November 21, 2009
Villagers in rural Egypt (© 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.
November 20, 2009
On Veterans Day, an Institute holiday, MIT students got the rare opportunity to take a day off in the middle of the week. Some relaxed in their dorms, some explored Boston, and some participated in events on campus such as Katwalk, a fashion show put on by the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.
Katwalk allowed students to strut their stuff on the runway and featured designers such as Marc Jacobs, American Apparel, and Club Monaco. I photographed the event and I must say that I was surprised by the wide range of outfits that the MIT students chose to model. From bright pink cardigans to dresses made out of cardboard, the outfits modeled in Katwalk showcased the creative facet of MIT students. The audience definitely got their money’s worth, whether they were dazzled by fabulous designer dresses to or laughing at bizarre and hilarious outfits.
All proceeds from Katwalk went towards CASA, an organization that advocates for abused and neglected children. Troy Astorino, a freshman at MIT who modeled in Katwalk, says that, “It was fun getting dressed up and walking the runway, and the fact that it benefited charity made the whole experience so much more rewarding.” It just goes to show that the students at MIT know how to have fun and think of others in the process.
November 19, 2009
“When you’re faced with the entire living kingdom as a materials library, what do you design?” That’s the way Wired magazine describes the challenge at the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM), the premiere undergraduate synthetic biology competition held at MIT Oct. 29-Nov. 2.
Rainbow-haired iGEM winners, a global group.
The Wired story, written as a first-person account by a friend of the winning team, describes arriving at MIT with the crew from the UK: “seven rainbow-haired undergraduates who spent their summer engineering a new kind of E.coli that secretes a palette of seven colors, christened E. chromi after a tense online vote.”
IGEM began in 2003 as a month-long Independent Activities Period (IAP) course where students designed biological systems to make cells blink. In 2009, more than 110 teams, including 1200 participants, took part. Last summer these student teams began working at their own schools—using a kit from the Registry of Standard Biological Parts plus their own inventions—to build biological systems and operate them in living cells. Essentially they customized bacteria to do their bidding.
Curious? Check out iGEM ideas from the winners:
November 18, 2009
How does someone go from studying engineering to writing for television? Saladin K. Patterson ’94 did it by studying TV like an engineer.
Saladin Patterson on the set of The Bernie Mac Show.
Ever the class clown, Patterson thought a show about him and his friend would be a hit. So on a whim in 1995 he scrutinized popular comedies—Frasier, Seinfeld, Mad About You, and Ellen—with an engineer’s analytical, process-oriented approach to understand their structure then wrote spec scripts. “The first thing I realized is that a TV show about me and my friend Rich would not be funny,” Patterson says.
Still, he continued writing and left a graduate psychology program at Vanderbilt after landing a prestigious Disney|ABC Writing Fellowship—his entrée into Hollywood. He learned about pitching and fleshing out ideas and writing scripts from industry insiders and forged important connections with executives that helped him move up the ranks. During his fellowship, for example, he met former Harvard Lampoon writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss, who offered advice, an internship, and, finally, a staff writer position on Teen Angel. Before long, Patterson was writing for Frasier then The Bernie Mac Show. He’s especially proud of his work on Frasier. “That was like a dream come true,” he says. “I was a huge fan before I became a writer. It was the first spec script I wrote.” Most thrilling was tape night, when he could witness a live audience responding to his jokes. “It gives you a rush. It’s something you can’t get anywhere else,” he says.
These days, Patterson is a coexecutive producer on USA Network’s dramedy Psych about a fake psychic detective. Television writing is highly collaborative. A team of writers and producers (who are senior-level writers who also work on set throughout an episode’s production) brainstorm story arcs and characters. Then, one or sometimes two people end up writing the actual script. Many writers new to the LA scene, Patterson says, struggle with assimilating their writing habits with the group collaboration and strict deadlines of TV, but he was well-suited to the process and structure. “At MIT you have to learn how to organize yourself within time constraints,” he says. “Television shows in general follow a universal structure,” which doesn’t mean the stories themselves are formulaic. “But there are formulas in television you can learn and exercise.” (more…)
November 17, 2009
The structure is comprised of a filigree central array of columns. Photo: The Cloud
Though still a few years off, an international team of artists, architects, and engineers, which includes MIT professor Carlo Ratti, recently released plans for a 400-ft tall spherical cloud structure that would rest atop long, thin towers and be a center-piece of the 2012 London Olympics.
Designers of the otherworldly “Cloud,” as the structure is called, hope to fund the project by soliciting millions of micro-donations. Ratti, who is the associate professor of practice and director of MIT’s senseable city laboratory, told the BBC that the project was highly scalable: “We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached,” he said in an interview. “It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud.”
People can choose to ascend to the Cloud by foot or bicycle. Photo: The Cloud
In addition to being both structural elements and habitable spaces, the spherical units that make up the Cloud could be used to display real-time information about the games, crowd sizes, and weather. The plans call for them to be constructed out of a plastic called Ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), which is the same material that was used to build the Beijing Aquatic Center.
London mayor Boris Johnson put the Cloud on a shortlist of potential tourist attractions to be built in the Olympic Park. According to the BBC, he is still deciding if it will be built.
Curious? Learn more by following the Cloud on Facebook and Twitter, or watch the YouTube video below:
November 16, 2009
Sloan grad student and politician Leland Cheung
Apparently being a grad student at both MIT and Harvard isn’t time-consuming enough for some people. They just want more.
Sloan graduate student Leland Cheung must be one of those people. He is set to become the first university student, first Asian-American, and the youngest current member of the Cambridge City Council, after winning the Nov. 3 election. In January, Cheung will be sworn in for a two-year term. He says his priorities are job creation, education, affordable housing, university/community relations, and transparent government
While in office Cheung will continue pursuing an MBA at Sloan and a master’s of public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School in a dual degree program. At Sloan, he is on the entrepreneurship and innovation track focusing on for-profit and not-for-profit entrepreneurship.
“I decided to take this on this role because I saw an opportunity to make a positive difference in the community. Public service is a priority for me. If every MIT student who’s currently balancing coursework, hobbies, community involvement, start-ups, friends, and a host of other demands waited until they didn’t have anything else going on to try and make a positive difference in the world, MIT wouldn’t be nearly the dynamic engine of innovation and change that it is today,” says Cheung. “It’ll be a challenge, but I’m hoping to work as a team with the other City Councilors so we don’t have to be all things to all people. I’m looking forward to supporting their initiatives as they support my initiatives to improve town-gown relations and support small businesses and entrepreneurs.”
The Wicked Local Cambridge Web site endorsed Cheung with these words:
“Cheung’s goal of strengthening ties between town and gown would be an asset to Cambridge. If there’s one problem in this city, it’s the consistent tension between the universities and longtime residents (the arrest of Henry Louis Gates might be emblematic of this problem). The 31-year-old Harvard-MIT joint MBA student would be the youngest councilor and the first Asian-American to serve on the council if elected.”
November 15, 2009
Thankfully, thanksgiving is next week and I’ll be able to go home and exchange my light winter coat for my heavy winter coat. The semester is weeks away from being over, and I have officially had to retire my flip flops. Luckily, we still have memories of summer to sustain us through the winter months. I thought it’d be fun to follow up with the “what are YOU doing this summer?” post from last spring and show you a few friends in action during Summer ‘09.
Ariadne Smith '10 (course 2) in Paris, where she interned at Electricite de France.
Sam O'Keefe '09 (course 1) in front of the Roman Aqueducts ("you can smell the engineering"-Sam). Sam participated in Misti Spain and interned at a Renewable Energy Policy Lobby in Madrid.
Emily Onufer '10 (course 20) interned at St. Jude Medical Devices -a company specializing in cardiac medical technology, in Minneapolis, MN.
Will Gibson '10 (course 20) UROP'd in the Edelman lab at HST, conducting studies on syndecan-1, heparanase and occasionally leaving lab to hang out with me 
November 14, 2009
Boarding a USO flight in Tikrit, Baghdad (© 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.
November 13, 2009
Who doesn’t love a good pop-up book? And members of the MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech group have found a way to make them even better. Electronic Popables combine traditional pop-up mechanisms with thin, flexible, paper-based electronics (the circuitry is made with paint on the paper) to create an interactive book that sparkles, sings, reacts, and moves. The book was built by summer UROP student Jie Qi, who attends Columbia University, with assistance from Assistant Professor Leah Buechley, director of the High-Low Tech Group, and Tshen Chew ’11.
The first video shows what the book can do. In the second, Buechley explains how it all works.
November 12, 2009
Long jump contenders have quite a history at MIT. In 1936, senior Stanley Johnson was an MIT senior on a mission, competing for an Olympic berth to Berlin against the likes of Jesse Owens, Ohio State; Kermit King, Pittsburg, Kansas; and Al Olson, USC. He was the only non-scholarship athlete vying for this honor.
Stanley Johnson ’36
Although Johnson fell a bit short in the Olympic trials, his record long jump of 24’2” at MIT still stands! In hot pursuit is Stephen Morton ’10 who finished 8th at the 2008 NCAA National Division III Championships with a long jump of 22’3”. His personal best at MIT is 23’8”, just 6 inches short of Stan’s record.
“The story is a great one for MIT and for collegiate sports in general,” says Professor Donald Morrison ’61, PhD ’82, a member of the “top 6” long jump club at MIT. “Stanley has done something quite special and we want to celebrate his accomplishment as well as give Stephen Morton the incentive to leap to greater distances before he graduates in 2010.”
Read the full story to find out about the rest of the top six long jumpers from MIT.
Subscribe to Slice
MIT Alumni News