Only You Can Help an Alumni Game Take Home the Prize

Two video games with MIT connections are currently up for the $10,000 Indie Game Challenge’s Gamer’s Choice Award, as voted on by the public.

Cogs (shown top), programmed by Lazy 8 Studios founder Rob Jagnow SM ’01, PhD ’05, is a 3-D puzzle game with high-end rendering in which players build a variety of machines from sliding tiles.

Waker (shown bottom), created by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, is an educational platform-arcade and puzzle game that aims to teach players about the theories of displacement and velocity. The GAMBIT team (Poof Productions) consisted of MIT staff and grad students as well as students from other universities.

Find videos of each game as well as what inspired the creators on the IGC site. In addition to the Gamer’s Choice Award, both games are also up for $100,000 grand prizes—luckily in different categories. Winners will be announced Feb. 19, so hurry and vote.

What’s more, Cogs is also up for an Excellence In Design award from the Independent Games Festival. Winners will be announced March 11. Congrats to both!

Related

Five MIT-Developed Video Games that Revolutionized the Industry

Even More Groundbreaking Alumni-Developed Video Games

 

Hack Alert: Engineered Body Parts

Bioengineering hack on Feb. 7. Photo: Eric Schmiedl ’09

Hack aficionado and photographer Eric Schmiedl ’09 captured a Feb. 7 hack in photos and this on-the-scene description:

Satirizing MIT’s newest major (Biological Engineering), hackers representing “Stepford Labs” at the MIT Department of Biological Engineering installed a display case full of “enhanced” simulated body parts in MIT’s Infinite Corridor on 2/7/10. The body parts included: a head with a functional video camera replacing an eye, a leg with a power socket, feet with rolling wheels, an “Avatar”-style head, a face with LEDs in the eyes (transmitting “IHTFP” in Morse code), a head with a “Matrix”-style socket in the neck, a neck featuring a jack for “IP over Voice” as well as analog audio, and a hand with a USB “thumb drive.”

See a slide show of the hack photos.

 

What did you do during IAP?

Drum roll, please.

Ernie ’12: Over IAP, I became more Korean, won the 6.190 competition with Ryan, took UPOP, played hockey, went to church, and coded websites.

Jason ’10: I danced excessively for various dance groups on campus.

Pooja ’11: I worked at a strategic healthcare consulting firm, Decision Resources, as an analyst.

Dan ’11: Bonded with the fam. And I guess the LSAT.

Claire ’11: I did the 6.470 web programming competition and went on outdoor adventures with Winter School!

Giulia and Diana ’11: Studied for the MCAT!

Kimmee ’12: I was in course 4 studio 28 hrs a day. ‘Nuff said. Ohhhh but I got an A for the class!

Juhee ’13: Worked in the admissions office!

Ariadne ’10: I practiced twice a day for the varsity swim team, worked for UPOP (the undergraduate practice opportunities program) and attended a course on project management in Vermont.

Ryan ’10: I coded like a fiend over IAP for the 2010 Speech Recognition Competition! (Ed note: So modest; he also WON!)

Elizabeth ’13: I went to Disney World!

Evelyn ’12: I worked at Donorschoose.org – a great nonprofit in NYC.

Troy ’13: I enjoyed the sun back home!

Tina ’12: I set up a chapter of Leadership Training Institute in Brazil.

Jamie ’11: I did an externship at a Medical Devices start up!

Leigh ’10: I took an HST class in which I dissected a cadaver.

Jess ’11: I participated in MLK Seminar and completed an installation about minorities in media.

Chris ‘10: I backpacked through Europe with 2 of my friends- 10 countries in 31 days!

Tom ‘10: I built a ceramic water filter factory in Northern Ghana.

Beth ‘10: I ice climbed and hiked in the pretty Patagonian mountains of Chile!

And finally, a friend who shall remain nameless, just walked into my room after having a little too much fun at a Super Bowl party at his frat. I asked him to tell me what he did during IAP in a sentence.

“I just worked in my…” His eyes widened and he was silent for a few moments.

“…I need to go into lab right now. To check on my cellies…”

With that, he turned on his heel and walked out of my room.

I’m worried for the cellies [sic].

 

CubeSats:Tiny Satellites for the Future

About a dozen miniature satellites, about the size of Rubik’s Cubes, are circling the Earth taking simple measurements on, for example, Earth’s atomosphere. The numbers of this tiny cohort of cube satellites or CubeSats may swell if a key limitation—lack of on-board propulsion systems—is resolved.

CubeSats may multiply with a little MIT help. Graphic: Christine Daniloff

Paulo Lozano SM ’93, PhD ’03 hopes to do just that. Lozano, the H.N. Slater Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, is designing a tiny propulsion system that could allow the economy-sized satellites to travel great distances and take on tasks such as searching for planets outside this solar system.

His technology is a leap ahead of existing chemical propulsion systems that require substantial fuel supplies. He is building a system that relies on an electric system that can produce a more efficient thrust and be small enough to fit the tiny satellite. The energy would come from a technology based on the process of extracting and accelerating charged ions. He plans to complete a prototype of the system, about the size of a computer chip, by summer.

Learn how the technology works in an MIT News Office article.

 

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—Feb. 6, 2010

A Chinese smoker in Suzhou (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.

 

What’s the Most Important Profession in America According to Teens?

Findings from the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index. Teachers rank highest, followed by doctors, scientists, military personnel, engineers, and politicians.

If you had to choose, which profession would you say contributes most to society’s well-being? According to the recent Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey that gauges kids’ perceptions about invention and innovation, teens rate teachers highest, followed by doctors (see graphic). Less than one-fifth of respondents viewed scientists as having the highest impact on society and only 5 percent chose engineers.

One reason might be because students simply aren’t aware what professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) do and don’t have suitable role models. But the good news is that teens are excited to learn. Indeed, 77 percent were interested in pursuing a STEM career, and 85 percent wish they knew more about STEM in order to create or invent something. The most effective way to engage them is through hands-on activities with enthusiastic mentors and teachers. Passion seems to be essential. More than half of respondents (55 percent) would be more interested in STEM simply by having teachers who enjoy the subjects they teach.

The most inspiring training grounds, teens indicated, were field trips to view STEM in action and places outside the classroom where they can build things and conduct experiments (53 percent).

Learn more about the Invention Index’s findings and how you can mentor students in STEM subjects.

 

#1 University Web Site: MIT

A university’s Web page is an institution’s new front door since many prospective students virtually visit colleges these days and alumni are scattered worldwide. Good thing MIT is on top of that. In fact, MIT’s Web site has just been named the top university Web site by 4 International Colleges and Universities, which bills itself as an online directory of accredited, four-year institutions around the world.

A New York Times article wrote: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was deemed No. 1 in Web popularity, followed by Stanford University, Harvard, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Inquiring minds at MIT wanted to know just what was the criteria? 4ICU’s response: “The algorythm is based on three web metrics. Page rank of the home page (i.e. www.mit), Alexa Traffic Rank of the entire site, and number of inbound links (Yahoo!) pointing to the entire site pages.”

In fact, OpenCourseWare Executive Director Cecilia d’Oliveira says MIT has been ranked #1 for several years by a Spanish research group’s Webometrics Ranking of World Universities. That ranking is based on global performance and visibility of the universities with points given for criteria ranging from Nobel prizes to highly cited researchers to size of the site.  The MIT Web site has well over one million pages!

 

Media Lab Prof: Bionic Limbs are Hot

Credit: Howard Schatz via aimeemullins.com

Hugh Herr SM ‘93, associate professor and director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, contributed to a fascinating article in Fast Company about the appeal of prosthetics from not just a functional standpoint, but also a social and even sexual one.

Herr, who lost both his legs below the knee in a rock climbing accident at age 17, has robotic ankles that can propel him across the room in 400-watt bursts. “When the technology works,” he told Fast Company, “when it can make you stronger or faster than you were, it overnight becomes sexy and powerful and threatening. Overnight.”

Read more about Herr and recent advancements in prostheses.

 

Imperfect@MIT and Camp Kesem Founder Earns a Rhodes

MIT Camp Kesem founder Caroline Huang enjoys arts and crafts with a camper.

Caroline Huang ’10, a brain and cognitive sciences major, is heading to Oxford next year as a Rhodes Scholar, based not only on her academic achievements but also on her work establishing an MIT branch of a summer camp for kids affected by cancer and cofounding a quirky club called Imperfect@MIT.

“Camp Kesem provides a free, week-long summer camp for kids whose parents have or have had cancer. Kesem is the Hebrew word for magic; our goal at Camp Kesem is to provide these children with a magical week that allows them to escape the harsh realities of cancer,” Huang said in a GoCollege blog post. Huang, whose paternal grandparents died of cancer in close succession, wanted to provide an experience that involved fun, leadership skills, and emotional support.

The idea for imperfect@MIT came from a study that found undergraduates felt pressure to be effortlessly smart, accomplished, attractive, athletic, and popular—a phenomenon called the myth of effortless perfection. An imperfect@MIT brochure, written by students, describes how to recover from setbacks.

“This myth manifests a little differently at MIT, in that some students brag about taking the most classes and having the most work, and consider sleep deprivation a badge of honor. This lifestyle puts students at risk of burnout, especially when they are accustomed to standing out the same way they did in high school: succeeding on intelligence alone, putting minimal work into classes, concentrating on a smorgasbord of activities, and somehow achieving enviable results. I have definitely had days when I felt that the work I was doing was not getting me anywhere, but the imperfect@MIT message reminds me that it is perfectly natural to struggle sometimes—and that sometimes struggles sweeten the subsequent rewards.”

Huang is interested in careers involving health policy or psychology and plans to focus her doctoral work at Oxford will examine the ethical and policy implications of the genetic testing. Learn more about the Rhodes application process, Camp Kesem, and Imperfect@ MIT inthe GoCollege post.

 

Talk Energy and Entrepreneurship at the Global Startup Workshop, March 24–26

Register today for the MIT Global Startup Workshop.

Considering innovative start-up ideas? Looking to expand your entrepreneurial network on a global scale? Attend the MIT Global Startup Workshop, the world’s premier learning and networking opportunity for entrepreneurs. This year’s workshop will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland, March 24–26, to the theme of Conquering the Economic Crisis with Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Green Energy. Its focus will be to interactively explore how to harness the powers of entrepreneurship and green-energy technologies to recover from the current economic crisis and create long-term sustainability. Iceland, a world leader in the emerging field of green energy, is the only country generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

The student-run three-day conference is geared to up-and-coming and established entrepreneurial leaders, financiers, professors, students, government agents, and private parties looking to stimulate discussion, generate ideas, and share best entrepreneurial practices. It features inspirational talks, expert panel discussions, interactive case studies, breakout sessions, an elevator pitch competition, a business plan competition workshop, and plenty of opportunities for facilitated networking with participants from more than 60 nations. You’ll leave with a global support network for all stages of entrepreneurial activity.

“Three power-packed days—fun, eye-opening, inspirational.”
—GSW attendee

This year’s confirmed keynote speakers include:

• Alf Bjørseth (founder of Renewable Energy Corporation)
• Robin Chase SM ’86 (founder of Zipcar and GoLoco)
• Nader F. Darehshori (former CEO of Houghton Mifflin)
• Kenneth P. Morse (founder of 3Com and five other companies).

Join this unique community, experience the dynamic forum, and help build the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Register today.