Martin York named U.S. Air Force Cadet of the Year

Martin A. York, a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) and a cadet member of MIT’s Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC) Detachment 365, has been named the 2016 Air Force Cadet of the Year. Air Force Chief of Staff General David L. Goldfein presented York with the award in a Dec. 12 ceremony at the Pentagon.

The award is sponsored by the Royal Air Squadron, a private organization of prominent British aviation enthusiasts. The honor pays tribute to the Air Force for supporting the United Kingdom over the years and recognizes the most outstanding cadet in an Air Force commissioning program. Its criteria include military performance, academics, and physical fitness.

The squadron’s nomination of York was effusive in its praise for his performance and abilities. “Cadet York is No. 1 in everything he does — first in leadership, academic, research and fitness. There are none better,” it reads. Among the nomination’s accolades, York is cited for having led the MIT ROTC detachment to the highest combined grade point average and Air Force physical fitness assessment (GPA/PFA) average in the nation while he was Cadet Wing Commander. He oversaw “intense and professional” military training activities, inspired future Air Force leaders through oversight and coordination of Junior ROTC cadets. As a sophomore, he was elected co-chair of the prestigious Arnold Air Society, a professional, honorary service organization advocating the support of aerospace power.

He is lauded for having been in the top 1 percent of his MIT senior class, and was named to the Dean’s List seven times. Under Professor Warren Hoburg, he worked as a research assistant on the groundbreaking D-8 “Double-Bubble” design for a future commercial aircraft. He lead 10 students developing a high-altitude balloon project, configuring GPS and radio equipment to collect atmospheric data at an altitude of 100,000 feet. He is currently a research assistant in the Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory under Hoburg.

The nomination termed York “a fitness juggernaut.” Five times he received a perfect score in a cadet fitness program, played intramural ice hockey and football, and twice set North Carolina powerlifting records.

York holds a private pilot’s license with instrument rating. He has been given an Air Force pilot training slot, and his goal is to be accepted for astronaut training.

AeroAstro head Jaime Peraire lauded York’s award, saying that "Martin represents MIT at its best: excellence across the board — academics, leadership, sportsmanship and service. We’re honored to count him as part of the AeroAstro community.”

York is the second MIT USAF Cadet and AeroAstro student to be named Cadet of the Year since the award’s inception in 2000. The first was Ryan Castonia ’10, SM ’10, who received the award in 2009.

MIT’s AFROTC detachment is named “Doolittle’s Raiders,” an homage to famous MIT alumnus General James “Jimmy” Doolittle SM ’24, ScD ’25. Among Doolittle’s many accomplishments was receiving the Medal of Honor as commander of the Doolittle Raid, a bold long-range retaliatory air raid on the Japanese main islands following the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Alumni and entrepreneurs team up to guide young startups

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) is at the forefront of identifying problems and finding new solutions for existing industries and infrastructures to make a big impact around the world. On Nov. 17, eight CEE students and researchers pitched business ideas to a panel of seasoned entrepreneurs at the second Innovation@ONE competition, offering solutions to problems at many scales, from public health to physical infrastructure.

Some of the student ideas, which were all in various stages of development, included video technology that identified vibrations in infrastructures to find problems before they occur, naturally electrically conductive materials for locating pressure ulcers, and affordable, user-friendly at-home tests for checking tap water for lead.

“At CEE we are committed to supporting our students and faculty in this path, and use scientific breakthroughs to come up with engineering solutions that impact people’s lives. Our students and postdocs will disrupt the status quo with ingenuity, to solve big engineering challenges. Innovation@ONE was just a glimpse into the wide variety of opportunities to change the world,” CEE Department Head and McAfee Professor of Engineering Markus Buehler said.

At Innovation@ONE, an esteemed group of panelists were brought in to ask questions, challenge the students, offer suggestions to improve the entrepreneurs’ ideas, and help the students potentially take their business ideas beyond the walls of MIT.

“Civil and environmental engineering provides an enormously potent vision of what’s going to be needed and methods to solve those problems,” said Norman Gaut SM ’64, PhD ‘67, who is a serial entrepreneur. Currently, Gaut serves as chairman of SuperWater Solutions Inc., Galactic Energy, LLC, and Semaco Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Other panelists included Basar Arioglu ’89, SM ‘91 of Yapi Merkezi Construction, Inc.; Arunas Chesonis ’84 of Sweetwater Energy, Inc.; Leslie Dewan ’07, PhD ‘13 of Transatomic Power Corporation; Matthew M. Nordan of MNL Partners; Livio Valenti of Vaxess Technologies, Inc.; Fiona Murray, the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management, associate dean for innovation, and co-director of the MIT Innovation Initiative; and John Williams, a professor of civil engineering and engineering systems and director of the MIT Geospatial Data Center.

Top three pitches

The Business Pitch Champion was awarded to postdoc associate Justin Chen, who presented Motus View, a software product that identifies vibrations in various infrastructure. Chen received a cash prize of $1,500 to support Motus View as it continues to grow. Developed along with Neal Wadhwa and Abe Davis, Motus View uses video technology to magnify motion in infrastructure such as bridges and building, but is looking to expand to monitoring oil wells and structures in other industries such as railroad infrastructure, aerospace, and health care.

Previously, studying motion in bridges and other infrastructure meant placing and monitoring sensors on the bridge manually. Motus View changes that by filming the bridge, having a user select a frequency, and then witnessing subtle rocking motions. This phenomenon is made possible by using computer vision to capture the motions that exist in the bridge, even if the bridge appears completely still to the naked eye. The technology and algorithms behind Motus View are currently patented by MIT, and Chen and his team are planning on licensing the tool for their software product.

The Best Early Stage Idea award was given to Paige Midstokke, who presented Safe Tap for a $1,000 prize. Midstokke and her team tap into one of the most talked-about water issues: lead. “Lead is not something you can see and it’s really hard to solve. It is usually not detected until there are health scares,” said Midstokke, a second year graduate student and a Tata Fellow in technology and policy.

Midstokke noted that one in 17 Americans are consuming lead from their home faucets. Safe Tap counters this by offering a simple way to detect lead in household water and suggesting three steps once consumers determine the quality of their water. Currently in prototype development, the product is comprised of small white spheres that, when placed into a glass of water, will turn green if the lead level is over the allowable amount. The spheres will turn red if the lead amount is over the amount most filtration systems can filter out. The lead-detecting balls are only the first step of Safe Tap — the system will include a free mobile app that allows users to share their information. The app is designed to offer three items: a filter that works for the contaminants in the water, contact information for the local water agency, and the opportunity to share this information with neighbors. “If you have lead in your water, it is likely that your neighbor does, too” Midstokke said.

In the future, Safe Tap hopes to expand and create a multi-pack that tests for other contaminants such as mercury and copper. Safe Tap also hopes to target gyms, health and wellness stores, as well as infant and toy stores, Midstokke said.

The Most Inventive Business Idea prize, and $500 award, was presented to Jingjie Yeo who presented Accuro Pressure Silk, an electrically conductive silk-based fiber, which is electrically conductive and is capable of measuring changes in pressure and humidity. Yeo and his team hope to weave the pressure silk into other fabrics to create a commercial product to help prevent ulcers by licensing their technology to American manufacturers.

“In America alone we have thousands of U.S. veteran amputees, frail [elderly] and immobile patients who are highly susceptible to these kinds of skin problems. The fundamental issue is that there is a lack of a good monitoring system in order to measure where exactly in the body are highly susceptible to developing pressure ulcers,” Yeo said.

There is a variety of potentially widespread uses of Accuro Pressure Silk, stemming from its electrically conductive nature. Panelist Gaut suggested the potential of partnerships with producers of other commercial health products, which aligns with Yeo and his team’s next steps. In the future, Yeo and his team hope to expand their manpower, network with health product manufacturers, and develop an app and user interface to allow users to track their pressure and gather data about pressure ulcers. This data could then be used for researchers to get a better understanding of how and where pressure ulcers develop and potential solutions. Yeo is a postdoc fellow in the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics.

Technological advances for ease of life

Two proposed startups presented on solving different issues through technological innovations. One group, empathEyes, seeks to make nonverbal cues explicit; the other, Automata Systems, uses data and algorithms to more efficiently translate data from utility companies into real-world solutions.

It can be difficult to evaluate the mood or emotions of strangers and even of close friends, but this is especially difficult for the visually impaired and individuals with autism, who may not be able to pick up on nonverbal cues. But empathEyes, a service created by CEE research scientist Bruce Jones and graduate students Samuel Raymond and Justin Montgomery, seeks to fill in these blanks by identifying the emotions of people in various settings. This information can also be helpful in evaluating one’s audience, and can be used for security in large crowds. “Identifying people whose responses may be unusual under the circumstance, could be very valuable information,” Jones said.

The trio created empathEyes as a platform to translate nonverbal cues into a format that anyone can understand. In a world increasingly saturated with smart devices, empathEyes hopes to be available through such modes. Acknowledging the technological limitations of reaching a wider audience, empathEyes is also planning to create an app that would be more widely available. Although empathEyes is still in prototype, the trio plans to conduct user testing. "[W]e know we can get information, the challenge is in what form to present that to the user,” Jones said. 

Scott Foster, a student in the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program, who is pursuing an MBA and a master's degree in civil and environmental engineering, presented for his company, Automata Systems, which seeks to use LiDAR technology and data collected by utility companies to predict and detect a variety of issues before they occur. Utility companies are starting to move towards less time-consuming methods of gathering data, such as using helicopters and drones, but not much is being done with this information, Foster said. Automata Systems reduces the cost of utility companies by putting the data into the cloud and ultimately increasing the reliability of identifying problems while lowering the costs of manually sifting through data. Automata Systems is designed for analysts at utility companies and plans to be sustainable through long-term software contracts. Before pitching at Innovation@ONE, Foster and his team received $5,000 in MIT Sandbox funding.

Green and environmental ideas

In addition to creating technological products, other startups pitched solutions to problems that seek to increase quality of life, and in an environmentally friendly way.

How can pig manure and the sludge leftover from water treatment plants turn into a reusable and environmentally friendly product? CEE researcher Fran Martinez presented Bio-Alchemy, which uses hydrothermal liquefaction to treat pig manure and the sludge, and turn it into asphalt. There are many companies that make asphalt, but Bio-Alchemy has a competitive advantage, Martinez said: It can be applied to roads at lower temperatures and it lasts longer because it oxidizes less and, thus, cracks less. Bio-Alchemy is made up of Yeo, Diego Lopez, and Zhao Qin.

CEE research scientist Zhao Qin presented on material designs and manufacturing for water filtration. After running out of water on a hike and being surrounded by undrinkable water, Qin recalls thinking, “[I]s there a way we create a material that can directly translate polluted water into safe water for drinking?” In response, Qin and his partner Shengjie Ling, who work with Buehler and David Kaplan of Tufts University, have created a multilayer silk membrane inspired by a coffee filter. The technology is still being tested, but the pair hopes to expand their product to be inexpensive and convenient for hiking and natural hazards, and also would collaborate with non-governmental organizations.

Showing the audience that it's never too early to innovate, Seiji Engelkemier, a second year undergraduate and the youngest competitor, presented an early stage idea for rethinking helium airships. Although most may think of blimps, Engelkemier shared multiple real-world uses for helium airships. For one, they can reach places that boats and trucks cannot, especially in cases where there are not roads or developed infrastructure. Helium airships are slower but more efficient than airplanes, Engelkemier said. He is currently looking for a mentor and to build a team to further develop the concept and business plan.

Entrepreneurs advise next generation of inventors

In addition to challenging the competitors and asking thought-provoking questions about their products, the panel of seasoned entrepreneurs also lent their perspectives and advice to the audience during a question and answer segment.  

Valenti offered advice for pitching a startup idea to investors by sharing his own story about pitching Vaxess Technologies. Even when one pitch was unsuccessful, it helped his team prepare for the next one. “Every time we got rejected, we learned something,” he said. If investors don’t think the startup team has enough experience in the field, Valenti suggested getting an advisor or consultant to lend more credibility to the team.

In a perfect summary of the entrepreneurial career, Sweetwater Energy's Chesonis shared how to leverage the excitement of being an entrepreneur into what is typically an evolving product or technology. He told the competitors, “If you are creating a solution to fix a person’s problem, save them money or create some other value and your solution gets the customer really jazzed and happy. That to me is what juices me up and gets the team going and gets them excited. It’s a natural high when you solve problems for people," he said.

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Edith Ackermann, developmental psychologist and learning researcher, dies at 70

Edith Ackermann, who was a professor at the MIT Media Lab from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Dec. 24. She was 70.

Swiss-born Ackermann earned all her degrees from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She earned a bachelor's degree in experimental psychology in 1969, two master's degrees in developmental psychology and clinical psychology in 1970, and a PhD in developmental psychology in 1981.

At the University of Geneva, she was part of an interdisciplinary research team under the direction of Jean Piaget, the Swiss developmental psychologist renowned for his pioneering work in child development. Ackermann considered Piaget a "hero" in her field. In a list of her greatest influences, Ackermann also included Maria Montessori, a renowned Italian physician and educator, as well as two founding faculty members of the Media Lab: Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert. It was the opportunity to work with Papert that drew Ackermann to the Media Lab in 1984, when she joined his Epistemology and Learning Group. There, Ackermann focused on technological tools for learning and emerging literacies.

On her website, Ackermann described her approach to education research: "I team up with partners from varying backgrounds to help shape the future of play and learning in a digital world. I study how people use place, relate to others, and treat things to find their ways — and voices — in an ever-changing world." Mitchel Resnick, the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research who worked with Ackermann in Papert’s group, says his late colleague "brought a joyful energy, probing questions, and fresh ideas to every conversation. She will be deeply missed."

Ackermann’s relationship with the Media Lab extended well beyond her time on its faculty. Resnick, now head of the Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten group, says that Ackermann continued "as a friend, collaborator, and advisor to people throughout the Media Lab community, serving on many general-exam and dissertation committees, and joining many Media Lab conversations and symposia, including a recent discussion about cybernetics."

In addition to her ongoing affiliation as a visiting scientist at the Media Lab, Ackermann in recent years was a research affiliate at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, a visiting senior researcher for the LEGO Foundation, a senior research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, an honorary professor of developmental psychology at the University of Aix-Marseille, France, and a visiting professor at the University of Siena, Italy. She has been honored with accolades throughout her career, most recently in October 2016, when she received a lifetime achievement award at the FabLearn Conference at Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Ackermann believed that her work was itself an act of continuous self-education. As she wrote on her Media Lab web page: "When it comes to learning and creative uses of technologies, children have more to teach adults than adults to children! When it comes to innovating for others, don’t guess what they want or do what they say: co-create what they — and you — will love, once it is there!"

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Technique could yield hyperprecise gravitational measurements

Atom interferometry is the most sensitive known technique for measuring gravitational forces and inertial forces such as acceleration and rotation. It’s a mainstay of scientific research and is being commercialized as a means of location-tracking in environments where GPS is unavailable. It’s also extremely sensitive to electric fields and has been used to make minute measurements of elements’ fundamental electrical properties.

The most sensitive atom interferometers use exotic states of matter called Bose-Einstein condensates. In the latest issue of Physical Review Letters, MIT researchers present a way to make atom interferometry with Bose-Einstein condensates even more precise, by eliminating a source of error endemic to earlier designs.

Interferometers using the new design could help resolve some fundamental questions in physics, such as the nature of the intermediate states between the quantum description of matter, which prevails at very small scales, and the Newtonian description that everyday engineering depends on.

“The idea here is that Bose-Einstein condensates are actually pretty big,” says William Burton, an MIT graduate student in physics and first author on the paper. “We know that very small things act quantum, but then big things like you and me don’t act very quantum. So we can see how far apart we can stretch a quantum system and still have it act coherently when we bring it back together. It’s an interesting question.”

Joining Burton on the paper are his advisor, professor of physics Wolfgang Ketterle, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering work on Bose-Einstein condensates, and four other members of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, which Ketterle directs.

Carving up condensates

Bose-Einstein condensates are clusters of atoms that, when cooled almost to absolute zero, all inhabit exactly the same quantum state. This gives them a number of unusual properties, among them extreme sensitivity to perturbation by outside forces.

A common approach to building a Bose-Einstein condensate interferometer involves suspending a cloud of atoms — the condensate — in a chamber and then firing a laser beam into it to produce a “standing wave.” If a wave is thought of as a squiggle with regular troughs and crests, then a standing wave is produced when a wave is exactly aligned with its reflection. The zero points — the points of transition between trough and crest — of the wave and its reflection are identical.

The standing wave divides the condensate into approximately equal-sized clusters of atoms, each its own condensate. In the MIT researchers’ experiment, for instance, the standing wave divides about 20,000 rubidium atoms into 10 groups of about 2,000, each suspended in a “well” between two zero points of the standing wave.

When outside forces act on the condensate, the laser trap keeps them from moving. But when the laser is turned off, the condensates expand, and their energy reflects the forces they were subjected to. Shining a light through the cloud of atoms produces an interference pattern from which that energy, and thus the force the condensates experienced, can be calculated.

This technique has yielded the most accurate measurements of gravitational and inertial forces on record. But it has one problem: The division of the condensate into separate clusters is not perfectly even. One well of the standing wave might contain, say, 1,950 atoms, and the one next to it 2,050. This imbalance yields differences in energy between wells that introduce errors into the final energy measurement, limiting its precision.

Balancing act

To solve this problem, Burton, Ketterle, and their colleagues use not one but two condensates as the starting point for their interferometer. In addition to trapping the condensates with a laser, they also subject them to a magnetic field.

Both condensates consist of rubidium atoms, but they have different “spins,” a quantum property that describes their magnetic alignment. The standing wave segregates both groups of atoms, but only one of them — the spin-down atoms — feels the magnetic field. That means that the atoms in the other group — the spin-up atoms — are free to move from well to well of the standing wave.

Since a relative excess of spin-down atoms in one well gives it a slight boost in energy, it will knock some of its spin-up atoms into the neighboring wells. The spin-up atoms shuffle themselves around the standing wave until every well has the exact same number of atoms. At the end of the process, when the energies of the atoms are read out, the spin-up atoms correct the imbalances between spin-down atoms.

Bose-Einstein condensates are interesting because they exhibit relatively large-scale quantum effects, and quantum descriptions of physical systems generally reflect wave-particle duality — the fact that, at small enough scales, matter will exhibit behaviors characteristic of both particles and waves. The condensates in the MIT researchers’ experiments can thus be thought of as waves, with their own wavelengths, amplitudes, and phases.

To do atom interferometry, the clusters of atoms trapped by the laser must all be in phase, meaning that the troughs and crests of their waves are aligned. The researchers showed that their “shielding” method kept the condensates in phase much longer than was previously possible, which should improve the accuracy of atom interferometry.

“One of the great expectations for Bose-Einstein condensates [BECs], which was highlighted in the Nobel citation, was that they would lead to applications,” says Dominik Schneble, an associate professor of physics at Stony Brook University. “And one of those applications is atom interferometry.”

“But interactions between BECs basically give rise to de-phasing, which cannot be very well-controlled,” Schneble says. “One approach has been to turn the interactions off. In certain elements, one can do this very well. But it’s not a universal property. What they are doing in this paper is they’re saying, ‘We accept the fact that the interactions are there, but we are using interactions such that it’s not only not a problem but also solves other problems.’ It’s very elegant and very clever. It fits the situation like a natural glove.”

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Bots, bit flips, and catching the bus

Imagine you’re walking in your dimly lit hallway. You’ve donned a pair of glasses that augment your reality. But the new object in your environment — a sleeping dragon the size of a cat — looks disappointingly flat and cartoonish.

“You can tell it’s really fake, because the lighting [on it] doesn’t match your environment,” explains Elisa Young. A senior in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Young is researching how to make simulated objects reflect the light in a user’s environment. That way, they could look more like objects in the real world.

“I have such love for visual things in combination with computer science,” says Young, who is enthused to erode the boundary between virtual and concrete realities. She smiles at the thought. “It’s really cool to be like, ‘Oh, I’m living in a movie.’”

Young was among 151 students presenting their work on Thursday, Dec. 8, at the SuperUROP Research Review. Students enrolled in the School of Engineering SuperUROP program — an advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) — who undertake yearlong research projects shared their first term’s progress with faculty and graduate student mentors.

The relevance of the students’ work — research to enable faster commutes, use robots to help people, optimize buildings, and bolster defenses against massive cyber attacks — made an impression. “It’s amazing to see them tackling these tough problems,” said Anantha Chandrakasan, head of EECS. Chandrakasan created the program in 2012 to provide students with an immersive, graduate-level research experience.

Cooper Sloan wants to make catching the bus easier using machine learning, a technique that allows computers to pick out subtle patterns. Using the last five years of GPS data from Boston buses, Sloan is unraveling the dynamics of the bus system, which has some quirks. “Slow buses tend to get slower and fast buses tend to get faster, which results in clumping,” says the EECS senior. Training a neural net, the architecture by which machines learn, will enable software to better predict bus arrival times — something commuters are waiting for.

Machines could also better assist people right in their homes, including senior citizens who have trouble walking. To that end, Alex LaGrassa is training robots to understand human speech. Right now, robots can easily act on pre-programmed information, she explains — for example, "Grab the Blue Ribbon muffin mix." Yet in the flurry of a real kitchen, a person might say "grab the blue box" — using a description rather than a proper name. An EECS junior, LaGrassa is programming a robot to understand natural speech and actively search for objects that meet the speaker’s criteria. “It has that extra step of figuring out ‘What is this person talking about?’,” she says. Having robots bridge that linguistic divide between human and machine would be helpful, says LaGrassa, “Because, you know, requiring people to know how to program is problematic.”

Brenda Stern, a senior in civil and environmental engineering, is looking to design buildings with a smaller carbon footprint. Most people of think of the energy consumed during construction or once a building is up and running. But Stern focuses on the energy that went into creating the building materials — like the concrete or steel columns, slabs, and framework. They all have embodied carbon, or the carbon emissions associated with their production. “I’m finding ways to minimize these materials to create more sustainable structures,” she says.

Valerie Sarge is working on hardware, trying to do more with less data. An EECS junior, Sarge is researching how to transform low-resolution images into high-resolution facsimiles. By using field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, she can program hardware with a neural net to extrapolate information, mimicking the way a human would fill in the dots: “We quickly hallucinate the information that your brain expects to see.” That means you could download a low resolution video onto your phone, and watch it in high-definition.

The goal is to push current limits of computing power by moving some of the computational demand from software into hardware. If scientists can achieve that, Sarge says, “every type of research, every type of analysis, every type of study that requires computing power will become easier.”

Another SuperUROP is preparing hardware for space. Madeleine Waller, an EECS senior, is running tests to make the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scheduled for launch in December 2017, more resilient.

The satellite will contend with meddlesome cosmic rays, which can cause computer chip bits to flip, creating errors in the data. Waller is testing the satellite’s FPGA by intentionally injecting errors into a model data stream. “We’re trying to trigger all the watchdog protocols in the system,” she says. Ensuring they work would give researchers a better chance of confidently detecting exoplanets.

But while some threats to systems are random, others are maliciously calculated. In October, Hyunjoon Song, a senior in EECS, saw news that millions of infected bots had attacked Akamai, a network server company. The strike had wielded an army of “internet of things” devices, such as digital cameras and video recorders. Collectively dubbed the Mirai botnet, the bots battered Akamai with 620 Gb per second to attempt to overload the company's servers in what's known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. “This was one of the most powerful DDoS attacks ever,” he says. “And the problem is that there are billions more of these devices that are just as vulnerable. The Mirai botnet is just the beginning.” 

Song is looking at the source code and interacting with the Mirai botnet to understand its architecture and sift for vulnerabilities, in the hope of preventing more serious attacks.

“The students show incredible enthusiasm for their work,” Chandrakasan says. “I’m eager to see how their projects develop over the spring semester.” 

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MIT’s Campaign for a Better World tour arrives in Hong Kong

On Dec. 14, MIT’s Campaign for a Better World tour arrived in Hong Kong, where over 200 attendees joined President L. Rafael Reif, local hosts, and guest speakers at the top of the International Commerce Center in Hong Kong’s Kowloon City. The high-energy event celebrated MIT’s recently launched Campaign and the vibrant international community in cities like Hong Kong.

The evening’s master of ceremonies was Victor K. Fung ’66, SM ’66, group chairman of the Fung Group and advisory board chair for the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. A longtime leader in the MIT alumni community, Fung introduced Reif and expressed his pleasure in seeing so many gathered to take part in this “exciting moment in MIT’s history.”

As he thanked Fung and the host committee, Reif added that MIT is being “hosted” in Hong Kong in even more enduring ways. The MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node, he said, is the product of partnerships between MIT and “creative makers and entrepreneurs right here in Hong Kong” and offers a perfect example of “the great things that can happen when we strengthen the connections that unite” the global MIT community.

Reif noted that the evening’s speakers — Samuel Hwang, Yasheng Huang, and Li-Huei Tsai — exemplify core values of MIT through their work and have been inspired by the Institute to tackle complex challenges.

For Samuel Hwang ’06, SM ’08, an MIT education provided the critical skills he needed to launch and lead technology companies that are now transforming education for millions. Hwang is CEO of EIC Education, one of China’s leading education companies with offices in Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Hwang said that MIT trained him to “think outside the box” along with other students who had come to MIT “to solve big problems.” Hwang is proud to be what he calls “a living example” of the power of MIT education to transform lives.

Next at the podium was Yasheng Huang, MIT Sloan associate dean and professor of global economics and management, whose research offers a compelling example of MIT entrepreneurship bringing solutions to global problems. Huang’s team is creating adaptive new methods for locating deadly contaminants in milk and other staples in the global food supply. He highlighted the value of projects such as the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node, which place research, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs in one synergistic location. This is world-changing, said Huang, because “the faster this innovative research gets tested and is used, the more lives we can save.”

Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and lead investigator for MIT’s Aging Brain Initiative, was the evening’s final speaker. Tsai, a renowned Alzheimer’s researcher, received a swell of applause as she shared news of her team’s recent development of a new method to slow or halt Alzheimer’s disease in lab animals, a breakthrough that may translate to human treatments. She credits her success to MIT’s collaborative and ambitious atmosphere, paired with commercial and tech “know-how” for moving discovery swiftly from labs in Kendall Square to patients and their families. With the support of the MIT community, Tsai concluded, MIT research will continue to improve global health.

Reif capped the evening with a reminder that the generosity of MIT alumni such as the Hong Kong event attendees has helped bring MIT to a moment of extraordinary opportunity. The MIT Campaign for a Better World will build MIT’s momentum in education and health, business, and innovative technology. The challenges are more profound than ever, Reif said, but “MIT is ready!”

On Jan. 13, the MIT Campaign for a Better World tour comes to London, and on Jan. 22 it stops in Tel Aviv. Interested alumni and friends are encouraged to register early. Please visit http://ift.tt/2eOlax5 for details and to learn more about the MIT Campaign for a Better World. 

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New approach calculates benefits of building hazard-resistant structures

Hazard-induced maintenance costs can be significant over the lifetime of a building. Researchers at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) are developing new methods to calculate the benefits of investing in more hazard-resistant structures. Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the CSHub recently presented one metric, the CSHub’s Break-Even Hazard Mitigation Percentage (BEMP), to officials in Florida and Georgia — states that can see millions in property damage due to hurricanes. 

“The BEMP evaluates the cost-effectiveness of mitigation features for a building in a particular location by factoring in the expected damage a conventional building designed to code would endure over its lifetime, and comparing it to a more resilient, enhanced building design,” says Gregory. “In areas prone to natural disasters, more spending on mitigation is justified — the BEMP helps to identify how much extra spending is recommended.”

The southeastern United States was hit hard by weather patterns resulting from Hurricane Matthew in October. Georgia has sustained some $90 million in insured losses to date, and total claims are expected to rise. Florida was spared Matthew’s worst effects, but the state is regularly witness to the destructive power of such storms and there’s a lot at stake: The insured value of residential and commercial properties in Florida’s coastal counties now exceeds $13 trillion.

Gregory spoke to officials and members of the building community in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tallahassee, Florida, this month during roundtable discussions about building resilience, the BEMP, and hazard mitigation. He also presented the topic to journalists and industry professionals during a recent webinar.

“Structures in coastal areas states like Florida and Georgia are prone to damage from high winds and hurricanes,” says Gregory. “Through previous case studies we’ve demonstrated that investing in more hazard-resistant residential construction in some locations can be very cost-effective, especially in costal states where the impact of hurricanes can have devastating economic effects.”

One case study showed a BEMP of 3.4 percent for in the coastal city Galveston, Texas, meaning for a $10 million midrise apartment building, $340,000 could be spent on mitigation, and costs would break even over the building life. The highest BEMP calculations are in cities in southeastern Florida, where the values are approximately 8 percent.

Too often, building developers make decisions about materials or building techniques to keep initial costs down. Although the resulting structures are built to code, those codes often fail to factor in the long-term costs or impacts on future owners and communities. One of the goals of this research is widespread adoption of codes and standards that incorporate hazard mitigation into building design.

“Hazard mitigation efforts offer benefits to society at large,” says Gregory. “Builders or short-term owners might have to invest more up front, but — by decreasing recovery costs and lessening the impact on lives — insurance agencies, taxpayers, and future occupants benefit in the long run. Because of these long-term benefits, this is a concept that it makes sense for state officials to get behind.”

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"Hidden Figures" screening, discussion addresses the history of black women at NASA

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States was engaged in a frantic competition with the Soviet Union to launch the first Earth-orbiting satellite, place a human in space, and, ultimately, set foot on the moon. Laboring behind the scenes in this monumental technological effort were what NASA termed “colored computers,” African-American female mathematicians responsible for critical calculations and other technical works.

On Dec. 25, 20th Century Fox will release the film “Hidden Figures,” based on the book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly. The film tells the true-life story of three of these unsung heroes whose work played a key role in NASA's space race victories. But on Dec. 8, the MIT community enjoyed a sneak preview screening of the film, thanks to Fox and the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), with the MIT Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Consortium for Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality as co-sponsors.

In his review of the film, Variety critic Peter Debruge noted “just how thoroughly the deck was stacked against these women.” He wrote, “‘Hidden Figures’ is empowerment cinema at its most populist, and one only wishes that the film had existed at the time it depicts.”

Following the MIT screening at the Kendall Square Cinema, a panel comprised of Shetterly, MIT Museum Director of Collections Deborah Douglas, and Insitute Professor Sheila E. Widnall offered comments on the film and solicited input from the audience of MIT students, staff, and faculty. Recently retired NASA astronaut and AeroAstro alumna Cady Coleman '83 also addressed the audience. 

Shetterly, who co-produced the film, provided insights into how she was inspired to write her book after growing up with a father who worked as a research scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. She also noted that, while the film focuses on three individuals, she learned about scores of women at NASA while doing research for her book, which was published earlier this fall. 

Widnall, who came to MIT as an undergraduate in 1956 and would later become the Institute’s first female engineering professor, was “shocked” by the fact that one of the film's protagoinsts, Mary Jackson, was told outright that she couldn't aspire to be an engineer simply because she was a woman. “At MIT, I was never told I couldn’t be an engineer. I never felt I didn’t belong,” Widnall said. She added that the hurdles faced by the women in the story “is a lesson we must never forget.”

Douglas, who authored the book “American Women and Flight Since 1940” (University Press of Kentucky, 2004), moderated the panel. She noted that Shetterly’s work “captures a really basic aspect of aeronautical engineering in the mid-20th century: that engineering analysis relied on a lot of number crunching — not just a few quick computations with a slide rule but reams and reams of equations solved one after another, and while computers would eventually do this, the reality is that there were large cadres of human computers, mostly women, who performed these calculations.”

AeroAstro fourth-year student Rachel Harris said she was struck by the hurdles the characters in the movie faced and how they surmounted them. “I hope that this movie can generate a similar response in the broader nation such that we can continue to identify and fix the inequalities we still face,” Harris said.

Ashley Simon, a second-year biology major, found the film “powerful.” “I feel like it took we college students out of our comfort zone, which is the time we live in. We’ve all heard stories about the time, but to see what was happening is something totally different. The film took me on an emotional rollercoaster,” Simon said. Simon was particularly pleased that author Shetterly attended the event. “She provided us with more insight into the stories and told us more about the real women she interviewed. Margot Lee Shetterly was the piece to the puzzle that I didn’t even know was missing.”

Douglas summed up her reaction to the event: “The most powerful thing for me was to see how deeply affecting the film was for many in the audience. A starving person sometimes doesn’t know how hungry he or she is until there is an abundance of food. From the audience comments, I think there is a very deep hunger among many at MIT for the kind of affirmation that this film provides.”

Copies of the “Hidden Figures” book — including a special young readers' edition — were available at a discounted price prior to the screening, courtesy of the MIT Press. For those interested in diving further into the hidden histories of black women at NASA, the book is the next selection in MIT's all-community book club, MIT Reads. For information on discussion dates, visit the MIT Reads website.

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Financial aid gains to offset tuition increase for 2017-18

MIT will increase its financial aid budget for the 2017-18 academic year, benefiting a broad range of students and families and offsetting a 3 percent increase in tuition and fees — the smallest percentage increase since 1970.

The tuition and financial aid figures were announced at today’s MIT faculty meeting.

The Institute’s $118.5 million budget for undergraduate financial aid next year is up sharply from the $30.5 million allocated in 2000 — a sustained rate of growth far exceeding tuition and fee increases during the same period.

Because of this growth in the Institute’s financial aid budget, the average net price for an MIT student receiving need-based aid next year is projected to be only 0.7 percent higher than in 2000 — $21,487 in 2017, compared to $21,346 in 2000 — and significantly lower when inflation is taken into account.

“Next year’s financial aid budget will give more students and families critical support, and it will help reduce the burdens and stress that understandably come with managing college education costs,” says Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart. “Additionally, this budget reflects MIT’s staunch commitment to removing barriers to talent and to making the Institute more affordable and accessible for all of our scholars.”

As part of the coming year’s increase in the financial aid budget, student self-help costs — the amount students with financial aid are asked to contribute through loans and term-time work — will decrease from $5,500 to $3,400, giving students more freedom to pursue their studies and extracurricular activites.

With these changes, the average MIT scholarship, for students receiving financial aid, will increase to an estimated $45,943. One-third of MIT undergraduates receive aid sufficient to allow them to attend the Institute tuition-free; the new financial aid budget is expected to increase the number of students who fall into this category.

For undergraduates who do not receive need-based financial aid, tuition and fees will be $49,892 next year. With average housing and dining costs included, students not receiving financial aid will pay $64,612 next year.

MIT is one of only five American colleges and universities that currently admit all undergraduate students without regard to their financial circumstances, award all financial aid based on need, and meet the full demonstrated financial need of all admitted students.

In the coming academic year, for students with family incomes under $90,000 per year and typical assets, MIT guarantees that scholarship funding from all sources allows them to attend the Institute tuition-free. While the Institute’s financial aid program primarily supports students from lower- and middle-income families, even families earning more than $250,000 may qualify for need-based financial aid based on their family circumstances, such as if two or more children are in college at the same time.

About 60 percent of MIT’s 4,524 undergraduates receive need-based financial aid from the Institute, including 33 percent who attend MIT tuition-free and 18 percent who receive Federal Pell Grants, which generally go to students with family incomes below $60,000.

Students receiving need-based financial aid from MIT, as well as Pell Grants, continue to benefit from the unique MIT Pell Grant Program, which helps students to graduate with little or no debt. That program was created in 2006 to allow MIT students to use their Pell Grants in place of work and loans to defray what they are expected to contribute to their education.

In 2016, 72 percent of MIT seniors graduated with no debt; of those who did assume debt to finance their education, the median indebtedness at graduation was $16,703.

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New tool calculates benefits of building hazard-resistant structures

Hazard-induced maintenance costs can be significant over the lifetime of a building. Researchers at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) are developing new methods to calculate the benefits of investing in more hazard-resistant structures. Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the CSHub recently presented one metric, the CSHub’s Break-Even Hazard Mitigation Percentage (BEMP), to officials in Florida and Georgia — states that can see millions in property damage due to hurricanes. 

“The BEMP evaluates the cost-effectiveness of mitigation features for a building in a particular location by factoring in the expected damage a conventional building designed to code would endure over its lifetime, and comparing it to a more resilient, enhanced building design,” says Gregory. “In areas prone to natural disasters, more spending on mitigation is justified — the BEMP helps to identify how much extra spending is recommended.”

The southeastern United States was hit hard by weather patterns resulting from Hurricane Matthew in October. Georgia has sustained some $90 million in insured losses to date, and total claims are expected to rise. Florida was spared Matthew’s worst effects, but the state is regularly witness to the destructive power of such storms and there’s a lot at stake: The insured value of residential and commercial properties in Florida’s coastal counties now exceeds $13 trillion.

Gregory spoke to officials and members of the building community in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tallahassee, Florida, this month during roundtable discussions about building resilience, the BEMP, and hazard mitigation. He also presented the topic to journalists and industry professionals during a recent webinar.

“Structures in coastal areas states like Florida and Georgia are prone to damage from high winds and hurricanes,” says Gregory. “Through previous case studies we’ve demonstrated that investing in more hazard-resistant residential construction in some locations can be very cost-effective, especially in costal states where the impact of hurricanes can have devastating economic effects.”

One case study showed a BEMP of 3.4 percent for in the coastal city Galveston, Texas, meaning for a $10 million midrise apartment building, $340,000 could be spent on mitigation, and costs would break even over the building life. The highest BEMP calculations are in cities in southeastern Florida, where the values are approximately 8 percent.

Too often, building developers make decisions about materials or building techniques to keep initial costs down. Although the resulting structures are built to code, those codes often fail to factor in the long-term costs or impacts on future owners and communities. One of the goals of this research is widespread adoption of codes and standards that incorporate hazard mitigation into building design.

“Hazard mitigation efforts offer benefits to society at large,” says Gregory. “Builders or short-term owners might have to invest more up front, but — by decreasing recovery costs and lessening the impact on lives — insurance agencies, taxpayers, and future occupants benefit in the long run. Because of these long-term benefits, this is a concept that it makes sense for state officials to get behind.”

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Students, academics, and entrepreneurs join forces to tackle the future of water utilities

Turn on the faucet and it is likely that clean, drinkable water will come out; water that can be safely consumed. However, one in four cities around the world are water-stressed, and almost 97 percent of the Earth’s water is undrinkable. From the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, to droughts across the country, the significance of water utility and sustainability is more prevalent than ever before.

To address the future of the water utilities, academics, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders came together to discuss the future of water in the United States and around the world at the fifth annual MIT Water Summit on Nov. 17 and 18, hosted by the MIT Water Club. Members of the MIT Water Club moderated five panels over the two-day summit. This year’s topics ranged from the role of policy and economics on the future of water to the influence of industry and academic advances, but the overall vision was toward the future.

“My aim was to hold an event with a broad enough appeal, but a specific focus explored through different approaches, such as technology, finance and policy,” said Gualtiero Jaeger, director of the MIT Water Summit and PhD candidate in the MIT- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program. “The theme ‘water utilities of the future’ gradually developed out of our initial ideas, and we looked for speakers with relevant expertise. Here our alumni and other connections helped us immensely.” 

Finding creative solutions to challenging problems

“Creativity is part of the daily DNA of the water industry,” said keynote speaker George Hawkins, CEO and general manager of DC Water. Hawkins noted that many solutions to water problems require thinking outside the box, and cited the modernization and re-branding of DC Water to increase public awareness of their water utility. Similar creativity emerged through the interdisciplinary discussions at the MIT Water Summit.

Luis Montestruque, president and CEO of EmNet, suggested the possible overlaps between green energy and water systems. Noting the use of solar energy to power electronic street signs, he questioned whether water utilities could follow to lower the energy costs. Stephen Estes-Smargiassi '79, director of planning and sustainability at Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) and an alumnus of the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), served as a keynote speaker and gave the Massachusetts perspective of water and energy. In his talk, Smargiassi highlighted the significance of water as an energy source, pointing out that 31 percent of the energy needed by MWRA is renewable energy, meaning the amount of money spent purchasing energy and power has decreased. By recycling water, Massachusetts is simultaneously creating energy.

Ed McCormick, president of McCormick Strategic Water Management, cited potable reuse as one major example of creativity in the water sector during the panel on the role of economics. Potable reuse is the use of technologies to treat wastewater without putting water back into the environment and through the water cycle. McCormick acknowledged the negative perceptions people have of associating human waste with drinking water. “We replicate the water cycle with technology; we can do as good a job as nature. Those negative perceptions are changing and that’s where I see the creativity coming big time. It hasn’t quite swept to areas where you have more water than you need, but it’s certainly happening in the Southwest,” he said.

Professor Gabriella Carolini of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning suggested that there is no shortage of technological innovation, but that technological implementation is the major issue in the water sector. “Implementation is a problem that is not just financial, regulatory, technological or social; it’s a combination of all of those things, so we need to look at the implementation issue,” she said.

Current policies and regulations are also not always conducive to rapid execution of news ideas. One component to this issue is the extensive pilot period, when technologies and ideas are studied before used widely. “We pilot for so long that by the time you actually determine that something is effective, there’s a new technology that we want to pilot. What we want to do is release some of the regulations a little bit so that we can promote some of these innovative technologies that are out there” said Mary Barry, executive director of New England Water Environment Association (NEWEA).

Instead of hindering creative ideas with regulations and pilot programs, “We should be promoting innovation. That’s the only way we are going to grow and the only way we’re going to make things more efficient, both on the energy side and on the financial side,” she said.

The creation of innovative technologies and their aligning with regulatory standards are only worth so much until the general public is on board with their implementation. As Ed McCormick suggested, changing the public’s perception of an issue of new innovative solutions is critical to the success of the product and the water sector.

Communicating with the public to implement new ideas and technologies

Speakers noted that reaching the general public is a difficult task, especially with the wide variety of media outlets and fragmented audiences. “I think the media can be a great asset to us as an industry, I just don’t think water is their focus,” said Mary Barry of NEWEA. One way to reach adults is through their children, who often talk about what they learn with their parents at home, she highlighted, citing the effectiveness of marketing to children. “Talking to students in schools allows them to go home and talk with their parents about something their parents might not be thinking about, because it has always been a luxury for them to have clean water and sanitation,” Barry said.

The media is still considered a valuable method, however: “The full spectrum of media is an extremely useful tool, for even controlling outstanding systems like our own. I would say that the situation in Flint is an experience that is super important. It’s one thing to say that we have achieved amazing results in drinking water in this country, but I might suggest that we are only as good as our weakest link, and if something like that can happen in Flint, then it can happen anyplace,” said Carolini.

Communication takes many forms beyond the media as well, such as through access to data. The availability and transparency of data in the water sector was a theme that continued throughout the Water Summit. During the panel “Visions for the Future,” panelists discussed the presence of smart systems, and the observation of resulting consumer behavior changes.

Professor James Wescoat of the Department of Architecture and the MIT Tata Center spoke of staying in a hotel in Europe that displayed water meters in each room and showed how much water was used when a visitor turned on the shower or the sink. He recalled hearing fellow travelers discuss how few liters of water they used, each wanting to be lower than his counterpart. On that note, George Hawkins pointed out that when DC Water installed automatic meter readings in 2002, they noticed drops in water use. DC Water noted similar decreases when they began sending high-use notification alerts to customers, courtesy messages notifying customers of significant changes in water use, which could indicate leaking pipes.

Alexander Heil, chief economist of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, made a similar point about water usage during the panel on the role of economics, noting that without smart systems and up-to-date information of one’s water usage, there is a disconnect between how people pay for water and how they use it. “There is a discrepancy between the point of usage and the point of payment. For example, if you have a quarterly billing cycle, nobody remembers how they used water three months ago.”

The availability of data at water utility plants is crucial for the plants to troubleshoot any issues with their product. Anupam Bhargava, vice president of advanced technology and innovation at Xylem Inc., discussed this importance through disruptive sensing capabilities, one of the areas Xylam is looking into for the future. Disruptive sensing capabilities would allow water utility plants to detect issues immediately and allow them to be proactive in finding a solution. Noting that water, unlike other products commonly sold, cannot be recalled once it leaves the plant, Bhargava said that “real-time sensing capability is going to allow our customers to operate and manage their plants a lot more productively and safely.” Disruptive sensing capabilities would thus allow water utility plants to have important information at their fingertips and to avoid major public health hazards.

Collaborating to solve major issues in the water sector

Collaboration is often seen in the water sector to address major issues and find solutions. However, collaboration does not always mean centralized ownership. George Hawkins of DC Water mentioned the challenges of creating a centralized water system, because smaller municipalities prefer to maintain ownership of localized water sources. Instead, he proposed the creation of a more coordinated system on a broader scale, rather than centralized ownership.

Ed McCormick shared that he has started to see such coordination through regional partnerships between smaller utilities. “In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are nearly 60 utilities that all discharge in the San Francisco Bay, some of them are very small and others are very large. What we have seen are agreements where small utilities can connect with other utilities to purchase bulk chemicals and get the benefit of scale, that larger utilities can get,” McCormick said.  

Marcus Gay, executive director of New England Water Innovation Network, pointed out that “innovation isn’t just about new technological solutions, it’s about bringing both innovative technological solutions and market adoption together. It’s an entire process.” One way to do this is to foster collaboration between academia and the water industry markets, to create a well-researched product or plan to implement and have a real-world impact. This was brought to life by the Water Summit’s panel on “Academia to Markets.”

John Lienhard V, professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab, noted that the best partnerships are with people who understand the need for water. “We have worked with a number of international institutions from countries that have serious water challenges. We have tried to get into these issues with them because they understand that these are not simply academic problems, but they are problems that can be translated back into the needs of their countries and societies in a way that provides water to people’s taps, that help people actually live and survive. In those cases, we have seen that the research is productive, it is viewed as important, it is supported well and it has the impact we need in both the practical and academic side,” he said.

The fifth annual Water Summit was a full house, complete with academics from MIT and neighboring schools, business leaders, thought leaders, and students. Sami Harper, a graduate student in CEE, attended the summit to find out more about how changing technology is affecting the way we get our water. “I learned a lot from the keynote addresses which shed some light on water utility operations and the future of the industry,” she said.  

Members of the MIT Water Club also benefited from the event. “The interactions with professionals beyond our academic research was immensely valuable. We received insight into the water industry and the workings of institutions and companies in the water world,” Gualtiero Jaeger said.

Sponsors for this year's Water Summit included Desalitech, Gradient Corporation, Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab, the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, New England Water Innovation Network, Pepsico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Xylem.

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Majorana fermions predicted in a superconducting material

A low-temperature material made from the elements praseodymium, osmium, and antimony should be able to host subatomic particles known as Majorana fermions, MIT researchers have shown in a theoretical analysis.

Majorana fermions, first predicted by physicists in 1937, can be thought of as electrons split into two parts, each of which behaves as independent particles. These fermions do not exist as elementary particles in nature but can emerge in certain superconducting materials near absolute zero temperature. In superconducting materials, electrons flow without resistance generating little or no heat.

The new analysis by graduate student Vladyslav Kozii, postdoc Jörn Venderbos, and Lawrence C. (1944) and Sarah W. Biedenharn Career Development Assistant Professor Liang Fu predicts this special state should occur in a praseodymium, osmium and antimony compound, PrOs₄Sb_12, and similar materials made of heavy metals.

Physicists describe electrons by their energy, momentum, and spin. An electron can occupy a possible energy level, and an unoccupied level is called a hole. In the new analysis, Majorana fermions emerge as a quantum superposition of an electron and a hole that move freely, with each having the same direction, or spin. This Majorana fermion spin can interact with the spin of atomic nuclei in the material, so it ought to be seen using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, they predict.

“We address a certain class of superconductors, show that they have Majorana fermions as freely propagating quasiparticles in the bulk, and then look at how they can be detected and what other properties these materials have that one could use in the future for interesting functionality,” says Venderbos. “I think it very nicely bridges the gap between experiment and theory and it can be used by experimentalists right now.” Their paper was published this month in the journal Science Advances.

A key physics concept in this work is that of time-reversal symmetry. Such symmetry means that equations of motions governing an object or particle stay the same if one could reverse the direction of time — with time flowing backward rather forward. If the equation of motion of electrons in a material is different when time flows backwards — as is true in magnets, for instance — then time-reversal symmetry is said to be broken. This gives physicists an important way to distinguish different materials. In the proposed antimony-compound based superconductor, analysis shows that the Majorana fermions can only exist when time reversal symmetry is broken. Upon reversing the motion in time, the spin of the Majorana fermions is reversed — for example, from clockwise to counterclockwise — and this implies a different equation of motion for Majorana fermions going backward in time. “Regarding the material that we proposed, actually there is one recent experiment that confirms that time-reversal symmetry is broken in the superconducting state of this material. This reinforces our conclusion that it is indeed a very promising candidate for our theory to apply,” Kozii explains.

Majorana fermions were first proposed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana as a special mathematical solution for quantum behavior of electrons. Princeton University researchers reported detection of a zero-dimensional realization of these particles at the end of an atom chain in October 2014. The MIT theorists now show that the three-dimensional propagating Majorana fermions they predict are governed by Majorana’s original equation. “The extensive study we have performed shows that this peculiar particle may now find its realization in solid state physics in a real material,” Venderbos says.

Electrons in materials such as metals and semiconductors can fill only certain energy levels, or bands, with excluded, or forbidden, energy levels referred to as a bandgap. In a superconductor, this is also called the superconducting gap. Ordinarily, it takes outside energy in order to lift a lower energy electron to a higher energy level, especially when it has to cross a bandgap. The Fu groups’ analysis of praseodymium, osmium, and antimony reveals that there are some special points in its electronic excitation spectrum where the bandgap vanishes in its superconducting state, which means that low energy excitations are possible. “However low energy you take, there will be always excitation at this energy. These excitations are exactly these Majorana fermions we were talking about,” Kozii explains. Venderbos adds, “There are some excitations for which you don’t have to put in any energy or just an infinitesimally tiny amount and you can still create the excitation.”

Noting that Fu has made “some fantastic predictions in the past,” Princeton University professor of chemistry Robert J. Cava, who was not involved in this research, suggests: “Experimentalists should listen to what he has to say. ... I am very happy to see that he and his coworkers have presented an analysis of real materials in which their ideas might be embodied.”

Kozii, Venderbos, and Fu analyzed these unconventional superconductors for a year. For Kozii, the work will become part of his doctoral thesis.

The researchers hope their work will inspire experimentalists to look again at some previously studied materials to identify ones that host superconducting states with Majorana fermions. “I think the first step would be just to find a material in which everyone can agree that it has these Majorana fermions. That would be really exciting and constitute the discovery of a new type of superconductor in experiment,” Venderbos says. “The next step would be to think about functionalization of these materials, what could be the specific applications.” Trying to make quantum devices out of these materials is one possible direction.  “We hope this research ultimately brings closer efforts from the quantum material and quantum device community in finding out the many facets of Majorana fermions,” Fu adds.

The Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering supported Fu’s and Kozii’s work. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research supported Venderbos through a Rubicon grant.

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MIT continues to show support for community members impacted by Cambridge fire

In the weeks since a devastating 10-alarm fire in East Cambridge, the MIT community has banded together to offer aid and relief to the students, staff, and community residents who lost their belongings or homes during the Dec. 3 emergency on Berkshire and York Streets. From opening the doors to on-campus housing to making an Institute donation to the Mayor’s Fire Relief Fund, and inviting members of the community to do the same, MIT is standing with the impacted individuals and families. And now, thanks to the Graduate Student Council (GSC), there is a new way to provide sustained support for MIT graduate students impacted by the tragedy: a fire relief gift registry.

Spearheaded by the GSC’s Housing and Community Affairs Committee, the Amazon gift registry was designed to meet the direct needs of the eight graduate students who lost their belongings or homes. The GSC asked them to register for the household supplies and goods they need now and in the coming months and then invited the MIT community to purchase items off the registry by following these easy instructions:

• Visit amazon.com.
• Under “Accounts and Lists,” click on “Find a List or Registry.”
• Search for the email address gsc-hca@mit.edu to find the “Cambridge Fire Relief” registry.
• Purchase items registered by displaced community members.

"This registry provides an opportunity for us to show compassion for members of our own community who have suffered,” states Ryan Gillis, GSC Housing and Community Affairs Committee co-chair. “I hope that we can reach out together and help the victims of this fire.” 

The GSC’s generosity is in keeping with MIT’s larger response to the fire. In the immediate aftermath and in the weeks since the blaze, administrators, faculty, students, and staff have offered support in a variety of ways, including:

• The Division of Student Life contacted impacted students on the day of the fire to offer them open rooms in Tang Hall. Altogether, six students and their partners moved into Tang, and MIT Dining helped them get meals. Another family was moved into an open Westgate apartment.
• Human Resources highlighted its MyLife Services so that MIT employees (and family members) can access free assistance in the following areas: emotional support and counseling, as well as personalized legal, financial, and relocation help and resources. This benefit is free and is available 24/7 by calling:  844-405-5433. All calls are confidential.
• Human Resources informed employees about backup child care and backup adult care services. These services, provided by the Work-Life Center vendor partner, Care.com, can be accessed by visiting mit.care.com and completing the enrollment form. Then, call Care.com at 1-855-781-1303, extension 2, during regular business hours, Monday through Friday 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., to schedule care.

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Distinctive brain pattern may underlie dyslexia

A distinctive neural signature found in the brains of people with dyslexia may explain why these individuals have difficulty learning to read, according to a new study from MIT neuroscientists.

The researchers discovered that in people with dyslexia, the brain has a diminished ability to acclimate to a repeated input — a trait known as neural adaptation. For example, when dyslexic students see the same word repeatedly, brain regions involved in reading do not show the same adaptation seen in typical readers.

This suggests that the brain’s plasticity, which underpins its ability to learn new things, is reduced, says John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. 

“It’s a difference in the brain that’s not about reading per se, but it’s a difference in perceptual learning that’s pretty broad,” says Gabrieli, who is the study’s senior author. “This is a path by which a brain difference could influence learning to read, which involves so many demands on plasticity.”

Former MIT graduate student Tyler Perrachione, who is now an assistant professor at Boston University, is the lead author of the study, which appears in the Dec. 21 issue of Neuron.

Reduced plasticity

The MIT team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of young adults with and without reading difficulties as they performed a variety of tasks. In the first experiment, the subjects listened to a series of words read by either four different speakers or a single speaker.

The MRI scans revealed distinctive patterns of activity in each group of subjects. In nondyslexic people, areas of the brain that are involved in language showed neural adaption after hearing words said by the same speaker, but not when different speakers said the words. However, the dyslexic subjects showed much less adaptation to hearing words said by a single speaker.

Neurons that respond to a particular sensory input usually react strongly at first, but their response becomes muted as the input continues. This neural adaptation reflects chemical changes in neurons that make it easier for them to respond to a familiar stimulus, Gabrieli says. This phenomenon, known as plasticity, is key to learning new skills.

“You learn something upon the initial presentation that makes you better able to do it the second time, and the ease is marked by reduced neural activity,” Gabrieli says. “Because you’ve done something before, it’s easier to do it again.”

The researchers then ran a series of experiments to test how broad this effect might be. They asked subjects to look at series of the same word or different words; pictures of the same object or different objects; and pictures of the same face or different faces. In each case, they found that in people with dyslexia, brain regions devoted to interpreting words, objects, and faces, respectively, did not show neural adaptation when the same stimuli were repeated multiple times.

“The brain location changed depending on the nature of the content that was being perceived, but the reduced adaptation was consistent across very different domains,” Gabrieli says.

He was surprised to see that this effect was so widespread, appearing even during tasks that have nothing to do with reading; people with dyslexia have no documented difficulties in recognizing objects or faces.

He hypothesizes that the impairment shows up primarily in reading because deciphering letters and mapping them to sounds is such a demanding cognitive task. “There are probably few tasks people undertake that require as much plasticity as reading,” Gabrieli says.

Early appearance

In their final experiment, the researchers tested first and second graders with and without reading difficulties, and they found the same disparity in neural adaptation.

“We got almost the identical reduction in plasticity, which suggests that this is occurring quite early in learning to read,” Gabrieli says. “It’s not a consequence of a different learning experience over the years in struggling to read.”

Guinevere Eden, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University Medical Center, described the study as “groundbreaking.”

“For children with dyslexia, we know that the brain looks different in terms of anatomy and function, but we have not been able to establish why,” says Eden, who was not involved in the research. “This study makes an important step in that direction: It gets to the true characteristics of the properties of the neurons in these brain regions, not just their outward appearance.”

Gabrieli’s lab now plans to study younger children to see if these differences might be apparent even before children begin to learn to read. They also hope to use other types of brain measurements such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) to follow the time course of the neural adaptation more closely.

The research was funded by the Ellison Medical Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

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Majorana fermions predicted in a semiconducting material

A low-temperature material made from the elements praseodymium, osmium, and antimony should be able to host subatomic particles known as Majorana fermions, MIT researchers have shown in a theoretical analysis.

Majorana fermions, first predicted by physicists in 1937, can be thought of as electrons split into two parts, each of which behaves as independent particles. These fermions do not exist as elementary particles in nature but can emerge in certain superconducting materials near absolute zero temperature. In superconducting materials, electrons flow without resistance generating little or no heat.

The new analysis by graduate student Vladyslav Kozii, postdoc Jörn Venderbos, and Lawrence C. (1944) and Sarah W. Biedenharn Career Development Assistant Professor Liang Fu predicts this special state should occur in a praseodymium, osmium and antimony compound, PrOs₄Sb_12, and similar materials made of heavy metals.

Physicists describe electrons by their energy, momentum, and spin. An electron can occupy a possible energy level, and an unoccupied level is called a hole. In the new analysis, Majorana fermions emerge as a quantum superposition of an electron and a hole that move freely, with each having the same direction, or spin. This Majorana fermion spin can interact with the spin of atomic nuclei in the material, so it ought to be seen using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, they predict.

“We address a certain class of superconductors, show that they have Majorana fermions as freely propagating quasiparticles in the bulk, and then look at how they can be detected and what other properties these materials have that one could use in the future for interesting functionality,” says Venderbos. “I think it very nicely bridges the gap between experiment and theory and it can be used by experimentalists right now.” Their paper was published this month in the journal Science Advances.

A key physics concept in this work is that of time-reversal symmetry. Such symmetry means that equations of motions governing an object or particle stay the same if one could reverse the direction of time — with time flowing backward rather forward. If the equation of motion of electrons in a material is different when time flows backwards — as is true in magnets, for instance — then time-reversal symmetry is said to be broken. This gives physicists an important way to distinguish different materials. In the proposed antimony-compound based superconductor, analysis shows that the Majorana fermions can only exist when time reversal symmetry is broken. Upon reversing the motion in time, the spin of the Majorana fermions is reversed — for example, from clockwise to counterclockwise — and this implies a different equation of motion for Majorana fermions going backward in time. “Regarding the material that we proposed, actually there is one recent experiment that confirms that time-reversal symmetry is broken in the superconducting state of this material. This reinforces our conclusion that it is indeed a very promising candidate for our theory to apply,” Kozii explains.

Majorana fermions were first proposed by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana as a special mathematical solution for quantum behavior of electrons. Princeton University researchers reported detection of a zero-dimensional realization of these particles at the end of an atom chain in October 2014. The MIT theorists now show that the three-dimensional propagating Majorana fermions they predict are governed by Majorana’s original equation. “The extensive study we have performed shows that this peculiar particle may now find its realization in solid state physics in a real material,” Venderbos says.

Electrons in materials such as metals and semiconductors can fill only certain energy levels, or bands, with excluded, or forbidden, energy levels referred to as a bandgap. In a superconductor, this is also called the superconducting gap. Ordinarily, it takes outside energy in order to lift a lower energy electron to a higher energy level, especially when it has to cross a bandgap. The Fu groups’ analysis of praseodymium, osmium, and antimony reveals that there are some special points in its electronic excitation spectrum where the bandgap vanishes in its superconducting state, which means that low energy excitations are possible. “However low energy you take, there will be always excitation at this energy. These excitations are exactly these Majorana fermions we were talking about,” Kozii explains. Venderbos adds, “There are some excitations for which you don’t have to put in any energy or just an infinitesimally tiny amount and you can still create the excitation.”

Noting that Fu has made “some fantastic predictions in the past,” Princeton University professor of chemistry Robert J. Cava, who was not involved in this research, suggests: “Experimentalists should listen to what he has to say. ... I am very happy to see that he and his coworkers have presented an analysis of real materials in which their ideas might be embodied.”

Kozii, Venderbos, and Fu analyzed these unconventional superconductors for a year. For Kozii, the work will become part of his doctoral thesis.

The researchers hope their work will inspire experimentalists to look again at some previously studied materials to identify ones that host superconducting states with Majorana fermions. “I think the first step would be just to find a material in which everyone can agree that it has these Majorana fermions. That would be really exciting and constitute the discovery of a new type of superconductor in experiment,” Venderbos says. “The next step would be to think about functionalization of these materials, what could be the specific applications.” Trying to make quantum devices out of these materials is one possible direction.  “We hope this research ultimately brings closer efforts from the quantum material and quantum device community in finding out the many facets of Majorana fermions,” Fu adds.

The Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering supported Fu’s and Kozii’s work. The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research supported Venderbos through a Rubicon grant.

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Letter regarding MIT's updated policy against discrimination and harassment

The following email was sent today to the MIT community by President L. Rafael Reif.

To the members of the MIT community:

I write for two reasons – one official, one personal. Officially, I share MIT's updated policy against discrimination and harassment, including sexual harassment. Thanks to thoughtful insights from many people, this revision now offers more concrete examples and is clearer about boundaries and consequences.

None of us, however, loves the MIT community because its policies aspire to be excellent. What we love is that the energy, creativity, standards, principles and values that we each contribute make a magnificent whole – a precious shared home.

So I offer a few personal observations on our MIT community, and why it matters, especially now.

We live in a moment when, in our public conversation, familiar standards of decency and open, respectful discourse can no longer be taken for granted. These unwritten rules of a healthy society are especially significant in a community like ours; at MIT, our differences of opinion, perspective, training, identity and background, and our ability to navigate and learn from those differences, are essential to our creative excellence. These shared values have even greater importance in this charged time, when incidents of discrimination across the country have left many members of our community uneasy about their own safety.

In that context, I would like to try to articulate a few of our unwritten rules, so we can reflect on them together.

At MIT, when our community is at its best, bigotry and discrimination are out of bounds, period. Diminishing or excluding others on the basis of their identity – whether race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, social class, nationality or any other aspect – would be unthinkable. It's also out of the question to bully others, period. Such behavior is simply beneath us – because we value each other as members of our community and respect each other as fellow human beings.

The mission we pursue together is too important and too difficult for any of us to spend time erecting artificial barriers to anyone else's achievement; we need to welcome and embrace all the great talent we are fortunate enough to attract. Intellectually, we are a community where prejudice – pre-judging – is anathema. In the MIT community I love, our personal interactions benefit when we behave as we do in our intellectual work: Assume less and ask more, to learn more. Refrain from jumping to conclusions on superficial evidence. And listen as closely and as much as we can.

At the same time, free expression of ideas is a fundamental MIT value. In my experience, valuing free expression at MIT means accepting each other's right to express deep disagreement and candid criticism, sometimes in very strong terms, whether the subject is science or philosophy or politics. As long as such arguments are governed by mutual respect, they are part of how we make each other smarter. The capacity to listen to each other through passionate disagreement is an indispensable tool for learning; we shouldn't trade or compromise that for anything.

I believe our magnificently diverse community can and must be part of making a better world. Through that work, we speak clearly and proudly for our community's deeply American ideals. And we do that best if we succeed in living out those values here at home: if we remember always that all of us are here on our merits and by choice, and that we need each other and benefit and learn from each other. In striving to accomplish this, we might even offer a model of human possibility.

For the privilege of belonging to this community, each of us has a responsibility to live up to its values, to care for it – and to make it better. I have said that I would like MIT to be famous not only for what we know, and what we know how to do, but for being a community where we treat one another with sympathy, humility, decency, respect and kindness. We may not be there yet. But thanks to the sustained loving effort of many individuals, I believe we are on our way.

In these unsettled times, let's commit ourselves – mind, hand and heart – to achieving this aspiration.

With gratitude for what we have accomplished together and with high hopes for the future,

L. Rafael Reif

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Driverless platoons

As driverless cars merge into our transportation system in the coming years, some researchers believe autonomous vehicles may save fuel by trailing each other in large platoons. Like birds and fighter jets flying in formation, or bikers and race car drivers drafting in packs, vehicles experience less aerodynamic drag when they drive close together.

But assembling a vehicle platoon to deliver packages between distribution centers, or to transport passengers between stations, requires time. The first vehicle to arrive at a station must wait for others to show up before they can all leave as a platoon, creating inevitable delays.

Now MIT engineers have studied a simple vehicle-platooning scenario and determined the best ways to deploy vehicles in order to save fuel and minimize delays. Their analysis, presented this week at the International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics, shows that relatively simple, straightforward schedules may be the optimal approach for saving fuel and minimizing delays for autonomous vehicle fleets. The findings may also apply to conventional long-distance trucking and even ride-sharing services.

“Ride-sharing and truck platooning, and even flocking birds and formation flight, are similar problems from a systems point of view,” says Sertac Karaman, the Class of 1948 Career Development Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

 at MIT. “People who study these systems only look at efficiency metrics like delay and throughput. We look at those same metrics, versus sustainability such as cost, energy, and environmental impact. This line of research might really turn transportation on its head.”

Karaman is a co-author of the paper, along with Aviv Adler, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and David Miculescu, a graduate student in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Pushing through drag

Karaman says that for truck-driving — particularly over long distances — most of a truck’s fuel is spent on trying to overcome aerodynamic drag, that is, to push the truck through the surrounding air. Scientists have previously calculated that if several trucks were to drive just a few meters apart, one behind the other, those in the middle should experience less drag, saving fuel by as much as 20 percent, while the last truck should save 15 percent — slightly less, due to air currents that drag behind.

If more vehicles are added to a platoon, more energy can collectively be saved. But there is a cost in terms of the time it takes to assemble a platoon.

Karaman and his colleagues developed a mathematical model to study the effects of different scheduling policies on fuel consumption and delays. They modeled a simple scenario in which multiple trucks travel between two stations, arriving at each station at random times. The model includes two main components: a formula to represent vehicle arrival times, and another to predict the energy consumption of a vehicle platoon. 

The group looked at how arrival times and energy consumption changed under two general scheduling policies: a time-table policy, in which vehicles assemble and leave as a platoon at set times; and a feedback policy, in which vehicles assemble and leave as a platoon only when a certain number of vehicles are present — a policy that Karaman first experienced in Turkey.

“I grew up in Turkey, where there are two types of public transportation buses: normal buses that go out at certain time units, and another set where the driver will sit there until the bus is full, and then will go,” Karaman says.

When to stay, when to go

In their modeling of vehicle platooning, the researchers analyzed many different scenarios under the two main scheduling policies. For example, to evaluate the effects of time-table scheduling, they modeled scenarios in which platoons were sent out at regular intervals — for instance, every five minutes — versus over more staggered intervals, such as every three and seven minutes. Under the feedback policy, they compared scenarios in which platoons were deployed once a certain number of trucks reached a station, versus sending three trucks out one time, then five trucks out the next time.

Ultimately, the team found the simplest policies incurred the least delays while saving the most fuel. That is, time tables set to deploy platoons at regular intervals were more sustainable and efficient than those that deployed at more staggered times. Similarly, feedback scenarios that waited for the same number of trucks before deploying every time were more optimal than those that varied the number of trucks in a platoon.

Overall, feedback policies were just slightly more sustainable than time-table policies, saving only 5 percent more fuel.

“You’d think a more complicated scheme would save more energy and time,” Karaman says. “But we show in a formal proof that in the long run, it’s the simpler policies that help you.”

Ahead of the game

Karaman is currently working with trucking companies in Brazil that are interested in using the group’s model to determine how to deploy truck platoons to save fuel. He hopes to use data from these companies on when trucks enter highways to compute delay and energy tradeoffs with his mathematical model.

Eventually, he says, the model may suggest that trucks  follow each other at very close range, within 3 to 4 meters, which is difficult for a driver to maintain. Ultimately, Karaman says, truck platoons may require autonomous driving systems to kick in during long stretches of driving, to keep the platoon close enough together to save the most fuel.

“There are already experimental trials testing autonomous trucks [in Europe],” Karaman says. “I imagine truck platooning is something we might see early in the [autonomous transportation] game.”

The researchers are also applying their simulations to autonomous ride-sharing services. Karaman envisions a system of driverless shuttles that transport passengers between stations, at rates and times that depend on the overall system’s energy capacity and schedule requirements. The team’s simulations could determine, for instance, the optimal number of passengers per shuttle in order to save fuel or prevent gridlock.

“We believe that ultimately this thinking will allow us to build new transportation systems in which the cost of transportation will be reduced substantially,” Karaman says.

This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

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35 exceptional MIT students named Burchard Scholars for 2017

The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has named 35 exceptional MIT undergraduates as Burchard Scholars for 2017. The award honors sophomores and juniors who demonstrate academic excellence in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, as well as in science and engineering.

Burchard Scholars can come from any school or department of the Institute, and this year’s honorees major and minor in a range of disciplines, including physics, history, biology, economics, Chinese, French, engineering, mathematics, international studies, management, and philosophy. "What binds the group together," says Margery Resnick, professor of literature and director of the Burchard Program, "is a powerful curiosity about ideas."

“The Burchard scholars are some of MIT’s liveliest undergraduates,” she says. “Selection is extremely competitive, and the students chosen are unafraid to wrestle with new ideas.”

Ideas and conversation at dinner seminars

Named in honor of the school's first dean, John Ely Burchard, the Burchard Scholars Program brings undergraduates together with distinguished members of the faculty for a series of eight dinner seminars that reflect the range of MIT's research in the humanities, arts, and social science fields. Past gatherings have featured talks on: the politics of aid to Haitian trauma survivors; what philosophy tells us about how to make big decisions; U.S. grand strategy in foreign policy; the art of discovery; and a political history of gravity. 

“The Burchard dinners are, for faculty and students alike, an oasis in our busy lives,” Resnick notes. “I look forward to every dinner as the powerful ideas generated by our faculty are reflected upon, challenged, and enjoyed by this wonderful group of young scholars and citizens."

Expanding horizons, in community

The Burchard gatherings are famous not only for presenting leading edge research, but for building a warm, supportive community, and giving students experience in the art of give-and-take in intellectual conversations — a skill students value for success in every field.

“Engaging and engaged are defining characteristics of MIT's Burchard Scholars,” Resnick says, noting that many past winners have gone on to receive other distinguished honors, including Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman scholarships and fellowships.

Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS, will congratulate the new class of Burchard Scholars at a reception to be held in their honor in February 2017.

The 2017 Burchard Scholars are:

Meia Alsup, sophomore in materials science and engineering

Natasha Batten, sophomore in chemical engineering

Jaclyn Baughman, sophomore in physics

Margaret Bertoni, sophomore in mechanical engineering

Phoebe Cai, junior in mathematics and economics

Samantha Cawthon, sophomore in brain and cognitive sciences

Ann Chen, junior in mechanical engineering with a minor in history

Herng Yi Cheng, junior in mathematics

Matthew Coupin, junior in materials science and engineering

Caralyn Cutlip, junior in mechanical engineering with a minor in German

Anshula Gandhi, sophomore in electrical engineering and computer science

Ying Gao, junior in mathematics and economics

Benjamin Harpt, junior in physics

Christopher Hillenbrand, sophomore in chemistry

Nicholas Hoffman, junior in Earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences

Yuliya Klochan, junior in philosophy and political science

Tinna-Solveig Kosoko-Thoroddsen, sophomore in chemical engineering with a minor in Chinese

Jennifer Lee, sophomore in electrical engineering and computer science

Feng Ping "Angela" Leong, junior in mechanical engineering

Jessy Lin, sophomore in electrical engineering and computer science

Stacie Lin, sophomore in biology

Ian MacFarlane, junior in physics

Oghenefejiro Oruerio, junior in mechanical engineering

Audrey Pillsbury, sophomore in chemical engineering

Mary Jane Porzenheim, sophomore in biology

Ankita Reddy, sophomore in biology

Uma Roy, sophomore in mathematics

Megan Schussman, sophomore in brian and cognitive sciences and philosophy

Jacqueline Shen, junior in biology with a minor in applied international studies

Nafisa Syed, sophomore in biology

Emily Tang, sophomore in electrical engineering and computer science

Amanda Wu, junior in brian and cognitive sciences

Sefa Yakpo, junior in management with a minor in French 

Rachel Yang, junior in electrical engineering and computer science

Jingyi Zhao, junior in mathematics

Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications
 

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