Undergraduate financial aid boosted for 2018-19

MIT will further boost its undergraduate financial aid budget for the 2018-19 academic year to support a dynamic community of talented students and their families. The 9.6 percent increase in financial aid will counterbalance a 3.9 percent increase in tuition and fees.

The Institute will commit $129.9 million for financial aid next year. The net cost for an average MIT student receiving need-based aid will be $23,539 in 2018 — only 10 percent higher than it was almost 20 years ago in 2000 ($21,346).

“We have a long-standing commitment to expanding our financial aid resources,” says Vice Chancellor Ian A. Waitz. “We want to make sure that students and families, especially those who might think we are out of reach in terms of cost, understand that MIT is welcoming and accessible. By removing barriers to talent, we enable exceptional students to attend regardless of need. And once here, the level of financial aid and other resources MIT provides allows students to focus on their education.”

Based upon a study by the Equality of Opportunity Project (analyzing data from 30 million college students from 1999 to 2013), MIT enrolled the highest proportion of students who come from families with annual income of $20,000 or less, relative to its peers. MIT also ranked first in the report’s overall mobility index, compared to the same group. The index measures the likelihood that a student will move up two or more income quintiles after obtaining a degree.

The estimated average MIT scholarship for students receiving financial aid next year is $47,251. More than 30 percent of MIT undergraduates receive aid sufficient to allow them to attend the Institute tuition-free.

For undergraduates who do not receive need-based financial aid, tuition and fees will be $51,832 next year. With average housing and dining costs included, students not receiving financial aid will pay $67,342.

MIT is one of only five American colleges and universities that currently admit all undergraduate students without regard to their financial circumstances; award all financial aid based on need; and meet the full demonstrated financial need of all admitted students.

In the past few years, the MIT Admissions Office has enhanced communications and outreach to raise awareness about the accessibility and affordability of the Institute. In addition, other efforts such as the Office of Engineering Outreach Programs, targeting underserved high school students interested in science and engineering fields, continue to demonstrate success: Giving participants a firsthand MIT experience helps to build their confidence and encourages them to apply to MIT or similar institutions in greater numbers.

For students with family incomes under $90,000 a year and typical assets, MIT guarantees that scholarship funding from all sources will allow them to attend the Institute tuition-free. While the Institute’s financial aid program primarily supports students from lower- and middle-income households, even families earning more than $250,000 may qualify for need-based financial aid based on their family circumstances, such as if two or more children are in college at the same time.

About 57 percent of MIT’s 4,547 undergraduates receive need-based financial aid from the Institute and 18 percent receive Federal Pell Grants, which generally go to U.S. students with family incomes below $60,000.

MIT treats the Pell grant in a unique way to further support low income students. Unlike most other colleges and universities, MIT allows students to use the Pell grant to offset what they are expected to contribute through work-study during the semester and the summer.

Assistance on campus also goes beyond traditional financial aid, ensuring that all incoming students can take advantage of hallmark MIT opportunities such as participating in paid research through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program; engaging in international and public service internships; and pursuing entrepreneurial ideas with appropriate mentorship and seed funding.

In 2017, 71 percent of MIT seniors graduated with no debt; of those who did assume debt to finance their education, the median indebtedness at graduation was $16,192.

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MIT Black History Project launches new website

The MIT Black History Project has launched a new website that documents evidence of the role and experience of the black community at MIT since the Institute opened its doors in 1865.

“Look at this project to get a better sense of what happens when you ignore human potential ... based on appearance, which has been much of our country's history,” says Melissa Nobles, professor of political science and Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) at MIT.

The MIT Black History Project was founded and is directed by Clarence G. Williams, adjunct professor emeritus and former special assistant to the president. The project is an ongoing collaborative research effort sponsored by the MIT Office of the Provost.

Since 1995, the project has worked to archive over 150 years of the black experience at MIT and identified six key historical periods along the way: Roots and Exponents (1861-1920), Order of Operations (1921-1945), Potential Output (1946-1954), Critical Mass (1955-1968), Integration and Differentiation (1969-1994), and Rising Voices (1995-present).

At present, the website offers more than 500 illustrations, photographs, and other archival material available for community members, scholars, journalists, and other interested individuals to search. An additional 2,500 items already collected by the project will be included in the future. A major call to action is on the site’s Giving page, where people are invited to share their own pieces of MIT black history.

Williams’ objective has been to place the black experience at MIT in its full and appropriate context by researching and disseminating materials that expose communities both inside and outside MIT to this rich, historically significant legacy.

This effort includes lending research support to other Institute-affiliated entities such as the MIT and Slavery course taught by historian Craig Steven Wilder and archivist Nora Murphy, the MIT MLK Visiting Professor and Scholars Program website, and various Black Alumni/ae of MIT (BAMIT) endeavors.

Via the materials disseminated by the MIT Black History Project, Williams hopes that “future generations may relate to our hopes and disappointments [at MIT], to our struggles and achievements.”

Williams joined the MIT administration in 1972 as assistant dean of the graduate school. Throughout an MIT career spanning over three decades, he served as special assistant to the president and chancellor for minority affairs, acting director of the Office of Minority Education, assistant equal opportunity officer, ombudsperson, and adjunct professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Williams is the author of "Reflections of the Dream, 1975-1994: Twenty-One Years Celebrating the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology" (MIT Press, 1996) and "Technology and the Dream: Reflections on the Black Experience at MIT, 1941-1999" (MIT Press, 2003).

A valuable new resource

Website content includes the first visual evidence of the MIT black experience, dating back to 1875, at the early campus in downtown Boston: Jones' Lunch is a small cafeteria owned and operated out of a gymnasium by a black caterer named Jones.

By 1892, the Institute sees its first black graduate, Robert R. Taylor. He goes on to become the first known African-American architect to be accredited in the United States. Taylor also designs most of the pre-1930s buildings at Tuskegee Institute, which models its own curriculum after MIT’s.

The first black woman student to attend MIT is Marie C. Turner. She enrolls in 1905, along with her brother Henry Charles Turner, Jr. They are the second case of black siblings to attend MIT since Charles S. Dixon, Class of 1898, and John B. Dixon, Class of 1899.

It isn’t until 1955 that MIT hires its first black faculty member, linguist Joseph R. Applegate — the same year that both Applegate and Noam Chomsky earn their PhDs from the University of Pennsylvania.

About the project team

The web content team is led by writer and MIT alumna Nelly Rosario and digital humanities producer Robert L. Dunbar. Serving as project consultants is a diverse group of current and retired MIT administrators and staff. Web development, content strategy, and design services were provided by MIT Information Systems and Technology (IS&T), MIT Communications Initiatives, and the MacPhee Design Group, a web design and development firm from the Boston area.

The project has received support from MIT President L. Rafael Reif, MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt, and two previous presidents in memoriam, Charles M. Vest and Paul E. Gray. Alumni have also contributed to this effort, notably philanthropist Reginald Van Lee and RPI president Shirley Ann Jackson, both of whom serve as the project’s senior advisors.

The MIT Black History Project website launch coincides with Black History Month and with the MIT Black Students’ Union 50th Anniversary year.

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Mens et Manus America panelists analyze U.S. immigration policy

Immigration from Mexico to the United States has been roughly stable for the past 10 years, and immigrants are statistically less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. These are just two of the facts shared by leading immigration experts who presented an introduction to the subject at an event at MIT on Feb. 8.

"Understanding Immigration: How Can the U.S. Achieve a Fair, Humane Policy for Accepting and Integrating Immigrants" centered largely on immigration from Mexico, which has been a focal point of recent policy debates in Washington. Featuring two leading sociologists — Douglas S. Massey of Princeton University and Mary C. Waters of Harvard University — the event was the latest in a series sponsored by Mens et Manus America, an MIT initiative focused on the country’s social, political, and economic challenges.

"For me, watching immigration policy unfold over the last decades has been like watching a slow-moving train wreck," said Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton, who began the evening’s presentation by providing a short history of the ebbs and flows of Mexican immigration and related U.S. policy since the 1940s.

"The great irony is that [the United States] spent $35 billion to try to stop the flow from Mexico that would have stopped of its own accord," said Massey, who revealed that the United States cracked down even as long-term demographic shifts in the Mexican population were reducing migration.

Waters, for her part, noted that immigrants are generally a large and successful segment of American society. "Immigrants and their children represent one out of every four U.S. residents," said Waters, the John L. Loeb Professor and interim department chair of sociology at Harvard. "Immigration is an engine of our success as a society."

Policy affects migration

Massey is the author of "Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2007) and co-author of "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass" (Harvard University Press, 1993), among many other works. He has been researching and writing on immigration since the late 1970s and is the founder of the Mexican Migration Project, a 35-year-old binational research effort centered on understanding Mexican migration to the United States.

He told a standing room only audience in Building E62-276 that from 1942 to 1964, the United States ran a guest worker program for Mexicans that facilitated the flow of labor for seasonal agricultural work. At that time, he said, most migrants were men who returned to their families in Mexico during the off-season. Then Congress changed the rules in the 1960s — motivated, according to Massey, by the desire to appear non-racist. Immigration rules for Mexico were brought in line with those for other countries, capping immigration from the Western Hemisphere for the first time, he said.

Since Mexicans still wanted to work in the United States and farms still needed workers, however, migration didn’t stop. Instead, workers came over without documentation, and the United States responded by increasing enforcement. More policing led to more apprehensions, which increased the impression among Americans that there was a problem — even though entries from Mexico leveled off after 1979, Massey said. Net migration from Mexico began to decline in 2000 and has been relatively stable for the last 10 years, he said.

The costs and risks of crossing the border escalated, however, which did stop migrants from crossing the border — just not in the way U.S. leaders intended, according to Massey. "The border enforcement backfired," Massey said. Mexicans began avoiding being caught at the border "not by staying in Mexico, but by not leaving the United States," he said.

Immigrant integration

This is just one example of the gulf that has existed between the facts and U.S. immigration policy for at least the past 30 years, both speakers agreed. "The idea that we’re going to keep people out of our country by dealing with the immigration process is really myopic," Waters said, noting that 180 million people enter the country every year — as tourists and students, for example — and most do not decide to remain here.

Those who do stay tend to improve American society, added Waters, who chaired the National Academies of Sciences' committee that produced a report in 2015 titled, "The Integration of Immigrants into American Society." She said that research revealed that immigrants are healthier, more religious, and much less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

Researchers also found that immigrants integrate well and quickly into American society. "Immigrants are very much a part of American society," Waters said — and that includes undocumented immigrants, 61 percent of whom have been in the country a decade or more. Yet, undocumented immigrants don’t have the same legal rights as citizens, Waters noted. They can be arrested without probable cause, sentenced without probation, and have no right to an attorney, she said.

The author of numerous books, including "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age" (Russell Sage Foundation, 2009) and "Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America" (University of California Press, 1990), Waters also noted that enforcing immigration rules is expensive — costing more each year than is spent on the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Secret Service combined. "Most Americans don’t know the level to which we’re acting like a police state," she said.

Following the two presentations, first-year MBA student Xavier Vargas moderated a question-and-answer session in his role as a vice president of the Hispanic Business Club, which helped support the event, along with the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Vargas noted that both sides of the immigration debate could use more empathy and asked what the speakers might say to a custodian in Tucson, Arizona — the mother of an MIT staffer — who feels overwhelmed by competition from immigrants.

Waters replied that while there will always be anecdotes about job competition, the data indicates that immigrants generally bump up wages for native-born Americans. "It’s very convenient for a society with huge and growing income inequality to have someone to blame that on — rather than on those taking the profits and not paying those who work for them a living wage," she said.

Attitude shift

Waters and Massey both emphasized that real human damage is being done by the country’s immigration policies — from the fear spreading through immigrant communities to families torn by detainments or deportations. Yet both also offered hopeful notes.

Massey pointed out that the sheer numbers of immigrants in the country will likely move the pendulum toward more immigrant-friendly policies. And Waters suggested that several factors indicate the country is moving toward better relations between natives and immigrants. Chief among these is the demographic changes that have moved immigrants into more regions of the country, increasing citizens’ first-hand knowledge of immigration issues. "I think we have a growing knowledge of immigration and a knowledge and acceptance of people in their schools and workplaces — and that’s leading to better attitudes," she said.

Mens et Manus America is jointly sponsored by SHASS and MIT Sloan. The Feb. 8 event was also offered in partnership with the Hispanic Business Club at MIT Sloan. The program is co-directed by Agustín Rayo, a professor of philosophy, and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, the Alvin J. Siteman (1948) Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy and deputy dean of MIT Sloan, who introduced the evening’s speakers.

Story by SHASS Communications
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand
Senior Writer: Kathryn O'Neill

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Future Heritage Lab devises creative responses to humanitarian crises

Azra Akšamija first visited the Al Azraq refugee camp in Jordan in 2016. “Once I saw [the camp], I couldn’t unsee it,” says Akšamija, an associate professor in the Art, Culture, and Technology program of the Department of Architecture. “I thought we really needed to do something there.”

Her impulse to help alleviate the suffering of people displaced or otherwise traumatized by the atrocities of war informed a range of artistic, educational, and research projects — and inspired the creation of the MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL) within the School of Architecture and Planning.

The FHL explores creative responses to conflict and crisis through artistic collaborations across borders, culturally sensitive design, and experiments in cultural preservation. In the context of humanitarian crises, the lab develops projects at the intersection of art, culture, and technology to address the emotional and practical needs of communities under threat. Since its launch in 2015, the FHL has implemented five large-scale participatory global art projects, developed three MIT graduate courses, and established a global network of collaborators in the arts, education, and humanitarian aid.

Now the lab is in the process of launching a satellite hub in the Al Azraq refugee camp. The space is produced in collaboration with local artists, designers, and academics from Amman and from the camp itself. The objective is to advance the education of refugees and students from MIT and the German-Jordanian University (GJU) through multi-directional knowledge exchange, foster a better understanding between cultures, and advance the competencies of humanitarian aid from the perspective of art and design.

Akšamija, who experienced the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, remembers how culture became an instrument to counter violence. “I know that culture kept people alive," she says. "During the siege of Sarajevo, people would organize exhibitions, risk their lives to do something artistic. Because art and culture kept them human and made them feel different from this destruction.”

In communities affected by conflict, Akšamija points out, there are many neglected issues related to specific emotional needs or to the preservation of heritage, identity, and cultural memories. It is in these areas where she feels she and others in art and design disciplines can contribute to humanitarian efforts through both research and practice.

But, she cautions, “help can often be dehumanizing.” So she advocates for methods of co-creation in order to not take agency away from the residents in the camp. The first year of this project involved site visits and meetings with refugees, Skype sessions, and workshops focused on problem analysis with MIT and GJU students and participants from the refugee camp. The team identified a range of issues, many of which were interrelated. They prioritized the artistic and design interventions that could address a number of issues simultaneously.

“Lightweaver,” a kinetic light sculpture, was one of the results. It is a utilitarian and poetic response to everyday difficulties of the camp stemming from the austerity of the shelters. The corrugated steel shelters lack human dignity, and residents are issued only small solar lamps to light their spaces. These conditions breed hopelessness, especially among school-age children who often quit their education because they cannot imagine a future beyond the camp.

Lightweaver not only provides a lighting device that can transform the shelter interior into an immersive cultural environment, but the project also involves training in basic electrical and mechanical engineering, embroidery, calligraphy, and cultural storytelling. The prototypes are playful kinetic lighting machines and educational devices developed in collaboration with the artists, engineers, and inventors from the Al Azraq refugee camp. Stories from textiles are translated into the light displays as a means of preserving cultural memory and inspiring hope.

In working on Lightweaver, the team met a group of 16-year-olds in the camp who started a journal. MIT students taught them photography and design, while the writers documented their lives in the camp with stories, poems and images. These collaborations were recently shown at the Design for a Nomadic World exhibition, which took place at the German-Jordanian University during Amman Design Week 2017.   

MIT Department of Architecture also donated several laptops to support the publication of Al Azraq camp inventions that FHL is developing with the youth in the camp. This collaborative publishing project includes a photographic survey of art and design in the camp, essays, and a catalogue of inventions made by refugees, such as air conditioners, fountains, monuments, and toys. It will be used as a textbook for Akšamija’s upcoming MITx course, Design and Scarcity, to be launched in 2019. This course invites online learners worldwide to learn from refugees and from each other and to engage with design issues in the context of scarcity and crisis.

Akšamija has developed several other courses around the work the Future Heritage Lab is doing in the camp, including the one being offered in spring 2018, Culturally Sensitive Design: Art and Innovation in the Refugee Camp. This course, which received 2017 J-WEL Grant in Higher Education Innovation, investigates how artistic translations of historical cultural forms could provide means to address the loss of history, memory and identity of displaced communities. Students will focus on designing a mixed-use facility to be built in the camp through FHL’s co-creation method. “There is no social space in the camp — nowhere for people to come and sit together,” Akšamija explains. “So, we are creating this space as a hybrid of a living room, a makerspace, a classroom, and a living museum. It will be a space to inspire new forms of cultural preservation and civic life.” Every aspect of the facility will be conceived and designed with the people in the camp.

FHL aims to make an impact that goes beyond the classroom and beyond any one humanitarian crisis. To that end, Akšamija and her students initiated a Code of Ethics to equip other practitioners in the arts and cultural sector who work in a humanitarian capacity with a much-needed tool. This online platform offers a shared channel for dissemination of questions, critical reflections and dilemmas regarding the ethics of interventions in the humanitarian context toward the formulation of transdisciplinary guidelines. The platform is developed through crowdsourced intelligence and contributions from partnering organizations who are invited to share their valuable expertise. The code itself evolved from dilemmas the class faced, and the topics reflect the course lessons — destruction, preservation, art, education, economy, fundraising, and media.

“I am honored to work with an amazing team of people from various backgrounds who want to help by using their skills or sharing access to their institutional capacities,” says Akšamija. “It is incredibly valuable and inspiring to learn from refugees’ experiences and their ingenuity to transform the most difficult living situation with minimal means.”

Sera Tolgay, one of Akšamija’s graduate students learned from this context, describing the Al Azraq camp as “a sea of steel from afar, an ocean of inspiration from inside.” As Akšamija and her students continue this necessary work, she says her foremost question remains: “How can we make a contribution to help these people survive this awful time they're going through?”

The Future Heritage Lab’s work has been supported by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Mellon Faculty Grant; CARE Jordan; a Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) Research Grant; the MISTI Arab World Program; the MIT Center for International Studies; and the MIT Council for the Arts (CAMIT). Anyone seeking to learn more about and support the Future Heritage Lab facility in the Al Azraq refugee camp in Jordan can do so online.

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MIT’s growing global leadership in water achieves industry recognition

In early January 2018, MIT professor John Lienhard opened an unexpected email. A panel of water industry professionals from around the world had ranked him fourth in the Top 25 Global Water Leaders list. The list was compiled and published by Water and Wastewater International (WWi), a publication dedicated to the distribution of practical knowledge for water system operators, wastewater engineers, and other professionals in the water industry worldwide. Its readership includes industry professionals either working in or consulting with water and wastewater systems and plants, researchers and educators, government and development agencies, industrial wastewater facilities, and environmental management organizations.

“WWi is one of many industry publications that I turn to to stay informed of the latest trends in water management, as do many of my colleagues from within and outside of academia,” says Lienhard. “Therefore it was an honor and a surprise to find my name included in this year’s list of influential leaders in the water sector.” 

On the 2018 list, Lienhard was joined by influential individuals from across the globe who were recognized for their leadership in water innovation for the digital age. Among the recognized achievements were: developing an innovative urban storm water management strategy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; building a biofuel production facility for algae harvested using wastewater in Spain; producing a global hub for the big-data-informed smart water sector to exchange information; leadership of the only water utility company to be named on the World’s Most Ethical Companies list for seven years running (Northumbrian Water); and many more.

Lienhard was recognized for the specific research-based water sector innovations that have come out of his lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The Lienhard Research Group at MIT focuses on developing technologies for clean water through a wide variety of approaches, among them desalination, wastewater remediation, and water recycling, all while retaining the core objective of energy efficiency and reduced environmental impact. However, his influence on water innovation extends beyond this role. As director of the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT, he leads an Institute-wide initiative to cultivate new water and food systems research across fields and disciplines. This work is catalyzing innovation through grants, sponsored research programs, and other partnerships that result in real progress toward a future where the world’s water and food needs are met with a minimal impact on the environment.

While Lienhard was the only academic on the list, three others who were also nominated have a strong relationship to academia, and specifically to MIT and J-WAFS. Patrick Decker, CEO of Xylem Inc., was recognized for the way he is driving the company into the smart water space. Xylem’s business includes industry-leading brands that are used in water infrastructure around the world. The company invests in research and innovation in order to develop and distribute new technologies that will improve the way water is used, conserved, and reused in the future. J-WAFS is a key collaborator in this effort. In 2016, Xylem became J-WAFS’ first research affiliate through a three-year agreement involving sponsored research and support for J-WAFS activities and students at MIT. The sponsored research addresses challenges related to water contaminants, energy requirements for moving water, sustainability, and data analytics. The funding is also supporting a new generation of water innovators, through sponsorship of the MIT Water Club’s Water Innovation Prize and a J-WAFS graduate student fellowship.

“The global challenges of climate change, resource scarcity, and economic development for a growing population require research-based innovations in order to find new solutions,” says Decker. “The research affiliation with MIT, through J-WAFS, is allowing us to tap into a deep well of knowledge, cutting-edge facilities, and a culture of creativity to produce solutions at the vanguard of our field. This relationship shows the power of cross-sector collaboration to scope and solve these challenges.”

Research at MIT was also critical to the deployment of an advanced water sensing system in Singapore that has since become one of the digital water management strategies for which PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, was recognized. This water sensing system began through a collaboration between PUB and the MIT Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling. The research collaboration was initiated and led by Andrew Whittle, the Edmund K. Turner Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the technology that emerged grew into the city-scale wireless sensor network now utilized by PUB Singapore to monitor water distribution by measuring water pressure, flow, and quality to track and prevent leaks, bursts, and other water loss. Harry Seah, PUB’s chief engineering and technology officer recognized by the 2018 Top 25 list, initially encouraged the project, along with and the institutional collaboration with MIT that made it possible. The technology launched a spinoff company, Visenti, which was purchased by Xylem in 2016. The sensors are now used in 25 cities worldwide.
 
At the top of this year’s Top 25 list is another familiar face at MIT: Carlos Cosín, CEO of Almar Water Solutions. Cosín is an agronomist and a well-known figure in the international water management community. He’s a good friend of MIT, following J-WAFS-supported research through multiple campus visits and through his company’s relationship with the Jameel organization, whose commitment to addressing the most significant problems facing mankind led to the gift that founded J-WAFS. 

“MIT’s strength is creating basic research and translating it to innovations in technology that have broad societal benefits,” says Lienhard. “When our faculty and students bring this approach to the water sector, innovations abound, as is exemplified by our relationship to several of the water sector leaders recognized by the Top 25 list. The partnerships in industry and the public sector that J-WAFS has developed, and the research results that have occurred through Singapore-MIT Alliance’s relationship to PUB, show the important cross-pollination between academic research and industrial development. While the nominating committee named only one of MIT’s water researchers, I am proud to see our institutional influence on water sector advancements represented here.”

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MIT Sandbox’s first acquired startup gives back

In spring 2016, the Institute launched MIT Sandbox, a program that provides fledgling entrepreneurs with funding, mentorship, education, and other support to help shape and launch early-stage ventures.

Two years later, the program is celebrating a major entrepreneurial milestone: Escher Reality, an augmented-reality (AR) startup from the first Sandbox cohort, has been acquired by an AR-game-developer giant — and plans to give back to the program that helped it launch.

Escher is developing a back-end platform for AR that allows, for the first time, cross-platform and fully multiplayer games. It also enables “persistent experiences,” as the startup calls them, in which an AR game remembers where a user places digital objects in a physical play area — to return to, or for others to find — and recognizes when other users, connected on other devices, interact with those objects.

On Feb. 1, the startup announced that it sold to Niantic, the major AR-game developer, founded by ex-Google engineers, that’s behind 2016’s massive hit “Pokémon Go.”

Of the roughly 700 startups that so far have gone through Sandbox, several have raised significant rounds and are generating revenue, but Escher is the first that’s penned an exit deal. Attributing part of its early success to Sandbox — especially as a startup operating in a very young industry — Escher co-founders are now giving back to the program.

“The Sandbox is phenomenal,” says Ross Finman, who co-founded Escher with Diana Hu, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. “It gives students freedom to explore any idea … and funds and mentorship and a bunch of resources to work with. If someone wants to pursue something, there’s no reason they can’t do it. We are excited to be the first exit coming out of Sandbox and to be the first ones giving back.”

Sandbox aims to open pathways for a range of student innovators, who may have an idea, an experimental technology, or even a specific startup in mind. Sandbox connects students with educational experiences and mentoring, and provides up to $25,000 in funding. Sandbox collaborates with other MIT programs, such as the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, the Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), and the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program. The program accepts three cohorts per year, in the spring, summer, and fall.

Participating entrepreneurs sign a voluntary pledge to give back if they find success outside the program. Escher plans to give back more than originally pledged. The gift means a lot, emotionally and practically, says Jinane Abounadi, executive director of Sandbox.

“On the emotional side, we’re so proud of the outcome and proud to have been part of the journey,” she says. On the practical side: “Our assumption is that when people are able to give back, they will, so the next generation of students has the same opportunities. That the first company that exits is generously giving back — it validates that assumption.”

Vice Chancellor Ian A. Waitz, now faculty director of Sandbox, who launched the program as dean of the School of Engineering, met Finman at the inception of the program, but a couple years before its launch. “In the interim, he sent me 43 emails asking, ‘When will it happen? We really need this!’” Waitz says. “His passion and enthusiasm are part of what drove the effort forward, the same way they have driven Escher forward. So, it is a wonderful coincidence that his team is the first Sandbox team to have an exit.”

Entrepreneur from the start

At MIT, Finman was deeply involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem — including as a student advisor during the formation of Sandbox.

In 2014, he was on the founding team of StartMIT (then Start6), founded by Anantha Chandrakasan, the current dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, along with other students, faculty, and administrators. The Independent Activities Period program provides students and postdocs opportunities to participate in venture-building activities and attend events with alumni and Boston innovation leaders. Participants also work with mentors and take field trips to local startups to explore the culture.

StartMIT organizers noted Finman’s enthusiasm. When Abounadi started to put together a student advisory group for Sandbox in 2015, Finman’s name immediately came up from Waitz, who was a key organizer of StartMIT. “I got an email from Ian that told me to contact Ross because he was so passionate about entrepreneurship,” she says.

Finman provided Sandbox organizers with insights into what resources students may need to succeed. For Finman, the opportunity to help was indicative of MIT’s student-focused ecosystem. “MIT is always asking, ‘What do students need?’” he says.

Around the same time Sandbox launched, Finman and Hu were drafting startup ideas. The co-founders had met as undergraduates studying artificial intelligence and computer vision at Carnegie Mellon years before. After graduating, Hu worked as an engineer at Intel, while Finman enrolled at MIT, where he developed advanced computer vision algorithms for robots in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s Marine Robotics Group.

In early 2016, the two decided to bring their combined computer vision experience to a then-emerging field: AR. Most technological development and funding was focused on virtual reality at the time, Finman says, while very few startups were developing AR technologies. “We decided to be contrarian,” he says.

Founding Escher that spring, they were accepted to Sandbox in the first summer cohort, with only a vague idea for advancing AR capabilities. Then, that July, “Pokémon Go” took the world by storm. “That’s when things really took off,” Finman says. “We said, ‘How do you take this to the next level?’”

In and out of Sandbox

Playing “Pokémon Go,” the two noticed a few lacking features: multiplayer and cross-platform capabilities, and the ability to save games.

In Sandbox, the team developed early proof of concepts. To fix the cross-platform issue, they developed a “unifying layer” that connects disparate devices to the same game. To provide multiplayer capabilities, they found a way to synchronize devices with low latency. Then they used algorithmic techniques to help each device recognize where, say, one Pokémon character is in relation to the other in the real world.

The other issue — “a freakishly hard problem,” Finman says — was saving games. When players exit an AR game, they lose all data and need to start over. The startup developed algorithms that let devices always recognize the exact spot where a digital object had been in a physical space, each time a game is restarted.

But perhaps more importantly, Finman says, the co-founders in Sandbox worked on marketing the technology in an industry that was just getting its footing. “In early days, it was putting together demos of user interfaces for developers and gamers,” he says. “For the early markets that many MIT companies go after, you have to ask, ‘How do you get it out to customers?’”

That Sandbox work got Escher that fall into the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps Program, hosted on campus by the VMS. Over the course of the program, they interviewed 100 AR and game developers in about seven weeks, which really helped them understand the market.

In June 2017, Escher joined Y Combinator, a seed accelerator in Silicon Valley. That August, Apple released its ARKit for AR software developers. Then, the many AR limitations — such as lack of multiplayer and cross-platform capabilities — that Escher had been working on for well over a year became apparent to developers. That caught the eye of Niantic, which quickly scooped up the startup.

Now the Escher team of six joins Niantic’s AR development team, as Niantic gears up for the 2018 release of its next title, “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.”

“[Niantic] has been a trailblazer of AR and getting people excited about AR. That’s why it’s such a good match for us,” Finman says, adding, “Because who doesn’t want to play wizard battles in the real world?”

For Abounadi, Escher’s story is a prime example of what Sandbox stands for. Escher entered the program with only an idea for a brand-new technology that had no definite application in an emerging industry. “We expect that a good portion of the ideas people work on in Sandbox will fit exactly that mold,” she says. “Because it’s MIT, and we have people pushing the boundaries on new technologies.”

de MIT News http://ift.tt/2EHA3m1

3 Questions: The future of nuclear energy

The MIT Energy Initiative continues to develop and expand its eight Low-Carbon Energy Centers, which facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration among MIT researchers, industry, and government to advance research in technology areas critical to addressing climate change. Below, the co-directors of the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems discuss their vision for transforming the energy system.

Q: How can advanced nuclear energy systems research help the world reach its goal of reducing carbon emissions?

A: Today, fossil fuel–based power generation and transportation systems are major contributors to the all-time-high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. To address the potentially devastating impacts of climate change, future systems will need to produce very low or even zero carbon emissions — and scale up within a short time horizon: less than 35 years.

Nuclear fission is uniquely positioned to help meet this challenge because it has the highest energy density of any power source and its growth potential is not limited by resource availability. Nuclear power can also scale up quickly to fulfill high demand with zero carbon emissions.

The potential applications are wide-reaching. Not only can nuclear power be harnessed to meet the world’s growing demand for electricity, it could be used to decarbonize the transportation sector by providing the power and heat necessary to operate electric cars or produce synthetic fuels.

Q: What are the major challenges to the expanded use of nuclear energy, and how will the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES) address them?

A: While nuclear fission is already a leading source of zero-carbon energy, providing approximately 12 percent of power generation worldwide, progress toward expansion has been stymied by several factors. There are substantial capital costs and regulatory hurdles associated with contemporary reactor designs; rare but serious accidents have exacerbated concerns about plant safety — in spite of the industry’s robust safety record; and questions regarding waste and proliferation continue to temper the public’s enthusiasm for nuclear energy.

CANES aims to address these issues by hastening the development of new and transformative technologies, materials, and methods that will make nuclear fission more affordable and more rapidly and securely deployable. Building upon MIT’s already extensive capability in nuclear fission-related innovation, the center supports work across the entire technology development arc — from basic materials research through to reactor design, manufacturing, and the fuel cycle.

The center also pairs its innovative research with a dedicated technologic, economic, and systems analysis program focused on how best to overcome the challenges involved in expanding nuclear power. An MIT team is conducting technology assessments, economic modeling, and analyses of the regulatory, financial, and political aspects of siting, designing, constructing, operating, and decommissioning nuclear facilities.

Q: What kind of research is currently underway at the center?

A: CANES research centers on the real-world needs identified by MITEI’s partners in industry and builds upon established tools of nuclear research, including our on-campus 6-megawatt research reactor and state-of-the-art experimental facilities.

Projects currently underway range from advances in reactor design, materials, and operation to regulatory innovations that will continue to ensure a robust level of safety for nuclear systems, accelerate the nuclear innovation cycle, and promote private investment in new nuclear technologies.

Recent examples of MIT work include advances in light-water-reactor materials that can help increase the reliability and decrease the operating costs of existing plants; research into the possibility of permanently sequestering high-level radioactive waste in deep granite boreholes; and development of a risk-informed, performance-based regulatory framework that could facilitate the licensing of innovative new reactor designs. MIT researchers are also developing a design for an offshore floating nuclear plant that promises to be less expensive and easier to deploy than today’s land-based plants.

This article appears in the Autumn 2017 issue of Energy Futures, the magazine of the MIT Energy Initiative.

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