Pru Robinson: “MIT has been really good to me”
Position opening: Assistant Director for Administration, Design Initiative
The MIT Design Initiative is a new endeavor to elevate design education and research across MIT and around the world by creating new educational experiences in design for MIT’s students; building capacity for research in the creative fields; attracting and retaining leading students and faculty in design disciplines; and connecting to a global network of industry, education, and civic organizations to expand educational impact and foster a new generation of socially responsible entrepreneurs.
MIT Morningside Academy for Design created as a new hub for cross-disciplinary education, research, and innovation
Supported by a $100 million founding gift, the academy will deepen the integration of design across the Institute and beyond.
Could used beer yeast be the solution to heavy metal contamination in water?
A study shows that yeast, an abundant waste product from breweries, can filter out even trace amounts of lead.
Helping renewable energy projects succeed in local communities
PhD student Jungwoo Chun works toward a more sustainable future through research, teaching, and public service.
QS ranks MIT the world’s No. 1 university for 2022-23
Earning the top spot for the 11th straight year, the Institute also places first in 12 subject areas.
Students imagine better products, services, and infrastructure for an aging society
Projects from a new MIT urban studies and planning course speak to the impact of increased longevity on systems and markets.
Mobilizing across borders to address global challenges
MISTI Global Seed Funds program provides millions of dollars to advance international collaborations for MIT faculty.
Inaugural Day of AI brings new digital literacy to classrooms worldwide
Thousands of children participate in MIT-developed artificial intelligence curriculum.
MIT Simmons Hall as an interactive canvas
Student project “116 x 31” transforms an iconic building on MIT’s campus with a large-scale interactive installation.
President Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson of Iceland visits MIT
Delegation meets campus leaders, with an eye toward AI applications and the Icelandic language.
MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium announces recipients of inaugural MCSC Seed Awards
Twenty winning projects will link industry member priorities with research groups across campus to develop scalable climate solutions.
MIT J-WAFS announces 2022 seed grant recipients
The grants total over $1 million in support of research that addresses issues in the water and food sectors.
13 from MIT awarded Fulbright Fellowships
The Fulbright US Student Program funds opportunities for research, graduate study, and teaching abroad.
3 Questions: Ariel Ekblaw on building beautiful architecture in space
The TESSERAE project, a design for self-assembling space structures and habitats, has sent prototypes to the International Space Station.
Looking forward to forecast the risks of a changing climate
To better inform local policy in the face of changing weather extremes, MIT researchers seek to advance the modeling of long-term weather risks.
MIT’s FutureMakers programs help kids get their minds around — and hands on — AI
The programs are designed to foster an understanding of how artificial intelligence technologies work, including their social implications.
Driving a human-machine collaboration
In MIT Mobility Forum talk, John Leonard (left) and Avinash Balachandran discuss a future for vehicle automation that lets technology and drivers interact.
MIT announces five flagship projects in first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition
The portfolio of multiyear projects focuses on delivering breakthrough solutions.
Architecture isn’t just for humans anymore
In the remote desert of Nevada, an MIT team designs shelter for all species.
QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 12 subjects for 2022
The Department of Architecture is among those subjects ranked No. 1.
With new industry, a new era for cities
In his book, “New Industrial Urbanism,” Eran Ben-Joseph looks at the evolving form and function of 21st-century cities.
Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on new pathways to decarbonizing industry
Faculty leaders detail promising technologies, materials, and methods that could help unlock a low-carbon future in sectors where emissions are hardest to cut.
Building bridges, not silos
A new study reveals how MIT’s campus design and architecture influence interaction among researchers.
Ride-hailing without the traffic snarls?
Study suggests how much competition in the urban ride market can grow before gridlock sets in.
Pandemic mood: Much worse than a bad Monday
Study uses social media to measure how much sentiment has been affected by the Covid-19 crisis, worldwide.
Using nature’s structures in wooden buildings
A new approach enables architects to use discarded tree forks as load-bearing joints in their structures.
MIT Center for Real Estate launches the Asia Real Estate Initiative
New effort empowers MIT researchers to shape real estate’s future and build responsibly and sustainably.
Q&A: Climate Grand Challenges finalists on building equity and fairness into climate solutions
Faculty leaders discuss the opportunities and obstacles in developing, scaling, and implementing their work rapidly.
Finding joy through art and advocacy
Senior Tanner Bonner creates connections across MIT to give voice to first-generation and low-income students.
New power sources
Thirty-six million people in the U.S. use an energy system developed by a handful of activists in the 1990s. An MIT scholar examines this unusual story.
Using deep imaging for higher resolution
Akasha Imaging, an MIT Media Lab spinout, provides efficient and cost-effective imaging with higher-resolution feature detection, tracking, and pose orientation.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to speak at MIT’s 2022 Commencement
Director-General of the World Trade Organization and MIT alumna will address the Class of 2022 on May 27.
MIT experts test technical research for a hypothetical central bank digital currency
Collaboration with Federal Reserve Bank of Boston yields progress in understanding how a digital currency might be developed in the future.
Professors Elchanan Mossel and Rosalind Picard named 2021 ACM Fellows
Fellowship honors ACM members whose accomplishments drive innovation and make broader advances possible.
3 Questions: Jinhua Zhao on a “third place” between home and office
Remote workers have been seeking new types of workspaces, with implications for business and transit.
Deploying machine learning to improve mental health
MIT scientist Rosalind Picard collaborates with clinicians to develop tools for mental health care delivery.
A nudge to resume economic activity
MIT experiment finds people will respond to cues from neighbors about activities and risk preferences.
Cynthia Breazeal named dean for digital learning at MIT
Overseeing business and research units across MIT Open Learning, Breazeal will focus on the future of digital technologies and their applications in education.
Life Sciences Supermind Report outlines proposed solutions to re-imagine the global health ecosystem
Collective intelligence methodology identifies key findings to accelerate the pace of innovation and build health resilience.
Merging design, tech, and cognitive science
Senior Ibuki Iwasaki seeks creative ways to design technology that considers the human user.
“Hey Alexa! Are you trustworthy?”
The more social behaviors a voice-user interface exhibits, the more likely people are to trust it, engage with it, and consider it to be competent.
Courtney Lesoon and Elizabeth Yarina win Fulbright-Hays Scholarships
Prestigious grants will support full-time doctoral research abroad for the MIT architecture and urban planning students.
At MIT, learning about the language, history, and art of Arabic
Calligrapher Hajj Wafaa shares insights about his craft while MIT Global Languages announces the arrival of Arabic classes.
Speeding up directed evolution of molecules in the lab
Using a new robotic platform, researchers can simultaneously track hundreds of microbial populations as they evolve new proteins or other molecules.
Characters for good, created by artificial intelligence
Researchers encourage positive use cases of AI-generated characters for education and well-being.
Harmonix keeps innovating, with lasting impact
The MIT spinout has been releasing iconic video games for more than 25 years.
Making her way through MIT
Graduate student Lucy Du designs novel prosthetics and seeks to inspire other students.
How MIT students are transforming the art of narrative
A new exhibition explores the possibilities of virtual storytelling.
MIT Future Founders Initiative announces competition to promote female entrepreneurs in biotech
MIT Media Lab’s Canan Dagdeviren is among the nine MIT researchers selected as finalists for 2021 prize
Report: Economics drives migration from Central America to the U.S.
A new survey underscores how material needs lead to movement within the Americas — at a high cost to those trying to relocate.
One autonomous taxi, please
Self-driving Roboats, developed at MIT, set sea in Amsterdam canals.
At MIT, arts, humanities and STEM fields forge an essential partnership
Writing for Times Higher Ed, Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, and Agustín Rayo, interim dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, underscore the importance of the arts, humanities, and design fields as “an essential part of an MIT education, critical to the Institute’s capacity for innovation and vital to its mission to make a better world.”
Graham Yeager: Fostering artists and community at ACT
In his position managing the fabrication studio for the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT, Graham Yeager has his hands in everything — literally — and he could not be happier.
Nimfa de Leon: Supporting fellows, sharing fellowship
Nimfa de Leon, assistant director of the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS), has “had the good fortune of working for the program’s founder and each subsequent director, so far.”
SA+P Staff Initiatives
For Support and Administrative Staff
SA+P Staff Mentoring Program
The Staff Mentoring Program is open to all staff who are interested in receiving mentorship from a more experienced colleague. Mentees will work with a mentor who is based in a different unit within SA+P. Mentoring can include career guidance, advice on navigating MIT, and insights into managing interpersonal conflict.
If you are interested in participating, please complete the Mentee Interest Form and Monica Orta will follow up with you.
SA+P Career Corridors Series
A lunch-time series that offers information on some of the big picture aspects of SA+P and the Institute, and insights about how to build a satisfying career at MIT. The series will kick off in January with “How I Got Here,” a panel of administrators who have risen through the ranks at MIT and will share their insights and lessons learned. The session will be held on Zoom and lunch vouchers will be provided. More information to come!
For All Staff
Staff Special Interest Groups (SSIGs)
Staff are invited to form SSIGs based on a common activity, purpose, background, or interest. This is an opportunity to share a professional or personal interest with colleagues across the School. Want to create a climate change book club, find fellow Settlers of Catan players, or practice new knitting techniques? This is your chance! No topic is too big or small. After 18 months of limited interpersonal engagement, SSIGs aim to strengthen staff connections across SA+P. The School will provide funds to meet once per month over lunch or before/after work. Regardless of the topic, groups will be open and advertised to all staff in SA+P.
If you’d like to start an SSIG, fill out the proposal form and Dineen Doucette will follow up with you.
Check out the unique things your colleagues are up to in our staff profile series “Talking with…” — Joel Carela, Maggie Church, and Alan Reyes.
Talking with Alan Reyes: “MIT helped me find what type of person I want to be”
An interview with Alan Reyes, who joined MIT in 2018 as an intern supporting human resources and financial operations in the Dean’s office of the School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Architecture.
MIT Energy Initiative awards seven Seed Fund grants for early-stage energy research
Awards support research to improve the efficiency, scalability, and adoption of clean energy technologies. Leslie Norford and Caitlin Mueller are among the awardees.
Fifteen MIT faculty honored as “Committed to Caring” for 2021-23
Honor recognizes professors who went the extra mile advising during the pandemic’s disruptions. Included are DUSP’s Mariana Arcaya, devin michelle bunten, Janelle Knox-Hayes, and Architecture’s Miho Mazereeuw.
At Mass STEM Week kickoff, MIT RAISE announces Day of AI
Artificial intelligence is top-of-mind as Governor Baker, President Reif encourage students to “see yourself in STEM.”
Cynthia Breazeal named senior associate dean for open learning
Social robotics and artificial intelligence pioneer will oversee business units and help to guide innovative learning initiatives.
Ingenuity, design, and human spirit
A new book from the MIT Future Heritage Lab goes inside a Syrian refugee camp to uncover the creative lives of its inhabitants.
How the brain navigates cities
We seem to be wired to calculate not the shortest path but the “pointiest” one, facing us toward our destination as much as possible.
New fibers can make breath-regulating garments
“Robotic” textiles could help performers and athletes train their breathing, and potentially help patients recovering from postsurgery breathing changes.
A dispatch and routing platform to improve deliveries
Wise Systems has grown from an MIT class project to a company helping multinationals improve last-mile logistics.
Tool for predicting pedestrian flow expands its reach
Long-term study of Melbourne, Australia, shows how urban development and change affects pedestrians, not just automobiles.
Blockchain technology could provide secure communications for robot teams
The transaction-based communications system ensures robot teams achieve their goal even if some robots are hacked.
A robot that finds lost items
This robotic arm fuses data from a camera and antenna to locate and retrieve items, even if they are buried under a pile.
For campus “porosity hunters,” climate resilience is the goal
With the MIT campus as a test bed, a citizen science effort provides lessons well beyond MIT.
New bionics center established at MIT with $24 million gift
Interdisciplinary research center funded by philanthropist Lisa Yang aims to mitigate disability through technologies that marry human physiology with electromechanics.
MIT appoints members of new faculty committee to drive climate action plan
Architecture’s John Fernández and Christoph Reinhart and DUSP’s Julie Newman and Chris Zegras are members of the committee — named Climate Nucleus — charged with managing and implementing MIT’s new plan.
End-to-end supply chain transparency
Leonardo Bonanni MA ’03, SM ’05, PhD ’10 is founder and CEO of Sourcemap, an MIT Media Lab spinoff helping multinationals gain unprecedented insights into their supply chains.
MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2021-22
A record number of honorees will engage in the life of the Institute through teaching, research, and other interactions with the MIT community.
Renovated Hayden Library and courtyard open to the MIT community
Transformational projects bring inclusive, welcoming spaces to the MIT campus. The space was designed by Kennedy & Violich Architecture.
360-degree transparency for construction sites made simple
Jeevan Kalanithi SM ’07 is CEO of OpenSpace, a company founded by three Media Lab graduates using computer vision to benefit the construction industry.
Talking with Maggie Church: MIT staff are “part of it all”
Maggie Church’s seven years at MIT have been spent at the Media Lab. For the last three years, she has served as the program coordinator for the City Science team.
Study: Ending an eviction moratorium increases Covid-19 hazard
Results show infection rates increase across communities; individuals in low-income areas and those in poor health are at highest risk.
Jordan Harrod: Brain researcher and AI-focused YouTuber
The PhD student uses machine learning as a tool for studying pain and consciousness — and as subject matter for her popular videos.
A serious plea for playful design
In their new book, “Urban Play,” two DUSP researchers advance the idea of using technology to make urban life creative and unpredictable.
Climate and sustainability classes expand at MIT
MIT offers over 120 undergraduate classes related to sustainability, a sign of growing student and faculty interest in the environmental impacts of their fields.
Magnets could offer better control of prosthetic limbs
System uses tiny magnetic beads to rapidly measure the position of muscles and relay that information to a bionic prosthesis.
“AI for Impact” lives up to its name
Entrepreneurship class MAS.664 launches businesses with global reach.
Finding common ground in Malden
Using an untapped resource, the Malden River Project is boosting social resilience along with climate mitigation in the gateway city of Malden, Massachusetts.
Kristy Johnson: Expanding communication for all
The physicist, neuroscientist, and PhD candidate creates augmentative technology for children with neurodevelopmental differences.
Life in space: Preparing for an increasingly tangible reality
The Space Exploration Initiative supports research across and beyond MIT in two microgravity flights this spring.
New directions in real estate practice
Professor Siqi Zheng promotes sustainable urbanization at MIT’s Center for Real Estate.
2021 Teaching with Digital Technology Awards honor MIT educators’ innovation and empathy
Twenty-three instructors — including SA+P’s Caroline Jones — recognized for extraordinary online teaching with annual student-nominated award.
Talking with Joel Carela: The “Corporeal Connection” at MITdesignX
Joel arrived at MIT about three years ago to take on the role of Program Assistant for MITdesignX. Originally from Washington D.C., Joel moved to the Boston area a few years after graduating from the College of William and Mary.
At the Venice Biennale, an architecture exhibition to meet the moment
The global event, curated by MIT’s Hashim Sarkis, queries how people can best live together at a time of uncertainty, crisis, and change.
Full story on MIT News (7/8)
Summer 2021 recommended reading from MIT
Enjoy these recent titles from Institute faculty and staff — including eight titles from MIT SA+P.
Full story on MIT News (7/1)
MIT welcomes six new assistant deans for diversity, equity, and inclusion
The Institute’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing will have dedicated professional staff to advance initiatives locally and across the Institute.
Full story on MIT News (6/28)
A new chapter for space sustainability
MIT researchers are co-leading the design of a global Space Sustainability Rating system that will soon be operational.
Full story on MIT News (6/25)
From NYC zookeeper to aspiring architect
Merging species conservation and architectural design, graduate student James Brice is studying the sustainable development of public spaces.
Full story on MIT News (6/24)
Finding the love hormone in a stressed-out world
A new art/science collaboration uses molecular structures as its creative medium.
Full story on MIT News (6/22)
E-scooters as a new micro-mobility service
SMART researchers explore the potential of e-scooter sharing as a replacement for short-distance transit in Singapore.
Full story on MIT News (6/22)
QS ranks MIT the world’s number one university for 2021-22
Ranked at the top for the 10th straight year, the Institute also places first in 12 subject areas, including architecture.
Full story on MIT News (6/8)
MIT J-WAFS awards eight grants in seventh round of seed funding
Ten principal investigators from seven MIT departments and labs will receive up to $150,000 for two years, overhead-free, for innovative research on global food and water challenges.
Full story on MIT News (6/8)
Trying to put the brakes on car ownership
Study of Beijing’s car-restriction policy underscores value of regional coordination to meet transportation and emissions goals.
Full story on MIT News (6/8)
Evaluating the competition between autonomous vehicles and public transit
SMART study determines benefits of competition and potential impact for future urban cities and transport systems.
Full story on MIT News (6/4)
On systemic sources of early life stress, and empathetic responses
At Picower Institute symposium, speakers describe harms of early exposure to trauma, racism, as well as the restorative power of understanding, nurturing, and extending opportunity.
Full story on MIT News (6/3)
When masks reveal
Students design face masks that uncover personal and collective experiences from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Full story on MIT News (6/1)
Study reveals a universal travel pattern across four continents
Globally, people follow a “visitation law” — an inverse relationship between distance and frequency of visits.
Full story on MIT News (5/26)
MIT students and alumni “hack” Hong Kong Kowloon East
Activating technology for urban life with a virtual site visit to Hong Kong in collaboration with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Full story on MIT News (5/25)
Using machine learning to predict high-impact research
DELPHI, an artificial intelligence framework, can give an “early-alert” signal for future key technologies by learning from patterns gleaned from previous scientific publications.
Full story on MIT News (5/17)
SA+P’s Jierui Fang among MIT alumni named 2021 Knight-Hennessy Scholars
Fellowship funds graduate studies at Stanford University.
Full story on MIT News (5/7)
SMART breakthrough uses artificial neural networks to enhance travel behavior research
Theory-based residual neural network combines discrete choice models and deep neural networks, long viewed as conflicting methods.
Full story on MIT News (5/7)
Ceasar McDowell named associate director of MIT Center for Constructive Communication
McDowell will head civic design at new center, maintain leadership role at Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Full story on MIT News (5/6)
Buttressing perseverance from a distance
SA+P’s Caroline Jones honored as “Committed to Caring.”
Full story on MIT News (5/5)
Study finds ride-sharing intensifies urban road congestion
SMART research finds US road congestion increased by almost 1 percent while the duration of congestion rose by 4.5 percent.
Full story on MIT News (4/23)
Justin Steil and Desiree Plata win Edgerton Faculty Award
The DUSP and CEE faculty members recognized for excellence in leadership, service, and impactful work tackling environmental and social justice issues.
Full story on MIT News (4/21)
MIT juniors Yu Jing Chen (DUSP) and Max Williamson named 2021 Truman Scholars
Fellowship provides funding for graduate school and recognizes future public service leaders.
Full story on MIT News (4/15)
Counting pedestrians to make pedestrians count
Andres Sevtsuk’s new work estimates foot traffic in cities — so planners and developers can study the flow of people, not just vehicles.
Full story on MIT News (4/15)
MIT Press launches open access collection of 34 classic architecture and urban studies titles
An unprecedented digitization program makes out-of-print works available as e-books for the first time.
Full story on MIT News (4/12)
Encouraging solar energy adoption in rural India
What motivates people in remote communities to decide to buy and use a particular energy source?
Full story on MIT News (4/1)
A robot that senses hidden objects
System uses penetrative radio frequency to pinpoint items, even when they’re hidden from view.
Full story via
Full story on MIT News (4/1)
Comprehensive report on pandemic response solutions developed by 180 leading experts
Online platform harnesses collective intelligence to accelerate recovery from Covid-19 and prepare for future disease outbreaks.
Full story via MIT News (3/30)
What Does Home Mean To Us?
Not the Same Thing it Did Before the Pandemic
The New York Times asked architects, urban policy experts, and novelists how their relationship with their homes has changed. Dean Hashim Sarkis shared his thoughts.
Full story via New York Times (3/23)
QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 12 subjects for 2021
Architecture ranks No. 1; The Institute ranks second in four subject areas.
Full story via MIT News (3/3)
Braiding diverse networks
Professors Bergmann and Susskind honored as “Committed to Caring.”
Full story via MIT News (2/25)
Q&A: Ceasar McDowell on better public conversation
Professor of civic design and head of We Who Engage MIT talks about rebuilding connections in America.
Full story via MIT News (2/24)
Toward a disease-sniffing device that rivals a dog’s nose
Trained dogs can detect cancer and other diseases by smell. A miniaturized detector can analyze trace molecules to mimic the process.
Full story via MIT News (2/17/21)
New surgery may enable better control of prosthetic limbs
Reconnecting muscle pairs during amputation gives patients more sensory feedback from the limb.
Full story via MIT News (2/15/21)
Sarah Williams named director of the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism
Associate professor of technology and urban planning to lead LCAU with a research focus on planning, design, construction, and retrofitting of urban environments for the 21st century.
Full story via MIT News (1/29/21)
School of Architecture and Planning creates climate action plan
The school aims to reduce carbon emissions through changes in procurement, waste tracking, airline travel, and other areas of operation.
Full story via MIT News (1/26/21)
A new lens on real estate design
Natasha Sadikin arrived at the MIT Center for Real Estate as a Sustainable Real Estate Development Action (SREDA) Fellow. With an artist’s eye, the graduate student keeps good design at the forefront of real estate development.
Full story via MIT News (1/14/21)
MIT launches Center for Constructive Communication
The cross-campus effort will design human-machine systems that improve communication across divides and increase opportunity for underheard communities.
Full story via MIT News (1/13/21)
Dava Newman named director of MIT Media Lab
Visionary astronautics researcher, explorer, and expert on human adaptation to space will lead the Institute’s world-renowned research center.
Full story via MIT News (12/22/20)
Seeing the values behind the numbers
In a new book, “Data Action,” Associate Professor Sarah Williams issues a call for thinking ethically about data today.
Full story via MIT News (12/8/20)
Four MIT students awarded 2022 Schwarzman Scholarships
Francesca Macchiavello Cauvi, Alice Ho, Ava Waitz, and Lucio Milanese will pursue master’s degrees in global affairs and leadership training at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Alice Ho from Macau, China, will graduate from MIT in 2021 with a double major in management and architecture.
Full story via MIT News (12/7/20)
Meet the MIT alumnae who worked to secure the right for women to vote
In the early 1900s, Florence Luscomb ’04 (VII), Katharine Dexter McCormick, and other MIT alumnae worked tirelessly to convince women they deserved a voice in democracy.
Full story via MIT Technology Review (10/20/20)
3 Questions: The price of privacy in ride-sharing app performance
JTL Urban Mobility Lab researchers examine the effects of protecting user data privacy on the efficiency and service quality of ride-sharing applications.
Full story via MIT News (10/14/20)
How to build more equitable public space after COVID-19
In this roundtable discussion, led by senior editor Suzanne LaBarre, top executives and thought leaders discussed how to innovate public space. Participants in this session, in alphabetical order, were…Ceasar McDowell, professor of the practice of civic design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology…”That is true; sidewalks are an important part of what makes a city work, but they’re not sufficient to taking care of broader issues. We have lots of history of people living next to each other in different classes and statuses and still not doing the hard work of dismantling power and sharing resources. You can have everyone on the street and still have really bad policies and practices in place. It takes more than just hoping the intermingling will do it; it takes us constructing new practices.”
Full story via Fast Company (10/13/20)
The power of narrative in business
In this roundtable discussion, led by senior editor Amy Farley, top executives talked about how companies build narratives that can resonate with consumers and with employees, and how the role of authentic storytelling and honest communication will be a key tenet of business in the decades to come. Participants in this session, in no particular order, were the executive director of MIT Media Lab Deb Roy…”We’re getting good at casting shadows and having machines that can make out contours or shapes of narratives at different scales, and then putting those two together and understanding (and predicting in some cases) how particular audience segments may respond to different forms of narratives, and different choices—all the way down to specific words and phrases that are chosen, all the way up to the emotional contours of an entire video sequences.”
Full story via Fast Company (10/13/20)
A unique concept in American childhood history: “junior republics”
Professor Jennifer Light explores the changing conception of kids in America in her new book, “States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895-1945,” published by MIT Press.
Full story via MIT News (8/5/20)
All the Light That’s Ours to See
Judith Barry, director of MIT’s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology, has a new exhibition which constitutes the international premiere of a two-channel immersive installation. The exhibition is on view now through November 22 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Hashim Sarkis on “How will we live together?”: Exploring the Question of the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale
Scheduled originally from August to November 2020, the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale was postponed, like every other event this year, and will be held from May 22nd to November 21st, 2021, due to the pandemic. Questioning “How will we live together?” the original statement of curator Hashim Sarkis, called upon architects “to imagine spaces in which we can generously live together”. Relevant today more than ever, with the current worldwide circumstances, the theme of the Biennale is in fact the focus of interest of the global scene.
Full story via ArchDaily (10/7/20)
The benefits of scooter-sharing vs. bike-sharing
Studying usage in Singapore, researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab and the Future Urban Mobility Interdisciplinary Research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) find scooter rentals allow for increased sharing frequency and fewer vehicles needed.
Full story via MIT News (10/5/20)
City garbage collection is finally getting the disruption it deserves
Trash cans are a ubiquitous, and malodorous, fact of urban life, but a few dozen cities around the world are experimenting with eliminating them. In their place, local governments are installing chutes which connect to an underground system of pneumatic tubes that use high-pressure air to woosh garbage away to a handful of centralized collection points. Gabriella Carolini, an associate professor of urban planning at MIT, says there’s probably a ceiling on adoption. Cities simply face too many challenges—and too many budget limitations—to realistically expect them to make citywide waste pipes a priority.
Full story via Quartz (9/30/20)
The wish for beauty, thought, art, and sociality are ongoing inRenée Green’s latest work
The Art, Culture and Technology professor’s solo exhibition at the Bortolami Gallery in New York City presents a series of works that expand and contract language and color to facilitate its exploration over space and time. Green’s work is also currently featured in group exhibitions in Madrid, Berlin, and at Wesleyan College in Middleton, CT.
Robots and magnetic soap: scientists rethink oil spill clean-ups
Self-driving navigating robots may be another solution. Carlo Ratti, the director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, pioneered the Sea Swarm robot in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.“This technology was conceived to be deployed anywhere it was needed – in oceans, rivers, or seas. It’s mostly useful in deltas and zigzagging coastlines where most of the other technologies fail,” Ratti said.
Full story via The Guardian (9/29/20)
Massachusetts must extend eviction moratorium to protect voting rights
A recent report by City Life/Vida Urbana and researchers at MIT, including DUSP’s Ben Walker, documented that as many as 1 in 3 Massachusetts tenants are presently at risk of eviction — over 300,000 renters. Housing courts also predict an avalanche of at least some 20,000 evictions being filed in Boston alone the first day the moratorium lifts.
Full story via The Boston Globe (9/28/20)
Advancing Racial Justice in Disruptive Moments of Change
A recent MIT webinar, Advancing Racial Justice in Disruptive Moments of Change, centered on work underway from and with socially marginalized communities that aims to fight multi-generational poverty and racial injustice, particularly in the wake of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. The event was moderated by MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) Deputy Director Taina S. McField and featured CoLab Executive Director Dayna L. Cunningham, tech innovator Christopher M. Jones, and social entrepreneur Juan Constain.
Watch the video on YouTube (9/28/20)
Modernizing village life
“Prototype Village House” from Rafi Segal and the MIT Rwanda Workshop team won a 2020 Brick Award in the category “Living Together,” for a prototype for an affordable house completely tailored to Rwandan needs. As part of the process, mason builders trained villagers in construction techniques, generating a process of community building with lasting impact. Organized by brick company Wienerberger, the biennial award celebrates outstanding brick architecture from around the world.
Full story via brickaward.com (9/29/20)
‘Shofuso and Modernism: Mid-Century Collaboration Between Japan and Philadelphia’ Review: A Cross-Cultural Home
The work of George K Nakashima’s MAR ’30 (IV), by contrast, is heartfelt rather than playful. His mission, a statement of his philosophy declares, was to fill the “lag between mass production and hand craftsmanship.” We see him attempting this in various ways. A robust chair with a corded hemp seat is an Arts and Crafts essay, while a Windsor chair made of birch takes an utterly conventional form and gracefully updates it for Knoll, the innovative furniture company. But he also loved free-form invention, especially when given a unique piece of wood. A lustrous walnut plank forms the top of a coffee table of 1947, showing the naturally irregular “free edge” that became his most recognizable device. It is abstract sculpture, but one must look at the sturdy legs of Nakashima’s furniture, which always present a strong structural idea, to realize that he was a trained architect with a master’s degree from M.I.T.
Full story via Wall Street Journal (9/23/20)
China Is Building Green Cities, But Struggling to Find Residents
“New cities are like experiments where the governments can easily test innovative ideas,” said Zheng Siqi, faculty director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sustainable Urbanization Lab. “The new city does not need to deal with existing residents,” unlike when the government redevelops existing ones, Zheng said.
Full story via Bloomberg (9/24/20)
Wielding science and tech, Ani Liu
SM ’17 (MAS) creates art that imitates life
Experiences she designs often question the ways society fails to be humane.
Full story via Slice of MIT (9/21/20)
A New York Clock That Told Time Now Tells the Time Remaining
Metronome’s digital clock in Manhattan has been reprogrammed by artists Andrew Boyd and Gan Golan MCP ’06 (XI) to illustrate a critical window for action to prevent the effects of global warming from becoming irreversible.
Full story via The New York Times (9/21/20)
Malden River Works project awarded state $150K grant
The team behind the design to provide flood protection and create a waterfront park includes DUSP’s Marie Law Adams and Tanvi Sharma. The project previously won the 2019 Norman B. Leventhal City Prize from LCAU.
Full story via Patch (9/16/20)
Anti-racism in technology and policy design
Media Lab researcher Katlyn Turner explores how critical race theory can influence science — and how science can inform policy — as an IDSS Research to Policy Engagement Initiative Fellow. Turner recently joined four other nuclear scientists issuing a call for antiracist actions within their profession.
She discusses discriminatory practices in the field in this 3 Questions MIT News article. (9/16/20)
Additional coverage via MIT News (9/4/20)
Americans speak more than 1,300 languages. This artist wants to capture them all
Media Lab Assistant Professor Ekene Ijeoma’s project, A Counting, aims to capture audio recordings of the more than 1,300 languages spoken by Americans. “The question for A Counting is how we can count to a whole using everyone’s voices to represent,” says Ijeoma, “not just languages, but voices and accents as a way of representing their cultural and ethnic identities.”
Full story via Fast Company (9/16/20)
How Gen Z & Young Millennials Are Redefining Life Stages, Markets & Retirement For Everyone
(Written by MIT AgeLab Director, Joseph Coughlin) Noah may be correct, it may not be “terrible” to live with mom and dad in your 20s and beyond. Many parents are thrilled to have their children live with them for as long as possible — a reason why many young adults may be at home, rarely cited by social observers. But, whatever the reasons are for young adults’ delaying their departure from home, this evolving trend is not just about the changing definition of young adulthood, it is also about the changing definition of life stages across the life course, including retirement.
Full story via Forbes (9/14/20)
How a thinker rocking the design world draws upon his N.L. roots
Matthew Mazzotta looks at cities and sees solutions to problems that most of us don’t even know exist. It turns out that some of the inspiration for this provocative urban thinker comes from rural Newfoundland, and the can-do attitude of his grandfather. …Mazzotta who is now a visiting lecturer at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), got his start there as a janitor. He was cleaning artists’ studios, until he attended a professor’s talk and — inspired by his work —enrolled in the Art, Culture and Technology program.
Full story via CBC (9/13/20)
MIT Media Lab charts a course for the future
The high-profile research lab is retaining its unique form of creativity while building trust and inclusion.
Full story via MIT News (9/9/20)
The buildings warmed by the human body
Location aside, human body heat cannot be the sole heating source of a building. “I don’t think body heat would be a major source of heat [in a building], but it has to be combined with that from electrical appliances, cooking, refrigerators and so on,” says Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston, Massachusetts. Energy-saving building design is not always appreciated, especially in countries without a mature green awareness. “More people build houses in green standards, but there is not a general agreement to how much energy this can save. [Thus,] there’s still a reluctance in employing such design,” Glicksman says.
Full story via BBC (9/8/20)
Sarah Williams: Applying a data-driven approach to help cities function
Sarah Williams, an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, applies a data-driven approach to help cities function for everyone. “We hear big data is going to change the world, but I don’t believe it will unless we synthesize it into tools with a public benefit,” she says.
Full story via MIT News (9/8/20)
Back to school: Moving the class outside
Commissioned by the Grayson School in Philadelphia, Brandon Clifford’s Matter Design has created an experimental outdoor space to promote recreational learning in kids and young adults. In collaboration with CEMEX Global R&D, Matter Design developed a collection of curious concrete characters, designed to serve as scaffolding to feed the imagination of the learning program for the school’s pre-K through grade 12 students.
Full story via Domus (9/5/20)
Anti-racism in technology and policy design
Media Lab researcher Kate Turner explores how critical race theory can influence science — and how science can inform policy — as an IDSS Research to Policy Engagement Initiative Fellow.
Full story via MIT News (9/4/20)
From Chaos to Order: A Brief Cultural History of the Parking Lot
DUSP Professor Eran Ben-Joseph, urban designer and prof of landscape architecture & planning at MIT DUSP charts the evolution of the humble parking lot
Full story via MIT Press (9/3/20)
Can Neighborhood Planning in Shrinking Cities Achieve Demolition Goals?
DUSP Professor Brent Ryan co-authored an article in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, entitled “Can Neighborhood Planning in Shrinking Cities Achieve Demolition Goals? A Conformance and Performance Evaluation of Neighborhood Action Plans in Youngstown, Ohio.”
Full story via Sage Journals (9/3/20)
“The Emerald Tutu” earns NSF grant for design to protect Boston’s coastline
As an activist and scholar working alongside i“To address the true danger of climate change in Boston, we wanted to focus on making infrastructure green, inhabitable, and accessible.”mmigrant and indigenous Pacific Islander communities, Department of Urban Studies and Planning PhD candidate Kevin Lee has a lot on his plate. But “when things matter so deeply in your bones, the energy just comes,” he says.
Full story via MIT News (9/3/20)
Listening to immigrant and indigenous Pacific Islander voices
As an activist and scholar working alongside immigrant and indigenous Pacific Islander communities, Department of Urban Studies and Planning PhD candidate Kevin Lee has a lot on his plate. But “when things matter so deeply in your bones, the energy just comes,” he says.
Full story via MIT News (9/2/20)
Judith Black’s best photograph: my family on Father’s Day
It was a very intense time, says Judith Black SM ’81 (IV). My marriage had broken up. I was in my mid-30s and the plan was to go back to school to get a degree and secure a teaching position, maybe in a high school. I got on a course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology called the Creative Photo Lab, started by the US photographer Minor White.
Full story via The Guardian (9/2/20)
Remote working means the rise of productivity-tracking tattleware
Perhaps the most fascinating series of experiments were conducted at the MIT Human Dynamics Laboratory by researcher Alex Pentland. Using an electronic badge capable of capturing a vast spectrum of behavioural data, like tone of voice and body language, Pentland studied more than 20 teams in settings including hospitals and call centres. The most telltale sign of a productive team was the level of social engagement between employees. More productive teams had more energetic conversations – not just with their leaders, and outside scheduled meetings.
Full story via Wired (9/2/20)
Cultural bandwidth
In an essay for Places Journal, doctoral candidate Nushelle de Silva SMArchS ’15 explores the expanded role museums can play given the global pandemic.
Full story via placesjournal.org (September 2020)
Designing from a Distance
While the Institute closed its physical doors on campus this past spring, the Department opened itself up over the summer with the Summer Work and Pedagogy Program (SWAP). Subjects ranged from building geodesic domes, to prototyping publications, workshopping for radio, and exploring the social intersections of architecture.
Full story via MIT Architecture (9/1/20)
The Costs of Political Manipulation of Factor Markets in China
In a working paper “The Costs of Political Manipulation of Factor Markets in China,” CRE Director’s Siqi Zheng (with Henderson, Su, and Zhang) looks at three factor market distortions: land mis-allocation, capital mis-allocation and migration friction in a GE framework.
Full story via Centre for Economic Policy Research (September 2020)
Exploring Gustavino’s tile vaults around the country
John Ochsendorf sheds light on the tile vaults of Rafael Guastavino and his son, Rafael Jr., which grace some of America’s most iconic buildings, including the Boston Public Library. For most of the past century, the architectural contributions of these two immigrants have gone unrecognized.
Full story via Preservation Magazine (Summer 2020)
Six strategic areas identified for shared faculty hiring in computing
New faculty in these areas will connect the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and a department or school, including in the School of Architecture and Planning.
Full story via MIT News (8/31/20)
How to help urban street commerce thrive
How to help urban street commerce thrive: Associate Professor Andres Sevtsuk’s new book, “Street Commerce,” delves into the science of stores, streets, and public space.
Full story via MIT News (8/28/20)
Global Collaboration To Surveil Governments And Companies In Response To The Climate Crisis
“The metrics used to measure progress with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a good place to start. In addition to using them to report on governments, we can apply them to individual companies and projects,” says Media Lab professor Alex Pentland.
Full story via Forbes (8/27/20)
“Tech for good” in boxes of books
Charlie DeTar SM ’09 (MAS), PhD ’13 (MAS) is helping to lead Literati, which offers curated subscription boxes of children’s books for infants to 12-year-olds.
Full story via Slice of MIT (8/26/20)
Business leaders need to follow words with actions and support America’s workers
Chart a path to pay your entire workforce a living wage. Use DUSP Professor’s Amy Glasmeier’s MIT’s Living Wage Calculator to analyze how many employees make a living wage in their geography. Build a plan to transition your workforce to ensure all are paid at that level or provide flexibility and resources to build their skills to earn living wage roles.
Full story via The Boston Globe (8/24/20)
‘Ghost Road’ and the Surprising Future of Autonomous Transportation | Inside Higher Ed
Anthony Townsend, an MIT trained PhD in urban and regional planning, sketches an alternative narrative around our autonomous transportation future. Rather than focusing his analysis solely on self-driving automobiles, Townsend widens the lens to consider all forms of mobility. Townsend is one of the few experts on self-driving cars who can write authoritatively about urban design and public transportation. I had not quite realized how anti-public transportation many of the enthusiasts for autonomous vehicles (such as Elon Musk) are oriented. It is an urbanist take on autonomy that makes Ghost Road such a rewarding and edifying read.
Full story via the Inside Higher Ed (8/24/20)
How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering
‘Even people who don’t believe institutionalized racism are struck when we show them these maps,’ said DUSP alumna Cate Mingoya (MCP ’15) in this New York Times article on urban planning’s role in racial injustice for the climate crisis.
Full story via The New York Times (8/24/20)
MITArchA: A Message From Howayda Al-Harithy, SMArchS ’87
Howayda Al-Harithy (SMArchS ’87) shares her work as professor of architecture at AUB Lebanon with the Beirut Urban Lab, a program for the urban recovery of Beirut in the wake of the August 4 explosion.
Full story via the MITArchA (8/23/20)
MLVoices: Arwa Michelle Mboya
“How do we imagine our futures?” For her master’s thesis in the Center for Civic Media, Arwa Michelle Mboya designed a study to ask how women in informal settlements in Nairobi interact with novel technologies like VR; she’s also designing a new headstrap system for VR headsets that can accommodate Black hair.
Full story via the MIT Media Lab (8/21/20)
The Convergence of Health, Wellness, and the Built Environment
DUSP Prof. Dennis Frenchman was recently interviewed in an article about how real estate developers and health tech companies can collaborate to create healthier and safer communities.
Full story via multifamilyexecutive.com (8/20/20)
Riskscapes and the socio-spatial challenges of climate change
DUSP Profesor Janelle Knox-Hayes co-authored an article, entitled “Riskscapes and the socio-spatial challenges of climate change,” in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society.
Full story via academic.oup.com (8/20/20)
Mobility Systems Center awards four projects for low-carbon transportation research
Topics include Covid-19 and urban mobility, strategies for electric vehicle charging networks, and infrastructure and economics for hydrogen-fueled transportation.
In addition to pursuing new avenues of research, the Mobility Systems Center also welcomes Jinhua Zhao as co-director. Zhao serves alongside Professor William H. Green, the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in Chemical Engineering. Zhao is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the director of the JTL Urban Mobility Lab. He succeeds Sanjay Sarma, the vice president for open learning and the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Full story via MIT News (8/18/20)
Okay Boomer, Millennials Find This Lifestyle Might Not Be That Terrible
MIT Technology AgeLab director Joseph Coughlin’s article in Forbes says the suburbs are becoming multigenerational.
Full story via Forbes (8/19/20)
With Beirut Box, Boston restaurants find a way to help
In times of hardship, food brings us together. That’s the theory behind Beirut Box, a fund-raiser created to help Beirut in the aftermath of the Aug. 4 explosion. It uses “the almost universal love of Lebanese cuisine as a link to bring people on board to do something for Lebanon,” as cofounder Diala Ezzeddine puts it.
Beirut Box is the brainchild of two local couples with Lebanese roots: Ezzeddine, CEO of Airbase Breathing Company; her husband, MIT School of Architecture and Planning dean Hashim Sarkis; Habib Haddad, managing partner of MIT Media Lab-affiliated E14 Fund; and his wife, Hala Hanna, managing director of community for MIT Solve, which works to overcome world challenges through innovation. They have collaborated on fund-raising efforts regularly since the 2006 Lebanon War.
Full story via The Boston Globe (8/18/20)
The City We Told Our Parents About
In their outofframe story, “The City We Told Our Parents About,” Mohamad Nahleh (SMarchs AD) & Meriam Soltan (SMarchs AKPIA) take readers through a tour of their beloved city, Beirut.
Full story via www.outofframe.mit.edu (8/17/20)
The deep timescales of our most urgent crises
“The coronavirus crisis is making us aware that the future has always been uncertain and that the present moment is part of planetary time-trajectories and temporal geographies far wider than our cultural narratives.” For Strelka Magazine, Architecture Lecturer Cristina Parreño explores how the current pandemic calls for humans to think and act according to much larger timescales.
Full story via Strelka Magazine (8/17/20)
Michael Rakowitz’s Art of Return
Through playful, outraged interventions, sculptor Michael Rakowitz SM ’98 (IV) seeks to reclaim a lost Iraq.
Full story via The New Yorker (8/17/20)
Meet the Black design collective reimagining how cities get built
Kenyatta McLean MCP ’20 describes BlackSpace, a nonprofit she co-founded that aims to bring communities of color into the urban planning decision-making process. “We know that heritage is such an important part of Black neighborhoods and is something that Black neighborhoods continue to produce and conserve themselves, so we did want to amplify that work,” McLean says.
Full story via Fast Company (8/17/20)
OUR: Office of (Un)certainty Research
OUR: Office of (Un)certainty Research — led by MIT Architecture Professor Mark Jarzombek and Vikam Prakash (Professor: University of Washington) — present its first year of work: A House Deconstructed – a research project that studies the global and indeed universal sourcing of a recently built modernist house in Seattle – and two speculative design projects: Cenotaph for Neils Bohr and Tirtha: Recomposting Temple Complex. OUR is a design research practice dedicated to rethinking architecture in terms of the emergent scientific, social and political parameters of the 21st century.
Full story via OUR: Office of (Un)certainty Research (8/17/20)
Trump says Biden would ‘destroy’ the suburbs. What is he talking about?
People who have kept tabs on AFFH — as the rule is known — say the issue is far more nuanced than Trump makes it out to be. For one thing, while plans had to be approved by HUD, they were written by local governments, said Justin Steil, a law professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who tracked AFFH. “They make it seem like this top-down requirement from Washington,” he said. “The whole point is that each locality has its own needs, and it makes sense for each locality to make its own goals and plans.”
Full story via The Boston Globe (8/17/20)
Turning grief from a hidden past into a healing space
The University of Virginia in Charlottesville, designed by Thomas Jefferson, was built by enslaved people. The Memorial to Enslaved Laborers, designed by former MIT Architecture Head Meejin Yoon’s firm, Höweler + Yoon, in collaboration with artist Eto Otitigbe ’99, and others, acknowledges that long-suppressed history.
Full story via The New York Times (8/16/20)
3 Questions: Dayna Cunningham on urban planning’s role in racial and social justice
Community Innovators Lab will provide hands-on, field-based training to students seeking to address the underlying causes of urban crisis.
Full story via MIT News (8/13/20)
A new conceptual framework for Glacier National Park
Alumna Angeline Jacques MArch ’20 discusses her thesis project focused on the design of national parks in the age of climate change in a feature for Archinect. Jaques also shares her experiences as a young designer learning how to start her professional career remotely and during a pandemic.
Full story via Archinect (8/13/20)
Best of Boston 2020
For the “COVID-19 Heroes Edition” of the annual Best of Boston readers’ poll, MIT Architecture’s Sheila Kennedy and Frano Violich of KVA have been named “local everyday heroes” of 2020 by Boston Magazine readers.
Full story via Boston Magazine (8/12/20)
Pandemic Reshapes Clients’ Expectations Of Advisors, Joe Coughlin Of MIT AgeLab Tells SHOOKtalks
The pandemic has dramatically altered how financial advisors cultivate, communicate and work with clients. The changes promise to reshape the industry for generations to come. Those insights were shared by Patti Brennan, co-chief executive officer of Key Financial, West Chester, Penn., and Joseph Coughlin, Ph.D., director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. …“What we are seeing out there is an acceleration of trends that are already under way,” said Coughlin. “One of the things we are finding is that technology is the new toilet paper. Everybody is buying it by the boatload.”
Full story via Forbes (8/12/20)
Rebuilding cultures through art, design, and community
The art of Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, a Bosnian Muslim whose family fled war in the 1990s, explores cultural identity and conflict. “When you work in public space, it’s not about finding a consensus,” she says. “It’s about accepting … conflicting attitudes and ideas.”
Full story via MIT News (8/12/20)
3 Questions: Enabling informed migration in India
DUSP and MITdesignX alums Jacob Kohn and Rushil Palavajjhala are using entrepreneurial and technical skills gained at MIT to empower vulnerable workers.
Full story via MIT News (8/11/20)
Congratulations to SA+P alumni
Congrats to DUSP alumna Rebecca Karp (MCP ’11) who was named Crain’s New York Rising Star in Real Estate & Ali Sutherland Brown (MCP ’16), nominated as CoreNet Global New York’s 2020 Young Leader!
Full story via Karp Strategies newsletter (8/10/20)
America Could Have ‘Great Depression’ Levels of Homelessness by Year’s End
“I’ve always been trying to bridge the gap between facts and feelings.” MIT Media Lab’s Poetic Justice head Ekene Ijeoma talks to NPR about his work at, from Deconstructed Anthems to A Counting.
Full story via NPR (8/6/20)
This Audio Portrait Of The 2020 Census Asks: Whose Voices Really Count?
A century ago, the chemical industry wooed builders with the promise of durable new synthetic materials. But in transforming construction, architecture PhD student Jessica Varner says, these companies also hid the risks of these dyes, additives, and foams.
Full story via MIT News (8/6/20)
When the chemical industry met modern architecture
A century ago, the chemical industry wooed builders with the promise of durable new synthetic materials. But in transforming construction, architecture PhD student Jessica Varner says, these companies also hid the risks of these dyes, additives, and foams.
Full story via MIT News (8/6/20)
School of Architecture and Planning announces 2020 Infinite Mile Award winners
“The Infinite Mile award is the most prestigious staff award given in the SA+P,” says Dineen Doucette, SA+P’s manager of finance and human resources administration.
This year’s recipients were: Andrea Porras (Media Lab); Ruth Tse Yiu (DUSP); Jim Harrington (SA+P); and Marissa Friedman, Kevin McLellan, Chelsea Polk, John Steiner, Thera Webb, and Graham Yeager (ACT).
Full story via MIT News (8/6/20)
DUSP and Sloan courses transition successfully online: 11.312 and 15.679
While shifting his urban studies and Sloan classes to remote learning, Ceasar McDowell discovered some surprising benefits to online learning.
Full story via MIT Open Learning (8/6/20)
Finding Joy in Making, and the Making of #HellaJuneteenth
Architecture alum Quinnton Harris ’11 shares his successful work promoting the history of Juneteenth.
Full story via Slice of MIT (8/5/20)
315,000 In Massachusetts Not Confident About Making August Rent
Many renters have relied on sources of funding other than income or savings to make ends meet, a practice that MIT researcher Ben Walker described as “unsustainable.” “People need to pay rent, and without action from the State House and the federal government, people are coming up with their own solutions,” Walker, who worked on the City Life / Vida Urbana report, said in an interview with the News Service. “Household Pulse survey data says people are turning to credit cards, taking out loans, borrowing money from family and friends, and these solutions can’t last forever.”
Full story via WGBH (8/5/20)
This is Capitalism Blog features CRE
Dr. Dorinth van Dijk, Head of the MIT Price Dynamics Platform, was recently quoted in a series of insightful articles about current real estate markets, for the Stephens Inc. “This is Capitalism” blog.
Head of Industry Relations and Real Estate Tech Lead Steve Weikal was recently quoted in a series of insightful articles about technology, innovation and the future of real estate at the Stephens Inc. “This is Capitalism” blog.
The shape of segregation: The role of urban form in immigrant assimilation
What’s the shape of segregation? Using data from the large inflow of immigrants in Barcelona (1998-2008) in a paper published in Cities, DUSP’s Arianna Salazar Miranda studies whether the urban configuration is linked to the residential segregation of immigrants:
Full story via Cities (8/20)
Your Whole Life: Beyond Childhood and Adulthood
What happens when we re-frame our lives not in ‘stages’ but as an encompassing whole that we view differently as we age? DUPS alum James Murphy (MCP ’83) explores this question in his new book, “Your Whole Life.”
Full story via UPenn Press (8/20)
Nina Wishnok’s work featured in exhibition
Several of the MIT Media Lab design manager’s monoprints are on view in a Portland, Maine, gallery exhibition: Singular and Serial.
Full story via Cove Street Arts (8/20)
Meet the computer scientist and activist who got Big Tech to stand down
The editors of Fast Company recently named graduate student and researcher Joy Buolamwini SM ’17 to their “Most Creative People in Business” list and selected her to appear on their latest magazine cover. Reporter Amy Farley spotlighted Buolamwini and her work battling bias in artificial intelligence systems, noting that “when it comes to AI injustices, her voice resonates.” Buolamwini emphasized that “we have a voice and a choice in the kind of future we have.”
Full story via Fast Company (8/4/20)
Teaching with Digital Technology Awards
DUSP’s Bruno Verdini (above), Devin Michelle Bunten, and Larry Susskind are recognized for their outstanding achievements in using digital technology to improve teaching and learning.
Full story via MIT Open Learning (8/3/20)
New US postage stamp highlights MIT research
A new postage stamp series on innovation uses an image from the Biomechatronics research group at the MIT Media Lab to represent robotics. The U.S. Postal Service stamp depicts a bionic prosthesis designed and built by Matt Carney PhD ’20 and other group members.
Full story via MIT News (8/2/20)
Ca’n Terra: Architecture of the Earth – Virtual Exhibition
Architecture Professor Antón García-Abril’s Ensamble Studio is featured in ‘T’ Space’s 2020 Synthesis of the Arts with a virtual reality exhibition of their project Ca’n Terra: Architecture of the Earth
Full story via ‘T’ Space (8/1/20)
Take a lesson from the French bonne femme and don’t let a scrap go to waste
One of the most famous bonnes femmes is Clementine from “Clementine in the Kitchen,” written and illustrated by Samuel Chamberlain (1943). Chamberlain wrote books and travel articles with his wife, Narcissa; they lived for a decade in France and settled in Marblehead before World War II. Clementine cooked for the family for many years, in France and later in Massachusetts. Chamberlain, who studied architecture at MIT, wrote under the pseudonym Phineas Beck.
Full story via the Boston Globe (8/1/20)
Why imposter syndrome hits women and women of colour harder
Several years ago, Rana el Kaliouby (a former post-doc in the MIT Department of Architecture) left Egypt to move to the US to pursue a career in artificial intelligence. She worked at MIT and did well, which led her to co-found Affectiva, an emotion-measurement technology company in Boston. “I had no faith in my ability to lead,” says el Kaliouby. “I was a woman in a foreign country with no business experience, working in a field that is to this day overwhelmingly white and male. How could I be an executive? I told myself I couldn’t, and we opted to hire a seasoned business executive to serve as CEO.”
Full story via the BBC (7/31/20)
Edward Allen, longtime professor of architecture, dies at 81
A longtime architecture professor, Allen influenced students and professionals around the world.
Full story via the MIT News (7/31/20)
Additional coverage via Architect Magazine (8/5/20)
Graham Foundation Awardees
Congrats to DUSP’s Delia Wendel + MIT alumni Jessica Myers (MCP ’17) & Shiben Banerji (MCP ’06, PhD ’15), all of who have been named 2020 Graham Foundation grant awardees! Learn more about the Graham Foundation as well as the 2020 cohort projects
Full story via the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (7/31/20)
‘I like the idea of a powerful mother and daughter linked by style’
The podcast that struck me recently was Neri Oxman’s TED talk. She’s an amazing designer and architect, and a professor at MIT. She is conducting research on how to make digital manufacturing interact with the organic world and draws parallels between science and art/design. She gets artists and scientists to collaborate on topics related to sustainable development, and that really speaks to me about the work I’m trying to do at Boucheron. I would love to meet her one day to talk about future collections.
Full story via Financial Times (7/30/20)
Neri Oxmans’s 2015 Ted Talk
The Venture Capitalists Making a Bet on Aging Consumers
The population of Americans age 65 and older has grown by a third, or almost 14 million people, since 2010, a faster increase than any other age group, the U.S. Census Bureau said in June. Older people are consumers, too, which is something younger entrepreneurs and investors can forget, says Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab and author of the 2017 book The Longevity Economy. Americans older than 50 have 70% of the buying power in the U.S., Coughlin writes in his book, and like everyone else, they’re interested in new products that can make their lives easier—beyond gadgets that take their blood pressure or track their pills. “While all those things are critical, there’s a lot more to life than your meds,” he says.
Full story via Bloomberg (7/29/20)
Karilyn Crockett was appointed the first-ever chief of equity in Boston. Here’s what she wants you to know about her mission.
Karilyn Crockett, the first chief of equity for the City of Boston, says she’s ready to tackle the hard and demanding work that is needed to address systemic racism in the city. Crockett, who previously served as the Director of Economic Policy and Research and Director of Small Business Development for the City of Boston before taking up a position as a lecturer at MIT, was appointed to the newly created position in late June by Mayor Marty Walsh. The cabinet-level position at the head of the Office of Equity is charged with leading the Walsh Administration’s efforts to “embed equity into all city work” and actively work to dismantle racism within Boston.
Full story via The Boston Globe (7/28/20)
Additional coverage: “‘It’s stressful, lonely work’: The newest job at City Hall is also the most important,” via Fast Company (8/3/20)
Council Post: Cities Aren’t Going Anywhere, But The Way We Build Them Must Change
Since the expansion of the suburbs in the mid-20th century, we’ve been conditioned to think that more square footage equals a higher quality of life. I’d like to challenge that narrative. During my studies at MIT, I worked closely with renowned researcher Kent Larson, director of City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, on this exact issue. What we found through our research was that space itself wasn’t the key to comfortable living, but rather it was making a space more functional with less effort. And that’s the foundation on which my team and I went on to found our business.
Op-ed by MIT alumnus Hasier Larrea SM ’15 (MAS) via Forbes (7/28/20)
Baker’s Housing Choice bill short on choice
‘Massachusetts is in a housing crisis,’ writes DUSP’s David Robinson in an analysis of Gov. Baker’s Housing Choice Bill. Robinson describes how a lack of standards & protections could exacerbate the crisis for the most vulnerable.
Full story via Commonwealth Magazine (7/28/20)
Will Kyiv’s Soviet Industrial Districts Survive? A Study of Transformation, Preservation, and Demolition of Industrial Heritage in Ukraine’s Capital
In an article for Journal of Planning History former LCAU fellow Anastasiya Ponomaryova & DUSP Professor Brent Ryan explore 5 significant complexes.
Full story via Journal of Planning History (7/27/20)
Does ride-sharing substitute for or complement public transit?
In the Chinese city of Chengdu, one-third of ride-sharing might replace public transit trips. To understand more about this and the impact upon cities, Hui Kong, Xiaohu Zhang, and Jinhua Zhao from SMART Future Urban Mobility interdisciplinary research group (IRG) and the JTL Urban Mobility Lab at MIT recently conducted a study that investigates the relationship between ride-sharing and public transit using ride-sourcing data.
Full story via MIT News (7/27/20)
Introducing out of frame
MIT Architecture students have launched a new student-edited platform, out of frame, conceived to foster community and to enable sharing from a distance. “We are interested in elevating what is hidden in our everyday life, academic or not,” say founding co-editors April Gao and Ginevra D’Agostino.
Full story via out of frame
Occidental Tourists
“It is difficult to understand how, more than forty years after the critical revolution initiated by Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism,’ this artistic tradition can be regarded with such a striking lack of critical skepticism,” writes Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.
Full story via ArtForum (July/August issue)
Trump Moves to Roll Back Obama Program Addressing Housing Discrimination
A study from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that under the Obama rule, municipalities proposed more ambitious fair housing goals. Justin Steil, a co-author of the study, said that the program initially faced some difficulties, including complaints from localities that its requirements were onerous, but that those issues could have been resolved with time.
Full story via The New York Times (7/23/20)
Impact and Optimism: Julie Kim on Academia and Practice, Sharing her Work, and Issues Bigger than Buildings
In conversation with Madame Architect Julie Kim, Julie Kim M.Arch ’94, talks about her time in both academia and practice, advising young architects to never undersell themselves. Kim is currently a Georgia Institute of Technology associate professor.
Full story via Madame Architect (7/23/20)
The Freewheeling Style of Pro Skater Alexis Sablone
Alumna Alexis Sablone MArch ’16 is an artist, architect, and animator—and soon to be Olympian, as a core member of the United States’ first-ever skate team. Recently featured in GQ, Sablone discusses how skating and design have informed her career trajectory.
Full story via GQ (7/23/20)
Travel Costs, Trade, and Market Segmentation: Evidence from China’s High-Speed Railway
How will the movement of people affect the movement of goods? The new study led by MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab researcher Dongxiao Niu with Siqi Zheng and Weizeng Sun indicates that the inter-regional trade between HSR-connected trading partners increased by 24.59% due to the substitution between HSR and conventional railway in passenger transportation, and from accelerated information exchange & knowledge spillover.
Full story via Regional Science Association International (7/23/20)
Urban demonstrations are a triumph of the city
“Public space is performing its primordial function: revealing fault lines in our society and helping to reconcile them,” writes DUSP professor of the practice Carlo Ratti in an op-ed on the importance of public spaces in bringing people together. “This is a particularly important activity today, as the growth of digital communication is leading to increased polarization.”
Full story via The Boston Globe (7/22/20)
The Struggle for the Urban Soundscape
Both the loudness of Black Lives Matter protests and the quiet of urban lockdown reflect this battle for control. As soon as the coronavirus pandemic started changing city conditions, some urbanists launched campaigns to make such change permanent by banning or reducing car traffic on urban streets or adding protected bike lanes. Nicholas de Monchaux, an architecture professor at MIT, blamed urban inequality on poor street and transportation design, and praised the opportunity to redesign streets during lockdown.
Full story via The Atlantic (7/21/20)
‘Revolutionary’ Timber Set To Be Used For First Time In Boston Building
Architect John Klein SM ’15 (MAS), CEO of Generate Technologies, stands on the sidewalk in front of the site. His digital design team, trained at MIT, is leading the CLT construction disruption in Massachusetts. “Yeah, looking at the site, getting excited. That’s the beauty of design,” Klein says. “What you see is dumpsters and weeds and turn it into something magnificent for the area. It becomes a catalyst.”
Full story via WBUR (7/21/20)
A new way to control experimentation with dreams
An MIT Media Lab-developed device not only helps record dream reports, but also guides dreams toward particular themes.
Full story via MIT News (7/21/20)
Smart Tattoos: transforming your phone into fashion
Recently, researchers from Harvard and MIT have further broadened the scope of wearable technology by utilizing a form of art that seems unrelated to technology at first glance — tattoos. According to Alvin Powell, a staff writer at Harvard University, two postdoctoral fellows at Harvard Medical School and a research team led by Katia Vega at MIT’s media lab have developed a biosensitive ink that indicates one’s health condition by changing its color. With the subtle embellishment of the ink with tattoo artistry, the team aims to overcome the shortcomings of the current biomedical monitoring devices.
Full story via the Los Angeles Times (7/21/20)
A new way to control experimentation with dreams
An MIT Media Lab-developed device not only helps record dream reports, but also guides dreams toward particular themes.
Full story via MIT News (7/21/20)
The Bostonians Giving Us Hope for the Future
In Boston Magazine, Brittany Jasnoff details Maria Belén Power & DUSP alumna Caroline Ellenbird’s (MCP ’14) efforts to organize networks of neighbors to respond & coordinate efforts to aid Chelsea residents through the COVID-19 pandemic & beyond.
Full story via Boston Magazine (7/21/20)
MIT M.Arch Graduates Alexandre Beaudouin-Mackay & Sarah Wagner Inject “A New Way of Play” Into Architectural Pedagogy
In their thesis project A New Way of Play: The Forms and Functions of Participatory Design and Critical Pedagogies, Beaudouin-Mackay and Wagner they push for architecture to reimagine play. As recent graduates from MIT’s School of Architecture, they created a set of play spaces for children in order to understand how different forms of architectural authorship could be challenged.
Full story via Archinect (7/20/20)
Theorizing the resilience district: Design-based decision making for coastal climate change adaptation
DUSP’s Alan Berger and Jonah Susskind, along with the Kennedy School’s Richard Zeckhauser and Mike Wilson published a paper, “Theorizing the resilience district: Design-based decision making for coastal climate change adaptation” in the latest issue of JOLA.
Full story via Journal of Landscape Architecture (7/19/20)
Our racist fossil fuel energy system
Assistant Professor at UC Santa Barbara and DUSP graduate Leah Stokes PhD ’15, SM ’15 published an op-ed in The Boston Globe describing how the fossil fuel economy is killing Black Americans.
Full story via The Boston Globe (7/17/20)
Rock Star and Web Founder Teaming Up on Technology
A rock star, a vegan financier and a pioneer of the internet are backing a project to find ways for humans to communicate with animals using machine learning and artificial intelligence….The group’s members include cognitive psychologist and marine mammal scientist Diana Reiss and Neil Gershenfeld, head of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. They said recent advances in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data make their audacious goal more realistic. Gabriel, Cerf, Reiss and Gershenfeld have been collaborating on ways to decipher the language of animals for several years, and Coller recently brought more financial heft to those efforts.
Full story via Bloomberg (7/17/20)
Young farmers and farmers of color have been shut out of federal assistance during the pandemic
Roberto Meza, a 32-year-old former Architecture graduate student at MIT, farms in Bennett, Colo. He says young farmers often struggle with student debt and often have no way to access land. He and his partner grow tomatoes, lettuces and microgreens in greenhouses.
Full story via The Washington Post (7/16/20)
What should Cambridge’s monument to women’s suffrage look like?
ACT Associate Professor Azra Akšamija has designed a proposal for a new piece of public art in Cambridge that would honor the passage of the 19th Amendment while also acknowledging the ongoing struggle for voting rights for all.
Full story via Boston Magazine (7/14/20)
“Global Flora” named U.S. Building of the week
Global Flora,” a project by Sheila Kennedy’s firm Kennedy & Violich Architecture, has been highlighted by World Architects. A free and public botany lab and “museum” located on the Wellesley College campus, the project was designed to replace the century-old Margaret Ferguson Greenhouse.
Full story via world-architects.com (7/13/20)
Smart Cities: Urban Progressivism Focused On The Future Of City Dwellers
Forbes discusses the need for improving the quality of life for city dwellers through partnerships by saying Senseable City is taking the lead.
Full story via Forbes (7/13/20)
How a Small Arab Nation Built a Mars Mission from Scratch in Six Years?
Many researchers outside the country are excited at the UAE’s venture into space. “I love listening to the team talk about why they do the mission, about viewing it as an inspirational goal giving excitement and hope across the Middle East,” says Danielle Wood, who specializes in aerospace engineering and policy at the Media Lab.
Full story via Nature (7/13/20)
Biomimicry: Using Nature’s Perfect Innovation Systems To Design The Future
Neri Oxman of the MIT Media Lab Mediated Matter Group, and her team, are creating a new field bio-informed design in which “buildings with biological materials can adapt, respond and potentially interact with their surroundings.” They created a Silk Pavilion using a robot to build a framework and then having thousands of silkworms spin the covering, a small dome made entirely of natural materials and zero construction.
Full story via Forbes (7/13/20)
MIT M.Arch Graduates Kevin Marblestone and Emily Whitbeck Investigate Architecture Pedagogy’s Relationship to Time
In their thesis project, graduate students Kevin Marblestone and Emily Whitbeck engage with architectural pedagogy by exploring time and it’s relation to the design process. According to the duo, “Architecture needs a new generation of practitioners that can think differently about time.”
Full story via Archinect (7/13/20)
Matter Design wins R+D Award
“Walking Assembly,” a project from Brandon Clifford’s design practice Matter Design and CEMEX Global R&D has been awarded a 2020 Architect Magazine R+D Award. Learn more about how the collaborators converted their shared fascination with “embedding intelligence into objects” into maneuverable megalithic units.
Full story via Architect Magazine (7/12/20)
Listen: Azra Akšamija’s design for sanctuary
In a new podcast from ACT, Azra Akšamija discusses the notion of sanctuary and her design for an exhibit of the same name with ACT’s Marissa Friedman. Learn more about the Sanctuary exhibit, on view until October 25, at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.
Full story via Sound Cloud (7/11/20)
Finding space to make, move, and grow
Architecture major Jackie Chen ’21 has forged a unique path at MIT, blending urban planning, sustainability, and the arts. In a recent video profile, she talks about creative exploration through projects that connect residential spaces to productive spaces to landscapes.
Full story via MIT Better World
400 years later: An Indigenous artist’s perspective
Alumna Erin Genia SMACT ’19 writes about the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the English settlers as a reminder of the grief Indigenous people faced. Genia discusses the crucial role of art in the public sphere and Indigenous artists in, “Centering Justice: Indigenous Artists’ Perspectives on Public Art.”
Full story via New England Foundation for the Arts (7/10/20)
Parrish Bergquist | Climate Change and Civic Opinion
DUSP alumna Parrish Bergquist ’19 on the importance of—and hope for—developing “broad support for a holistic approach to addressing climate, social, and economic challenges.”
Full story via MIT SHASS (7/10/20)
5 Questions on Data and Feminicide with Silvana Fumega
The latest in a series of interviews by DUSP Professor Catherine D’Ignazio.
Full story via The Medium (7/10/20)
‘It Will Consume Your Life’: 4 Families Take On Rare Diseases
The journey of Sonia Vallabh, 36, and her husband, Eric Minikel, began in December 2011. She was living in Cambridge, Mass, and had just graduated from Harvard Law School. Her mother died the year before, at age 52, from Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome, a degenerative and uniformly fatal brain disease caused by misfolded prion proteins….Dr. Vallabh had just started work at a small consulting company, and her husband, now 36, had recently gotten a degree in urban planning from M.I.T. The couple decided they had to learn more. They knew there was no treatment or cure for G.S.S. Was there any promising research? Dr. Vallabh had just started work at a small consulting company, and her husband, now 36, had recently gotten a degree in urban planning from M.I.T. The couple decided they had to learn more. They knew there was no treatment or cure for G.S.S. Was there any promising research?
Full story via The New York Times (7/7/20)
A morphing airplane wing built by tiny robots
Graduate student at the Center for Bits and Atoms, Benjamin Jenett, discusses his work developing a new kind of airplane wing that can adapt, on the fly, to changing conditions. “If you can have an aircraft that can actively change its shape, then you can optimize its performance,” he says.
Full story via Tech Briefs (7/7/20)
Black Lives Matter: Can viral videos stop police brutality?
Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab, says neither police cameras nor bystander footage can really be an effective check on abuse. “Our legal system gives so much flexibility to the police to use violence in the course of carrying out their duties,” he says. “Imagery may matter as far as getting people out into the streets, but it does not matter as far as preventing police from using violence in the first place.”
Full story via the BBC (7/6/20)
MIT professor Tunney Lee, an architect, urban planner, and historian of Chinatown, dies at 88
Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee, an architect and urban planner, served as the chief of planning and design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority and was working on an extensive project to preserve the heritage of Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood. “At MIT, Mr. Lee was a mentor to scores of architects, teaching them to look beyond the creativity that went into designing buildings.”
Full story via The Boston Globe (7/5/20) and MIT News (7/10/20)
What are art galleries for?
ACT director Judith Barry is one of three artists discussing the future of the gallery system after Covid-19 in The Nation.
Full story via The Nation (7/1/20)
2020 SPURS Newsletter
On July 1, the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS) published its annual newsletter, which includes a letter from its Director and DUSP Professor Bish Sanyal.
SPURS newsletter is accessible here (7/1/20)
Toward Urban Economic Vibrancy: Patterns and Practices in Asia’s New Cities
The Sustainable Urbanization Lab is excited to announce a new book from the MIT SA+P Press,”Toward Urban Economic Vibrancy: Patterns and Practices in Asia’s New Cities“, edited by MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab’s Siqi Zheng and ZhengZhen Tan. A heartfelt thank you to all who helped work toward its completion!
Full story via MIT Press (6/20)
Stefan Bird (MSRED ’20) Places in Harvard Design Competition
Stefan Bird (MSRED ’20) is the first-ever MIT/CRE student to place in Harvard’s Plimpton-Poorvu Design Prize, taking second prize with his and Tessa Crespo’s (Harvard MDes Risk & Resilience ’20) proposal El Mercado Modelo de Miami. Their project embraces the rich Dominican Republic culture of eating and artisanship in public spaces to envision how a nonprofit multi-stakeholder cooperative can be an incubator and community asset for social and economic mobility in the Allapattah neighborhood of Miami. Congratulations Stefan!
Full story via Harvard GSD (6/20)
Devoting true attention to students’ well-being
Caroline Jones and Lawrence Susskind honored with the Committed to Caring Award for her thoughtful and engaged mentorship.
Full story via MIT News (6/30/20)
Karilyn Crockett, of MIT, will be tapped to head city’s new equity and inclusion office
Karilyn Crockett, an MIT lecturer who has previously worked in the administration of Mayor Martin J. Walsh, will head the city’s new equity and inclusion Cabinet-level office, which is being created to combat racial injustice and support marginalized communities in the city.
Full story via The Boston Globe (6/29/20) and additional coverage via NBCBoston (6/29/20)
Watch Karilyn Crockett’s press conference via YouTube (6/29/20)
We can make surveillance work for us
In a Boston Globe op-ed, MIT Media Lab Professor Iyad Rahwan and former MIT research scientist William Powers describe how technologies that threaten our autonomy also offer opportunities to build a more humane world.
Full story via The Boston Globe (6/26/20)
Now in Education: Vernelle A. A. Noel on Teaching Yourself, Teaching Others, and Doing Good
“I would like to leave an impression on minorities – this includes women, minority students. ‘Doing it’ for them will require a lot more work than others might have to engage in. It’s hard work. But they can do it.” Vernelle Noel, SMArchS ’13
Full story via www.madamearchitect.org (6/25/20)
Michael Hawley, former professor of media arts and sciences, dies at 58
A modern-day Renaissance man, Hawley pioneered the internet of things, won the Van Cliburn amateur piano competition, and published the world’s largest book.
Full story via MIT News (6/25/20)
Full story via The New York Times (6/24/20)
Darien Williams: Chronicling Black resilience to disaster
In researching disaster recovery and marginalized populations, the PhD student seeks out people with deep knowledge of their communities.
Full story via MIT News (6/24/20)
2020 Innovator Unders 35
This month, MIT Technology Review released its annual 35 Innovators Under 35 list. The 2020 roster includes 13 people with MIT connections: 10 alumni, plus three others who are current or former postdocs, including Nadya Peek SM ’10 (MAS), PhD ’16 (MAS).
Full story via MIT Technology Review (6/24/20)
Sex Does Not Mean Gender. Equating Them Erases Trans Lives.
In a New York Times op-ed, DUSP Professor Devin Bunten describes how embracing the experiences of trans people means leaving old vocabularies behind.
Full story via The New York Times (6/23/20)
Travel costs, trade, and market segmentation: Evidence from China’s high‐speed railway
How will the movement of people affect the movement of goods? Read “Travel Costs, Trade, and Market Segmentation: Evidence from China’s High-Speed Railway” led by SUL’s Dongxiao Niu, CRE’s Siqi Zheng & Weizeng Sun. It was recently accepted by Papers in Regional Science!
Full story via Regional Science Association International (6/23/20)
Design in a major key
MIT’s design minor and major programs give rise to polymath students with design skills they can apply to any field.
Full story via MIT News (6/23/20)
A 43-Million-Person Investigation into Weather and Expressed Sentiment in a Changing Climate
How do weather extremes impact our sentiment? In a new article for One Earth, CRE’s Siqi Zheng & Jianghao Wang analyze over 400 million geotagged social media posts across China to examine how user’s emotions are influenced by meteorological events.
Full story via Science Direct (6/19/20)
Congratulations to SA+P’s awardees
MIT Media Lab’s Ramesh Raskar and three SA+P graduate students are among this year’s awardees for the annual Awards Convocation.
Full story via MIT News (6/19/20)
Cynthia Breazeal named Media Lab associate director
Expert in personal social robots will work with lab faculty and researchers to develop strategic research initiatives, and to explore new funding mechanisms.
Full story via MIT News (6/19/20)
Unjust Legacy
Alumna Saritha Ramakrishna’s (MCP ’19) ‘Unjust Legacy’ for Orion Magazine builds on her DUSP thesis, ‘Land, sea, and sky: environmental histories and planning conflicts in East Boston.’
Full story via Orion Magazine (Summer 2020)
Meet The MIT And Harvard Grads Who Just Raised $15 Million For Their Delivery Management Platform
Forbes magazine featured Layla Shaikley SMArchS ’13 and two fellow MIT alums who created a delivery management platform that caught investors’ eyes.
Full story via Forbes (6/18/20)
Can art change the world? Inside the debate raging over Black Lives Matter murals
“D.C. is different than any other place in the U.S., politically,” explains Ceasar McDowell, special advisor to the MIT Media Lab and professor of practice in civic design. “So one could look at it and say this is actually, you know, a governmental institution that in of itself has been struggling, just like people living in it who are mostly Black, and this is a way of speaking out and acknowledging its own struggle. It’s very different than other cities like Atlanta or Detroit. D.C. is . . . a place where the president can call out the National Guard, and the D.C. mayor can’t do anything about it.”
Full story via Fast Company (6/18/20)
What moves people?
Jinhua Zhao, an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, says that “transportation systems are half physical infrastructure, and half human beings.” His body of research flows from this approach — and a bit like the best mobility systems, Zhao’s work is multimodal.
Full story via MIT News (6/15/20)
Street Commerce
In his new book ‘Street Commerce,’ DUSP Professor’s Andres Sevtsuk’s case studies offer insights into how the disruption of the pandemic provides opportunity for greater equity + sustainability in our cities.
Book available at UPenn Press (6/12/20)
Ecological, Societal, and Technological Risks and the Financial Sector
REI Lab member Jordan Owen recently published a chapter in Ecological, Societal, and Technological Risks and the Financial Sector. Focusing on the economic risks from policy pressures in Montreal’s real estate market, his work highlights some of the issues with taxes and regulations on new developments around REM Stations. Will developments around the REM Stations be affordable, or will developers be forced to pass on the increased costs to the end user?
Book available at Amazon.com (6/11/20)
A Case for Banning Facial Recognition
MIT Media Lab research assistant Joy Buolamwini’s research is impacting how governmental and corporate entities are approaching facial recognition.
Full story via The New York Times (6/9/20)
Additional coverage includes:
“Boston police support the effort to ban facial recognition technology — for now,” The Boston Globe (6/10/20)
“The influential project that sparked the end of IBM’s facial recognition program,” Quartz (6/10/20)
“Amazon bans police from using its facial recognition technology for the next year,” The Verge (6/10/20)
“Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm,” The New York Times (6/24/20)
Black-centered design is the future of business
Dismantling the New Jim Code—as with the political and social strategies that Blacks leveraged to combat Jim Crow laws—requires new design perspectives and power paradigms. It requires Black-Centered Design. Black-Centered Design approaches offer a framework by which the nuanced complexities of the Black identity can act as an ethos for creating more equitable and just emerging technological solutions. Ceasar McDowell, professor of civic design within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, coins it Design for the Margins. In the editorial “Diversity is Not Enough,” McDowell writes that: “The idea here is that if you design an intervention or change to work for (and with) those who are most marginalized, then you inevitably cover them and those who are in the majority. Within the structure of the United States, it is blackness that defines the fundamental marginal group. The marginalization of blacks is in the origin story of this country and the current politics of this country.”
Full story via Fast Company (6/8/20)
The social life of data
Eden Medina, associate professor of science, technology and society, and Sarah Williams, associate professor of technology and urban planning, teach a multi-layered course, Data and Society. It designed to train practitioners who know how to use data in responsible ways.
Full story via MIT News (6/8/20)
Equitable Planning to Protect Seattle’s Diverse Communities
Sam Assefa MCP ’91, director of Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development, encourages growth that benefits disadvantaged communities.
Full story via Slice of MIT (6/8/20)
Planning Beyond Mass Incarceration
DUSP Professor Justin Steil, Adita Mehta
MCP ’10 (XI), PhD ’18 (XI D), and Sheryl-Ann Simpson co-edited the June issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research, entitled “Planning Beyond Mass Incarceration.”
The June issue can be found at Sage Journals (6/20)
‘Girl Decoded’ Review: The Soulfulness of a New Machine
A fortuitous encounter with Simon Baron-Cohen, a leading autism expert, led Ms. Rana el Kaliouby to his unique archive of videos that captured people displaying a wide range of emotions. With the help of sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, and later innovations while she was a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, Ms. el Kaliouby’s machines eventually learned to recognize a rudimentary “emotional palette” encompassing six different human emotional categories.
Full story via The Wall Street Journal (6/2/20)
The marriage of biology and silicon is poised to unleash (literal) life-changing innovations
The new frontier is neuroprosthetic limbs that take signals from a surgically implanted chip in the patient’s brain. The Biomechatronics Group at MIT headed by Hugh Herr, himself a double amputee, is refining a method that replicates muscle pairings so that the brain thinks that the limb is still there, making it easier to move the bionic limb.
Full story via Fast Company (6/1/20)
2020 Architecture graduate students’ theses available online
BSA, MArch, SMArchS, SMBT thesis projects can be read at Issuu.com
This Biotech Artist Wants Scientists To Think About Their Creations
In 2015, artist Ani Liu SM ’17 (MAS) heard two sentences that changed her entire approach to art: “Digital is dead. Bio is the new digital.” Those words, spoken at a welcome talk on her first day as a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, triggered panic at first. “I was like, oh shit, I don’t know anything about biology,” Liu says. But today, biology is the starting point for most of Liu’s work. Her feminist artworks are visceral, thought-provoking, and anchored in biotechnology. “I like to say that I have a research-based practice,” Liu says. “Each of the artworks I make are usually centered around a specific topic that I do a deep dive of research into.”
Full story via Science Friday (5/28/20)
MITdesignX Pitch Day
On May 26, ten teams of the MITdesignX 2020 cohort presented their final exhibitions at the DesignX showcase. The audience included over 400 people from around the world, who were asked to vote for the top three startups.
Watch the presentation via MITdesignX (5/26/20)
The Extraordinary Way We’ll Rebuild Our Shrinking Islands
In the Maldives, the MIT Self-Assembly Lab, led by Architecture’s Skylar Tibbits, is conducting experiments to combat sea-level rise by redirecting natural sand movement.
Full story via Popular Mechanics (5/25/20)
For more details, read Skylar Tibbits’ interview with the MIT News (5/11/20)
Ten from MIT awarded 2020 Fulbright Fellowships
Graduating seniors, including Architecture’s Kedi Hu, and recent alumni will spend the upcoming year abroad on Fulbright grants.
Full story via MIT News (5/22/20)
As Technology Evolves, Smart(er) Cities Become a Reality
MIT/CRE Director Prof. Dennis Frenchman quoted in SIOR article “As Technology Evolves, Smart(er) Cities Become a Reality”
Full story via SIOR (Spring 2020)
Spatio Metrics finalist in MIT $100K Entrepenuership Competition
REI Lab member Jim Peraino (Co-founder and CTO of Spatio Metrics) and his partner Sonal Singh were finalists in this year’s MIT 100K competition. The Spatio Metrics team is developing an open source spatial analytics tool for social distancing. The company was in the 2019 cohort of MITdesignX companies.
Full story via MIT100k.org (5/21/20)
Transportation policymaking in Chinese cities
Using a novel methodology, MITEI researcher Joanna Moody and DUSP Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao uncovered patterns in the development trends and transportation policies of China’s 287 cities — including Fengcheng, shown here — that may help decision-makers learn from one another.
Full story via MIT News (5/21/20)
The Women Geniuses Taking on Racial and Gender Bias in AI—and Amazon
New documentary, “Coded Bias,” follows the Meida Lab’s Joy Buolamwini on her journey to prove inherent gender and racial bias within facial recognition programs used by law enforcement.
Full story via The Daily Beast (5/16/20)
SA+P faculty and students highlighted in Spring 2020 issue of Spectrum “Computing”
Programmable Materials Design: Athina Papadopoulou SM ’14, a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture’s Design Computation Group creates wearable tech for well-being.
Full story via Spectrum (5/20)
The Future is Now: DUSP Professor Eran Ben-Joseph and others comment on the Schwarzman College of Computing.
Full story via Spectrum (5/20)
A Microcosm of Research: SuperUROPs, including DUSP’s Avital Vainberg ’21, showcase breadth of computing applications.
Full story via Spectrum (5/20)
Six from MIT, including CRE’s Siqi Zheng, awarded research funding to address Covid-19
Multi-institutional MassCPR initiative announces more than $16.5 million to support 62 Boston-area projects.
Full story via MIT News (5/19/20)
The Architectural League of New York Announces Winners of Its 2020 Prize for Young Architects + Designers
Congratulations to Architecture alumni Leslie Lok (M.Arch ’11) and Sasa Zivkovic (M.Arch ’12) of HANNAH Design Office, awarded a 2020 Prize for Young Architects + Designers from the Architectural League of New York.
Full story via The Architect (5/13/20)
Watch Lok’s and Zivkovic’s April 16 lecture to the MIT Architecture community
Location, Location, Experience Creation: The Market Dynamics & Financial Impacts of Experiential Retail
New paper “Location, Location, Experience Creation: The Market Dynamics and Financial Impacts of Experiential Retail” by CRE’s Austin Fields and Dr. Andrea Chegut.
Full story via Real Estate Innovation Lab (5/12/20)
The Future of Artistic Research
Gary Zhexi Zhang (SMACT ’19) published an article, entitled “The Future of Artistic Research,” in the April 2020 issue of ArtReview.
Full story via ACT (5/11/20)
ACT receives grant to preserve experimental music studio recordings
This funding will allow ACT’s Archivist, Thera Webb, the opportunity to preserve recordings from the MIT Experimental Music Studio.
Full story via ACT (5/8/20)
The pandemic shows why we need to treat housing as a right
DUSP professor Balakrishan Rajagopal explains in a Washington Post op-ed
See op-ed (5/7/20)
Design that makes a difference
Fusing art, science, and product design, senior Jierui Fang has followed — and sometimes created — her own path at MIT.
Full story via MIT News (5/6/20)
The Value of Design in Asset Pricing
In their study “The Value of Design in Asset Pricing,” authors Helena Rong, Juncheng Yang, Minkoo Kang and Dr. Andrea Chegut examine four external, architectural design features—diagonality, building curvature, setbacks and podium extrusions—and evaluate their financial impacts on real estate pricing in New York City. The findings suggest that three of the four design elements significantly shape the economic outcome of a building, and that the topic has opened channels for further research.
Full story via the Real Estate Innovation Lab (5/4/20)
Architecture’s Cristina Parreño curates Shadow-Time journal
Nine essays explore the feelings that many are having during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read here (5/20)
Designing for place and space
Associate professor of architecture Rafi Segal creates projects meant to enhance a sense of community.
Full story via MIT News (4/26/20)
The passive house that’s aggressively green
A six-story building designed to the “Passive House” standard just went up in Cambridge. Architect Michelle Apigian, MA ’00, MCP ’00, gives us a tour and explains why it’s so energy efficient
Full story via the Technology Review (4/15/20)
3 Questions: Catherine D’Ignazio on visualizing Covid-19 data
“Data scientists and visualization designers need to take their civic role very seriously in a pandemic,” says the MIT assistant professor.
Full story via MIT News (4/13/20)
Creating “an architecture out of constraints, ordering systems, and rules” with WOJR
Archinect talks to William O’Brien for a Studio Snapshot (4/10/20)
Learning about artificial intelligence: A hub of MIT resources for K-12 students
Full story via MIT News (4/7/20)
Amy Glasmeier on the 2020 census
SHASS Dean Melissa Nobles and DUSP’S Amy Glasmeier, who have used census data in their research, explain the importance of a complete count: “The census is the statistical fabric, if you will, of our society,” Glasmeier says.
Full story via MIT News (3/31/20)
Turning shipping containers into hospitals for treating Covid-19
Professor of the practice Carlo Ratti is developing a prototype for transforming shipping containers into portable pods that could be used to expand a hospital’s intensive care space for Covid-19 patients. “The key thing is the ease with which you can move these pods around,” he says.
Full story via The Guardian (3/27/20)
Managing the flow of ideas in a pandemic
Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland describes tools and tactics for maximizing effective communication and decision-making while minimizing the spread of illness.
Full story via MIT Sloan Management Review (3/25/20)
Urbanism in motion and without density
UrbanNext features Civic Data Design Lab’s “Moving in Nairobi” series and an essay by Rafi Segal and Els Verbakel on “Urbanism without Density”
Kwadwo Poku leaves SA+P for new position at MIT Medical
We bid a fond farewell to Kwadwo Poku, who is leaving his role as our School’s Manager of Diversity and Inclusion for a new position as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at MIT Medical. While at SA+P, Kwadwo connected our departments and programs with prospective students who have been traditionally underrepresented, and hosted presentations and gatherings that enhanced a sense of belonging for all students, faculty, and staff. We wish him the best of luck as he brings his talents and unfailing good humor to MIT Medical.