MIT Senior Lilly Chin wins “Jeopardy!” College Championship

Let’s be honest: Even the most disciplined college students don’t pay attention all the time during their classes. The temptations of a hushed conversation with a classmate, a daydream, or any number of digital distractions can be hard to resist.

But one could argue that senior Lilly Chin had an excellent excuse for tuning out during one of her comparative media studies classes last October: She was taking a 10-minute online test to qualify for the popular TV quiz show “Jeopardy!” It was only offered on one specific date, at one specific time — which happened to be during class — so she had little choice. “I was trying not to get caught by the teacher while I was answering the questions,” she later confided to a “Jeopardy!” film crew, barely suppressing a giggle.

In the end, it was worth the risk. Chin went on to become a contestant on the show, made it to the finals, and walked away with the college championship title and the tidy sum of $100,000. Sworn to secrecy since the show’s January taping, Chin was able to savor the victory tonight at a final episode screening held in Room 4-237, where she was cheered on by dozens of friends and other fans from the MIT community.

The making of a “Jeopardy!” champion

Chin was one of thousands of students from schools around the U.S. who applied in October to be contestants on the show. Of those, 250 were invited to in-person auditions in New York City in November, which consisted of a written test, gameplay, and an interview. She learned she’d made the cut — a total of 15 students and one alternate — in December, and the show was taped Jan. 10-11 in Los Angeles.

Chin, an electrical engineering and computer science major with a minor in mechanical engineering, credits part of her success to her curiosity about media, which led her to also minor in comparative media studies. She loves “investigating different forms of media, whether it’s film, video games, or children’s literature — [it’s] the same curiosity which leads me to seek out factoids about these media, and which tend to get asked about more on ‘Jeopardy!’”

A native of Decatur, Georgia, Chin is no stranger to trivia competitions; she participated in quiz bowls from 5th grade through high school. She prepared for “Jeopardy!” in a myriad of ways, like reviewing her old trivia books, reading web comics, listening to Top 40 music, and generally spending lots of time “goofing off on the internet.” She found creative ways to bolster her knowledge of subjects she didn’t know well; to address a weakness in history, she crammed The Cartoon History of the Modern World.

Chin enlisted the help of MIT friends to study and practice her gameplay, including playing Protobowl, a real-time, multi-player quiz bowl application created by her classmate, senior Kevin Kwok. She also sought advice from two MIT connections who had “Jeopardy!” experience: her former graduate resident tutor, Philip Arevalo (who motivated her to apply for the show), and Pranjal Vachaspati ’14.

Preparation aside, Chin also had a few tricks up her sleeve. One of them was buzzer strategy. “I think the game is actually more about buzzer strategy than trivia,” she says. Timing is everything: buzz too soon, before the show’s host Alex Trebek finishes reading the clue, and your buzzer will get locked out for a fraction of a second — enough time for an opponent to buzz in. The key is to time it precisely when Trebek is done speaking.

Her board strategy paid off, too. In the more conventional approach, contestants work their way through one category, moving from lower-value clues at the top of the board to higher-value clues at the bottom. Others, like Chin, prefer to jump between categories and choose clues further down the board. “It’s a bit of a controversial strategy,” she says. But the advantage is that skipping around the board can throw off your opponents and increase your odds of finding the clue with the Daily Double. “The Daily Doubles aren’t evenly distributed,” Chin explains. “People have run stats and found they tend to be in the fourth row or so.”

Being on the show was “surreal,” Chin recalls, smiling broadly. “There was a moment when all the contestants realized that this was actually happening. After the game, everyone’s hands were shaking.” To combat her own nerves, she channeled her experience on the trap shooting team (part of the MIT Sporting Clays Association), in which players shoot moving clay targets with a shotgun. “The coach is always like, ‘Don’t keep track of the score, just take it one shot at a time,’’ she says, “because especially for shooting, any sport, you need to be calm. As soon as you start thinking, ‘Oh no, what ifs’, then your game gets off and you miss everything. So I think that really helped.”

MIT senior Lilly Chin has rolled into the @Jeopardy #CollegeChampionship finals, which begin tonight! #GoLilly https://t.co/ibsGl3Afqi http://pic.twitter.com/oS2tIR90cL

— MIT (@MIT) February 23, 2017

“Nerd pride”

Throughout the course of the two-week tournament, as word spread about her progress, Chin developed quite a following on the MIT campus. “The best part of being on the show has definitely been the great outpouring of support the MIT community has given me,” she says.  “At first, I was a bit embarrassed about being on national television and tried to keep the whole thing under wraps. But soon, I found that the more people that I told, the more I found that people were eager to help and support me.”

President L. Rafael Reif, Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart, and Vice President and Dean for Student Life Suzy Nelson were among those rooting for her. “If the clue is ‘Nerd Pride,’ the answer must be, ‘What was our overwhelming reaction when we learned that Lilly Chin just won College Jeopardy?’” Reif wrote in an email to Chin. “Even better, for this longtime professor: You’re not just MIT, you're EECS! Lilly, I hope you have a moment to savor this terrific achievement.”

“[Provost] Marty Schmidt and I have decided you are the Tom Brady of ‘Jeopardy’ — great job!” Barnhart said in an email to Chin, following Chin’s second-to-last appearance on the show. Nelson wrote Chin after her strong showing in the first week: “I’m so proud of your Jeopardy performance…Plus, love your strategy of finding those Daily Doubles — bold and fearless.”

Chin developed quite a fan base among MIT students, who found creative ways to show their support, throwing screening parties and sharing their favorite moments on social media. One friend, Shi-Ke Xue ’16, created a series of gifs of Chin on the show and shared them on Reddit.

Looking back, and ahead

In retrospect, Chin admits she feels a bit bad about taking the “Jeopardy!” online test during class in October, adding, “That is one of my favorite classes.” Luckily, her professor, T.L. Taylor, who also followed her progress on “Jeopardy!” (and is now privy to Chin’s secret about the test), loves the anecdote. “How very apropos,” she says, “considering it was a class on games and culture!”

Chin, who plans to begin a PhD program in robotics after graduation, says she’ll use the prize money to pay off college loan debt and to travel to a few research conferences around the world on video game studies — a media that continues to pique her boundless curiosity.

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Virtual-reality system for the elderly wins health care prize

Virtual reality is quickly gaining steam in the gaming industry. But an MIT startup is now aiming the technology at a different demographic, putting it to use as a health care tool for the elderly.

At last night’s MIT Sloan Healthcare Innovations Prize pitch competition, Rendever earned the $25,000 grand prize for creating a virtual-reality platform that gives residents in assisted-living facilities the chance to explore the world virtually. The platform also provides cognitive therapy and tracks movement data to aid in early diagnosis of dementia.

“We’re using virtual reality to improve the way we age, so you don’t become isolated, don’t become depressed, and you can keep your mind happy and healthy,” said Rendever co-founder and CEO Dennis Lally, an MIT Sloan School of Management student who launched the startup with classmate Reed Hayes.

Rendever was one of eight finalist teams — winnowed down from 50 applicants — to pitch health care innovation ideas to a panel of expert judges and a capacity audience last night at the MIT Wong Auditorium in the Tang Center. The competition, part of the 14th annual MIT Sloan Healthcare and BioInnovations Conference (being held today in the MIT Media Lab), is organized by the student-run MIT Sloan Healthcare Club to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the health care space.

A second-place prize of $4,000 went to Need-a-Knee, a team of MIT mechanical engineering undergraduates developing an inexpensive leg prosthetic that allows users to sit cross-legged — an important part of culture in countries such as India, where current models don’t allow for such flexibility.

Day Zero Diagnostics, a team from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, earned a $1,000 audience-choice prize for developing a diagnostic tool that makes the detection of specific bacterial infection in hospitals much faster, reducing wait times from days to hours.

Other competing teams were: CareMobile Transportation, an Uber-like medical-transportation startup that employs social workers to transport and care for people with disabilities; Manus Robotics, a wearable robotic gripper that helps stroke survivors with impaired hand functions; Patients Like This, an analytics tool that improves mental health patient outcomes by using electronic health record data; Neurosleeve, a computerized glove that measures electrical function of nerves in the hand to diagnose carpal tunnel syndrome and other conditions; and #1, a wearable device and app system that treats urinary incontinence by tracking pelvic muscle training and measuring moisture associated with incontinence.

Socializing, therapy, and diagnostics

In the team’s winning pitch, Rendever said its system includes multiple virtual-reality headsets, custom software, and a tablet. The software syncs headsets together, so users can join together in a virtual world, visiting childhood homes, exotic locales, sports games, or a relative’s wedding across the world. The headsets can be controlled simultaneously by caregivers, using the tablet. All content is also custom-made by Rendever, based on 20 million gigabytes of content mined from the internet.

Apart from providing a socializing tool, the system can double as a form of reminiscence therapy, which involves discussing past experiences, with aid of photographs, familiar items, and music — or virtual cues, in the case of Rendever.

According to trial studies, Rendever’s system has increased overall resident happiness at the Brookdale Senior Living Community in Massachusetts by 40 percent, Lally said. The startup is currently working with the MIT AgeLab to validate those statistics.

Rendever also hopes to leverage virtual-reality data to aid in diagnosing dementia, which currently relies on qualitative studies and expert opinion. “We’re creating a data-driven [diagnostics] solution,” Lally said. 

Users are asked to work through real-life simulations, such as making dinner, completing a series of tasks. In the process, Rendever’s software collects thousands of data points per minute on movement, reaction time, and executive function. All this can lead to earlier interventions for dementia patients and help measure the efficacy of treatments.

“We can track very precisely how someone moves through this space, and what they were doing,” Hayes, Rendever’s chief operations officer, told MIT News. “We also built a machine-learning model that’s currently being trained to help find patterns [characteristic of] someone who has early-stage dementia versus someone of healthy mind.”

Rendever’s prize money will help fund research and development, with a second trial study kicking off soon. Hayes attributes the team’s win to tapping into an underserved need. “Everyone has a parent or grandparent who’s getting older … and not much can be done when they can’t leave the house,” he said. “The solution we built is a fun way for them to re-experience the world again, to be explorers. We’re bringing that to a demographic that has lost the ability [to explore].”

Last year, Rendever entered the pitch competition — its first entrepreneurship contest ever — and made it to the semifinals round. By refining the business and technology through MIT classes at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship — under the watchful eye of managing director Bill Aulet — the team came out on top, Reed said. “It’s this awesome story for us to come back [to the competition] and win,” he said.

Pushing ideas forward

There were only three prizewinners last night. But MIT Sloan student Maddie Thoms, co-president of the MIT Sloan Healthcare Club that organized the competition, said the aim is to help all the entrepreneurs further refine their ventures. “It’s not just about one or two teams walking away with a good prize. We’re hoping to push a bunch of teams forward in their endeavors,” she said.

In the weeks leading up to the pitch competition, teams were offered mentorship, networking opportunities, and a one-day workshop on developing business pitches. The competition consisted of two semifinal rounds, where judges provided further coaching.

Teams were each required to have at least one MIT or Harvard University student. Criteria for choosing competing teams included determining the novelty of the invention, its technical feasibility, any hurdles in governmental and other regulations, and whether the team has acquired customers or made its first sale.

With the competition, organizers also hope to strengthen the health care community at MIT, in neighboring Kendall Square, and across Boston by fostering connections between teams, judges, and local mentors and investors. Thoms said that networking helps “get the right ideas connected with the right people, ventures, or partner companies.”

Competing amongst similar startups helped second-place team Need-a-Knee solidify a business plan, said team member Matthew Cavuto, a mechanical engineering student and a 2017 Marshall Scholar. The team built a rotating disc with a simple push-button spring-pin mechanism at the knee joint of a low-cost prosthetic. Pushing a button on the disc releases a pin inside, which lets users rotate the disc and snap it into place at an angle to sit cross-legged. In India, for instance, people sit this way for praying, eating, and other activities, but current inexpensive prosthetics aren’t designed for the position.

Most engineering for the prosthetic was completed in one semester, Cavuto said, and the competition helped demonstrate how major global problems can be tackled quickly. “There are real needs that can be solved in a fairly short amount of time in the developing world, and there’s a big market … that’s not usually seen here in the United States,” he said. The team’s $4,000 prize money will go toward International Organization for Standardization testing, which will certify it for safety and compatibility with humans.

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IMPRESIONANTE TRANSPORTE Y COLOCACIÓN DEL PILAR DE UN PUENTE DE 105 METROS Y 1550 TONELADAS

El puente New Wear Crossing se propuso en 2005 y en 2010 recibió el permiso de planificación del Ayuntamiento de Sunderland para convertirse en el puente más alto de Inglaterra con un diseño icónico. Pero debido a los problemas financieros, en 2013 se optó por realizar un diseño más simple.

El actual puente, atirantado, pesará más de 3.100 toneladas, tendrá una longitud total de 336 metros, contará con un pilar en forma de A alcanzando una altura máxima de 115 metros y 30 metros de ancho.

Está ubicado en el río Wear entre Castletown en el norte a Pallion en la orilla sur y tendrá dos carriles de tráfico en ambas direcciones, además de carril para ciclistas y peatones.

Se está construyendo con el fin de reducir la congestión del tráfico, tiene un presupuesto de 138 millones de euros y se espera que esté completada en la primavera de 2018. 

INSTALACIÓN DEL PILAR

El 10 de febrero hemos podido ver como empezó a tomar posición la pieza central del nuevo puente y tras dos días con un total de unas 16 horas de trabajo se pudo completar . 

'Para que os hagáis una idea pesa como 200 🚌 autobuses'

TIMELAPSE

TRANSPORTE DEL PILAR

A finales de 2016 se realizó un transporte del impresionante elemento estructural desde el patio del fabricante Victor Buyck en Gante (Bélgica) hasta su destino final en Sunderland (Reino Unido). Esta impresionante estructura de 100 metros con sus más de 1.000 toneladas de acero y 550 toneladas de hormigón fue transportada por la compañía especializada en la logística Sarens y para ello se utilizó dos barcazas transportadoras modulares grande y masiva de 52 ejes.

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Jacob Collier harmonizes with MIT

A productive artist residency generally provides the yin to an artist’s yang. If daily life is distracting, for example, an artist may relish solitude. If, on the other hand, the artist is Jacob Collier, a self-contained singer-songwriter-performer-composer-arranger-producer who mostly works alone in his family’s London home music room, then collaborating with over 150 eager students may present a welcome change. Collier, the immensely talented 22-year-old multi-instrumentalist, known for his complex YouTube videos, his live multi-track one-man shows, his celebrated debut album, “In My Room,” and his two 2017 Grammy awards for his arrangements of “You and I” and “Flintstones,” was in residence at MIT in fall 2016.

Fred Harris, MIT lecturer in music and director of the Institutes' wind and jazz ensembles who conceived and spearheaded the residency, says, “With few exceptions, Jacob's been rather isolated in his musical creativity, yet he yearns to collaborate.” Through the MIT Center For Art, Science and Technology’s Visiting Artists Program, Harris invited Collier to work with the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble; Ben Bloomberg, a PhD student in the Media Lab in the Opera of the Future group; Jamshied Sharifi ’83, composer, producer and keyboardist; and a specially assembled orchestra and chorus comprised of music students from MIT, Berklee College of Music, New England Conservatory, University of New Hampshire, and Boston Arts Academy. At the culminating concert, “Imagination Off the Charts,” Collier said MIT feels like “a second home” to him:

“I’ve always felt a kinship with this idea of celebrating the introvert. I’ve learned the skills of being an extrovert, when I go on tour and when I perform. There’s lots of joy that is found by giving, but I think at MIT, there’s a sublime understanding of the people who think inwards first. And I would count myself amongst that group of people. So I’d like to celebrate that idea; being at MIT consistently reminds me of how wonderful it is when people think beyond the surface level, up and down to other realms of things. I’d like to say thank you to MIT as a concept, and additionally to the human beings with whom I’ve been working at MIT.”

The concert featured works by Collier, newly arranged for the jazz ensemble and full orchestra by Collier himself and by Sharifi, as well as a new improvisational piece, “Sonic Bloom Mountain,” reliant on an app created by Bloomberg and Peter Torpey. With its jubilant performances from scores of vocalists and orchestra members and the singularly talented Collier, all playing to a rapt and packed audience, the concert was one measure of the residency’s success. But, as Harris points out, the behind-the-scenes activities — the months of thoughtful planning, engaging rehearsals, arduous transcription work and technical invention — are what make the residency meaningful to the students and the artist alike: “Obviously the crux of the project is not just bringing Jacob to MIT. Any place could bring Jacob to perform. It's what we're doing with him with our students and how our students are interacting with him in ways that no one else has yet. This is the first ever college residency he’s done. So I’m trying to set the bar pretty high.”

The relationship begins

Collier’s introduction to MIT began with a Facebook message from Ben Bloomberg in 2014. Bloomberg, who specializes in the design and implementation of advanced surround sound and other live performance systems, wrote to compliment his work and to offer his assistance with future technical needs. “It was perfect timing,” he recalls, “because Jacob had just been asked to do this massive performance in front of 4,000 people at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and he didn’t know what he was going to do. He had all these crazy ideas involving technology. It was just luck that I sent him a message that same week. He responded, essentially like, ‘Oh, yeah, we need that.’ One of the things that I really get excited about is trying to figure out how to design these systems so that they stand up to the test of a live show.” Since then, Bloomberg has developed scalable performance systems and customized instruments, such as a 12-note vocal harmonizer, for Collier to transform his video productions into live one-man concerts.

When Harris learned of Bloomberg’s friendship and prior work with Collier, he “immediately saw a door open.” He invited Collier to MIT in fall 2015 to work with the Festival Jazz Ensemble in a free-form master class.

“What I realized is that as amazing as his music videos are … they are the tip of the iceberg,” Harris says. “The range of his musical interests and the depth and breadth of his talents are incredible. One could look at those videos and pigeonhole him, but they would be making a big mistake, because his range goes from Renaissance music to contemporary classical music, jazz, and pop. In that master class, he was doing all kinds of things ranging from playing jazz piano with us and playing with the big band to dissecting one of his music videos… . By the end of the class, we got inside one of Jacob’s greatest gifts, creating harmonies. He had all of the members of the jazz ensemble — like 20 people who are not vocalists — singing complicated chords, really dense 20-part chords. He's the full package as a musician.”

“Imagination off the charts”

Harris says, “What I wanted to do with this residency is give Jacob a musical playground. I wanted to say, ‘I am blown away by what you represent. I'm going to give you a bunch of toys and see how you're going to play with them, because it's going to be great for our students.’ What I try to do in residencies is give artists something that will excite them.”

During the residency, Bloomberg and Torpey worked with Collier to create a new app that allowed him to use iPads and midi controllers to play the Festival Jazz Ensemble like the harmonizer. For the resulting improvisational piece, “Sonic Bloom Mountain,” named after Bloomberg, the jazz ensemble reacted in real time to notes Collier sent to their mobile devices.

MIT senior Garrett Parrish, a Festival Jazz Ensemble drummer who rehearsed and performed with Collier and has worked in the Media Lab with Bloomberg, says, “From a performance perspective, the system allows for Jacob to, in the moment, transmit his musical ideas to tens of people. It's every musician’s dream to be able to wave your arms and have a band know exactly what to play and how to play it without having to tell them, and that's what we did with this piece [‘Sonic Bloom Mountain’]. I'm sure it was a god-like experience for him as much as it was a collectively thrilling experience for the band.” He adds, “Creating meaningful technological enhancements for human performance is incredibly difficult,” but it can work seamlessly on rare occasions, “when you have the union of Jacob and Ben, both of whom are equally creative, imaginative, and skilled — granted, at different things.”

Harris devised another way for students to tap into Collier’s diverse talent. He asked MIT alumnus Jamshied Sharafi to transcribe and arrange three songs from Collier’s 2016 album “In My Room,” — “Hideaway,” “Down the Line,” and “Saviour” — for jazz ensemble, chorus, and full orchestra. Translating these solo pieces was no easy task, given Collier typically plays all 30 to 50 parts himself and rarely writes down the music. Sharifi’s transcriptions aimed to honor what Collier did on his recordings, while leaving room for spontaneity. Collier also wrote a new arrangement of his song “Hajanga,” a personal favorite, for the Festival Jazz Ensemble and string orchestra. Collier’s own orchestral arrangement of  “In the Very Early Morning,” a beautiful piece recently performed in London’s Royal Albert Hall, and several jazz and pop standards rounded out the program.

Harris was consciously creating a once-in-a-lifetime experience for students, while hopefully commencing an enduring relationship with Collier. “It's so rare to be able to come in contact with a musician at such an early stage of his career, you know? There's no question in my mind that whatever he ends up doing in the next 50 or 60 years, it will be amazing. So the fact that we can have this relationship early on — which I hope continues — is very magical.”

Performing with Collier made a strong impression on students like Parrish. “Jacob gives off such a humble, supportive, yet inimitable talented aura that brings everyone up with him, rather than outshining them by comparison. That is the key,” says Parris. “He helped me play better, brought out parts of me I didn't remember or know existed, and I think that can be said for everyone. The difference between Jacob and almost any other performer I have worked with is that his intention is so deeply thought-out and real. When it comes to music, the intention behind it is what makes it sing, and, man that boy can sing.”

Harris has been bringing in guest artists to work with his students regularly since 2000. Sometimes, he says, it involves musicians playing with the Wind Ensemble and Festival Jazz Ensemble on an existing piece; often it involves musicians composing music expressly for the students; and in the case of Collier, it was a combination of both. “My feeling is, is that the students at MIT gain a world class education. They have contact with the greatest faculty members and outside practitioners in all the disciplines — in engineering and political science, in whatever subject. It should be and is the same thing in the arts. And not just someone who comes in and gives a talk. I mean, real substantial contact, where there are legs to the project, where we form relationships. ... I'm already dreaming about what to do with Jacob next because there's something special about developing relationships with people — not just for us, but for them too.”

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3Q: Behind the scenes of the National Academy of Sciences' report on human genome editing

When the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released its Human Genome Editing Report last week, a wave of questions arose regarding the report’s scientific and clinical implications. The report, which outlines criteria that should be met before allowing clinical trials involving germline editing to go forward, was issued in response to the promising research and clinical opportunities associated with powerful genome-editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9.

Richard O. Hynes is a Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT, a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and a former director of the Koch Institute's predecessor, the MIT Center for Cancer Research. Hynes, a co-chair of the NAS study committee that created the report, sat down to shed additional light on the report’s recommendations and its impact on the future of genome editing.

Q: Why is a report like this needed now?

A: We are in the midst of an explosion of new research and clinical opportunities that can be enabled by genome-editing tools. Genome editing is now much easier, faster, cheaper, and more versatile than ever. Because this field is advancing so rapidly, the issues and concerns that genome editing raises needed to be seriously reviewed and addressed, alongside the development of the technology itself.

There are, of course, many technical questions — such as what risks exist, how to reduce them, and how to regulate the different ongoing applications — which need to be explored further, but there are plenty of societal questions as well. For example, should one allow “enhancement” or going beyond treatment and prevention of disease and disability? Should heritable germline editing be allowed, if and when it might become sufficiently reproducible, accurate, and safe? And if so, how would that affect societal attitudes toward disability, issues of equity and fairness, and concerns around creating a slippery slope that could lead to inappropriate applications?

The report’s committee represented four continents and included scientists, clinicians, ethicists, lawyers, and public engagement experts, among others. Each member offered a unique perspective on how oversight guidelines should be crafted and regulated and how to further public discussion. We believe the resulting recommendations will have universal applicability across multiple countries and cultures, and we recommend a set of principles that could be incorporated into the regulation and oversight in any country pursuing human genome editing.

Q: What are the report’s primary take-home points?

A: First, human genome editing in the contexts of basic laboratory research, and somatic gene therapy for the treatment and prevention of disease and disability are valuable and well-regulated. They should proceed under the existing oversight and regulatory norms.

Second, editing for purposes other than treatment or prevention of disease and disability should not be approved at this time. Public engagement and discussion on this topic should be actively promoted before advancing past these purposes, and specific funding should be allotted to support this.

Finally, while human heritable germline editing is not yet practicable and much further research is necessary before it could be considered for clinical trials, there are arguments for limited applications to prevent heritable disease should that become feasible. At the same time, there are technical, practical, societal, and ethical concerns that need to be addressed. The report lays out a set of stringent criteria that would need to be met for approval of any trial of heritable germline editing, and it recommends extensive public engagement in discussions about how to assess its implications before any such trials. 

Q: Are there any misconceptions about the report that you would like to address?

A: Of course, there is always the potential for concern around these topics when they enter the public sphere, but this report is firmly grounded in existing ethical, scientific, and regulatory practices — and in consultation with the individuals and communities who will be directly affected by this technology. I would say that the committee is not opening the door to human genome editing, but we are, so to speak, removing the padlock pending possible new applications. Furthermore, the report is recommending human applications only for purposes of treatment and prevention of disease or disability and not for any applications that go beyond that, such as enhancements.

We limited our recommendations to this because of concerns about making unnecessary, potentially risky edits aimed to enhance human capacities beyond what is necessary to treat a life-threatening or debilitating condition. Enhancement is a topic that needs more discussion and public engagement to assess societal attitudes. At this time, we say no to any germline enhancements. If technology moves forward to enable the possibility, our current recommendation would be that it should be used to enable healthy babies, not “designer babies.” We also have confidence in the current systems of regulation and decision-making based on risk/benefit analysis but believe it should incorporate more engagement with public opinion.

Overall, we have been pleased with the coverage of the report so far, and the public seems to be excited about the major acceleration of our understanding of human biology. There is real potential to combat many diseases, such as cancer and thousands of genetically inherited diseases, which affect a significant number of people in the global population. Somatic editing is already in clinical trials, and many more are yet to come that we will learn a great deal from — particularly about efficacy, risks, and the impact of this modern form of gene therapy.  Germline editing is not possible yet — probably not for several years — but it is time to think carefully about the implications while the technical aspects are still being explored, rather than waiting until the decisions as to whether or not to proceed are imminent.

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Center for Environmental Health Sciences select 2017 poster winners

The Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) at MIT held its annual poster session on Jan. 18 in the Building 13 Lobby. The session highlighted the work of the environmental health research communities of MIT and some of the Institute's sister institutions. Over 60 posters were presented from the science and engineering laboratories affiliated with the center. 

The CEHS has an overall mission to study the biological effects of exposure to environmental agents in order to understand, and predict, how such exposures affect human health. Moreover, by uncovering the chemical, biochemical and genetic bases for environmental disease, sometimes researchers are able to leverage that understanding to delay or even prevent the development of disease in human populations. To that end, the center brings together 39 MIT faculty members from a total of 10 MIT departments (in both the School of Science and the School of Engineering) plus one Harvard University faculty member from the Harvard School of Public Health.

This year’s CEHS cash prizes are awarded in two categories, graduate students and postdocs. For each category, the prize for first-place is $1,000, second-place prize is $500, and the third-place prize is $200 plus CEHS memorabilia. The cash prizes were made possible by the Myriam Marcelle Znaty Research Fund, which was established over 30 years ago to support the research of young scientists at MIT. 

Undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and research staff presented the results of their research. Jonathan Franklin from Professor Jesse Kroll’s lab won first place in the graduate student category. Franklin presented his work on the “Measurements of I/SVOC from Mobile Sourcing using online Thermal Desorption EI-MS.” In second place was Le “Lizzie” Ngo from Professor Bevin Engelward’s lab, presenting her work on “Novel Microarray Colony Formation Platform for High-Throughput Viability Testing.” Finally, in a third place tie was Daniel Rothenberg, from Professor Forest White’s lab, presenting his work on “Profiling the Translatome with Bioorthogonal Non-Canonical Amino Acids” and Jules Stephen from the Liz Nolan lab, who presented on “Methionine Oxidation Increases the Protease Sensitivity of Calprotectin by Altering Its Oligomeric State.”

In the postdoc category, first place went to Supawadee “Apple” Chawanthayatham from Professor John Essigmann’s lab, presenting on “Mutational Spectra of Aflatoxin B1 in vivo Establish Biomarkers of Exposure for Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma.”  Second place went to Yehuda Brody, from Professor Paul Blainey’s lab, who presented his work on “’Lineage Sequencing’ for Deeper Insights into Exposure-Induced Somatic Mutations.” And lastly, another third place tie went to Victor Hernandez-Gordillo, from Professor Linda Griffith’s lab, after presenting his work on “Toward the Development of an Organotypic Intestinal Model to Recapitulate Epithelial-stromal Interactions,” and Annelien Zweemer from the Douglas Lauffenburger’s lab, who presented her work on “Apoptotic Cell Bodies Elicit Gas6-mediated Migration of AXL-expressing Tumor Cells.” 

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5 Ways Writing Case Studies Helps Build Your Career

Open just about any publication related to engineering – or read a blog, or attend a conference – and it will likely contain case studies. Engineers have an abiding passion for helping their colleagues learn from their own experiences – and like many people, they enjoy showing how smart they are. The case study does that. What is a Case Study? First of all, what’s a case study? Essentially, a case study is a story – a story about a project. It describes th...

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