The data speak: Stronger pandemic response yields better economic recovery

The research described in this article has been published as a working paper but has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.

With much of the U.S. in shutdown mode to limit the spread of the Covid-19 disease, a debate has sprung up about when the country might “reopen” commerce, to limit economic fallout from the pandemic. But as a new study co-authored by an MIT economist shows, taking care of public health first is precisely what generates a stronger economic rebound later.

The study, using data from the flu pandemic that swept the U.S. in 1918-1919, finds cities that acted more emphatically to limit social and civic interactions had more economic growth following the period of restrictions.

Indeed, cities that implemented social-distancing and other public health interventions just 10 days earlier than their counterparts saw a 5 percent relative increase in manufacturing employment after the pandemic ended, through 1923. Similarly, an extra 50 days of social distancing was worth a 6.5 percent increase in manufacturing employment, in a given city.

“We find no evidence that cities that acted more aggressively in public health terms performed worse in economic terms,” says Emil Verner, an assistant professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings. “If anything, the cities that acted more aggressively performed better.”

With that in mind, he observes, the idea of a “trade-off” between public health and economic activity does not hold up to scrutiny; places that are harder hit by a pandemic are unlikely to rebuild their economic capacities as quickly, compared to areas that are more intact.

“It casts doubt on the idea there is a trade-off between addressing the impact of the virus, on the one hand, and economic activity, on the other hand, because the pandemic itself is so destructive for the economy,” Verner says.

The study, “Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu,” was posted to the Social Science Research Network as a working paper on March 26. In addition to Verner, the co-authors are Sergio Correia, an economist with the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Stephen Luck, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Evaluating economic consequences

To conduct the research, the three scholars examined mortality statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), historical economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and banking statistics compiled by finance economist Mark D. Flood, using the “Annual Reports of the Comptroller of Currency,” a government publication.

As Verner notes, the researchers were motivated to investigate the 1918-1919 flu pandemic to see what lessons from it might be applicable to the current crisis.

“The genesis of the study is that we’re interested in what the expected economic impacts of today’s coronavirus are going to be, and what is the right way to think about the economic consequences of the public health and social distancing interventions we’re seeing all around the world,” Verner says.

Scholars have known that the varying use of “nonpharmaceutical interventions,” or social-distancing measures, correlated to varying health outcomes across cities in 1918 and 1919. When that pandemic hit, U.S. cities that shut down schools earlier, such as St. Louis, fared better against the flu than places implementing shutdowns later, such as Philadelphia. The current study extends that framework to economic activity.

Quite a bit like today, social distancing measures back then included school and theater closures, bans on public gatherings, and restricted business activity.

“The nonpharmaceutical interventions that were implemented in 1918 interestingly resemble many of the policies that are being used today to reduce the spread of Covid-19,” Verner says.

Overall, the study indicates, the economic impact of the pandemic was severe. Using state-level data, the researchers find an 18 percent drop in manufacturing output through 1923, well after the last wave of the flu hit in 1919.

Looking at the effect across 43 cities, however, the researchers found significantly different economic outcomes, linked to different social distancing policies. The best-performing cities included Oakland, California; Omaha, Nebraska; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, which all enforced over 120 days of social distancing in 1918. Cities that instituted fewer than 60 days of social distancing in 1918, and saw manufacturing struggle afterward, include Philadelphia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Lowell, Massachusetts.

“What we find is that areas that were more severely affected in the 1918 flu pandemic see a sharp and persistent decline in a number of measures of economic activity, including manufacturing employment, manufacturing output, bank loans, and the stock of consumer durables,” Verner says.

Banking issues

As far as banking goes, the study included banking write-downs as an indicator of economic health, because “banks were recognizing losses from loans that households and businesses were defaulting on, due to the economic disruption caused by the pandemic,” Verner says.

The researchers found that in Albany, New York; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; and Syracuse, New York — all of which also had fewer than 60 days of social distancing in 1918 — the banking sector struggled more than anywhere else in the country.

As the authors note in the paper, the economic struggles that followed the 1918-1919 flu pandemic reduced the ability of firms to manufacture goods — but the reduction in employment meant that people had less purchasing power as well.

“The evidence that we have in our paper … suggests that the pandemic creates both a supply-side problem and a demand-side problem,” Verner notes.

As Verner readily acknowledges, the composition of the U.S. economy has evolved since 1918-1919, with relatively less manufacturing today and relatively more activity in services. The 1918-1919 pandemic was also especially deadly for prime working-age adults, making its economic impact particularly severe. Still, the economists think the dynamics of the previous pandemic are readily applicable to our ongoing crisis.

“The structure of the economy is of course different,” Verner notes. However, he adds, “While one shouldn’t extrapolate too directly from history, we can learn some of the lessons that may be relevant to us today.” First among those lessons, he emphasizes: “Pandemic economics are different than normal economics.”

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MIT Professional Education conducts first all-virtual class in the wake of Covid-19

Following more than a year of planning, MIT Professional Education’s high-demand “Digital Transformation” program was ready to be held at Al Yamamah University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when it suddenly hit an inflection point. Given the development of the Covid-19 global pandemic, delivering the on-the-ground program was no longer an option. Program Director Abel Sanchez and staff considered the options: “Do we cancel or postpone the program, or can we effectively pivot to a live virtual format — and still provide an engaging, high-quality learning experience?”

With only two weeks to reconfigure the program, Sanchez decided to take on the challenge and quickly adapted his curriculum to a new environment of instruction — live, but completely virtual.

“Though I’ve taught webinars in the past, this was my first time teaching an entire program virtually,” says Sanchez. “The challenge is that online formats can be dry and dull. As a participant, you’re checking your emails while [the course] is going on, and then coming back to attention when things pick up a bit. I knew we had to develop a better way. So that’s what we did!”

Developing a high-level online experience

With the support of Al Yamamah University, Sanchez took the material he had planned for the Digital Transformation course and reformatted it to accommodate live virtual delivery. That included incorporating tools such as interactive surveys and word-clouds. “I probably did about four times more preparation for this offering than I’ve done for a traditional face-to-face course,” Sanchez says. “I wanted to incorporate a lot of interactivity.”

Through the process, he discovered three major takeaways for translating on-the-ground courses to online virtual formats: 

1. You can’t rely on charm and personality. When teaching, instructors often rely on the in-person connection to effectively engage with their students. Without that component, you need to win them over with content and activities.

2. Don’t fall in love with your planned content. You’ve worked hard in your field and put a lot of effort into preparing your curriculum, but the pacing of virtual teaching can differ from in-person courses. If your students are particularly engaged with one activity, you may not have time for something else you had planned — and you have to be OK with that. 

3. Interactive activities win the day. You may not be physically together, but you can — and should — still work together. “The pace and ratio of activities are really important,” Sanchez says. “If you include too many activities, the program becomes disconnected and you lose momentum. But if your course is too lecture-heavy, you lose engagement. You need to strike a very careful balance.”

Learning in a period of disruption

Once the course launched, Sanchez followed a simple format to encourage participant engagement. After familiarizing the participants with the interactive features of the online platform, he would lecture for a short period, introduce an activity, make time for discussion, and then repeat the cycle. Within the structure, Sanchez encouraged participants to help shape their course experience. For instance, he offered the choice of completing an activity on fake news or autonomous vehicles (fake news won with two-thirds of the votes).

Group discussions, an important component of the on-the-ground course curriculum, were also translated for the online environment. Sanchez found that not only did the virtual format allow for these important breakout sessions — it actually made them easier to facilitate. 

“The team breakouts were faster than when we do them face-to-face,” he said. “In person, it takes a lot of time for people to navigate the physical space and get into groups. For this course, I’d tell them it was time to break out and 10 seconds later, 36 participants were in groups and collaborating.”

Participants also appeared more comfortable asking questions in the online format, Sanchez reports, perhaps due to the anonymity of the chat function. The result was a more open environment, in which people could engage without worrying about whether they were asking “stupid” questions. 

Moving forward in a time of uncertainty

Under less-than-ideal circumstances created by Covid-19, Sanchez was able to transform an in-person offering into a virtual learning model in just two weeks. And the final product was an unqualified success.

“The course was wonderful,” says Hessah Alsalamah, dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture, Al Yamamah University, who attended the course herself. She notes, “The hands-on exercises and group discussions made the material even more interesting.”

“It was a very informative and effective course,” says another course participant, Feras Ababatain, team lead of a digital transformation unit. “We were able to explore the most important and up-to-date technologies that executives must know about.”

Khalid Alrabiah, financial analyst for an electricity company, agrees, highlighting the advantages of virtual learning. “I liked using Zoom because there were no (external) distractions,” Khalid says. “We were able to focus completely on the course.”

“At MIT, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of technology — and that includes the way we teach,” says Bhaskar Pant, executive director of MIT Professional Education. “At MIT Professional Education, we had been pursuing asynchronous online and hybrid learning models for some time, but this is the first time we offered an entire four-day course live virtually to a dispersed, non-colocated audience, spurred by the evolving coronavirus situation. We are very proud to have taken the lead in this regard, with Dr. Sanchez’s adventurous, well-planned contribution, allowing MIT faculty to learn from our successful experience. We will continue to break new ground in serving our learners in these uncertain times.”

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MIT initiates mass manufacture of disposable face shields for Covid-19 response

The shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available to health care professionals has become increasingly problematic as Covid-19 cases continue to surge. The sheer volume of PPE needed to keep doctors, nurses, and their patients safe in this crisis is daunting — for example, tens of millions of disposable face shields will be needed nationwide each month. This week, a team from MIT launched mass manufacturing of a new technique to meet the high demand for disposable face shields.

The single piece face shield design will be made using a process known as die cutting. Machines will cut the design from thousands of flat sheets per hour. Once boxes of these flat sheets arrive at hospitals, health care professionals can quickly fold them into three-dimensional face shields before adjusting for their faces.

“These face shields have to be made rapidly and at low cost because they need to be disposable,” explains Martin Culpepper, professor of mechanical engineering, director of Project Manus, and a member of MIT’s governance team on manufacturing opportunities for Covid-19. “Our technique combines low-cost materials with a high-rate manufacturing that has the potential of meeting the need for face shields nationwide.”

Culpepper and his team at Project Manus spearheaded the development of the technique in collaboration with a number of partners from MIT, local-area hospitals, and industry. The team has been working closely with the MIT Medical Outreach team and the Crisis Management Unit established by Vice President for Research Maria Zuber and directed by Elazer R. Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT.

Extending the life of face masks

When used correctly, face masks should be changed every time a doctor or nurse treats a new patient. However, over the past month, many health care professionals have been asked to wear one face mask per day. That one mask could carry virus particles — potentially contributing to the spread of Covid-19 within hospitals and endangering health care professionals.

“The lack of adequate protective equipment or the idea of reusing potentially contaminated equipment is especially frightening to health care workers who are putting their lives, and by extension the lives and well-being of their families, on the line every day,” explains Edelman, who is also the director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and leader of MIT’s PPE task force.

Face shields can address this problem by providing another layer of protection that covers masks and entire faces while extending the life of PPE. The shields are made of clear materials and have a shape similar to a welder's mask. They protect the health care professional and their face mask from coming in direct contact with virus particles spread through coughing or sneezing.

“If we can slow down the rate at which health care professionals use face masks with a disposable face shield, we can make a real difference in protecting their health and safety,” explains Culpepper.

Culpepper and his team at Project Manus set out to design a face shield that could be rapidly produced at a scale large enough to meet the growing demand. They landed on a flat design that people could quickly fold into a three dimensional structure when the shield was ready for use. Their design also includes extra protection with flaps that fold under the neck and over the forehead.

As much of MIT’s campus came to a halt in light of social distancing measures being put in place, Culpepper started prototyping using a laser cutter he had in his house. Along with some design input from his children, he tested different materials and made the first 10 prototypes at home.

“When you’re thinking of materials, you have to keep supply chains in mind. You can’t choose a material that could evaporate from the supply chain. That is a challenging problem in this crisis,” explains Culpepper. After testing a few materials that cracked and broke when bent, the team chose polycarbonate and polyethylene terephthalate glycol – known more commonly as PETG – as the shield’s material.

In addition to making more prototypes at the Project Manus Metropolis Makerspace using a laser cutter, Culpepper worked with Professor Neil Gershenfeld and his team at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) on rapid-prototyping designs for testing using a Zund large-format cutter.

Gershenfeld’s team at CBA is working on a number of projects for coronavirus response using its digital fabrication facility at MIT as well as the global Fab Lab network it launched. “The coronavirus response site is a great resource for those that are interested in working on solutions for PPE and devices for the Covid-19 pandemic,” Culpepper adds.

“It's been a pleasure in this difficult time collaborating with such an impressive group, drawing on all of the Institute's strengths to quickly define and refine a solution to an urgent need,” says Gershenfeld. “The work at MIT will be valuable beyond its immediate local impact, as a best-practices reference for the many other face shield projects emerging around the world.”

Testing the shield at local hospitals

With a number of working prototypes built, Culpepper and his team moved to the testing phase after consultation with, and practical feedback from, Edelman, who is also a physician.

“The single greatest insecurity of a health care provider is the thought that we will become infected and in doing so be unable to perform our duties or infect others,” adds Edelman.

Edelman demonstrated how to store, assemble, and use the face shields for nurses and physicians at a number of area hospitals. Participants were then asked to use them in real-life situations and provide feedback using a one-page survey.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive — participants found that in addition to being easy to assemble and use, the MIT-designed shields provided good protection against coming in contact with virus particles through splashes or aerosolized particles.

Armed with this feedback, Culpepper’s team made a few minor adjustments to the design to maximize coverage around the sides and neck of users. With the design finalized, the project has this week shifted to high-rate mass manufacturing.

High-rate mass manufacturing

The die cutter machines used in mass manufacturing will produce the flat face shields at a rate of 50,000 shields per day in a few weeks. The manufacturer will continue to ramp up and increase the rate of manufacturing further with the ability to fabricate in more than 80 facilities nationwide.

“This process has been designed in such a way that there is the potential to ramp up to millions of face shields produced per day,” explains Culpepper. “This could very quickly become a nationwide solution for face shield shortages.”

MIT plans on purchasing the first 40,000 face shields to donate to local Boston-area hospitals this week and the fabrication facilities will donate 60,000.

“Having an adequate and perhaps even endless supply of PPE is absolutely critical to ensuring the safety of the entire population, especially those who care for Covid-19 patients,” adds Edelman.

Throughout the process, Culpepper’s team received help from a number of colleagues and departments across MIT. This includes MIT’s Office of the Vice President for Research, Professor Elazer Edelman, Tolga Durak, managing director of the MIT Environment, Health and Safety Office, the Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT Procurement Operations, MIT’s Office of the General Counsel, MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and colleagues from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, who helped source material to build the face shields and supported design iterations. They also received advice from MIT colleagues working with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which is helping organize manufacturers for Covid-19 response.

“This project was a great example of collaboration across MIT and the employment of mind-heart-hand. When we reached out to others, they dropped everything to put their minds and hands to work helping us make this happen quickly,” says Culpepper. “It is also a great example for others to look to safely and rapidly innovate PPE for Covid-19.”

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In a time of physical distancing, connecting socially across generations is more important than ever

Collective disruption to our schools, work, and play, along with a heightened awareness of what it means to worry about our close ties with others, add up to fuel for sparking a movement. Just a few days ago, most high school students were in school, looking forward to spring break, graduation, and dreaming about plans for the summer. In light of Covid-19 outbreaks across the globe, many of those plans have suddenly changed.

At the same time, older adults have found that their senior centers and social clubs have closed. Everyday public spaces, such as grocery stores, have become potentially dangerous places. Not only Covid-19, but social isolation is a major risk.

In a time of so much uncertainty and change, the mutually beneficial activities that foster connections between the old and young cannot stop now. They are more important than ever.

Connection between older and younger adults strengthens social bonds and community ties, facilitates the sharing of knowledge and wisdom, and reminds us that generational differences are often greater in theory than in practice. The MIT AgeLab helps to organize a program called OMEGA (Opportunities for Multigenerational Exchange, Growth, and Action), an initiative designed to foster multigenerational connections between high school students and older adults. But conventional thinking about intergenerational connection must change during a pandemic. 

While it might not be possible to connect across generations in the usual ways, it doesn’t mean those connections need to stop entirely. Instead, now can be a time for new creative measures: Individuals need to support one another and to leverage technologies to support our relationships. It is now more important than ever to live up to the “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”) MIT motto. Here are some ways the AgeLab is thinking about to help keep generations connected for a better life tomorrow:

Mutual aid: Neighborhood apps like Nextdoor can connect you with neighbors nearby who may be worried about the risk of exposure to the virus in public spaces. With the app, you can volunteer to run an errand, such as grocery shopping. Additionally, with so many school districts shifting over to online learning, adults can offer virtual or phone tutoring to students who may need academic support. Both of these forms of intergenerational aid offer an opportunity to check in with each other and have a conversation.  

Virtual performances: Do you have a hobby or skill like playing a musical instrument, speaking a foreign language, vlogging, cooking, etc., that you could share with someone in your life? Whether live or pre-recorded, virtual performances are a great opportunity to practice your talent while sharing the live energy with others.

Informal conversations: Whether it’s “old school” through the phone or live on a video chatting application, such as FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom, we can talk in real-time with others — or engage thoughtfully through social media. Consider using these formats to check in with folks, to share news or interesting information, or even to do an activity together, such as a puzzle, game, or book club discussion.

Video messages: Pre-recording digital video messages to share with people you can’t visit right now is a great way to let someone know you are thinking of them. You can get really creative with these, including how they are produced, what you discuss, and how many you collect from others.

Physical distancing doesn’t have to mean social disconnection, and all generations can play a key role in taking action. The movement doesn’t have to stall because of Covid-19; instead, it is more important than ever.

The MIT AgeLab’s OMEGA Project, sponsored by Five Star Senior Living, is an initiative designed to strengthen multigenerational relationships and spark brainstorming for student-championed programming ideas and activities that connect high school students with older adults. The 2020 OMEGA Scholarship application is now available for high school students who have led intergenerational efforts in their own communities.

Need advice about running an intergenerational activity during this period of social distancing? Get in touch virtually with an AgeLab researcher at omegamit@mit.edu.

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Mesoamerican copper smelting technology aided colonial weaponry

When Spanish invaders arrived in the Americas, they were generally able to subjugate the local peoples thanks, in part, to their superior weaponry and technology. But archeological evidence indicates that, in at least one crucial respect, the Spaniards were quite dependent on an older indigenous technology in parts of Mesoamerica (today’s Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras).

The invaders needed copper for their artillery, as well as for coins, kettles, and pans, but they lacked the knowledge and skills to produce the metal. Even Spain at that time had not produced the metal domestically for centuries, relying on imports from central Europe. In Mesoamerica they had to depend on local smelters, furnace builders, and miners to produce the essential material. Those skilled workers, in turn, were able to bargain for exemption from the taxes levied on the other indigenous people.

This dependence continued for at least a century, and perhaps as long as two centuries or more, according to new findings published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, in a paper by Dorothy Hosler, professor of archeology and ancient technology at MIT, and Johan Garcia Zaidua, a researcher at the University of Porto, in Portugal.

The research, at the site of El Manchón, in Mexico, made use of information gleaned from more than four centuries worth of archeological features and artifacts excavated by Hosler and her crew over multiple years of fieldwork, as well as from lab work and historical archives in Portugal, Spain, and Mexico analyzed by Garcia.

El Manchón, a large and remote settlement, initially displayed no evidence of Spanish presence. The site consisted of three steep sectors, two of which displayed long house foundations, some with interior rooms and religious sanctuaries, patios, and a configuration that was conceptually Mesoamerican but unrelated to any known ethnic groups such as the Aztec. In between the two was an area that contained mounds of slag (the nonmetallic material that separates out during smelting from the pure metal, which floats to the surface).

The Spanish invaders urgently needed enormous quantities of copper and tin to make the bronze for their cannons and other armaments, Hosler says, and this is documented in the historical and archival records. But “they didn’t know how to smelt,” she says, whereas archaeological data suggest the indigenous people had already been smelting copper at this settlement for several hundred years, mostly to make ritual or ceremonial materials such as bells and amulets. These artisans were highly skilled, and in Guerrero and elsewhere had been producing complex alloys including copper-silver, copper-arsenic, and copper-tin for hundreds of years, working on a small scale using blowpipes and crucibles to smelt the copper and other ores. 

But the Spanish desperately reqired large quantities of copper and tin, and in consultation with indigenous smelters introduced some European technology into the process. Hosler and her colleagues excavated an enigmatic feature that consisted of two parallel courses of stones leading toward a large cake of slag in the smelting area. They identified this as the remains of a thus-far-undocumented hybrid type of closed furnace design, powered by a modified hand-held European bellows. A small regional museum in highland Guerrero illustrates just such a hybrid furnace design, including the modified European-introduced bellows system, capable of producing large volumes of copper. But no actual remains of such furnaces had previously been found.

The period when this site was occupied spanned from about 1240 to 1680, Hosler says, and may have extended to both earlier and later times.

The Guerrero site, which Hosler excavated over four field seasons before work had to be suspended because of local drug cartel activity, contains large heaps of copper slag, built up over centuries of intensive use. But it took a combination of the physical evidence, analysis of the ore and slags, the archaeological feature in the the smelting area, the archival work, and reconstruction drawing to enable identification of the centuries of interdependence of the two populations in this remote outpost.

Earlier studies of the composition of the slag at the site, by Hosler and some of her students, revealed that it had formed at a temperature of 1150 degrees Celsius, which could not have been achieved with just the blowpipe system and would have required bellows. That helps to confirm the continued operation of the site long into the colonial period, Hosler says.

Years of work went into trying to find ways to date the different deposits of slag at the site. The team also tried archaeomagnetic data but found that the method was not effective for the materials in that particular region of Mexico. But the written historical record proved key to making sense of the wide range of dates, which reflected centuries of use of the site.

Documents sent back to Spain in the early colonial period described the availability of the locally produced copper, and the colonists’ successful tests of using it to cast bronze artillery pieces. Documents also described the bargains made by the indigenous producers to gain economic privileges for their people, based on their specialized metallurgical knowledge.

“We know from documents that the Europeans figured out that the only way they could smelt copper was to collaborate with the indigenous people who were already doing it,” Hosler says. “They had to cut deals with the indigenous smelters.”

Hosler says that “what’s so interesting to me is that we were able to use traditional archeological methods and data from materials analysis as well as ethnographic data” from the furnace in a museum in the area, “and historical and archival material from 16th century archives in Portugal, Spain, and Mexico, then to put all the data from these distinct disciplines together into an explanation that is absolutely solid.”

The research received support from Charles Barber, CEO of Asarco; the Wenner-Gren Foundation; FAMSI; and MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

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The 2020 U.S. census: Time to make it count

The year’s U.S. census is taking place at a unique time in the country’s history. Many people, including college students, are staying in their homes as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, the Census Bureau has taken a number of steps to respond to the disruptions of the outbreak.

Students who are usually at school should be counted at school, even if they are temporarily living somewhere else due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and universities like MIT are working with census officials to count students that normally live in a dorm or other college-owned housing.

But, under official guidance, “if you live in an apartment or house alone or with roommates or others,” you should receive an invitation in the mail to respond to the census, which you can respond to online, by phone, or by mail. “Whatever method you choose,” the guidance continues, “make sure you use your normal address — where you usually live while you’re at school. You should also include anyone else who normally lives there, too. That means you’ll be asked about your roommates’ birthdays, how they want to identify their race, etc. But if you don’t know that information, or you can’t verify whether your roommate has already responded for your home, please respond for the entire household.”

Census Day is April 1, but the government strongly encourages online responses, which can be submitted here until Aug. 14 under a revised schedule. Census takers will also follow up with some households that don’t respond. Still, most things will not change for the once-a-decade-survey. By law, the Census Bureau must deliver each state’s population total to the president by Dec. 31 of this year. That’s because census data have important implications for redistricting and representation purposes.

The census is valuable for a number of other applications as well. To learn more, and to understand why members of the MIT community should participate, MIT News spoke with Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Amy Glasmeier, a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planing, both of whom have used census data for important research throughout their careers.

Q: Why is the census so important?

GLASMEIER: The census is the basis of many important functions in our society. First, it helps to set the congressional districts and decide how many representatives particular geographic areas have. Second, the census is used to determine the distribution of federal resources. For example, if a region goes down to 49,000 people, it’s not considered a metropolitan area anymore and falls into a completely different [resource allocation] category. Third, it’s important at the community level. Communities are responsible for certain kinds of goods and services, and if they don’t have an accurate count of their population, they don’t have a good way of knowing what their responsibilities are. It’s incredibly important to know how many students are in your school district and the growth rate of your school district, or the growth rate of your elderly population. So the census is the statistical fabric, if you will, of our society.

NOBLES: Over the centuries, the importance of census data has grown far past representative purposes. Uses now extend to budgeting and really anything we care about in public life.

The census deals with many things researchers are interested in. From where people live to how they are living, to how large their households are, to age distribution, gender distribution, etc. It’s a public service and it allows for broad access to data by researchers, which is different from private databases ,which may not provide you that information. It’s a public service that researchers rely on enormously.

Q: Why should members of the MIT community participate?

NOBLES: The census is based on inhabitants in locations, so it’s indifferent to citizenship. It’s important for governments (federal, state, and municipal) and researchers to know that international students are here, for example, and how many people there are in their communities.

The main thrust of the census is to be counted. It asks where every inhabitant in the U.S. is on April 1, census day. It’s a relatively quick survey and it’s worth doing; it’s part of our civic duty. Our government needs reliable data — we should appreciate the importance of that, at MIT. In order to make good policies, you first need good data, so participating in the census is  part of our intellectual duty in addition to our civic duty.

GLASMEIER: Unless someone is registered to vote in their home, they’re going to be identified here as a resident in a group quarter. This kind of information is important for the city of Cambridge, because they’re making decisions about things like water supply, housing, and transportation, and it’s also important from the perspective of understanding who’s going to college. What’s their personal history? Where do they come from, from the standpoint of ethnicity, race, gender?

Q: What do you wish more people know about the census?

NOBLES: I don’t want people to be suspicious of it. There are rightly many concerns right now about data privacy, and sometimes it seems people are more fearful of the census than they are of private corporations, which often have way more personal information than the government, by the way. You can rest assured that these data are used for a range of government programs, most importantly our own democratic governance, and it’s part of living in the U.S. People should look at it as a useful tool and not be suspicious of it.

GLASMEIER: The anonymity is important. America is extremely rigorous about confidentiality across the entire census. It also sets the political environment for the nation, and it’s exceedingly important in that way. Finally, for those of us who use it for research purposes, it’s a daily thing we touch. For many others that are starting to deal with populations and think about people, the census is this amazing source they may not even know exists.

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Making MIT entrepreneurship matter in Hong Kong

You have two weeks in a city that is 8,000 miles away from everything familiar to you. Alongside you are 34 of the best minds selected from both MIT and Hong Kong universities. There is one goal: build products that will transform an underserved district.

This objective was set by the staff of the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node, who believed that by putting theory into practice, they could design a program that grounded action learning to local inquiry — they call it the MIT Entrepreneurship and Maker Skills Integrator (MEMSI). This program is featured in Kowloon East, a unique area of Hong Kong with sponsors who have a vested interest in its prospects for revitalization. Professor Charles Sodini, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering and faculty director of the Innovation Node, says the location provides “a terrific experience for students to discover opportunities against a backdrop of socio-economic and environmental challenges.”

Product ideas and proposed startups are a valuable resource to both the sponsors and the community. In response to these challenges, students form interdisciplinary teams to examine wide-ranging themes across smart mobility, sustainability, and wellness. Participants experience the chaos and excitement of entrepreneurship: making critical early decisions, building relationships with stakeholders and prospective customers, and using insights to converge ideas into tangible solutions. By the end of the program, the MEMSI teams build proof-of-concept prototypes and pitch their business plans to over 100 attendees at a showcase held in Hong Kong.

Showcased projects have included:

• a health-care kiosk to give patients access to diagnostic services;
• a fall-detection wearable, worn as jewelry by seniors, that alerts caregivers;
• an intelligent waste management system to promote positive food waste-sorting habits;
• an internet of things-enabled platform that upgrades the walking tour experience and made accessible for the visually-impaired; and
• a crowd-control system to improve passenger dispersion on train platforms.

From idea to market

While MEMSI is about the educational experience, teams have already started testing their ideas outside of the program. Sodini notes that several projects have advanced to the next level, often connecting with opportunities on campus to develop into startups. “MEMSI is a launch pad for students. They can explore multiple entrepreneurial paths and access rapid, low-volume manufacturing capabilities right in our backyard,” he states.

The program is designed for students who are looking to test their appetite for technology-based entrepreneurship. For example, Atem, a startup admitted into MIT’s delta v accelerator last summer, created their “smart” inhaler during MEMSI. The device helps users manage respiratory health through improved adherence and technique.

Another startup, Aavia, focuses on women’s health and was also conceived during the MEMSI program, with co-founders from both MIT and Hong Kong. They created a patented “smart sleeve” for blister packs of contraceptives that sends reminders to users to take the pill on schedule. Prior to joining delta v, the team spent one year at the Innovation Node prototyping and sourcing manufacturing partnerships across the mainland China border.

A global classroom

MEMSI is a product of collaborative input that was designed to educate students in the key areas of innovation practice, by incorporating the knowledge and novel experiences of both innovation node staff and featured entrepreneurs. This two-week immersive hardware program is supported by the MIT Innovation Initiative and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) China Program, and it integrates content from the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and Project Manus.

For MBA student Yunus Sevimli, learning to work in a diverse team “is an indispensable skill” but often “hard to practice within the classroom of a business school.” He says MEMSI gave him the opportunity to collaborate with a group that is truly diverse in multiple aspects. “Our team of seven was composed of engineering, design, business, and occupational therapy students from three universities in Hong Kong as well as two graduate programs at MIT. The different perspectives each team member brought to the table allowed us to challenge our assumptions and push ourselves.”

Kate Wong, a student participant from Hong Kong, agrees. Working with Sevimli, she attributes the team’s “positive dynamics” to this diversity. Wong’s background in medical rehabilitation enabled her to “make use of connections with nonprofit organizations and professionals … and connecting with the elderly,” as they drew stakeholder insights to inform the design of a fall detection wearable for senior citizens.

The global classroom experience included a two-day tour to Shenzhen, a major city known for its speed to market when it comes to hardware innovation. Students learned about the Chinese hardware manufacturing ecosystem first-hand, which was a highlight for students such as Antoine Yazbeck, an engineering graduate student studying advanced manufacturing and design.

“We hear a lot about Chinese factories, but having the chance to actually see that for yourself is different. Within these visits, what was great was also the diversity of factories we visited. From the traditional ‘high productivity for a healthy economy’ factory to the new modern-and-connected factory,” says Yazbeck. 

Building an entrepreneurial community

The MIT Innovation Node has worked with more than 120 MIT students in the past three years. With each cohort, students return to Hong Kong as teaching assistants to support the learning experience for their peers, while honing their own teaching and learning around entrepreneurship.

Being a teaching assistant for MEMSI provided Eric Wong, an engineering graduate student, “an amazing opportunity to take what I learned as a participant in the program last year and hopefully inspire the cohort to think bigger of what is possible for them as I felt myself.”

For the Innovation Node, building an entrepreneurial community is fundamental to inspire students to think bigger. This means connecting with like-minded entrepreneurs, industry experts and business mentors — many of whom are MIT alumni residing in Hong Kong.

The opportunity for alumni to mentor students is “like an intense pick-up basketball game with a group of young skilled players — both challenging and fun,” says Sean Kwok ’97, MArch ’01, a practicing architect and prop-tech entrepreneur. Kwok sees the experience of guiding these aspiring entrepreneurs as mutually beneficial, “Their fresh perspectives and unique insights often inspire me with new ideas for my own projects.” 

By helping students adopt a customer-centric approach to build solutions around those insights, the program aims to nurture entrepreneurial skills relevant for the future.

“Whether they’re building a startup, joining a corporation, or advancing their academic pursuits,” says Charleston Sin, executive director of the Innovation Node, “our goal is to nurture the entrepreneurial mindset that will help students succeed in their careers.”

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Newly discovered enzyme “square dance” helps generate DNA building blocks

How do you capture a cellular process that transpires in the blink of an eye? Biochemists at MIT have devised a way to trap and visualize a vital enzyme at the moment it becomes active — informing drug development and revealing how biological systems store and transfer energy.

The enzyme, ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), is responsible for converting RNA building blocks into DNA building blocks, in order to build new DNA strands and repair old ones. RNR is a target for anti-cancer therapies, as well as drugs that treat viral diseases like HIV/AIDS. But for decades, scientists struggled to determine how the enzyme is activated because it happens so quickly. Now, for the first time, researchers have trapped the enzyme in its active state and observed how the enzyme changes shape, bringing its two subunits closer together and transferring the energy needed to produce the building blocks for DNA assembly.

Before this study, many believed RNR’s two subunits came together and fit with perfect symmetry, like a key into a lock. “For 30 years, that’s what we thought,” says Catherine Drennan, an MIT professor of chemistry and biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “But now, we can see the movement is much more elegant. The enzyme is actually performing a ‘molecular square dance,’ where different parts of the protein hook onto and swing around other parts. It’s really quite beautiful.”

Drennan and JoAnne Stubbe, professor emerita of chemistry and biology at MIT, are the senior authors on the study, which appeared in the journal Science on March 26. Former graduate student Gyunghoon "Kenny" Kang PhD ’19 is the lead author.

All proteins, including RNR, are composed of fundamental units known as amino acids. For over a decade, Stubbe’s lab has been experimenting with substituting RNR’s natural amino acids for synthetic ones. In doing so, the lab realized they could trap the enzyme in its active state and slow down its return to normal. However, it wasn’t until the Drennan lab gained access to a key technological advancement — cryo-electron microscopy — that they could snap high-resolution images of these “trapped” enzymes from the Stubbe lab and get a closer look.

“We really hadn’t done any cryo-electron microscopy at the point that we actively started trying to do the impossible: get the structure of RNR in its active state,” Drennan says. “I can’t believe it worked; I’m still pinching myself.”

The combination of these techniques allowed the team to visualize the complex molecular dance that allows the enzyme to transport the catalytic “firepower” from one subunit to the next, in order to generate DNA building blocks. This firepower is derived from a highly reactive unpaired electron (a radical), which must be carefully controlled to prevent damage to the enzyme. 

According to Drennan, the team “wanted to see how RNR does the equivalent of playing with fire without getting burned.”

First author Kang says slowing down the radical transfer allowed them to observe parts of the enzyme no one had been able to see before in full. “Before this study, we knew this molecular dance was happening, but we’d never seen the dance in action,” he says. “But now that we have a structure for RNR in its active state, we have a much better idea about how the different components of the enzyme are moving and interacting in order to transfer the radical across long distances.”

Although this molecular dance brings the subunits together, there is still considerable distance between them: The radical must travel 35-40 angstroms from the first subunit to the second. This journey is roughly 10 times farther than the average radical transfer, according to Drennan. The radical must then travel back to its starting place and be stored safely, all within a fraction of a second before the enzyme returns to its normal conformation.

Because RNR is a target for drugs treating cancer and certain viruses, knowing its active-state structure could help researchers devise more effective treatments. Understanding the enzyme’s active state could also provide insight into biological electron transport for applications like biofuels. Drennan and Kang hope their study will encourage others to capture fleeting cellular events that have been difficult to observe in the past.

“We may need to reassess decades of past results,” Drennan says. “This study could open more questions than it answers; it’s more of a beginning than an end.”

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, a David H. Koch Graduate Fellowship, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Discerning the texture of urban resilience

If you’ve ever turned down a city street only to be blasted with air, you’ve stepped into what is known as an urban canyon.

Much like their geological counterparts, urban canyons are gaps between two tall surfaces — in this case, buildings. The gusts they channel, however, have real implications. They can magnify a hurricane’s winds or increase a city’s air temperature depending on their arrangement — an arrangement known as city texture. The problem is, according to researchers at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), that current hazard mitigation practices don’t consider city texture. Consequently, they frequently underestimate damages, in some cases by as much as a factor of three.

Reconsidering current practices

To understand the potential impact of city texture, CSHub researchers first investigated the current construction practices. One of the practices they examined were building codes.

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Building codes are sets of regulations governing the design, construction, alteration, and maintenance of structures.” One of their purposes is to protect the inhabitants of a building from natural disasters by specifying the strength of that building.

To keep buildings safe from wind hazards, codes stipulate how a building must interact with the wind, a value known as a drag coefficient. The drag coefficient of a building determines the amount of air resistance it will experience when exposed to the wind. As a building’s drag coefficient increases, so does its likelihood of damage.

“Design codes assume that buildings have fixed drag coefficients. And in a way, that makes sense — the shape of a building doesn’t change much,” says Jake Roxon, a researcher at CSHub. “However, we’ve found that it’s not just the shape of the building that affects its drag coefficient, but also the local configuration of adjacent buildings, which we refer to as urban texture.”

Urban texture measures the probability of finding a neighboring building at a certain distance away from a given building. Roxon calculates it by drawing rings of a certain diameter around each building in a city. Then he counts the number of buildings in each ring.

The more buildings in each ring, the greater the probability is of finding a building at that distance. And the higher the probability, the more ordered and regular the local texture is, while the lower the probability, the more disordered and unpredictable. To capture a whole city’s texture, Roxon averages together the texture of each of its buildings.

“On average, we have found that areas with disordered textures have more resilience,” says Roxon. “If you are unable to predict which angle the wind will come from, it will offer the greatest level of protection. On the other hand, for an ordered city with the same density of buildings, you would expect to see more damage during an extreme hazard event.”

The reason behind the resilience of disordered streets is how they distribute wind. By distributing wind more randomly, disordered cities like Boston or Paris experience less of the magnification that occurs as the wind travels the corridors of ordered cities, such as New York. In some cases, cities with more ordered textures can magnify hurricane winds from a Category 3 to a Category 4, Roxon has found.

The impact of city texture on drag coefficients and wind loads appeared prominently during Hurricane Irma in 2017, which passed through West Florida.

“An example of the texture effect is Sarasota and Lee counties in Florida during Irma,” explains Ipek Bensu Manav, a CSHub researcher collaborating with Roxon. “Those counties are situated close to each other geographically, so they experience a similar hurricane risk. And when you look at the building stocks, they are also similar — mostly single and two-floor single-family houses.”

However, the two counties differed in terms of texture.

“Sarasota County has a less-ordered texture, falling less onto a typical grid, and Lee County has a more orderly texture,” says Manav. “When looking at Lee County we saw more structural damage — some buildings collapsed completely. There were more flooding and overturning of vegetation as well. So, Irma caused a lot more damage in the county that had a higher texture effect.”

It turns out, too, that ordered textures have a similar effect on heat.

“We have found this to be the case with temperature as well — specifically, the urban heat island effect,” says Roxon. “Ordered cities experience the greatest temperature difference between them and their rural surroundings at night.”

Code cracking

So, then, if layouts of streets greatly influence hazard damage, why don’t building codes account for them?

Simply put, it’s currently too difficult to incorporate them.

Right now, the standard tool for investigating the drag coefficients of a building is computational fluid dynamics (CFD). CFD simulations measure the drag coefficient of a building and its hazard risk by modeling the flow of heat and wind. Though highly accurate, CFD simulations demand prohibitively intense time and computing requirements at scale.

“Using current resources, CFD simulations simply don’t work on the scale of cities,” says Roxon. “New York City, for example, has over 1 million buildings. Running a simulation would take a long time. And if you make just one small adjustment to the arrangement of buildings or the direction of the wind, you have to rerun the simulation.”

Despite their imperfections, CFD simulations remain an important tool for understanding wind flow. But Roxon believes his city texture model can compensate for CFD’s limitations and, in the process, make cities more resilient.

“We have found that there are certain variables derived from city texture that allow us, with relative accuracy, to estimate the drag coefficients for buildings and identify areas vulnerable to risks of damage. Then we can run CFD simulations to determine precisely where that damage will occur.”

Essentially, city texture serves as a first-line tool for stakeholders, allowing them to assess risk and then use their resources, including CFD, more efficiently to identify vulnerable buildings for retrofit and, in turn, save lives.

The complete picture

In addition to the loss of life, natural disasters inflict an immense financial toll. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 258 natural disasters have caused more than $1.75 trillion of damage in the United States since 1980.

While numerous practices can predict and mitigate these costs, Manav has found that they still leave a lot on the table — namely, city texture.

By collaborating with Roxon, she has discovered that by discounting community characteristics like city texture, current models underestimate losses, often dramatically.

To apply texture to hurricane losses, Manav looked once again to Florida’s Sarasota and Lee counties. She conducted a conventional loss estimation and a city texture-adjusted loss estimation for each county based on the 95th percentile of annual expected hazard events — equivalent to some of the strongest hurricanes, like Irma. She found that the expected losses increased when she incorporated city texture into her estimations. The increase was particularly acute in Lee County, whose ordered texture would likely magnify wind loads.

“In Sarasota County, we saw an increase in the expected loss from 1 percent to 6 percent of average home’s value when incorporating city texture,” says Manav. “But doing the same for Lee County, we saw an appreciably higher amount of damage, equivalent to approximately 9 percent of an average home’s value.”

Without incorporating city texture, then, these conventional estimations dramatically underestimate damages. This makes residents unaware of their hazard risk, and consequentially leaves them vulnerable.

The incentives for resilience

As sobering as these loss estimations are, Manav hopes they may yet help communities become more hazard-resilient.

Currently, she notes, hazard resilience has not become broadly implemented because most remain unaware of its cost benefits.

“One reason hazard-mitigation practices are not being implemented is that their benefits are not being communicated thoroughly,” she says. “Obviously, there is the cost of constructing to better standards. But to balance out these costs there are the benefits of reduced repair costs following hazard events.”

These reduced damage costs are significant.

Actions as simple as choosing hardier shingles, improving roof-to-wall connections, and adding shutters and impact-rated windows can mitigate hazard damages enough to pay back in as little as two years in hazard-prone areas like coastal Florida.

By using city texture to calculate hazard costs, Manav and Roxon hope homeowners, developers, and policymakers will choose to implement these relatively simple practices. The only key is making their incentives widely known.

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“Living drug factories” might treat diabetes and other diseases

One promising way to treat diabetes is with transplanted islet cells that produce insulin when blood sugar levels get too low. However, patients who receive such transplants must take drugs to prevent their immune systems from rejecting the transplanted cells, so the treatment is not often used.

To help make this type of therapy more feasible, MIT researchers have now devised a way to encapsulate therapeutic cells in a flexible protective device that prevents immune rejection while still allowing oxygen and other critical nutrients to reach the cells. Such cells could pump out insulin or other proteins whenever they are needed.

“The vision is to have a living drug factory that you can implant in patients, which could secrete drugs as-needed in the patient. We hope that technology like this could be used to treat many different diseases, including diabetes,” says Daniel Anderson, an associate professor of chemical engineering, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the senior author of the work.

In a study of mice, the researchers showed that genetically engineered human cells remained viable for at least five months, and they believe they could last longer to achieve long-term treatment of chronic diseases such as diabetes or hemophilia, among others.

Suman Bose, a research scientist at the Koch Institute, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. 

Protective effect

Patients with type 1 diabetes usually have to inject themselves with insulin several times a day to keep their blood sugar levels within a healthy range. Since 1999, a small number of diabetes patients have received transplanted islet cells, which can take over for their nonfunctioning pancreas. While the treatment is often effective, the immunosuppressant drugs that these patients have to take make them vulnerable to infection and can have other serious side effects.

For several years, Anderson’s lab has been working on ways to protect transplanted cells from the host’s immune system, so that immunosuppressant drugs would not be necessary.

“We want to be able to implant cells into patients that can secrete therapeutic factors like insulin, but prevent them from being rejected by the body,” Anderson says. “If you could build a device that could protect those cells and not require immune suppression, you could really help a lot of people.”

To protect the transplanted cells from the immune system, the researchers housed them inside a device built out of a silicon-based elastomer (polydimethylsiloxane) and a special porous membrane. “It’s almost the same stiffness as tissue, and you make it thin enough so that it can wrap around organs,” Bose says.

They then coated the outer surface of the device with a small-molecule drug called THPT. In a previous study, the researchers had discovered that this molecule can help prevent fibrosis, a buildup of scar tissue that results when the immune system attacks foreign objects.

The device contains a porous membrane that allows the transplanted cells obtain nutrients and oxygen from the bloodstream. These pores must be large enough to allow nutrients and insulin to pass through, but small enough so that immune cells such as T cells can’t get in and attack the transplanted cells.

In this study, the researchers tested polymer coatings with pores ranging from 400 nanometers to 3 micrometers in diameter, and found that a size range of 800 nanometers to 1 micrometer was optimal. At this size, small molecules and oxygen can pass through, but not T cells. Until now, it had been believed that 1-micrometer pores would be too large to stop cellular rejection.

Drugs on demand

In a study of diabetic mice, the researchers showed that transplanted rat islets inside microdevices maintained normal blood glucose levels in the mice for more than 10 weeks.

The researchers also tested this approach with human embryonic kidney cells that were engineered to produce erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that promotes red blood cell production and is used to treat anemia. These therapeutic human cells survived in mice for at least the 19-week duration of the experiment. 

“The cells in the device act as a factory and continuously produce high levels of EPO. This led to an increase in the red blood cell count in the animals for as long as we did the experiment,” Anderson says.

In addition, the researchers showed that they could program the transplanted cells to produce a protein only in response to treatment with a small molecule drug. Specifically, the transplanted engineered cells produced EPO when mice were given the drug doxycycline. This strategy could allow for on-demand production of a protein or hormone only when it is needed.

This type of “living drug factory” could be useful for treating any kind of chronic disease that requires frequent doses of a protein or hormone, the researchers say. They are currently focusing on diabetes and are working on ways to extend the lifetime of transplanted islet cells.

“This is the eighth Nature journal paper our team has published in the past four-plus years elucidating key fundamental aspects of biocompatibility of implants. We hope and believe these findings will lead to new super-biocompatible implants to treat diabetes and many other diseases in the years to come,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and an author of the paper.

Sigilon Therapeutics, a company founded by Anderson and Langer, has patented the use of the THPT coating for implantable devices and is now developing treatments based on this approach.

The research was funded by JDRF. Other authors of the paper include Lisa Volpatti, Devina Thiono, Volkan Yesilyurt, Collin McGladian, Yaoyu Tang, Amanda Facklam, Amy Wang, Siddharth Jhunjhunwala, Omid Veiseh, Jennifer Hollister-Lock, Chandrabali Bhattacharya, Gordon Weir, and Dale Greiner.

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3 Questions: Jonathan Parker on building an economic recovery

The Covid-19 pandemic is a public health crisis with enormous economic implications: As much of the U.S. reduces daily activity in spring 2020, unemployment is already surging and experts are forecasting major drops in GDP during the second quarter of the year. U.S. Congress has also just passed a $2 trillion aid package for individuals and businesses.

To assess the current state of the economy, MIT News contacted Jonathan Parker, the Robert C. Merton Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Among his other areas of research, Parker is a leading expert in understanding how U.S. citizens use stimulus payments from the government, and how big an impact such efforts make on GDP and the macroeconomy.

Q: What are the particular effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, and how should economic policy be used to respond?

A: Unlike in the typical recession, the main responsibility of our government today is not directly economic policy. First and foremost, we have to focus on winning the medical war against the virus. This not only saves lives, but is also the best way to help the economy. However, the war hasn’t gone well at this point, and for good public health reasons we have shut down large parts of our economy. People are not going to work, producing goods, and earning income, and people are avoiding the types of consumption that would put them in crowded places. So, there is going to be a huge collapse in GDP and national income.

Q: The U.S. Congress just passed a $2 trillion aid package to help compensate for the drastic economic slowdown. To what extent can such policy measures maintain incomes?

A: There is no way for us to make up the lost income, because we have lost it by not producing the goods and services that earn it. That said, we can transfer money to people so that the most vulnerable people don’t lose access completely to the goods and services that we do have. And that is part of what House and Senate leaders have just done in passing the recent relief package. The bill includes what are now being called “stimulus payments” to send around $1,200 out to American households. [The package also includes enhanced unemployment insurance for many people, as well as other aid for people adversely affected by the shutdown.]

While this is called stimulus, it is better thought of as disaster insurance for now. We don’t want the economy stimulated. People should be staying home. But the hardest hit need to be able to pay bills and eat. Ideally, we would freeze time for the period when we are isolating, to limit the spread of the virus and allow the government to catch up with the production of virus-wartime medical supplies like ventilators and masks and test kits, so that we can move from isolating all of us to isolating only the sick. And then having frozen time, we would restart the economy where we were before. Sending out checks to people allows those at the bottom of the income and wealth distribution to survive this freeze, and is part of restarting where we left off.

Q: Don’t we need to give significant funds to businesses for the same reason?

A: No, and yes. Starting with “no,” we don’t have to give funds to large firms, or even make them favorable loans. In the American economic system, when large companies that are profitable in the long run go bankrupt, they continue to operate and employ Americans, and emerge from bankruptcy sometimes stronger than before. This happened for General Motors in the financial crisis, and American Airlines operated for years in bankruptcy. For large companies, bankruptcy is only about the division of profits between stockholders and bondholders, not about whether the company continues to operate, so loans and transfers to large corporations almost exclusively benefit the stockholders.

U.S. stocks are owned by the very wealthiest people all over the world, and I think it is a mistake for the stimulus program to be transferring money from taxpayers to the world’s wealthiest people right now (or any time). The parts of the $2 trillion bill that are for supporting large firms are incorrectly fighting the last war. In 2008, the government supported banks because they were all threatened and, like Lehman Brothers, they cannot survive bankruptcy. So, this aspect of the current legislation is a mistake.

But there is an important answer of “yes,” also. First, in crisis times, there is a large increase in the demand for money and safe money-like assets so that financial markets can function. The Federal Reserve is tasked with providing the money and money-like assets that are appropriate with the demands of businesses, and it is doing this nicely. This type of support makes the taxpayer money, so it’s a win-win situation, not a bailout. Of course, this legislation also has the Treasury involved and is supporting private bond markets, and while this can also help, we have to look more closely at what is and is not a subsidy from taxpayers to stockholders of big firms, rather than an aid to the economy.

Second, small businesses need help to survive this crisis. Small businesses do not survive bankruptcy. While many will be able to renegotiate leases and bank loans and so forth, many others will not. Thus, I am highly supportive of the parts of this bill that provide somewhat-subsidized loans to small businesses to keep them operational through the economic hard times. Again, we want to be able to restart the economy when the virus threat is contained, and to do that, we want our small businesses to also be able to restart and thrive.

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Engineers 3D print soft, rubbery brain implants

The brain is one of our most vulnerable organs, as soft as the softest tofu. Brain implants, on the other hand, are typically made from metal and other rigid materials that over time can cause inflammation and the buildup of scar tissue.

MIT engineers are working on developing soft, flexible neural implants that can gently conform to the brain’s contours and monitor activity over longer periods, without aggravating surrounding tissue. Such flexible electronics could be softer alternatives to existing metal-based electrodes designed to monitor brain activity, and may also be useful in brain implants that stimulate neural regions to ease symptoms of epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and severe depression.

Led by Xuanhe Zhao, a professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering, the research team has now developed a way to 3D print neural probes and other electronic devices that are as soft and flexible as rubber.

The devices are made from a type of polymer, or soft plastic, that is electrically conductive. The team transformed this normally liquid-like conducting polymer solution into a substance more like viscous toothpaste — which they could then feed through a conventional 3D printer to make stable, electrically conductive patterns.

The team printed several soft electronic devices, including a small, rubbery electrode, which they implanted in the brain of a mouse. As the mouse moved freely in a controlled environment, the neural probe was able to pick up on the activity from a single neuron. Monitoring this activity can give scientists a higher-resolution picture of the brain’s activity, and can help in tailoring therapies and long-term brain implants for a variety of neurological disorders.

“We hope by demonstrating this proof of concept, people can use this technology to make different devices, quickly,” says Hyunwoo Yuk, a graduate student in Zhao’s group at MIT. “They can change the design, run the printing code, and generate a new design in 30 minutes. Hopefully this will streamline the development of neural interfaces, fully made of soft materials.”

Yuk and Zhao have published their results today in the journal Nature Communications. Their co-authors include Baoyang Lu and Jingkun Xu of the Jiangxi Science and Technology Normal University, along with Shen Lin and Jianhong Luo of Zheijiang University’s School of Medicine.

The team printed several soft electronic devices, including a small, rubbery electrode.

From soap water to toothpaste

Conducting polymers are a class of materials that scientists have eagerly explored in recent years for their unique combination of plastic-like flexibility and metal-like electrical conductivity. Conducting polymers are used commercially as antistatic coatings, as they can effectively carry away any electrostatic charges that build up on electronics and other static-prone surfaces.

“These polymer solutions are easy to spray on electrical devices like touchscreens,” Yuk says. “But the liquid form is mostly for homogenous coatings, and it’s difficult to use this for any two-dimensional, high-resolution patterning. In 3D, it’s impossible.”

Yuk and his colleagues reasoned that if they could develop a printable conducting polymer, they could then use the material to print a host of soft, intricately patterned electronic devices, such as flexible circuits, and single-neuron electrodes.

In their new study, the team report modifying poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate, or PEDOT:PSS, a conducting polymer typically supplied in the form of an inky, dark-blue liquid. The liquid is a mixture of water and nanofibers of PEDOT:PSS. The liquid gets its conductivity from these nanofibers, which, when they come in contact, act as a sort of tunnel through which any electrical charge can flow.

If the researchers were to feed this polymer into a 3D printer in its liquid form, it would simply bleed across the underlying surface. So the team looked for a way to thicken the polymer while retaining the material’s inherent electrical conductivity.

They first freeze-dried the material, removing the liquid and leaving behind a dry matrix, or sponge, of nanofibers. Left alone, these nanofibers would become brittle and crack. So the researchers then remixed the nanofibers with a solution of water and an organic solvent, which they had previously developed, to form a hydrogel — a water-based, rubbery material embedded with nanofibers.

They made hydrogels with various concentrations of nanofibers, and found that a range between 5 to 8 percent by weight of nanofibers produced a toothpaste-like material that was both electrically conductive and suitable for feeding into a 3D printer.

“Initially, it’s like soap water,” Zhao says. “We condense the nanofibers and make it viscous like toothpaste, so we can squeeze it out as a thick, printable liquid.”

Implants on demand

The researchers fed the new conducting polymer into a conventional 3D printer and found they could produce intricate patterns that remained stable and electrically conductive.

As a proof of concept, they printed a small, rubbery electrode, about the size of a piece of confetti. The electrode consists of a layer of flexible, transparent polymer, over which they then printed the conducting polymer, in thin, parallel lines that converged at a tip, measuring about 10 microns wide — small enough to pick up electrical signals from a single neuron.

MIT researchers print flexible circuits (shown here) and other soft electrical devices using new 3-D-printing technique and conducting polymer ink.  

The team implanted the electrode in the brain of a mouse and found it could pick up electrical signals from a single neuron.

“Traditionally, electrodes are rigid metal wires, and once there are vibrations, these metal electrodes could damage tissue,” Zhao says. “We’ve shown now that you could insert a gel probe instead of a needle.”

In principle, such soft, hydrogel-based electrodes might even be more sensitive than conventional metal electrodes. That’s because most metal electrodes conduct electricity in the form of electrons, whereas neurons in the brain produce electrical signals in the form of ions. Any ionic current produced by the brain needs to be converted into an electrical signal that a metal electrode can register — a conversion that can result in some part of the signal getting lost in translation. What’s more, ions can only interact with a metal electrode at its surface, which can limit the concentration of ions that the electrode can detect at any given time.

In contrast, the team’s soft electrode is made from electron-conducting nanofibers, embedded in a hydrogel — a water-based material that ions can freely pass through.

“The beauty of a conducting polymer hydrogel is, on top of its soft mechanical properties, it is made of hydrogel, which is ionically conductive, and also a porous sponge of nanofibers, which the ions can flow in and out of,” Lu says. “Because the electrode’s whole volume is active, its sensitivity is enhanced.”

In addition to the neural probe, the team also fabricated a multielectrode array — a small, Post-it-sized square of plastic, printed with very thin electrodes, over which the researchers also printed a round plastic well. Neuroscientists typically fill the wells of such arrays with cultured  neurons, and can study their activity through the signals that are detected by the device’s underlying electrodes.

For this demonstration, the group showed they could replicate the complex designs of such arrays using 3D printing, versus traditional lithography techniques, which

involve carefully etching metals, such as gold, into prescribed patterns, or masks — a process that can take days to complete a single device.

“We make the same geometry and resolution of this device using 3D printing, in less than an hour,” Yuk says. “This process may replace or supplement lithography techniques, as a simpler and cheaper way to make a variety of neurological devices, on demand.”

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Optimizing complex decision-making

When he began his engineering program at École Polytechnique in his hometown of Paris, Jean Pauphilet did not aspire to the academy.

“I used to associate academia with fundamental research, which I don’t enjoy much,” he says. “But slowly, I discovered another type of research, where people use rigorous scientific principles for applied and impactful projects.”

A fascination with projects that have direct applications to organizational problems led Pauphilet to the field of operations research and analytics — and to a PhD at the Operations Research Center (ORC), a joint program between the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing and the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Operations research models decision-making processes as mathematical optimization problems, such as planning for energy production given unpredictable fluctuations in demand. It’s a complex subject that Pauphilet finds exhilarating. “Operations in practice are very messy, but I think that’s what makes them exciting. You’re never short on problems to solve,” he says.

Working in the lab of Professor Dimitris Bertsimas, and in collaboration with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Pauphilet focuses on solving challenges in the health care field. For example, how can hospitals best make bed assignments and staffing decisions? These types of logistical decisions are “a pain point for everyone,” he notes.

“You really feel that you’re making peoples’ lives easier because when you’re talking about it to doctors and nurses, you realize that they don’t like to do it, they’re not trained at it, and it’s keeping them from actually doing their job. So, for me it was clear that it had a positive impact on their workload.”

Becoming an expert

As the son of two doctors, Pauphilet is already comfortable working within the medical field. He also feels well-prepared by his training in France, which allows students to choose their majors late and emphasizes a background in math. “Operations research requires versatility,” he explains. “Methodologically, it can involve anything ranging from probability theory to optimization algorithms and machine learning. So, having a strong and wide math background definitely helps.”

This mentality has allowed him to grow into an expert in his field at MIT. “I’m less scared of research now,” he explains, “You might not find what you were expecting, but you always find something that is relevant to someone. So [research] is uncertain, but not risky. You can always get back on your feet in some way.” It’s a mentality that’s given him the confidence to find, solve, and address operations problems in novel ways in collaboration with companies and hospitals.

Pauphilet, who plans to remain in academia, has found himself thinking about the different pedagogical philosophies in the U.S. and France. At MIT, he completed the Kaufman Teaching Certificate Program to become more familiar with aspects of teaching not typically experienced as a teaching assistant, such as designing a course, writing lectures, and creating assignments.

“Coming from France and teaching in the U.S., I think it’s especially interesting to learn from other peoples’ experience and to compare what their first experience of learning was at their universities in their countries. Also [it’s challenging] to define what is the best method of teaching that you can think of that acknowledges the differences between the students and the way they learn, and to try to take that into account in your own teaching style.”

Culture and community

In his free time, Pauphilet takes advantage of cultural and intellectual offerings in Cambridge and Boston. He frequents the Boston Symphony Orchestra (which offers $25 tickets for people under 40) and enjoys hearing unfamiliar composers and music, especially contemporary music with surprising new elements.

Pauphilet is an avid chef who relishes the challenge of cooking large pieces of meat, such as whole turkeys or lamb shoulders, for friends. Beyond the food, he enjoys the long conversations that these meals facilitate and that people can’t necessarily experience in a restaurant. (As an aside he notes, “I think the service in a restaurant here is much more efficient than in Europe!”). Still, Pauphilet enjoys going out to dinner at Cambridge-area eateries like the Faialense Sport Club, a Portuguese restaurant, or eating a Boston cream pie at Darwin’s Ltd. every Sunday.

Pauphilet is also the president of MIT’s French Club, which organizes a variety of events for around 100 French-speaking graduate students, postdocs, and undergraduates — from movie nights and barbecues to wine tastings and mixers with other Boston-area French groups. Though his undergraduate institution is well-represented at MIT, Pauphilet feels strongly about creating a network for those Francophones who may not have his luck, so they can feel as at home as he does.

Now at the end of his PhD, Pauphilet has the chance to reflect on his experiences over the past three and a half years. In particular, he has found a deep sense of community in his cohort, lab, and community here. He attributes some of that to his graduate program’s structure — which begins with two required classes that everyone in the cohort takes together — but that’s just one aspect of the investment in building community Pauphilet has felt at MIT.

“It’s a great environment. Honestly, I find that everyone is very mindful of students. I have a great relationship with my advisor that is not only based on research, and I think that’s very important,” he says.

Overall, Pauphilet attributes his significant personal and professional growth in grad school to learning in MIT’s collaborative and open environment. And, he notes, being at the Institute has affected him in another important way.

“I’m a bit nerdier than I used to be!”

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Rolling out remote learning

Moving some 1,200 MIT subjects to a remote teaching and learning model, launched today, has been less like flipping a switch and more like building the switch itself — with whatever was on hand. In short, it’s a very MIT kind of problem.

In late February, before the coronavirus altered daily life and work in the U.S., Meghan Perdue, a digital learning lab fellow in Open Learning and an instructor in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, noticed some rumblings on the horizon: Universities in Asia were switching to teaching online as the virus took hold there. She shared her concerns with Krishna Rajagopal, dean for digital learning, who, in turn, looped in Ian A. Waitz, vice chancellor for undergraduate and graduate education, and Sheryl Barnes, director of residential education in Open Learning. They began thinking, hypothetically, of how MIT could address such a challenging situation. With the help of other digital learning lab fellows across MIT, they began planning in earnest, designing online learning workshops and developing best practices.

In early March, as the outbreak appeared to be turning into a global pandemic, Waitz formed the Covid-19 Academic Continuity Working Group as part of a broader emergency management effort to ensure academic, residential life, research, and business continuity at MIT. From the get-go, he advocated a “pen-knife and matches” approach, with a focus on “thinking less about technology and more about how to put learning first” in the event, as has now happened, that most of the students, faculty, and instructors would be living and working off-campus.

Building the switch

With that in mind, as part of the working group, Rajagopal launched an intense and evolving effort that has drawn upon experts in the Teaching and Learning Lab (TLL), Open Learning, Information Systems and Technology (IS&T), and departments across MIT. It has been a monumental task: How do you go from a physical classroom like 10-250 to a multipaned Zoom window or video segments and online problems? How do you balance when to use real-time teaching with asynchronous? How do you support faculty and students along the way? And how do you do all this under the intense time constraints imposed by the ever-changing responses to Covid-19?

In short order, IS&T, TLL, and Open Learning have collaborated to build a teaching resource site that provides soup-to-nuts instructions on preparing classes for remote delivery. The site also focuses on best practices; ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion; and maintaining community; despite the fact that students are engaging from around the globe.

Meanwhile, Vice President for IS&T Mark Silis and his team have been at the ready to bolster and retool the Institute’s technical backbone to align with virtual learning. In addition to negotiating MIT-wide licenses for Zoom, Slack, Piazza, and Gradescope, and expanded Dropbox allocations for file storage, Silis says, “we are pleased to report that we launched a beta version of a Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) program that will simplify the integration of Zoom, Piazza, and Gradescope with MIT’s Stellar and LMOD learning management environments for courses in which instructors plan to use live Zoom sessions for every class and recitation.” Rajagopal commented that IS&T’s “lightning-fast response to needs and never-say-impossible attitude has been astonishing.”

Equally adept at wrangling technology has been Sloan School of Management’s Wes Esser, Chief Technology Officer. Esser and his team have been eager to share their virtual learning expertise with the rest of the campus. Silis wrote in a blog post, “Sloan’s experience has been invaluable in their early embrace of the Zoom platform and its integration in the evolution of their academic programs. The ability to bring the Zoom platform to the entire MIT community within a matter of a few days, would simply not have been possible without our Sloan colleagues, and for that we all owe them a debt of thanks.”

Division of Student Life (DSL) also lent a hand, working with IS&T to ensure that students who needed access to technical tools to learn remotely, such as loaner laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots, would be ready for anything, from p-sets to office hours to live or recorded lectures.

One MIT

Throngs of faculty and other staff have come together to help make teaching and learning remote. Even before the decision was made to migrate to virtual instruction, faculty were on it, says Rajagopal. He had reached out to the instructional teams of the largest MIT classes to assess their readiness and to get a sense of how they were thinking about going remote. Appropriately, he says, “the response was magnificent and very MIT.” Faculty were already stepping up, with large economics, physics, and electrical engineering and computer science courses some of the first to make the switch.

For her part, Perdue has offered a steady drumbeat of workshops since early March to help faculty acclimate to teaching online. (To date, 15 two-hour workshops, and counting.) Likewise, two of Rajagopal’s key thought and action partners, Barnes and Janet Rankin, director of the Teaching and Learning Lab, have run webinars and fielded hundreds of questions about everything from how to build community in distributed learning environments, to team teaching, to creating video segments, to Zoom pedagogy. They turned their respective offices into tactical command centers, lending expertise and inspiration to faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants across campus.

Of course, not all modes of instruction translate easily to online platforms. “We also have labs, project classes, design classes, and performance classes and these will be a harder challenge,” Rajagopal says, “where instructors — and students — will need creativity and flexibility to achieve learning goals.” Some faculty have embraced these challenges early on. In 2.007, the iconic design and manufacturing course, professors Amos Winter and Maria Yang have worked to find creative solutions and silver linings, and planned for ways for students to build with at-hand materials. Likewise, in 8.13, the major lab class for physics juniors, Professor Gunther Roland was already confident that although students won’t be able to “twiddle the knobs,” they will achieve many of their learning goals via doing data analysis, writing a paper, and giving presentations.

Emma Teng, the T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations, has been one of the many department leaders rallying her colleagues. “I feel my unit is prepared to begin the ‘best possible’ remote teaching on Monday,” she says. “We have the right policies, right technologies, right supports, and right spirit to enter into this endeavor. Not that there won’t be glitches, but after the experiences of the past two weeks people are ready to roll with the glitches as well!”

Expressing her gratitude to all those working behind the scenes to virtualize instruction, she says, “No one wished to find themselves in this place, but this group and so many others have worked tirelessly to make it the best it could possibly be.”

As collaboration has and will continue to be the key ingredient for success, Open Learning created an open community site for faculty to work together and share ideas and tips, which has seen lively traffic since it launched. Contributors have chimed in on topics like preventing Zoombombing (when interlopers disrupt an online class); how to conduct office hours and recitations; and even how to turn your cellphone into an overhead camera.

Staying connected to the Infinite — and each other

The parallel to remote teaching is, of course, remote learning. With that in mind, the Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC) created a website for students which helps students navigate their new academic and social landscape. The website focuses on learning styles, well-being, and ensuring that classes still have that MIT feel. And in a letter to students Rajagopal and Waitz reminded students to be flexible too: “Don’t be surprised if you encounter a kid or two in the background, spouses and partners might pop in and out of view, as may pets, and everything will not always go according to plan.”

To help students stay connected, the Division of Student Life, OVC, and other campus partners are launching a collaborative effort to match every student with a Student Success Coach. Over 500 volunteers from across MIT have come forward to serve in this new support role. Through weekly one-on-one meetings, coaches will listen to how students are doing — as learners, and overall — and connect them to each other and to MIT in ways that will help them succeed.

“You can think of this as a way to keep students connected to the Infinite,” says Lauren Pouchak, director of special projects in the OVC, who is working with Elizabeth Cogliano Young, associate dean and director of the Office of the First Year, and Gus Burkett, senior associate dean in DSL. The three are leading an effort “to create a new kind of fabric, now that the physical campus is gone.”

And now that classes are underway, they and the hundreds of staff who helped implement remote learning at MIT can pause, briefly, and catch their collective breath. There is much more to be done. There will be hiccups along the way. And there will be unexpected lessons learned and opportunities, too.

“None of us have ever done this before, so we will navigate together,” says Rajagopal. “We will be making course corrections all the time. We will plan as we go, and then change our plan. We will be creative, flexible, and we will deliver to our students something that we can be proud of.”

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Scene at MIT: Donations of personal protective equipment ready for local hospitals

While much of the MIT campus is quiet, Mail Services has seen a steady stream of activity this week as it acts as the staging and sorting area for thousands of donated Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from across campus.

More than 50 departments, labs, and centers — as well as individual community members — have responded to a call to donate extra, unopened PPE to support area hospitals and frontline health care workers in need. Some labs even included handwritten notes of thanks and support on their donation.

A cross departmental effort has allowed for a quick response to an outpouring of donations: Mail Services and Custodial Services have collected donated PPEs from across campus, while Campus Services Senior Manager Marty O’Brien; Environment, Health, and Safety Associate Director Nick Paquin; and Office of Sustainability Project Manager Steve Lanou have worked to sort and inventory items as they come in. O’Brien, along with Mail Services Supervisor Darren O’Connor and Manager Mike Fahie, have to date delivered donations to area hospitals including Cambridge Health Alliance and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, as well as to the Cambridge Police and Fire Departments. Additional distribution to area hospitals is planned.

As these donations go out, Professor Elazer R. Edelman, faculty lead on this effort and the director of the Institute for Medical Engineering (IMES), notes that hospitals still remain in acute need of PPE, and are specifically in need of unopened and unused face masks including clinical and surgical; face shields; gloves; powered air-purifying respirators; gowns; cleaning wipes with bleach; hand sanitizers; swabs including Dacron, rayon, or nylon swabs; and culture media. Labs with any of these items in any quantity are encouraged to email donate-ppe@mit.edu to arrange collection.

While the handling these donations focuses on collecting available PPE for rapid distribution, another PPE team is organizing efforts across campus to consider manufacturing and sterilization solutions. The PPE manufacturing team can be reached at manufacturer-ppe@mit.edu.

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