December 12, 2009
Waiters leaving the kitchen of Daniel Boulud's great French restaurant in New York, Daniel (© Owen Franken).
Curious about Owen Franken? See 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. And, view his exhibition, A Photography Retrospective, through early January 2010 at the Gallery at Vivid Solutions, 2208 Martin Luther King Ave. SE, Washington, DC.
December 11, 2009
Design Squad Host Nate Ball ’05, SM ’07 stands ready (on roof) while Zach Tribbett ’12 tests a T-shirt shooter for the WNBA that can reach an arena's upper deck.
Ask MIT engineers to help create a TV show and what do you get? Design Squad, PBS’s Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning show that aims to educate and excite tweens and teens about engineering. On it, teams of teenage contestants design and build problem-solving products for actual clients, such as a remote-controlled aquatic pet rescue vehicle for the New Orleans Fire Department or a portable peanut-butter-making machine for a women’s collective in Haiti, while competing for a $10,000 scholarship. Filmed near Boston, Design Squad is half show, half engineering outreach. The companion Web site offers hands-on activities, educators’ guides, videos of working engineers, and more. Watch the show.
As host of the show, Ball would monitor teams' progress and scout for lessons to emphasize to viewers through narrated animations.
Several members of the MIT community have been instrumental in the development and production of the show. To name a few, Daniel Frey PhD ’97, associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering systems, served as the show’s first advisor, in 2002, and created the curriculum in collaboration with producers at WGBH-TV Boston. He also oversaw UROP students participating in the show. David Wallace SM ’91, PhD ’95, professor of mechanical engineering, has created design challenges, served as technical advisor on set, mentored teams, and aided post-production. Inventor Nate Ball ’05, SM ’07 hosts the show and some MIT students have been cast members.
The show aims to introduce the process and practice of engineering and demystify it as a possible career choice. “[TV] can certainly offer exposure to the world of engineering in a much more visual and experiential way than you can get otherwise,” says Ball, who loved to tinker and build things as a kid but didn’t know what mechanical engineers did until he went to college. Still, reality TV as a teaching tool does have its demands. Ball has to balance a mix of excitement, interest, competence, and zaniness and also works to buoy and motivate contestants during frustrating moments so they don’t just reflect aggravation on camera.
Tribbett during the season finale. Contestants had to build a boat on Misery Island in Salem Sound and make it a half mile back to shore. Ball considers this a successful challenge. "It was a great mix of we've got to get this right or we're going to sink."
Tight time and budget constraints, which prevent overtime, offer some of the greatest struggles. Contestants have 16 hours to complete challenges, yet they can be held up waiting to film key moments, like joining two pieces of a design together. “Whenever we were going on to the next step in the process, they’d have to get that on camera,” says Zach Tribbett ’12, a math and brain and cognitive sciences major from West Chester, Pennsylvania, who appeared on the third (and most recent) season. If the camera operator was occupied, contestants had to wait. Then, they’d have to restage the shot from different angles. A two-minute procedure could take 20 minutes to an hour. (more…)
December 10, 2009
Hypothetically speaking, let’s say it’s peak flu season, you’re a little run down from the usual holiday stressors, and now you have to journey six hours south to your in-laws house for a weekend of winter festivities. Worried about getting sick? The folks at MIT Medical think you might be, so they put together a four minute video that’s rich with retro footage and dead-panned lines to teach the MIT community how to stay healthy while traveling, especially on airplanes. Dr. Howard Heller, chief of medicine at MIT Medical, addresses things like airplane air (will it make you sick?), the dirtiest place in the plane (is it the bathroom?), and how to eat snacks from a flight attendant with a coughing problem.
Watch the video below or on TechTV:
December 9, 2009
Perhaps it was the Mystery Hunt-like resourcefulness required or researchers applying their social media savvy or how they worked the money, but when the federal agency that founded the Internet launched the red balloon challenge last weekend, MIT won the prize—and fast.
Balloon locations courtesy DARPA.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, set up a contest challenging some 4,300 teams to locate 10 red weather balloons scattered across the U.S. on Dec. 5. DARPA, which wanted a better understanding of how information is disseminated through social networks, asked the teams to establish viral networks of spotters.
Late Saturday, DARPA announced an MIT team was the first to locate all the balloons and won the $40,000 first prize—in just eight hours and 56 minutes.
The MIT group, a small team at the MIT Media Laboratory Human Dynamics Group led by physicist Riley Crane, a post doc, won by enlisting the help of more than 4,000 spotters reporting via Facebook and Twitter. Their invitation to participate offered to share the money with accurate spotters and the charities of their choice—as well as people in their social networks.
“We’re giving $2000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates, but that’s not all — we’re also giving $1000 to the person who invited them. Then we’re giving $500 whoever invited the inviter, and $250 to whoever invited them, and so on…,” MIT noted on its Red Balloon Challenge Recruitment web page.
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform an experiment at a massive scale,” he told the New York Times.
December 8, 2009
Image: ©istockphoto.com/Viorika.
Coordinators of Charm School, that much-beloved Independent Activities Period (IAP) tradition where MIT students brush up on various life skills, are looking for alumni to extol the real-world virtues of these proficiencies—such as table manners and handshaking—to illustrate their value. Has your mastery of small talk or networking helped you get ahead or make an important connection? Do you rock the art of nonverbal communication? Has your ability to handle difficult people or situations earned you praise? If so, please submit a quote for possible inclusion on posters to be displayed at the Jan. 29 Charm School session.
Check out a list of possible topics to comment on. You don’t need to have attended Charm School; you just have to indicate how your mastery of etiquette, manners, communication, and/or personal skills have benefitted you at some point in your life. Please submit quotes by Dec. 16 and include your degree year and course number(s) and current occupation/endeavors.
If you prefer to disseminate your wisdom in person, volunteer to be on the Charm School “faculty” and run a course. Or, if you want to learn some life skills yourself, feel free to join in the fun on Jan. 29, 2010, from noon–4:00 p.m. at the Stratton Student Center.
December 8, 2009
When I first heard about Padma Lakshmi coming to MIT , the details (i.e., what for?) were inconsequential in my decision to attend her speech. As the host of one of my favorite TV shows, Top Chef, she was the second most famous person to visit MIT this semester (second to…well…Barack Obama, if you’ve heard of him) and I figured it’d be memorable and fun. Little did I know she was coming to MIT to help launch a new research center for women’s diseases; MIT is the first engineering school to take on such an endeavor! Quite the historical step!
Padma came to MIT to discuss her battle with Endometriosis, a common but not well known disease that affects 10 million women in the United States and over 90 million worldwide. It is highly treatable when detected early…unfortunately, it usually is not. The disease causes a great deal of pain and in its later stages, infertility. But Padma spoke to us (very eloquently and poignantly, I might add) on Friday while six months pregnant, and explained the path of misdiagnoses that finally lead to the correct diagnosis, treatment, and eventual triumph over the disease.
My favorite part of Padma’s lecture was when she mentioned the obvious dichotomy between wanting to be a private person through keeping her personal life confidential but also needing to share such a personal part of her life in order to spread awareness about Endometriosis. She reconciled this by always keeping the greater good in mind. “I asked myself, ‘what’s more important? My life or the lives of millions of others?’ I chose the latter.” 
For more information on MIT’s new research center, check out: http://web.mit.edu/cgr/
For more information on Endometriosis, check out: http://www.endometriosisassn.org/
December 7, 2009
Geeta Dayal and her new book.
Geeta Dayal ’01, who writes about visual art, sound, and technology, has just published a book on musician Brian Eno, Another Green World – and won recognition for her edgy work.
Dayal, who earned degrees in brain and cognitive sciences and in humanities, has been named one of 26 recipients of a 2009 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She won $30,000 for a publication titled Locative Art and Urban Space: Mapping an Emerging Field, which will explore topics from Christian Nold’s emotional cartography to Stefan Schemat’s GPS-enabled aural landscapes. Her work will incorporate multimedia content and be made available online and on handheld mobile devices.
Check out her blog, the Original Soundtrack, to learn about her work, reflections on turning 30, and a recent article for Rhizome at the New Museum titled “Brian Eno, Peter Schmidt, and Cybernetics.”
December 6, 2009
Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70
The end-of-term crunch has begun, with finals just a week away. The students are tired and fall asleep easily. I, like other faculty, am wondering how I will ever get a final exam prepared.
It was in this season, when my daughter was an MIT freshman, that I asked her how things were going. “Ok,” she grunted.
She graduated from Concord Academy, a private high school on the difficult end of the spectrum—so difficult that when she was there, graduated students coming back to visit would always tell the current students not to worry about college. It will be no big deal, they would say, no harder and probably easier than Concord Academy.
So, trying to provoke my daugher into supplying some details about how things were going, I asked her if what those Concord Academy graduates predicted was really true—transitioning to MIT was no big deal. “No, Daddy” she said, “that’s only true for ordinary schools—like Harvard and Yale.”
Vive la différence!
December 5, 2009
Picking saffron from the flowers in La Mancha, Spain (© Owen Franken).
Curious about Owen Franken? See 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. And, view his exhibition, A Photography Retrospective, through early January 2010 at the Gallery at Vivid Solutions, 2208 Martin Luther King Ave. SE, Washington, DC.
December 4, 2009
The weather is changing, leaves are falling, and finals week is getting closer and closer! This can only mean one thing: winter break and IAP are just around the corner! As some students pack their bags awaiting a well-earned break, many others are preparing for amazing endeavors during the Independent Activities Period (IAP). While countless students are exploring the Institute’s on-campus opportunities such as UROPs, classes, and sports, some students are venturing past state and national boundaries to participate in internships and travel around the world. For example, my brother Kevin, a junior at MIT, will be shacking up with a few friends in an apartment in New York City while working at Deutsch Bank throughout IAP. Jason Scott, Class of ’09 Class President, will be travelling to Turkey and Eastern Europe, something he’s always wanted to do. Jason says “It’s amazing to have the opportunity to take a trip like this, and I would not have the time without IAP.”
Even for those staying at MIT during IAP, the possibilities are endless! The activities during IAP cover every facet of an MIT student’s desires. Several of my floormates plan to take a truffle-making class, some are taking a snowboarding class, and some, including myself, are taking classes to earn units and get ahead in their majors. From sports to classes to even truffles, MIT students are taking full advantage of all that the Institute has to offer. And for those that are using their IAP to sit back, relax, and enjoy a month-long winter break… hey, that’s not a bad idea either!
To see all of the activities during IAP, see http://web.mit.edu/iap/
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