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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research. MIT is one of two private land-grant universities[b] and is also a sea-grant and space-grant university.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can be traced back to the 1861 incorporation of the “Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History” lead primarily by William Barton Rogers.

MIT is named the best engineering graduate school in 2010

Admissions: http://web.mit.edu/admissions/

Website: http://web.mit.edu/

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Rankings in 2010

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Rankings in 2011

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rankings in 2012

Latest News about MIT

Newfound exoplanet may turn to dust - Fri, 18 May 2012
Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris — much like the tail of a comet — is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet’s disintegration. According to the team’s calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

The team found that the dusty planet circles its parent star every 15 hours — one of the shortest planet orbits ever observed. Such a short orbit must be very tight and implies that the planet must be heated by its orange-hot parent star to a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers hypothesize that rocky material at the surface of the planet melts and evaporates at such high temperatures, forming a wind that carries both gas and dust into space. Dense clouds of the dust trail the planet as it speeds around its star.

“We think this dust is made up of submicron-sized particles,” says co-author Saul Rappaport, a professor emeritus of physics at MIT. “It would be like looking through a Los Angeles smog.”

The group’s findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, are based on data from the Kepler Observatory, a space-based telescope that surveys more than 160,000 stars in the Milky Way. The observatory records the brightness of each star at regular intervals; scientists then analyze the data for signs of new planets outside our own solar system.

A curiously stellar case

Astronomers using the Kepler satellite typically identify exoplanets by looking for regular dips in a star’s brightness. For example, if a star dims every month, one possibility is that the dimming is due to a planet that travels around the star over the course of a month; each time the planet travels in front of the star, the planet blocks the same small amount of light.

However, Rappaport and his colleagues came across a curious light pattern from a star dubbed KIC 12557548. The group examined the star’s light curves, a graph of its brightness over time, and found that its light dropped by different intensities every 15 hours — suggesting that something was blocking the star regularly, but by varying degrees.

The team considered several explanations for the puzzling data, including the possibility that a planetary duo — two planets orbiting each other — also orbited the star. (Rappaport reasoned that the planetary pair would pass by the star at different orientations, blocking out different amounts of light during each eclipse.) In the end, the data failed to support this hypothesis: The dimming every 15 hours was judged far too short a period to allow sufficient room for two planetary bodies orbiting each other, in the same way that Earth and the moon together orbit the sun.

A dusty idea

Instead, the researchers landed on a novel hypothesis: that the varying intensities of light were caused by a somewhat amorphous, shape-shifting body.

“I’m not sure how we came to this epiphany,” Rappaport says. “But it had to be something that was fundamentally changing. It was not a solid body, but rather, dust coming off the planet.”

Rappaport and his colleagues investigated various ways in which dust could be created and blown off a planet. They reasoned that the planet must have a low gravitational field, much like that of Mercury, in order for gas and dust to escape from the planet’s gravitational pull. The planet must also be extremely hot — on the order of 3,600° F.

Rappaport says there are two possible explanations for how the planetary dust might form: It might erupt as ash from surface volcanoes, or it could form from metals that are vaporized by high temperatures and then condense into dust. As for how much dust is spewed from the planet, the team showed that the planet could lose enough dust to explain the Kepler data. From their calculations, the researchers concluded that at such a rate, the planet will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

The researchers created a model of the planet orbiting its star, along with its long, trailing cloud of dust. The dust was densest immediately surrounding the planet, thinning out as it trailed away. The group simulated the star’s brightness as the planet and its dust cloud passed by, and found that the light patterns matched the irregular light curves taken from the Kepler Observatory.

“We’re actually now very happy about the asymmetry in the eclipse profile,” Rappaport says. “At first we didn’t understand this picture. But once we developed this theory, we realized this dust tail has to be here. If it’s not, this picture is wrong.”

Dan Fabrycky, a member of the Kepler Observatory science team, says the model may add to the many different ways in which a planet can disappear.

“This might be another way in which planets are eventually doomed,” says Fabrycky, who was not involved in the research. “A lot of research has come to the conclusion that planets are not eternal objects, they can die extraordinary deaths, and this might be a case where the planet might evaporate entirely in the future.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Human touch - Thu, 17 May 2012
No one can be all things to all people. But President-elect L. Rafael Reif is regarded by many members of the MIT community as “warm,” “humble” and “human,” and as someone who cares deeply about education.

Those traits were a central theme of the reaction on the MIT campus to Wednesday’s announcement that Reif, currently MIT’s provost, will become the Institute’s 17th president on July 2. Faculty and students alike anticipate that Reif will bring core elements of his character to bear on a diverse group of institutional challenges.

Institute Professor Ann Graybiel, a cognitive scientist who served on MIT’s Presidential Search Committee, called Reif a person of “deep humanity” with “total dedication to MIT’s goal of improving the human condition through the unique set of talents brought together on our campus.” Graybiel added: “He is humble yet strong, gentle yet determined, and has a clear sense of how to push toward MIT’s goals.”

Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who also served on the search committee, called Reif the “right person for the right time for MIT.” During the search process, Kochan added, the committee “heard loud and clear from a broad cross section of faculty, students and staff that we need a leader who embodies the MIT values of commitment to excellence and inclusion and who can both build community among us all.”

Members of the Student Advisory Committee who helped MIT’s search lauded Reif’s understanding that “students see MIT as their home.” Reif echoed that sentiment in his introductory remarks on Wednesday, saying in describing his career and life, “MIT became my home, and I never left.” In the same talk, Reif pledged that MIT “has been, and must continue to be, a force for the good, for the nation and for the world.”

“The warmth and vision Rafael expressed in his message to the community demonstrates that the search process worked,” Kochan stated.

Up close and personal

Many undergraduates had the chance to meet Reif on Wednesday afternoon, at a student reception for the president-elect in MIT’s Stata Center, and said they had a positive first impression of him.

“It does seem like he’s interested in what’s going on in the education realm,” said junior Chinua Shaw, a computer science and theater major. “It’s good to see that he’s thinking about the students.”

Freshman Priyanka Chatterjee, who is studying mechanical engineering and ocean engineering, said she had actively followed the presidential selection process, “saw a lot of names,” and came away convinced that Reif was “the most well-equipped for the job.” Because Reif has been at MIT since 1980, she added, “He has that knowledge of what is going on already” at the Institute.

In remarks at the student reception, Reif emphasized — as he did in his comments when first being introduced as president earlier on Wednesday — that his life history “is not too different from that of many of you. I grew up in a home wealthy in integrity and principles and values, but poor in everything material.”

Students said they relate to that story. “He has a high degree of humility and honesty,” said junior Naren Tallapragada, a student in electrical engineering and physics. “I think that comes from his family background.” After talking with Reif at the reception, Tallapragada said it was “like speaking with my father.”

For his part, Reif has said he will embark on a “listening tour” of the Institute, in which he hoped people would “be candid with me,” and express their unvarnished views. That kind of approach would seem to suit MIT’s students.

“We want to really feel like we’re part of the planning process around here, not part of the approval process,” Shaw said.

The view from Venezuela

Away from MIT, news of Reif’s selection earned considerable attention in Latin America, particularly in his native Venezuela, where he earned his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Universidad de Carabobo. The independent newspaper El Nacional featured the news prominently on its website on Wednesday.

As Leopoldo A. Guinand ’64, like Reif a Venezuelan who studied electrical engineering, wrote in an email to MIT News, “I am very proud as an MIT alumnus. … This has been for me and all Venezuelans wonderful and exciting news.”

And Moises Naim, Venezuela’s former minister of trade and industry and now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a widely read columnist throughout Latin America, wrote Wednesday on Twitter that he was “so proud” of Reif.

‘This is a dream I never dared to imagine’ - Wed, 16 May 2012
“I cannot tell you that this is a dream come true,” L. Rafael Reif said shortly after his election Wednesday morning as MIT’s 17th president, “because this is a dream I never dared to imagine.”

Reif — who grew up in Venezuela and didn't speak English until arriving at graduate school in his early 20s — said at a press conference announcing his selection by the MIT Corporation, “As a kid it’s impossible to think that any of these things are achievable.” But after seven years as the Institute’s provost, he said, “I am standing here ready, eager, excited and inspired to lead one of the most remarkable academic institutions in the world.”

“My story is not too different from that of many at MIT,” Reif said, describing his family as “wealthy in integrity and principles and values, but poor in everything material.” Coming from that background, he said, “What happened in my life was a set of good opportunities that I was able to take advantage of.”

John S. Reed ‘61, chairman of the MIT Corporation, announced Reif’s selection, saying it followed a search process that “captured the voice of the community in many ways.”

“The idea is to find someone who is right for MIT,” Reed said. “We have found that person.”

‘A place that I call home’

Reif described MIT as “a place that I call home” and a place “that nurtured me and made possible my dream for a better life.” He said that the entire MIT community perceives the Institute as “an extended family of curious, creative individuals who collaborate daily with each other to advance MIT’s mission. I am one of them.”

But Reif didn’t always see the Institute that way, as he recalled in remarks Wednesday afternoon to the MIT community: When he was first invited to apply for a faculty position at MIT after earning his PhD at Stanford University in 1979, he wasn’t especially interested.

“After all,” the president-elect said, to laughter, “I had seen pictures of the Blizzard of 1978.”

Not wanting to offend the MIT faculty member who was wooing him, Reif agreed to visit Cambridge. “So I came, I spent a day here, and I realized — ‘This is it,’” he said. “We packed the car with all our belongings, and drove all the way across the country. It took about three weeks, most of it camping. My moving expenses were a bunch of receipts for campsites.”

Preserving access, reimagining education

Reif made clear that he intends to remain accessible to members of the MIT community after he assumes his new post, describing a recent conversation in which MIT’s 14th president, Paul Gray, advised that Reif remain open to impromptu meetings with students and faculty. And Reif described his own habit of going out for a walk twice a day, to “pretend to go get a cup of coffee,” as a way of fostering casual meetings with people around campus.

Reif said one of his top priorities as president will be to advance the frontiers of education, and to find the most effective ways of harnessing the wealth of tools now at educators’ disposal. “We should focus on educational innovation,” he said. “It’s my belief that we should look at all the areas where MIT can make a contribution” to advancing the technologies and practices of higher education.

That focus will be a natural continuation of Reif’s recent work spearheading MITx, the Institute’s five-month-old initiative to provide free online interactive coursework both to MIT students and to the world.

“There is a lot of experimentation that needs to be done,” he said. “We’re entering a new era. Everything is up to us to discover.”

‘We should seize this opportunity’

Reif said that he intends to be guided by MIT’s values and principles, and that among those he cherishes most are its commitments to meritocracy and integrity, excellence, taking the high road, and to “do what is right, and to make a positive, constructive contribution to society.”

In this time of presidential transition, he said, “We should seize this opportunity to assess what we are doing that works well, and what we are doing that is not working well. I intend to spend the next few months listening to our community.”

Reif also thanked Susan Hockfield, MIT’s president since December 2004, for “giving me the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“I learned a tremendous amount working with her,” he added.

‘A splendid appointment’

Hockfield, in comments at the community event on Wednesday afternoon, said, “It is impossible for me to imagine any person who is better prepared,” calling Reif “a brilliant, farsighted and strategic thinker.” She praised the president-elect for his “collegial, consensus-building leadership,” and for his “unfailing ability to listen and to learn from different points of view, without losing his sense of humor.”

Hockfield presented her successor with a copy of Roberts’ Rules of Order that had been given to her by her predecessor, Charles M. Vest, who in turn had received it from his predecessor, Paul Gray. She also presented the incoming 17th president with an MIT baseball jersey emblazoned with the number 17.

Vest, who was MIT’s president from 1990 to 2004 and is now head of the National Academy of Engineering, said Reif “is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known.” Noting “the warmth with which he’s being received,” Vest said that everyone he has spoken to about Reif’s selection “has commented first and foremost on his values and character.”

Gray, MIT’s president from 1980 to 1990, said that Reif “has a sense of strategic vision, and a great knowledge of the place.” He added he has “a manner of interacting with people that is superb, and very effective. … This was a splendid appointment, for everyone.”

“I am deeply moved by the trust you all are placing in me,” Reif said. “MIT is a great human treasure, and serving as its leader is a profound responsibility.”

‘Hockfield Day’ celebrates MIT’s 16th president - Thu, 17 May 2012
A carnival atmosphere overtook Killian Court today as students, faculty and staff came out en masse for a community picnic to celebrate Susan Hockfield, MIT’s 16th president, who will conclude her seven-and-a-half years of service on July 1. On Wednesday, Provost L. Rafael Reif was elected to succeed her as MIT’s 17th president.

“It was a magnificent day for all of us yesterday,” Hockfield remarked at the picnic, “a truly great day. It’s nice to follow … with a little levity today.”

There was literal levity, too, in true MIT fashion: a parade of translucent blimps, designed by students in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), kicked off the event with a remote-controlled voyage across Killian Court — an airy tribute to MIT’s outgoing president.

“She did really an awesome job as president,” said AeroAstro freshman Molly Kosiarek. "This day is a great idea.”

Thousands gathered in the sunshine for food and fun, as entertainers milled among the crowds, swinging yo-yos and performing magic tricks. On the last day of spring-semester classes, it seemed every student came out to honor Hockfield — even those in a course on land use and urban studies, which held its last class in a shady corner of Killian Court so as not to miss the fun.

“President Hockfield has done an incredible job engaging with the student population,” said Sam Shames, a sophomore majoring in materials science and engineering.

In recognition of Hockfield’s commitment to the student body, TyShaun Wynter, former president of the Undergraduate Association, and Aalap Dighe, vice president of the Graduate Student Council, presented Hockfield with a brightly colored vase from MIT’s Glass Lab.

“We must honor the people who not only aspire to greatness, but inspire others to greatness,” Wynter said.

In his remarks, Chancellor Eric Grimson spoke of Hockfield’s extensive accomplishments as president, including her support of the MIT Energy Initiative, the Production in the Innovation Economy manufacturing initiative, and numerous international collaborations, as well as spearheading the yearlong celebration of MIT’s 150th anniversary. Grimson also pointed to Hockfield’s role in “dramatically reshaping student life,” supporting the construction of buildings such as Maseeh Hall and the new Ashdown House, “all with style, grace, dexterity and insight.”

Blanche Staton, senior associate dean for graduate students, spoke of Hockfield’s “unwavering” support of MIT staff, saying that the president could often be heard saying that staffers “are the engine” that run MIT. Staton also thanked the president for her significant contributions to diversity and inclusion throughout the Institute, which she said was tremendously encouraging, bringing members of the community “out from the invisible.”

“It is so clear to me that what has happened in the last seven years is because of all of us,” Hockfield replied in her remarks to the community. “It has been thrilling to be president during such a remarkable time.”

In closing, Hockfield thanked the MIT community for its “willingness to do experiments — many of them successful — which will position MIT” to grow in the years to come. She also thanked the MIT students — particularly this year’s graduating class, many of whom finished their final MIT class today.

In response, loudspeakers kicked on, blaring a musical tribute to Hockfield as a flash mob of students ran to the center of Killian Court, waving international flags in a choreographed dance. The students circled back to the stage, running up to high-five and fist-pump with the president.

Freshman Sarah Vente, who spontaneously joined the student line, remarked afterward: “It was the most inspiring high-five of my life!”

CloudTop takes top $100K competition prize - Thu, 17 May 2012
This year’s MIT $100K Business Plan Contest drew a record 215 teams to compete for the coveted grand prize: $100,000 to start a business venture or market a new product. On Tuesday evening, eight finalists pitched their ideas to a capacity crowd in Kresge Auditorium — and while only one team walked away with the big check, there was plenty of seed money and startup opportunity to go around.

The winning team beat out the competition with its pitch for CloudTop, a Web-based application that would enable the user to connect disparate computer programs in a single online application. The team says the app may provide an entirely new computing paradigm: Instead of having to carry around a laptop with all your saved files, you may be able to access those files from any computer with an Internet connection. With the app, a user may take photos from Facebook, edit them in Pixlr, and save them into a Microsoft Word document — all within the same secure Web browser.

On Tuesday, the CloudTop team of four MIT students appealed to the audience and judges with a final pitch line: “We envision a world where your digital life goes wherever you go … it’s totally freeing.” The $100,000 prize now frees the CloudTop team to pursue commercialization opportunities.

But the remaining finalists didn’t go home empty-handed. In addition to making one last business pitch, each finalist received $15,000 for rising to the top of their respective track: life sciences; products and services; mobile; web/IT; energy; and the Segal Family Foundation’s emerging markets track. Two more finalists were selected as wild cards for Tuesday’s finale.

The contest also sponsored several offshoots: a $10,000 Data Prize, sponsored by Thomson Reuters, for the team with the most innovative data-centric business plan; a $5,000 YouTube Pitch Prize, awarded to the team with the best 60-second video pitch for a business idea; and a $2,000 Audience Choice Award, for the team with the best pitch of the night, as voted by audience members via text messages.

An entrepreneur’s playbook

The event’s keynote speaker, Todd Park, appointed by President Barack Obama earlier this year as chief technology officer for the United States, commented enthusiastically on MIT’s entrepreneurial spirit, noting that contests such as the $100K help to “unleash entrepreneurship” and push technology solutions into the marketplace.

Often pacing onstage and drawing appreciative laughs from the crowd, Park talked about his previous experience as chief technology officer — or “entrepreneur in residence,” as he called it — for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. There, he was tasked with making public the agency’s vast archive of medical data. He decided to “take a page from the MIT playbook” and hold a competition — which he fondly dubbed “Datapalooza” — to identify innovative ways to use health data to help consumers.

Park now hopes to hold similar entrepreneurial contests to solve some of the country’s biggest issues in energy, public safety and finance. “There’s no problem that we can’t invent ourselves out of,” he said. “Don’t stop being addicted to building something out of nothing. That’s what makes an entrepreneur.”

Everyone’s a winner

The $100K competition's runner-up, LiquiGlide, pitched a product that would solve a particularly sticky problem: The team invented a slippery, biocompatible coating that could be used to line ketchup and mustard bottles. A video illustrating the product showed a blob of ketchup sliding through a glass bottle with a simple tilt of the hand — a frictionless alternative to today’s less user-friendly condiment designs. The group’s quirky pitch earned it the Audience Choice Award, along with $2,000.

Two teams pitched health-related business plans: IoVista, a finalist in the emerging markets track, presented a plan for a handheld device that quickly performs eye tests. The team said the device could be useful in areas such as rural India and China that have few trained eye specialists.

Podimetrics, a finalist in the life sciences track, made its case for what looked like a bath mat — but when a team member stood on the mat, a screen overhead projected an image of his feet. The team designed the mat’s sensors to quickly detect abnormalities that are common complications for patients with diabetes.

In the products and services track, Cryoocyte pitched a new method to freeze fish eggs — a tricky operation that the team said may help rejuvenate fisheries if stocks collapse. The team hopes to both make a profit and replenish fish stocks, a solution team members envisioned as “enabling the blue revolution.”

Several teams presented solutions to energy and web-based problems. SolidEnergy, a finalist in the energy track, pitched a new battery design that would stretch a laptop’s battery life on a single charge to 16 hours. Team member Qichao Hu, whose PhD thesis spawned the design, listed the many MIT collaborations that helped to improve the design. “The story of SolidEnergy is only possible at MIT,” Hu said.

The team MegaMIMO sought to unjam wireless connections. The team pointed out that in one of the late Steve Jobs’ presentations, the Apple co-founder had asked the audience to power down all laptops and smartphones, so Jobs himself could connect to a wireless network. “This might work for Steve Jobs, but not for the rest of us,” a team member said.

MegaMIMO’s solution is an “access point design” for overcrowded networks that clears up interfering signals, allowing more users to wirelessly connect without losing data transmission speed. The team capped their presentation with the tagline: “Mo’ MIMO, no problems.”

A potential alternative to Craigslist came in the form of Peddl, a team that pitched an app for buying and selling goods and services online. Like Craigslist, the application emphasizes local goods, but with an added bonus: The app creates maps, flagging listings close to a user’s location or address. The user-friendly interface allows a customer to indicate interest in a listing, contact a buyer, ask for a lower price, or post a listing. “For the last decade, Craigslist has dominated the local market,” the team pitched. “We think this area is ripe for disruption.”

The elusive capacity of networks - Tue, 15 May 2012
In its early years, information theory — which grew out of a landmark 1948 paper by MIT alumnus and future professor Claude Shannon — was dominated by research on error-correcting codes: How do you encode information so as to guarantee its faithful transmission, even in the presence of the corrupting influences engineers call "noise"?

Recently, one of the most intriguing developments in information theory has been a different kind of coding, called network coding, in which the question is how to encode information in order to maximize the capacity of a network as a whole. For information theorists, it was natural to ask how these two types of coding might be combined: If you want to both minimize error and maximize capacity, which kind of coding do you apply where, and when do you do the decoding?

What makes that question particularly hard to answer is that no one knows how to calculate the data capacity of a network as a whole — or even whether it can be calculated. Nonetheless, in the first half of a two-part paper, which was published recently in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, MIT's Muriel Médard, California Institute of Technology's Michelle Effros and the late Ralf Koetter of the University of Technology in Munich show that in a wired network, network coding and error-correcting coding can be handled separately, without reduction in the network's capacity. In the forthcoming second half of the paper, the same researchers demonstrate some bounds on the capacities of wireless networks, which could help guide future research in both industry and academia.

A typical data network consists of an array of nodes — which could be routers on the Internet, wireless base stations or even processing units on a single chip — each of which can directly communicate with a handful of its neighbors. When a packet of data arrives at a node, the node inspects its addressing information and decides which of several pathways to send it along.

Calculated confusion

With network coding, on the other hand, a node scrambles together the packets it receives and sends the hybrid packets down multiple paths; at each subsequent node they're scrambled again in different ways. Counterintuitively, this can significantly increase the capacity of the network as a whole: Hybrid packets arrive at their destination along multiple paths. If one of those paths is congested, or if one of its links fails outright, the packets arriving via the other paths will probably contain enough information that the recipient can piece together the original message.

But each link between nodes could be noisy, so the information in the packets also needs to be encoded to correct for errors. "Suppose that I'm a node in a network, and I see a communication coming in, and it is corrupted by noise," says Médard, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "I could try to remove the noise, but by doing that, I'm in effect making a decision right now that maybe would have been better taken by someone downstream from me who might have had more observations of the same source."

On the other hand, Médard says, if a node simply forwards the data it receives without performing any error correction, it could end up squandering bandwidth. "If the node takes all the signal it has and does not whittle down his representation, then it might be using a lot of energy to transmit noise," she says. "The question is, how much of the noise do I remove, and how much do I leave in?"

In their first paper, Médard and her colleagues analyze the case in which the noise in a given link is unrelated to the signals traveling over other links, as is true of most wired networks. In that case, the researchers show, the problems of error correction and network coding can be separated without limiting the capacity of the network as a whole.

Noisy neighbors

In the second paper, the researchers tackle the case in which the noise on a given link is related to the signals on other links, as is true of most wireless networks, since the transmissions of neighboring base stations can interfere with each other. This complicates things enormously: Indeed, Médard points out, information theorists still don't know how to quantify the capacity of a simple three-node wireless network, in which two nodes relay messages to each other via a third node.

Nonetheless, Médard and her colleagues show how to calculate upper and lower bounds on the capacity of a given wireless network. While the gap between the bounds can be very large in practice, knowing the bounds could still help network operators evaluate the benefits of further research on network coding. If the observed bit rate on a real-world network is below the lower bound, the operator knows the minimum improvement that the ideal code would provide; if the observed rate is above the lower bound but below the upper, then the operator knows the maximum improvement that the ideal code might provide. If even the maximum improvement would afford only a small savings in operational expenses, the operator may decide that further research on improved coding isn't worth the money.

"The separation theorem they proved is of fundamental interest," says Raymond Yeung, a professor of information engineering and co-director of the Institute of Network Coding at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "While the result itself is not surprising, it is somewhat unexpected that they were able to prove the result in such a general setting."

Yeung cautions, however, that while the researchers have "decomposed a very difficult problem into two," one of those problems "remains very difficult. … The bound is in terms of the solution to another problem which is difficult to solve," he says. "It is not clear how tight this bound is; that needs further research."

A new look at prolonged radiation exposure - Tue, 15 May 2012
A new study from MIT scientists suggests that the guidelines governments use to determine when to evacuate people following a nuclear accident may be too conservative.

The study, led by Bevin Engelward and Jacquelyn Yanch and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that when mice were exposed to radiation doses about 400 times greater than background levels for five weeks, no DNA damage could be detected.

Current U.S. regulations require that residents of any area that reaches radiation levels eight times higher than background should be evacuated. However, the financial and emotional cost of such relocation may not be worthwhile, the researchers say.

“There are no data that say that’s a dangerous level,” says Yanch, a senior lecturer in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “This paper shows that you could go 400 times higher than average background levels and you’re still not detecting genetic damage. It could potentially have a big impact on tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in the vicinity of a nuclear powerplant accident or a nuclear bomb detonation, if we figure out just when we should evacuate and when it’s OK to stay where we are.”

Until now, very few studies have measured the effects of low doses of radiation delivered over a long period of time. This study is the first to measure the genetic damage seen at a level as low as 400 times background (0.0002 centigray per minute, or 105 cGy in a year).

“Almost all radiation studies are done with one quick hit of radiation. That would cause a totally different biological outcome compared to long-term conditions,” says Engelward, an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT.

How much is too much?

Background radiation comes from cosmic radiation and natural radioactive isotopes in the environment. These sources add up to about 0.3 cGy per year per person, on average.

“Exposure to low-dose-rate radiation is natural, and some people may even say essential for life. The question is, how high does the rate need to get before we need to worry about ill effects on our health?” Yanch says.

Previous studies have shown that a radiation level of 10.5 cGy, the total dose used in this study, does produce DNA damage if given all at once. However, for this study, the researchers spread the dose out over five weeks, using radioactive iodine as a source. The radiation emitted by the radioactive iodine is similar to that emitted by the damaged Fukushima reactor in Japan.

At the end of five weeks, the researchers tested for several types of DNA damage, using the most sensitive techniques available. Those types of damage fall into two major classes: base lesions, in which the structure of the DNA base (nucleotide) is altered, and breaks in the DNA strand. They found no significant increases in either type.

DNA damage occurs spontaneously even at background radiation levels, conservatively at a rate of about 10,000 changes per cell per day. Most of that damage is fixed by DNA repair systems within each cell. The researchers estimate that the amount of radiation used in this study produces an additional dozen lesions per cell per day, all of which appear to have been repaired.

Though the study ended after five weeks, Engelward believes the results would be the same for longer exposures. “My take on this is that this amount of radiation is not creating very many lesions to begin with, and you already have good DNA repair systems. My guess is that you could probably leave the mice there indefinitely and the damage wouldn’t be significant,” she says.

Doug Boreham, a professor of medical physics and applied radiation sciences at McMaster University, says the study adds to growing evidence that low doses of radiation are not as harmful as people often fear.

“Now, it’s believed that all radiation is bad for you, and any time you get a little bit of radiation, it adds up and your risk of cancer goes up,” says Boreham, who was not involved in this study. “There’s now evidence building that that is not the case.”

Conservative estimates

Most of the radiation studies on which evacuation guidelines have been based were originally done to establish safe levels for radiation in the workplace, Yanch says — meaning they are very conservative. In workplace cases, this makes sense because the employer can pay for shielding for all of their employees at once, which lowers the cost, she says.

However, “when you’ve got a contaminated environment, then the source is no longer controlled, and every citizen has to pay for their own dose avoidance,” Yanch says. “They have to leave their home or their community, maybe even forever. They often lose their jobs, like you saw in Fukushima. And there you really want to call into question how conservative in your analysis of the radiation effect you want to be. Instead of being conservative, it makes more sense to look at a best estimate of how hazardous radiation really is.”

Those conservative estimates are based on acute radiation exposures, and then extrapolating what might happen at lower doses and lower dose-rates, Engelward says. “Basically you’re using a data set collected based on an acute high dose exposure to make predictions about what’s happening at very low doses over a long period of time, and you don’t really have any direct data. It’s guesswork,” she says. “People argue constantly about how to predict what is happening at lower doses and lower dose-rates.”

However, the researchers say that more studies are needed before evacuation guidelines can be revised.

“Clearly these studies had to be done in animals rather than people, but many studies show that mice and humans share similar responses to radiation. This work therefore provides a framework for additional research and careful evaluation of our current guidelines,” Engelward says.

“It is interesting that, despite the evacuation of roughly 100,000 residents, the Japanese government was criticized for not imposing evacuations for even more people. From our studies, we would predict that the population that was left behind would not show excess DNA damage — this is something we can test using technologies recently developed in our laboratory,” she adds.

The first author on these studies is former MIT postdoc Werner Olipitz, and the work was done in collaboration with Department of Biological Engineering faculty Leona Samson and Peter Dedon. These studies were supported by the DOE and by MIT’s Center for Environmental Health Sciences.

A physicist and an inventor - Mon, 14 May 2012
As a boy growing up in Croatia, Marin Soljacic wanted to be an inventor. But he wasn’t interested only in designing new products; he wanted to discover physical phenomena that would enable completely new technologies.

In that, Soljacic has succeeded remarkably. With others at MIT, he developed a way to transmit power wirelessly — a technology that might soon allow people to charge their cellphones, computers and even electric cars without ever having to plug them in. His work on photonic crystals, which can alter the behavior of light, could lead to a variety of novel applications, including more efficient ways to capture solar and thermal energy, faster optical communications and novel light sources.

“As a child I always dreamed about inventing machines. But when I started taking computer science classes, physics classes and engineering classes, I realized that what I found most exciting was when new physics enables new applications,” says Soljacic, who in 2008 won a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the “genius grant.”

Soljacic, a physics professor who earned tenure last summer, had a serendipitous route to MIT. He was a high school junior in 1991 when Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia. Soljacic had been planning to attend the University of Zagreb, but the prospect of war prompted him to consider other possibilities more seriously. A friend who was a year older had gained acceptance to MIT, and encouraged him to apply.

“I had heard of MIT, but I didn’t know that much about it,” Soljacic recalls. He thought it would be too expensive to attend, but applied for scholarship money at his friend’s suggestion.

“I didn’t really have very high hopes that I would get in and get the money,” he recalls. “On the other hand, I thought I might as well apply.”

Soljacic spent much of the first half of his senior year of high school in bomb shelters, fearing the war might go on for many years. But in January 1992, the international community recognized Croatia’s independence and a ceasefire was declared.

After that, “motivation to study outside of Croatia was weaker,” Soljacic says. “I wouldn’t say I forgot about it, but it was less urgent. Then two months later I got a letter from MIT saying that not only would they admit me, but they would pay for everything. Then I was like, I might as well go and see — what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

As an undergraduate, Soljacic majored in physics and electrical engineering. “I couldn’t make up my mind,” he laughs. His undergraduate thesis resulted in a paper on inflationary cosmology, written with physics professors Alan Guth and Lisa Randall (now at Harvard University).

However, Soljacic, who graduated from MIT in 1996, wanted to focus more on experimental research. As a graduate student at Princeton University, he first worked with Frank Wilczek (now at MIT) on soft condensed matter theory, a field that examines the physical behavior of materials such as liquids, glasses, polymers, foams and gels.

For his PhD thesis, Soljacic turned his attention to the field of photonics — the study of the physics of light. “I really liked that because it’s still a fairly small field, so not only is it possible but it’s still desirable to do both theory and experiments,” he says. “Many fields are larger, more mature, and once fields become more mature it is often difficult to do things like that. Typically, one needs to become more specialized.”

Practical applications

After finishing his PhD, Soljacic came to MIT as a Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellow. After that, he was a principal research scientist at MIT’s Research Laboratory for Electronics (RLE) for two years, then joined the faculty of the physics department in 2005.

Soljacic, who is still a member of RLE, came up with the idea for wireless energy transfer after growing tired of hearing his cellphone emit warning beeps in the middle of the night because its battery was dying.

Such systems could make forgetting to charge your cellphone a thing of the past, and make electric cars more practical, Soljacic says. “Let’s say you have an electric car and your neighbor has a conventional car, running on gasoline. The only difference you will notice is you never have to go to a gas station again,” he says. “You’ll just park it in your garage and it will charge itself, so you won’t have to remember to plug it in every night.”

Soljacic is also working on more efficient solar energy conversion using photonic crystals — materials whose nanoscale structures make light behave in ways it ordinarily can’t. Specifically, the crystals are made of a lattice of one kind of material alternating with either a different material or open space. Depending on the structure and the spacing of the blocks that make up the lattice, certain wavelengths can get through while others are reflected or absorbed.

“By tailoring the nanostructure, we can tailor the laws of physics as far as light is concerned, almost at will,” Soljacic says. “We can create materials, called metamaterials, which have physical properties dramatically different than any naturally existing materials.”

For example, such materials can be designed to absorb substantially more energy from the sun than traditional ones, while thermal radiation losses are minimized. Photonic crystals can also be used for applications in lasers, LEDs and optical fibers. Soljacic’s lab is also working on creating materials that change color depending on the spacing of materials in the nanostructure.

Entrepreneurial students dive into product design and development - Mon, 14 May 2012
A subway commuter digs through his backpack to find his iPad. A college student lugs a bag of dirty clothes to the laundry room in her dorm. A rushed Starbucks customer tears open a paper sugar packet.

This semester, 11 teams of MIT and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) students — all enrolled in a course called “Product Design and Development” — sought to ameliorate these challenging everyday moments. As the culmination of the course, on Saturday, May 12, these teams presented their products to a panel of product development professionals.

Convenient carriers

While more and more people are choosing iPads and other tablets for their portable size, it’s not always convenient or safe to use them in public. One team — sponsored by outdoor outfitter Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) — came up with a backpack that holds a tablet in a zippered, padded compartment designed so that users can remove the tablet without removing the backpack. Andrew Erickson, an MIT senior in mechanical engineering, demonstrated a key safety feature of the team’s “EMS Tablet Pack.”

“Someone tries to grab it out of your hand, or you drop it: ‘Oh no!’” Erickson said as he dropped the tablet — but a lanyard connecting it to the backpack caught the device before it hit the floor. For greater ease of access and security in public places, the team also designed the EMS Tablet Pack to fold open from the bottom so the tablet can be used in a laptop position.

Another team sought to improve the lives of college students and laundromat users with a new laundry hamper dubbed the Kangalau. “We wanted it to be subtle and very comfortable,” said RISD student Beth Soucy. With a divider inside for sorting laundry, mesh holes for air-drying, pockets for detergent and loose change, and a tall rectangular structure one user called “just as comfortable as a normal backpack,” the Kangalau also has “environmental benefits because it’s durable and recyclable,” Soucy said.

Sustainability with profit

Making a profit doesn’t have to come at the expense of the environment, as the Kangalau team found. But some projects had an environmental focus from the start.

According to the team that created the Sucrosity Sugar Dispenser, paper sugar packets create more than a million pounds of waste each day. “That is completely ridiculous and we want that eliminated from coffee shops and cafes,” said Daniela Kretchmer, a Sloan graduate student. Ashley Ko, a fellow team member from RISD, demonstrated the dispenser’s ability to dispense an exact amount of sugar — equivalent to half a sugar packet — with the turn of a knob, saving paper while still allowing customers to measure how much they’re putting in. The team tested the design at a local Starbucks, said Neha Dave, an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering. Customers there liked the device because it’s easy to use, she said; employees liked it because it makes less of a mess.

The GM UCharge team, sponsored by General Motors, came up with an improved design for electric vehicle charging stations. “In the electric vehicle space, it’s a chicken-and-egg problem,” said Erick Corona, a graduate student in the Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) Program. “People don’t purchase electric vehicles because there’s not enough infrastructure.” The team created a docking system whose charger handle can slide along a metal rail to service multiple parking spots, adding a revolving cord to the handle to make it even easier to use.

Bike accessories

Two teams had good news for bicyclists: You can keep your bike illuminated and your phone charged as you ride with the Lumos Bike Light System, and then secure the bike with the Viper Bike Lock — which is just as secure as a traditional U-lock, its creators say, but can be attached with one hand, saving time and effort.

The Lumos Bike Light System includes a small charging station with magnets inside that clamps to the rear wheel of the bike. “We’re using magnetic induction to create power,” said Madalyn Berns, an MIT graduate student in mechanical engineering. As the bicyclist pedals, the magnets spin, inducing an electric current in a series of coils that the device uses to power the light system. The charging station has a USB port for an electronic device and connects to a front-mounted bike light to keep it powered.

Engineering and designing a better world

Other products included:
- the BuzzyBaby Child Carrier System, a baby harness that parents can choose to clip either into a stroller or onto themselves;
- the GM Kid-Friendly Back Seat, a portable case with a drawing surface and iPad to entertain kids on car rides;
- EMS Hiking Furniture, a lightweight and collapsible seat for hikers;
- CarryOne luggage, a combined laptop case and carry-on suitcase; and
- Wet Impact Drinking Fountain, a water fountain that informs users via a solar-powered display how much CO₂ they have offset by avoiding bottled water.
At the conclusion of the presentations, the three instructors of the course — MIT professors Steven Eppinger and Warren Seering, as well as Matthew Kressy, who holds joint appointments at MIT and RISD — congratulated the students on their projects and on the collaboration between two very different schools. Over the course of the spring semester, 19 RISD students made the drive from Providence to Cambridge twice a week to attend the class, which also included about 30 engineering and 30 management students from MIT. Some of the teams have already applied for patents on their products.

“I think we saw 11 viable business products today,” said Eppinger, the General Motors LGO Professor of Management at Sloan. “Each of you brings a different perspective, but none of you has all the skills that it takes to create any one of these products. I’m not sure you knew that at the start of the semester.”

“At the beginning of the term, it was pretty easy to tell which schools you were all from,” added Seering, the Weber-Shaughness Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Systems at MIT. “It looks to us like you’ve learned to think in new ways.”

“Science and engineering are very good at quantifying what is,” said Kressy, a lecturer in MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and an adjunct faculty member in industrial design at RISD. “But they’re not so good at figuring out what could be — that’s where art and design come in.” The collaboration between the two institutions and their respective disciplines, Kressy said, “will eventually, I hope, lead to a better world.”

Whirr, click, hum: Robots go at it in 2.007 finale - Fri, 11 May 2012
MIT’s Johnson Athletic Center took on the aura of an old-fashioned county fair on Thursday night, complete with popcorn, balloons, jugglers, cotton candy and pitchmen wearing brightly colored jackets and bowties. But rather than ring tosses and sheep-shearing, the central event was a series of one-on-one matchups between an amazing variety of robots that students have spent the whole semester designing, building and testing.

This was the culmination of MIT’s renowned course in mechanical engineering, “Design and Manufacturing 1,” better known by its course number, 2.007. As always, a series of tasks set by the designers of this year’s competition triggered a wild proliferation of imaginative designs and strategies. But in the end, relatively simple, stable and repeatable approaches won the competition.
- Video: Watch the archived webcast of the finals
“You don’t always know what the best approach is going to be,” says Daniel Frey, associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems and the lead instructor of the class. And this year, a variety of tasks for the robots to choose from, on a playing field modeled after a county fair, added to the variety of approaches.

Even seemingly simple challenges can lead to inventive solutions: For example, a “strength tester” — the carnival game where striking a lever with a mallet sends a projectile upward to strike a bell — was approached quite differently by different students. Some struck the lever with an actual hammer or mallet mounted on a hinge, while some ignored the lever and built miniature elevators to gently lift the projectile up to the bell; others built spring-loaded spatula-like devices to flip the projectile up.

Besides the strength test, other challenges teams could choose for their robots included the mechanical removal of tickets from a roll — which turned out to be surprisingly difficult — and the inflating of a balloon from a container of compressed air — made harder by the difficulty of maintaining a tight seal. A final challenge was a Ferris wheel that could be turned in one direction or the other by robots on opposite sides of the field; the number of rotations the Ferris wheel made served to multiply the points gained through successful completion of the other tests.

Most of the students, all of whom were issued identical kits of parts to work with at the beginning of the term, built single robots to perform one or more of the tasks. But the rules allowed for making multiple robots, and the ultimate winner, Kawin Surakitbovorn, a sophomore majoring in physics, used a two-robot system. One device used a scissors-jack elevator to raise the strength-test projectile, while a second, much smaller robot concentrated on turning the Ferris wheel.

The complexity of the playing field, the different ways of scoring, and the vagaries of actual competition — where sometimes a battery fails or a small piece falls off a robot — led to a wide range of outcomes: Even though preliminary matchups had already winnowed the roughly 130 robots to just 32 final contestants, the scores in the finals ranged all the way from 0 to 150.

As is so often the case at MIT, the students had to deal with competing demands for their time. Runner-up Sarah Southerland, a senior majoring in architecture and mechanical engineering, had to leave in the middle of the competition to take part in a dance performance, getting back in time to control her robot for the final match. Unlike many of the machines that were designed to perform multiple tasks, Southerland’s single small robot was designed to do a single task steadily and reliably: lifting the strength-test projectile using a spatula-like device.

While students compete intensely in the 2.007 finale, winning doesn’t have any effect on a student’s grade, and participation in the contest is optional. But this year’s winners did earn more than just bragging rights: In addition to their awards, the top three finishers won the opportunity to fly to Japan this summer to represent MIT in an intensive two-week International Design Competition.

Two additional cash awards were given for robot designs that were especially clever and innovative, but did not end up placing in the top ranks. The awards went to sophomore Sam Whittemore (for an interesting approach to the strength test that used a spinning flywheel to build up momentum before striking the lever) and junior Joe Church (for a control system that used a touch-tone phone, an unusual system of pivoting wheels, and a clever mechanism for raising the projectile via a device akin to an oversized tape-measure).

“I think the most impressive thing is the teamwork,” Frey says: Even though students compete individually, throughout the semester they share ideas and help each other out with problems. That kind of teamwork and cooperation, he says, is one of the class’s most important lessons.

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