New “risk triage” platform pinpoints compounding threats to US infrastructure

Over a 36-hour period in August, Hurricane Henri delivered record rainfall in New York City, where an aging storm-sewer system was not built to handle the deluge, resulting in street flooding. Meanwhile, an ongoing drought in California continued to overburden aquifers and extend statewide water restrictions. As climate change amplifies the frequency and intensity of extreme events in the United States and around the world, and the populations and economies they threaten grow and change, there is a critical need to make infrastructure more resilient. But how can this be done in a timely, cost-effective way?

An emerging discipline called multi-sector dynamics (MSD) offers a promising solution. MSD homes in on compounding risks and potential tipping points across interconnected natural and human systems. Tipping points occur when these systems can no longer sustain multiple, co-evolving stresses, such as extreme events, population growth, land degradation, drinkable water shortages, air pollution, aging infrastructure, and increased human demands. MSD researchers use observations and computer models to identify key precursory indicators of such tipping points, providing decision-makers with critical information that can be applied to mitigate risks and boost resilience in infrastructure and managed resources.

At MIT, the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has since 2018 been developing MSD expertise and modeling tools and using them to explore compounding risks and potential tipping points in selected regions of the United States. In a two-hour webinar on Sept. 15, MIT Joint Program researchers presented an overview of the program’s MSD research tool set and its applications.  

MSD and the risk triage platform

“Multi-sector dynamics explores interactions and interdependencies among human and natural systems, and how these systems may adapt, interact, and co-evolve in response to short-term shocks and long-term influences and stresses,” says MIT Joint Program Deputy Director C. Adam Schlosser, noting that such analysis can reveal and quantify potential risks that would likely evade detection in siloed investigations. “These systems can experience cascading effects or failures after crossing tipping points. The real question is not just where these tipping points are in each system, but how they manifest and interact across all systems.”

To address that question, the program’s MSD researchers have developed the MIT Socio-Environmental Triage (MST) platform, now publicly available for the first time. Focused on the continental United States, the first version of the platform analyzes present-day risks related to water, land, climate, the economy, energy, demographics, health, and infrastructure, and where these compound to create risk hot spots. It’s essentially a screening-level visualization tool that allows users to examine risks, identify hot spots when combining risks, and make decisions about how to deploy more in-depth analysis to solve complex problems at regional and local levels. For example, MST can identify hot spots for combined flood and poverty risks in the lower Mississippi River basin, and thereby alert decision-makers as to where more concentrated flood-control resources are needed.

Successive versions of the platform will incorporate projections based on the MIT Joint Program’s Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework of how different systems and stressors may co-evolve into the future and thereby change the risk landscape. This enhanced capability could help uncover cost-effective pathways for mitigating and adapting to a wide range of environmental and economic risks.  

MSD applications

Five webinar presentations explored how MIT Joint Program researchers are applying the program’s risk triage platform and other MSD modeling tools to identify potential tipping points and risks in five key domains: water quality, land use, economics and energy, health, and infrastructure. 

Joint Program Principal Research Scientist Xiang Gao described her efforts to apply a high-resolution U.S. water-quality model to calculate a location-specific, water-quality index over more than 2,000 river basins in the country. By accounting for interactions among climate, agriculture, and socioeconomic systems, various water-quality measures can be obtained ranging from nitrate and phosphate levels to phytoplankton concentrations. This modeling approach advances a unique capability to identify potential water-quality risk hot spots for freshwater resources.

Joint Program Research Scientist Angelo Gurgel discussed his MSD-based analysis of how climate change, population growth, changing diets, crop-yield improvements and other forces that drive land-use change at the global level may ultimately impact how land is used in the United States. Drawing upon national observational data and the IGSM framework, the analysis shows that while current U.S. land-use trends are projected to persist or intensify between now and 2050, there is no evidence of any concerning tipping points arising throughout this period.  

MIT Joint Program Research Scientist Jennifer Morris presented several examples of how the risk triage platform can be used to combine existing U.S. datasets and the IGSM framework to assess energy and economic risks at the regional level. For example, by aggregating separate data streams on fossil-fuel employment and poverty, one can target selected counties for clean energy job training programs as the nation moves toward a low-carbon future. 

“Our modeling and risk triage frameworks can provide pictures of current and projected future economic and energy landscapes,” says Morris. “They can also highlight interactions among different human, built, and natural systems, including compounding risks that occur in the same location.”  

MIT Joint Program research affiliate Sebastian Eastham, a research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment, described an MSD approach to the study of air pollution and public health. Linking the IGSM with an atmospheric chemistry model, Eastham ultimately aims to better understand where the greatest health risks are in the United States and how they may compound throughout this century under different policy scenarios. Using the risk triage tool to combine current risk metrics for air quality and poverty in a selected county based on current population and air-quality data, he showed how one can rapidly identify cardiovascular and other air-pollution-induced disease risk hot spots.

Finally, MIT Joint Program research affiliate Alyssa McCluskey, a lecturer at the University of Colorado at Boulder, showed how the risk triage tool can be used to pinpoint potential risks to roadways, waterways, and power distribution lines from flooding, extreme temperatures, population growth, and other stressors. In addition, McCluskey described how transportation and energy infrastructure development and expansion can threaten critical wildlife habitats.

Enabling comprehensive, location-specific analyses of risks and hot spots within and among multiple domains, the Joint Program’s MSD modeling tools can be used to inform policymaking and investment from the municipal to the global level.

“MSD takes on the challenge of linking human, natural, and infrastructure systems in order to inform risk analysis and decision-making,” says Schlosser. “Through our risk triage platform and other MSD models, we plan to assess important interactions and tipping points, and to provide foresight that supports action toward a sustainable, resilient, and prosperous world.”

This research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science as an ongoing project.

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David Julius ’77 shares the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine

David Julius, a 1977 graduate of MIT, will share the 2021 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this morning in Stockholm.

Julius, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, shares the prize with Ardem Patapoutian, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute, for their discoveries in how the body senses touch and temperature.

Both scientists helped to answer a fundamental question regarding how the nervous system interprets our environment: How are temperature and mechanical stimuli converted into electrical impulses in the nervous system?

Using capsaicin, a compound that gives chili peppers their distinctive burning sensation, Julius was able to identify a receptor in the nerve endings of skin that responds to heat. His experiments revealed that this receptor, which he called TRPV1, is an ion channel that is activated by painful heat.

“David Julius’ discovery of TRPV1 was the breakthrough that allowed us to understand how differences in temperature can induce electrical signals in the nervous system,” according to today’s announcement by the Nobel committee.

Later, Julius and Patapoutian independently discovered a receptor called TRPM8, which responds to cold. Patapoutian was also honored for his discovery of receptors that respond to mechanical force in the skin and other organs. Their work on how the body senses temperature and mechanical stimuli is now being harnessed to develop treatments for a variety of diseases, including chronic pain.

Julius, who was born in New York, earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from MIT in 1977. He received a PhD in 1984 from University of California at Berkeley and was a postdoc at Columbia University before joining the faculty of the University of California at San Francisco in 1989.

He is the 39th MIT graduate to win a Nobel Prize.

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For campus “porosity hunters,” climate resilience is the goal

At MIT, it’s not uncommon to see groups navigating campus with smartphones and measuring devices in hand, using the Institute as a test bed for research. During one week this summer more than a dozen students, researchers, and faculty, plus an altimeter, could be seen doing just that as they traveled across MIT to measure the points of entry into campus buildings — including windows, doors, and vents — known as a building’s porosity.

Why measure campus building porosity?

The group was part of the MIT Porosity Hunt, a citizen-science effort that is using the MIT campus as a place to test emerging methodologies, instruments, and data collection processes to better understand the potential impact of a changing climate — and specifically storm scenarios resulting from it — on infrastructure. The hunt is a collaborative effort between the Urban Risk Lab, led by director and associate professor of architecture and urbanism Miho Mazereeuw, and the Office of Sustainability (MITOS), aimed at supporting an MIT that is resilient to the impacts of climate change, including flooding and extreme heat events. Working over three days, members of the hunt catalogued openings in dozens of buildings across campus to better support flood mapping and resiliency planning at MIT.

For Mazereeuw, the data collection project lies at the nexus of her work with the Urban Risk Lab and as a member of MIT’s Climate Resiliency Committee. While the lab’s mission is to “develop methods, prototypes, and technologies to embed risk reduction and preparedness into the design of cities and regions to increase resilience,” the Climate Resiliency Committee — made up of faculty, staff, and researchers — is focused on assessing, planning, and operationalizing a climate-resilient MIT. The work of both the lab and the committee is embedded in the recently released MIT Climate Resiliency Dashboard, a visualization tool that allows users to understand potential flooding impacts of a number of storm scenarios and drive decision-making.

While the debut of the tool signaled a big advancement in resiliency planning at MIT, some, including Mazereeuw, saw an opportunity for enhancement. In working with Ken Strzepek, a MITOS Faculty Fellow and research scientist at the MIT Center for Global Change Science who was also an integral part of this work, Mazereeuw says she was surprised to learn that even the most sophisticated flood modeling treats buildings as solid blocks. With all buildings being treated the same, despite varying porosity, the dashboard is limited in some flood scenario analysis. To address this, Mazereeuw and others got to work to fill in that additional layer of data, with the citizen science efforts a key factor of that work. “Understanding the porosity of the building is important to understanding how much water actually goes in the building in these scenarios,” she explains.

Though surveyors are often used to collect and map this type of information, Mazereeuw wanted to leverage the MIT community in order to collect data quickly while engaging students, faculty, and researchers as resiliency stewards for the campus. “It’s important for projects like this to encourage awareness,” she explains. “Generally, when something fails, we notice it, but otherwise we don’t. With climate change bringing on more uncertainty in the scale and intensity of events, we need everyone to be more aware and help us understand things like vulnerabilities.”

To do this, MITOS and the Urban Risk Lab reached out to more than a dozen students, who were joined by faculty, staff, and researchers, to map porosity of 31 campus buildings connected by basements. The buildings were chosen based on this connectivity, understanding that water that reaches one basement could potentially flow to another.

Urban Risk Lab research scientists Aditya Barve and Mayank Ojha aided the group’s efforts by creating a mapping app and chatbot to support consistency in reporting and ease of use. Each team member used the app to find buildings where porosity points needed to be mapped. As teams arrived at the building exteriors, they entered their location in the app, which then triggered the Facebook and LINE-powered chatbot on their phone. There, students were guided through measuring the opening, adjusting for elevation to correlate to the City of Cambridge base datum, and, based on observable features, noting the materials and quality of the opening on a one-through-three scale. Over just three days, the team, which included Mazereeuw herself, mapped 1,030 porosity points that will aid in resiliency planning and preparation on campus in a number of ways.

“The goal is to understand various heights for flood waters around porous spots on campus,” says Mazereeuw. “But the impact can be different depending on the space. We hope this data can inform safety as well as understanding potential damage to research or disruption to campus operations from future storms.”

The porosity data collection is complete for this round — future hunts will likely be conducted to confirm and converge data — but one team member’s work continues at the basement level of MIT. Katarina Boukin, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering and PhD student fellow with MITOS, has been focused on methods of collecting data beneath buildings at MIT to understand how they would be impacted if flood water were to enter. “We have a number of connected basements on campus, and if one of them floods, potentially all of them do,” explains Boukin. “By looking at absolute elevation and porosity, we’re connecting the outside to the inside and tracking how much and where water may flow.” With the added data from the Porosity Hunt, a complete picture of vulnerabilities and resiliency opportunities can be shared.

Synthesizing much of this data is where Eva Then ’21 comes in. Then was among the students who worked to capture data points over the three days and is now working in ArcGIS — an online mapping software that also powers the Climate Resiliency Dashboard — to process and visualize the data collected. Once completed, the data will be incorporated into the campus flood model to increase the accuracy of projections on the Climate Resiliency Dashboard. “Over the next decades, the model will serve as an adaptive planning tool to make campus safe and resilient amid growing climate risks,” Then says.

For Mazereeuw, the Porosity Hunt and data collected additionally serve as a study in scalability, providing valuable insight on how similar research efforts inspired by the MIT test bed approach could be undertaken and inform policy beyond MIT. She also hopes it will inspire students to launch their own hunts in the future, becoming resiliency stewards for their campus and dorms. “Going through measuring and documenting turns on and shows a new set of goggles — you see campus and buildings in a slightly different way,” she says, “Having people look carefully and document change is a powerful tool in climate and resiliency planning.” 

Mazereeuw also notes that recent devastating flooding events across the country, including those resulting from Hurricane Ida, have put a special focus on this work. “The loss of life that occurred in that storm, including those who died as waters flooded their basement homes  underscores the urgency of this type of research, planning, and readiness.”

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Ana Pantelic appointed executive director of MIT D-Lab

MIT D-Lab recently welcomed new Executive Director Ana Pantelic to its team. Pantelic has worked at the confluence of systems change and social innovation and brings nearly 15 years of experience in policy and practice from Latin America, East Africa, and the Balkans.

“As we prepare to enter our third decade, we are excited to have Ana on board to guide our vision and help implement our goal to deepen and broaden D-Lab's impact at MIT and in the world,” says D-Lab Founding Director Amy Smith. “Her leadership skills and experience navigating complex projects in Colombia and Uganda make her an excellent choice as executive director, and we look forward to working with her.”

“I am excited to be here,” says Pantelic. “D-Lab is steering brilliant minds — at MIT and around the world — toward the challenges of global poverty.”

Paths shaped by curiosity and serendipity

Specializing in poverty reduction through the lens of finance, Pantelic’s experience includes working for UNICEF, where she launched Uganda’s first urban social protection program for adolescent girls, and Fundación Capital, where she founded a digital solution proven to increase the financial health of people living in poverty. She has been invited to share her insights at conferences in more than 20 countries and has authored several publications, is fluent in three languages, and holds a master’s degree in international relations from Boston University and a doctoral degree in political science from the University of Belgrade.

Of her career trajectory, Pantelic comments, “I’ve experienced geographic and thematic depth and breadth in my work over the years, and have intentionally sought diversity, using intellectual curiosity and a dose of serendipity to guide me.”

Sounds a lot like D-Lab: global, organic in its development, guided by curiosity, and grounded in expertise.

D-Lab was founded in 2002 by Amy Smith, as a single class working with a community partner in Haiti who identified a need for cooking-fuel alternatives to wood and wood-derived charcoal. As D-Lab added subjects to its academic roster, it also gained depth in research ranging from biomass fuels, evaporative cooling, and water purification to the study of local innovation and field research methods, and grew its cherished network of community partners around the world. Over the course of nearly two decades, MIT D-Lab’s programs have grown to include more than 15 interdisciplinary MIT classes; engineering and social science research groups; methodologies that guide technology design and development for, with, and by people living in poverty; and a network of community partners in two-dozen countries who work with D-Lab on a suite of international field programs.

“D-Lab plays a critical role at MIT and in international development,” Pantelic says. “More than 2,500 students have participated in a class or research opportunity with D-Lab, and they are overwhelmingly satisfied with their D-Lab experiences. A study showed that we are increasing their ability to understand global social issues, design solutions to problems, and integrate knowledge across disciplines; and we are influencing their career paths.”

A participatory approach to design and development

“Persistent poverty is a consequence of power imbalance,” says Pantelic, “and those experiencing it rarely have the opportunity to help design the policies and programs meant for them. Whether it is governments designing social safety net programs or nonprofits distributing water purification tablets, people living in poverty are usually defined as the ‘beneficiaries’ of a proposed solution, rather than as ‘customers’ or even ‘designers’ of that solution. D-Lab does a great job of challenging those power dynamics.”

D-Lab is known around the world for this approach to participatory design in resource-constrained settings. D-Lab students, researchers, and practitioners don’t design in a vacuum. Community partners identify needs, frame problems, and communicate cultural and material preferences, and D-Lab brings engineering, computing, and other knowledge and experience to the design table.

And this excites Pantelic. “I think that students are drawn to D-Lab because they want to have a positive impact on people and the planet,” she notes. “And along the way, they find that scarcity fuels creativity, and that solving engineering questions with the additional complexity of constraints within low-income communities provides a tremendous platform for learning.”

Hitting the ground running

There is a lot to learn and a lot to do as the new executive director, and Pantelic is impressing the D-Lab team as a quick study.

“Since her start at D-Lab just over a month ago, Ana has hit the ground running,” says Associate Dean of Engineering Maria Yang, who serves as academic faculty director at D-Lab. “She has absorbed an extraordinary amount of material about D-Lab’s history and operations and met with staff at D-Lab and across MIT. After a quiet August, she is now soaking up the very special atmosphere at D-Lab’s space in N51, with students pouring in for classes, the workshop humming, and researchers taking up their posts and their work on campus again. It is a pleasure to have her on board.”

This fall, D-Lab is offering six classes, and engaging in research and practice both remotely and in person. “D-Lab classes stand out at MIT for their ability to help students understand the complexity of social problems and develop global awareness,” says Pantelic. “Some students feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and are no longer satisfied with chasing profit over purpose. D-Lab provides students with a window to the world through experiential learning and participatory innovation, and invites them to connect to the MIT motto of 'mens et manus,' or 'mind and hand,' to design for a more equitable world.”

Gearing up for D-Lab’s 20th anniversary

In 2017, on the occasion of D-Lab’s 15th anniversary, MIT President L. Rafael Reif remarked in a letter of congratulations that “D-Lab has become a global laboratory, leveraging MIT’s strengths to design, create, build, and make a better world,” and that D-Lab “has evolved into one of MIT’s most popular and meaningful experiences.” Four years later, having deepened its work and expanded its impact, D-Lab is on the cusp of celebrating its first two decades.

“I joined D-Lab at a pivotal moment,” says Pantelic. “Next year we will be celebrating an important milestone, and this is a great opportunity to not only reflect on our trajectory but also to explore where we want to go next. I’ll be working closely with our staff, students, and community partners to define a strategy for D-Lab in which we do more of what we do well, while further integrating diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into our organizational culture.”

Kate Trimble, senior associate dean and director of the Office for Experiential Learning, says of Pantelic: “It takes a special person to lead a complex organization like D-Lab that has such an important and expansive mission — educating MIT students, conducting research that produces actionable findings to address global poverty challenges, and catalyzing and supporting innovation in low- and middle-income communities around the world. Ana has the core values, global experience, leadership skills, and passion for building a better world that make her the right person for this moment in D-Lab’s nearly 20-year history.”

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Professor Emeritus Frederick Frey, a leader in the field of geochemistry, dies at 83

MIT Professor Emeritus Frederick A. Frey, a geochemist whose innovative research unlocked many mysteries of the Earth’s interior, died Sept. 13 in Natick, Massachusetts. He was 83.

Frey was a pioneer of trace element geochemistry in the study of Earth’s mantle. He established himself as a leading geochemist early in his career by introducing novel applications of techniques and instrumentation — such as radiochemical neutron activation analysis, integrating it with X-ray fluorescence, isotope dilution, radiogenic isotope ratios and field studies — to study variations in the composition of the Earth's most common rocks and enable quantitative modeling of magmatic processes.

“Fred literally shaped this field of geochemistry,” says Timothy Grove, MIT's Robert R. Shrock Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “He used this information on variations in composition to understand processes of melting in the Earth's deep interior in all of the major tectonic environments.”

Over his career spanning five decades as a member of the faculty at MIT, Frey taught the fundamentals of geochemistry to hundreds of students and trained more than 30 doctoral students, many of whom also became leaders in the field.

“Fred Frey had a huge impact on my, and many other former students', personal and professional lives,” says Alberto Saal, professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University. “He gave students from many countries — the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Chile and Argentina, to cite only a few — the opportunity to pursue graduate studies at MIT, and that completely changed the trajectory of our lives. We were very fortunate to have Fred Frey cross our path.”

Frey published well over 200 papers, including one as recently as 2017.

“His publications cover an exceedingly wide range of topics, almost all in highly rated journals,” said J. Michael Rhodes, professor of geochemistry, volcanology, and petrology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, when Frey won the Distinguished Geologic Career Award from the Geological Society of America in 2014. “Many are 'classics' that have been highly influential in modern geochemistry.”

Born April 1, 1938, Frey earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in 1960. While there, he was a member of Tau Beta Pi, a national engineering honor society. He originally chose a chemical engineering degree, predicting that it would provide job opportunities at a chemical company. However, after working in the chemical industry, he returned to the University of Wisconsin for a PhD in physical chemistry, which he completed in 1967.

It was during his PhD that he got his first taste for studying rare-earth elements (REE) when he was asked to use radiochemical neutron activation analysis to determine the amount of REE in peridotite, a rock abundant in the Earth’s mantle. The resulting paper, “Rare Earths in Oceanic Basalt,” is considered to be groundbreaking in the discipline. Immediately after his thesis defense in 1966, he was offered a faculty position at MIT.

Frey recognized early on that analyzing the trace elements in the Earth’s mantle was imperative to understanding the chemical heterogeneity observed in the mantle, and to model its dynamics and melting processes. This insight turned out to be pivotal in geology and geochemistry even though he recalled, when accepting the GSA Distinguished Geologic Career Award, that he was often asked, “How can you ignore 99 percent of the rock?”

Although Frey helped lead the instrumentation “revolution” of the 1960s in geochemical research, which both made higher-quality data more accessible to the geochemical community at large and rendered more cumbersome and tedious methods obsolete, the authors of a 2016 editorial in Geochemica Cosmochemica Acta, in a special issue honoring Frey’s work, suggested that it was his early experiences with more painstaking methodology that helped cultivate Frey’s “uncompromising insistence on the importance of the highest-quality geochemical data.”

Frey's background and training were in the laboratory, yet he embraced field studies because he believed that knowing the environment from which a sample was taken was critical for understanding its geochemistry. His field travels were diverse, and took him from the Chilean Andes to the Indian Ocean, as well as to Antarctic Kerguelen Island. He considered his work on Kerguelen a career highlight and spent considerable time in Iceland and Hawaii.

Frey adored travel and adventure, according to his family members, and he himself joked in 1987, “My students have noted the ploy of switching hemispheres to insure the combination of accessible volcanoes, pleasant weather, and amenities such as nearby beaches or lakes.”

Frey's family has received condolences from scientists and students all over the world, his wife, Julie, says.

“I have been profoundly moved by the emails from students," she says. “For some, he was almost a father figure. He had more impact than anybody else in their lives.”

Frey's son, Oren, says his father liked to think of himself as “Joe Average, but clearly that was not the case.”

“He traveled all over the world, was a true pioneer in his field, loved bird-watching and snorkeling, embraced and encouraged nontraditional adventures, and was a loving father and spouse,” he says.

Frey was the associate editor of Geochemica Cosmochemica Acta for more than 20 years. He was the president of the Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology Section of the American Geophysical Union from 2000 to 2002. He was also selected to be a member of the Apollo Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team.

Frey was a fellow at the American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society, European Association for Geochemistry, and Geological Society of America. He was awarded the American Geophysical Union Bowen Award in 1986, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Wisconsin in 2006, in addition to the GSA Distinguished Geologic Career Award in 2014.

The Frey family plans to hold a memorial service sometime in the second quarter of 2022.

Additional reporting for this piece was contributed by Kate S. Petersen.

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MIT economist Nancy Rose receives the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award

MIT economist Nancy L. Rose, the Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics, has been awarded the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (CSWEP).

The annual prize, named in honor of the late Wellesley College faculty member who was the first chair of CSWEP, recognizes an individual who has furthered the status of women in the economics profession through example, achievements, increasing our understanding of how women can advance in the economics profession, or mentoring others. The CSWEP prize citation notes that Rose is “an accomplished scholar, an award-winning teacher, a gifted advisor and mentor, and a strong academic leader.”

Accepting the award, Rose thanked mentors, colleagues, and generations of MIT students for inspiring and motivating her work and service. She called for renewed commitment to expanding the diversity of the economics profession, not only to strengthen the talent pool, expand research agendas, or because “it’s the right thing to do,” but also for its ability to transform, for the better, the experiences of all economists.

Rose’s research focuses on industrial organization, especially the role of regulation in affecting firm behavior and consumer welfare. She has studied the impact of government policies in the airline, trucking, and electric utility industries. Rose has also played a central role in advising the next generation of scholars in industrial organization. CSWEP notes that “many of the women trained and mentored by Professor Rose have gone on to stellar careers and leadership roles in academia.”

Rose has been an active contributor to both public policy and the economics profession. Between 2014 and 2016, she served as deputy attorney general for economic analysis in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She has served as vice president of the American Economic Association, is currently vice president of the Industrial Organization Society, and was selected as a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow at MIT in 2012 for her contributions to undergraduate teaching. Rose also founded, and led from 1990 until 2014, the Industrial Organization program at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rose received her PhD in economics from MIT in 1985, and joined the faculty in the MIT Sloan School of Management Applied Economics Group. In 1994, she accepted a joint appointment in the MIT Department of Economics. She moved full-time to economics in 1997. Rose served as economics department head from 2017 to 2020, the second woman to hold this post. The first, the late Ann F. “Nan” Friedlaender, was department head in 1983-84 and served as the dean of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences from 1984 to 1990.

Reflecting on the Carolyn Bell Shaw prize, Rose says, "I’m proud of this award, as I think it speaks to the long tradition MIT economics has for promoting women and their contributions to the economics profession. It’s been a great environment for me over my career, and a privilege to pass this along to future generations."

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MIT Welcome Center opens in Kendall Square

The MIT Welcome Center opened this month in Building E38, just steps from the Kendall/MIT MBTA subway station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visitors and MIT community members can stop by the center for wayfinding and other information about campus and the local area. Later this fall, prospective students and their families can attend in-person information sessions in the center’s 200-seat auditorium, which will also be made available for use by the Cambridge community.

“This open, bright, and welcoming space allows us to craft an even better visit experience for our prospective students and their families,” says Stu Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services. “Being in the heart of Kendall Square and sharing the space with MIT InnovationHQ, MIT Open Space Programming team, the Office of Sustainability, and others in E38 will enable visitors to experience the dynamic, open, and community-minded nature of MIT.”

A gift of Tina Moghadam and Hamid Moghadam ’77, SM ’78, the center was originally slated to launch in summer 2020, but the opening was delayed due to the pandemic. The center is the result of an iterative process guided by a working group made up of representatives from across the Institute, including the Innovation Initiative, MIT Admissions, the Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer (EVPT), Open Space Programming, the Institute Office of Communications, Campus Construction, Campus Planning, Institute Events, the MIT Museum, and the MIT Press.

“It’s exciting to see the center and open space come to life as part of MIT’s Kendall Square gateway,” says EVPT Glen Shor. “Visitors will quickly come to see what MIT is all about, and how to make their way around our vibrant campus.”

“Only at MIT”

In creating the center, a goal was for visitors to know right away they had entered MIT’s campus. The artwork, lighting, and interiors are inspired by the concept of “only at MIT,” evoking MIT’s eclectic culture.

The lobby’s “Welcome Wall” features a photo of MIT’s Great Dome, overlaid by the colorful doodles of artist Lydia Krasilnikova ’14, MEng’16, who also illustrated the MIT Admissions website and the first-year application.

The first floor’s rotating story wall currently showcases the work of the student group Borderline, which created art representing what it means to be an MIT student. When viewed with the Artive app, the mural is transformed into dynamic, animated images.

Also on display is Arthur Ganson’s delightful kinetic sculpture “Margot’s Cat.” Stepping on the foot pedal springs the sculpture to life, as a dollhouse-size chair moon-bounces over a cat figurine, evoking the convergence of engineering, creativity, and playfulness — a familiar triad at MIT.

The fabric frieze above the auditorium will soon feature a lighting installation by Soso Limited, an interactive agency founded by MIT alumni, that runs on Processing, a graphical programming language developed by MIT researchers.

And for visitors wanting to snap a photo of their visit to campus, a selfie wall with a three-dimensional MIT sign provides an Instagram-ready backdrop.

A community green space

Beyond the center’s large glass windows are two acres of open space with trees and plantings — a space for visitors to eat lunch, take a break from the urban environment, and enjoy the nature around them.

The area acts as an extension of the Infinite Corridor, connecting Kendall to the rest of campus. “We’ve already seen people running into each other, like they do in the Infinite, exchanging ideas and reconnecting,” explains Jessie Schlosser Smith, director of open space programming.

Since launching the space in August, Smith and her team have organized nearly a dozen free, public events, including movie nights, a Tuesday “Lunch Breaks” series with performances, talks, and hands-on activities, and Saturday morning programs geared toward families.

The programming brings activity into the public space and shows the MIT community’s wide range of experiences and interests, telling a fuller story and providing a window into an MIT that local community members might not know.

“Having this beautiful outdoor space has been amazing, precious, and useful during Covid times,” says Smith. “Partnering with local artists and nonprofit organizations, we are developing programs that foster inclusive interactions and community connections. Our Cambridge neighbors are encouraged to enjoy our public spaces. We want to create a welcoming and inclusive environment through our programming and broaden the reach of MIT.”

Earlier this month, local artist Silvia Lopez Chavez led a community art project where participants were asked to reflect on experiences, challenges, and hopes of the past year. Their reflections will be incorporated into a temporary mural that will be displayed on the building’s glass façade on Main Street that will be unveiled on Oct. 27.

“With the opening of the welcome center, open space, the MIT Press Bookstore, and later, the MIT Museum, the gateway area will soon live up to its promise of advancing Kendall’s trademark bump-and-connect vibe — with a focused emphasis on welcoming all from MIT, Cambridge, the region, and beyond,” says Sarah Gallop, co-director of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations.

The MIT Welcome Center is open to the public, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., excluding MIT holidays. Visit openspace.mit.edu to learn about about upcoming MIT Open Space Programming events.

de MIT News https://ift.tt/3F6bQRW