Tag: School of Architecture and Planning

MIT community in 2023: A year in review

The year 2023 saw the turning of a new page for MIT, as the Institute welcomed its 18th president. MIT also saw the opening of new and renovated spaces, launched a new “Dialogues Across Difference” speaker series, and celebrated a Nobel Prize, Turing Award, National Medals of Technology and Science, and many more honors for […]

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Two from MIT named 2024 Marshall Scholars

Anushree Chaudhuri and Rupert Li have won Marshall Scholarships, a prestigious British government-funded fellowship that offers exceptional American students the opportunity to pursue several years of graduate study in any field at any university in the United Kingdom. Up to 50 scholarships are awarded each year by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. The students were […]

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A new ultrasound patch can measure how full your bladder is

MIT researchers have designed a wearable ultrasound monitor, in the form of a patch, that can image organs within the body without the need for an ultrasound operator or application of gel. In a new study, the researchers showed that their patch can accurately image the bladder and determine how full it is. This could […]

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The power of representation and connectivity in STEM education

On Oct. 13 and 14 at the Wong Auditorium at MIT, an event called Bridging Talents and Opportunities took place. It was part of an initiative led by MIT Latinx professors and students aimed at providing talented Latinx high school students from the greater Boston area and various Latin American countries a unique chance to […]

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Forging climate connections across the Institute

Climate change is the ultimate cross-cutting issue: Not limited to any one discipline, it ranges across science, technology, policy, culture, human behavior, and well beyond. The response to it likewise requires an all-of-MIT effort. Now, to strengthen such an effort, a new grant program spearheaded by the Climate Nucleus, the faculty committee charged with the […]

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A marvel in masonry shows the art of the possible

In the Hudson River Valley, on a hill inside the Storm King Art Center, a new addition to the country’s leading outdoor sculpture collection was unveiled this fall. “Lookout,” by the eminent American sculptor Martin Puryear, is a beguiling, domed brick structure with confounding curves, a walk-in entrance, and 90 apertures. The sculpture “could be […]

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Shape-shifting fiber can produce morphing fabrics

Instead of needing a coat for each season, imagine having a jacket that would dynamically change shape so it becomes more insulating to keep you warm as the temperature drops. A programmable, actuating fiber developed by an interdisciplinary team of MIT researchers could someday make this vision a reality. Known as FibeRobo, the fiber contracts […]

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Mobilizing creative learning with OctoStudio

A group of schoolchildren in Chile walk on a hillside, taking photos of plants and animals with mobile devices. They later integrate the photos into animated stories about the local environment. Two friends in Uganda create an interactive game with an animated chicken that moves across the screen as you tilt the phone — and speaks […]

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Building on an enduring bond

Robert Robinson Taylor’s impressive legacy straddles two institutions. There’s MIT, where he studied architecture and became the Institute’s first African American graduate; and then there is Tuskegee University, originally the Tuskegee Institute, where Taylor spent most of his career, heading the architecture department of the historically Black college, helping to shape its educational philosophy that […]

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Designing a revolution

It is widely recognized that the period in the early 1970s in which Salvador Allende was president of Chile was a moment of political innovation, when people thought they could bring about socialist transformation peacefully and within existing democratic institutions. “People thought that this would be a political third way,” says Eden Medina, an associate […]

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From MIT to Burning Man: The Living Knitwork Pavilion

Set against the vast and surreal backdrop of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, Burning Man is an annual gathering that transforms the flat, barren expanse into a vibrant playground for artistic and creative expression. Here, “Burners” come to both witness and contribute to the ephemeral Black Rock City, which participants build anew each year. […]

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MakerLodge: A launchpad for hands-on learning

MakerLodge is an extracurricular training program open to all MIT first-year undergraduate students that teaches making skills. It’s a great way to discover MIT shops and makerspaces, use manual and digital tools, socialize, and appreciate the power of making for experiential learning. By making a couple of small objects using a range of equipment such […]

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Improving accessibility of online graphics for blind users

The beauty of a nice infographic published alongside a news or magazine story is that it makes numeric data more accessible to the average reader. But for blind and visually impaired users, such graphics often have the opposite effect. For visually impaired users — who frequently rely on screen-reading software that speaks words or numbers […]

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Is AI in the eye of the beholder?

Someone’s prior beliefs about an artificial intelligence agent, like a chatbot, have a significant effect on their interactions with that agent and their perception of its trustworthiness, empathy, and effectiveness, according to a new study. Researchers from MIT and Arizona State University found that priming users — by telling them that a conversational AI agent […]

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MIT announces 2023 Bose Grants for daring new research

MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart has announced three Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grants to support bold research projects across diverse areas of study including engineering, animal behavior, and human movement. This year’s recipients are Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the d’Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering; Canan Dagdeviren, associate professor and […]

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Giving students the computational chops to tackle 21st-century challenges

Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain […]

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Re-imagining the opera of the future

In the mid-1980s, composer Tod Machover came across a copy of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novel “VALIS” in a Parisian bookstore. Based on a mystical vision Dick called his “pink light experience,” “VALIS” was an acronym for “vast active living intelligence system.” The metaphysical novel would become the basis for Machover’s opera of the […]

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MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2023-24

Established in 1990, the MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program at MIT welcomes outstanding scholars to the Institute for visiting appointments. MIT aspires to attract candidates who are, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.” The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending […]

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Bringing design justice to the classroom and workplace

Whether you’re building a home or programming a robot, design is a human-centered activity, making it essential to teach design in a way that focuses on equity, justice, and ethics. That’s one of the messages that was shared at a workshop offered by members of MIT’s Design Justice Project at the International Design Engineering Technical Conferences […]

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Mariama N’Diaye’s design-led approach to governance

Mariama N’Diaye, a design fellow at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), works to transform the public sector through design thinking and innovation. With a diverse background in urban planning and business administration — she’s pursuing a dual master’s degree at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and the MIT Sloan School […]

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MIT scholars awarded seed grants to probe the social implications of generative AI

In July, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart issued a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of generative AI.” Over the next month, they received an influx of responses from every school at MIT proposing to explore generative AI’s potential applications and […]

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Technologies for water conservation and treatment move closer to commercialization

The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) provides Solutions Grants to help MIT researchers launch startup companies or products to commercialize breakthrough technologies in water and food systems. The Solutions Grant Program began in 2015 and is supported by Community Jameel. In addition to one-year, renewable grants of up to $150,000, the […]

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Device offers long-distance, low-power underwater communication

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances. This technique, which the researchers began developing several years ago, uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use. By expanding their battery-free system’s communication range, the researchers have made the technology more […]

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3 Questions: How are cities managing record-setting temperatures?

July 2023 was the hottest month globally since humans began keeping records. People all over the U.S. experienced punishingly high temperatures this summer. In Phoenix, there were a record-setting 31 consecutive days with a high temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or more. July was the hottest month on record in Miami. A scan of high […]

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Denzil Streete named senior associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education

After a national search, the MIT Office of the Vice Chancellor has named Denzil A. Streete senior associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education (OGE). Streete succeeds Blanche Staton, who retired this summer after serving for more than 25 years at MIT. He will begin his role at MIT on Sept. 12. […]

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Faces of MIT: Abisola Okuk

Senior staff accountant Abisola Okuk’s role has changed a lot since she first came to MIT back in 2014. She started in the Media Lab as an administrative assistant, then moved to the MIT Sloan School of Management’s external relations team, and is now senior staff accountant in the Office of the Vice President for […]

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Dyanna Jaye: Bringing the urgency of organizing to climate policy

Growing up in the Tidewater region of Virginia, Dyanna Jaye had a front row seat to the climate crisis. She recalls beach stabilization efforts that pumped sand from the bottom of the ocean to the shore in response to rising sea levels. And every hurricane season, the streets would flood. “I was thinking at a […]

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MIT at the 2023 Venice Biennale

The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest and most visited exhibition focusing on architecture, is once again featuring work by many MIT faculty, students, and alumni. On view through Nov. 26, the 2023 biennale, curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect, academic, and novelist Lesley Lokko, is showcasing projects responding to the theme of “The Laboratory of Change.” […]

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