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

A part of the MIT Artfinity Arts Festival and the inaugural season of events in the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT.MIT Music & Theater Arts presents the Boston Symphony Chamber PlayersSunday, March 2nd, 2025 - 5pm Thomas Tull Concert Hall Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building (W18), MIT 201 Amherst St, Cambridge, MA 02139Please note that this event is in-person only and will not be livestreamed.Boston Symphony Chamber PlayersAlexander Velinzon, Tatiana Dimitriades, Glen Cherry, Lisa Ji Eun Kim, violins Stephen Ansell and Cathy Basrak, violas Blaise Déjardin and Oliver Aldort, cellos Edwin Barker, bass Lorna McGhee, flute John Ferrillo, oboe William R. Hudgins, clarinet Richard Svoboda, bassoon Richard Sebring, horn Anna Handler, conductor Vytas Baksys, pianoProgramKeeril MAKAN Portal, for wind quintetAaron COPLAND Appalachian SpringJohannes BRAHMS String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 18About the Boston Symphony Chamber PlayersOne of the world’s most distinguished chamber music ensembles sponsored by a major symphony orchestra and made up of principal players from that orchestra, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players include first-chair string and wind players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra.The BSCP was founded in 1964 during Erich Leinsdorf’s tenure as BSO music director. The flexibility of the ensemble ensures that it can perform virtually any work within the vast chamber music literature, expanding their range by calling upon other BSO members or enlisting the services of guest artists, who have included such performers as pianists Thomas Ades, Emanuel Ax, and André Previn and vocalists Thomas Hampson, Ben Heppner, Dominique Labelle, and Dawn Upshaw.The Chamber Players present an annual four-concert series in Boston’s Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory and perform each season at Tanglewood. The ensemble has toured in Europe, Japan, South America, and the Soviet Union, and in September 2008 performed on the Queen Mary 2‘s transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton, England, sponsored by Cunard® Line. The Chamber Players have recorded many of the great works of the chamber music repertoire, including the Mozart and Brahms quintets for clarinet and strings, Brahms string quintets, Second Viennese School transcriptions of Johann Strauss II waltzes, Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat with narrator Sir John Gielgud, Debussy chamber music, works by Quincy Porter, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Aaron Copland, and Leon Kirchner, and much more. Releases on the BSO’s own BSO Classics label include Mozart chamber music for winds and strings; American chamber music by William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, Michael Gandolfi, and Osvaldo Golijov; the Grammy-nominated Profanes et Sacrées, chamber music by Ravel, Debussy, Tomasi, Françaix, and Dutilleux, and, most recently, serenades by Brahms and Dvořák.

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.

Want to get exercise at the start of the day but don’t want to go outside? Join the tunnel walk for a 30-minute walk led by a volunteer through MIT’s famous tunnel system. This walk may include stairs/inclines. Wear comfortable shoes. Free.Location details: Meet in the atrium by the staircase. Location photo below.Tunnel Walk Leaders will have a white flag they will raise at the meeting spot for you to find them.Prize Drawing: Attend a walk and scan a QR code from the walk leaders to be entered into a drawing for a getfit tote bag at the end of the getfit challenge. The more walks you attend, the more entries you get. Winner will be drawn and notified at the end of April. Winner does not need to be a getfit participant.Disclaimer: Tunnel walks are led by volunteers. In the rare occasion when a volunteer isn’t able to make it, we will do our best to notify participants. In the event we are unable to notify participants and a walk leader does not show up, we encourage you to walk as much as you feel comfortable doing so. We recommend checking this calendar just before you head out. [As of Feb 12, this calendar is defaulting to the year 1899. Click "today" to be brought to the current week.]Getfit is a 12-week fitness challenge for the entire MIT community. These tunnel walks are open to the entire MIT community and you do not need to be a current getfit participant to join.

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 Sven DorkenwaldDate: Monday, March 3, 2025Time: 10:00 am – 11:00 amLocation: McGovern Seminar Room (46-3189)Talk title: Reconstruction and analysis of synaptic wiring diagrams of the fruit fly brain and mouse cortexTalk abstract: Connections between neurons can be mapped by acquiring and analyzing electron microscopic brain images. In recent years, this approach has been scaled to chunks of mammalian brains and entire invertebrate brains. First, I will present our reconstruction of the first neuronal wiring diagram of a whole adult fruit fly brain, containing >50 million chemical synapses between 139,255 neurons, as well as the technological progress leading up to the creation of this resource. I will discuss how the connectome can be used to study synaptic pathways from the brain’s input to output neurons. Second, I will present progress toward cortical connectomes and how a densely reconstructed circuit between pyramidal neurons provides insight into rules governing circuit assembly.Bio: Sven Dorkenwald is a Shanahan Research Fellow at the Allen Institute and the University of Washington, and a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google Research. He received his undergraduate degree in Physics in 2014 and a Masters degree in Computer Engineering in 2017 at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. While in Heidelberg, he worked on automated image analysis in connectomics with Jörgen Kornfeld in the department of Winfried Denk at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research. Sven received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Neuroscience from Princeton University in 2023, where he worked with Sebastian Seung and Mala Murthy. During his PhD, he developed approaches for the reconstruction and analysis of neuronal circuits from Electron Microscopy images and spearheaded the FlyWire consortium effort that produced the first synapse-resolution connectome of an adult Drosophila brain. Sven joined Google Researcher part-time in 2020, where he is developing self-supervised machine-learning approaches for efficient annotation and encoding of cell reconstructions. Sven joined the Allen Institute and the University of Washington in 2023.