Making appliances and energy grids more efficient

The ceiling fan is one of the most widely used mechanical appliances in the world. It is also, in many cases, one of the least efficient.

In India, ceiling fans have been used for centuries to get relief from the hot, humid climate. Hand-operated fans called punkahs can be traced as far back as 500 BC and were fixtures of life under the British Raj in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today’s ceiling fans run on electricity and are more ubiquitous than ever. The Indian Fan Manufacturers’ Association reported producing 40 million units in 2014 alone, and the number of fans in use nationwide is estimated in the hundreds of millions, perhaps as many as half a billion.

James Kirtley Jr., a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, has been investigating the efficiency of small motors like those found in ceiling fans for more than 30 years.

“A typical ceiling fan in India draws about 80 watts of electricity, and it does less than 10 watts of work on the air,” he says. “That gives you an efficiency of just 12.5 percent.”

Low-efficiency fans pose a variety of energy problems. Consumers don’t get good value for the electricity they buy from the grid, and energy utilities have to deal with the power losses and grid instability that result from low-quality appliances.

But there’s a reason these low-efficiency fans, driven by single-phase induction motors, are so popular: They’re inexpensive. “The best fans on the market in India — those that move a reasonable amount of air and have a low input power — are actually quite costly,” Kirtley says. The high price puts them out of reach for most of India’s population.

Now Kirtley, with support from the Tata Center for Technology and Design, is working on a single-phase motor design that offers high efficiency at an affordable cost. He says the potential impact is huge.

“If every fan in India saved just 2 watts of electricity, that would be the equivalent of a nuclear power plant’s generation capacity,” he says. “If we could make these fans substantially more efficient than they are, operating off of DC electricity, you could imagine extending the use of ceiling fans into rural areas where they could provide a benefit to the quality of life.”

Mohammad Qasim, a graduate student in Kirtley’s research group and a fellow in the Tata Center, says the benefits could reach multiple stakeholders. “Having more efficient appliances means a lower electricity bill for the consumer and fewer power losses on the utility’s side,” he says.

Choosing the right motor

“The idea is to try and hit that high-efficiency mark at a cost that is only a little more than that of existing low-efficiency fans,” Kirtley says. “We imagine a fan that might have an input power of 15 watts and an efficiency of 75 percent.”

To accomplish that, Kirtley and Qasim are exploring two approaches: creating an improved version of the conventional induction motor, or switching to a brushless DC motor, which may be more expensive but can deliver superior efficiency.

In either case, they plan to use power electronics — devices that control and optimize the flow of electricity through the motor — to improve the power quality and grid compatibility of the fan. Power electronics can also be used to convert AC electricity from the grid into DC, opening up the possibility of using DC motors in ceiling fans.

Brushless DC motors, which are the younger technology, use permanent magnets to establish a magnetic field that creates torque between the motor’s two main components, the rotor and stator. “You can think of it almost like a dog chasing his tail,” Kirtley says. “If I establish the magnetic field in some direction, the magnet turns to align itself in that direction. As I rotate the magnetic field, the magnet moves to align, and that keeps the rotor spinning.”

Induction motors, on the other hand, use no magnets but instead create a rotating magnetic field by flowing current through the stator coils. Because they use AC electricity, they are directly grid compatible, but their efficiency and stability can be improved by using power electronics to optimize the speed of the motor.

International collaboration

In determining which path to take, induction or brushless DC motor, Kirtley and Qasim are leaning on the expertise of Vivek Agarwal, a professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB). Agarwal is a specialist in power electronics.

“The collaboration with Professor Agarwal’s group is so important,” Kirtley says. “They can give us a good idea of what the two different power electronics packages will cost. You would typically think of the brushless motor package as the more expensive option, but it may or may not be.”

Outside of the lab, on-the-ground detective work is key. When Qasim visited India in January 2017, he hit the streets of Mumbai with one of the graduate students from Agarwal’s lab. Together, they visited people across the ceiling fan industry, from manufacturers to repairmen in street-side shops.

“This visit was a big motivation for us,” says Qasim, noting that they were able to glean insights that will help them design a more robust and durable motor. “We want to understand the major maintenance issues that cause these motors to break down so that we can avoid common sources of failure. It was important to make the effort to talk to local people who had real experience repairing these motors.”

Usha International, an appliance manufacturer based in New Delhi, has been a key advisor in the early stages of the project and helped identify ceiling fans as a critical focus area. Engineers at Usha agree with Kirtley’s assessment that there is an unmet need for high-efficiency motors at relatively low cost, and Qasim says the Usha team shared what they had learned from designing their own high-efficiency fans.

Now, Kirtley and Qasim are engaged in the daunting task of envisioning how an ideal motor might look.

“This is a very challenging problem, to design a motor that is both efficient and inexpensive,” Kirtley says. “There’s still a question of which type of motor is going to be the best one to pursue. If we can get a good understanding of what exactly the machine ought to do, we can proceed to do a good machine design.”

Qasim has built a test facility in Kirtley’s laboratory at MIT, which he is using to characterize a variety of existing fans. His experimental data, combined with his fieldwork in India, should provide a set of design requirements for the improved motor. From there, he and Kirtley will work with the IITB researchers to pair the machine with an appropriate power electronics package.

In reducing the power demands of the standard ceiling fan by as much as 65 watts, they hope to have a far-reaching, positive effect on India’s energy system. But that’s only the start. Ultimately, they believe efficient, affordable motors can be applied to a number of common appliances, potentially saving gigawatts of electricity in a country that is working hard to expand reliable energy access for what will soon be the world’s largest population.

This article appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative. 

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J. Phillip Thompson named deputy mayor of New York City

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray have appointed J. Phillip Thompson, associate professor of urban studies and planning at MIT, as deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives for New York City.

Thompson previously served as deputy general manager of the New York Housing Authority and director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination under former mayor David Dinkins. Thompson’s expertise in urban politics and coalition building, applied knowledge of interagency collaboration, and sustained efforts to help empower marginalized Americans position him to oversee the de Blasio administration’s signature initiatives.

“Phillip is one of the foremost experts on how to better serve and lift up low-income neighborhoods, and has spent decades fighting in the trenches for progressive causes,” says de Blasio. “He will make sure our agencies are working together to make New York City the fairest big city in the nation. As New Yorkers, we’re all very lucky he decided to come home.”

Thompson’s work at the intersection of urban politics, race, political economy, and urban policymaking is reflected in his writing, teaching, and role as the head of the Housing, Community, and Economic Development group within MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). As an advisor to a $1.4 billion state plan to revitalize central Brooklyn, Thompson has focused on local participation and empowerment, including the engagement of labor unions to strengthen community relationships and increase employment, safety, and political representation for low-income neighborhoods.

“As a scholar, activist, and public servant, Phil Thompson has never shied away from the tough challenges that affect our communities — from economic, racial, and health disparities to environmental justice and affordable housing,” says McCray. “I’m confident that Phil, as our new deputy mayor, will serve the people of New York City well, and I look forward to working with him on the issues that matter most to our city.”

Thompson will continue to teach 11.S947 (The Politics of Economic Democracy) at MIT this semester. “While it will be hard to replace Phil’s leadership, mentorship, and teaching here at MIT, there are tremendous potential upsides to strengthening our connections to the City,” says Eran Ben-Joseph, MIT professor and head of DUSP. “We look forward to work with Phil and New York City in building productive partnerships and establishing deeper involvement of our students and faculty.”

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Astronomers detect earliest evidence yet of hydrogen in the universe

In a study published today in the journal Nature, astronomers from MIT and Arizona State University report that a table-sized radio antenna in a remote region of western Australia has picked up faint signals of hydrogen gas from the primordial universe.

The scientists have traced the signals to just 180 million years after the Big Bang, making the detection the earliest evidence of hydrogen yet observed.

They also determined that the gas was in a state that would have been possible only in the presence of the very first stars. These stars, blinking on for the first time in a universe that was previously devoid of light, emitted ultraviolet radiation that interacted with the surrounding hydrogen gas. As a result, hydrogen atoms across the universe began to absorb background radiation — a pivotal change that the scientists were able to detect in the form of radio waves.

The findings provide evidence that the first stars may have started turning on around 180 million years after the Big Bang.

“This is the first real signal that stars are starting to form, and starting to affect the medium around them,” says study co-author Alan Rogers, a scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory. “What’s happening in this period is that some of the radiation from the very first stars is starting to allow hydrogen to be seen. It’s causing hydrogen to start absorbing the background radiation, so you start seeing it in silhouette, at particular radio frequencies.”

Certain characteristics in the detected radio waves also suggest that hydrogen gas, and the universe as a whole, must have been twice as cold as scientists previously estimated, with a temperature of about 3 kelvins, or –454 degrees Fahrenheit. Rogers and his colleagues are unsure precisely why the early universe was so much colder, but some researchers have suggested that interactions with dark matter may have played some role.

“These results require some changes in our current understanding of the early evolution of the universe,” says Colin Lonsdale, director of Haystack Observatory. “It would affect cosmological models and require theorists to put their thinking caps back on to figure out how that would happen.”

Rogers’ co-authors are lead author Judd Bowman of Arizona State University (ASU), along with Thomas Mozdzen, Nivedita Mahesh, and Raul Monsalve, from the University of Colorado.

Turning on, tuning in

The scientists detected the primordial hydrogen gas using EDGES (Experiment to Detect Global EoR Signature), a small ground-based radio antenna located in western Australia, and funded by the National Science Foundation.

The antennas and portions of the receiver were designed and constructed by Rogers and the Haystack Observatory team; Bowman, Monsalve, and the ASU team added an automated antenna reflection measurement system to the receiver, outfitted a control hut with the electronics, constructed the ground plane, and conducted the field work for the project. Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization provided on-site infrastructure for the EDGES project.

The current version of EDGES is the result of years of design iteration and instrument calibration in order to reach the levels of precision necessary for successfully achieving an extremely difficult measurement.

The instrument was originally designed to pick up radio waves emitted from a time in the universe’s history known as the Epoch of Reionization, or EoR. During this period, it’s thought that the first luminous sources, such as stars, quasars, and galaxies, appeared in the universe, causing the previously neutral intergalactic medium, made mostly of hydrogen gas, to become ionized.

Prior to the appearance of the first stars, the universe was shrouded in darkness, and hydrogen, its most abundant element, was virtually invisible, embodying an energy state that was indistinguishable from the surrounding cosmic background radiation.

Scientists believe that when the first stars turned on, they provided ultraviolet radiation that caused changes to the hydrogen atoms’ distribution of energy states. These changes induced hydrogen’s single electron to spin in alignment or opposite to the spin of its proton, causing hydrogen as a whole to “decouple” from the background radiation. As a result, hydrogen gas began to either emit or absorb that radiation, at a characteristic wavelength of 21 centimeters, equivalent to a frequency of 1,420 megahertz. As the universe expanded over time, this radiation became “red-shifted” to lower frequencies. By the time this 21-centimeter radiation reached present-day Earth, it landed somewhere in the range of 100 megahertz.

Rogers and his colleagues have been using EDGES to try to detect hydrogen that existed during the very early evolution of the universe, in order to pinpoint when the first stars turned on.

“There is a great technical challenge to making this detection,” says Peter Kurczynski, program director for Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation, in the Division of Astronomical Sciences at the National Science Foundation, which has provided funding for the project over the past several years. “Sources of noise can be a thousand times brighter than the signal they are looking for. It is like being in the middle of a hurricane and trying to hear the flap of a hummingbird’s wing.”

The instrument, about the size of a small table, sits in a remote region of western Australia where there are very little humanmade radio signals to interfere with incoming radio waves from the distant universe. The antenna detects radio waves from the entire sky, and the researchers had originally tuned it to listen in at a frequency range of 100 to 200 megahertz.

A switch hit

However, when the researchers looked within this range, they initially failed to pick up much of any signal. They realized that theoretical models had predicted that primordial hydrogen should give off emissions within this range if the gas was hotter than the surrounding medium. But what if the gas was in fact colder? Models predict that the hydrogen should then absorb radiation more strongly in the 50 to 100 megahertz frequency range.

“As soon as we switched our system to this lower range, we started seeing things that we felt might be a real signature,” Rogers says.

Specifically, the researchers observed a flattened absorption profile, or a dip in the radio waves, at around 78 megahertz.

“We see this dip most strongly at about 78 megahertz, and that frequency corresponds to roughly 180 million years after the Big Bang,” Rogers says. “In terms of a direct detection of a signal from the hydrogen gas itself, this has got to be the earliest.”

The dip in radio waves was stronger and deeper than theoretical models predicted, suggesting that the hydrogen gas at the time was colder than previously thought. The radio waves’ profile also matches theoretical predictions of what would be produced if hydrogen were indeed influenced by the first stars.

“The signature of this absorption feature is uniquely associated with the first stars,” Lonsdale says. “Those stars are the most plausible source of radiation that would produce this signal.”

“It is unlikely that we’ll be able to see any earlier into the history of stars in our lifetimes,” lead author Bowman of ASU says. “This project shows that a promising new technique can work and has paved the way for decades of new astrophysical discoveries.”

The researchers say this new detection lifts the curtain on a previously obscure phase in the evolution of the universe.

“This is exciting because it is the first look into a particularly important period in the universe, when the first stars and galaxies were beginning to form,” Lonsdale says. “This is the first time anybody’s had any direct observational data from that epoch.”

This research was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

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MIT rates No. 1 in 12 subjects in 2018 QS World University Rankings

MIT has been honored with 12 No. 1 subject rankings in the QS World University Rankings for 2018.

MIT received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Architecture/Built Environment; Linguistics; Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering; Chemistry; Materials Science; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research.   

Additional high-ranking MIT subjects include: Art and Design (No. 4), Biological Sciences (No. 2), Earth and Marine Sciences (No. 3), Environmental Sciences (No. 3), Accounting and Finance (No. 2), Business and Management Studies (No. 4), and Economics and Econometrics (No. 2).

Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually, are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools in their field of interest. Rankings cover 48 disciplines and are based on an institute’s research quality and accomplishments, academic reputation, and graduate employment.

MIT has been ranked as the No. 1 university in the world by QS World University Rankings for six straight years.

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MIT and SenseTime announce effort to advance artificial intelligence research

MIT and SenseTime today announced that SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company, is joining MIT's efforts to define the next frontier of human and machine intelligence.

SenseTime was founded by MIT alumnus Xiao’ou Tang PhD ’96 and specializes in computer vision and deep learning technologies. The MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence aims to open up new avenues of discovery across MIT in areas such as computer vision, human-intelligence-inspired algorithms, medical imaging, and robotics; drive technological breakthroughs in AI that have the potential to confront some of the world’s greatest challenges; and empower MIT faculty and students to pursue interdisciplinary projects at the vanguard of intelligence research. 

SenseTime is the first company to join a new Institute-wide initiative, the MIT Intelligence Quest, since its launch earlier this month. The MIT Intelligence Quest seeks to leverage the Institute’s strengths in brain and cognitive science and computer science to advance research into human and machine intelligence in service to all humanity. It will apply the fruits of its discoveries to diverse fields — from materials design to finance to early disease diagnosis — while considering deeply the economic, cultural, and ethical implications of AI. 

An essential element of the new initiative is forging connections with innovative companies and individuals who share MIT’s passion for work in intelligence. 

"As an MIT alumnus, I’m grateful to have this opportunity to collaborate with my alma mater, especially on something that is dear to my heart — to advance research on artificial intelligence,” says Tang, who is also a professor of information engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “SenseTime is committed to innovating in the fields of computer vision and deep learning. With the creation of the MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence, I’m confident that we will bring together the world’s best and brightest talent to further advance the state of the art for AI to the benefit of society.”

Li Xu, CEO and co-founder of SenseTime, adds, “MIT has long been at the forefront of research into artificial intelligence. As the largest provider of AI algorithms in China, SenseTime has worked with more than 400 leading customers and partners to solve hard, real-world problems. We are very excited to join hands with MIT to lead global AI research into the next frontier.”

The alliance emerges from a longstanding connection between MIT and Tang, who conducted his PhD research in underwater robotics and computer vision at the Institute more than 25 years ago, applying computer vision to the study and classification of underwater imagery. One of his advisors was W. Eric L. Grimson PhD ’80, now the chancellor for academic advancement at MIT and the Bernard M. Gordon Professor of Medical Engineering.

“Xiao’ou has used the same practical approach to computation and artificial intelligence that he displayed at MIT to build a highly successful academic and applied research career and a tremendously successful, technologically impressive startup company in SenseTime,” Grimson says. “He has become well known throughout China and the world as a leader in the field of AI, and especially computer vision and deep learning. Xiao’ou has always kept MIT front of mind, both as a professor and an entrepreneur. He has shared intellectual ideas and is ever on the lookout for impressive young talent whom he encourages to apply to the Institute. I personally am proud of Xiao’ou’s success and the impact he is making on the world, and look forward to a deepened, mutually beneficial relationship between MIT and SenseTime.”

Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, who recently helped to lead the development of the MIT Intelligence Quest, says, “I am thrilled that SenseTime has chosen to join us as we embark on our quest to achieve a deeper understanding of the science and engineering of intelligence and to harness that understanding to create a better world. Dr. Tang is no stranger to innovative research, and the MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence will facilitate boundary-pushing research in intelligence across the Institute and give faculty and students opportunities to unlock new thinking through intense collaboration. This is an exciting moment for both MIT and SenseTime.”

MIT has been on the frontier of intelligence research since the 1950s, when pioneers Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy helped establish the field of artificial intelligence. MIT pushed several major advances in the subsequent decades — from neural networks to data encryption to quantum computing to crowdsourcing — and the Institute now has more than 200 principal investigators whose research bears directly on intelligence. Currently, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT Media Lab, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, and MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society serve as connected hubs for AI and related research at MIT.

Considered China’s leading AI “unicorn” valued at more than $3 billion, SenseTime has developed a sophisticated proprietary deep learning platform and built applications for multiple industries. The company has applied its core computer vision technologies, including face recognition, video analysis, text recognition, and autonomous driving, across industries such as automobile, finance, mobile Internet, robotics, security, and smartphones.

SenseTime is currently working on developing autonomous driving, intelligent medical treatment, and deep learning hardware optimization. It is also strengthening its technology platform and attracting leading talent from around the world to open up greater applications scenarios and a SenseTime-driven AI commercial ecosystem. The company has offices in Beijing, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, Kyoto, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Tokyo.

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Q&A: Jay Scheib on theater, daring, and love

Jay Scheib, professor of theater at MIT, directs “Bat Out of Hell,” a rock ’n’ roll musical based on Jim Steinman’s eponymous albums made famous by Meat Loaf. In December 2017, “Bat” received the London Evening Standard BBC Radio 2 Audience Award for Best Musical.

First written over 40 years ago, Steinman’s dystopian, futuristic adaptation of the Peter Pan and Wendy epic cuts in a bit of “West Side Story” and “Romeo and Juliet.” The musical follows Strat, the forever young leader of The Lost and his adventures in a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, now named Obsidian. When Raven, the daughter of Obsidian’s tyrannical ruler, Falco, falls in love with Strat the world comes unglued.

The musical premiered in Manchester, U.K. in February 2017, before opening in London in June. The production then moved to Toronto in October, where it ran through Jan. 7, 2018. It is now slated to return to London’s Dominion Theatre for an open-ended run beginning in April 2018. Scheib says a North American tour is also currently in discussion — with a Broadway run on the horizon.

Q: “Bat Out of Hell” has garnered a lot of positive press — much of it for the staging. The Manchester Evening News gave the show a five-star review, calling it “a truly staggering piece of musical theatre, which breaks new boundaries in its staging, choreography, and concept on an epic scale.” Paul Downham of North West End said, “this show has literally changed the way musicals are staged forever.” What boundaries were broken? What are some of the complexities to staging this show?
 
A: Those are thrilling claims. I would never make such claims about my own work, being from the Midwest, but I definitely was thrilled they did. We set out to work ahead of the rules — in the best circumstances, innovation results; that’s the challenge I always try to set for myself, staying in front of the rules, in an honest and committed way, and it usually pays off. I think the critics responded to the visceral quality of the work. We intend to leap off the stage, literally. The live cinema performance aspect is nothing new in my work and “Bat” goes the furthest in synthesizing many years of experimentation. It also opens new vistas. The use of camera allows us to see differently and to establish a level of intimacy usually reserved exclusively for the screen. Taken together, everything intensifies, everything is partially screened, and partially seen.

Q: What has the process been like, developing “Bat Out of Hell” with Jim Steinman?

A: I worked with Jim to develop the story and text — line by line, word by word, comma by comma. We would talk and then he would send me away to restructure scenes or rework dialogue and we’d discuss and we’d edit further and spend the nights typing and erasing. Jim’s insatiable but he’s also a night owl so I lost a lot of sleep that year.

The most thrilling task was in transforming these super iconic songs — most of which made famous by the singer Meat Loaf. Jim and I worked very hard to ensure that each song carried the action forward — much as though it were an opera. We spent a lot of time together, on the phone, in person when possible, via Skype. Jim still watches every single performance and sends me his notes and comments and suggestions for making improvements. It’s an ongoing process. It’s live.
 
Q: Is this also how you work with video?

A: Often technology and other aspects of the design don’t enter the room until the final stages of the process. That means that a lot of video design can feel decorative and not actually in dialogue with the work. Integrating these elements from the beginning is key. With “Bat Out of Hell” we had cameras, monitors, and sound equipment in the rehearsal room day one. Paulina Jurzec, who operated camera, was there from the beginning, developing camera moves in step with the staging of each scene.
 
Q: The show received the London Evening Standard Audience Award for Best Musical. What did you hope the audience experience would be like?

A: The aspect of the performance that I’m personally drawn to, and to which the whole mise-en-scène is really devoted, is rock ’n’ roll. And in this case it’s a rock ’n’ roll romance. I’m into the love story. I’m into doing “anything for love,” to quote one of the songs in “Bat.” People get hurt and in one tragic accident, die. Youth confront tyranny and run from the cops. Despots try and fail miserably to control their daughters. They fall in love. They fall more in love and gnash their teeth. They get on motorcycles and ride too fast and crash too hard. It’s mad-to-live madness in the spirit of punk. And if there is anything that I hope folks take away it is that it’s absolutely worthwhile to do anything for love — anything less is just less than rock ‘n’ roll.

The times feel uncertain. It would be naive to suggest that if you just fall in love and go for it, everything will be resolved. But on the other hand, the willingness to dare, to risk judgment and roll the dice on something you know and believe is true, emotionally, is valuable. It’s worth it.

The daring that goes into the Black Lives Matter movement and the #MeToo movement is a massive inspiration. That radical daring needs to go into the political situations that continually enrage us. Rock ’n’ roll is good at that, and that’s why it’s not just a good time. It’s also a way to unleash that celebratory energy that’s able to overcome all that threatens. It’s a rehearsal of the revolution.

Q: You’ve premiered a number of productions last fall — an opera at one of the German State Theaters in Wuppertal in September (Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung,” combined with Heiner Goebbels’ orchestral cycle “Surrogate Cities”), “Bat Out of Hell” in Toronto in October, then “Persona” in Los Angeles in November. Occasionally, MIT students have opportunities to work on certain aspects of faculty’s shows — designing new technologies or working with visiting artists. Has your recent work influenced your classes?

A: All three of those projects have shown up in the studio in recent years. Students worked on Peter Pan themes in 21M.645 (Motion Theater); strategies for live camera were explored in 21M.842 (Live Cinema Performance). Others participated in the development of the opera, “Persona,” which was composed by Professor Keeril Makan.

It’s valuable for our students to experience the transition from theory to practice in performance — it’s a real “mens-et-manus” approach to performance making. Unique situations and conditions arise that don’t otherwise exist in the studio. Many of the courses in Theater Arts are practice-based. The classroom is an extension of the studio, and for all of us, sharing the extension of our research from the lab to the field is unique at MIT.

Next semester, I’m developing an opera for the Royal Opera House in London, “Mamzer Bastard” by the Israeli composer Na’ama Zisser. We’ll be working on themes related to that production in the Live Cinema Performance class this spring, and I hope some students can join in that project in June in London. Several of the students came to see “Bat” in London last summer, and it was great to talk to them post-performance, to discuss their reactions, and introduce them to some of the producers, performers, and designers. It’s a great exchange, especially for the ones who want to push out into the field. It’s what I wish I had as an undergraduate! It feels vibrant, and it is.

Story prepared by SHASS Communications
Editorial team: Sharon Lacey and Emily Hiestand
 

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MIT physicists observe electroweak production of same-sign W boson pairs

In research conducted by a group led by MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science researcher and associate professor of physics Markus Klute, electroweak productions of same-sign W boson pairs were observed, the first such observation of its kind and a milestone toward precision testing of vector boson scattering (W and Z bosons) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, was proposed in the 1980s as a machine to either find the Higgs boson or discover yet unknown particles or interactions. This idea, that the LHC would be able to make a discovery, whatever that might be, is called by theorists No-lose Theorem, and is connected to probing the scattering of W boson pairs at energies above 1 teraelectronvolt (TeV). In 2012, only two years after the first high-energy collision at the LHC, this proposal paid huge dividends when the Higgs boson was discovered by the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenid (CMS) collaborations.

According to CERN, the CMS detector at the LHC utilizes a massive solenoid magnet to study everything from the Higgs boson to dark matter to the Standard Model. CMS is capable of generating a magnetic field that is approximately 100,000 times that of Earth. It resides in an underground cavern near Cessy, France, which is northwest of Geneva.

The main goal of a recent measurement by CMS was to identify W boson pairs with the same sign (W+W+ or W-W-) produced purely via the electroweak interaction and probing the scattering of W bosons. The result does not unveil physics beyond the Standard Model, but this first observation of this process marks a starting point for a field of study to independently test whether the discovered Higgs boson is or is not the particle predicted by Robert Brout, François Englert, and Peter Higgs. It is anticipated that the rapidly growing data sets available at the LHC will further knowledge along these lines. Studies show that the high luminosity LHC will likely allow the direct study of longitudinal W boson scattering.

“The measurement of vector-boson scattering processes, like the one studied in this paper, is an important test bench of the nature of the Higgs boson, as small deviations from the Standard Model expectation can have a large impact on event rates,” Klute says. “While challenging new physics models, these processes also allow a unique model-independent measurement of Higgs boson couplings to the W and Z boson at the LHC.”

“The observation of this vector-boson scattering process is an important milestone toward future precision measurements,” Klute says. “These measurements are very challenging experimentally and require theoretical predictions with high precision. Both areas are pushed forward by the published results.”

The work, while within CMS, was performed by MIT and included Klute, his students Andrew Levin and Xinmei Nui, and research scientist Guillelmo Gomez-Ceballos, along with University of Antwerp colleague Xavier Janssen and his student Jasper Lauwers.

The work has been published in Physical Review Letters.

This research was funded with support from U.S. Department of Energy.

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Is democracy dying?

Is democracy dying, in the U.S. and around the world? Why or why not? And if so, what can anyone do about it?

Those vexing questions were at the heart of a public forum on the MIT campus Monday night, as scholars and journalists examined the current pressures on democratic systems of rule and suggested some measures to protect them. Held in the Stata Center, the event drew a standing-room only crowd of more than 300.

“Is democracy dying? Well, I don’t know, but it’s certainly having a rough ride,” said Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT and co-author, with James Robinson, of the 2012 book, “Why Nations Fail.”

“We’re seeing attacks on the very norms and rules that we need for liberal democracy to be stable,” said Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on political theory at Harvard University and author of the new book, “The People Versus Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It.”

And as the panelists noted, the erosion of democracy is international trend, given a recent withering of rights and norms in Hungary, Kenya, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela, among other countries — as well as contentious debate about governmental norms and the balance of powers in the U.S.

Journalist Maria Ramirez, who covers U.S. politics for the Univision network, noted that there is now considerable public information about “a lot of details about the Russian operation to discredit democracy in the U.S.,” underscoring that people need to understand the vulnerabilities such incursions exploit.

Acemoglu emphasized, in a central theme of his remarks, that democracy cannot be protected through anything other than ongoing citizen mobilization. Even the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution, he asserted, are not especially powerful.

“They are not strong, and they weren’t designed to protect democracy,” Acemoglu said. “The only thing that can save democracy is society itself.”  

Causes: Inequality, and much more

The Starr Forum is a long-running Institute event series sponsored by MIT’s Center for International Studies, which provides public discussions about international politics and global security issues.

Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and a professor of political science, provided introductory remarks, noting that the status of democracy was “a question that is now probably occupying many of our fellow citizens in this country, and indeed around the world.”

Acemoglu suggested multiple factors have created stress on democracy, including a long-term shift toward income inequality, the exploitation of the media by authoritarian leaders around the globe, and a decline of manufacturing and trade unions — not strictly because of the ideological orientation of unions, but also because the capacity for civic engagement they once created is now dwindling.

So while economic inequality and the ensuing resentment against the political status quo is a factor, “It would also be a mistake to think it’s just about economic hardship,” said Acemoglu, who has written extensively on the relationship between political institutions and economic growth.

Mounk pointed out that in concert with such trends, there has also been an alarming generational shift in tolerance for authoritarian rule and military rule; in surveys, about two-thirds of people born in the 1930s and 1940s said democracy was absolutely important, but less than one-third of those born in the 1980s and later agreed.

Mounk also noted that even recently political scientists regarded places like Hungary and Poland as democratic success stories, and thought the income levels and multiple transitions of power indicated such places had reached a state of stability. Instead, key rights have been eroded in those countries in recent years.

And while the U.S. has “an astounding record of political stability,” Mounk said, he expressed concerns about transitions of power at the state level, citing actions by the Republican-led state legislature in North Carolina, which moved to strip certain powers from the governor’s office after Democratic Party candidate Roy Cooper won it in November 2016.

For that matter, Mounk said, as much as democracy has built up a strong track record, we “don’t yet know what the dynamics of multiethnic democracy and the reaction against it are” in the long run, given the relatively short time periods in which such democracies have existed.

Maintaining democratic standards

In response to audience questions, the speakers suggested a few measures that could help the health of democracies around the globe.

“Support journalists is my message,” Ramirez said, calling good reporting “a public service that now is maybe more clear than ever.”

In response to one question, Acemoglu expressed some skepticism that technical tweaks to voting methods (such as preferential or instant-runoff voting) might ensure political stability, although he did assert that a reduction in gerrymandering, limits to the amount of money in U.S. politics, and a smaller political influence in the U.S. civil service would be valuable changes.

Still, Acemoglu reiterated, “I think this is really about social mobilization.”

Mounk, who quipped that the panel consisted of “one semioptimist and two pessimists,” underlined that there are no certainties when it comes to the status of democracy, meaning that citizens who care about it should think about how best to engage with their governments.

“It makes you reflect a little bit about what you can actually do,” Mounk said. For U.S. citizens, he told the audience, “You maintain agency” to take action where rights have already been stripped away from people in many other countries.

“So let’s use it,” Mounk concluded.

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MIT launches Task Force on the Work of the Future

Today MIT launched its Task Force on the Work of the Future, an Institute-wide effort to understand and shape the evolution of jobs during an age of innovation.

The task force’s mission was announced in a letter to the MIT community by Provost Martin A. Schmidt.

“The MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future takes as a guiding premise that addressing the social and human implications of technology should not be an afterthought, but instead should be a first concern that pervades how we design, innovate, and take our ideas to market, as well as what we teach our students, the technologists of tomorrow,” Schmidt writes.

The task force’s project is a vital part of examining the strength of our civic fabric, MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. 

“In profound and pervasive ways, the technologies humans invent in the present will set the terms of our shared future,” Reif says. “The global race to advance those technologies will help determine the nature of society itself. Through the work of the task force, we hope to help the nation and the world reflect on what kind of society we aspire to — and come together to make it real.” 

Since at least the industrial revolution, new technologies have both created and replaced jobs at large scales, while altering many other forms of work. Today, new developments in artificial intelligence, automation, information technology, 3-D printing, and other areas of innovation are again reshaping traditional jobs and have the potential to further change the workplace.

Faced with this uncertain landscape, as well as growing concerns about the issue across the political spectrum, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future will conduct an empirical, interdisciplinary, and global study of the subject, to understand work today and its possible trajectories in the future. The task force aims to shed new light on the linked evolution of technology and human work, and will issue findings guiding the development and implementation of policy, to suggest how society can continue to offer broad opportunity and prosperity.

Many MIT scholars have already produced research revealing recent changes in the nature of work. The new initiative will bring that expertise to the fore and tap into the Institute’s unique range of scholarship.

The MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future consists of a faculty and student research team of more than 20 members, as well as an external advisory board. Additional researchers are expected to participate in working groups to supplement the efforts of the core task force members.

Those task force members represent fields from engineering and cognitive science to economics, management, political science, anthropology, education innovation, and the history of technology. The group will integrate deep knowledge of technology, expertise in the social and human sciences, and an understanding that public policy significantly shapes the workplace as well.

All told, the task force is expected to continue for two years. The group will issue research findings periodically, as well as final reports and a published book intended for a general audience. Task force activities will include conferences and a speaker series, in addition to educational and outreach efforts.

The task force leadership team consists of David Autor, the Ford Professor of Economics and associate head of the MIT Department of Economics; David Mindell, the Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and a professor of aeronautics and astronautics; and Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center (IPC) and a lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

“History makes clear that individuals and institutions shape how innovation, automation, and rising productivity translate into opportunity, meritocracy, and dynamism on the one hand, or into economic stasis, dynasticism, and plutocracy on the other,” says Autor, a labor economist who has studied many aspects of the workplace.

Autor adds: “MIT's choice of the title Work of the Future conveys two facets of the challenge and opportunity we face. One is to understand and anticipate the role that human work will play in a future in which machines accomplish many of our traditional cognitive and physical tasks. A second is to seize the opportunity to shape that future. Our task force aims to contribute to both goals — anticipating the future and enabling individuals, institutions, private-sector actors, and governments to make this future a better one.”

Mindell, an engineer, historian, and entrepreneur who has written multiple books about human-machine interactions, says he is “honored” to be co-chairing the task force. “I believe it is the most important thing MIT can be doing right now, as the world is clamoring for sober, informed assessments on how we can shape the future of technology and work. MIT’s resources on both the technical and social dimensions of these changes are unsurpassed, and I’m thrilled that the task force will bring together expertise from so many perspectives.”

Reynolds oversees the IPC, an interdisciplinary center supporting research about firms, industries, and technological change in the global economy. The new task force will engage with several issues that have been of longstanding interest to the IPC, such as the adoption of new technologies by firms, the role institutions play in shaping regional growth and labor markets, and the impact of increasing globalization on industry.

“We see significant variation in how different regions and countries more broadly are responding to concerns about the impact of new technologies on work in the future,” Reynolds says. “These differences are important to understand, within the U.S., as well as in other countries. We expect our research will try to capture this variation and learn from it.”

The launch of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future is occurring as the Institute is starting the MIT Intelligence Quest (MIT IQ), an interdisciplinary project to study and develop human and machine intelligence. The task force’s ability to draw upon the latest developments from MIT IQ will help it stay informed about the leading edge of intelligence research and its possible workplace applications. At the same time, research from the Work of the Future task force can inform the approach of MIT IQ and other Institute initiatives relevant to the workplace. 

The MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future has a similar aim and structure as some high-profile MIT research initiatives that preceded it. MIT’s Production in the Innovation Economy (PIE) initiative, which concluded in 2013, examined the relationship between advanced manufacturing and innovation. Along with MIT’s participation in the U.S. federal government’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, the PIE initiative has helped inform U.S. economic policy on industrial innovation.

Earlier, MIT’s Commission on Industrial Productivity examined U.S. industrial competitiveness and published the notable 1989 book, “Made in America.”

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Talking points: MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference explores data and how to share it

At the Super Bowl this February, the Philadelphia Eagles pulled off the game’s signature play: a touchdown pass off a reverse, with tight end Trey Burton throwing to quarterback Nick Foles. That play, which helped upset the New England Patriots, is called the “Philly Special.” And from a sports-analytics viewpoint, the play was special, all right — because it came on a fourth-down situation.

For years, data-driven football analysts have been saying that on fourth downs, teams should go for first downs (or touchdowns) more frequently than they typically do, rather than punting or kicking field goals. This season, the Eagles tried to convert fourth downs more than any team since the 2008 Patriots — and it paid off. Indeed, Eagles coach Doug Pedersen had an extra assistant coach talking into his headset during games all year, just to inform those kinds of decisions.

The Eagles’ real-time sideline discussions fit nicely with the content of 12th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC), held Feb. 23-24; the conference’s theme, “Talk Data to Me,” and many of its panels, underscored the importance of communication in sports analytics. 

After all, since pioneering analyst Bill James’ popular annual “Baseball Abstract” books began mainstream publication in 1982, some fans have known that a lot of conventional wisdom in sports does not add up. But communicating that to executives, coaches, and players has never been easy. Still, this year SSAC was brimming with speakers, many with championship resumes, attesting to the progress in the field.

“We try to be data-driven and model-driven, but when we get that data, we try to talk about it as a group,” said Brandon Taubman, the senior director of baseball operations and analytics at the 2017 World Series-winning Houston Astros, speaking at a panel on baseball data.

“You have to listen,” said Nick Caserio, director of player personnel for the Patriots, at a football panel. “It’s not about where [an] idea comes from or how it gets to you. If it’s a good idea, it’s good.”

“Our culture is one of information,” offered John Chayka, general manager of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League, at a panel on hockey analytics.

President in the house

First held in 2007, the SSAC was founded by Daryl Morey SM ’05, general manager of the Houston Rockets (who currently have the best record in the NBA), and Jessica Gelman, CEO of the Kraft Analytics Group

This year’s edition, held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, was the biggest ever, with 3,500 attendees from 35 countries and 46 U.S. states, representing over 200 universities and roughly 600 companies. The event also featured 37 conference panels, 33 “competitive advantage” talks on research or new products, a research paper competition — and one former U.S. president.

That would be Barack Obama, who spoke on Friday afternoon, in an hour-long on-stage conversation with Morey and Gelman. Obama’s remarks, made before a capacity audience, were off the record. 

Obama is well-known as a sports fan, and in keeping with the idea of deploying data whenever possible, Morey and Gelman showed a slide during their Friday morning welcoming remarks underlining his basketball acumen: Obama’s NCAA tournament picks, which he publicly unveiled every year during his presidency, have been more accurate than those of Morey and Gelman.

Why players want data: “It justifies the hard work”  

The classic sports communication problem about data has involved scouts, on the one hand, who evaluate players in person, and analysts, on the other, who look at large data sets to avoid observational biases. But a lot of team executives say that linking the two groups is a common practice now. 

“It’s incredibly different,” said Jerry DiPoto, general manager of baseball’s Seattle Mariners, speaking of the evolving relationship between old baseball hands and front-office number crunchers. “Ten years ago they would just sit across the table and throw fruit at each other. … Now it is a bigger and more inclusive group.” 

Or, as Taubman put it: “We value good scouts, and we value good analytics.”

In some ways, sharing data with players can be trickier, since it involves condensing statistics down to a few useful data points, and not forcing players to rethink their well-honed instincts. But sometimes the best players want the most data — like hockey superstar Sidney Crosby of the two-time defending NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

“Sid right now is at another level in terms of the information he wants to get,” said former Penguins coach Dan Bylsma, who steered the team to the 2009 Stanley Cup trophy. Crosby, added Bylsma, would even look at video in between periods of games to analyze how his possessions unfolded.

“But not every player is like that,” Bylsma added.

Chris Bosh, a former NBA all-star who appeared on multiple SSAC panels, won two titles with the analytically minded Miami Heat. Even so, Bosh said, he would have preferred being given more defensive data by his coaches. 

“It justifies the hard work,” Bosh said.

Percentage basketball, grown organically

One reason the use of analytics in sports may be getting easier is the growing realization that new statistics reinforce traditional values. In basketball, many old-school coaches emphasized winning through defense, rebounding, avoiding turnovers, and having good shot-selection on offense.

Modern basketball analytics puts a premium on those concepts as well, since they all help a team take more high-percentage shots than its opponent, and thus tilt the odds of victory in its favor.

What has changed is the contemporary conception of what a good shot is, and how to obtain it. Teams in the NBA take far more three-point shots than ever now, and space players on the floor more intentionally in an effort to create more space for shooters.

As the star point guard of highly influential Phoenix Suns for several years starting in the 2004-2005 season, Steve Nash helped create this change as much as anyone. Nash won two MVP awards as the Suns increased the tempo, stretched the court, and created a new template for offense. But did this style develop with numbers in mind? Not exactly, said Nash on Saturday, in his first SSAC appearance.

“A lot of what happened in Phoenix was pretty organic,” Nash said, adding that the team’s style started to crystallize during pickup games the players held in the fall of 2004. “It wasn’t necessarily predetermined.”

But it was, organically, a high-percentage style, something Nash’s coach at the time, Mike D’Antoni — now coach of Morey’s Rockets — quickly realized.

“I think a lot of coaches would have found a way to stop that [style] and find validation in organizing something that didn’t need to be organized,” Nash added.

So for all the talk at SSAC about getting players and old-school coaches on board with new thinking, Nash’s example provides a valuable additional lesson: Everyone needs to be open-minded about the unpredictable evolution of sports. That may be something to talk about at next year’s SSAC.

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Study reveals why polymer stents failed

Many patients with heart disease have a metal stent implanted to keep their coronary artery open and prevent blood clotting that can lead to heart attacks. One drawback to these stents is that long-term use can eventually damage the artery.

Several years ago, in hopes of overcoming that issue, a new type of stent made from biodegradable polymers was introduced. Stent designers hoped that these devices would eventually be absorbed by the blood vessel walls, removing the risk of long-term implantation. At first, these stents appeared to be working well in patients, but after a few years these patients experienced more heart attacks than patients with metal stents, and the polymer stents were taken off the market.

MIT researchers in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering have now discovered why these stents failed. Their study also reveals why the problems were not uncovered during the development process: The evaluation procedures, which were based on those used for metal stents, were not well-suited to evaluating polymer stents.

“People have been evaluating polymer materials as if they were metals, but metals and polymers don’t behave the same way,” says Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. “People were looking at the wrong metrics, they were looking at the wrong timescales, and they didn’t have the right tools.”

The researchers hope that their work will lead to a new approach to designing and evaluating polymer stents and other types of degradable medical devices.

“When we use polymers to make these devices, we need to start thinking about how the fabrication techniques will affect the microstructure, and how the microstructure will affect the device performance,” says lead author Pei-Jiang Wang, a Boston University graduate student who is doing hid PhD thesis with Edelman.

Edelman is the senior author of the paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 26. Other authors include MIT research scientist Nicola Ferralis, MIT professor of materials science and engineering Jeffrey Grossman, and National University of Ireland Galway professor of engineering Claire Conway.

Microstructural flaws

The degradable stents are made from a polymer called poly-l-lactic acid (pLLA), which is also used in dissolvable sutures. Preclinical testing (studies done in the lab and with animal models) did not reveal any cause for concern. In human patients the stents appeared stable for the first year, but then problems began to arise. After three years, over 10 percent of patients had experienced a heart attack, including fatal heart attacks, or had to go through another medical intervention. That is double the rate seen in patients with metal stents.

After the stents were taken off the market, the team decided to try to figure out if there were any warning signs that could have been detected earlier. To do this, they used Raman spectroscopy to analyze the microstructure of the stents. This technique, which uses light to measure energy shifts in molecular vibrations, offers detailed information about the chemical composition of a material. Ferralis and Grossman modified and optimized the technique for studying stents.

The researchers found that at the microscopic level, polymer stents have a heterogeneous structure that eventually leads to structural collapse. While the outer layers of the stent have a smooth crystalline structure made of highly aligned polymers, the inner core tends to have a less ordered structure. When the stent is inflated, these regions are disrupted, potentially causing early loss of integrity in parts of the structure.

“Because the nonuniform degradation will cause certain locations to degrade faster, it will promote large deformations, potentially causing flow disruption,” Wang says.

When the stents become deformed, they can block blood flow, leading to clotting and potentially heart attacks. The researchers believe that the information they gained in this study could help stent designers come up with alternative approaches to fabricating stents, allowing them to possibly eliminate some of the structural irregularities.

A silent problem

Another reason that these problems weren’t detected earlier, according to the researchers, is that many preclinical tests were conducted for only about six months. During this time, the polymer devices were beginning to degrade at the microscopic level, but these flaws couldn’t be detected with the tools scientists were using to analyze them. Visible deformations did not appear until much later.

“In this period of time, they don’t visibly erode. The problem is silent,” Edelman says. “But by the end of three years, there’s a huge problem.”

The researchers believe that their new method for analyzing the device’s microstructure could help scientists better evaluate new stents as well as other types of degradable polymer devices.

“This method provides a tool that allows you to look at a metric that very early on tells you something about what will happen much later,” Edelman says. “If you know about potential issues in advance, you can have a better idea of where to look in animal models and clinical models for safety issues.”

The research was funded by Boston Scientific Corporation and the National Institutes of Health.

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Seeing the brain's electrical activity

Neurons in the brain communicate via rapid electrical impulses that allow the brain to coordinate behavior, sensation, thoughts, and emotion. Scientists who want to study this electrical activity usually measure these signals with electrodes inserted into the brain, a task that is notoriously difficult and time-consuming.

MIT researchers have now come up with a completely different approach to measuring electrical activity in the brain, which they believe will prove much easier and more informative. They have developed a light-sensitive protein that can be embedded into neuron membranes, where it emits a fluorescent signal that indicates how much voltage a particular cell is experiencing. This could allow scientists to study how neurons behave, millisecond by millisecond, as the brain performs a particular function.

“If you put an electrode in the brain, it’s like trying to understand a phone conversation by hearing only one person talk,” says Edward Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. “Now we can record the neural activity of many cells in a neural circuit and hear them as they talk to each other.”

Boyden, who is also a member of MIT’s Media Lab, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and an HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholar, is the senior author of the study, which appears in the Feb. 26 issue of Nature Chemical Biology. The paper’s lead authors are MIT postdocs Kiryl Piatkevich and Erica Jung.

Imaging voltage

For the past two decades, scientists have sought a way to monitor electrical activity in the brain through imaging instead of recording with electrodes. Finding fluorescent molecules that can be used for this kind of imaging has been difficult; not only do the proteins have to be very sensitive to changes in voltage, they must also respond quickly and be resistant to photobleaching (fading that can be caused by exposure to light).

Boyden and his colleagues came up with a new strategy for finding a molecule that would fulfill everything on this wish list: They built a robot that could screen millions of proteins, generated through a process called directed protein evolution, for the traits they wanted.

“You take a gene, then you make millions and millions of mutant genes, and finally you pick the ones that work the best,” Boyden says. “That’s the way that evolution works in nature, but now we’re doing it in the lab with robots so we can pick out the genes with the properties we want.”

The researchers made 1.5 million mutated versions of a light-sensitive protein called QuasAr2, which was previously engineered by Adam Cohen’s lab at Harvard University. (That work, in turn, was based on the molecule Arch, which the Boyden lab reported in 2010.) The researchers put each of those genes into mammalian cells (one mutant per cell), then grew the cells in lab dishes and used an automated microscope to take pictures of the cells. The robot was able to identify cells with proteins that met the criteria the researchers were looking for, the most important being the protein’s location within the cell and its brightness.

The research team then selected five of the best candidates and did another round of mutation, generating 8 million new candidates. The robot picked out the seven best of these, which the researchers then narrowed down to one top performer, which they called Archon1.

Mapping the brain

A key feature of Archon1 is that once the gene is delivered into a cell, the Archon1 protein embeds itself into the cell membrane, which is the best place to obtain an accurate measurement of a cell’s voltage.

Using this protein, the researchers were able to measure electrical activity in mouse brain tissue, as well as in brain cells of zebrafish larvae and the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. The latter two organisms are transparent, so it is easy to expose them to light and image the resulting fluorescence. When the cells are exposed to a certain wavelength of reddish-orange light, the protein sensor emits a longer wavelength of red light, and the brightness of the light corresponds to the voltage of that cell at a given moment in time.

The researchers also showed that Archon1 can be used in conjunction with light-sensitive proteins that are commonly used to silence or stimulate neuron activity — these are known as optogenetic proteins — as long as those proteins respond to colors other than red. In experiments with C. elegans, the researchers demonstrated that they could stimulate one neuron using blue light and then use Archon1 to measure the resulting effect in neurons that receive input from that cell.

Cohen, the Harvard professor who developed the predecessor to Archon1, says the new MIT protein brings scientists closer to the goal of imaging millisecond-timescale electrical activity in live brains.

“Traditionally, it has been excruciatingly labor-intensive to engineer fluorescent voltage indicators, because each mutant had to be cloned individually and then tested through a slow, manual patch-clamp electrophysiology measurement. The Boyden lab developed a very clever high-throughput screening approach to this problem,” says Cohen, who was not involved in this study. “Their new reporter looks really great in fish and worms and in brain slices. I’m eager to try it in my lab.”

The researchers are now working on using this technology to measure brain activity in mice as they perform various tasks, which Boyden believes should allow them to map neural circuits and discover how they produce specific behaviors.

“We will be able to watch a neural computation happen,” he says. “Over the next five years or so we’re going to try to solve some small brain circuits completely. Such results might take a step toward understanding what a thought or a feeling actually is.”

The research was funded by the HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholars Program, the IET Harvey Prize, the MIT Media Lab, the New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Award, the Open Philanthropy Project, John Doerr, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award.

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Event explores initial findings from “MIT and Slavery” class

In 1882, MIT students socialized in a drawing room that featured a replica of J.M.W. Turner’s painting, “The Slaveship,” which shows enslaved people drowning, thrown overboard during a storm as expendable cargo. The students’ commentary centered on the painting’s bold colors, but ignored the violent human narrative.

On Friday, Feb. 16, MIT senior Alaisha Alexander stood under a projection of that haunting image, and noted that absence in the campus dialogue of the time. Early MIT coursework also referred to scientific literature that validated slavery, she said, without encountering opposition from professors or students. “It’s not just about what is taught at a university. It’s also about what isn’t,” said Alexander, a mechanical engineering student. “Science and technology aren’t neutral.”

Alexander and other MIT students have begun exploring the university’s entanglement with the institution of slavery, in the process writing a more complete history, and helping to catalyze a national conversation about the legacies of slavery in science, engineering, and technical education. The source of this momentum is a new, ongoing undergraduate research course, “MIT and Slavery,” (21H.S01). Set in motion by MIT President L. Rafael Reif with School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) Dean Melissa Nobles, the course was developed and taught by Craig Steven Wilder, the Barton L. Weller Professor of History and the nation’s leading expert on the links between universities and slavery, in collaboration with Nora Murphy, the MIT Archivist for Researcher Services.

How can history help us invent a better future?

The power of stories and seeking the facts were primary threads of discussion among the nine speakers during Friday’s event, the first of the “MIT and the Legacy of Slavery” dialogues that will engage the MIT community in considering responses to the course findings. A single MIT course rarely prompts community-wide conversations, but the research of the “MIT and Slavery” course speaks not only to more complete understanding of the Institute’s own history, but to the roots of ongoing culture-wide issues of justice, inclusion, and human rights.

“I believe the work of this class is important to the present — and to the future,” President Reif said in his welcoming remarks to around 200 faculty, students, alumni, and a livestream audience at the event. “Something I have always loved about the MIT community is that we seek, and we face, facts. What can history teach us now, as we work to invent the future? How can we make sure that the technologies we invent will indeed contribute to making a better world for all?”

The power of facts — and stories

Four MIT students from the first class presented well-researched information and narratives — previously obscured, forgotten, ignored — that shed new light on the history of science and technology in the U.S. One of many revelations unearthed in the course involves the story of MIT’s founder and first president William Barton Rogers. As Murphy discovered in the U.S. Census Slave Schedule of Virginia, before Rogers moved to Massachusetts in 1853, he owned six enslaved people, who, according to the census records, lived in his Virginia household.

This discovery hardly surprises scholars such as Wilder. In his words, “If we're surprised, our surprise is a measure of how successful we’ve been as a nation at erasing the history of slavery,” including its pervasive links with the economy and major institutions, in the Northeast as well as the South. Many U.S. engineering schools, for example, were originally funded by families whose wealth derived from textile, sugar, and mining operations, which depended, directly or indirectly, on the labor of enslaved people.

A new space for research and conversation

All the early findings from the new course, and those from future classes, will contribute to advancing a national dialogue, Wilder said: “We are not only participating in a larger exploration of the ties between American universities and slavery, we are leading a part of it.” Wilder said he hopes the MIT project inspires other science and technology institutions across the country to revisit their histories, and to form a collaborative research effort on the relationship between science, engineering, and the slave economies of the Atlantic World. Wilder is partnering with colleagues at New York University to convene several schools this spring to launch the initiative.

“The goal of our work is to collectively tell our story in the most honest, complicated, full, and transparent way that we can,” Wilder said during Friday’s event. Such a narrative will create space for much better conversations on campuses, in cities, in states, and across the country, he explained, adding that “what we mean by race, social justice, inclusion, and diversity” for the present and the future can only be understood when seen against an accurate historical backdrop.

Fundamental to the nation's history

In 1861, when MIT was founded, the political and social order in the U.S., along with its economy, was still fundamentally shaped by the institution of slavery, said Nobles, who provided an overview of the cultural and economic context in which MIT was founded, and will lead MIT’s process of community discussions to consider responses to the “MIT and Slavery” course findings.

The legacy of slavery is enmeshed in the histories of many of the country’s oldest and most prestigious institutions, said Nobles, who is also a professor of political science at MIT. “Slavery was so fundamental to our country’s history, economy, and politics that it would only be surprising if there were no connections at MIT.”

Indeed all scientific knowledge is embedded in a social context, said the course’s teaching assistant Clare Kim, a fifth-year PhD candidate. Her students visited the MIT archives and pored over old issues of the student newspaper The Tech and the MIT yearbook Technique. They also read faculty minutes, course catalogs, and a wealth of secondary source materials.

“These students interrogated not only our assumptions about MIT and slavery — but also race, science, and technology,” Kim said. She urged the audience to do more than passively receive the facts the class has found. “Go back to your labs and offices and look at your environment. Consider how the way you think about MIT — and science and technology — includes traces of the histories you are about to hear today.”

Insights from MIT students

Gasps were audible as Alexander, the mechanical engineering student, delved into early MIT silence around “The Slaveship” painting and other racialized art and literature. She ended her presentation by saying, “I encourage you to think about where different notions of science come from.”

Visual images were also the focus of first-year student Kelvin Green II’s research. Combing through early MIT student publications, Green II strove to understand early campus attitudes through the images that MIT students drew. He found racialized and mocking images of African-Americans; hooded figures evocative of the Klu Klux Klan; and an absence of images depicting African-Americans as students or engineers — an absence at odds with the actual occupations of black male Bostonians during the 1881-1911 time period.

When asked about the impact of these slavery-related findings on black students at MIT today, Green II reflected: “How do you quantify the experience of a black student confronted with the images I’ve put up?” Understanding racism, he continued, requires qualitative analysis, including listening to the stories of those most affected by it. “Engage in dialogue. If you don’t have a black friend, make a black friend!” he said to applause.

Sophomore Mahalaxmi Elango dug into MIT’s early curriculum for her project, and discovered not only an early focus on mining — an industry that had relied heavily on enslaved people — but also that slavery was a subject for academic discussion at MIT. A popular course in moral philosophy, for example, explored the relationship between technology and the economies of labor, including the labor of enslaved people. An 1873 political economy exam asked: “Define Labor, and prove that the service of slaves, or any involuntary work, is not labor in the economic sense.”

Charlotte Minsky, a sophomore majoring in earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences, examined the careers of students who came to MIT in its first 15 years and found a large concentration of these students went into the railroad industry. She speculated that this focus emerged from the need to rebuild the South after the Civil War. “It’s essential to the narrative of early MIT that there’s a flow of money and ideas from the South to the North in the era of Reconstruction,” she said. Of MIT’s investigation into slavery, Minsky observed, “MIT is setting a precedent for similar institutions. We are showing that connections to slavery are very nuanced, and that science and technology are an aspect of this history that can longer be left in the wings.”

Raising questions

What skepticism there is about the “MIT and Slavery” research course takes the form of questions like the following, posed by a livestream viewer: “What gives anyone today the right to judge the actions of people in the distant past by modern popular moral standards?”

Wilder welcomed the opportunity to address that question. “Birth gives us the right,” he said, with a chuckle. “The idea that to judge the past by modern moral values is somehow ahistorical misunderstands what history is. History is the science of thinking about the past and how it influences the present.” The MIT community is capable of thinking about the past in constructive ways, he added. “One of the goals of the project is to create opportunities for us as a community — as communities — to wrestle with difficult issues in dialogue in a democratic and open way.”

Another community member asked one of the questions the project raises for education: “What would you say the implications of MIT’s findings are for teaching science and the history of science?” As an initial response, Kim noted that the “MIT and Slavery” course will itself be one example, continuing to research and share discoveries about the relationship between science, technology, and the social realities of which they are a part. She added, “We are asking people to think differently.”

Looking ahead

The value of this ongoing exploration is immeasurable, President Reif said. “If we have the courage to look at even the troubling parts of our history,” he said, “I believe we have a much better chance of approaching the present and the future with humility and self-awareness.”

The MIT and Legacy of Slavery dialogue will continue at MIT, led by Nobles who will announce plans for new opportunities to contribute ideas and reflections later this spring. The process Nobles envisions will be one of “looking at old things with new eyes.” In the meantime, and in parallel with the Institute-wide conversation, updates and information on the “MIT and Slavery” course findings will be posted to the course website.

Story prepared by SHASS Communications Editorial team: Meg Murphy and Emily Hiestand

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New digital archive showcases work from the Center for Advanced Visual Studies

In 1967, the newly established MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), founded by professor György Kepes and conceived as a fellowship program for artists, welcomed its first three fellows. Pioneering work at the intersection of art, science, and technology quickly got underway, and in the following decades, more than 200 fellows arrived to participate in this globally influential program, along with researchers and graduate students.

Now, as part of a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of CAVS, a new interactive digital archive is offering public access to experimental work created by the fellows, including world-renowned artists such as Otto Piene, Aldo Tambellini, Yvonne Rainer, Nam June Paik, Muriel Cooper, and Stan VanDerBeek.

The digital archive was launched thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the digitization and online presentation of the CAVS Special Collection, long held as slides and other original documentation at the Program for Art, Culture and Technology (ACT). ACT was formed in 2009 out of the merger of CAVS and MIT’s Visual Arts Program.  

“Fifty years ago, the founding of CAVS showed remarkable conviction and foresight,” says former ACT director and Associate Professor Gediminas Urbonas. “But what is even more remarkable is how the work and ideas that the CAVS fellows’ initiative produced are still relevant to our present world. We are living in the future that they imagined. And that work can help us address many of the crises that have and will emerge.”

The landing page of the site introduces users to an experimental, randomized three-dimensional environment of collection materials, which can be clicked through to view metadata (such as dates, locations, and descriptions) for each item. This feature allows users to experience a serendipitous visualization of the collection, encountering new materials at every turn. The design was inspired by the work of Muriel Cooper, a CAVS fellow, founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab, and the first design director of the MIT Press.

Users can explore the collection by artist, subject (from environmental sound to sky art), or format (whether installations, drawings, booklets, photographs, videos, etc.). Topic tags show how materials are connected. The site provides more than 200 profiles of artist-fellows and alumni from CAVS; a timeline of the affiliations of fellows, visiting artists, and graduate students; and an interactive world map that illustrates the diverse global origins of the fellows.

Designed for both artists and academics, the site will grow to include research resources that document the process of creating art, such as proposals, administrative records, and correspondence. Posters, academic course booklets from the Master of Science in Visual Studies (SMVisS) degree program (now the Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology), and publications from exhibitions are now accessible. As the project continues, thousands of additional images, documents, and video files will be added.

Leadership for the project came from Urbonas, with project management by ACT archivist Jeremy Grubman. The MIT Libraries provided cataloging support, and the MIT Museum contributed materials from their CAVS-related holdings. The site was designed by NODE, a Berlin- and Oslo-based design studio, with development work by Bengler, an Oslo-based firm.

One component of the site makes it unique among visual art repositories: the ability for artists to annotate their works, sharing their inspirations and the process behind creating art. ACT has posted several sample annotations and will invite CAVS fellows more broadly to participate.

In one of the sample annotations, CAVS fellow Jon Goldman SMVisS '84 writes of his “nudibranch” sculptures: “I created nudibranch, a forty-foot cold-air inflatable sculpture ... to call attention to the most delicate of creatures as telltales for the health of their ecosystem. The bleaching of coral ecosystems worldwide was becoming a reality and I looked to these incredibly beautiful creatures as source models to become kinetic sculptures activated by the wind.”

Ellen Sebring SMVisS '86, another CAVS fellow, annotated a catalog of video art titled “Centervideo”: “The generation of video artists that I worked with at CAVS were across-the-board phenomenal. They had mountains of energy, openness, and the confidence, with the advent of portable cameras, to cast personal video as the interface between themselves and the world ... You can’t imagine the sudden freedom of the moving image being accessible.”

In addition to launching the digital archive, ACT is celebrating the CAVS50 anniversary by developing exhibitions, events, an international symposium, and a publication, all intended to explore ideas that emerged from CAVS — art and the environment, art at the civic scale, and art as it relates to the future — in a contemporary context.

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MIT students take back Putnam competition honors

A trio of MIT math undergrads has claimed the top team spot in the 78th annual William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. MIT students dominated the competition, taking 17 of the top 25 spots from among 4,638 test-takers from 575 institutions last December. Of the five top scorers, who are named Putnam Fellows, four were from MIT. A total of 38 out of the 99 top scorers were MIT undergraduates.

With the announcement of the results, MIT can now claim the highest rank for four out of the past five years. Last year, the MIT team came in fourth.

"I am delighted that MIT undergraduates have again won first place in the 2017 Putnam Competition,” says Michael Sipser, the Donner Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Science at MIT. “This stunning performance reflects the extraordinary talent of our students and the superb coaching that they receive here. Kudos to all participants and to the Department of Mathematics.”

The Putman is one of the most prestigious mathematical competitions in the U.S. and Canada, requiring competitors to attempt to solve 12 brutally challenging problems in six hours. The highest exam score was 89 out of a possible 120 points. Only 20 percent of participants earned a score above 13.

The school with the first-place team receives an award of $25,000. Each first-place team member receives $1,000. Putnam Fellows receive an award of $2,500.

On the MIT team were Putnam veterans Allen Liu, who is in his third year, and seniors Sammy Luo and Yunkun Zhou. Zhou was MIT’s Putnam Fellow last year. This year’s Putnam Fellows are Omer Cerrahoglu, Jiyang Gao, Junyao Peng, and Ashwin Sah.

The Institute's Putnam exam preparation was run by Yufei Zhao SB '10, PhD '15, who was recently appointed as an assistant professor in the MIT Department of Mathematics. Zhao was named a Putnam Fellow in 2006, 2008, and 2009. He also ranked seventh in 2007.  

"I am incredibly proud of MIT students' amazing performance," says Zhao. "The success reminds us that the level of enthusiasm and strength of our math undergraduates is unmatched by anywhere else."

Students can prepare for the Putnam by taking 18.A34 (Mathematical Problem Solving Seminar), which last fall was taught by Zhao. As a freshman, Zhao had taken the class with professors Richard Stanley and Hartley Rogers. Each week in his seminar, Zhao presented a lecture on a specific topic for the students to solve in the next class.

“I get to see a lot of interesting and creative solutions presented by the students, and I think they had a fun time coming up and presenting their proof, often containing pretty cool and creative ideas,” Zhao says. “To be honest, there's very little that I can teach the group in a semester. The time is short, and they're all already so amazing. What I hope the seminar accomplished is to keep them interested in math problem solving, form a group so that they have friends to talk to, so that they don't end up getting rusty at solving math competition-type problems. Most of the top-performing students have had much more intensive competition training from their high school math contest days.”

Mathematics interim department head Michel Goemans offered his congratulations “to all participants and to Yufei Zhao.”

“It is a delight to have such a talented pool of students at MIT who are so passionate about mathematics,” Goemans says. “And let me also recognize the tremendous work of the admissions office, without whom this would have not been possible."

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MIT expands multidepartmental partnership with Imperial College London

Building on the success of existing partnerships, MIT’s Global Education and Career Development (GECD) is significantly expanding its academic exchange with Imperial College London, while continuing to grow the Imperial summer research exchange. Twelve MIT departments will now take part in one or both exchanges.

These augmented multidepartmental exchange programs will allow even more MIT undergraduates to participate in rigorous and enriching study abroad and research experiences at Imperial, a leading U.K. university that focuses exclusively on science, engineering, medicine, and business.

The academic exchange is transforming from a departmental exchange spanning two departments to a multidepartmental exchange involving nine departments. GECD will start sending students on the expanded academic exchange program this coming fall.

Meanwhile, the summer research exchange with Imperial has been growing steadily, from two departments in 2013 to 10 now.

“Such opportunities provide hugely valuable experiences in learning to learn and work in another culture and a different scientific environment,” says Professor Linn Hobbs of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Students find the experience challenging, exciting, and full of potential for both personal and intellectual growth.”

MIT’s partnership with Imperial began in 2013 with a summer research program for students from both schools’ departments of Materials Science and Physics. Hobbs spearheaded the exchange, working closely with Robin Grimes, professor of materials physics at Imperial and chief scientific advisor to the U.K.

Hobbs was also the impetus behind the academic exchange program that shortly followed, and has championed the development of both exchange programs. As part of the academic exchange, a corresponding number of Imperial students come to MIT to partake in courses and research.

Semester/year academic exchange

The academic exchange program offers the opportunity for two juniors each (four in the case of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) from nine departments to spend either the spring semester of their junior year or their full junior year in the corresponding department at Imperial College London. Students apply through GECD and are selected jointly by faculty in their MIT department and GECD’s Global Education staff.

While on the exchange, students study on Imperial’s campus, which is located in central London’s posh Kensington and Chelsea neighborhoods steps away from such cultural attractions as the Science and Industry Museum, Royal Albert Hall, and numerous music and restaurant venues. Students take academic subjects that provide MIT transfer credit for core or restricted-elected subjects in their majors. In addition, Imperial offers UROP-like experiences whenever possible.

The 2019 academic year will initiate a two-year pilot for the expanded exchange that will enable student participation from seven new departments. These new departments, joining Materials Science and Engineering and Nuclear Science and Engineering, are: Mechanical Engineering; Chemistry; Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Chemical Engineering; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Aeronautics and Astronautics; and Mathematics.

Faculty as well as students are enthusiastic about the multidepartmental expansion. “We are excited to be initiating a student exchange with Imperial College London, one of the great research institutions of the world,” says Professor Haynes Miller in the Department of Mathematics. “Imperial has an excellent undergraduate program, one that will offer our students the same kind of perspective and growth that the Cambridge-MIT Exchange did. Thirty-seven of our majors spent a year as Cambridge students over the 16 years of the program. Each and every one gained from it in deep ways, and we anticipate the same results from the Imperial project. We look forward also to hosting an equal number of Imperial students here; their different perspectives will enrich the experience of our majors here in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

Summer research exchange

Since its launch in 2013, the summer research exchange with Imperial has added new departments over the years and welcomed increasing numbers of participants. The research exchange is now open to undergraduates in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Physics, Chemical Engineering, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Mathematics, Biological Engineering, and Nuclear Science and Engineering. Each department nominates two students to participate each year. The faculty coordinators then work closely with their counterparts at Imperial to identify labs, faculty supervisors, and advisors for participating students.

The research exchange runs from late June through mid-August. During those weeks, MIT also welcomes Imperial students to its campus. Last summer, 18 MIT students and 18 Imperial students participated in the exchange, including rising MIT junior Yun Chang. Chang, an AeroAstro major who is also an Emerson fellow in piano, immersed himself in his lab’s research on quadrocopter 3-D SLAM implementation, savored the cosmopolitan world of London and Imperial, and attended numerous BBC classical music promenade concerts.

“Doing research at Imperial College London was an amazing experience, and was especially unique in that I got to meet people from all over the world,” says Chang. “I got to do interesting research, and I was able to broaden my horizons. I am already missing walking through Kensington Gardens on my way to Imperial every morning.”

MIT’s UROP office is an integral partner with GECD’s Global Education team for this program. As a co-sponsor, UROP provides student funding through hourly wages and an airfare stipend, while GECD funds MIT students’ accommodations in London.

Looking forward to future collaboration

“MIT is looking forward to a long-term partnership with Imperial College London,” says Julie Maddox, assistant dean for Global Education at GECD. “I’ve seen students profiting from their academic and research experiences at Imperial over the years and have been inspired by how they speak about their intellectual and personal growth. Likewise, Imperial students who come to our campus greatly contribute to our classes and labs and are enthusiastic about their experiences here.”

“I’m thrilled that we succeeded in growing both the academic and research exchanges with Imperial so more students from across MIT will be able to engage in these important opportunities,” adds Malgorzata Hedderick, associate dean for Global Education at GECD. “Imperial has been a very supportive partner over the years and we are excited to continue this mutually beneficial relationship. Huge thanks go to the MIT and Imperial faculty; none of this would have been possible without their leadership, dedication, and involvement.” 

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Human malaria parasites grown for the first time in dormant form

One of the biggest obstacles to eradicating malaria is a dormant form of the parasite that lurks in the livers of some patients. This dormant form is resistant to most antimalarial drugs and can reawaken months or years later, causing disease relapse.

Malaria researchers know little about the biology of these dormant parasites, so it has been difficult to develop drugs that target them. In an advance that could help scientist discover new drugs, MIT researchers have shown they can grow the dormant parasite in engineered human liver tissue for several weeks, allowing them to closely study how the parasite becomes dormant, what vulnerabilities it may have, and how it springs back to life.

After verifying that they had successfully cultivated the dormant form of the parasite, the researchers showed that they could also sequence its RNA and test its response to known and novel antimalarial drugs — both important steps toward finding ways to eradicate the disease.

“After 10 years of hard work, we were able to grow the organism, show it had all the functional hallmarks, perform a drug screen against it, and report the first transcriptome of this elusive form. I’m really excited because I believe it will open the door to both the basic biology of dormancy as well as the possibility of better medicines,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Bhatia is also a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the senior author of the study.

MIT graduate student Nil Gural is the first author of the paper, which appears in the Feb. 22 issue of the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

MIT researchers captured video of malaria parasites budding off from infected cells. In this image, the parasites are getting ready to emerge from the cell. (Nil Gural)

After a few minutes, the parasites have emerged from the infected cell. (Nil Gural)

Persistent infections

Most human cases of malaria are caused by one of two parasite species, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. Plasmodium vivax, while less deadly, produces dormant forms known as hypnozoites (so called because they are “hypnotized”), and can lead to recurring infections. 

In 1991, Aneityum, a small island in the Southwest Pacific, was chosen as a site to test possible measures to eradicate malaria. Researchers sprayed against mosquito larvae and supplied bed nets and malaria medicine across the entire island. These efforts led to the complete eradication of Plasmodium falciparum within a year. In contrast, it took five years to eliminate Plasmodium vivax.

“This dormant form has been seen as the critical barrier to eradication,” Bhatia says. “You can treat the symptoms of vivax malaria by killing all the parasites in the blood, but if hypnozoites linger in someone’s liver, these forms can reactivate and reinfect the blood of a patient. If a mosquito comes along and takes a blood meal, the cycle starts all over again. So, if we want to eradicate malaria, we have to eradicate the hypnozoite.”

The only existing drug that can kill hypnozoites is primaquine, but this drug cannot be used in large-scale eradication campaigns because it causes blood cells to rupture in people with a certain enzyme deficiency.

Bhatia’s team became aware of this problem in 2008, when the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called for a renewed effort to eradicate malaria, which infects more than 200 million people every year and killed an estimated 429,000 in 2015. Her lab is working with special micropatterned surfaces on which human liver cells can be grown, surrounded by supportive cells. This architecture creates a microenvironment in which human liver cells function much the same way as they do in humans, making it easier to establish, maintain, and study infections of the liver.

Bhatia, who initially used this technology to model hepatitis infections, realized it was also well-suited to studying the liver stage of malaria. She and her malaria team lead, Sandra March, began with Plasmodium falciparum, the strain that can be cultured in lab settings, and found that parasites grown in these liver tissue followed the same life cycle observed in natural infections. They also found that the system could be used to test responses to experimental malaria vaccines.

Following that success, Bhatia’s lab began working with Plasmodium vivax. Efforts to bring the parasite-infected mosquitoes into the United States were unsuccessful, so Gural, the paper’s lead author, traveled to collaborator Jetsumon Prachumsri’s lab in Thailand repeatedly to obtain samples from infected patients and perform the experiments there.

Using their new technology, the researchers showed that they could grow small forms of the parasite that had all of the known features of hypnozoites: persistence, sensitivity to primaquine, and the ability to “wake up” after a few weeks.

New drug targets

Once the researchers were confident that these forms were actually hypnozoites, they set out to do some further studies. First, they obtained six candidate antimalarials now in development and tested them for activity against their Plasmodium vivax samples. They found that none of them could kill established hypnozoites, which was what they had expected based on clinical trials. They now plan to test a larger set of new compounds, working with the nonprofit group Medicines for Malaria Venture, which has a collection of thousands of drug candidates.

Working with scientists at the Swanson Biotechnology Center at the Koch Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, the MIT team performed the first sequencing of the hypnozoite transcriptome. No one had been able to look this closely at hypnozoites before, and RNA sequencing revealed that the dormant forms were not transcriptionally silent, as had been expected, but instead express a different subset of genes than those found in their active counterparts.

“This is a very exciting study,” says Maria Mota, executive director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of Lisbon. “It provides not only the first transcriptional comparative characterization of replicating schizonts and hypnozoites of P. vivax, but most importantly demonstrates the feasibility of an in vitro platform to study hypnozoites without the need to use animals.”

In future studies, Bhatia, in collaboration with other MIT labs, plans to use single cell RNA-sequencing to identify gene signatures to uncover the signaling pathways that control hypnozoite dormancy and reactivation. The researchers will also study corresponding changes in gene expression of the infected liver cells. This approach could yield potential new drug candidates that would specifically target the dormant forms of the parasite, bringing the field closer to its goal of eradicating malaria. The researchers also hope to identify biomarkers that could be used to diagnose patients who have an otherwise undetectable dormant infection.

The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, and the Koch Institute Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

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