emerge from the two-year competition that yielded 27 finalist projects, the five flagship projects will receive additional funding and resources from MIT and others to develop their ideas and swiftly transform them into practical solutions at scale.

CHIPS and Science Act

President Reif and Vice President for Research Maria Zuber were among several MIT representatives to witness President Biden’s signing of the $52 billion “CHIPS and Science” bill into law in August. Reif helped shape aspects of the bill and was a vocal advocate for it among university and government officials, while Zuber served on two government science advisory boards during the bill’s gestation and consideration. Earlier in the year, MIT.nano hosted U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, while MIT researchers released a key report on U.S. microelectronics research and manufacturing.

MIT Morningside Academy for Design

Supported by a $100 million founding gift, the MIT Morningside Academy for Design launched as a major interdisciplinary center that aims to build on the Institute’s leadership in design-focused education. Housed in the School of Architecture and Planning, the academy provides a hub that will encourage design work at MIT to grow and cross disciplines among engineering, science, management, computing, architecture, urban planning, and the arts.

Reports of the Institute

A number of key Institute reports and announcements were released in 2022. They include: an announcement of the future of gift acceptance for MIT: an announcement of priority MIT investments; a new MIT Values Statement; a renewed commitment to Indigenous scholarship and community; the Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement, and Composition; a report on MIT’s engagement with China; a report of the Working Group on Reimagining Public Safety at MIT; a report of the Indigenous Working Group; and a report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Arts, Culture, and DEI.

Nobel Prizes

MIT affiliates were well-represented among new and recent Nobel laureates who took part in the first in-person Nobel Prize ceremony since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. MIT-affiliated winners for 2022 included Ben Bernanke PhD ’79, K. Barry Sharpless, and Carolyn Bertozzi. Winners in attendance from 2020 and 2021 included Professor Joshua Angrist, David Julius ’77, and Andrea Ghez ’87.

New MIT Museum

A reimagined MIT Museum opened this fall in a new 56,000-square-foot space in the heart of Cambridge’s Kendall Square. The museum invites visitors to explore the Institute’s innovations in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math — and to take part in that work with hands-on learning labs and maker spaces, interactive exhibits, and venues to discuss the impact of science and technology on society.

“Wakanda Forever”

In November, the Institute Office of Communications and the Division of Student Life hosted a special screening of Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The MIT campus had been used as a filming location in summer 2021, as one of the film’s characters, Riri Williams (also known as Ironheart), is portrayed as a student at the Institute.

In-person Commencement returns

After two years of online celebrations due to Covid-19, MIT Commencement returned to Killian Court at the end of May. World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala MCP ’78, PhD ’81 delivered the Commencement address, while poet Kealoha Wong ’99 spoke at a special ceremony for the classes of 2020 and 2021.

Students win distinguished fellowships

As in previous years, MIT students continued to shine. This year, exceptional undergraduates were awarded Fulbright, Marshall, Mitchell, Rhodes, and Schwarzman scholarships.

Remembering those we’ve lost

Among MIT community members who died this year were Robert Balluffi, Louis Braida, Ashton Carter, Tom Eagar, Dick Eckaus, Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Peter Griffith, Patrick Hale, Frank Sidney Jones, Nonabah Lane, Leo Marx, Bruce Montgomery, Joel Moses, Brian Sousa Jr., Mohamed Magdi Taha, John Tirman, and Markus Zahn.

In case you missed it:

Additional top community stories of 2022 included MIT students dominating the 82nd Putnam Mathematical Competition, an update on MIT’s reinstating the SAT/ACT requirement for admissions, a new mathematics program for Ukrainian students and refugees, a roundup of new books from MIT authors, the renaming of the MIT.nano building, an announcement of winners of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, the new MIT Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, and MIT students winning the 45th International Collegiate Programming Contest for the first time in 44 years.

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MIT in the media: 2022 in review

From the announcement that President L. Rafael Reif would be stepping down and the news that Duke University Provost Sally Kornbluth had been named MIT’s 18th president to the Institute’s first Climate Grand Challenges and the opening of the new MIT Museum in Kendall Square, MIT faculty, researchers, students, and staff made headlines in 2022. MIT community members served as leading voices emphasizing the importance of inclusion, the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, the need to invest in semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., and the pressing issue of income inequality. Below please find highlights of news stories that spotlight some of the many efforts underway at MIT.

Rafael Reif on Leading – and Leaving – MIT
President Reif, who will return to the faculty following a sabbatical, reflects on his tenure and how his upbringing shaped his outlook on education. “For many, MIT’s reputation is one that is defined by innovative research – a technology hub built on drive and hustle. But when Rafael Reif first visited the school in the spring of 1979, he found a campus full of down-to-earth people who wanted to make the world better, something he could get behind.”
Full story via Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa

Incoming MIT President Sally Kornbluth wants to lift other women up with her: “Being a role model is important”
President-elect Sally Kornbluth discusses her hopes and aspirations for her tenure as MIT’s president. “I just want to continue the excellence of MIT,” she said. “I hope when I turn my head back down the road some years from now that this will have been viewed as a period of continued excellence, but also of the discovery, innovation, and invention of things that continue to really have a huge impact on the world stage.”
Full story via The Boston Globe 

Major semiconductor support bill passes first hurdle
Professor Jesús del Alamo emphasizes the importance of the CHIPS and Science Act and the pressing need to invest in semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.
Full story via Science Friday 

MIT is creating a digital twin of the Earth to help model climate change
Associate Provost Richard Lester and Professor Noelle Selin discuss MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges. Lester notes that he hopes the challenges will “inspire a new generation of students to roll up their sleeves, put their shoulders to the wheel and help us solve this problem.”
Full story via Radio Boston (WBUR)

Science must overcome its racist legacy
In an editorial for Nature, Chancellor Melissa Nobles and colleagues detail the long history of racism in science and outline their work as guest editors of a series of special Nature issues focused on racism in science.
Full story via Nature

New MIT Museum glimpses the future and examines school’s past
The new MIT Museum, a “purpose-built exhibition and gathering space in the heart of Kendall Square ... seeks to demystify some of the school’s opaque inner workings, makes itself broadly approachable with expanded gallery space, forum areas, learning labs, and a maker hub where visitors can work on museum-led projects.”
Full story via The Boston Globe

Emerging solar technology
Ross Trethewey, co-host of This Old House, visits Professor Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano, to learn more about the future of solar technology.
Full story via This Old House

Computational power

Is artificial intelligence about to transform the mammogram?
Professor Regina Barzilay and graduate student Adam Yala developed an AI system called Mirai that could transform how breast cancer is diagnosed, “an innovation that could seriously disrupt how we think about the disease.”
Full story via The Washington Post

Boston Fed, MIT see promise in possible digital-dollar code
Researchers from MIT and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released a new paper and open-source code, called OpenCBDC, aimed at furthering understanding of how a hypothetical central bank digital currency might be developed.
Full story via Bloomberg 

Slowly but surely, robots will wind up in our clothes
Professor Yoel Fink discusses the growing field of smart textiles and his work creating fabrics embedded with computational power. He and colleagues “have created fibers with hundreds of [silicon] microchips to transmit digital signals — essential if clothes are to automatically track things like heart rate or foot swelling.”
Full story via The Washington Post

Expert explains 5G impact on airports
When fears escalated that 5G technologies could negatively impact airline safety, Professor Muriel Médard helped demystify the technology behind 5G.
Full story via NBC Boston

Shoulders to the wheel on climate change

Batteries, solar, wind and hydropower: Why renewable energy is essential to curbing climate change
Professor Jessika Trancik underscores the urgent need to transition to renewable energy sources and explores how we can build a future powered by renewables.
Full story via ABC News

Cat litter could be an antidote for climate change, researchers say
Professor Desirée Plata’s research group developed a new compound using zeolite and copper that has the “potential to greatly reduce the amount of methane in the atmosphere and slow warming temperatures on the planet.”
Full story via The Wall Street Journal

Boston tech startups bet big on batteries 
A number of MIT spinoffs are working on developing new technologies aimed at changing the world’s energy-storage systems. “Behind these companies are key technological advances in chemistry and materials, many of them pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” writes Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray.
Full story via The Boston Globe

Five skills college students will need for their future careers
Associate Professor Miho Mazereeuw discusses courses she is teaching at MIT focused on environmental risk and disaster-resilient design.
Full story via The Wall Street Journal

MIT research explores whether plant DNA can help solve our plastics problem
Professor Kristala Prather speaks about her work using synthetic biology to develop new materials that function like plastic but don’t rely on fossil fuels and biodegrade when no longer in use. Prather also explores how the Kendall Square innovation ecosystem has helped fuel her work.
Full story via Radio Boston (WBUR) 

Companies face pressure to improve environmental sustainability in supply chain
Research Scientist David Correll discusses the challenges companies are facing as they try to improve supply-chain sustainability.
Full story via The Wall Street Journal

Human health

This sticker looks inside the body
MIT engineers created an ultrasound device that can adhere to a patient’s skin and record high-resolution videos of internal organs for up to two days. The technology, Professor Xuanhe Zhao explains, could potentially “change the paradigm of medical imaging by empowering long-term continuous imaging.”
Full story via Scientific American

Next-generation vaccines could end boosters
MIT scientists are developing self-boosting vaccine technology that could allow people to receive multiple vaccine doses in one shot. This technology “would be a game-changer, not only for future pandemics but also for vaccination programs in remote regions where it is harder to deliver boosters.”
Full story via The Economist

Robotic pill that delivers drugs to gut could end insulin injections
MIT researchers developed a robotic drug-carrying pill that can propel itself through mucus in the intestines and could enable some injection-only medications to be taken orally.
Full story via New Scientist

Educational opportunities

MIT to launch new design academy 
With the creation of the new MIT Morningside Academy for Design, MIT is looking to create “a hub of resources for the next generation of designers, integrating areas of study such as engineering and architecture in the process.”
Full story via The Boston Globe

She thought MIT was out of reach. Then a new transfer program for community college students changed her life.
Undergraduate Evelyn De La Rosa discusses her experience with the Transfer Scholars Network, a program aimed at providing community college students with a pathway to four-year universities. “We want to be as accessible as we can,” says Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services. “We want to educate the best students from everywhere, from all backgrounds.”
Full story via The Boston Globe

They’re locked up in D.C. — and learning how to code from MIT
The MIT Educational Justice Initiative developed a 12-week program called Brave Behind Bars that teaches inmates “basic coding languages such as JavaScript and HTML in hopes of opening the door for detainees to one day pursue high-paying jobs.”
Full story via The Washington Post

Addressing inequality

Economists pin more blame on tech for rising inequality
Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu’s research shows how “excessive automation” is contributing to rising inequality. “We need to redirect technology so it works for people,” says Acemoglu, “not against them.”
Full story via The New York Times

Will robots really destroy the future of work?
Professor David Autor discusses “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines,” a book he wrote with Professor David Mindell and Elisabeth Reynolds.
Full story via The New York Times

Anna Stansbury on how to boost worker bargaining power
Assistant Professor Anna Stansbury discusses her research on the labor market and worker power.
Full story via Bloomberg

To infinity and beyond

Hear the weird sounds of a black hole singing
MIT astronomers have used light echoes from X-ray bursts to try to map the environment around black holes. Assistant Professor Erin Kara then worked with education and music experts to transform the X-ray reflections into audible sound.
Full story via The New York Times

Images from James Webb Space Telescope will inspire generations of students, MIT professor says
“It’s like going from listening to the radio to suddenly being able to watch television,” says Assistant Professor Julien de Wit of the first images released from the James Webb Space Telescope. “Further down the road, we may be able to see if planets are habitable, if some of these planets have signs of life one way or the other. There are so many things we’re going to discover thanks to it.”
Full story via CBS Boston

NASA made enough oxygen on Mars to last an astronaut for 100 minutes
During day and night, in the wake of a dust storm and in extreme temperatures, the MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) was able to produce about 100 minutes of breathable oxygen in 2021 on Mars.
Full story via New Scientist

Emphasizing Inclusion

One on one with Alison Wendlandt
“I think being different, whatever that means — in my case, being LGBTQ — has been like a superpower,” says Assistant Professor Alison Wendlandt of her journey to leading her own research lab and how being queer has been integral to that journey.
Full story via C&EN

MIT mentor inspires underrepresented students to get involved in STEM
Chiamaka Agbasi-Porter, K-12 STEM outreach coordinator at MIT Lincoln Lab, discusses her work aimed at inspiring young people to pursue STEM interests through the Lincoln Laboratory Radar Introduction for Student Engineers (LLRISE) program.
Full story via CBS Boston

Three questions with Dean Nergis Mavalvala: Kicking off Women’s History Month with a bright star
Professor Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science, speaks with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai about what inspired her love of science, how to inspire more women to pursue their passions, and her hopes for the next generation of STEM students.
Full story via Podium

Mary Anne Ocampo on teaching and practicing urban design
Associate Professor of the Practice Mary Anne Ocampo delves into what inspired her passion for architecture and urban planning, and her advice for new designers. “The impact I would like to have in this world is creating strong collaborations that promote inclusive and resilient design visions,” says Ocampo.
Full story via Madame Architect

What it means to be counted: MIT art project aims to capture Ogden’s vocal diversity
Assistant Professor Ekene Ijeoma discusses his group’s art project, “A Counting,” which spotlights people counting to 100 in their native languages.
Full story via KUER

“Wakanda Forever” and the importance of #BlackGirlGenius
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah emphasizes the importance of representation in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which features Riri Williams (Ironheart) as a Black female engineer at MIT.
Full story via The Washington Post

Gang Chen

Justice Department drops China spy initiative as past target speaks out
Jim Axelrod of CBS News speaks with Professor Gang Chen about his ordeal following charges he faced – all now dismissed – under the “China Initiative.”
Full story via CBS News

We are all Gang Chen
Writing for Science, Professor Gang Chen emphasizes the need for universities and funding agencies to stand up for faculty who are wrongfully prosecuted. “What gave me hope and ultimately saved me is a lesson for all universities. MIT leadership, under President L. Rafael Reif, supported me morally and financially after I was detained at the airport, and the university made its support public soon after I was arrested,” writes Chen.
Full story via Science

MIT professor wrongfully accused of spying for China helps make a major discovery 
Months after having all charges he faced under the “China Initiative” dismissed, Professor Gang Chen and his colleagues announced that they discovered a new material that can perform better than silicon.
Full story via NBC News

Leading the conversation

Opinion: The CHIPS are on the table — but semis are only part of the story
MIT President L. Rafael Reif and Blackstone chairperson, CEO, and co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman praise the new CHIPS and Science Act and highlight the need for further action on the “science” part of the law.
Full story via The Hill

Opinion: Stop financing Putin’s war machine. Cut off Russia’s oil and gas sales
Professor Simon Johnson and Oleg Ustenko, an economic advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, emphasize the importance of the U.S. cutting off oil and gas sales from Russia.
Full story via The Los Angeles Times

Opinion: As a child in Haiti, I was taught to despise my language and myself
Professor Michel DeGraff details how the education system in Haiti discriminates against Kreyòl speakers, forcing children to speak and learn in French.
Full story via The New York Times

Opinion: “FemTech” and a moonshot for menstruation science
Professor Linda Griffith underscores the pressing need to invest in studying women’s health and menstruation science.
Full story via The Boston Globe

Opinion: How leaders can create a cybersecure workplace culture
Professor Emeritus Stuart Madnick and Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan Executive Director Keri Pearlson underscore seven actions that leaders can take to ensure employees contribute to maintaining a secure organization.
Full story via The Wall Street Journal

Opinion: The big idea: Why we shouldn’t try to be happy
“What, then, should we strive for? Not happiness or an ideal life, but to find sufficient meaning in the world that we are glad to be alive, and to cope with grace when life is hard. We won’t achieve perfection, but our lives may be good enough,” writes Professor Kieran Setiya in his new book, “Life is Hard.”
Full story via The Guardian

Opinion: When classical music was an alibi
“In moments of war and violence, it can be tempting to either downplay classical music’s involvement in global events or emphasize music’s power only when it is used as a force for what a given observer perceives as good,” write Professor Emily Richmond Pollock and University of Michigan Professor Kira Thurman.
Full story via The New York Times

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MIT Science Bowl Club hosts invitational event

“I have many classes in this auditorium, and I’ve never seen it as full as it is this morning,” said Anka Hu, a senior majoring in mathematics and president of the MIT Science Bowl Club, in her opening remarks at the 2022 MIT Science Bowl Invitational in Kresge Auditorium. “Raise your hand if you think you’re the team that traveled the farthest.”

“University!” echoed through the crowd in response. A group from University High School in Irvine, California, lifted their hands. For many sitting in the audience — MIT student volunteers, teachers, guardians, and of course, the high school participants — Nov. 12 marked their first in-person competition on MIT’s campus, after the event moved online for two years due to the pandemic.

The student-run competition is similar to the National Science Bowl, an annual event in Washington where teams of high school and middle school students compete in a fast-paced verbal forum to solve technical problems and answer science and math questions. In addition, the National Science Bowl holds 60 high school and around 50 middle school regional competitions each year. As an invitational competition, the MIT Science Bowl is a rare opportunity for participants to compete against teams from around the country outside of the nationals.

Sponsored by the School of Science, the event brought together 26 high school teams. The day began with five rapid round-robin matches, continued with casual scrimmages and a lunch break, and culminated in an afternoon of six double-elimination games.

Over 50 volunteers from MIT, nearby universities including Boston University and Northeastern University, and People Making a Difference made event possible. One such volunteer was Gilford Ting, a first-year student who got involved with the MIT Science Bowl Club during Campus Preview Weekend. In addition to the high school invitational, the club organizes a regional competition for middle schoolers every spring.

While the official national and regional meets use questions provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the MIT invitational uses a series of questions meticulously crafted by MIT student volunteers. Ting wrote chemistry questions over the summer. Once the school year started, he helped to compile questions across categories — including an “energy” subcategory — into neat packets with software originally written by MIT alumni and former volunteers. This twist contributes a unique flavor to the event, with many questions drawing on research and labs based at the Institute.

Down to the buzzer

The final double-elimination round began around 4:30 p.m. Eight high school students sat in the first row of the auditorium, split into two teams of four. They hovered over their buzzers as the spectators looked on, spread around the auditorium with their teams. A squad of MIT volunteers were at the front of the auditorium, acting as judges, timers, and scorekeepers.

Enloe Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada, paired off. The match marked the end of the long day.

Question: The Gehring Lab at MIT is studying gene imprinting in nutritive plant tissues. During germination, what modified organelles are responsible for breaking down fatty tissue for the plant? Answer: Glyoxysomes.

Bonus question: Researchers in the Gehring Lab at MIT are investigating the role of RNA polymerase IV in endosperm epigenetics and have discovered that the enzyme can be influenced such that it is only inherited paternally or maternally. What is the term for such an effect, where the expression of a gene depends on the side of inheritance? Answer: Genomic imprinting.

While the competitors were nothing but serious about their answers — often buzzing in before the announcer even finished reading the whole question — everyone was having fun. The final two teams laughed along with the spectators over missed answers in between their laser-focused face-offs.

The teams scribbled equations, whispered to one another, and firmly voiced their answers before time ran out. Two scorekeepers worked the massive chalkboards, ensuring the correct points were awarded. Enloe Magnet High School ultimately took the No. 1 spot.

“The whole vibe, the whole atmosphere is completely different here. Your whole heart is racing, and you feel the game way more than you do through the screen,” said Rohith Hair, a member of the winning team competing in-person at MIT for the first time.

“And your dog doesn’t bark in the background,” laughed his teammate.

The Science Bowl Club ended the day with a closing ceremony where they presented awards to the top teams.

The Enloe group had plans to tour campus later, but agreed that the highlight of the Science Bowl was connecting with competitors and student volunteers, many of whom they had met online in years prior. “For me, the more important part about knowing MIT is talking to the students at MIT,” explained Colin Hanns, his team nodding in agreement.

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New tool can assist with identifying carbohydrate-binding proteins

One of the major obstacles that those conducting research on carbohydrates are constantly working to overcome is the limited array of tools available to decipher the role of sugars. As a workaround, most researchers utilize lectins (sugar-binding proteins) isolated from plants or fungi, but they are large, with weak binding, and they are limited in their specificity and in the scope of sugars that they detect. In a new study published in ACS Chemical Biology, researchers in Professor Barbara Imperiali's group have developed a platform to address this shortcoming.

“The challenge with polymers of carbohydrates is that their biosynthesis is not template-driven,” says Imperiali, the senior author of the study and a professor in the departments of Chemistry and Biology. “Biology, medicine, and biotechnology have been fueled by technological advancements for proteins and nucleic acids. The carbohydrate field lags terribly behind and is desperately seeking tools.”

Identifying carbohydrate-binding proteins

Biosynthesizing carbohydrates requires every link between individual sugar molecules to be made by a particular enzyme, and there’s no ready way to decipher the structures and sequences of complex carbohydrates. Antibodies to carbohydrates can be generated,  but doing so is challenging, expensive, and results in a molecule that is far larger than what is really needed for the research. An ideal resource for this field plagued with limited mechanisms would be discovery of binding proteins, of limited size, that recognize small chunks of carbohydrates to piece together a structure by using those binders, or methods to detect and identify particular carbohydrates within complicated structures.

The authors of this study used directed evolution and clever screen design to identify carbohydrate-binding proteins from proteins that have absolutely no ability to bind carbohydrates at all. Their findings lay the groundwork for identifying carbohydrate-binding proteins with diverse and programmable specificity.

Streamlining for collaboration

This advance will allow researchers to go after a user-defined sugar target without being limited by what a lectin does, or challenged by the abilities of generating antibodies. These results could serve to inspire future collaborations with engineering communities to maximize the efficiency of glycobiology’s yeast surface display pipeline. As it is, this pipeline works well for proteins, but sugars are far more difficult targets and require the pipeline to be modified. 

In terms of future applications, the potential for this innovation ranges from diagnostic to, in the longer term, therapeutic, and paves the way for collaborations with researchers at MIT and beyond. For example, chemistry Professor Laura Kiessling's research group works with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which has an unusual cell wall composition with unique, distinct, and exclusive sugars. Using this method, a binder could potentially be evolved to that particular feature on Mtb. Chemical engineering Professor Hadley Sikes develops paper-based diagnostic tools where the binding partner for a particular epitope or marker is laid down, and with the use of this discovery, in the longer term, a lateral flow assay device could be developed.

Laying the groundwork for future solutions

In cancer, certain sugars are overrepresented on cell surfaces, so theoretically, researchers can utilize this finding, which is also amenable to labeling, to develop a tool out of the evolved glycan binder for detection.

This discovery also stands to contribute significantly to improving cell imaging. Researchers can modify binders with a fluorophore using a simple ligation strategy, and can then choose the best fluorophore for tissue or cell imaging. The Kiessling group, for example, could apply small protein binders labeled with fluorophore to detect bacterial sugars to initiate fluorescence-activated cell sorting to probe a complex mixture of microbes. This could in turn be used to determine how a patient’s microbiome has been disturbed. It also has the potential to screen the microbiome of a patient’s mouth or their upper or lower gastrointestinal tract to read out the imbalance within the community using these types of reagents. In the more distant future, the binders could potentially have therapeutic purposes like clearing the gastrointestinal tract or mouth of a particular bacterium based on the sugars that the bacterium displays.

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White House names Daniel Hastings to space advisory group

United States Vice President Kamala Harris, the chair of the National Space Council (NSpC), has named MIT Professor Daniel Hastings to serve on the NSpC Users Advisory Group (UAG). Hastings, who is the associate dean of engineering for diversity, equity, and inclusion; head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, will join a panel of experts spanning academia, industry, government, and the nonprofit sector to provide advice and guidance to the White House on matters related to the space enterprise.

“I am deeply interested in all the exciting things going on in the space enterprise because it is a rapidly evolving field with a tangible impact on the U.S. security and the economy. The space enterprise is being disrupted by new technology, new architectures, new business models, and new horizons. It will be important to consider all of these as we move forward,” says Hastings. “I am thrilled and honored to be asked to have a seat at the table with this incredible group of experts and stakeholders to lend my perspective on these important topics.”

The purpose of the NSpC is to assist the White House with strategy and policy development related to space activity. According to a White House news release, the UAG “will provide the National Space Council advice and recommendations on matters related to space policy and strategy, including but not limited to, government policies, laws, regulations, treaties, international instruments, programs, and practices across the civil, commercial, international, and national security space sectors.”

Hastings received his bachelor’s degree from Oxford University, joining the MIT community as a graduate student in 1976. He received his MS (1978) and PhD (1980) degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and joined the MIT faculty in 1985. His research interests have included laser-material interactions, fusion plasma physics, spacecraft plasma environment interactions, space plasma thrusters, and space systems analysis and design.

Hastings has a dedicated career in service both within and outside MIT. He served as MIT’s dean of undergraduate education from 2006 to 2013. In 2014, he was appointed to a five-year term as the director of SMART, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. He was appointed head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2019. In 2021, Hastings was appointed co-chair of MIT’s Values Statement Committee.

Outside of MIT, Hastings served as chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force from 1997 to 1999. In this role, he was the chief scientific adviser to the chief of staff and the secretary and provided assessments on a wide range of scientific and technical issues affecting the Air Force mission. He is a fellow of the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council in System Engineering and an honorary fellow of the AIAA. He is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

General (USAF, Ret.) Lester Lyles will serve as UAG chair overseeing the 30 members of the UAG. Hastings joins fellow MIT affiliates Charles Bolden (member of the MIT AeroAstro Visiting Committee), Karina Drees MBA ’07, Gwynne Shotwell (former member of the AeroAstro Visiting Committee), Robert Smith MBA ’98, and Mandy Vaughn ’00, SM ’02.

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Evelyn Wang appointed as director of US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy

On Thursday, the United States Senate confirmed the appointment of Evelyn Wang, the Ford Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as director of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

“I am deeply honored by the opportunity to serve as the director of ARPA-E. I’d like to thank President Biden, for his nomination to this important role, and Secretary Granholm, for her confidence in my abilities. I am thrilled to be joining the incredibly talented team at ARPA-E and look forward to helping bring innovative energy technologies that bolster our nation’s economy and national security to market,” says Wang. 

An internationally recognized leader in applying nanotechnology to heat transfer, Wang has developed a number of high-efficiency, clean energy, and clean water solutions. Wang received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 2000. After receiving her master’s degree and PhD from Stanford University, she returned to MIT as a faculty member in 2007. In 2018, she was named department head of MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

As director of ARPA-E, Wang will advance the agency’s mission to fund and support early-stage energy research that has the potential to impact energy generation, storage, and use. The agency helps researchers commercialize innovative technologies that, according to ARPA-E, “have the potential to radically improve U.S. economic prosperity, national security, and environmental well-being.”

“I am so grateful to the Senate for confirming Dr. Evelyn Wang to serve as Director of DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement today. “Now more than ever, we rely on ARPA-E to support early-stage energy technologies that will help us tackle climate change and strengthen American competitiveness. Dr. Wang’s experience and expertise with groundbreaking research will ensure that ARPA-E continues its role as a key engine of innovation and climate action. I am deeply grateful for Dr. Wang’s willingness to serve the American people, and we’re so excited to welcome her to DOE.” 

Wang has served as principal investigator of MIT’s Device Research Lab. She and her team have developed a number of devices that offer solutions to the world’s many energy and water challenges. These devices include an aerogel that drastically improves window insulation, a high-efficiency solar powered desalination system, a radiative cooling device that requires no electricity, and a system that pulls potable water out of air, even in arid conditions.

Throughout her career, Wang has been recognized with multiple awards and honors. In 2021, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) Gustus L. Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in mechanical engineering in 2017 and was named an ASME Fellow in 2015. Having mentored and advised hundreds of students at MIT, Wang was honored with a MIT Committed to Caring Award for her commitment to mentoring graduate students. She has also served as co-chair of the inaugural Rising Stars in Mechanical Engineering program to encourage women graduate students and postdocs considering future careers in academia.

As department head, Wang has led and implemented a variety of strategic research, educational, and community initiatives in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. Alongside other departmental leaders, she led a focus on groundbreaking research advances that help address several “grand challenges” that our world faces. She worked closely with faculty and teaching staff on developing educational offerings that prepare the next generation of mechanical engineers for the workforce. She also championed new initiatives to make the department a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community for students, faculty, and staff. 

Wang, who is stepping down as department head effective immediately in light of her confirmation, will be taking a temporary leave as a faculty member at MIT while she serves in this role. MIT School of Engineering Dean Anantha Chandrakasan will share plans for the search for her replacement with the mechanical engineering community in the coming days.

Once sworn in, Wang will officially assume her role as director of ARPA-E.

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Merging storytelling and technology, “The Conquered” comes together in true MIT fashion

It started with a childhood memory. Or maybe it was a dream. MIT Senior Lecturer Ken Urban couldn’t get the image of a face in a window out of his head.

Eventually he developed the vision into a rough idea for a plot. Last year, he shared an early treatment with Jay Scheib, MIT’s Class of 1949 Professor of Music and Theater Arts, and the two decided it would be the perfect opportunity for a long-discussed collaboration.

That kernel of an idea has come to life as a harrowing, suspenseful play titled The Conquered, performed Dec. 9 and 10 in the blackbox theater in MIT’s Theater Arts building.

The piece featured technical and storytelling aspects for which both professors are renown. Scheib, who served as director, made use of a huge screen to the left of stage that functioned similarly to a jumbotron at a sporting event, giving the audience an intimate look at the action on stage. Meanwhile the plot, created by the playwright Urban, included scenes of intense interpersonal struggle that have served as a hallmark of his writing career.

“It was a new way of working for me, having that much technology involved in the process, but I felt like it really helped to tell the story,” Urban says.

The play was unique for not only the performance but also how it came together. The professors had little more than a rough idea for the show until about a week before it opened, leading — intentionally — to a final, whirlwind week in which the team worked on the piece at a pace that resembled the move-fast-and-break things mantra of a startup.

In keeping with that approach, the weekend shows were dubbed “work in progress performances” that gave everyone a chance to see how the story lived on stage in front of an audience.

The performance also had a decidedly MIT feel because of the technological subject matter: Urban was partially inspired by stories he read about epileptic patients’ experience with brain implants.

“Being at MIT has got me interested in technology both as a subject matter and a form,” Urban says. “This project also comes from hearing the types of work my students are doing. … [Being on campus] has really opened my eyes to technology.”

Making a show

In the play, Jane is a recently married middle-aged woman whose recurring nightmares prompt her to begin seeing a psychiatrist. She’s prescribed antidepressants, which stop the nightmares, but she can’t help shake the feeling that she’s being watched and something isn’t right.

Eventually Jane thinks she sees a man in her backyard, prompting her to stop taking her medication in an attempt to determine if her increasing paranoia is warranted.

The story is told through a series of intimate scenes between Jane and her husband, and Jane and her psychiatrist. Interspersed throughout are bouts of quick, hair-raising dialogue as Jane reads fragmented diary passages expressing her secret distress and self-doubt. An eerie score designed by Christian Frederickson, a technical instructor at MIT, made the audience feel Jane’s panic as she unravels the horrifying truth.

The play was performed on a stage designed to switch from Jane’s living room to her psychiatrist’s office. The huge screen showed a live feed from one of three cameras throughout the performance, zeroing in on characters and giving the impression of being in a movie theater.

The play came from a vision Urban had as a child of seeing a face in his second-floor bathroom window.

“It doesn’t make sense and can’t have actually happened, but that weird sense of the uncanny was something I was interested in writing about,” Urban says.

After stumbling onto stories about the epileptic patients with brain implants — who Urban says “felt as if someone was living in their brains”— he decided to merge the two concepts to write the story.

Scheib, who’s been at MIT since 2003, expressed interest in Urban’s idea, and the pair received a Fay Chandler Creativity Grant from MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) last fall to develop the work.

This past summer, Urban went to MacDowell, an artist residency in the woods of Peterborough, New Hampshire, where he wrote a draft of the play in three sleepless days.

He shared the work with Scheib, who began considering staging and technology options, but the two professors didn’t really start to collaborate intensely until a week before the performance, a process Scheib compared to a startup deploying its first product.

“It’s like rapidly prototyping an idea and applying it to what is often a very slow process,” Scheib says. “We’re reversing the traditional American theater process in a sense. … I like to incorporate the technical aspects on day one, so it gives all aspects of production the opportunity to fire on the same piston.”

A teaching opportunity

The play and the process behind it also served as a model for Urban and Scheib’s students to learn from.

“We’ve been able to treat the theater the same way you might use the labs on campus.” Scheib says.

Urban showed his playwriting class 21M.604J (Playwriting Fundamentals) an early treatment of the play and later a draft of the first scene. Students from 21M.711, Scheib’s live cinema performance course, worked with him on the set while he directed. Both professors invited students to rehearsals the week before the play and asked them to take notes at the showing to see how it all came together.

“A lot of the things we’re doing in this play are really an extension of what we do in our classes in some ways,” Scheib says.

Urban was changing and cutting scenes throughout the last week, including on the second day of the performance, when he rewrote three scenes and added a new scene.

“I know the story of the play and I know who these characters are, but I’m excited to see how, when they live in real space in this world we’re creating, that changes the story or amplifies different things,” Urban said before the show.

Scheib also got a new perspective while watching the actors rehearse and perform, and he says the play’s meaning has evolved for him as he’s helped bring Urban’s writing to life.

“You never know exactly what a piece will mean until you’ve put it under enough pressure that it reveals itself,” he says. “There’s an interesting theme in the piece I’m drawn to of forgetting. Forgetting usually has a negative connotation, but in this work, it has a really powerful allure — it just turns out it’s not as easy as it seems.”

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Pablo Jarillo-Herrero delivers 2022 Dresselhaus Lecture on the magic of moiré quantum matter

“We have barely scratched the surface of the moiré quantum matter universe,” said Pablo Jarillo-Herrero at the 2022 Mildred S. Dresselhaus Lecture. The Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics at MIT, Jarillo-Herrero is at the forefront of the scientific exploration into moiré quantum systems, where correlated physics, superconductivity, and other phases of matter can be studied with unprecedented tunability.

Delivered on Nov. 22, Jarillo-Herrero’s lecture introduced a combined in-person and virtual audience of over 200 to magic-angle graphene, the rise of moiré quantum matter, and what comes next, with a bit of inspiration from the late MIT Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus.

“I’m a great fan of Millie, and it’s really a great honor to have been selected,” Jarillo-Herrero began, explaining that he chose to study carbon nanotubes for his PhD after reading the book “Science of Fullerenes and Carbon Nanotubes,” co-authored by Dresselhaus and two others. Fast forward a decade, and Jarillo-Herrero was co-hosting Dresselhaus’ 80th birthday party at MIT. “I never imagined I would be a colleague of Millie. Her office was just upstairs from mine,” he noted, glancing upward. “I would always be sitting there thinking, ‘What would Millie do?’”

Investigating strongly correlated quantum materials

There are two traditional platforms to investigate quantum materials, said Jarillo-Herrero. Physical materials made of atoms periodically positioned in lattices spaced at the scale of 1 angstrom (0.1 nanometers), and cold atoms trapped in optically induced lattices where the typical space between atoms is 1 micron (1,000 nanometers). As of 2018 there is also a third platform that falls neatly in the middle — moiré quantum matter.

Over the past few years, using moiré quantum matter as a platform for tuning atomic interactions, physicists have realized many, if not all, of the phases of condensed matter physics — correlated insulators, topological phases, nematicity, superconductivity, magnetism, moiré ferroelectricity, and strange metals, among others — using just two or three sheets of two-dimensional materials (just one atom thick) stacked on top of each other.

Introducing magic angle graphene

Graphene is one such 2D material, consisting of a single layer of bonded carbon atoms. A stack of graphene sheets with the atomic directions of each sheet perfectly aligned forms graphite — the material used in pencils. Jarillo-Herrero’s breakthrough was to ask, “What happens if you put graphene on top of graphene and rotate it?”

The answer, in real space, is that you form a moiré pattern, as the atoms in the top graphene sheet now only occasionally match the positions of the atoms in the bottom graphene sheet. Depending on the angle, the periodicity at which the atoms of the two graphene layers match each other will change. At a “magic” twist angle of 1.1 degrees, the system of two graphene sheets becomes a platform to explore the workings of the universe.

“When you make these devices, then the magic starts to happen,” Jarillo-Herrero explained. At that particular twist angle of two pieces of graphene, and at a certain doping density (in particular, two electrons per moiré unit cell), the system becomes a correlated insulator, Jarillo-Herrero explained. Then, add just a fraction more of electrons per moiré unit cell, and the system goes from insulator to superconductor.

The theory tsunami

After the 2018 discovery of superconductivity in magic angle graphene by a team led by Jarillo-Herrero, the scientific world dove into moiré quantum matter with deep focus.

In addition to successfully reproducing the results of Jarillo-Herrero’s group, physicists all over the world started measuring the critical temperature at which superconductivity is initiated, testing what happens when you apply pressure to the device, and even creating quantum twisting scanning tunneling microscopes. Since then, several other correlated systems have been discovered, such as magic angle twisted trilayer graphene, the strongest superconductor in the world, reported by Jarillo-Herrero in 2021.

“One of the biggest satisfactions for me,” he said, “is that this moiré quantum matter has meant the merging of several modern condensed matter physics communities — 2D van der Waals materials and heterostructures, strongly correlated materials, and topological condensed matter physics. All of these types of physics and systems come together in moiré quantum matter.”

Moiré magic beyond graphene

The same engineering trick of using crystal symmetry can be applied to many other stacked 2D materials, explained Jarillo-Herrero. He described recent findings involving ferroelectricity in bilayer boron nitride, where his group made a ferroelectric out of something that is not ferroelectric. By breaking the natural, 180-degree stacking of hexagonal boron nitride and stacking it instead at 0 degrees, they created a switchable ferroelectric that can operate at room temperature and is robust and stable.

In addition, moiré magic is expanding beyond twisted 2D materials. Physicists are investigating twisted cold atoms lattices, twisted phononics, twisted photonics that could slow down the speed of light, twisted electrochemistry and catalysis, and even moiré gravity.

After his talk, Jarillo-Herrero answered audience questions about minimal feature size, the next materials to stack, and practical applications.

“It does seem that every moment of the day, every month, there is yet another angle to be pursued in the twisted options of the moiré solids,” said Vladimir Bulović, the director of MIT.nano and Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. “If you can imagine one day that there’s a 2D materials foundry sitting in MIT.nano, what do we start seeing?”

“There is a barrier in terms of how easy it is to make the devices,” responded Jarillo-Herrero. “If we had a quantum foundry that would automate many of the pieces and the processes that are involved in making these structures reliably, with high reproducibility, and all identical, I think it would vastly expand the basic science. We have infinite possibilities; doing them manually is very costly. If we could make hundreds of variations, we would advance very far in terms of possibilities for applications.”

Honoring Mildred S. Dresselhaus

Jarillo-Herrero was the fourth speaker to deliver the Dresselhaus Lecture, an annual event organized by MIT.nano to honor the late MIT physics and electrical engineering professor Mildred Dresselhaus. The lecture features a speaker from anywhere in the world whose leadership and impact echo Millie’s life, accomplishments, and values.

In closing, Jarillo-Herrero shared a quote by Millie that was also shared at the 2019 inaugural lecture by Cornell University Professor Paul McEuen: “Follow your interests, get the best available education and training, set your sights high, be persistent, be flexible, keep your options open, accept help when offered, and be prepared to help others.”

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This is your brain. This is your brain on code

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures changes in blood flow throughout the brain, has been used over the past couple of decades for a variety of applications, including “functional anatomy” — a way of determining which brain areas are switched on when a person carries out a particular task. fMRI has been used to look at people’s brains while they’re doing all sorts of things — working out math problems, learning foreign languages, playing chess, improvising on the piano, doing crossword puzzles, and even watching TV shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

One pursuit that’s received little attention is computer programming — both the chore of writing code and the equally confounding task of trying to understand a piece of already-written code. “Given the importance that computer programs have assumed in our everyday lives,” says Shashank Srikant, a PhD student in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), “that’s surely worth looking into. So many people are dealing with code these days — reading, writing, designing, debugging — but no one really knows what’s going on in their heads when that happens.” Fortunately, he has made some “headway” in that direction in a paper — written with MIT colleagues Benjamin Lipkin (the paper’s other lead author, along with Srikant), Anna Ivanova, Evelina Fedorenko, and Una-May O’Reilly — that was presented earlier this month at the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference held in New Orleans.

The new paper built on a 2020 study, written by many of the same authors, which used fMRI to monitor the brains of programmers as they “comprehended” small pieces, or snippets, of code. (Comprehension, in this case, means looking at a snippet and correctly determining the result of the computation performed by the snippet.) The 2020 work showed that code comprehension did not consistently activate the language system, brain regions that handle language processing, explains Fedorenko, a brain and cognitive sciences (BCS) professor and a coauthor of the earlier study. “Instead, the multiple demand network — a brain system that is linked to general reasoning and supports domains like mathematical and logical thinking — was strongly active.” The current work, which also utilizes MRI scans of programmers, takes “a deeper dive,” she says, seeking to obtain more fine-grained information.

Whereas the previous study looked at 20 to 30 people to determine which brain systems, on average, are relied upon to comprehend code, the new research looks at the brain activity of individual programmers as they process specific elements of a computer program. Suppose, for instance, that there’s a one-line piece of code that involves word manipulation and a separate piece of code that entails a mathematical operation. “Can I go from the activity we see in the brains, the actual brain signals, to try to reverse-engineer and figure out what, specifically, the programmer was looking at?” Srikant asks. “This would reveal what information pertaining to programs is uniquely encoded in our brains.” To neuroscientists, he notes, a physical property is considered “encoded” if they can infer that property by looking at someone’s brain signals.

Take, for instance, a loop — an instruction within a program to repeat a specific operation until the desired result is achieved — or a branch, a different type of programming instruction than can cause the computer to switch from one operation to another. Based on the patterns of brain activity that were observed, the group could tell whether someone was evaluating a piece of code involving a loop or a branch. The researchers could also tell whether the code related to words or mathematical symbols, and whether someone was reading actual code or merely a written description of that code.

That addressed a first question that an investigator might ask as to whether something is, in fact, encoded. If the answer is yes, the next question might be: where is it encoded? In the above-cited cases — loops or branches, words or math, code or a description thereof — brain activation levels were found to be comparable in both the language system and the multiple demand network.

A noticeable difference was observed, however, when it came to code properties related to what’s called dynamic analysis.

Programs can have “static” properties — such as the number of numerals in a sequence — that do not change over time. “But programs can also have a dynamic aspect, such as the number of times a loop runs,” Srikant says. “I can’t always read a piece of code and know, in advance, what the run time of that program will be.” The MIT researchers found that for dynamic analysis, information is encoded much better in the multiple demand network than it is in the language processing center. That finding was one clue in their quest to see how code comprehension is distributed throughout the brain — which parts are involved and which ones assume a bigger role in certain aspects of that task.

The team carried out a second set of experiments, which incorporated machine learning models called neural networks that were specifically trained on computer programs. These models have been successful, in recent years, in helping programmers complete pieces of code. What the group wanted to find out was whether the brain signals seen in their study when participants were examining pieces of code resembled the patterns of activation observed when neural networks analyzed the same piece of code. And the answer they arrived at was a qualified yes.

“If you put a piece of code into the neural network, it produces a list of numbers that tells you, in some way, what the program is all about,” Srikant says. Brain scans of people studying computer programs similarly produce a list of numbers. When a program is dominated by branching, for example, “you see a distinct pattern of brain activity,” he adds, “and you see a similar pattern when the machine learning model tries to understand that same snippet.”

Mariya Toneva of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems considers findings like this “particularly exciting. They raise the possibility of using computational models of code to better understand what happens in our brains as we read programs,” she says.

The MIT scientists are definitely intrigued by the connections they’ve uncovered, which shed light on how discrete pieces of computer programs are encoded in the brain. But they don’t yet know what these recently-gleaned insights can tell us about how people carry out more elaborate plans in the real world. Completing tasks of this sort — such as going to the movies, which requires checking showtimes, arranging for transportation, purchasing tickets, and so forth — could not be handled by a single unit of code and just a single algorithm. Successful execution of such a plan would instead require “composition” — stringing together various snippets and algorithms into a sensible sequence that leads to something new, just like assembling individual bars of music in order to make a song or even a symphony. Creating models of code composition, says O’Reilly, a principal research scientist at CSAIL, “is beyond our grasp at the moment.”

Lipkin, a BCS PhD student, considers this the next logical step — figuring out how to “combine simple operations to build complex programs and use those strategies to effectively address general reasoning tasks.” He further believes that some of the progress toward that goal achieved by the team so far owes to its interdisciplinary makeup. “We were able to draw from individual experiences with program analysis and neural signal processing, as well as combined work on machine learning and natural language processing,” Lipkin says. “These types of collaborations are becoming increasingly common as neuro- and computer scientists join forces on the quest towards understanding and building general intelligence.”

This project was funded by grants from the MIT-IBM Watson AI lab, MIT Quest Initiative, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, McGovern Institute of Brain Research, MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and the Simons Center for the Social Brain.

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MIT’s top research stories of 2022

The dizzying pace of research and innovation at MIT can make it hard to keep up. To mark the end of the year, MIT News is looking back at 10 of the research stories that generated the most excitement in 2022.

• Designing a heat engine with no moving parts. In April, engineers at MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) designed a heat engine that might someday enable a fully decarbonized power grid. In demonstrations, the engine was able to convert heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency — a performance better than that of traditional steam turbines.

• Creating a lightweight material stronger than steel. In February, MIT chemical engineers used a new polymerization process to form a material that that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities. The material could be used as a coating for car parts or as a building material for bridges and other structures.

• Enabling portable desalination at the push of a button. MIT researchers developed a suitcase-sized device that can remove particles and salts to generate drinking water. Unlike other desalination units that rely on filters, this device uses electrical power to purify the water. It requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger and can be driven by a small solar panel. Just push start.

• Linking human genes to function. A team of researchers created the first map tying every gene expressed in human cells to its job in the cell. The map, which is available for other scientists to use, makes it easier to study a range of biological questions. The map was created using a CRISPR-based single-cell sequencing method known as Perturb-seq.

• Improving supercomputing with a new programming language. A team of researchers based mainly at MIT invented a faster and more reliable programming language for high-performance computing. The language, which was tested on a number of small programs, could one day help computers with a number of deep learning tasks like image processing.

• Lifting people out of extreme poverty. A study co-authored by an MIT economist showed that a one-time capital boost (in this case, a cow) helped poor people in rural Bangladesh improve their lives in the long run. The study suggests the very poor are in a poverty trap, in which an initial lack of resources prevents them from improving their circumstances, and implies that large asset transfers are an effective way to reduce global poverty.

• Helping robots fly. Inspired by fireflies, MIT researchers created tiny actuators that emit light to allow insect-scale robots to communicate. Weighing barely more than a paper clip, the robots are too small to make use of traditional means of sensing and communication. Instead, the actuators that control the robots’ wings light up in different colors and patterns, which could enable them to do things like share their location and call for help.

• Detecting a radio signal in a far-off galaxy. In July, astronomers at MIT and elsewhere were surprised to find a periodic fast radio burst (FRB) originating billions of light-years from Earth. It is the longest lasting FRB pattern detected to date and is made up of intensely strong radio waves that repeat every 0.2 seconds, similar to a heartbeat. Astronomers suspect the signal is coming from a neutron star.

• Proposal for a new, low-cost battery design. Researchers at MIT developed a battery made from abundant, inexpensive materials to complement the rise of lithium-ion batteries. The new battery uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials and a molten salt electrolyte in between. It could be ideal for powering single homes or small to medium sized businesses, producing a few tens of kilowatt-hours of storage capacity.

• Immigrants as job creators. A study co-authored by an MIT economist found that compared to native-born citizens, immigrants are about 80 percent more likely to found a firm. The study, which looked at registered businesses of all types across the country, suggests that immigrants act more as "job creators" than "job takers" and play outsized roles in high-growth entrepreneurship in the U.S.

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Putting a new spin on computer hardware

Luqiao Liu was the kind of kid who would rather take his toys apart to see how they worked than play with them the way they were intended.

Curiosity has been a driving force throughout his life, and it led him to MIT, where Liu is a newly tenured associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Rather than taking things apart, he’s now using novel materials and nanoscale fabrication techniques to build next-generation electronics that use dramatically less power than conventional devices. Curiosity still comes in handy, he says, especially since he and his collaborators work in the largely uncharted territory of spin electronics — a field that only emerged in the 1980s.

“There are many challenges that we must overcome in our work. In spin electronics, there is still a gap between what could be done fundamentally and what has been done so far. There is a lot still to study in terms of getting better materials and finding new mechanisms so we can reach higher and higher performance,” says Liu, who is also a member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

Electrons are subatomic particles that possess a fundamental quantum property known as spin. One way to visualize this is to think of a spinning top that circulates around itself, which gives the top angular momentum. That angular momentum, a product of the spinning top’s mass, radius, and velocity, is known as its spin.

Although electrons don’t technically rotate on an axis like a top, they do possess the same kind of spin. Their angular momentum can be pointing “up” or “down.” Instead of using positive and negative electric charges to represent binary information (1s and 0s) in electronic devices, engineers can use the binary nature of electron spin.

Because it takes less energy to change the spin direction of electrons, electron spin can be used to switch transistors in electronic devices using much less power than with traditional electronics. Transistors, the basic building blocks of modern electronics, are used to regulate electrical signals.

Also, due to their angular momentum, electrons behave like tiny magnets. Researchers can use these magnetic properties to represent and store information in computer memory hardware. Liu and his collaborators are aiming to accelerate the process, removing the speed bottlenecks that hold back lower-power, higher-performance computer memory devices.

Attracted to magnetism

Liu’s path to studying computer memory hardware and spin electronics began with refrigerator magnets. As a young child, he wondered why a magnet would stick to the fridge.

That early curiosity helped to spark his interest in science and math. As he delved into those subjects in high school and college, learning more about physics, chemistry, and electronics, his curiosity about magnetism and its uses in computers deepened.

When he had the opportunity to pursue a PhD at Cornell University and join a research group that was studying magnetic materials, Liu found the perfect match.

“I spent the next five or six years looking into new and more efficient ways to generate electron spin current and use that to write information into magnetic computer memories,” he says.

While he was fascinated by the world of research, Liu wanted to try his hand at an industry career, so he joined IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center after graduate school. There, his work focused on developing more efficient magnetic random access memory hardware for computers.

“Making something finally work in a commercially available format is quite important, but I didn’t find myself fully engaged with that kind of fine-tuning work. I wanted to show the viability of very novel work — to prove that some new concept is possible,” Liu says. He joined MIT as an assistant professor in 2015.

Material matters

Some of Liu’s most recent work at MIT involves building computer memories using nanoscale, antiferromagnetic materials. Antiferromagnetic materials, such as manganese, contain ions which act as tiny magnets due to electron spin. They arrange themselves so that ions spinning “up” and those spinning “down” are opposite one another, so the magnetism cancels out.

Because they don’t produce magnetic fields, antiferromagnetic materials can be packed closer together onto a memory device, which leads to higher storage capacity. And their lack of a magnetic field means the spin states can be switched between “up” and “down” very quickly, so antiferromagnetic materials can switch transistors much faster than traditional materials, Liu explains.

“In the scientific community, it had been under debate whether you can electrically switch the spin orientation inside these antiferromagnetic materials. Using experiments, we showed that you can,” he says.

In his experiments, Liu often uses novel materials that were created just a few years ago, so all their properties are not yet well-understood. But he enjoys the challenge of integrating them into devices and testing their functionality. Finding better materials to leverage electron spin in computer memories can lead to devices that use less power, store more information, and retain that information for a longer period of time.

Liu takes advantage of the cutting-edge equipment inside MIT.nano, a shared 214,000-square-foot nanoscale research center, to build and test nanoscale devices. Having such state-of-the-art facilities at his fingertips is a boon for his research, he says.

But for Liu, the human capital is what really fuels his work.

“The colleagues and students are the most precious part of MIT. To be able to discuss questions and talk to people who are the smartest in the world, that is the most enjoyable experience of doing this job,” he says.

He, his students, and colleagues are pushing the young field of spin electronics forward.

In the future, he envisions using antiferromagnetic materials in tandem with existing technologies to create hybrid computing devices that achieve even better performance. He also plans to dive deeper into the world of quantum technologies. For instance, spin electronics could be used to efficiently control the flow of information in quantum circuits, he says.

In quantum computing, signal isolation is critical — the information must flow in only one direction from the quantum circuit to the external circuit. He is exploring the use of a phenomenon known as a spin wave, which is the excitation of electron spin inside magnetic materials, to ensure the signal only moves in one direction.

Whether he is investigating quantum computing or probing the properties of new materials, one thing holds true — Liu continues to be driven by an insatiable curiosity.

“We are continually exploring, delving into many exciting and challenging new topics toward the goal of making better computing memory or digital logic devices using spin electronics,” he says.

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Should we tax robots?

What if the U.S. placed a tax on robots? The concept has been publicly discussed by policy analysts, scholars, and Bill Gates (who favors the notion). Because robots can replace jobs, the idea goes, a stiff tax on them would give firms incentive to help retain workers, while also compensating for a dropoff in payroll taxes when robots are used. Thus far, South Korea has reduced incentives for firms to deploy robots; European Union policymakers, on the other hand, considered a robot tax but did not enact it.  

Now a study by MIT economists scrutinizes the existing evidence and suggests the optimal policy in this situation would indeed include a tax on robots, but only a modest one. The same applies to taxes on foreign trade that would also reduce U.S. jobs, the research finds.   

“Our finding suggests that taxes on either robots or imported goods should be pretty small,” says Arnaud Costinot, an MIT economist, and co-author of a published paper detailing the findings. “Although robots have an effect on income inequality … they still lead to optimal taxes that are modest.”

Specifically, the study finds that a tax on robots should range from 1 percent to 3.7 percent of their value, while trade taxes would be from 0.03 percent to 0.11 percent, given current U.S. income taxes.

“We came in to this not knowing what would happen,” says Iván Werning, an MIT economist and the other co-author of the study. “We had all the potential ingredients for this to be a big tax, so that by stopping technology or trade you would have less inequality, but … for now, we find a tax in the one-digit range, and for trade, even smaller taxes.”

The paper, “Robots, Trade, and Luddism: A Sufficient Statistic Approach to Optimal Technology Regulation,” appears in advance online form in The Review of Economic Studies. Costinot is a professor of economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics; Werning is the department’s Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics.

A sufficient statistic: Wages

A key to the study is that the scholars did not start with an a priori idea about whether or not taxes on robots and trade were merited. Rather, they applied a “sufficient statistic” approach, examining empirical evidence on the subject.

For instance, one study by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Boston University economist Pascual Restrepo found that in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007, adding one robot per 1,000 workers reduced the employment-to-population ratio by about 0.2 percent; each robot added in manufacturing replaced about 3.3 workers, while the increase in workplace robots lowered wages about 0.4 percent.

In conducting their policy analysis, Costinot and Werning drew upon that empirical study and others. They built a model to evaluate a few different scenarios, and included levers like income taxes as other means of addressing income inequality.

“We do have these other tools, though they’re not perfect, for dealing with inequality,” Werning says. “We think it’s incorrect to discuss this taxes on robots and trade as if they are our only tools for redistribution.”

Still more specifically, the scholars used wage distribution data across all five income quintiles in the U.S. — the top 20 percent, the next 20 percent, and so on — to evaluate the need for robot and trade taxes. Where empirical data indicates technology and trade have changed that wage distribution, the magnitude of that change helped produce the robot and trade tax estimates Costinot and Werning suggest. This has the benefit of simplicity; the overall wage numbers help the economists avoid making a model with too many assumptions about, say, the exact role automation might play in a workplace.

“I think where we are methodologically breaking ground, we’re able to make that connection between wages and taxes without making super-particular assumptions about technology and about the way production works,” Werning says. “It’s all encoded in that distributional effect. We’re asking a lot from that empirical work. But we’re not making assumptions we cannot test about the rest of the economy.”

Costinot adds: “If you are at peace with some high-level assumptions about the way markets operate, we can tell you that the only objects of interest driving the optimal policy on robots or Chinese goods should be these responses of wages across quantiles of the income distribution, which, luckily for us, people have tried to estimate.”

Beyond robots, an approach for climate and more

Apart from its bottom-line tax numbers, the study contains some additional conclusions about technology and income trends. Perhaps counterintuitively, the research concludes that after many more robots are added to the economy, the impact that each additional robot has on wages may actually decline. At a future point, robot taxes could then be reduced even further.   

“You could have a situation where we deeply care about redistribution, we have more robots, we have more trade, but taxes are actually going down,” Costinot says. If the economy is relatively saturated with robots, he adds, “That marginal robot you are getting in the economy matters less and less for inequality.”

The study’s approach could also be applied to subjects besides automation and trade. There is increasing empirical work on, for instance, the impact of climate change on income inequality, as well as similar studies about how migration, education, and other things affect wages. Given the increasing empirical data in those fields, the kind of modeling Costinot and Werning perform in this paper could be applied to determine, say, the right level for carbon taxes, if the goal is to sustain a reasonable income distribution.

“There are a lot of other applications,” Werning says. “There is a similar logic to those issues, where this methodology would carry through.” That suggests several other future avenues of research related to the current paper.

In the meantime, for people who have envisioned a steep tax on robots, however, they are “qualitatively right, but quantitatively off,” Werning concludes.

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