Join us at the MIT Museum for an evening exploring the connection between living organisms and the natural cycle of light and dark at the opening of Lighten Up! On Biology and Time.Part of the MIT Museum’s TIME thematic season, Lighten Up! features fifteen artists with eighteen immersive artworks, installations, and experiential environments, including work by Carsten Höller, James Carpenter, Liliane Lijn, Helga Schmid, and more. This exhibition was originally organized and presented by EPFL Pavilions and was curated by Anna Wirz-Justice, Marilyne Andersen, Sarah Kenderdine, and Giulia Bini.The evening will feature a panel discussion with Marilyne Andersen, artist Alan Bogana, and Harvard Professor of Neurobiology Elizabeth Klerman, moderated by MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman, followed by a reception where visitors can explore the exhibition.Lighten Up! at the MIT Museum is supported by generous donors to the 2025 McDermott Award Gala, hosted by the Council for the Arts at MIT. This reception is supported by SwissNex.Doors open at 6:15pm. Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please note that some ticket holders may be required to stand.We have a limited number of free tickets available for students. Please reach out to museumregadmin@mit.edu.

Time: 12:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA

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.

To mark the U.S. premiere of Lighten Up! — a traveling exhibition originally shown at the EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne, Switzerland that explores circadian rhythms through artistic and scientific lenses — Swissnex, in collaboration with the MIT Museum, is holding a one day interdisciplinary symposium, bringing together artists, scientists, and the wider community to explore themes of light, rhythm, time, sleep, and perception.Framed by the metaphor of a prism – breaking light into its constituent colors – the day is structured into thematic segments that pair artists and scientists in dialogue, performance, or experiment. The prism can refract light into a spectrum, symbolizing how one event, idea or reality can be seen in multiple ways, depending on the angle or context. Like a rainbow appearing out of storm and light, multiplicity reveals itself in layers of color – each hue a different voice, a different view.Departing from the classical symposium format, the event will be enriched with artistic interventions that shift the sensory and conceptual register throughout the day, along with slow lighting transitions, rhythm-based exercises, dream writing stations, and guided moments of reflection. These elements invite participants to not only talk about circadian rhythms, but to inhabit them.To see full program details and register, visit Swissnex.org.October 29 10am - 4pm MIT Museum

Immersive real-time 3D ultrasound imaging in augmented reality: Contextual overlays for medical training & practiceDATE: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 TIME: 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET LOCATION: Virtual (register for webinar link); limited in-person spots available SPEAKERS: Jason Hou, PhD Student in the MIT Media Lab, Conformable Decoders Group and April Anlage, PhD candidate, MIT Mechanical EngineeringREGISTERABSTRACT #1Ultrasound imaging is non-radiative, portable, and widely used—but interpreting two dimensional (2D) slices in real time poses significant cognitive challenges, especially when spatial understanding is critical. Hou proposes a novel system for immersive, real-time, three dimensional (3D) ultrasound visualization using augmented reality (AR). Their approach reconstructs incoming ultrasound data into a dynamic 3D voxel representation that is overlaid directly on top of a real-world visual feed within an AR environment. This contextual overlay provides critical spatial reference points, ensuring operators remain oriented during live exploration of volumetric data. In medicine, it can enhance guidance during critical procedures or live-examination and create intuitive training tools. Outside of healthcare, potential uses include nondestructive testing in manufacturing, biomechanical analysis, and immersive STEM education, where dynamic structure changes within an object are contextualized in real-time spatiotemporal resolution.ABSTRACT #2Ultrasound is a safe, portable, and inexpensive medical imaging modality. However, it can be difficult for inexperienced users to accurately and completely image a target. By tracking where a user has scanned, an ultrasound volume can be built. Using the information contained in the volume, scan-specific user guidance can be communicated. In this talk, Anlage will describe the ongoing development of a HoloLens 2 augmented reality (AR) application designed to efficiently guide a user through collecting a complete ultrasound scan over a given volume. With guided volume ultrasound, there is the potential to improve the education, training, and accessibility of ultrasound for medical imaging.SPEAKER BIOSJason Hou is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and MIT HEALS Graduate Fellow. He has a broad range of interests and experiences spanning brain-machine-interfaces to augmented reality imaging systems. His current work explores immersive, real-time 3D ultrasound visualization in augmented reality, creating contextual overlays that enhance surgical guidance, live diagnostics, and training. A systems builder with broad interests across electronics, materials, and biomedicine, Jason is passionate about developing chronically implantable and wearable technologies that seamlessly monitor and modulate human health.April Anlage is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her research focuses on clinical applications of volume ultrasound for improved repeatability. Prior to her Ph.D., April completed a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at MIT with research focused on self-efficacy and community in remote engineering design classes. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho, Southern Africa, teaching high school math and physics from 2016-18 and graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016. Her other interests include hiking, participatory design practices, and STEM education.The IMMERSED seminar series is an exploration into how immersive technology and new modalities for manipulating and understanding data are shaping innovations across science, engineering, and art. These events—a mixture of lectures, demonstrations, and tutorials—will offer a deep dive into a capability or set of capabilities and how they can be applied to various fields.IMMERSED is sponsored by the MIT.nano Immersion Lab, which provides space, tools, and a platform to connect the physical to the digital, joining researchers through creative projects that bridge multiple disciplines.