| Welcome, First-Years! | | | | | | MIT President L. Rafael Reif, the Institute’s top administrators, and selected faculty delivered their annual Convocation to welcome to the incoming first-year Class of 2022. “You are surrounded by a community that cares about you,” President Reif said. “All of us are dedicated to your success, and we believe in you.” |
| MIT-created programming language Julia 1.0 debuts Dynamic language, which is free and open source, combines the speed and popular features of top scientific and technical software. |  |
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| First observation of long-predicted Higgs boson decay Finding evidence of Higgs boson decay required “magic-eye” focus; may help physicists understand why the universe has mass, says MIT’s Philip Harris. |  |
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| 3 Questions: Sasha Costanza-Chock on “#MoreThanCode” report Study of 188 practitioners distills key recommendations about using technology to advance social justice and the public interest. |  |
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| MIT team digitizes historic sanctuary of Machu Picchu Scholars develop tools to explore Machu Picchu’s architectural and urban importance using 3-D, virtual reality, and augmented reality. |  |
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| Sun-powered car shines in American Solar Challenge MIT Solar Electrical Vehicle Team takes 5th place in nine-day challenge, which traversed the Oregon Trail from Omaha, Nebraska to Bend, Oregon. |  |
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| The mystery of people who speak dozens of languages // The New Yorker Ev Fedorenko, an alumna and research affiliate at MIT, explains her work studying the science of language. |
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| Study: Inequality grows between top firms, everybody else // The Wall Street Journal A new study by Prof. John Van Reenen finds differences in productivity, sales, and wages between companies have contributed to income inequality. |
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| Engineering students work with drones, cars at unique summer camp // WCVB At MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute, high school students are gaining hands-on engineering experience through projects that allow them to tackle such challenges as writing code that allows cars to navigate autonomously. |
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| MIT tech lets submarines “email” planes // BBC News A system developed by MIT researchers allows data to be transmitted between underwater and airborne devices. It could allow submarines to communicate with planes and “help planes or drones detect the location of a submerged ‘black box’ flight recorder.” |
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Name: Emrick Elias
Affiliation: Senior administrative assistant in the Department of Chemistry
Hometown: Bronx, New York
Years at MIT: 2
Favorite cuisine: Puerto Rican
Dream vacation spot: Bhutan
What was your first job? Mentor at the Summer Youth Program in NYC
Coolest person you’ve ever met: My mom
Secret superpower: Ever watch The Matrix trilogy? Well, I’m … Agent Smith
Favorite thing about MIT: Being surrounded by so many brilliant minds! |
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| | | Keith Ellenbogen, a renowned underwater photographer, is currently a visiting artist in the MIT Sea Grant College Program. While trying to image what he thought was a large but harmless basking shark, Keith realized the animal he encountered was, in fact, a much more dangerous great white shark. “As I as approached its giant face and teeth, what I remember most is its strong and direct eye contact. Fortunately, the shark did not change its behavior or trajectory,” Ellenbogen later described. “It was such a beautiful, majestic animal; I’m glad I had this once-in-a-lifetime encounter, and I’m fortunate that I have the rest of my lifetime to contemplate it!” |
| | | The world’s largest air-insulated Van de Graaff generator was built by MIT Professor Robert Van de Graaff in 1931. The machine, which was initially used to produce high voltages for research experiments, is now on permanent display at Boston’s Museum of Science. Since 1980, the generator has been put to use in demonstrations at least twice a day, enlightening visitors about the science of electricity. ⚡ |
This edition of the MIT Weekly was brought to you by koala-hugging softball players. 🐨⚾
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
—Maia, MIT News Office |
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