“Pangea” study aims to modernize national test and training infrastructure

Whenever the United States develops a new system — say, a plane — this system needs to be tested and validated to ensure all of its components are working as intended. That's where the U.S. national test and training infrastructure comes into play. Across the country are many different ranges focused on assessing the systems being developed domestically.  

Since 2013, under sponsorship of U.S. Air Force Test and Evaluation, MIT Lincoln Laboratory has conducted several studies to improve the test and training infrastructure at particular ranges. These studies have guided government acquisitions of future ground-based systems, generated modernization approaches for airborne platforms, helped set requirements for next-generation radar programs, and informed test range personnel and security procedures. Earlier this year, the laboratory team embarked on their latest study, called Pangea. While the previous studies considered one range at a time, Pangea seeks to provide a coherent modernization strategy across the Southwestern U.S. test and training ranges.

"We're leveraging our knowledge of desired test capabilities and system availabilities generated through a decade of collaborative studies and applying systems analysis and modeling backed by testing to recommend a unified modernization plan," says Andrew Daigle, technical staff in the Tactical Defense Systems Group, part of the laboratory's Tactical Systems R&D area. "Modernizing the ranges in a coherent fashion involves taking into account different government organizations and figuring out who is buying what systems, how many systems are needed, and where the systems are going. The goal is to create a more network-centric test and training infrastructure." 

Traditionally, each range has followed their own methods of acquiring systems, without necessarily talking to their counterparts. Pangea aims to help test ranges ensure they are purchasing systems well-suited to their needs and that facilitate integration with other ranges. To support integration, the laboratory team is building in the need for open architectures in government system acquisitions. If ranges utilize similar systems with the same architectures, test and training cases can easily be ported from one range to another. For example, consider a large test range with ample resources to develop the software modes for an acquired radar. A small test range with limited resources could purchase the same radar as the large range and leverage that range's software modes instead of having to develop their own.

As Daigle explains, one of the big questions in this modernization effort is how much test and training can be done in open air versus simulation. Recently, high-level government officials have pushed to move testing into more simulated environments, which provide significant cost savings, are much easier to control, and do not pose concerns of adversarial prying eyes. However, sometimes a component can work correctly in a simulated environment but not in the real world, where physics-based effects such as electromagnetic spectrum congestion are present.

"We're trying to come up with a unified approach going forward between open-air ranges and simulators," Daigle notes. "It's too expensive to test everything in open air, but you can learn valuable lessons from some individual testing and apply these lessons to simulators to increase their accuracy."

The Pangea study first considered acquisitions of ground-based radar systems across the frequency spectrum. The laboratory team utilized their knowledge of what radars are being developed in each band to ensure the ranges are looking at the cutting edge and acquiring systems that will be valuable not only today, but well into the future. Through modeling tools, the team identified where these radars should potentially be sited and what types of capabilities the radars should have to best test current developmental programs. In the next phase of the study, the team will explore aspects of connectivity between the ranges, such as networking. This work will consider the physical limitations and the regulatory limitations that arise when dealing with expansive regions that transcend multiple states, each with their own rules for airspace and spectrum usage.

"Instead of recommending that a particular range buy this or that system, as we did in our previous studies, we're building up government acquisition programs at a large scale," Daigle says. "Our goal is to impact the funding cycle, ensuring funds are allocated appropriately to make acquisitions that test and training ranges need."

The team recently briefed senior government leaders on their initial recommended plan, which was well-received. Pangea is expected to conclude in the fall, and the final outputs of the study are intended to impact the next funding cycle, to occur in February 2024. In the future, the team may look beyond ground-based radar test infrastructure to cover infrared, space, or other domains.

"This range modernization concept could enable significant change to the way we utilize our national test infrastructure," says Marc Viera, head of the Tactical Systems R&D area.

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Re-imagining our theories of language

Over a decade ago, the neuroscientist Ev Fedorenko asked 48 English speakers to complete tasks like reading sentences, recalling information, solving math problems, and listening to music. As they did this, she scanned their brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging to see which circuits were activated. If, as linguists have proposed for decades, language is connected to thought in the human brain, then the language processing regions would be activated even during nonlinguistic tasks.

Fedorenko's experiment, published in 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that when it comes to arithmetic, musical processing, general working memory, and other nonlinguistic tasks, language regions of the human brain showed no response. Contrary to what many linguistists have claimed, complex thought and language are separate things. One does not require the other. "We have this highly specialized place in the brain that doesn't respond to other activities," says Fedorenko, who is an associate professor at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. "It's not true that thought critically needs language."

The design of the experiment, using neuroscience to understand how language works, how it evolved, and its relation to other cognitive functions, is at the heart of Fedorenko's research. She is part of a unique intellectual triad at MIT's Department of BCS, along with her colleagues Roger Levy and Ted Gibson. (Gibson and Fedorenko have been married since 2007). Together they have engaged in a years-long collaboration and built a significant body of research focused on some of the biggest questions in linguistics and human cognition. While working in three independent labs — EvLab, TedLab, and the Computational Psycholinguistics Lab — the researchers are motivated by a shared fascination with the human mind and how language works in the brain. "We have a great deal of interaction and collaboration," says Levy. "It's a very broadly collaborative, intellectually rich and diverse landscape."

Using combinations of computational modeling, psycholinguistic experimentation, behavioral data, brain imaging, and large naturalistic language datasets, the researchers also share an answer to a fundamental question: What is the purpose of language? Of all the possible answers to why we have language, perhaps the simplest and most obvious is communication. "Believe it or not," says Ted Gibson, "that is not the standard answer."

Gibson first came to MIT in 1993 and joined the faculty of the Linguistics Department in 1997. Recalling the experience today, he describes it as frustrating. The field of linguistics at that time was dominated by the ideas of Noam Chomsky, one of the founders of MIT's Graduate Program in Linguistics, who has been called the father of modern linguistics. Chomsky's "nativist" theories of language posited that the purpose of language is the articulation of thought and that language capacity is built-in in advance of any learning. But Gibson, with his training in math and computer science, felt that researchers didn't satisfyingly test these ideas. He believed that finding the answer to many outstanding questions about language required quantitative research, a departure from standard linguistic methodology. "There's no reason to rely only on you and your friends, which is how linguistics has worked," Gibson says. "The data you can get can be much broader if you crowdsource lots of people using experimental methods." Chomsky's ascendancy in linguistics presented Gibson with what he saw as a challenge and an opportunity. "I felt like I had to figure it out in detail and see if there was truth in these claims," he says.

Three decades after he first joined MIT, Gibson believes that the collaborative research at BCS is persuasive and provocative, pointing to new ways of thinking about human culture and cognition. "Now we're at a stage where it is not just arguments against. We have a lot of positive stuff saying what language is," he explains. Levy adds: "I would say all three of us are of the view that communication plays a very import role in language learning and processing, but also in the structure of language itself."

Levy points out that the three researchers completed PhDs in different subjects: Fedorenko in neuroscience, Gibson in computer science, Levy in linguistics. Yet for years before their paths finally converged at MIT, their shared interests in quantitative linguistic research led them to follow each other's work closely and be influenced by it. The first collaboration between the three was in 2005 and focused on language processing in Russian relative clauses. Around that time, Gibson recalls, Levy was presenting what he describes as "lovely work" that was instrumental in helping him to understand the links between language structure and communication. "Communicative pressures drive the structures," says Gibson. "Roger was crucial for that. He was the one helping me think about those things a long time ago."

Levy's lab is focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psychology, using natural language processing tools. "I try to use the tools that are afforded by mathematical and computer science approaches to language to formalize scientific hypotheses about language and the human mind and test those hypotheses," he says.

Levy points to ongoing research between him and Gibson focused on language comprehension as an example of the benefits of collaboration. "One of the big questions is: When language understanding fails, why does it fail?" Together, the researchers have applied the concept of a "noisy channel," first developed by the information theorist Claude Shannon in the 1950s, which says that information or messages are corrupted in transmission. "Language understanding unfolds over time, involving an ongoing integration of the past with the present," says Levy. "Memory itself is an imperfect channel conveying the past from our brain a moment ago to our brain now in order to support successful language understanding." Indeed, the richness of our linguistic environment, the experience of hundreds of millions of words by adulthood, may create a kind of statistical knowledge guiding our expectations, beliefs, predictions, and interpretations of linguistic meaning. "Statistical knowledge of language actually interacts with the constraints of our memory," says Levy. "Our experience shapes our memory for language itself."

All three researchers say they share the belief that by following the evidence, they will eventually discover an even bigger and more complete story about language. "That's how science goes," says Fedorenko. "Ted trained me, along with Nancy Kanwisher, and both Ted and Roger are very data-driven. If the data is not giving you the answer you thought, you don't just keep pushing your story. You think of new hypotheses. Almost everything I have done has been like that." At times, Fedorenko's research into parts of the brain's language system has surprised her and forced her to abandon her hypotheses. "In a certain project I came in with a prior idea that there would be some separation between parts that cared about combinatorics versus words meanings," she says, "but every little bit of the language system is sensitive to both. At some point, I was like, this is what the data is telling us, and we have to roll with it."

The researchers' work pointing to communication as the constitutive purpose of language opens new possibilities for probing and studying non-human language. The standard claim is that human language has a drastically more extensive lexicon than animals, which have no grammar. "But many times, we don't even know what other species are communicating," says Gibson. "We say they can't communicate, but we don't know. We don't speak their language." Fedorenko hopes that more opportunities to make cross-species linguistic comparisons will open up. "Understanding where things are similar and where things diverge would be super useful," she says.

Meanwhile, the potential applications of language research are far-reaching. One of Levy’s current research projects focuses on how people read and use machine learning algorithms informed by the psychology of eye movements to develop proficiency tests. By tracking the eye movements of people who speak English as a second language while they read texts in English, Levy can predict how good they are at English, an approach that could one day replace the Test of English as a Foreign Language. "It's an implicit measure of language rather than a much more game-able test," he says.

The researchers agree that some of the most exciting opportunities in the neuroscience of language lies with large language models that provide new opportunities for asking new questions and making new discoveries. "In the neuroscience of language, the kind of stories that we've been able to tell about how the brain does language were limited to verbal, descriptive hypotheses," says Fedorenko. Computationally implemented models are now amazingly good at language and show some degree of alignment to the brain, she adds. Now, researchers can ask questions such as: what are the actual computations that cells are doing to get meaning from strings of words? "You can now use these models as tools to get insights into how humans might be processing language," she says. "And you can take the models apart in ways you can't take apart the brain." 

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On the hunt for sustainable materials

By the time she started high school, Avni Singhal had attended six different schools in a variety of settings, from a traditional public school to a self-paced program. The transitions opened her eyes to how widely educational environments can vary, and made her think about that impact on students.

“Experiencing so many different types of educational systems exposed me to different ways of looking at things and how that shapes people’s worldviews,” says Singhal.

Now a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Singhal is still thinking about increasing opportunities for her fellow students, while also pursuing her research. She devotes herself to both developing sustainable materials and improving the graduate experience in her department.

She recently completed her two-year term as a student representative on the department’s graduate studies committee. In this role, she helped revamp the communication around the qualifying exams and introducing student input to the faculty search process.

“It’s given me a lot of insight into how our department works,” says Singhal. “It’s a chance to get to know faculty, bring up issues that students experience, and work on changing things that we think could be improved.”

At the same time, Singhal uses atomistic simulations to model material properties, with an eye toward sustainability. She is a part of the Learning Matter Lab, a group that merges data science tools with engineering and physics-based simulation to better design and understand materials. As part of a computational group, Singhal has worked on a range of projects in collaboration with other labs that are looking to combine computing with other disciplines. Some of this work is sponsored by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium, which facilitates connections across MIT labs and industry.

Joining the Learning Matter Lab was a step out of Singhal’s comfort zone. She arrived at MIT from the University of California at Berkeley with a joint degree in materials science and bioengineering, as well as a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

“I was generally interested in doing work on environment-related applications,” says Singhal. “I was pretty hesitant at first to switch entirely to computation because it’s a very different type of lifestyle of research than what I was doing before.”

Singhal has taken the challenge in stride, contributing to projects including improving carbon capture molecules and developing new deconstructable, degradable plastics. Not only does Singhal have to understand the technical details of her own work, she also needs to understand the big picture and how to best wield the expertise of her collaborators.

“When I came in, I was very wide-eyed, thinking computation can do everything because I had never done it before,” says Singhal. “It’s that curve where you know a little bit about something, and you think it can do everything. And then as you learn more, you learn where it can and can’t help us, where it can be valuable, and how to figure out in what part of a project it’s useful.”

Singhal applies a similarly critical lens when thinking about graduate school as a whole. She notes that access to information and resources is often the main factor determining who enters selective educational programs, and that such access becomes increasingly limited at the graduate level.

“I realized just how much applying is a function of knowing how to do it,” says Singhal, who co-organized and volunteers with the DMSE Application Assistance Program. The program matches prospective applicants with current students to give feedback on their application materials and provide insight into what it’s like attending MIT. Some of the first students Singhal mentored through the program are now also participants as well.

“The further you get in your educational career, the more you realize how much assistance you got along the way to get where you are,” says Singhal. “That happens at every stage.”

Looking toward the future, Singhal wants to continue to pursue research with a sustainability impact. She also wants to continue mentoring in some capacity but isn’t in a rush to figure out exactly what that will look like.

“Grad school doesn’t mean I have to do one thing. I can stay open to all the possibilities of what comes next.”
 

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James Fujimoto, Eric Swanson, and David Huang win Lasker Award

The Lasker Foundation has named James Fujimoto ’79, SM ’81, PhD ’84, the Elihu Thomson Professor in Electrical Engineering and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), a recipient of the 2023 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for his groundbreaking work on optical coherence tomography. Fujimoto shares the award with Eric Swanson SM ’84, a research affiliate at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and mentor for the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and David Huang PhD ’93, professor of ophthalmology at Oregon Health and Science University.

Considered one of the most prestigious prizes for biomedical research, the Lasker Awards celebrate individuals who have “made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of human disease.” A large percentage of Lasker Award recipients have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.  

According to the Lasker Foundation citation, Fujimoto, Huang, and Swanson are being honored “for the invention of optical coherence tomography (OCT), a technology that revolutionized ophthalmology — allowing rapid detection of diseases of the retina that impair vision.” A cartoon video describing the work is available here.

“I am honored to be included among the recipients of this award,” says Fujimoto. “OCT represents the decades-long effort of a multidisciplinary partnership involving scientists, engineers, the clinical community, and industry. We are grateful for the opportunity to help to improve patient care and sincerely thank the Laser Foundation.”

Prior to the invention of OCT, the standard methods of diagnosing ophthalmic disease were limited. In the early 1990s, Fujimoto, an electrical engineer and expert in advanced laser technologies, collaborated with satellite communications engineer Swanson and MD-PhD student Huang to devise a better way to diagnose diseases. Using an optical technique known as interferometry, they developed a technology that could image the three dimensional microscopic structure of the living retina for the first time.  

Their work, published in 1991 in the journal Science, revolutionized the field of ophthalmology and enabled a more precise way to detect disease and monitor treatment.  

Revolutionizing ophthalmology with echoes of light

To understand how optical coherence tomography works, it’s useful to consider other imaging methods which use echoes. “OCT is an optical analogue of ultrasound or radar,” explains Fujimoto. “Instead of sound, it measures echo delays of reflected or scattered light in order to image the subsurface microstructure in tissues or materials in situ.”

The short wavelength of light allows for microscopic resolution of the images generated by OCT, but using light — as opposed to sound, which travels slower and has longer wavelengths — introduces thorny technological problems.

“The speed of light is extremely fast,” notes Fujimoto. “Light from the moon travels to earth in 1.3 seconds. So, in order to measure echo time delay over the very small dimensions in biological tissues, you need extremely high-resolution measurement technology.” 

Here, Fujimoto, Swanson, and Huang found that their differing backgrounds enhanced their problem-solving capabilities. 

“OCT uses many of the advances that were developed in high-speed optical communications,” explains Fujimoto. One of the team’s realizations was that infrared light provided good penetration of human tissues and interferometry could achieve the required high resolution and sensitivity. This made it possible to measure the “echo time” of reflected or scattered infrared light waves, thus creating a microscopic-resolution, three-dimensional image of subsurface structures inside tissues.

Performing Optical Biopsy

Importantly, the technology is not a substitute for ultrasound, CT or MRI, but rather a different tool with unique and complementary strengths. MRI, CT and ultrasound can penetrate deep into the body to create a full-body image, but have limited resolution. OCT can perform “optical biopsy,” imaging subsurface structure with microscopic resolution, without the need to excise and process specimens. OCT has limited imaging depth in tissues other than the eye, but can be combined with other optical instruments to image inside the body.

OCT could not have been developed without interdisciplinary collaboration with clinician scientists. Carmen Puliafito and Joel Schuman at the New England Eye Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, led the first clinical studies developing OCT in diabetic retinopathy, age related macular degeneration and glaucoma. These studies helped define the future clinical applications of OCT and commercialization in ophthalmology.

Retinal imaging became the largest application of OCT; in ophthalmologists’ offices worldwide, it is now considered the standard of care for diagnosing and monitoring eye disease. OCT has also helped improve understanding of disease mechanisms and accelerated development of new pharmaceutical treatments.

Many ophthalmologists say that OCT allows the non-specialist to detect disease with the sensitivity approaching that of a specialist. Diseases such as diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, and glaucoma which may not produce noticeable symptoms at an early stage, can be detected and treated before there is irreversible vision loss.  

Now, applications of OCT are being developed for even broader public usage outside of ophthalmology clinics. “In the future it will be possible to screen for diseases by having an automated OCT exam in local drug stores. The eye is a window on health – in addition to vision impairing eye diseases, OCT can enable detection of systemic disease such as diabetes and neurological conditions. The impact on public health could be immense,” explains Fujimoto.

OCT also has applications far beyond ophthalmology. The team quickly realized that fiber optics could be used to extend OCT’s reach into deeper areas of the body, imaging through catheters, endoscopes, and laparoscopes.

Intravascular imaging is the second largest application OCT and was developed in collaboration with Mark Brezinski, a cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Brezinski demonstrated that OCT could detect unstable atherosclerotic plaques which cause heart attacks and led many of the first studies demonstrating OCT for optical biopsy.

“There are tissues that are not typically biopsied, such as retina, coronary arteries, nerves, and brain where OCT can provide information on pathology in situ and in real-time,” says Fujimoto. “Another application is surgical guidance — you can see beneath the tissue surface to avoid sensitive nerves and blood vessels before making an incision.”

With many research groups and clinics developing technology and applications, OCT stands as a shining example of the potential of interdisciplinary, and international, scientific cooperation. “Interdisciplinary collaboration is very popular now, but it was relatively uncommon in the 1990s, when OCT was first developed,” explains Fujimoto.

The success of OCT and its growing list of applications, is, for Fujimoto, a powerful reminder of the importance of cross-disciplinary work. “In medicine, as well as in many other fields, there is increasing use of technologies, including advanced hardware and analysis technologies as well as AI. Modern medicine can draw upon these technologies to advance patient care and reduce mortality.”

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School of Engineering welcomes Songyee Yoon PhD ’00 as visiting innovation scholar

Songyee Yoon PhD ’00, an entrepreneur, innovator, investor, and leader in AI and the gaming industry, has been appointed as a School of Engineering visiting innovation scholar for the 2023-24 academic year.

Yoon, who is as a member of the MIT Corporation, serves as president and chief strategic officer of NCSOFT, a world leader in game publishing and digital entertainment. Under her leadership, NCSOFT has expanded to include locations in seven countries on three continents. She played a pivotal role in founding the NCSOFT AI Center, a state-of-the-art AI research facility that has helped the company develop and integrate the latest AI and machine learning technologies into their products.   

In 2021, Yoon founded Chamaeleon, an early-stage venture capital firm. As a managing partner at the firm, Yoon focuses on consumer software, content and media, and deep and frontier tech. She particularly supports entrepreneurs working at the intersection of AI, entertainment, and social platforms.   

As a visiting innovation scholar, Yoon will engage in a variety of activities with faculty, students, and staff across MIT’s School of Engineering. She will provide guidance to the dean of engineering on strategic initiatives, cutting-edge programs, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem within the school.

“I am both humbled and excited to embark on my journey as an innovation scholar, where I will champion entrepreneurship and empower female engineers to flourish within diverse career paths,” says Yoon.

A central theme throughout Yoon’s career and many philanthropic pursuits has been a passion for promoting inclusivity and supporting future leaders.

“As technology continues to transform our world, there is a growing need for inclusive innovation. Throughout my career, I’ve seen firsthand how amplifying all voices fosters more creativity and adds richness to building,” adds Yoon. “I am honored to help the School of Engineering bridge the gap between inspiration and realization, and nurture the next generation of trailblazing leaders who will shape the world with their brilliance.”

Yoon received a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and a PhD in computational neuroscience from MIT. She also received a juris doctor from Santa Clara University School of Law and is a graduate of Stanford University’s Executive Program.

After receiving her PhD, Yoon worked at McKinsey and Co., then served as vice president of communications intelligence at wireless service provider SK Telecom, where she used AI technologies to develop a smart, personalized data services platform. In 2008, she joined NCSOFT.

As a member of the MIT Corporation, Yoon has served on several visiting committees at MIT and is the current chair of the Governance and Nominations Committee. She serves on a number of advisory boards. She is an inaugural member of the Advisory Council of Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Center and a board of trustees of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Yoon is chair and founder of the NCSOFT Cultural Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes corporate social responsibility and supports the socially disadvantaged. In an effort to support working parents, Yoon personally oversaw the development of the “Laughing Peanut,” a 400-child daycare facility located at the NCSOFT R&D center, and “Projectory,” for nurturing and fostering creativity.

Yoon has received a number of awards and accolades for her contributions to technology and business. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea, was named one of the 50 Women to Watch in Business by The Wall Street Journal, and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

“Dr. Yoon is a true visionary. Her extensive experience in AI technologies, coupled with her passion for supporting entrepreneurs and championing diversity in engineering, make her an ideal fit as visiting innovation scholar,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “The faculty, students, and staff in the School of Engineering will all benefit from her expertise and vision.”

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New Volpe Center opens to support the country’s most innovative transportation projects

On a crisp Tuesday afternoon, representatives from MIT, the state and federal government, and the Cambridge community celebrated the official opening of the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony was the culmination of nearly a decade of collaboration in which MIT designed and constructed the highly energy-efficient building as part of an agreement that will allow the Institute to develop 10 additional acres of land in the Kendall Square area that are no longer needed by the federal government.

“I know many of you have been involved in the Volpe project for years — back when it was just an improbable concept,” President Sally Kornbluth told an audience contending with sporadic wind gusts. “I’ve been at MIT less than a year, but already it’s clear to me that together, we’re in the midst of doing something quite incredible on this site ­— a unique collaboration that benefits everyone involved.”

The Volpe Center, which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, supports cutting-edge research and development of new transportation solutions while addressing emerging and future challenges posed by trends across modes of transit, from autonomous vehicles to drone deliveries.

The center has been an engine for research and innovation within the federal government since 1970. It works on projects from the Department of Transportation as well as the Department of Defense, NASA, the Department of Interior, and state and local governments.

The new building — designed and built by MIT — will replace six aging Volpe buildings in the East Cambridge site that have been housing the center. It includes conference rooms, laboratories, offices, open workspaces, specialized building hangars, a day care center, and a unique public art space created by renowned designer and sculptor Maya Lin.

“At long last, Volpe has a headquarters that’s worthy of its critical mission, its brilliant staff, and its strategic location,” said Carlos Monje, the Department of Transportation’s under secretary of transportation for policy. “The vibrancy, diversity, and energy of the dynamic Kendall Square innovation hub helps inform our work, creates recruitment opportunities, and positions us to meet the future needs of the department and the nation.”

The building, which is on track to receive LEED Platinum-certification, will use less than half the energy of traditional buildings. It features triple-paned glass, heat recovery chillers, electric vehicle chargers, a rainwater reclamation and reuse system, a rooftop solar array, and more sustainability components.

Some speakers noted the energy-efficient building will be emblematic of the work going on within its walls to make the country’s transportation systems more sustainable. Others said for them, the building represents the possibilities unlocked when organizations across sectors work to find innovative solutions.

“Right here we’ve got the intellectual firepower of world-renowned academic institutions, a city and a neighborhood that bring people together, and a federal administration that is investing in our country’s future,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said. “I believe — and I may be a little biased — that what happens in Massachusetts matters not just to the people of Massachusetts, it matters to America and it matters for the world. Right here is where so much innovation and advancement happens for the good and betterment of society. Today is about more than celebrating a beautiful facility. It’s also emblematic of this time that we’re in and what’s possible right here in this state.”

The opening also marked a milestone in MIT’s broader development plans for the Volpe parcel. In the remaining 10 acres — which are included in the first-of-its-kind purchase agreement with the federal government — the Institute plans to create a vibrant, mixed-use center that strengthens connections in the Cambridge community through new open spaces, pedestrian links, market and affordable housing, retail and restaurants, a community center, and science and innovation facilities.

Kornbluth recognized former MIT president L. Rafael Reif for formulating the vision for the space, and joked that she’s looking forward to enjoying the space not only as MIT’s president, but as a nearby Cambridge resident with two dogs.

“On the acreage opened up by this unique arrangement, MIT will create an appealing new hub of activity in the heart of Kendall Square, a place for discovery and innovation, for grabbing a sandwich, for walking the dog, for making friends, raising kids — and meeting your next collaborator,” Kornbluth said.

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Bringing design justice to the classroom and workplace

Whether you’re building a home or programming a robot, design is a human-centered activity, making it essential to teach design in a way that focuses on equity, justice, and ethics.

That’s one of the messages that was shared at a workshop offered by members of MIT’s Design Justice Project at the International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC-CIE) held in Boston Aug. 20-23.

The workshop drew from recent publications by the project, including a look at how design justice is included in MIT syllabi in the journal Design Studies; a discussion on how the concept is featured in the engineering design academic literature in the Journal of Mechanical Design; and a review of ethics, equity, and justice in human-robot interactions published in the proceedings of the 2022 31st IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication.

The August event was a follow-up to a Design Justice Pedagogy Summit organized by Media Lab design researcher and postdoc Anastasia Ostrowski and mechanical engineering PhD students Madhurima Das and Jana Saadi in 2022.

Design justice is a framework for analyzing how design can both benefit and burden different groups of people, and how concepts of justice and equity should be considered in the context of design. Sasha Costanza-Chock, a former associate professor of civic media and steering committee member of the Design Justice Network, and the Design Justice Network provided the design justice scholarship underlying the current MIT project.

At the 2022 summit, more than 50 attendees brainstormed ideas and shared strategies to bring the principles of design justice into their own classrooms and workplaces. Ostrowski, Das, and Saadi hope that the workshop this past August will inspire the broader engineering design community to consider and adopt design justice principles.

“We saw that [the 2022 summit] gave people a lot of ideas about strategies to bring into the classroom, in ways that aren’t disrupting the whole curriculum,” says Ostrowski “I think that was important, to have people ask ‘What is one thing I can do now?,’ making it really manageable.”

“It can be really easy to start to feel hopeless because you want to make big institutional changes,” agrees Das. “But this was about having the agency as an individual — What can I do, even [if] it’s not the blue-sky solutions that we’d like to see long term.”

The Design Justice Project at MIT includes professor of media arts and sciences and MIT Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal; assistant professor of urban science and planning Catherine D’Ignazio, and professor of mechanical engineering Maria Yang. Some of the project’s research has been funded through the d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education.

Missing pieces

Before convening the summit and workshop, the researchers analyzed the design research and education space to learn more about how design classes approach equity, ethics, and justice. Their literature review of three leading engineering design journals and conference proceedings for the past four decades, for instance, found that these terms are rare in the literature, although their prevalence has increased over time. In most cases, they occur in discussions of sustainability and training the next generation of designers, the researchers found.

In their 2020 syllabus audit of courses across MIT, including those in architecture, urban studies and planning, media arts and design, and engineering, the research team found non-engineering design courses were more likely to be engaged with design justice than engineering courses.

It can be difficult to convince colleagues in an engineering department that these are essential aspects of design. “But if you’re an engineer, the things that you’re working on — or you’re a designer, the things that you’re working on — it all has to do with people, at some stage of the process, and you cannot remove them from the equation and then be surprised when things don’t go well,” Das says.

“Engineering has enormous potential to address the grand challenges that are facing the world today, and it’s so important that engineering students are prepared to think about these problems in a way that carefully considers their social impact on a range of people,” agrees Yang.

Finding community

The 2022 summit, funded by the d’Arbeloff Fund, included undergraduates, graduate students, professors at all levels, and industry professionals “who were thinking about training for their employees and how to bring design justice into the culture of their companies,” said Ostrowski.

Speakers discussed the challenges and opportunities to bring ethics, equity, and justice into design education and the workplace, even “when you are not in charge,” as a few sessions were labeled. While it can be daunting to integrate material about equity into technical courses, a number of sessions tried to break it down into manageable steps, like the workshop led by D'Ignazio that illustrated small tweaks in readings, pacing, and problem sets.

A gallery wall where participants could write down the first steps they were planning to take at their institutions provided inspiration and a safe environment to get feedback on ideas, the organizers say.

“A lot of common [ideas] were looking at the reading list of a course, and who is represented, who are the authors and what backgrounds do they come from, and how are we missing pieces of knowledge and different writers,” says Ostrowski. “Reflective learnings were another common idea, of going through a project and putting in places to consider who you are designing for, who are you designing with, their backgrounds, and how that might impact your design.”

“The Design Justice Pedagogy Summit is a great example of how a community can gather to support one another in curriculum innovation,” says Breazeal. 

Several attendees were interested in joining the Design Justice Network for more discussion and resources, the organizers found in their post-summit interviews.

“This really reinforced the idea that people are looking for that community to share with and gain ideas from and to talk to other people in a meaningful and respectful way,” says Das. “We’d love to encourage folks to run their own design justice summits in their communities.”

“Engineering disciplines, at their best, are service professions that aim to identify and find solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time — combating climate change, securing access to clean energy and water, protecting the environment…” adds Aditi Verma, a nuclear science and engineering PhD and postdoc at the Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the Design Justice Project. “It's vital, then, for engineers of the future to understand the societal and environmental implications of their work and wherever possible, work ethically and equitably, and towards more just outcomes.”

de MIT News https://ift.tt/TGFSVU7