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.

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