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.

Speaker: Elinor Karlsson (University of Massachusetts Medical School / Broad Institute)In person or on Zoom at https://mit.zoom.us/j/93513735220

Computers can get lost or stolen. Data can become corrupted. Hardware can fail. Setting up a solid backup system is key to avoiding data loss and restoring your data when catastrophe strikes. This session will cover what a good backup system looks like and what resources are available at MIT to help you confidently back up your stuff.

Professor Rochelle Terman from the University of Chicago at will speak at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.Summary: Public perceptions and representations of global affairs are central to International Relations (IR) scholarship, yet existing methodologies—such as surveys and media analysis—face temporal and coverage constraints. In this paper, we introduce a new, comprehensive dataset of country representations in millions of English-language books over 120 years. Harnessing the massive Google Books Ngram Corpus and cutting-edge text-as-data methods, we track the distribution of attention and meaning attached to 256 countries in both American and British print culture from 1900 to 2019. We measure both the frequency of country mentions and the semantic associations attached to them using dynamic word embeddings. Our analysis reveals enduring and evolving discursive frames—such as China’s association with growth/decline and Russia’s with grand strategy—demonstrating the persistence of country images in American public discourses. We validate our measures against established benchmarks and highlight their utility for studying international reputation, status, and public discourse. By expanding the temporal and substantive scope of text-based IR research, this study provides a valuable resource for examining long-term trends in public perceptions of global affairs and international relations.Dr. Austin Long will offer some reflections on the development of US nuclear policy, drawing on his experience as the Joint Staff deputy director, Strategic Stability Strategy, Plans and Policy Directorate within the Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Do you have a long-term home for your research data? Somewhere it can be persistently accessed so that other researchers can replicate your research or to comply with journal or funder requirements? There are many options out there, but we're here to help you narrow it down. This short workshop runs through MIT Libraries' recommendations for data repositories, as well as some of the main characteristics to consider as you decide where your data should be made available.