Presentation practice: Hurricanes to prosthetics

The wind whipped down Massachusetts Ave. Torrents of rain pelleted the roof of the Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center. The remnants of Hurricane Jose circled above.

But dry inside the Johnson Ice Rink, mechanical engineering graduate student Sydney Sroka had a different hurricane on her mind. Data from 1997’s Hurricane Guillermo informed her research on improving hurricane intensity forecasts.

“The overwhelming majority of energy in a hurricane comes from warm seawater, which bubbles into sea spray because the wind is so fast,” Sroka explained, pointing to a figure of small water droplets. “The air temperature is mediated by these tiny drops of seaspray, that are affected by microphysics,” she added.

By analyzing and modeling the heat of these drops of water, she said she hopes that forecasters can make more accurate predictions about a hurricane’s strength.

Sroka was one of the over 70 graduate students participating in the annual Mechanical Engineering Research Exhibition (MERE). In its fourth year, MERE, which is hosted by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Graduate Association of Mechanical Engineers, gives mechanical engineering graduate students, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) participants, and postdocs a chance to present their work to alumni, faculty, and fellow students. Projects range from low-cost braille label makers to solar thermophotovoltaic systems and an in vitro intestinal organ model.

“I think it is very important community building event,” said Professor Nicholas Fang, MERE’s faculty advisor. “For our graduate students, this is a great opportunity to get to know each other. MERE is often their first exposure to other research activities in the department.”

MERE is more than just an opportunity for students to showcase the research they’re working on — one of its primary goals is to emphasize the importance of effective communication to a diverse audience.

The set-up is similar to a poster session at a scientific conference. Students stand in front of their posters and answer questions from attendees. At MERE, these attendees are mostly comprised of alumni and faculty, who serve as judges. The judges aren’t just interested in what kind of research these students are presenting, but how the students are presenting the research. This setup enables students the ability to practice and hone their presentation skills and prepare for upcoming conferences or qualifying exams.

“I presented last year and it was a great experience and opportunity to get useful feedback on my work,” said PhD candidate Arny Leroy, who presented this year on high performance incandescent lighting. “It’s helpful to practice presenting.”

Some students were able to exhibit live demos as a part of their presentation. During the first poster session, a robot designed to adhere to pedestrian rules whizzed around the attendees. The robot was part of Michael Everett’s research project. Meanwhile Rachel Hoffman was able to show attendees a scale model of the multi-track elevator system she is working on for e-commerce fulfillment centers.

After the judges’ marks were tallied this year’s winners were announced. The day was capped off with a keynote speech by former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino SM '88, PhD '92. Massimino chronicled his journey from his childhood on Long Island playing with an astronaut Snoopy toy, to his time as an MIT graduate student living in a small apartment in Central Square, and then finally his experience working on the Hubble Space Telescope as an astronaut.

The following students were honored by the judges:

Best Overall/Understanding: Sebastian Pattinson — “Printed mesh materials with locally tailored elasticity for compliant wearable and implantable devices.”

Highest Impact: Arny Leroy — “High performance incandescent lighting”

Most Excitement: Elise Strobach — “Optically Transparent, Thermally Insulating and Soundproofing (OTTIS) Aerogel for High-Efficiency Window Applications

Best UROP: Ryan Koeppen — “Controlling Physical Interaction: Humans Do Not Minimize Energy”

The runner-ups included Victor Prost, Vrushank Phadnis, Jerry Wang, Mohammad Farazmand, Sydney Sroka, Hyeon Yu Kim, Anoop Rajappan, Edward Burnell, Kevin Kung, and Cecile Chazot.

Those receiving honorable mention included Bethany Lettiere, Yi Huang, Abiodun Olaoye, Michael Everett, Bikram Bhatia, Xiaoyu Wu, Zheng Jie Tan, Andrew Bouma, Qifang Bao, Quantum Wei, Sahil Shah, and Yi Xue.

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New target for treating “undruggable” lung cancer

Mutations in the KEAP1 gene could point the way to treating an aggressive form of lung cancer that is driven by “undruggable” mutations in the KRAS gene, according to a new study by MIT researchers.

KEAP1 mutations occur alongside KRAS mutations in about 17 percent of lung adenocarcinoma cases. Tyler Jacks, director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and co-senior author of the study, and his colleagues found that cancer cells with nonfunctioning KEAP1 genes are hungry for glutamine, an amino acid essential for protein synthesis and energy use. Starving these cells of glutamine may thus offer a way to treat cancers with both KRAS and KEAP1 mutations.

Indeed, small-molecule-based inhibitors of glutaminase, an enzyme crucial to glutamine metabolism, slowed cancer cell growth and led to smaller tumors overall in human lung adenocarcinoma cell lines and in tumors in mice with KEAP1 mutations, the researchers found.

The study offers a way to identify lung cancer patients who might respond well to drugs that block the work of glutaminase, says MIT graduate student Rodrigo Romero, a first author on the paper that appears in the Oct. 2 online edition of Nature Medicine.

“All cell lines that we have currently tested that are KEAP1-mutant — independent of their KRAS status — appear to be exquisitely sensitive to glutaminase inhibitors,” says Romero, a graduate student in Jacks’ lab, who participated in the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) as an undergraduate.

Hyperactivating the antioxidant response

Lung adenocarcinoma accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. lung cancers, and 15 to 30 percent of those cases contain a KRAS mutation. KRAS has been “notoriously difficult to inhibit” because the usual ways of blocking the KRAS protein’s interactions or interfering with the protein’s targets have fallen short, says Romero.

Lung cancers containing KRAS mutations often harbor other mutations, including KEAP1, which is the third most frequently mutated gene in lung adenocarcinoma. To find out more about how these co-mutations affect lung cancer progression, the MIT research team created KEAP1 mutations in mouse models of lung adenocarcinoma, using the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system to target the gene.

The KEAP1 protein normally represses another protein called NRF2, which controls the activation of an antioxidant response that removes toxic, reactive oxygen species from cells. When the researchers disabled KEAP1 with loss-of-function mutations, NRF2 was able to accumulate and contribute to a “hyperactivation” of the antioxidant response.

Lung adenocarcinomas bearing the KEAP1 mutation may “take advantage of this [hyper-activation] to promote cellular growth or detoxify intracellular damaging agents,” Romero says.

In fact, when the researchers examined genes targeted by NRF2 across a sample of human lung adenocarcinoma tumors, they concluded that the expression of these genes was greater in advanced stage IV tumors, and that patients with such “up-regulated” NRF2 tumors had significantly worse survival rates than other lung adenocarcinoma patients.

Tumors hungry for glutamine

Romero and colleagues used CRISPR/Cas9 to learn more about other genetic interactions with KEAP1 mutants. Their screening demonstrated that lung cancer cells with KRAS and KEAP1 loss-of function mutations were more dependent than other cells on increased amounts of glutamine.

To learn whether this glutamine hunger could be a therapeutic vulnerability, the researchers tested two glutaminase inhibitors against the cancer cells, including one compound called CB-839 that is in phase I clinical trials for KRAS-mutant lung cancer. CB-839 slowed growth and kept tumors smaller than normal in lung adenocarcinoma with KEAP1 mutations, the researchers found.

Phase I clinical trials that treat KEAP1-mutant lung adenocarcinoma patients with a combination of CB-839 and the cancer immunotherapy drug nivolumab (Opdivo) are also underway, says Romero, who notes the MIT study might help identify patients who would be good candidates for these trials.

“There are also many clinical trials testing the efficacy of glutaminase inhibition in a variety of cancer types, independent of KRAS status. However, the results from these studies are still unclear,” Romero says.

Jacks emphasizes that his laboratory has and will continue to study several mutations beyond KEAP1 that may cooperate with KRAS in their mouse models of human lung adenocarcinoma. “The complexity of human cancer can be quite daunting,” he notes. “The genetic tools that we have assembled allow us to create models of many individual subtypes of the disease and in this way begin to define the exploitable vulnerabilities of each. The observed sensitivity of KEAP1 mutant tumors to glutaminase inhibitors is an important example of this approach. There will be more.”

Co-authors on the Nature Medicine paper include former Koch Institute postdoc Thales Papagiannakopoulos, now at New York University, and MIT professor of biology Matthew Vander Heiden. The research was funded by the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Support Grant, the National Institutes of Health, and the Koch Institute Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

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Michael Rosbash PhD ’71 wins Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine

Michael Rosbash, who earned his PhD from MIT in 1971, will share the 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, the Nobel Committee announced this morning in Stockholm.

Rosbash, now a professor of biology at Brandeis University, shares the prize with Jeffrey C. Hall of the University of Maine and Michael W. Young of Rockefeller University. The scientists were honored for “their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm.”

Circadian rhythms help living organisms adapt their biological activities to the normal 24-hour cycle of light and darkness. These rhythms influence behavior, sleep, metabolism, body temperature, and many other biological functions.

In 1984, Rosbash, Hall, and Young isolated a gene that regulates these daily rhythms in fruit flies. This gene, known as period, encodes a protein that accumulates during the night and is degraded during the day. Further work revealed that this protein inhibits the gene that encodes it, creating a negative feedback loop that is key to generating continuous oscillations.

Since then, the three scientists have discovered several other genes necessary for maintaining circadian cycles, and similar processes have been found in many other organisms, including humans.

Rosbash was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Caltech before coming to MIT to pursue a PhD in biology. He has been on the faculty at Brandeis since 1974, and he is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2013, Rosbash, Hall, and Young shared the Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine for their circadian clock research.

Rosbash is the 35th MIT alumnus to win a Nobel Prize, and the 88th MIT-connected winner of the prize.

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Fast-moving magnetic particles could enable new form of data storage

New research has shown that an exotic kind of magnetic behavior discovered just a few years ago holds great promise as a way of storing data — one that could overcome fundamental limits that might otherwise be signaling the end of “Moore’s Law,” which describes the ongoing improvements in computation and data storage over recent decades.

Rather than reading and writing data one bit at a time by changing the orientation of magnetized particles on a surface, as today’s magnetic disks do, the new system would make use of tiny disturbances in magnetic orientation, which have been dubbed “skyrmions.” These virtual particles, which occur on a thin metallic film sandwiched against a film of different metal, can be manipulated and controlled using electric fields, and can store data for long periods without the need for further energy input.

In 2016, a team led by MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering Geoffrey Beach documented the existence of skyrmions, but the particles’ locations on a surface were entirely random. Now, Beach has collaborated with others to demonstrate experimentally for the first time that they can create these particles at will in specific locations, which is the next key requirement for using them in a data storage system. An efficient system for reading that data will also be needed to create a commercializable system.

The new findings are reported this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by Beach, MIT postdoc Felix Buettner, and graduate student Ivan Lemesh, and 10 others at MIT and in Germany.

The system focuses on the boundary region between atoms whose magnetic poles are pointing in one direction and those with poles pointing the other way. This boundary region can move back and forth within the magnetic material, Beach says. What he and his team found four years ago was that these boundary regions could be controlled by placing a second sheet of nonmagnetic heavy metal very close to the magnetic layer. The nonmagnetic layer can then influence the magnetic one, with electric fields in the nonmagnetic layer pushing around the magnetic domains in the magnetic layer. Skyrmions are little swirls of magnetic orientation within these layers, Beach adds.

The key to being able to create skyrmions at will in particular locations, it turns out, lay in material defects. By introducing a particular kind of defect in the magnetic layer, the skyrmions become pinned to specific locations on the surface, the team found. Those surfaces with intentional defects can then be used as a controllable writing surface for data encoded in the skyrmions. The team realized that instead of being a problem, the defects in the material could actually be beneficial.

“One of the biggest missing pieces” needed to make skyrmions a practical data-storage medium, Beach says, was a reliable way to create them when and where they were needed. “So this is a significant breakthrough,” he explains, thanks to work by Buettner and Lemesh, the paper’s lead authors. “What they discovered was a very fast and efficient way to write” such formations.

Because the skyrmions, basically little eddies of magnetism, are incredibly stable to external perturbations, unlike the individual magnetic poles in a conventional magnetic storage device, data can be stored using only a tiny area of the magnetic surface — perhaps just a few atoms across. That means that vastly more data could be written onto a surface of a given size. That’s an important quality, Beach explains, because conventional magnetic systems are now reaching limits set by the basic physics of their materials, potentially bringing to a halt the steady improvement of storage capacities that are the basis for Moore’s Law. The new system, once perfected, could provide a way to continue that progress toward ever-denser data storage, he says.

The system also potentially could encode data at very high speeds, making it efficient not only as a substitute for magnetic media such as hard discs, but even for the much faster memory systems used in Random Access Memory (RAM) for computation.

But what is still lacking is an effective way to read out the data once it has been stored. This can be done now using sophisticated X-ray magnetic spectroscopy, but that requires equipment too complex and expensive to be part of a practical computer memory system.  The researchers plan to explore better ways of getting the information back out, which could be practical to manufacture at scale.

The X-ray spectrograph is “like a microscope without lenses,” Buettner explains, so the image is reconstructed mathematically from the collected data, rather than physically by bending light beams using lenses. Lenses for X-rays exist, but they are very complex, and cost $40,000 to $50,000 apiece, he says.

But an alternative way of reading the data may be possible, using an additional metal layer added to the other layers. By creating a particular texture on this added layer, it may be possible to detect differences in the layer’s electrical resistance depending on whether a skyrmion is present or not in the adjacent layer. “There’s no question it would work,” Buettner says, it’s just a matter of figuring out the needed engineering development. The team is pursuing this and other possible strategies to address the readout question.
 
The team also included researchers at the Max Born Institute and the Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics, both in Berlin; the Institute for Laser Technologies in Medicine and Metrology at the University of Ulm, in Germany; and the Deutches Elektroniken-Syncrotron (DESY), in Hamburg. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the German Science Foundation.

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HUBweek shines spotlight on Kendall Square’s innovation ecosystem

It’s been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” But next week Kendall Square will mark a new milestone, when it becomes a veritable innovation playground, as part of the third annual HUBweek celebration of creativity across Greater Boston. MIT’s neighborhood will host a range of interactive events and activities highlighting the inventiveness of community members of all ages.

On Oct. 11, more than two dozen events will unfold across Kendall Square, and throughout the week many more MIT-related events will shine a roving spotlight on the excitement, innovation, and creative energy pulsing through Boston and Cambridge. This year’s HUBweek is expected to draw over 20,000 people to 175 events, with participation from 180 partner organizations. MIT is one of the co-founders of HUBweek, along with Harvard University, The Boston Globe and Massachusetts General Hospital.

When Kendall Square becomes a “hub” for HUBweek on Wednesday, the MIT List Visual Arts Center will lead a public art and architecture tour across the MIT campus, showcasing buildings by architects Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, and many others. Throughout the day, from noon to 8 p.m., Kendall Square: Innovation Playground will offer a broad menu of activities and games free and open to the public. Tents at One Broadway will host hands-on opportunities including drone-racing, digital graffiti, spontaneous Snapchat art photo booths, Lego art makerspace, and more. At 5 p.m., a ground-breaking ceremony for a new graduate student residence hall, the first building to rise as part of MIT’s Kendall Square Initiative, will take place, with a reception to follow. A new, larger-than-life mural on the Main Street pedestrian walkway — designed and produced by youth from the Community Art Center’s Teen Media Program around the theme “my vision is a world where…” — will also be unveiled.

“The idea is to offer cool ways of having fun to convey the Kendall style of innovation,” says Sarah Gallop, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, who also serves as President of the Kendall Square Association. “We want to bring people into the conversation about innovation happening in Kendall Square. With all of these HUBweek events, we’re trying to amplify the fact that Kendall Square has all of the key innovation ecosystem ingredients, from research institutions to industry to good transportation, housing, retail, and a vibrant mixed-use district. And anyone can participate in that.”

HUBweek aims to spotlight, support, and strengthen the broader innovation ecosystem of the Boston region, by fostering connections and dialogue. A new feature of this year’s festivities is The HUB, a central communal gathering space in Boston’s City Hall Plaza centered around a temporary village of over 80 shipping containers, art exhibits, and geodesic domes showcasing the region’s inventiveness. MIT will host a shipping container featuring giant canvases of student art and exhibits, with students on hand to explain the various ways in which research and teaching at MIT are making a better world.

“Our vision was to create a large-scale communal space to bring together incredibly inspiring visionaries across a number of different industries here in Greater Boston — all in one location,” says Linda Pizzuti Henry, co-founder and chairwoman of HUBweek. “We strongly believe in the power of convening to bring about positive change and shape the narrative of a region.”

In addition to hosting conversations among community members, artists, and change-makers, the HUB site will be the venue for one of the week’s highlights: the culmination of the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge. The IIC, the flagship initiative of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, is a global platform for identifying and supporting technology-driven solutions for making the fast-changing digital economy work for underserved communities. In a gala event open to the public at 6 p.m. on Oct. 12 at The HUB, this year’s challenge will recognize 16 organizations chosen from 1,000 registrants, and award over $1 million to problem-solvers shaping the future of work in the digital economy. Featured speakers will include Sheila Marcelo, founder and CEO of Care.com; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc.; and Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Sama Group and LXMI; and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

Another set of events with strong MIT participation is the Future Forum. From Oct. 12 to 15, this festival of ideas within HUBweek will present dozens of speakers’ visions of the novel solutions and big trends that will shape the future. In addition to influential thinkers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Atul Gawande, several MIT faculty will offer their insights on the changes to come in the realms of urban design, machine learning, and biotechnology, among other topics. On Oct. 12, Andy McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, will share his perspective on the “Second Machine Age,” and David Sun Kong, director of MIT’s Community Biology Initiative, will give a presentation at intersection of hip hop and biology called “Bio Meets Beats.” And on Oct. 13, Karl Iagnemma, CEO of MIT spinout nuTonomy, will consider “A Driverless Future?”

Citing the IIC and other events, such as an open innovation brainstorming session on high-impact solutions to climate change that will be hosted by MIT in Faneuil Hall, Henry notes that the partnership with MIT is integral to the weeklong celebration.

“HUBweek exists to strengthen and support the innovation ecosystem here in greater Boston and to connect more people to it both locally and from abroad,” she says. “MIT is one of the key drivers behind the success of this region, and there’s no question that the innovations that come out of this institution have far-reaching, global impact. We are so proud to have MIT as one of our founding partners of HUBweek, and we are grateful for their continued guidance, support, and unwavering commitment to this mission.”

That commitment to growing a thriving innovation ecosystem includes support for new business ventures. On Oct. 10, there will be an open house at the Central Square headquarters of The Engine, a venture launched by MIT to support entrepreneurs working on “tough tech,” with collaborative work space, business advice, funding, and access to specialized equipment. The MIT Enterprise Forum will host the fourth annual Beantown Throwdown, a startup pitch competition featuring student participants from a dozen colleges and universities around the Boston area, on Oct. 13 at City Hall Plaza. And on the final two days of the week, a signature HUBweek event will take place in City Hall Plaza: the massive startup showcase called Demo Day. Veteran entrepreneur panelists will share their stories about starting ventures in Boston and persevering through setbacks, and the work of over 100 of the region’s most promising startups — including several led by MIT alumni and faculty — will be on display.

“The relationship between MIT and HUBweek has only deepened over the past three years, and we are collaborating with more partners throughout the institution, from the Initiative on the Digital Economy to the Climate CoLab, CSAIL, Media Lab, and more,” says Henry. “We look forward to deepening HUBweek’s engagement in Kendall Square and to continuing to showcase the groundbreaking work happening there, both this year and for years to come.”

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HUBweek shines spotlight on Kendall Square’s innovation ecosystem

It’s been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” But next week Kendall Square will mark a new milestone, when it becomes a veritable innovation playground, as part of the third annual HUBweek celebration of creativity across Greater Boston. MIT’s neighborhood will host a range of interactive events and activities highlighting the inventiveness of community members of all ages.

On Oct. 11, more than two dozen events will unfold across Kendall Square, and throughout the week many more MIT-related events will shine a roving spotlight on the excitement, innovation, and creative energy pulsing through Boston and Cambridge. This year’s HUBweek is expected to draw over 20,000 people to 175 events, with participation from 180 partner organizations. MIT is one of the co-founders of HUBweek, along with Harvard University, The Boston Globe and Massachusetts General Hospital.

When Kendall Square becomes a “hub” for HUBweek on Wednesday, the MIT List Visual Arts Center will lead a public art and architecture tour across the MIT campus, showcasing buildings by architects Frank Gehry, I.M. Pei, and many others. Throughout the day, from noon to 8 p.m., Kendall Square: Innovation Playground will offer a broad menu of activities and games free and open to the public. Tents at One Broadway will host hands-on opportunities including drone-racing, digital graffiti, spontaneous Snapchat art photo booths, Lego art makerspace, and more. At 5 p.m., a ground-breaking ceremony for a new graduate student residence hall, the first building to rise as part of MIT’s Kendall Square Initiative, will take place, with a reception to follow. A new, larger-than-life mural on the Main Street pedestrian walkway — designed and produced by youth from the Community Art Center’s Teen Media Program around the theme “my vision is a world where…” — will also be unveiled.

“The idea is to offer cool ways of having fun to convey the Kendall style of innovation,” says Sarah Gallop, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations, who also serves as President of the Kendall Square Association. “We want to bring people into the conversation about innovation happening in Kendall Square. With all of these HUBweek events, we’re trying to amplify the fact that Kendall Square has all of the key innovation ecosystem ingredients, from research institutions to industry to good transportation, housing, retail, and a vibrant mixed-use district. And anyone can participate in that.”

HUBweek aims to spotlight, support, and strengthen the broader innovation ecosystem of the Boston region, by fostering connections and dialogue. A new feature of this year’s festivities is The HUB, a central communal gathering space in Boston’s City Hall Plaza centered around a temporary village of over 80 shipping containers, art exhibits, and geodesic domes showcasing the region’s inventiveness. MIT will host a shipping container featuring giant canvases of student art and exhibits, with students on hand to explain the various ways in which research and teaching at MIT are making a better world.

“Our vision was to create a large-scale communal space to bring together incredibly inspiring visionaries across a number of different industries here in Greater Boston — all in one location,” says Linda Pizzuti Henry, co-founder and chairwoman of HUBweek. “We strongly believe in the power of convening to bring about positive change and shape the narrative of a region.”

In addition to hosting conversations among community members, artists, and change-makers, the HUB site will be the venue for one of the week’s highlights: the culmination of the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge. The IIC, the flagship initiative of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, is a global platform for identifying and supporting technology-driven solutions for making the fast-changing digital economy work for underserved communities. In a gala event open to the public at 6 p.m. on Oct. 12 at The HUB, this year’s challenge will recognize 16 organizations chosen from 1,000 registrants, and award over $1 million to problem-solvers shaping the future of work in the digital economy. Featured speakers will include Sheila Marcelo, founder and CEO of Care.com; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Inc.; and Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Sama Group and LXMI; and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

Another set of events with strong MIT participation is the Future Forum. From Oct. 12 to 15, this festival of ideas within HUBweek will present dozens of speakers’ visions of the novel solutions and big trends that will shape the future. In addition to influential thinkers such as Malcolm Gladwell and Atul Gawande, several MIT faculty will offer their insights on the changes to come in the realms of urban design, machine learning, and biotechnology, among other topics. On Oct. 12, Andy McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, will share his perspective on the “Second Machine Age,” and David Sun Kong, director of MIT’s Community Biology Initiative, will give a presentation at intersection of hip hop and biology called “Bio Meets Beats.” And on Oct. 13, Karl Iagnemma, CEO of MIT spinout nuTonomy, will consider “A Driverless Future?”

Citing the IIC and other events, such as an open innovation brainstorming session on high-impact solutions to climate change that will be hosted by MIT in Faneuil Hall, Henry notes that the partnership with MIT is integral to the weeklong celebration.

“HUBweek exists to strengthen and support the innovation ecosystem here in greater Boston and to connect more people to it both locally and from abroad,” she says. “MIT is one of the key drivers behind the success of this region, and there’s no question that the innovations that come out of this institution have far-reaching, global impact. We are so proud to have MIT as one of our founding partners of HUBweek, and we are grateful for their continued guidance, support, and unwavering commitment to this mission.”

That commitment to growing a thriving innovation ecosystem includes support for new business ventures. On Oct. 10, there will be an open house at the Central Square headquarters of The Engine, a venture launched by MIT to support entrepreneurs working on “tough tech,” with collaborative work space, business advice, funding, and access to specialized equipment. The MIT Enterprise Forum will host the fourth annual Beantown Throwdown, a startup pitch competition featuring student participants from a dozen colleges and universities around the Boston area, on Oct. 13 at City Hall Plaza. And on the final two days of the week, a signature HUBweek event will take place in City Hall Plaza: the massive startup showcase called Demo Day. Veteran entrepreneur panelists will share their stories about starting ventures in Boston and persevering through setbacks, and the work of over 100 of the region’s most promising startups — including several led by MIT alumni and faculty — will be on display.

“The relationship between MIT and HUBweek has only deepened over the past three years, and we are collaborating with more partners throughout the institution, from the Initiative on the Digital Economy to the Climate CoLab, CSAIL, Media Lab, and more,” says Henry. “We look forward to deepening HUBweek’s engagement in Kendall Square and to continuing to showcase the groundbreaking work happening there, both this year and for years to come.”

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Veteran engineer studies career pathways of today’s graduates

Jim Magarian spent nearly 10 years working for a major aerospace engineering company before becoming a graduate student at MIT, and many of the watershed moments in his engineering career were filled with uncertainy.

“I landed in aerospace and wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. There were pockets of time where I didn’t like what I was doing, got frustrated, and almost left,” Magarian recalls. “Fast forward a few years, now I’m a manager and I have employees going through the same thing. They’re caught off-guard, and they’re wondering if it’s the right fit and if they should leave.”

Now a third-year graduate student and an engineering leadership instructor with the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program, Magarian has taken a new path that draws on these experiences to help other engineers make their way in the field. He is investigating the job trajectories of engineering graduates and exploring why some choose to be practicing engineers while others head in different directions.

“What really drives me is to better understand the engineering careers landscape and helping people achieve career fit,” Magarian says. “I’m looking at education, the work force, and the students, and trying to understand opportunities for enhancing career fit and satisfaction.”

Magarian first joined MIT as a full-time instructor with GEL. Two years in, faculty members were encouraging him to proceed further with his new passion and pursue a PhD. Magarian was hesitant at first, but he went for it.

“Going back from industry to academia was a very big jump for me. When I was in my 20s, I would have told you I was a career industry person,” Magarian says. “[A PhD is] such an involved, long-term thing, but the hesitation has never been for a lack of passion for the work, never. MIT has been an incredibly supportive place for that. I couldn’t think of another place I would rather be taking this plunge.”

Preparing for the real world

Magarian spends 50 percent of his time working on his research project under the guidance of Warren Seering, the Weber-Shaughness Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The other half of his time is spent teaching Course 6.912 (Engineering Leadership), which is part of the GEL core curriculum and is paired with a lab component in which students work in groups on exercises and simulations that are similar to what they might face on the job as engineers.

Interest in the course, which teaches students about leadership styles, team building, ethical decision making, advocacy, and conflict management, to name a few topics, has been growing, according to Magarian, who notes that enrollment has been increasing in recent years.

Among its other goals, the course aims to give students a taste of what careers in the engineering industry are really like. “This fairytale version of what engineering is, that engineers make spaceships — it’s too vague. Those descriptions don’t tell you what the day-to-day work life is like,” Magarian says.

When is a job an engineering job?

When Magarian isn’t preparing lectures for class, he’s working on his research, advised by Seering and faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research centers around two questions. The first is: How should we characterize engineering careers in the 21st century?

There has been a recent explosion in the diversity of job titles and hybrid roles in the professional engineering world, Magarian says. For many of these roles, such as in product management or innovation strategy, for example, there may be variance in how engineering-related these roles are across industry.

“One of the things I still see with students is that some have no problem envisioning a career that involves starting out as an engineer and later becoming a manager. They don’t view that as a career change,” he says. “But then other students are trying to decide whether they want to go into engineering or management. And they view it as a dichotomy.”

These distinctions in how jobs are characterized are important for communicating about and analyzing workforce issues, such as why women make up less than 15 percent of the workers in engineering fields.

“If you’re wondering why more women aren’t going into engineering, and you don’t have a way of saying which jobs are engineering jobs, and if you’re not measuring that consistently across different research studies, you could be introducing some error,” Magarian says.

Forces at work

Thousands of papers in neatly organized folders are sitting on a metal cart behind Magarian’s desk. They hold the responses of over 1,100 seniors majoring in mechanical engineering, from nine universities across the country. Magarian hopes the data within these files will address his second important research question: What are the mechanisms at play that attract some engineering graduates to conventional engineering jobs, draw others to hybrid jobs, and cause still others to leave the field altogether?

Each student that participated in the experiment has provided their internship history and work experience, as well as other information that reflects, for example, their mathematics confidence. Magarian would provide each student with several different job descriptions: Job A might emphasize collaboration, involve a strong mathematics component, be a short-term position, and require working under someone else. Each student then provides a rating of interest for each role. Magarian is trying to understand and control for a factor that he calls “informedness” — the extent to which students are aware of certain key attributes of jobs when they are considering taking a particular role.

“The working hypothesis is that when students graduate, they have a variation in their ‘informedness,’” he says. “What happens when we take that variance out of the picture? What types of students go towards what types of roles?”

For example, Magarian says, the literature claims that math confidence, while important, does not fully determine whether an engineering student will choose a more math-intensive engineering job. However, when Magarian controls the students’ understanding of how much math the job requires, he says you start to see what you might expect. Math-confident students gravitate towards “mathy” jobs — a finding that should be useful for employers who say they have difficulty recruiting the types of students they are looking for.

Experience begets wisdom

While teaching or conducting research, Magarian often tries to put himself back in the shoes of the people he’s trying to study. He remembers when he, too, was an engineering graduate unraveling the complexities of finding the right job.

“My priorities at the time were, ‘I want to get everything taken care of. I want to get my student debt paid off. I want to get my job,’” he says. “That’s just who I was at the time. There was comfort in having a decent, respectable offer that met my needs and seemed to be the right thing. So, I can understand why students might jump on offers that are the best fit for them now.”

At the moment, Magarian isn’t sure about where he might fit once he completes his PhD, but he expects to stay somewhere at the nexus of industry, workforce issues, and higher education.

“Being an older grad student has afforded me the opportunity to spend time in the environment that I’m now passionate about researching, which gives me all kinds of ideas about what I want to investigate about that environment,” Magarian says. “So, I actually relish my industry experience, because it fueled my research interests and gave me a legitimate passion for some of the things I want to try to understand or solve.”

de MIT News http://ift.tt/2yijLfL