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Four new graduate students and one continuing recipient have been chosen to receive the prestigious Hugh Hampton Young Memorial Fund Fellowship in 2013-14. The fellowship, named for the pioneering medical researcher Hugh Hampton Young, is a highly selective research fellowship at MIT. Recipients are chosen not only for academic achievement, but also exceptional personal and character strengths, weighing heavily the perceived overall potential of the candidate to have a positive impact on humanity.

Painting by Eric G. Haupt; oil on canvas, 39.5 by 31.5 inches, 1931. Read more

Purple bacteria are among Earth’s oldest organisms, and among its most efficient in turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting prowess has been explained through a detailed structural analysis by scientists at MIT.

A ring-shaped molecule with an unusual ninefold symmetry is critical, the researchers found. The circular symmetry accounts for its efficiency in converting sunlight, and for its mechanical durability and strength. The new analysis, carried out by professors of chemistry Jianshu Cao and the late Robert Silbey, postdoc Liam Cleary, and graduate students Hang Chen and Chern Chuang, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the rest of the article on MIT News.  photo courtesy of Jianshu Cao

At the May 8th Inaugural Multicultural Programs Awards Banquet, the Office of the Dean of Graduate Education’s own Jason McKnight, Assistant Dean for Graduate Education,  was the recipient of the Multicultural Advocate Award for supporting the Office of Multicultural Programs as it works to advance diversity and inclusion at MIT.  Jason is a staunch collaborator, having served as a chaperone, as a committee member, and workshop presentations. Jason can always be called on to advocate on behalf of underrepresented students.  His work is rooted in theory and best practices and provides students with opportunities to be challenged and affirmed.

New research at MIT could dramatically improve the efficiency of fuel cells, which are considered a promising alternative to batteries for powering everything from electronic devices to cars and homes.

Fuel cells make electricity by combining hydrogen, or hydrocarbon fuels, with oxygen. But the most efficient types, called solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), have drawbacks that have limited their usefulness — including operating temperatures above 700 degrees Celsius (roughly 1300 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, MIT researchers have unraveled the properties of a promising alternative material structure for a key component of these devices.

Oxygen reduction is one of two main reactions in a fuel cell, and the one that has limited their overall performance — so finding improved materials for that reaction could be a key advance for fuel cells, the researchers say. The new findings are published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials in a paper co-authored by graduate student Yan Chen, professors Harry Tuller and Bilge Yildiz, and three other researchers at MIT.

Continue reading the article on MIT News.  photo courtesy of Bilge Yildiz

The Office of the Dean of Graduate Education (ODGE) is pleased to announce the call for departmental nominations for the Wellington and Irene Loh Fund Fellowship.  Eligible MIT graduate students should direct applications to their departmental graduate administrator.  Questions may be directed to ODGE Manager of Graduate fellowships, Scott Tirrell (stirrell@mit.edu).  There will be 4 awards.  Graduate students from any field are all eligible.  The amount will be one semester of tuition (fall of spring) with a stipend of $2664 for 4.5 months, as well as MIT Student Health Insurance for one term.  This is intended to provide support for graduate students of Chinese ancestry.  Each department may nominate one student.  Nomination packets should include: Read more

Many natural composite materials have evolved to wrinkle in response to certain stimuli: The eye of the squid is lined with wavy layers of silvery reflectors that give it a silvery sheen. In the cell walls of many plants, wrinkles allow expansion without strain. Finally, the inner lining of arteries contain wrinkled lamellae that can be indicators of coronary heart disease, and can serve as markers for the condition.

Given these examples from nature, scientists say that understanding the mechanisms by which materials internally wrinkle could help in creating new, responsive materials for use in chemical sensing, medical diagnostics and optical and acoustic wave control.

Now researchers at MIT have identified the mechanics involved in the wrinkling of thin interfacial layers within soft composite materials, and developed a model based on material properties and geometry to predict how wrinkled an internal layer may become, given its stiffness and width. The researchers also fabricated composite materials using multi-material 3-D printing, and observed the wrinkling and instability pattern — results that were correctly predicted by their model.

Narges Kaynia, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at MIT, says the model may serve as a blueprint for developing new composite materials with reversibly wrinkling interfaces. Continue reading the article on MIT News.  photo courtesy of Narges Kaynia and Yaning Li 

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.

Most cancer deaths are caused by metastatic tumors, which break free from the original cancer site and spread throughout the body. For that to happen, cancer cells must undergo many genetic and physical changes.

Many of those genetic changes have been studied extensively, but it has been more difficult to study the physical changes. Now, MIT researchers have developed a way to study three key physical properties of cancer cells — their mass, stiffness and friction — on a large scale.

Authors from the paper include lead author and MIT postdoc Sangwon Byun, grad student Josephine Shaw, MIT postdoc Sungmin Son; Stanford University postdoc Dario Amodei; MIT grad students Nathan Cermak, Joon Ho Kang and Vivian Hecht; former MIT postdoc Monte Winslow; Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT and director of the Koch Institute; and Parag Mallick, an assistant professor of radiology at Stanford.

The rest of the article is available on MIT News.  photo courtesy of Sangwon Byun and Josephine Shaw

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.

Congratulations to Katherine Eleanor Buckingham, Master in City Planning degree candidate in the department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Devin Helfrich, Master of Science in Technology and Policy graduate, who have both been named finalists in the Presidential Management Fellows Program (PMF).  The PMF Program is a flagship leadership development program at the entry level for advanced degree candidates, designed to develop a cadre of potential government leaders by providing sustenance during the first years of employment and encouraging development of leadership capabilities. Read more

Interested in helping women graduate students connect to faculty and alumni mentors?  Excited about applying your technical and organizing skills to creative projects?  Come and join the GWAMIT Mentoring Program Committee; apply by contacting either Ricarose (ria@mit.edu) or Xuwen (xwzhu@mit.edu).  The mentoring program is a yearlong program where GWAMIT matches mentors and mentees during the summer, and groups meet individually every month.  Events during the year include a kick-off dinner, February social, spring reception, and more informal events during the summer.  GWAMIT is also holding monthly dinner meetings, and all are welcome to join (committee members get to choose their own mentors).

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.

Given reports that fewer recently minted life-sciences Ph.D.’s are landing full-time academic jobs while more are spending an increasing number of years as postdocs, it may be time to consider some alternatives. One alternative is to create your own job. If you are a graduate student or a postdoctoral fellow working on a project that has potential commercial value (i.e., it could result in a product that someone will buy), consider turning the project into your first job. How?

First, disclose your idea to your university’s technology-transfer office (Technology Licensing Office at MIT]. The personnel there can help you determine whether your idea has merit, and whether it can be protected by patents, trademarks, or copyright. If you are conducting your research at a university, the university probably has ownership rights; and if your idea is a good one, the university may file for intellectual-property protection on its own dime. Fortunately for you, it is obligated by U.S. law (under the Bayh-Dole Act, aka the Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act) to share the proceeds with inventors, who typically receive 25 to 35 percent. To read more about these strategies, take a look at the Chronicle of Higher Education’s page on creating your own job here. Photo by Brian Taylor for The Chronicle.

Vikalp Sabhlok, MSMS ’13, grew up in a small city in India where the electricity supply was notoriously unreliable.  Now, as a student in MIT Sloan’s Master of Science in Management Studies (MSMS)  program, he is exploring ways to improve the energy distribution system for the next generation. “I have always had an interest in going back to India to make things better,” he said. “If you provide electricity, productivity levels go up, and incomes increase.” To read the rest of the article, visit the Sloan webpage.

Always popular, the D-Lab Second Fridays showcase provides visitors with the chance to see what the creative and compassionate students are working on in the labs upstairs.  The event will take place on Friday, May 10th, 2013 from 5:00pm to 8:00pm, with free admission.  Founded by MacArthur award winner Amy Smith (who once was the Regional Beekeeping Officer for the Okavango River Delta in Botswana) the D-Lab’s mission is to improve the quality of life of low-income households through the creation and implementation of low cost technologies.  Learn more about D-Lab.

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.

On Wednesday, February 6th, 2013, President L. Rafael Reif announced the creation of the Institute-Wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education and requested that its members work to “reinvent the residential campus model and perhaps redefine education altogether.”  Technology has changed very rapidly in the past decade, especially with the advent of the Internet and the omnipresent communication it entails.  However, the institution from which the Internet grew out of has failed to fully adopt the potential of these emerging technologies to change a model of education that has been relatively the same for hundreds of years.  In support of the initiative, MIT launched the website future.mit.edu in early April designed to engage the MIT community in a larger conversation about where education is headed.  It also serves as a resource for the Task Force’s three working groups: Education and Facilities for the Future, The Future Global Implications of edX and the Opportunity it Creates, and A New Financial Model for Education.

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.

Like many Nigerians, MIT graduate student Chidube Ezeozue grew up frustrated by his nation’s erratic electrical grid. “Electrical outages are a huge problem in Nigeria,” says Ezeozue, who is pursuing dual master’s degrees in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program and in electrical engineering and computer science. “The outages really interrupt everyday life.”

Nigeria’s supply of electricity is severely limited, resulting in rolling outages: Power is cut off every few hours and redirected to neighborhoods that were previously in the dark. While Nigerians know to expect these power cuts, they rarely know when the outages will happen, or how long they will last. Read the rest of the article on MIT News.  photo by Allegra Boverman

Throughout decades of research on solar cells, one formula has been considered an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity: Called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, it posits that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34 percent for a single optimized semiconductor junction.

Now, researchers at MIT have shown that there is a way to blow past that limit as easily as today’s jet fighters zoom through the sound barrier — which was also once seen as an ultimate limit.

Their work appears this week in a report in the journal Science, co-authored by graduate students including Daniel Congreve, Nicholas Thompson, Eric Hontz and Shane Yost, alumna Jiye Lee ’12, and professors Marc Baldo and Troy Van Voorhis.

Continue reading the article on MIT News.  illustration by Christine Daniloff

Osteoarthritis, which affects at least 20 percent of adults in the United States, leads to deterioration of cartilage, the rubbery tissue that prevents bones from rubbing together. By studying the molecular properties of cartilage, MIT engineers have now discovered how the earliest stages of arthritis make the tissue more susceptible to damage from physical activities such as running or jumping.  Hadi Tavakoli Nia, the lead author of the paper, and Iman Soltani Bozchalooi, both graduate students in mechanical engineering, are working to answer this question. Visit MIT News to continue reading the article.

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:

Read more

DNA’s unique structure is ideal for carrying genetic information, but scientists have recently found ways to exploit this versatile molecule for other purposes: By controlling DNA sequences, they can manipulate the molecule to form many different nanoscale shapes.

Chemical and molecular engineers at MIT and Harvard University have now expanded this approach by using folded DNA to control the nanostructure of inorganic materials. After building DNA nanostructures of various shapes, they used the molecules as templates to create nanoscale patterns on sheets of graphene. This could be an important step toward large-scale production of electronic chips made of graphene, a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon with unique electronic properties.

Peng Yin, an assistant professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School and a member of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, is also a senior author of the paper, and MIT postdoc Zhong Jin is the lead author. Other authors are Harvard postdocs Wei Sun and Yonggang Ke, MIT graduate students Chih-Jen Shih and Geraldine Paulus, and MIT postdocs Qing Hua Wang and Bin Mu.

Continue reading the article on MIT News.

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.