All events

Writing Together Online offers the structured writing time to help you stay focused and productive during the busy fall months. Join our daily 90-minute writing sessions and become part of a community of scholars who connect online, set realistic goals, and write together in the spirit of accountability and camaraderie. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. The program is open to all MIT students, postdocs, faculty, staff, and affiliates who are working on papers, proposals, thesis/dissertation chapters, application materials, and other writing projects.Please register for any number of sessions:Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:00–10:30am (EST) Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00–9:30am and 9:30-11:00am (EST)For more information and to register, go to this link or check the WCC website. Please spread the word and join with colleagues and friends. MIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a gift-card raffle.

Writing Together Online offers the structured writing time to help you stay focused and productive during the busy fall months. Join our daily 90-minute writing sessions and become part of a community of scholars who connect online, set realistic goals, and write together in the spirit of accountability and camaraderie. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. The program is open to all MIT students, postdocs, faculty, staff, and affiliates who are working on papers, proposals, thesis/dissertation chapters, application materials, and other writing projects.Please register for any number of sessions:Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:00–10:30am (EST) Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00–9:30am and 9:30-11:00am (EST)For more information and to register, go to this link or check the WCC website. Please spread the word and join with colleagues and friends. MIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a gift-card raffle.

On view October 1 -- December 11, 2025This exhibition draws on archival materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC) to explore a century of cultural heritage preservation in Aleppo, Syria. It takes as its point of departure the work of Kamil al-Ghazzi (1853–1933), the pioneering Aleppine historian whose influential three-volume chronicle, Nahr al-Dhahab fī Tārīkh Ḥalab (The River of Gold in the History of Aleppo), was published between 1924 and 1926.Ink, Stone, and Silver Light presents three modes of documentation—manuscript, built form, and photography—through which Aleppo’s urban memory has been recorded and preserved. Featuring figures such as Michel Écochard and Yasser Tabbaa alongside al-Ghazzi, the exhibition traces overlapping efforts to capture the spirit of a city shaped by commerce, craft, and coexistence. At a time when Syria again confronts upheaval and displacement, these archival fragments offer models for preserving the past while envisioning futures rooted in dignity, knowledge, and place.

Janet Echelman's Remembering the Future widens our perspective in time, giving sculptural form to the history of the Earth's climate from the last ice age to the present moment, and then branching out to visualize multiple potential futures.Constructed from colored twines and ropes that are braided, knotted and hand-spliced to create a three-dimensional form, the immersive artwork greets you with its grand scale presiding over the MIT Museum lobby.This large-scale installation by 2022-2024 MIT Distinguished Visiting Artist Janet Echelman, was developed during her residency at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). Architect, engineer and MIT Associate Professor Caitlin Mueller collaborated on the development of the piece.The title, Remembering the Future was inspired by the writings commonly attributed to Søren Kierkegaard: "The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have."As the culmination of three years of dedicated research and collaboration, this site-specific installation explores Earth's climate timeline, translating historical records and possible futures into sculptural form.Echelman's climate research for this project was guided by Professor Raffaele Ferrari and the MIT Lorenz Center, creators of En-ROADS simulator which uses current climate data and modeling to visualize the impact of environmental policies and actions on energy systems.Learn more about Janet Echelman and the MIT Museum x CAST Collaboration.Learn more about the exhibition at the MIT Museum.

L-MAP will introduce postdocs to the interpersonal and psychological foundations of leading teams and managing people. The program will consist of 6 units that use case studies to help participants change attitudes, behaviors, and decisions related to conflict management, communication strategies and navigating organizational hierarchies. Postdocs will:Engage in hands-on 90-minute sessions for 6 weeks Discuss case studies developed by postdocs for postdocs Practice strategies to management collaborations Develop your leadership brand Expand your network with postdocs from Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and MIT All postdocs at GT, VT, and MIT are invited to participate. Dr. Karena Nguyen, Assistant Director of Postdoctoral Services at GT will be the main facilitator.This event is only open to MIT Postdocs. Please note the registration link is for SIX meetings on the following Thursdays from 10:30am-12:00 noon pm ET. Please register through here.October 9 October 16 October 23 October 30 November 5 November 13

Professor Cristóbal Bellolio will discuss Chile’s recent social and political transformations, from the 2019 social uprising and failed constitutional reforms to shifts in party dynamics. He will also frame the upcoming presidential race in the context of ongoing economic and security challenges. Lunch will be provided.Moderated by Valentin Figueroa, Assistant Professor of Political Science, MIT.Please RSVP here.

Are you interested in disinformation, political science, and lunch? Join us for an in-person discussion of the book On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy by Lee McIntyre. This is a small group discussion based on themes found in the book. Available to check out in any of the MIT Libraries locations. People who have not read the book but are interested in the discussion are welcome and encouraged to participate. Lunch will be provided.This event is open to the MIT Community only.More information about the book:On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy is a powerful, pocket-sized citizen’s guide on how to fight back against the disinformation campaigns that are imperiling American democracy. In On Disinformation, Lee McIntyre shows how the war on facts began, and how ordinary citizens can fight back against the scourge of disinformation that is now threatening the very fabric of our society. Drawing on his twenty years of experience as a scholar of science denial, McIntyre explains how autocrats wield disinformation to manipulate a populace and deny obvious realities, why the best way to combat disinformation is to disrupt its spread, and most importantly, how we can win the war on truth.

Learn how to apply your knowledge from our Introduction to GIS workshop to analyze and interpret geospatial data. In this workshop, you'll learn about geoprocessing tools for raster, vector, and tabular data in GIS software. You will have the option of completing short exercises using QGIS or ArcGIS Pro as well as a longer exercise after the workshop for additional learning.

Ten minutes for your mind@2:50 every day at 2:50 pm in multiple time zones:Europa@2:50, EET, Athens, Helsinki (UTC+2) (7:50 am EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88298032734Atlantica@2:50, EST, New York, Toronto (UTC-4) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85349851047Pacifica@2:50, PST, Los Angeles, Vancouver (UTC=7) (5:50 pm EST) https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85743543699Almost everything works better again if you unplug it for a bit, including your mind. Stop by and unplug. Get the benefits of mindfulness without the fuss.@2:50 meets at the same time every single day for ten minutes of quiet together.No pre-requisite, no registration needed.Visit the website to view all @2:50 time zones each day.at250.org or at250.mit.edu

We hope you can join us for the 12th annual conference of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy (MIT GCFP), this year on the timely theme of better measuring government assets and liabilities. Globally, growing government debt burdens and structural imbalances threaten fiscal sustainability. Yet projections based on official statistics reveal only part of the picture. A reevaluation of fiscal sustainability through the lens of financial economics can better inform policymakers and the public about the true magnitude of imbalances and the risks they entail. The conference will bring together leading academic, policymakers and practitioners to discuss these challenges and policy options for mitigating them, and to explore the implications for interest rates, financial markets, and the macroeconomy.The conference, co-sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, will be held in-person in at the Boston Marriott Cambridge in the heart of Kendall Square and will also be livestreamed. Attendance is free, but registration is required to join in person and space is limited.

Do you have data? (Who doesn't?!?) Learn about the five basic things you can do now to manage your data for future happiness. These tools and techniques support practical data management and you can start using them immediately. Work with your personal data or research data, but start working now to ensure a future you who is secure in the existence, understandability, and reusability of your data!

Talk Title: Hormone-mediated multi-day reorganization of cortical dynamics during female social choiceAbstract: Sex-steroid hormones powerfully influence internal states, mood, and social drive. In many species, including mice, females exhibit increased sexual receptivity during the peri-ovulatory phase following an estrogen surge. However, we lack understanding of how these hormones alter neural computations to regulate social behaviors, particularly their effects on neural dynamics in key regions for top-down control of social choice, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). One potential, but unexplored role of the estrogen surge is to enable persistent neural states to facilitate costly behaviors during the reproductive window. To test this, here we manipulate estrogen levels in females across a multi-day social choice paradigm. We quantify moment-to-moment behavioral changes based on features from multi-animal pose tracking using SLEAP, alongside chronic Neuropixels recordings from all mPFC subdivisions longitudinally across long-term hormone shifts. Female subjects reversibly change their social preference from females to males following estrogenic surge. Interestingly, higher estrogen levels also lead to more persistent behaviors. Using a hidden Markov model to segment the mPFC population activity in an unsupervised manner reveals neural state sequences that govern the cortical dynamics and and track the behavioral states with increased accuracy and persistence in high-estrogenic states. Dimensionality reduction and latent-space analyses suggest distinct ensembles in mPFC encoding male, female, and self-directed behaviors, and the ability to decode these states is significantly improved in the high estrogen states. Tracking day-to-day single-unit identity reveals that the estrogen surge reduces representational drift in social tuning. Crucially, we see increased functional coupling within the mPFC network, particularly among similarly tuned ensembles. Together, our work demonstrates that sex steroid hormones reshape female social preference and choice persistence by remodeling cortical function across multiple levels, from underlying functional connectivity to neural coding and emergent network dynamics.Bio: Meenakshi Asokan is a postdoctoral fellow in Annegret Falkner’s lab at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, with a Neurobiology concentration from Harvard University in 2022 and her B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering, with a minor in Biomedical Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2015.Followed by a reception with food and drink in 3rd floor atrium

Andres Santos (University of California Los Angeles)

Yannai Gonczarowski Harvard University (joint with Sergiu Hart)

Join us for a workshop on how to write your personal and research statements for the NSF-GRFP application. While the program is clear that you need to address the intellectual merit and broader impacts in both statements, figuring out how to do so in a unique and engaging way can be a challenge. We’ll talk about tips and strategies to make your writing more effective so that you can strengthen your application.

A series of talks on OR-related topics. For more information see: https://orc.mit.edu/seminars-events/

Speaker: Eitan Tadmor (University of Maryland, College Park)Title: Swarm-Based Gradient Descent: A Multi-Agent Approach for Non-Convex OptimizationAbstract: We discuss a novel class of swarm-based gradient descent (SBGD) methods for non-convex optimization. The swarm consists of agents, each is identified with position, x, and mass, m. There are two key ingredients in the SBGD dynamics:(i) persistent transition of mass from agents at high to lower ground; and(ii) time stepping protocol which decreases with m.The interplay between positions and masses leads to dynamic distinction between 'leaders' and 'explorers': heavier agents lead the swarm near local minima with small time steps; lighter agents use larger time steps to explore the landscape in search of improved global minimum, by reducing the overall 'loss' of the swarm. Convergence analysis and numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of SBGD method as a global optimizer.

Speaker: Sergey Fomin (Michigan)Title: Incidence geometry and tiled surfacesAbstract:We show that various classical theorems of linear incidence geometry, such as the theorems of Pappus, Desargues, Möbius, and so on, can be interpreted as special cases of a general result that involves a tiling of a closed oriented surface by quadrilateral tiles. This yields a general mechanism for producing new incidence theorems and generalizing and interpreting the known ones. This is joint work with Pavlo Pylyavskyy.*Preceded by refreshments at 4pm in the common room.

Speaker: Catherine Cannizzo (Columbia University)Title: Wrapping Lagrangians in the Fukaya category of a symplectic fibrationAbstract: The Fukaya category is an algebraic invariant of symplectic manifolds, with objects given by Lagrangian submanifolds and morphisms given by their intersection points. Mirror symmetry involves a pair of manifolds: given a symplectic manifold, what is its complex mirror manifold? We will show how line bundles on a blow-up of a complex manifold along a submanifold, specifically a deformation to the normal cone, is homologically mirror to the wrapping of Lagrangians around a puncture on the symplectic side in the Fukaya category. This is joint work with Sara Venkatesh.

Speaker: Mikayel Mkrtchyan (MIT)Title: Constructible sheaves, L-functions and base change theoremsAbstract:In this talk, we will give an overview of various foundational tools used for computations in etale cohomology. Time permitting, this may include constructible sheaves, their L-functions and the Grothendieck-Lefschetz trace formula, and the proper base change theorem.

Join us for a rich and interdisciplinary dialogue on the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of trade, security, and migration. This conference is co-sponsored by MIT-Mexico, UNAM Boston and UMass Boston, and will bring together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to explore the evolving dynamics of the U.S.–Mexico relationship.Please RSVP here.SPEAKERS:Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) and domain head of the publics track in the Master of Design Studies Program. Trained as a sociologist, Davis’s research interests include urban governance, urban social movements, the politics of planning, and conflict in cities. Her books include Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011); Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004); Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1994; Spanish translation 1999). In 2023 Davis was named a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIFAR) as well as co-director of its Humanity’s Urban Future program. She is currently completing a book in the history of police corruption and impunity in Mexico.Jorge Capetillo-Ponce is currently associate professor of sociology and Latino studies at University of Massachusetts, Boston. From 2016 to 2022 he was editor of the Sociology of the Caribbean section for the Library of Congress. He also taught courses and gave lectures from 2002-2021 in the culture program at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. Before he joined the faculty of sociology at UMASS Boston in 2002, Professor Capetillo-Ponce worked as executive director of the Mexican Cultural Institute in New York City (2000-2001) as advisor to the Dean of the Graduate Faculty at The New School (1996-2000), and as consultant to Latino/a grassroots organizations in New York City (2000-2002) and Boston (2002-present).Capetillo-Ponce has published close to one hundred essays, studies, reports and journalistic articles on such issues as social theory, race and ethnic relations, immigration, media studies, culture, consumption, art, religion, Latino Studies, Caribbean Studies, Mayan Studies, and US-Mexico relations. He is the co-author of one book (UMBRAL in 2022 with Juan San Juan) and editor of four books: (1) Images of Mexico in the US News Media in 2000; (2) A Foucault for the 21st Century (with Sam Binkley) in 2009; Migrant Marginality: A Transnational Perspective (with Glenn Jacobs and Philip Kretsedemas) in 2016: and Territorios Mayas e Interculturalidad (with Ever Canul) in 2025.José Ignacio Hernández (Caracas, 1974), has a law degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, with a summa cum laude diploma (1997); an advanced study certificate from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (2001) and a Juris Doctor from the Universidad Complutense with a summa cum laude diploma (2002). He is professor of administrative law at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, both in Venezuela. He also teaches economic constitutional law in the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. He has been professor of regulatory framework at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA), also in Venezuela.He is the director of the Law Review of the Law Faculty of the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.He has written more than 100 academic articles published in Venezuela, Colombia, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, USA, Italy, Poland and Spain. He also has written 14 books.Silvia Nuñez Garcia is a researcher at Center for Research on North America, from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she was director between 2009 and 2017. She also had the responsibility of directing the UNAM office in Los Angeles, California during 2021 and 2022. In 2019, the Government of Canada, through its Embassy in Mexico, awarded her the “Canada-Mexico 75” recognition for her contribution to strengthening academic ties between the two nations. Throughout her career, she has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Michigan State University and other prestigious institutions such as Georgetown University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Likewise, she was distinguished as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the United States in 1999. She has postgraduate studies in Sociology from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, UNAM. Member of the International Steering Committee of the Metropolis International Network; She served as Vice President of the Mexican Association for International Studies (AMEI). She works as a professor in the International Relations Division of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, UNAM. She has articles or chapters published in the United States, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and China.MODERATOR:Chappell Lawson is an associate professor of political science at MIT. Professor Lawson’s recent work has focused on homeland security policy, Mexican politics, the effect of candidates’ physical appearance on their electoral success, and political leadership.From September 2009 through February 2011, Professor Lawson was on leave from MIT as a political appointee in the Obama Administration, serving as executive director and senior advisor to the Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. Before joining the MIT faculty, he served briefly as a director of Inter-American Affairs on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton Administration.Professor Lawson was a national fellow at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University (2002-2003) and a visiting research fellow at the Center for US-Mexico Studies at the University of California, San Diego (1998-99). He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1999 and his AB from Princeton (the Woodrow Wilson School) in 1989.Free & open to the public.Contact mit-mexico@mit.edu with questions.

Join us for an uplifting talk on cultivating a Positive Mental Attitude, exploring insights from the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita to understand and support well-being :)Date & Time: 9th October, 6:00 – 7:00 PM Venue: Building 56, Room 180 Speaker: Dr. Mayank Bhasin (Ph.D. in Social Computing, specializing in the Happiness Coefficient) RSVP Link: https://forms.gle/n9KDKKZQ7figo1UU6Best Wishes, Vedic Vision Forum (VVF)

Join the MIT Sloan Design Club and the MIT Morningside Academy for Design for a conversation with Stuart Weitzman, founder and former CEO of his namesake footwear brand. Drawing on his career in design and business, Weitzman will reflect on the decisions and experiences that shaped his work — from building a global luxury brand to navigating questions of creativity, entrepreneurship, and leadership.

Silent Meditation in the Chapel on Thursdays 6-8pm, open to everyone in the MIT Community. Some sessions include Guided Meditation at 6:30pm.

Discover how rhythm shapes the way we move, create, and keep time.Explore Indigenous intersections in blues rhythms with DC's Queen of the Blues and The Voice Season 28 cast member, Carly Harvey.Experience the energy of MIT Rambax, MIT's Senegalese Drum Ensemble. Then, dive into sonic experimentation with musician and composer Jessica Shand, whose unique fusion of live performance and sound manipulation will transfom how you keep the beat and hear the world around you.Explore hands-on making and tinkering activities in our Maker Hub and Learning Labs.Beverages by Lamplighter Brewing Company and small bites by Tandor and Curry available for purchase.