Category Archives: Events

MIT and Imperial College London are jointly offering an intensive 4 ½ day Global Fellows Program for PhD students.  Through presentations, interactive work and hands-on activities, PhD students from Imperial (20) and MIT (20) will develop professional skills required to launch and manage a successful research career.  Emphasis will be on creating and sustaining successful international research collaborations.  The program will take place from Monday, June 24th through Friday, June 28th, 2013 in Sharon, Massachusetts.  Morning programs will begin at 9:30am, and evening programs should be completed by 9:00pm.  Participants must commit to the entire program, which includes full day events and some evenings.  The Fellowship covers the cost of travel, the program, and some meals.  Topics covered will include building successful working relationships and global collaborations, team and project development, global intercultural skills and communication.  Participants will work in small groups with either an MIT or Imperial facilitator.  Faculty members from each university will present on the topic of developing and managing international collaborations as an integral part of a research career.  Eligibility is restricted to PhD students with a preference for students who have passed their qualifying exams and have a few years remaining before completing their PhD program.  Apply soon!  Application available here.  For more information, contact Kim Benard in the GECD at globalphd@mit.edu.

Practice your presentation skills to a non-expert audience, to network with alumni, and even find someone who can give further insights on your projects!  The Grad Alumni Poster Session will take place Saturday, June 8, 2013, from 5:30pm-8:00pm in MIT Building E15, first floor hallway. All presenters will get feedback from attending alumni and students.  Prizes will be given to best presenters.  Free appetizers and open bar for all presenters and attendees.  Register as a presenter here.

MIT students, faculty and staff are invited to participate in the second performance of UP: The Umbrella Project on the evening of Sunday, May 19th, 2013, at 7:45pm in Jack Barry Field.  A collaboration between CSAIL’s Distributed Robotics Lab and internationally acclaimed dance company Pilobolus, UP will bring together members of the MIT community to participate in a large-scale live performance piece using umbrellas outfitted with LED lights.  Each UP participant will be provided with an umbrella equipped with red, green and blue LED lights.  Using hand controllers, participants will be able to independently change the color of their umbrella.  Guided by the Pilobolus creative team, UP participants will traverse the field and manipulate the hue of their umbrellas, creating a colorful and ever-changing display of live art.  All members of the MIT community, including students, faculty and staff, are invited to participate.  Those willing to participate must be at the field by 7:45pm.  The performance will be photographed and filmed for promotional purposes.  Participants must be at least 18 years of age and must be affiliated with MIT.  Visit this site for more information on UP.

The MIT Muslim Students Association and the MIT Arab Students Organization will be hosting a BBQ and Volleyball fundraiser on Saturday, May 11th, 2013, from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the MIT Kresge BBQ Pits.  Registration is $5 per person for the volleyball tournament.  All proceeds will go to UNICEF in Syria.  Contact msa-ec-current@mit.edu for more information.

Later in the day, there will be another BBQ from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at the Kresge BBQ Pits organized by Christians on Campus. Enjoy a relaxing time of singing, bible reading, games, food, and snacks.  Attendees will have the opportunity to share their experiences of Christ and encourage each other to pursue God together at MIT.  All are welcome to attend, regardless of faith; contact christiansoncampus-info@mit.edu for more information.

Light bulbs, paper clips and even tea bags are catching the attention of the media and the arts community.  Come to this new exhibition through September 1, 2013 at the MIT Museum which explores every day objects and shines a light on their inventors.  Learn more and view photos in this WBUR/NPR review. Admission to the MIT Museum is always free for MIT students.

MIT Concert Choir is going to be at Kresge Auditorium in MIT with Conductor William Cutter, Assistant Conductor and Pianist Joseph Turbessi, Soprano Kerry Deal, and Baritone Robert Honeysucker on Saturday, May 11th, 2013 beginning at 7:30pm.  Music includes Vaughan Williams’s Toward the Unknown Region and Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem.  Free advanced tickets are available here, or they are $5 at the door.

Come to the Radius Ensemble concert on Saturday, May 11th, 2013 at 8:00pm in Pickman Hall at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, 27 Garden Street in Harvard Square.  This concert features Mozart (String duo in B-flat major, K.424), Morrison (Lonesome Whistle for solo flute), and MIT’s own Harbison (Woodwind Quintet) and Southworth (JAMU for ensemble and Balinese Gamelan World Premiere).  When Michael Haydn, younger brother of Franz Joseph, found himself in hot water with the Archbishop of Salzburg for not completing a commission, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart quickly stepped in as an ally for his friend.  He composed two duos for violin and viola, sent them to Haydn, and sanctioned plagiarism by instructing Haydn to include them in the collection as his own.  John Harbison’s Wind Quintet is embroidery in sound, “mixtures rather than counterpoints,” to quote the composer.  A single strand of melody winnows from a flute in John Howell Morrison’s Lonesome Whistle—exploring the intricate tie between performer and instrument.  The concert will close with a world premiere, Christine Southworth’s alchemic Jamu for ensemble and Balinese Gamelan.  Student admission is $10; general admission is $20.  Buy tickets here.

Composer and electronic music innovator James Dashow will give a special presentation (The Dyad System) about his musical compositions and theories on Monday, May 6th, 2013 at 4:00pm in the MIT Media Lab (E14-244).  “The Dyad System” will focus on the integration of pitch structures into electronic sounds.  This system describes the basis and methods for embedding specific pitches into electronic sounds that are generated by the pitches themselves through various techniques that James Dashow will feature.  There will also be an excursion into the spatialization of sound, for which Dashow has a double approach: movement IN space, and movement OF space.  A variety of audio examples and a couple of pieces will be played.  For further information about this program, please contact Simone Ovsey at sovsey@media.mit.edu.

Come view The Rest I Make Up, a reading of “Fefu and her Friends” with original video footage of Michelle Memran, a homage to the work of Maria Irene Fornes, Cuban playwright, feminist, and activist.  This is directed by Anna Kohler, MIT Music and Theater Arts, and is presented as part of “It’s Alive.”  This event will take place on Monday, May 6th, 2013 at 7:30pm in Killian Hall, MIT.

In commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, several Greater Boston educational, historical, and cultural organizations are collaborating to present Freedom Rising: The 150th Anniversary of The Emancipation Proclamation and African American Military Service in the Civil War from Thursday through Saturday, May 2nd through 4th, 2013.  RSVP here.  The sequence of events are as follows:

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Come hear about how Boston Globe jounalists undertook a year-long effort to understand the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Dorchester at The Neighborhood Story event on Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 at 6:00pm in the Media Lab, MIT Room 15-525.  For decades, journalists have been reporting shootings and homicides there – rushing to crime scenes and then leaving to file their articles on time. The Globe wanted to tell a more complete story of the neighborhood. 

Two journalists – one of them originally from Dorchester – moved into an apartment in Bowdoin-Geneva in the Summer of 2012. With the help of videographers, photographers, data journalists, multimedia producers, editors, and fellow reporters, they spent a year learning this neighborhood.  If you cannot attend in person, follow the live blog.

The MIT Presidential Fellows/Sidney-Pacific Distinguished Lecture Series presents A Crisis in Civics? with Ethan Zuckerman, Director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.  This lecture will take place on Wednesday, May 1st, in the Sydney-Pacific Graduate Residence Multipurpose Room at 6:30pm (light refreshments will be served at 6:00pm).  Is digital media changing what it means to be an engaged citizen?  Countless commentators have declared that America is experiencing a crisis in civics, with young people less engaged with civic life than their parents and grandparents.  But an intriguing possibility exists: the practice of civics may be changing shape, moving from offline to online spaces and focusing on new targets.  Ethan Zuckerman will examine the landscape of this new digital civics and consider whether we should have hope for civic engagement in a Facebook age, or a fear of disaffection and slactivism.  RSVP here.

You’re invited to celebrate the best of MIT at the 2013 Institute Awards Convocation.  This event will take place on Thursday, April 25th, 2013 at 4:00pm in MIT Room 10-250.  The MIT Awards Convocation honors MIT students, faculty, staff, and community members who have made outstanding contributions to the shared life of the Institute.  The awards recognize many of the qualities MIT cherishes: excellence in academics and teaching, public service, community building, achievements in the arts and athletics, leadership, and entrepreneurship.  Visit the awards website to see past winners and the various awards given.

“In Between” is a semi-autobiographical one man show that portrays the complexities and contradictions inherent in Palestinian-Israeli identity.  On the precipice between two cultures stands Ibrahim Miari, son of a Palestinian Muslim father and Jewish Israeli mother.  During an interrogation by Israeli airport security, he recalls his childhood in Acco, memories of his Jewish and Palestinian grandmothers, of war. Questions surrounding his identity become even further complicated by his imminent marriage to a Jewish American woman. This fascinating intrsopective look into a unique culture will be shown at the Bartos Theatre, E15-070 at 7:30pm on Wednesday, April 24, and is free and open to the public! Presented by the Addir Fellows-MIT Interfaith Dialogue, MIT Hillel Foundation, MIT Muslim Student Association. Technology and Culture Forum at MIT, and Chaplain to the Institute Robert M. Randolh.

Social and developmental psychologist and author Lynn Phillips explores the line between consent and coercion in this thought-provoking look at popular culture and the ways real girls and women navigate their heterosexual relationships and hookups.

Featuring dramatizations of interviews that Phillips conducted with hundreds of young women, the film examines how the wider culture’s frequently contradictory messages about pleasure, danger, agency, and victimization enter into women’s most intimate relationships with men. The result is a refreshingly candid, and nuanced, look at how young women are forced to grapple with deeply ambivalent cultural attitudes about female sexuality. Join the MIT’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month discussion on April 24, 7-9pm in 3-133. For more information, feel free to take a look at the website at http://whiteelephant.scripts.mit.edu/saam/big-movie-night/.

The Fifth Annual MIT Sustainability Summit will take place on Saturday and Sunday, April 27th through the 28th, 2013 from 9:00am to 5:00pm in the MIT Media Lab (E14).  The Summit has the theme of empowering action towards sustainability and intends for attendees to leave feeling empowered to take action towards a sustainable future, either in their existing personal or professional context or in a new one.  Saturday will feature three keynote speeches and 10 breakout panels on topics related to “sustainable consumption,” “innovations in urban planning,” and “environmentally & socially responsible decision-making.”  Learn more about the art and science about environmental photography in the event An Evening with James Balog.  Sunday will feature design charettes that offer Summit participants hands-on learning through new product designs, software tools, campaigns, business ideas, and organizational models.  Register for the Summit here.

This Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 at noon, MIT will host a memorial service honoring the late Sean Collier, President L. Rafael Reif announced this morning in an email to the MIT community. The event will be open to the MIT community and to law enforcement officers from across the nation.

Top state and federal officials will also be invited to the event, which will be held on Briggs Field and is expected to draw up to 10,000 attendees. The event will follow a private memorial service and funeral in Wilmington, Mass., early this week for Collier, the MIT Police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty on Thursday evening.

“We grieve with his family, his many friends and his fellow MIT Police officers,” Reif wrote. “Many at MIT knew and lovedOfficer Sean Collier; for those who didn’t, he was someone we could all wish to have had the opportunity to know.” Continue reading the article on MIT News.

Come to this free film screening about the rising movement to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis and challenge the fossil fuel industry.  “Do The Math” will be shown on Sunday, April 21st, 2013, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm in MIT Room 32-123, followed by a live webcast and discussion.  Earn 10 Green Points for MIT Earth Day Challenge!  RSVP here or feel free to just show up.  Contact fossilfreeofficers@mit.edu for more information.

The Annual Charles L. Miller Lecture is taking place on Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 4:00pm in the MIT Faculty Club, Dining Room 5.  Refreshments will be served at 3:30pm.  The lecturer is Lawrence S. Bacow, President Emeritus of Tufts University and Former MIT Chancellor.  The topic for this lecture is “The Research University in the Digital Age.”  Online learning threatens to revolutionize undergraduate education. Many predict that the lecture will cease to exist as faculty “flip their classrooms.” As online education improves, colleges and universities will be under increasing pressure to justify the value added by the residential experience. What are the consequences of all of this for the research university? Undergraduate and graduate education are, after all, joint products. How will graduate education and the research function change in response to developments in online undergraduate education?  Read more on the website.

Thanks to the Council for the Arts at MIT, all MIT students with ID will receive free admission to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including this special event on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 at 5:00pm called “Gardener After Hours: Made By Hand.”  This event focuses on dazzling works in the historic collection that are often overlooked, like Isabella Gardner’s collections of furniture and lace.  Learn more about these and other handmade items in the Museum by twilight, enjoy a drink by the Courtyard, and try your own hand at a project in the Education Studio.  A jazz concert is also taking place at 7:00pm.  The Ron Savage Berklee Trio returns with Modern Impressionism, a unique blend of Afro-Brazilian, jazz, gospel, and soul, all performed in the acoustic intimacy of the classic jazz piano trio.  Visit the website to register.

This upcoming April 19 in Killian Hall at Noon, Singer-Songwriter Molly Ruggles will perform with special guests Jeffrey Sun ’16 and Sarah Quinn ’16. Molly Ruggles, writes about almost anything including MIT, deep sea fishing, and the impossibility of perfection. She will be joined by student and colleague guest artists, and the event promises a range of lively music.

Artists Beyond the Desk is a subcommittee of the Working Group on Support Staff Issues (WGSSI), and is funded in part by WGSSI, the Council for the Arts at MIT and MIT Human Resources. To find out more information, take a look at the Artist Beyond the Desk website here. Photo courtesy of MIT Artists Beyond the Desk.

Remember that awful biology class where you had to memorize a million Latin names?  Did you struggle to balance chemistry equations and swear never to do that again?  MIT scientists Tyler Dewitt (G, Biology), Raoul Correa (G, Chemistry), Kate Goldstein, Sabine Hauert, Filippo Menolascina, Tal Danino, and Eben Cross will share their most memorable moments from high school science class on Wednesday, April 17th, 2013, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at the MIT Museum.  They will also describe how those lessons continue to shape their research careers!  Tonight, allow yourself to flash back to high school, but this time with friends, acquaintances, and drink, to share those science experiences with good humor.  For a sneak peak at what to expect, check out Tyler’s TEDx talk.  Admission is free.  This event is recommended for older teens and adults.  Cash bar for ages 21+.  Check out the Facebook page.

Come to the Shahnaz Husain: Pioneer and Entrepreneur lecture on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 from 5:30pm to 6:30pm in MIT Room E62-223.  Meet the person whose revolutionary business model and marketing approach is well-known throughout Asia.  She will share the experiences and views of a female entrepreneur who has seen the growth of entrepreneurship in India, the increased role of female entrepreneurs, and the changing opportunities for people living at the bottom of the pyramid.  More information is available here.