Want to get exercise mid-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.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.

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing SERC group leaders will be hosting a series of workshops throughout the January Independent Activities Period to teach students the skill of writing a technology impact paper and to offer help and advice on creating such a paper for those interested in applying for the Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize.These workshops will provide general information on the competition, guidelines on how to write this kind of paper, and opportunities to discuss project ideas. Workshop slots are limited and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Sign up for a session here.

What if the key to unlocking your organization’s next big breakthrough isn’t new technology, but a new way of thinking about people? Companies that prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) are outperforming their competitors, driving innovation, and thriving in today’s competitive landscape. Yet, many leaders still view DEIB as a charitable effort rather than a critical business strategy.Malia Lazu will challenge that perspective and show how embracing DEIB can transform your organization’s bottom line, and its future.Malia Lazu is a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she combines her expertise as an award-winning strategist with cutting-edge research on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). Drawing from her work as a fellow at MIT’s Community Innovators Lab, Malia has pioneered initiatives like The Urban Labs, a multicultural agency helping brands realize the business value of diversity. Her research and teaching focus on transforming DEIB from a moral imperative to a strategic advantage, equipping leaders to create measurable impact in their organizations and communities.Join us for a complimentary LinkedIn Live event to explore how companies that embrace an "inclusion economy" mindset can unlock the potential of diverse talent pools, future-proof their organizations, and gain a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving global market.During this live conversation, you will gain: - A deeper understanding of how implicit bias affects teams and organizations, with actionable tools to recognize and transform it - Strategies for leading authentically and leveraging DEIB as a driver for revenue growth and profitabilityDive deeper during Malia’s new MIT Sloan Executive Education course, Intention to Impact: How to Lead in a Multicultural Economy, on campus July 9-11, 2025. Learn more and register: executive.mit.edu/iti

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

Speaker: Yi Han (MIT)Title: Some progress and mysteries in the study of inhomogeneous random matricesAbstract:The spectrum of a random matrix is well-understood for an invariant ensemble, and sufficiently strong information has been obtained for mean field type random matrices. There are however far more general situations where much less information is obtained: when the entries have a heavy-tailed distribution or when the variance profile has a specific structure. In this talk I discuss some recent discoveries in the latter regime. The topics include: a sharp description for the edge of a symmetric random matrix when its tail decays precisely like x^{-4} (the transition regime); a very weak condition for determining spectral outliers for finite rank perturbations of non-Hermitian random matrices with a banded variance profile; the smallest singular value for rectangular random matrix with entries in the domain of attraction of alpha-stable law; and on convergence to the circular law for ESDs of some nonhomogeneous matrices. The work employs recent concentration inequalities invented by Bandeira, Boedihardjo, van Handel and Brailovskaya. While satisfying results are obtained for some problems, a sharp understanding is still not obtained for other problems despite significant quantitative improvement.

Speaker: Søren Galatius (Columbia University)Title: Hopf algebra spectral sequences related to $\textit{K}(\mathbb{Z}$) and the Grothendieck–Teichmüller groupAbstract: The general linear group of the integers acts on the symmetric space $GL_n(\mathbb{R})/O(n)$, and the orbit space $X_n$ can be regarded as a “moduli space of real tori”. The compactly supported cohomology of these spaces forms the $E_1$ page of a spectral sequence converging to the cohomology of $BK(\mathbb{Z})$, the onefold delooping of the algebraic $K$-theory space. I will sketch how to construct a Hopf algebra structure on this spectral sequence, and how it maps to another spectral sequence of Hopf algebras, a version of the Connes–Kreimer Hopf algebra. In recent joint work with Brown, Chan, and Payne (2405.11528), we use this map of Hopf algebras to deduce lower bounds for the compactly supported cohomology of $X_n$ and of $A_n$, the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties.