February 26, 2025 - July 17, 2025Hidden 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.

Do you have data? (Who doesn't?!?) Learn about the five basic things you can do now to manage your data for future happiness. These tools and techniques support practical data management and you can start using them immediately. Work with your personal data or research data, but start working now to ensure a future you who is secure in the existence, understandability, and reusability of your data! This short workshop will be over Zoom and the link will be emailed to attendees.

Zoom Link: TBA --------- Speaker: Gasser ElbannaAffiliation: McDermott LabTitle: TBAAbstract: TBA--------- Speaker: Michaela SocolofAffiliation: Roger Levy LabTitle: TBAAbstract: TBA

Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/91279678580 ----- Speaker: Michaela SocolofAffiliation: CPL / Levy LabTitle: An information-theoretic approach to compositionalityAbstract: A fundamental property of language is that words can be combined into larger phrases in systematic and predictable ways. This property, known as compositionality, allows language users to produce novel, complex utterances using set rules. Yet compositionality is not absolute—some structures involve meanings that combine in non-systematic ways. If we have a way of precisely quantifying compositionality, then we can investigate the relationships between compositionality, linguistic structure, and processing. This talk will present an approach to formalizing compositionality using information theory and will include a discussion of completed and potential future experiments.

Do you feel the freedom to offer – or, if you are in leadership, to receive – genuine values-based feedback about how well your DLCI is living up to its stated mission? Join us for this collaborative staff workshop in which we respond to this question with insights from Dr. Mary Gentile’s Giving Voice to Values ® curriculum.Register to secure your meal.

Speakers: James McClure (Purdue University)Title: Making linear algebra student-friendly by re-ordering the topics and adapting the toneAbstract: Linear Algebra is often an obstacle for students whose only prior experience is with calculus. I discuss a textbook I'm writing that takes a very different approach from existing textbooks. The target audience is ordinary students, not honors students. A key organizing principle is for the course to have a narrative arc, with near term and longer-term goals pointing the way forward at each stage. The arc for the first part of the course focuses on diagonalization, first for the 2 x 2 case, and then using the n x n case as motivation for concepts like linear independence. Another important organizing principle is to introduce a concept only when it is necessary for the arc—for example, the transpose of a matrix isn't introduced until chapter 18—and then to give the students an intensive experience of using the concept. Proofs are a basic part of the course, and most homework problems are proofs; however, the usual emphasis on formal language is avoided (set theoretic language isn't used until chapter 16 and quantifiers are never used) without loss of mathematical correctness. The approach is both student-friendly and mathematically rich.Zoom link: https://cornell.zoom.us/j/92415199317Zoom Link Password: olsumeFor more information on OLSUME: https://olsume.org/