Winter 2019 – MIT Spectrum

For undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members, the financial support that provides entrance to MIT, or to a new avenue in their work, can be life-changing. Scholarships, fellowships, and professorships unlock one door to reveal many more.

Stephen Berenson '82 (left) and Matisse Peppet. Photo: M. Scott Brauer

To Be Continued

Each MIT story is different—but those who give and receive scholarships share a sense of the possibilities

MIT Reshapes Itself to Shape the Future

The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing

Left: Genia with Acoustic Tipi (2018). Photo: Nicolás Kisic Aguirre; Top Right: A glazed clay vessel made by Genia in 2016, inspired by Standing Rock’s Sacred Stone Camp, depicts the spirit of a water protector. Photo: courtesy of the artist; Bottom Right: Eclipse (2017), Genia’s expression of the morning star created with a CNC cutting machine for the class How to Make (Almost) Anything. Photo: courtesy of the artist

Transforming Traditions

Erin Genia infuses new technologies into the techniques of indigenous art

Patrick White (photographed in the Plasma Science and Fusion Center) is focused on the policy questions that will arise from the new SPARC technology. Photo: Bryce Vickmark

Looking Forward to Fusion

Technical policy scholar Patrick White joins the SPARC project to ask: what comes after success?

Ranganathan spent a week in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, in 2016 as an undergraduate studying environmental science. Photo: Courtesy of Meghana Ranganathan

Tuning the Model

Meghana Ranganathan uses math and machine learning to improve how climate predictions are made

Photo of the professor. Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Life in the Field

Juanjuan Zhang pushes marketing science forward, inspired by its original pioneer

More than 400 members of the MIT community gathered in October 2018 at New York City’s PlayStation Theater. Participants in a panel discussion on MIT’s approach to education included, from left, moderator and MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart SM ’85, PhD ’88, Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering; Simmons Hall president Edward Fan ’19; and architecture professor and Environmental Solutions Initiative director John E. Fernández ’85, faculty head of house at Baker House. Photo: Dana Maxson Photography

Better World Events Continue in 2019

The Campaign heads to California, Atlanta, and London

From the President

President’s Letter: Supporting Smartness

Spotlight

Why New Undergraduate Chemistry Labs?

Spotlight

Scholarships at MIT

Classes began in the new Chemistry Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories in the MIT.nano building this past fall. Photo: Ken Richardson

Do It Yourself

By recreating a chemistry professor’s research, students build the foundations for future discoveries

Leading to Green

More efficient or more sustainable? Janelle Heslop helps businesses achieve both

Urgent Care

Ari Bronsoler’s economic analysis helps to identify best practices in a struggling health system

A Wide Net to Trap Cancer

Stefani Spranger is exploring multiple avenues for the next immunotherapy breakthrough

García-Abril and his partner, Débora Mesa (pictured far left), live with their children in Brookline, Massachusetts, in a prefabricated home of their own design. Photo: Artemio Fochs Navarro

Stones and Beams

Ensamble Studio’s Antón García-Abril challenges basic notions about how (and where) buildings can be made

A 1948 illustration by György Kepes of the Department of Architecture’s curriculum. Image: Courtesy of MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections

Turning Points: 150 Years of Architecture at MIT

Celebrating the oldest architectural course of study in the United States

Submissions to the contest “C’était Paris en 1970” reveal—through their creators’ choice of subject, framing, and sometimes pointed captions—how thousands of amateur photographers viewed the capital’s history and radical urbanization. From left: “The Elderly in Paris Before the Expulsion (on the rue Payer whose buildings are destined to be demolished soon)” (anonymous); “New and Old Buildings of Paris, Citroën, rue de Ginoux” (anonymous); and “The Big Movie Theaters of the boulevard des Italians” (André Guillemenot).

This Was Paris

An excerpt from Catherine E. Clark’s book on the changing conventions of photography

Sarah Womble, Omar Ebrahim, and Jesse Darden in Schoenberg in Hollywood, in November 2018 at Boston Lyric Opera. Photo: Liza Voll Photographary/courtesy of BLO.

Composing History

Tod Machover turns to the past—and a fellow composer—for inspiration

Clean Start

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Opening Doors