Sunday, March 16th, 3pm Thomas Tull Concert Hall Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building (W18), MIT 201 Amherst St, Cambridge, MA 02139As part of the MIT Artfinity Arts Festival and the inaugural season in the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT, BCMS performs two early works by Fauré—the Violin Sonata No. 1 in A Major and the Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor—marking the centenary of his death, alongside Loeffler's evocative Two Rhapsodies of 1898.ProgramGabriel FAURÉ: Sonata No. 1 in A Major for Violin and Piano, Op. 13Charles Martin LOEFFLER: Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola, and Piano (1898)Gabriel FAURÉ: Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 15‍Featured musiciansPeggy Pearson, oboe; Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Marcus Thompson, viola; Raman Ramakrishnan, violoncello; Max Levinson, piano‍Fauré's Violin Sonata No. 1 premiered successfully in 1877, earning praise from his mentor Saint-Saëns: "In this sonata you can find everything to tempt a gourmet: new forms, excellent modulations, unusual tone colors, and the use of unexpected rhythms... a magic floats above everything."In the Two Rhapsodies, dedicated to two Boston Symphony Orchestra wind players, Loeffler reimagined his earlier settings of Maurice Rollinat's symbolist poetry.Fauré's Piano Quartet in C Minor features a Brahmsian Allegro, followed by a vibrant Scherzo with string pizzicato highlighting the piano. The melancholic Adagio brightens occasionally before a spirited finale that recalls earlier themes.This concert is presented by the Office of the Arts at MIT and MTA as part of Artfinity: A celebration of creativity and community at MIT.Boston Chamber Music SocietyMarcus A. Thompson, Artistic DirectorThe Boston Chamber Music Society, BCMS, is an ensemble of superb musicians who come together in different combinations to prepare and perform chamber music. Since its founding in 1982, BCMS has built a reputation for impassioned performances, ripened over time by the long personal and professional histories of its member musicians. BCMS invites guest artists, chosen for their particular affinity for the works they will play, to join its members, expanding the artistic possibilities to virtually all works in the chamber music repertoire.BCMS’s mission is to provide the public with exceptional performances of chamber music repertoire from the Baroque era to the present day while fostering understanding and appreciation of the art form, making it more accessible to all.BCMS presents the longest-running chamber music series and is distinguished for its enduring performance standards in Boston’s musically fertile region. In addition to its monthly concerts at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre, BCMS has performed in multiple neighborhood venues in the greater Boston area, toured nationally and internationally, and issued critically acclaimed recordings under its own label.Beyond the concert stage, BCMS musicians offer open rehearsals and masterclasses to students from educational institutions at various levels, and coach participants of all ages in the annual chamber music workshop to deepen their enthusiasm for the genre. Its hybrid fellowship program in cooperation with the New England Conservatory’s Entrepreneurial Musicianship department engages young musicians to serve as interns in the office to learn the basic inner workings of running an ensemble or concert series and to perform with the ensemble in concerts and community events. The BCMS Teaching Artist Program at the Somerville High School provides the SHS String Orchestra students weekly coaching as well as free access to its concerts.

A celebration of creativity and community at MITArtfinity is a new festival of the arts at MIT featuring 80 free performing and visual arts events, celebrating creativity and community at the Institute. Artfinity launches with the opening of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building on February 15, 2025, continues with a concentration of events February 28-March 16, and culminates with the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts public lecture by 2025 recipient artist and designer Es Devlin on May 1, 2025, and a concert by Grammy-winning rapper and Visiting Professor Lupe Fiasco on May 2, 2025. Artfinity embodies MIT’s commitment to creativity, community, and the intersection of art, science and technology. We invite you to join us in this celebration, explore the diverse events, and experience the innovative spirit that defines the arts at MIT.About the Artists Artfinity features the innovative work of MIT faculty, students, staff, and alumni, alongside guest artists from the Greater Boston area and beyond.About the Activities & Events All 80 events are open to the public, including dozens of concerts and performances plus an array of visual arts such as projections, films, installations, exhibitions, and augmented reality experiences, as well as lectures and workshops for attendees to participate in. With a wide range of visual and performing arts events open to all, Artfinity embodies MIT’s commitment to the arts and the intersection of art, science, and technology.About the Presenters Artfinity is an institute-sponsored event organized by the Office of the Arts at MIT with faculty leads Institute Professor of Music Marcus Thompson and Professor of Art, Culture and Technology Azra Akšamija. Departments, labs, centers, and student groups across MIT are presenting partners.Visit arts.mit.edu for more information about the arts at MIT.

Writing Together Online offers structured time to help you spring into writing and stay focused this semester. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. 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. 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. 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.Register for Spring 2025 Writing Challenge 1Choose those sessions that you want to attend during Challenge 1: February 10th through March 21stMondays 9:00–10:30amTuesdays 8–9:30am and 9:30–11amWednesdays 9:00–10:30amThursdays 8–9:30am and 9:30–11amFridays 8–9:30am and 9:30–11amMIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a raffle of three $25 Amazon gift cards. The raffle will take place on Friday, March 21st. The more you participate, the more times you will be entered into the raffle of prizes.For more information and to register, check the WCC website. Please spread the word and join with peers and friends.The funding support for this program comes from the Office of Graduate Education

Special Seminar with Anqi WuDate: Monday, March 17, 2025Time: 10:00 am – 11:00 amLocation: McGovern Seminar Room (46-3189)Title: Toward a Transformative Framework for Neural and Behavioral Analysis in Naturalistic ContextsAbstract: When a mouse freely explores its environment, it continuously perceives stimuli, considers actions, and executes behaviors. Understanding these processes has long been a central goal in neuroscience. Traditionally, researchers have investigated them in controlled experiments with restrictive settings, simple stimuli, and basic behaviors. However, transitioning to naturalistic scenarios introduces new modeling challenges.Naturalistic behavior is inherently more complex than controlled tasks, characterized by unstructured, self-paced, and unpredictable actions across multiple timescales. In the first part of this talk, I will demonstrate how inverse reinforcement learning can be leveraged to model long-term naturalistic behavior as a sequence of decision-making processes. The next challenge lies in understanding neural dynamics, which exhibit increased variability, lack of repeated, time-locked trials, and strong behavioral-state dependencies. In the second part, I will introduce a framework that incorporates biologically plausible connectivity constraints and higher-order history dependencies into neural dynamic models, yielding interpretable neural states aligned with behavior. Finally, I will explore how neural encoding mechanisms evolve over time. I will show how disentangled latent subspace analysis combined with time-varying models helps move beyond decoding-based mixed selectivity analysis, leading to a more structured understanding of neural representation—an essential advancement for studying neural activity in response to complex stimuli and naturalistic behaviors.In summary, emerging experimental paradigms increasingly involve complex, multidimensional stimuli and spontaneous, naturalistic behaviors, necessitating a fundamental shift in neural and behavioral data analysis. By advancing and revolutionizing data-driven methods for freely moving, naturalistic scenarios, I aim to contribute to the broader challenge of understanding the neuronal basis of cognition and behavior.Bio: Anqi Wu is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Computational and Quantitative Neuroscience and a graduate certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning from Princeton University. Anqi was selected for the MIT Rising Star in EECS, DARPA Riser, Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, and Kavli Fellow by National Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on developing scientifically grounded statistical models to uncover structure in neural and behavioral data at the intersection of machine learning and computational neuroscience. She is broadly interested in creating data-driven models to advance both animal and human studies in systems and cognitive neuroscience.

Hidden within MIT’s Distinctive Collections, many architectural elements from the earliest days of the Institute’s architecture program still survive as part of the Rotch Art Collection. Among the artworks that conservators salvaged was a set of striking windows of gypsum and stained-glass, dating to the late 18th- to 19th c. Ottoman Empire. This exhibition illuminates the life of these historic windows, tracing their refracted histories from Egypt to MIT, their ongoing conservation, and the cutting-edge research they still prompt.The Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130) is open Monday through Thursday, 10am - 4pm, excluding Institute holidays.

The slogan “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow” has become a rallying cry since 2022, drawing parallels between Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and China’s increasing military intimidation of Taiwan. With U.S. foreign policy under a second Trump administration tilting more toward Russia, the future of these two flashpoints remains uncertain. Are Ukraine and Taiwan on increasingly similar trajectories? What lessons emerge from these crises, and how might they shape strategic responses?Speaker: Alicia Chen, an award-winning journalist from Taiwan, has covered the war in Ukraine and reported from Taiwan for The Washington Post amid escalating tensions with China. Having directly witnessed the complexities of both situations, she will share her on-the-ground experiences and examine where the comparisons hold—and where they fall short.Moderator: Elizabeth Wood, Ford International Professor of History at MIT, founding director of the MIT Ukraine Program, and co-director of the MIT-Eurasia Program.Lunch will be available at 11:45am. RSVP here.Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions.