Guido Menzio New York University

Speaker: Ahmad (Mo) Khalil, Boston UniversityHost: Mike LaubTitle: "Cooperation in native and synthetic biology" The Holt LectureThe Biology Colloquium is a weekly seminar held throughout the academic year — featuring distinguished speakers in many areas of the biological sciences from universities and institutions worldwide. More information on speakers, their affiliations, and titles of their talks will be added as available. Unless otherwise stated, the Colloquium will be held live in Stata 32-123 (Kirsch auditorium) Contact Margaret Cabral with questions.

Faculty are people too! This workshop will teach you how to build lasting connections and tap into the support and opportunities faculty have to offer

The Center for International Studies at MIT presents“The New Famines of the Middle East and Horn of Africa: War economies and the normalization of starvation”Alex de WaalExecutive DirectorWorld Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School, Tufts UniversityThis lecture locates the return of famines in geo-strategic, economic and normative changes that have their sharpest manifestation in a cluster of countries in the Middle East and Horn of Africa. The most severe and widespread starvation in the contemporary world has struck Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and most recently Gaza, with neighboring countries also afflicted. All these countries are located in the “Red Sea Arena,” a zone of contestation consisting of the littoral countries of the Red Sea and their immediate neighbors. The lecture posits that this cluster of calamities have a common explanatory thread, namely the lens of “new war economies”. The demise of the liberal Pax Americana and the rise of Middle Eastern middle powers and the BRICS has led to new rivalries, organized around access to dollar reserves and alternative currency arrangements backed by resources including gold, oil, land, and strategic real estate. The Gulf monarchies and Israel have strategies and instruments designed to finance current and anticipated conflicts. They seek key resources in Africa and control of strategic locations at the crossroads of maritime commerce. They wage economic warfare that render their adversaries ungovernable. Most damagingly, the new war economies are associated with illiberal norms, including reviving sovereign privileges, undermining liberal multilateral institutions, and adopting a permissive ethos of tolerating mass starvation.Tuesday, March 11, 20254:30-6:00pmE51-145Zoom Livestream availableThe Bustani Seminar series celebrates its 40th anniversary this year!Information on the Emile Bustani Middle East SeminarInformation on the Spring 2025 Bustani Seminar SeriesSponsored by the MIT Center for International StudiesFor more information or any questions, contact:Dayana Mercier | dayan379@mit.edu

Join Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort for a discussion of their recent book Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text 1953-2023 (MIT Press, 2024).The discussion of computer-generated text has recently reached a fever pitch but largely omits the long history of work in this area--text generation, as it happens, was not invented yesterday in Silicon Valley. Output, thoughtfully selected, introduced, and edited by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort, aims to correct that omission by gathering seven decades of English-language texts produced by generation systems and software.Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of Travesty Generator, a book of computational poetry that was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry, and several other poetry books. They direct the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Maryland.Nick Montfort is a poet and artist who uses computation as his medium. His MIT Press publications range from the New Media Reader (coedited) and Twisty Little Passages to, most recently, The Future and the second edition of Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities. He is Professor of Digital Media at MIT and Principal Investigator in the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen, Norway.Copies of Output will be available for purchase onsite from the MIT Press Bookstore.

Join MIT Libraries for a closer look at selections from its Distinctive Collections - including artists’ books, zines, and art, alongside treasures from the Aga Khan Documentation Center - highlighting marginalized communities' contributions to art, science, and technology.Register 5-6 pm 6-7 pmThis event is presented as part of Artfinity: A celebration of creativity and community at MIT.