Johan Rockström: Presenting a framework for preserving Earth’s resilience

The Earth is entering a new global epoch, and the continuation of humanity as we know it depends on our ability to preserve Earth’s resilience through sustainable actions. That was the take-home message from Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and professor of environmental science at Stockholm University. He spoke on Tuesday, Sept. 19 for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative’s first People and the Planet lecture of the academic year.

“It’s the narrative of human survival,” Rockström said. “The ability to navigate the future for … at least 9, potentially even 10 billion co-citizens on Earth [by 2050], all with the same right to good lives.”

Rockström is best known for his 2009 proposal identifying specific limits to Earth’s various systems. He called these limits planetary boundaries and warned that should we exceed them, we may no longer enjoy the life-sustaining balance between nature and human progress.

The nine boundaries — which include climate change, biodiversity loss, the biogeochemical cycle on Earth, ocean acidification, land use, fresh water availability, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol levels, and chemical pollution — are meant as scientifically determined sustainability guidelines for governments and corporations.

“It is fundamentally about reconnecting the world economy to the biosphere,” says Rockström. “It’s ... such an incredibly fundamental part of our world development and … we are today putting all of this at risk.”

Socioeconomic systems around the world are based on the Earth’s capacity to absorb the impact of humanity. But the growth of that impact has accelerated dramatically, particularly in the time period since the second World War. Sixty-seven percent of vertebrate wildlife species is projected to be extinct by 2020. Fifty percent of the Australian Great Barrier Reef has already died. Changes to the atmosphere render 2 degrees Celsius of warming to the planet a distinct possibility. As planetary boundaries reach their tipping points, the Earth’s ability to recalibrate in response will diminish.

According to Rockström, if we avoid transgressing planetary boundaries we can maintain a semblance of the biosphere balance we enjoyed during the Holocene epoch of Earth history. The Holocene, which began approximately 11,500 years ago at the end of the last ice age, was a Garden of Eden of sorts. The gentle fluctuations in average global temperature allowed humanity to develop agriculture and take advantage of the Earth’s resources in a more organized manner.

“We were … a small world on a big planet,” Rockström said of our Holocene existence. Many experts say we are now at the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch, marked by the start of nuclear testing in the 1950s. It’s the first epoch in Earth’s 4.5 billion years during which humans are the main drivers of change in natural global systems.

Leaving the Holocene means entering the unknown. “The Holocene is the only equilibrium of the planet that we know for certain can support humanity as we know it,” he said. “We have no evidence to suggest that we could morally and ethically support 9.5 billion co-citizens with a minimum standard of good lives [outside of Holocene conditions].”

Despite current political uncertainties, Rockström is hopeful. He sees a path forward in the Carbon Law, the idea of halving carbon emissions every decade. (He laid out a decade-by-decade plan to this end in the March 2017 issue of Science.) This can be done on every scale, he said, from governments to businesses to individuals.

This isn’t an unobtainable utopia. John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management observed that, “Johan’s work shows clearly that humanity has already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. The good news is that we can change this dire situation: More and more governments, companies and individuals are taking action to create, deploy and scale the technologies and policies we need to build a sustainable world in which all can thrive.”

Many governments (including Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden) and businesses (such as clothing retailer H&M and auto manufacturer Volvo) have already adopted the planetary boundaries framework. The use of renewable energy sources is doubling every 5.4 years; continuing that rate of growth is a key strategy to phase out the use of fossil fuels and achieve full decarbonization of the economy by 2050, according to Rockström.

ESI Director John Fernandez shares this vision and suggests a key role for MIT. “The transformative role of technology — the development of low carbon energy supplies, the electrification of cities, the creation of economically viable and effective methods to recover and reuse key materials — this is MIT’s sandbox,” he said. “Much will come not from doom and gloom, but from the excitement that motivates discovery and invention and the accompanying optimism and responsibility about the real possibility for a deeply sustainable world.”

Rockstöm’s lecture ended on an encouraging note. “We’re starting to see signs of planetary stewardship,” he said. “For the first time ever, humanity has a road map for people and planet. … The light at the end of the tunnel is real.”

ESI’s People and the Planet Lecture Series presents individuals and organizations working to advance understanding and action toward a humane and sustainable future. On Nov. 20, the second fall lecture will feature Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

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Deep waters spiral upward around Antarctica

Since Captain James Cook’s discovery in the 1770s that water encompassed the Earth’s southern latitudes, oceanographers have been studying the Southern Ocean, its physics, and how it interacts with global water circulation and the climate.

Through observations and modeling, scientists have long known that large, deep currents in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans flow southward, converging on Antarctica. After entering the Southern Ocean they overturn — bringing water up from the deeper ocean — before moving back northward at the surface. This overturning completes the global circulation loop, which is important for the oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, the resupply of nutrients for use in biological production, as well as the understanding of how ice shelves melt.

Yet the three-dimensional structure of the pathways that these water particles take to reach the Southern Ocean’s surface mixed layer and their associated timescales was poorly understood until recently. Now researchers have found that deep, relatively-warm water from the three ocean basins enters the Southern Ocean and spirals southeastwards and upwards around Antarctica before reaching the ocean’s mixed layer, where it interacts with the atmosphere.

The research team includes scientists from MIT, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Princeton University, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Washington, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, also reveals that strong eddies, caused by topographical interactions at five locations within the current circling Antarctica, play a major role in this upwelling process. The researchers were additionally able to determine how much water from each ocean basin made it up what they call this “spiral staircase,” and believe this journey happens much quicker than previous estimates suggest.

In the Southern Ocean, strong ocean-atmosphere interactions and eddies largely drive upwelling, researchers have found. Westerly winds circling Antarctica blow cold, carbon-dioxide-rich surface water northward from the continent across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). The ACC flows around the northern edge of the Southern Ocean and is not only the world’s strongest current, but also the only major current that circles the globe unimpeded by continents. Much of the cold water is from ice melt, caused by warmer, nutrient-rich waters entering the ACC at depth and gradually upwelling from about 1,000-3,000 meters deep.

Observations of Southern Ocean temperature and salinity provided clues to the structure of this overturning, but it wasn’t until recently that computer models were sophisticated enough to run realistic simulations, allowing researchers to investigate if and how upwelling varies in three-dimensional space and what controls the upwelling structure. To explore these questions, the researchers used three atmosphere-ocean models, capable of capturing critical features of oceanic circulation that occur at small scales. They then followed virtual water particles from where they entered the Southern Ocean around 30 South and between 1,000 and 3,000 meters deep to where they crossed the mixed layer boundary, which was considered to be 200 meters deep. The conditions used in the climate models experiments were fairly consistent with those of the year 2000; these were then run for 200 years in this perpetual state. During this time virtual water particles were released in the models.

“We tracked millions of these particles as they’re upwelling. Then we mapped out their pathways, and we can determine … and separate the volume transport — how much water is being moved — by these currents. So, we’re able to compare how important these different regional pathways are,” says co-author Henri Drake, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and member of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. They also noted the time it took the particles to reach the mixed layer as well as locations of enhanced upwelling.

Their analysis revealed that the water parcels tended to flow southward, primarily along western and eastern boundary currents in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, where they entered the ACC tracking with density surfaces. Interactions of the ACC and eddies around underwater terrain also played an important role in the upwelling process.

“In the deep ocean, water parcels follow density surfaces … which start really deep out where we release the particles and then get shallower as you go south,” Drake says. “So if you have a particle traveling south along the same density surface, it’s going to get higher in the water column, until eventually the density surface intersects with the mixed layer.”

Additionally, five major topographic locations in the ACC — the Southwest Indian Ridge, the Kerguelen Plateau, the Macquarie Ridge, the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, and the Drake Passage — created areas of turbulence and high kinetic energy, which helped to upwell the majority of the water.

“Eddies are basically these vortices in the Southern Ocean that are really important for transporting waters,” says Drake. “If you don’t have any eddies, the water would probably go around Antarctica and come back at the same latitude. But with eddies, when the particles are traveling in these streamlines, they’re going to get to a place of high eddy kinetic energy and surge south and up to the next streamline.”

Researchers also found that half of the water that reached the mixed layer originated from the Atlantic Ocean, while the Indian and Pacific oceans each contributed approximately a fourth. The majority of these waters crossed this threshold after 28-81 years. In the highest resolution model, this timescale is as much as 10 times faster than previous estimates produced by non-eddying models, which were closer to 150-250 years. This demonstrates that upwelling rates could be critical for Antarctic ice melt with relation to future climate change, says Adele Morrison, a co-author at Australian National University who contributed to the work while at Princeton University. The models largely agreed, showing the robustness of the result, she says.

“Scientifically, this is significant, because for a long time we have thought of the upwelling as being primarily driven by the winds, which are pretty much uniform around the Southern Ocean,” says Morrison. “But here we have shown that the structure of the upwelling is really controlled by the under-sea topography and the eddy field.”

John Marshall, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in EAPS, who was not part of the study, says the reseach confirms that upwelling in the Southern Ocean “is mediated by eddies, but it emphasizes how important eddies are and how localized some of the eddy activity is — so it makes it hard to represent in models that don’t have any eddies.”

“I think the communication timescales might be a bit faster than we thought they were between the interior and the surface,” Marshall says.

The group plans to continue the work, investigating ocean-atmosphere interfaces, water particle trajectories, and the propagation of climate change signals from deep water formation in the Northern Atlantic to the Southern Ocean.

“Our description of the pathways that connect the deep ocean to the surface ocean open the door for future studies to connect the fluid mechanics of the deep ocean to exchanges of heat, carbon, and nutrients at the ocean-atmosphere interface that influence Earth’s climate,” Drake says.

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Biochemists discover mechanism that helps flu viruses evolve

Influenza viruses mutate rapidly, which is why flu vaccines have to be redesigned every year. A new study from MIT sheds light on just how these viruses evolve so quickly, and offers a potential way to slow them down.

The MIT team found that flu viruses’ rapid evolution relies in part on their ability to hijack some of the cellular machinery of the infected host cell — specifically, a group of proteins called chaperones, which help other proteins fold into the correct shape. When the viruses were unable to get help from these chaperones, they did not evolve as rapidly as when they could obtain extensive help from host chaperones. Moreover, the specific evolutionary trajectories followed by individual flu proteins depend on host chaperone activities.

The findings suggest that interfering with host cell chaperones could help prevent flu viruses from becoming resistant to existing drugs and vaccines, says Matthew Shoulders, the Whitehead Career Development Associate Professor of Chemistry at MIT.

“It’s relatively easy to make a drug that kills a virus, or an antibody that stops a virus from propagating, but it’s very hard to make one that the virus doesn’t promptly escape from once you start using it,” Shoulders says. “Our data suggest that, at some point in the future, targeting host chaperones might restrict the ability of a virus to evolve and allow us to kill viruses before they become drug resistant.”

Shoulders is the senior author of the study, which is a collaborative effort with Leonid Mirny, a professor of physics at MIT; and Yu-Shan Lin, a professor at Tufts University. Angela Phillips, an MIT graduate student and National Science Foundation graduate fellow, is the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal eLife on Sept. 26.

A little help

Flu viruses carry eight genome segments, all encoded by RNA. Of particular interest to flu researchers is the gene for the hemagglutinin protein, which is displayed on the surface of the viral envelope and interacts with cells of the infected host. Most flu vaccines target this protein, but these vaccines have to be updated every year to keep up with the protein’s ability to evolve quickly.

However, this rapid evolution also poses a challenge for the viruses themselves. When proteins mutate, they may become unable to fold into the shape they need to assume to perform their function. Previous research, such as the pioneering work of the late Susan Lindquist, a biology professor at MIT, has shown that in many organisms, evolution of endogenous proteins depends on the ability of that organism’s chaperones to help mutated proteins fold.

In this study, the MIT team investigated whether viruses can take advantage of their host’s chaperone proteins to help with their own evolution.

“Viral proteins are known to interact with host chaperones, so we suspected that this interplay could have a major impact on what evolutionary pathways are available to the virus,” Shoulders says.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers generated one set of cells with low protein-folding activity by inhibiting a key chaperone protein called heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90). In another set of cells, they used chemical genetic methods previously developed by Shoulders to enhance the levels of numerous chaperone proteins, creating a cellular environment with high protein-folding activity.

The researchers infected both sets of cells, plus a group of cells with normal chaperone levels, with a strain of flu and then allowed the virus to evolve for nearly 200 generations. They found that the virus did indeed evolve faster in the cells with higher chaperone levels than in the cells with inhibited chaperone proteins.

“This finding suggests that influenza will acquire new traits that might be beneficial for it faster when you have the heat shock response activated, and slower when you have key chaperones inhibited,” Shoulders says.

Blocking escape routes

The researchers also identified specific proteins that tend to become more mutated in cells with more chaperones. One of these is the hemagglutinin protein, and another is an enzyme called PA, which is a type of RNA polymerase that helps the virus copy its genes. The team also identified specific amino acids within these proteins that are more likely to become mutated in different protein-folding environments.

“The authors develop very nice chemical genetic tools for precisely manipulating proteostasis in human cells, and the application of their methods led to a number of interesting findings,” says Jesse Bloom, a viral evolution expert and associate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who was not involved in the research. “Perhaps the most compelling is the identification of a specific mutation in influenza (H452Q in PA) that has different effects depending on whether the heat shock response is activated versus whether Hsp90 is inhibited. Identification of this mutation is proof of principle that a virus' ability to tolerate specific mutations can be affected by chaperones, providing the first link between host proteostasis and viral evolution.”

Targeting this phenomenon could offer a way to delay viral evolution and decelerate escape from existing drugs and vaccines, the researchers say. Many chaperone inhibitors already exist, and some are now being tested in clinical trials to treat cancer and some viral infections. The new data imply that treating patients with a chaperone-inhibiting drug along with another antiviral therapy, such as a drug or vaccine, could help ensure that the virus does not evolve resistance to the therapeutic.

The researchers believe this phenomenon is likely also found in other viruses, and they are now studying HIV, another virus that mutates rapidly. They also plan to study how a host cell’s protein-folding capacity may affect the evolution of antiviral drug or antibody resistance, using therapeutics that circulating viruses are already resistant to.

“We can recapitulate environmental pressures like antiviral drugs in the lab, in the context of different host protein-folding environments, and see whether there’s a big impact. Our data suggest that there’s going to be, but we have to actually test it out,” Shoulders says.

The research was funded by the Smith Family Foundation Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research and an NSF CAREER Award.

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Nine new faculty join the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Dean Melissa Nobles and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences recently announced the newest members of the SHASS faculty. They have diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in their areas of research, which include counterfactual economic models, philosophy of mind, educational gaming, and global media. They are:
 
Martin Beraja is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 2016. Upon graduating, he spent one year as a postdoc at the Louis A. Simpson Center for the Study of Macroeconomics and the Department of Economics at Princeton University. Beraja is a macroeconomist who studies economic fluctuations and growth. In his dissertation, he developed a method for evaluating counterfactual policy changes in a way that is robust across models whenever researchers are uncertain about features of these models that are difficult to distinguish in the data. In other work, he has focused on bringing theory and micro-data together in order to discipline quantitative exercises that shed light on how the aggregate economy responds to shocks. He is currently studying how forms of technical change that complement certain types of skills shape the dynamics of inequality and productivity growth in economies where workers with such skills are scarce.

Dave Donaldson is a professor of economics. He obtained an undergraduate degree in physics from Oxford University and a PhD from the London School of Economics. He is a co-editor at the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and a program director at the International Growth Centre. Donaldson’s teaching and research specializes in the fields of international trade, development economics, and economic history. He and collaborators have investigated topics such as the welfare and other effects of market integration, the impact of improvements in transportation infrastructure, how trade might mediate the effects of climate change, and how trade affects food security and famine. This research was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2013 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 2017.

Amah Edoh joins the MIT faculty as assistant professor of African Studies in the Global Studies and Languages section (GSL), having completed a postdoc in the section in 2016-2017. She received the PhD in 2016 from MIT’s Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS). Edoh’s research focuses on how “Africa” is produced as a category of thought through material practices across African and non-African locations. Her current book manuscript is a multi-sited ethnography following the transnational trajectory of Dutch Wax cloth, a textile designed in Holland for West African markets since the 19th century. The manuscript examines how ideas about Africa and its place in the world are negotiated through visual and material forms and practices along the cloth’s path from design studio to dressed bodies.
 
E. J. Green earned a PhD in philosophy along with a cognitive science certificate from Rutgers University in 2016, and was a Bersoff Fellow at New York University from 2016 to 2017. Green’s research addresses topics at the intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, with a particular focus on perception. His papers have examined the perceptual experience of shape properties, the nature of perceptual reference, and the structure and function of perceptual object representations. His research interests also include foundational issues within the philosophy of cognitive science, such as the format of mental representations and the border between perception and cognition.

Simon Jäger is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He studied economics at the University of Bonn and the University of California at Berkeley and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. Prior to joining MIT, he spent a year as a postdoc at the Institute on Behavior and Inequality in Bonn, Germany. His research focuses on topics at the intersection of labor and public economics as well econometrics and combines experimental and quasi-experimental methods with large, administrative datasets to shed light on the functioning of labor markets and the origins and consequences of inequality.

Eric Klopfer is professor and director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade at MIT. He is also a co-faculty director for MIT’s J-WEL World Education Lab. His work uses a design-based research methodology to span the educational technology ecosystem, from design and development of new technologies to professional development and implementation. Much of Klopfer's research has focused on computer games and simulations for building understanding of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. His lab has produced many software platforms for others to create games and simulations. He recently completed a book, “Resonant Games,” about the design of educational games along with others in his lab. He has a PhD in zoology from the University of Wisconsin and a BS in biology from Cornell University.

Justin Reich is a learning scientist who received his EdD from Harvard University in 2012 and served as the Richard L. Menschel HarvardX Research Fellow before coming to MIT. Reich is the director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab where he investigates the complex, technology-rich classrooms of the future and the systems that prepare educators to thrive in those settings. He a faculty associate of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and his writings have appeared in Science, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Educational Researcher, The Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, the Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.

Lisa Parks is a global media scholar whose research focuses on: satellite technologies and media culture; critical studies of media infrastructures; media, militarization, and surveillance; and experimental methodologies. She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and was senate faculty and department chair of film and media studies at the Univerity of California at Santa Barbara before arriving at MIT. Parks is the author of "Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual" (Duke University Press, 2005) and the forthcoming "Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror," and is co-editor of "Life in the Age of Drone Warfare" (Duke University Press, 2017), "Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures" (Illinois University Press, 2015), "Down to Earth: Satellite Technologies, Industries and Cultures" (Rutgers University Press, 2012), and "Planet TV: A Global Television Reader" (New York University Press, 2003). She is director of the new Global Media Technologies and Cultures (GMTaC) Lab.

Miriam Schoenfield studied mathematics, neuroscience, and philosophy at Brandeis University as an undergraduate and received her PhD in philosophy from MIT in 2012. After spending some time at the University of Texas at Austin and New York University she is excited to return to Cambridge as faculty. Her research is focused primarily in epistemology, but she also has interests in metaethics and decision theory. Some recent projects concern the nature of rationality and its relation to accuracy, the prospects of using sets of probability functions, rather than single ones, to describe an agent's belief states, and some work on the question of how we should respond to the realization that many of the beliefs we have, we only have because we've been subject to certain social influences (in schools, religious communities, and political environments).

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Christine Wang receives American Association for Crystal Growth Award

Christine A. Wang, a senior staff member in the Laser Technology and Applications Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, has received the 2017 American Association for Crystal Growth Award for "seminal and innovative contributions to epitaxial crystal growth of III-V compound semiconductors and the design of high-performance OMVPE [organometallic vapor phase epitaxy] reactors." Wang accepted the award and presented a plenary talk during the 21st American Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy this summer in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

"Christine Wang has been long recognized as a world expert in the field of OMVPE growth of III-V semiconductor materials and the design of OMVPE reactors," said Craig Keast, associate head of the Advanced Technology Division at the laboratory. "Her early work at Lincoln Laboratory on gas flow visualization in OMVPE reactor growth cells led to some key understandings of the proper design of OMVPE systems, and the results of her work were subsequently incorporated into the design of commercial systems."

Wang's design concepts are used today in virtually all large-scale, rotating disk OMVPE reactors. OMVPE reactors are used to deposit III-V semiconductor materials on wafers. These wafers are processed to make solar cells, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), lasers, transistors, and other high-power, high-speed electronic switching devices. Wang's pioneering studies of OMVPE reactors for highly controllable and reproducible epitaxial growth have impacted the multibillion-dollar industries these technologies make up today. 

Beyond her earlier work on OMVPE reactors, Wang led the investigation and use of nonconventional chemical compounds to enable epitaxial growth of high-quality metastable antimonide-based III-V semiconductors and advanced the state of the art in the epitaxial growth of gallium arsenide-, gallium antimonide-, and indium phosphide-based optoelectronic devices, including diode lasers, quantum cascade lasers, and thermophotovoltaic cells. Her current research is focused on the development of high-power, continuous-wave quantum cascade lasers emitting in the long-wave infrared wavelength region. 

"I was completely surprised and overwhelmed to learn that I would receive this award. I know the work of the folks who have received the award in the past, and I never expected that my work might be considered in their league," Wang said. "As I reflect back on my work at the laboratory that led to the award, I am truly grateful for the opportunities to work on hard problems and the freedom to pursue solutions with independence along with the contributions of many outstanding collaborators." 

Throughout her career at Lincoln Laboratory, Wang has authored or coauthored more than 170 publications, has been granted eight patents, has given numerous invited talks at national and international conferences, and has edited one book. She has chaired and organized numerous national and international conferences related to epitaxial crystal growth and mid-infrared materials, and is currently a member of the Executive Committee for the American Association of Crystal Growth, Electronic Materials Conference Committee, and International Advisory Committee for International Conferences on Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy. She has also served as a mentor to many staff members at the Laboratory and to numerous MIT undergraduate and graduate students. Wang will serve as the program cochair for the next International Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy in 2019.

Wang earned bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees in materials science and engineering at MIT.

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MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node finds permanent home

The MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node yesterday announced the opening of its permanent, 5,000-square-foot facility, which will serve as a hub for collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship for MIT students, professors, and alumni, as well as others working in Hong Kong.

The opening ceremony at the facility was attended by Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam, as well as alumni and friends of MIT, Innovation Node leaders, students, and startups, and MIT professors who helped launch and guide the Innovation Node’s development.

Located in Kowloon Tong, in an area closely linked to major Hong Kong universities and rapid transportation, the facility includes cutting-edge prototyping equipment, a makerspace, and a variety of multipurpose areas that can be used for lectures, classes, and working spaces.

By enabling new programs and initiatives, the new facility will boost innovation, education, and collaboration between the MIT and Hong Kong communities, including high school and college students, professors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, says Charlie Sodini, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering, who serves as faculty director for the Innovation Node. “It really is about education — we brought MIT’s entrepreneurship and making curriculum across the Pacific Ocean,” he says.

Conceived by the MIT Innovation Initiative, the Node was first announced in November 2015. In June 2016, the Innovation Node launched its first program, a unique hardware accelerator program designed to educate students in key areas of innovation practice. In January came the launch of its flagship program, the MIT Entrepreneurship and Maker Skills Integrator (MEMSI), a two-week, immersive miniaccelerator that connects MIT students with peers from universities in Hong Kong.

But those programs have been held in rented venues around Hong Kong. Having a permanent space saves time and resources, creates a stronger sense of community, and “opens the door for many more programs” for students, alumni, professors, and even the public, says Brian Yen, executive director of the Innovation Node. “Now that we have our own space, we can start running regular programs, from maker courses to education programs to workshops,” he says.

Prototyping and manufacturing

Inside the Innovation Node is equipment for varying levels of prototyping. For light, rapid prototyping, there are soldering irons, 3-D printers, and equipment for making electronics. For more sophisticated projects, there are laser cutters and machines that make custom circuit boards. The makerspace also has basic construction tools, such as table saws, pipe cutters, and power drills. A wet lab that will support biological engineering tools is in the works.

Positioned above a manufacturing facility, the space also gives students access to more advanced prototyping tools, such as molding equipment and automated machines used for cutting, carving, and milling materials including wood, aluminum, and plastics. “When students do advanced stuff, they can walk downstairs and pay for their time,” Yen says.

Among students who have already benefited from the facility is Aagya Mathur, an MIT Sloan School of Management student who co-founded the startup aam, which began as part of MEMSI in January.

The “femtech” startup — meaning it uses technology to address women’s health issues — is developing a “smart sleeve” for blister packs of contraceptives or other pills, which recognizes individual pills and sends the user a reminder if one hasn’t been taken on schedule. The startup was one of the first to use the new facility over the summer. Now, it has a working prototype. “Because we are a hardware startup, a big piece of the startup is prototyping,” Mathur told MIT News. “The node is really great about having so many machines, such as 3-D printers, mills, vacuum pumps, laser cutters, bandsaws, and soldering stations we were able to use.”

Mathur and her co-founders also took advantage of the Innovation Node’s close proximity to Shenzhen, a major city with advanced manufacturing facilities located a 40-minute train ride away. Over the summer, they visited four manufacturing plants for a look behind the scenes. “It was really eye-opening to see the intricacies of [manufacturing] in person,” Mathur says. “You see how much it costs, how fast things go, and that’s valuable, especially for a hardware startup.”

At the opening event, aam was one of several student startups to present the prototypes they launched at the Innovation Node. Others were: BeThere, a video-recording device on wheels that parents can control remotely to keep an eye on their young children; InterFace, a smart lanyard that enhances interaction among conference participants; Sella, a sensor-embedded office chair that improves sitting posture for employees; Sightecho, one of the first Innovation Node participants, which is developing an augmented-reality mask for divers that displays vital information, including depth and oxygen level; and TNKK, a high school team from Hong Kong making a smart stress ball that provides tactile sensory relief.

Building a collaborative community

A major benefit of the physical space is that it provides continued access to resources for alumni of Hong Kong universities and MIT, says Marina Chan, director of strategic initiatives for the Innovation Node. “In Hong Kong, university students get a lot of resources, but once they graduate, that access is considerably shrunk,” she says. “In a way, we’re an attachment area for them.”

Innovation Node alumni from MIT and Hong Kong universities can drop by to continue projects or mentor budding entrepreneurs. MIT professors can visit during trips to the region to interact with students or deliver lectures. Startups that launched in the Innovation Node also have continued access to the space for further prototyping, company meetings, and, perhaps as importantly, free coffee. “It’s fuel for the mind,” Yen jokes.

In the future, the Innovation Node may also open to allow members of the public to use the makerspace, for example to take classes in app inventing or 3-D printing. It could also serve as an offline meeting spot for edX and MITx users. “We want to curate the best of what MIT has to offer and bring in the ‘mens et manus’ philosophy into the local context,” says Chan, referring to MIT’s “mind and hand” motto.

As space is scarce in Hong Kong, the facility was designed to be multifunctional under tight area constraints. MIT architecture alumnus Dennis Cheung SM ’13, one of the first Innovation Node participants a year ago, designed the space along with his team at UPSOP, a design studio he co-founded. Inspiration came from MIT Department of Architecture Professor George Stiny’s concept of “shape grammar,” which says furniture and other features in spaces should be designed for assembling in different configurations that encourage working and social interactions.

All of the furniture is custom-made and, along with the whiteboards and partitions, can be scooted around on wheels to form different seating, socializing, lecturing, and working arrangements. Apart from optimizing space, the design is meant to inspire creativity. “It doesn’t look boring,” Yen says. “One of the things we wanted is for people to come in and feel the spirit of innovation, and feel creative about how they use the space.”

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Building 31 powers back up

A $52 million renovation of the 90-year-old Building 31 on MIT’s campus has transformed the space into a gleaming home for research in autonomy, turbomachinery, energy storage, and transportation. The three-year project added nearly 7,000 square feet of new space and doubled Building 31's capacity for faculty, students, and researchers.

Faculty and students are moving back in with their robots, drones, and even a Corvette in tow. “The architects even redesigned an entrance to be wide enough to drive a full-scale car in,” says Amos Winter, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), who works on automotive technologies.

At the heart of the building is the new Kresa Center for Autonomous Systems, a 80-foot-long by 40-foot-wide space boasting 25-foot ceilings dedicated for work in all types of autonomous vehicles including rotor and fixed-wing aircraft. The space was enabled by a gift from MIT alumnus Kent Kresa. Professor Jonathan How from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) describes the space as “one of the largest custom-designed, dedicated spaces for robotics research that I am aware of in academia.”

New building features include indoor and outdoor spaces for unpiloted aerial vehicle testing, new laboratories for junior faculty, and workshops devoted to Beaver Works, the joint research and educational program with MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

“It was the generosity and enthusiasm of our extended MIT family that made this vision a reality. Generations of researchers and students will use this greatly improved space to conduct research that will benefit the world,” says Jaime Peraire, the H. N. Slater Professor and head of AeroAstro. The project represents the renewal of more than half of the campus research space for the department.

Building 31, officially known as the Sloan Laboratories for Aircraft and Automotive Engines, originally opened in 1928 as a single-story home for MIT’s internal combustion engine research, funded by General Motors CEO Alfred P. Sloan Jr., Class of 1895. A two-story east wing was added in 1940 to relieve testing floor congestion and a three-story west wing was added in 1944 to aid MIT’s increased contribution to the war effort. The building had remained largely unchanged in the 70 years since.

AeroAstro Professor Zoltán Spakovszky, director of the Gas Turbine Lab, which has been an anchor tenant of Building 31 since 1947, says: “The refurbished engine test cells and upgraded motor drive system for our de Laval wind tunnel and air system will greatly support our research.”

Renovations in the east wing of the building offer new office and laboratory space for MechE including the Sloan Automotive Laboratory, GEAR Lab, and Electrochemical Energy Lab.

As students, faculty, and staff make their way back into the refurbished building over the coming weeks, excitement is high. “We’re all really excited to come back and make it home again,” says Julie Shah, an associate professor in AeroAstro.

de MIT News http://ift.tt/2xqkZ80