Come to MIT Health’s next Baby Talk Open House, and learn how we can support you and your family.Meet our pediatricians and family medicine providers. Ask questions. Learn how MIT Health cares for children. Family members and guests are welcome.Monday, March 3, 5:30–6:30 p.m.MIT Health, second floor (E23, 25 Carleton Street)Meet Rosemarie Roqué Gordon, MD, MPHRegister here: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/fc550a44a70044d6a786305ff2e0bed3

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.

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.

Weng lab I "Biochemical Characterization of the DUF3328 Protein in the Biosynthesis of Cyclic Peptide Cyclochlorotine"