J-WEL grant award announcement and call for proposals in education innovation

The Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) is a new MIT initiative that promotes excellence and transformation in global education through three collaboratives: pre-K-12 (pK-12), Higher Education, and Workplace Learning.

Hazel Sive, a professor of biology and the faculty director of Higher Education at J-WEL, recently announced recipients of fall 2017 J-WEL grants in Higher Education Innovation. They are:

• Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, Department of Architecture: Culturally Sensitive Design: Art and Innovation in the Refugee Camp
• Professor W. Craig Carter, Department of Materials Science and Engineering: Improving Academic-Field-Specific Learning through Coding, Visualization, and Computational Thinking: The CodeSeal Project
• Professor Christoph Paus, Department of Physics: Fundamentals of Experimentation in the Physics Sciences using an Arduino

J-WEL is announcing a call for proposals through spring 2018 J-WEL Education Innovation Grant Program. Grants should be focused on educational innovations for pK-12, Higher Education, and Workplace Learning — generating solutions that may have MIT relevance, as well as the potential for global impact.

For deadlines, the detailed call, proposal form, budget template, and access to additional related resources, please visit the J-WEL Education Innovation Grant Program pages:

• pK-12 - due Feb. 6, 2018
• Higher Education - due March 9, 2018
• Workplace Learning - due Feb. 6, 2018

Please contact jwel-grants@mit.edu with specific questions about the process or its requirements.

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Fine-tuning cancer medicine

Details matter — perhaps most noticeably in the fight against cancer. Some patients respond to a given anticancer therapy, and some do not. A new initiative at MIT takes aim at those details, and the name of the game is precision.

The recently launched MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine (CPCM) is housed within MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and headed by physician-scientist Michael B. Yaffe, the David H. Koch Professor of Science and professor of biology and biological engineering. The center brings together leading Institute faculty members to focus on key research themes to accelerate the clinical translation of novel cancer discoveries, treatments, and technologies.

Engineering approaches to the clinic

While other institutions have begun efforts in precision medicine as well, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine stands out for using engineering approaches to solve complex clinical challenges in cancer treatment that are rooted in biology. In particular, the CPCM combines understandings of biological circuitry — along with engineering, computational, and mathematical techniques (as well as genomic ones) — to focus on signaling networks and pathways that are aberrantly regulated in cancer cells. This strategy is supported by the fact that most state-of-the-art molecularly targeted cancer therapies are focused on these key pathways.

At its core, the CPCM is driven by both internal and external collaboration, and is devoted to translational research to help the substantial number of patients who do not respond well to traditional cancer therapies — for example, those with triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, or advanced prostate cancer.

To improve outcomes for these patients, CPCM investigators are focused on four key areas of research. First among these is identifying and targeting the processes, signals, and mechanisms that determine an individual patient’s response to chemotherapy. Recent discoveries by CPCM researchers include mechanisms that cancer cells use to repair chemotherapy damage that should have killed them, to hide from drugs in protected “niches” in the body, or to grow when and where they should not.

CPCM members are also working on a second research pillar, which involves finding ways to use existing FDA-approved cancer drugs more effectively, particularly in carefully designed combinations. Combination therapies are currently used in the clinic to treat some cancers, yet the discovery process for these has been largely empirical. By contrast, CPCM investigators are integrating their knowledge of cancer biology, understandings of drugs’ mechanisms of action, and sophisticated analytical techniques, to identify or design specific combinations that work synergistically to disarm and then destroy cancer cells.

“We believe we can significantly alter cancer patients’ outcomes by determining the right combination of therapies and the right sequence of drugs for the right patients,” says Yaffe. “We’re also concentrating on innovative ways to give these drugs, like time-staggered dosages and nanoparticle delivery.” He notes that, as part of their analyses of drugs and combination regimens currently administered in the clinic, CPCM members expect to identify combinations of drugs that are not as efficacious when given simultaneously as when given sequentially, at specific intervals. Yaffe stresses that these will be important findings that could help reduce the toxicity of treatment by not exposing people to multiple drug toxicities at the same time.

In parallel with their efforts to use existing drugs more effectively, CPCM investigators are also working to identify compounds, materials, and approaches that can engage key “undruggable” genetic and molecular targets and disrupt processes driving drug resistance. The “undruggable” label often refers to the fact that a target protein or molecule lacks a site to which drugs can bind, and thus is not considered a good drug target by the pharmaceutical industry. However, using novel chemistry approaches, CPCM researchers have made early inroads against several such high-value cancer targets, including specific transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins. The center will continue and expand these efforts as the third part of its research platform, including collaborations with industry.

Finally, the fourth component of the CPCM’s efforts will be harnessing MIT’s particular expertise in big data analysis and tools to begin new and expedite existing cancer research efforts. For example, the researchers plan to use data analytics to identify selective panels of biomarkers that can be used to prioritize which of their drug combinations, treatment protocols, and formulations are best suited to a particular patient’s tumor.

Getting discoveries out the door

“Patients will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the work of the new MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine,” says Tyler Jacks, director of the Koch Institute and the David H. Koch Professor of Biology. “This research is, by its nature, imminently and rapidly translatable. By concentrating efforts on which patients will benefit from particular existing drugs or combinations of drugs, there is a relatively small step from laboratory to a treatment that is benefitting a cancer patient.”

While work on combinations of approved therapies, like that at the CPCM, may be more rapidly translatable than other cancer research, it can be challenging for industry to pursue, particularly when those drugs hail from multiple companies. Overcoming this disjuncture is one of the goals behind the establishment of the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, which was made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous donor.

Yaffe and his CPCM colleagues are committed to finding viable routes to move their cancer research into the clinic, particularly through collaborations between CPCM members, hospitals, and industry. Logistically, this means more work for the center’s research groups, including advanced laboratory and preclinical studies, safety and scale-up studies, and clinical-grade manufacturing, as well as staff to carry it out. Woven into these efforts, CPCM investigators will tap into MIT’s celebrated tradition of entrepreneurship and, even more so, the Institute’s expanding network of clinical collaborators. The philanthropic investment behind the center will provide stable financial support for the researchers’ endeavors.

The new hub in town

In addition to supporting the research of member investigators, the CPCM offers a robust training ground for young engineers and scientists interested in precision medicine. Moreover, it will serve as the hub of precision cancer medicine research at MIT and beyond, connecting with researchers across the MIT campus and partnering with clinical investigators in Greater Boston’s noted health care centers and around the country.

Five outstanding cancer researchers make up the center’s founding faculty:

• Michael B. Yaffe, MD, PhD, director, MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine; David H. Koch Professor of Science, professor of biology and biological engineering
• Michael Hemann, PhD, associate professor of biology
• Angela Koehler, PhD, Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Associate Professor, assistant professor of biological engineering
• Matthew Vander Heiden, MD, PhD, associate professor of biology, associate director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
• Forest M. White, PhD, professor of biological engineering

Efforts are currently underway to recruit an assistant director and a scientific advisory board.

As part of its charge, and key to spurring the new collaborations in precision cancer medicine that are its focus, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine will also convene lectures, events, and scientific exchanges and symposia, the first of which is slated for the fall.

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3Q: Daron Acemoglu on technology and the future of work

K. Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT, is a leading thinker on the labor market implications of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, and new technologies. His innovative work challenges the way people think about these technologies intersect with the world of work. In 2005, he won the John Bates Clark Medal, an honor shared by a number of Nobel Prize recipients and luminaries in the field of economics.

Acemoglu holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of York. His master’s degree in mathematical economics and econometrics and doctorate in economics are from the London School of Economics. With political scientist James Robinson, Acemoglu co-authored the much discussed book “Why Nations Fail” (Crown Business, 2012) and “Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy” (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He also wrote the book, “Introduction to Modern Economic Growth” (Princeton University Press, 2008). Acemoglu recently answered a few questions about technology and work.

Q: How do we begin to understand the rise of artificial intelligence and its future impact on society?

A: We need to look to the past in the face of modern innovations in machine learning, robotics, artificial intelligence, big data, and beyond. The process of machines replacing labor in the production process is not a new one. It's been going on pretty much continuously since the Industrial Revolution. Spinning and weaving machines took jobs away from spinners and weavers. One innovation would follow another, and people would be thrown out of work by a machine performing the job in a cheaper way.

But at the end of the day, the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath created much better opportunities for people. For much of the 20th century in the U.S., workers’ wages and employment kept growing. New occupations and new tasks and new jobs were generated within the framework of new technological knowledge. A huge number of occupations in the American economy today did not exist 50 years ago — radiologists, management consultants, software developers, and so on. Go back a century and most of the white-collar jobs today did not exist.

Q:  Do you think public fears about the future of work are just?

A: The way we live continuously changes in significant ways — how we learn, how we acquire food, what we emphasize, our social organizations.

Our adjustments to technology — especially transformative technologies — are not a walk in the park. It is not going to be easy and seamless and just sort itself out. A lot of historical evidence shows the process is a painful one. The mechanization of agriculture is one of the greatest achievement of the American economy but it was hugely disruptive for millions of people who suffered joblessness.

At the same time, we are capable technologically and socially of creating many new jobs that will take people to new horizons in terms of productivity and freedom from the hardest types of manual labor. There are great opportunities with artificial intelligence but whether or not we exploit them is a different question. I think you should never be too optimistic but neither should you be too pessimistic.

Q: How do you suggest people prepare for the future job market?

A: We are very much in the midst of understanding what sort of process we are going through. We don’t even necessarily know what skills are needed for the jobs of the future.

Imagine one scenario. Artificial intelligence removes the need for seasoned accountants to fulfill numeracy-related tasks. But we need tax professionals, for instance, to inform clients about their choices and options in some sort of emphatic human way. They will have to become the interface between the machines and the customers. The jobs of the future, in this instance and many others, would require communications, flexibility, and social skills.

However, I don't know if my hypothesis is true because we haven't tested it. We haven't lived through it. I see the biggest void in our knowledge. People at institutions like MIT must learn more about what's is going on so that we are better prepared to understand the future.

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Historian Robin Scheffler awarded 2018 Levitan Prize

Assistant Professor Robin Wolfe Scheffler of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) has been awarded the 2018 James A. (1945) and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities. The prestigious award comes with a $30,000 grant that will support his research into Boston’s biotechnology industry.

“Robin’s research will not only deepen our understanding of the development of the biotech industry in Greater Boston,” said Melissa Nobles, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. “It will also reveal insights into the ways that human values, community action, and public policy converge to shape technological innovation more generally.”

Scheffler, the Leo Marx Career Development Professor in the History and Culture of Science and Technology, recently completed his first book, “A Contagious Cause: The Search for Cancer Viruses and the Growth of American Biomedicine” (University of Chicago Press), which details the history of cancer virus research and its impact on the modern biological sciences. He was notified of the award by Nobles in early December.

The Kendall Square model

Scheffler says he plans to use the Levitan Prize to explore whether there is a formula for success behind the growth of the local biotech industry.

“If so, what are the ingredients? How important was MIT? How important was the regulatory framework? How much can be planned, and how much is serendipity? Can Kendall Square be replicated?” he says. “These are some of big questions I hope my research will help to answer.”

Scheffler says biotech firms tended to cluster in tradtionally industrial areas like Kendall Square, with clusters of factory buildings that provided open spaces for changing lab arrangements, solid floors, and high ceilings — all ideal for biotechnology research.

But he notes that Greater Boston also offered a more crucial resource: people. That included not just cutting-edge researchers but also the technical workers and clerical staff who work in the area’s universities and hospitals.

“It’s not just the ideas and technical innovations,” Scheffler says. “It’s also the people. A successful industry requires people with specific skills in order to flourish, and many of those people already lived here.”

Right place, right time, right archives

To date, histories of the biotech industry have tended to center on San Francisco, not only because the Bay Area is home to some of the industry’s major companies but also because the archives of many important Bay Area researchers, institutions, and firms have long available to the public, Scheffler says.

Greater Boston had lacked such resources until recently. Now, libraries at MIT, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts, and elsewhere have built a critical mass of archival material. One archive that has proven vital to the early stages of Scheffler’s work is the Recombinant DNA History Collection, held by the MIT Libraries and compiled by the late Charles Weiner, a professor of the history of science and technology at MIT.

In addition, Scheffler says many key players in the early biotech industry still live in and around Cambridge, and he plans to embark on a series of oral histories to enrich the more linear narrative presented by the archives.

“It’s just incredible timing,” he says. “If I had begun the project 10 years ago, the archives wouldn’t have been available. But if I started any later, I might have missed the chance to interview many of the people who were involved in the industry at its very beginning.”

A jumpstart from the Levitan Prize

Scheffler says the Levitan Prize also comes at the perfect time. “It’s thrilling to receive this award, particularly at the very beginning of a project,” he says. “This research is going to require long hours in the archives and conducting interviews, so support at this early stage jumpstarts the whole endeavor.”

Scheffler says he plans to interview not just pioneering researchers and company founders, but also the political leaders, day-to-day lab technicians, and citizen activists involved in biotech. Casting such a wide net will lead to a history that accounts for conflicts, contradictions, and dead ends as well as the industry’s successes.

“I would be so grateful if this award served as a beacon for those people whose experiences and views might otherwise not be included in official records,” he says, such as part-time technical workers, activists, and Kendall Square residents.

The Levitan Prize from MIT SHASS is awarded annually to support innovative and creative scholarship in the humanities. Established through a gift from the late James A. Levitan, a 1945 MIT graduate in chemistry who was also a member of the MIT Corporation, the prize was first awarded in 1990. 

This story was prepared by the MIT SHASS Communications Writing and Editorial Group: Emily Hiestand, Kathryn O'Neill, and Daniel Evans Pritchard

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MISTI Global Startup Labs celebrates 18 years

Entering its 18th year, the Global Startup Labs (GSL) program from MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) continues to recruit undergrads and graduate students across the Institute to teach entrepreneurship around the world.

Initially launched as a pilot program in Kenya, MISTI GSL now offers projects in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, Rwanda, and South Africa. Working in teams of three to four, MIT students travel abroad to help other students launch tech-based companies.

“Most MIT student instructors, when they land in a country, instantly become that country's foremost experts in entrepreneurship,” says Professor Saman Amarasinghe, the associate department head for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and faculty co-director for MISTI GSL. “It is not uncommon for a prominent CEO to consult them on how to take advantage of entrepreneurship, or senior university professors to sit in their classrooms. I have seen a vice chancellor of a leading university invite the MIT students to explain how flipped classrooms work, and an MIT freshman, who was the entrepreneurship assistant, calmly explain to a very attentive VC and his leadership team how her freshman classes at MIT worked.”

For the first time this year MISTI GSL is formally partnering with the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. The Legatum Center will help map the strategic direction of the program and the Martin Trust Center will provide the students with predeparture trainings.

“GSL is an exciting opportunity for our students to teach and learn from entrepreneurs across the world,” says Legatum Center Executive Director Georgina Campbell Flatter, a senior lecturer in technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management at MIT Sloan and a MISTI GSL faculty advisor. “Through our workshop, we’re excited to share MIT best practice in entrepreneurship education with the students, and for them to make it their own and take it to the field.”

This past summer 25 MIT students traveled to Brazil, Germany, Mauritius, Peru, Russia, and South Africa as part of the GSL program. The GSL-Peru group comprised entrepreneurship co-lead April Baker MBA '17, entrepreneurship co-lead Sandhya Bhagwandin MBA '17, technical assistant and EECS undergrad Alexa Jan, and technical lead Dalitso Banda, a master's candidate in EECS. Hosted by the University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC), the student team led their Peruvian peers in discussions, hands-on workshops, and a demo day — the final day of the course during which the UTEC teams pitched their new startups to experts in the field. 

“We were not sure what to expect. We planned out the curriculum for the first week, but we had been warned that we had to be prepared to be flexible,” the group says in a co-written report of their experiences “Through the use of technology and with the help of teammates and the UTEC contacts, we found it fairly easy to adapt to the new environment. We gained confidence in our ability to navigate foreign cultures, and we left feeling intellectually enriched.”

While more than 200 MIT students have benefitted from the “learning by teaching” technique of GSL, the program’s success can also be measured by the impact it’s had on foreign students.

“I wouldn’t have had the courage and determination to start my own business without the GSL program,” shares Lashan Silva, a 2013 GSL alumnus from Sri Lanka and the CEO and founder of Enhanzer. Enhanzer is a product development company focused on enhancing the efficiency of other businesses via cloud data storage, automated processes, and ERP consulting services. Founded in 2013, the company boasts over 11,000 transactions a day. Silva attributes his success to the GSL incubator hosted by MIT students five years ago. As part of the seven-week course, MIT GSL instructors showed Silva and his peers how to think like entrepreneurs and introduced them to various startup CEOs, senior staff, and IT experts. “At that time we didn’t have any entrepreneurship-related programs in our country. The GSL program helped me a lot to change my track from a traditional engineer to an entrepreneur,” Silva says.

The MISTI GSL program annually trains and funds top MIT students to mentor international peers, network with entrepreneurs, and teach real-world mobile app development. GSL has launched 68 programs in 22 countries: Algeria, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Zambia.

“It is so amazing to see some of the early GSL alumni who got to know about entrepreneurship through the program completely change their professional outlook and become successful entrepreneurs in their country,” Amarasinghe says. “Some are now leading companies with million dollar revenue and hundreds of employees.”

MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives is a program of the Center for International Studies within the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Students who would like to apply to MISTI GSL can do so online before Feb. 15. Students with questions can submit them to misti-gsl@mit.edu. 

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Polina Anikeeva and Feng Zhang awarded 2018 Vilcek Prize

Polina Anikeeva, the Class of 1942 Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, and Feng Zhang, the James and Patricia Poitras ’63 Professor in Neuroscience at the McGovern Institute, have each been awarded a 2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. Awarded annually by the Vilcek Foundation, the $50,000 prizes recognize younger immigrants who have demonstrated exceptional promise early in their careers.

“The Vilcek Prizes were established in appreciation of the immigrants who chose to dedicate their vision and talent to bettering American society,” says Rick Kinsel, president of the Vilcek Foundation. “This year’s prizewinners honor and continue that legacy with works of astounding, revolutionary importance.”

Polina Anikeeva, who was born in the former Soviet Union, earned her PhD in materials science and engineering at MIT in 2009 and now runs her own bioelectronics lab in the same department focused on the development of materials and devices that enable recording and manipulation of signaling processes within the nervous system. The Vilcek Foundation recognizes Anikeeva for “fashioning ingenious solutions to long-standing challenges in biomedical engineering” including the design of therapeutic devices for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury.

Feng Zhang, who is also a core member of the Broad Institute and an associate professor in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, is being recognized for his role in advancing optogenetics (a method for controlling brain activity with light) and developing molecular tools to edit the genome. Thanks to his leadership in inventing precise and efficient gene-editing technologies using CRISPR, Zhang's work has resulted in a "growing array of applications, such as uncovering the genetic underpinnings of diseases, ushering in gene therapies to cure heritable diseases, and improving agriculture." Zhang’s family immigrated to the United States from China when he was 11 years of age. 

Anikeeva and Zhang will be among eight Vilcek prizewinners honored at an awards gala in New York City in April 2018.

The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation, to honor the contributions of immigrants to the United States and to foster appreciation of the arts and sciences, was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their personal experiences and appreciation of the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country.

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Letter regarding the MIT Intelligence Quest

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

To the members of the MIT community,

This morning, MIT is launching a major new Institute-wide initiative on human and machine intelligence — the MIT Intelligence Quest, or MIT IQ — and I’m eager to explain why this effort will be crucial as we work to make a better world.

MIT IQ will consist of two parts:

• The Core, which will advance the science of human and machine intelligence, cross-pollinate ideas between the two, spark new collaborations, and engage underlying questions around ethics and societal impact, and
• The Bridge, which will provide custom-built AI tools for MIT researchers in any discipline who do not see themselves as AI experts, to accelerate their research.

You can learn more here about how MIT IQ will fit in and serve our research community.

60 years of intelligent progress

MIT IQ is focused squarely on the future — but it stems from MIT’s distinctive past. Sixty years ago, at MIT and elsewhere, big minds lit the fuse on a big question: What is intelligence and how does it work? The result: An explosion of new fields. Artificial intelligence. Cognitive science. Neuroscience. Modern linguistics. They all took off at MIT — and they have produced remarkable offshoots, from computational neuroscience, to neural nets, to empathetic robots.

The Core

Today, by tapping MIT’s exceptional strength in these and related fields, and by capitalizing on what these disciplines can teach each other, MIT IQ seeks to answer two compelling questions: How does human intelligence work, in engineering terms? And how can we use that deep grasp of human intelligence to build wiser and more useful machines, to the benefit of society?

The foundations of the AI being used now are relatively old. Some major tech firms are advancing true innovations, but most are largely engaged in squeezing brilliant new applications out of existing AI approaches. But the kind of breakthroughs that will revolutionize AI itself require fundamental new science now: a beautiful assignment for a place that loves hard problems. Already this challenge is inspiring interest from forward-looking companies and donors, and we are actively seeking more.

Today, AI is rightly generating both optimism and alarm. It will soon be a dominant source of new wealth, and therefore a new source of inequality, both between nations and within them. A vital element of MIT IQ will be research on AI’s economic, cultural and ethical implications, and how these technologies can be designed from the start to serve the best interests of our whole society. This work has natural links with MIT’s emerging effort to reinvent the future of work; expect to hear more soon.

The Bridge

While the Core pushes frontiers in basic science, the Bridge will accelerate the work of MIT researchers in virtually every discipline, by developing highly specialized AI tools. What’s more, we expect that solving such important practical problems for our own community will spin off new tools with broad impact far beyond our campus.

The best parallel for the Bridge may be Project Athena. In 1983, MIT faced a tough new problem: How to create a campus-wide distributed computing environment to serve the Institute’s educational mission. With a major commitment from leading companies such as IBM, Project Athena enabled MIT faculty and students to master this demanding problem for our community. In the process, they developed new tools — from the X Window System and Kerberos to the early seeds of instant messaging ­— that helped shape the course of desktop and distributed computing.

By inventing solutions to meet the stringent research demands of our community, the Bridge is positioned to deliver AI innovations for the nation and the world.

With gratitude and admiration

Understanding the nature of intelligence stands as one of the great problems in science; harnessing the forces of machine intelligence to make a better world stands as a defining challenge of our time. As we begin this important work, I want to thank all members of the faculty who poured the expertise and insight of a lifetime into shaping MIT IQ. The momentum you have built is thrilling, and I look forward with admiration to seeing what you achieve.

(And for anyone on campus excited about the quest that lies ahead: From noon to 2 PM today, there will be a little celebration in Lobby 10!)

With excitement and enthusiasm,

L. Rafael Reif

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