Institute Holiday

Writing Together Online offers the structured writing time to help you stay focused and productive during the busy fall months. 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. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. 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.Please register for any number of sessions:Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:00–10:30am (EST) Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00–9:30am and 9:30-11:00am (EST)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. MIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a gift-card raffle.

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

Jumpstart your postdoc experience! Plan Your Postdoc (PYP) is a signature program for early stage postdoctoral scholars who have joined MIT for less than a year. Participants attend four 1 to 1.5 hour lectures/planning sessions, panels, and interactive workshops to kickstart their career developmentJoin us for the second PYP meeting: Spend the first 45 minutes learning about breaking down goals into smaller tasks and what resources postdocs can harness to achieve their goals. Then spend the remaining 45 minutes applying this information and getting feedback from your peers.This event is only open to MIT Postdocs. Registration is required for this event. Please register here.

Enjoy Fall Foliage with TSMIT. Get to know students from older classes and new students. Meet other Thai student and friends.**Funded by GSC Funding Board **

Join us on Monday evenings for Argentine tango classes with outstanding instructors. Whether you are completely new to tango, or already have some experience, you will find a friendly environment in which to learn new things and improve your technique. You don't have to bring a partner, since the classes involve rotations with all participants.Full Series: Sep 15, 22, 29, October 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov 3, 10, 17, 24, Dec 1, 8, 15.For all info and registration, visit following link.

2025 Mandala @ MITCo-sponsored by MIT Prajnopaya, Buddhist Student Club, Simmons Hall

Writing Together Online offers the structured writing time to help you stay focused and productive during the busy fall months. 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. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. 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.Please register for any number of sessions:Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:00–10:30am (EST) Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00–9:30am and 9:30-11:00am (EST)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. MIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a gift-card raffle.

AbstractFrom offshore platforms to the interior of advanced electronics and high-performance vehicles, materials are constantly being pushed to their limits. The advancement of materials capable of withstanding extreme environments—such as high-rate deformation, shock loading, corrosive exposure, and intense thermal and mechanical stress—is a critical frontier in materials science and engineering. This symposium explores recent progress in the design, synthesis, and application of materials that exhibit exceptional durability, corrosion resistance, and structural reliability under such demanding conditions.Speakers will share real-world challenges and solutions, offering insights into cutting-edge alloy development, composite behavior under impact, and dimensional stability in substrates and components. The program highlights innovations that are redefining performance expectations and fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration around materials that are engineered not just to endure—but to enable the technologies of the future.REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

Writing Together Online offers the structured writing time to help you stay focused and productive during the busy fall months. 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. We offer writing sessions every workday, Monday through Friday. 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.Please register for any number of sessions:Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:00–10:30am (EST) Tuesday and Thursday, 8:00–9:30am and 9:30-11:00am (EST)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. MIT Students and postdocs who attend at least 5 sessions per challenge will be entered into a gift-card raffle.

On view October 1 -- December 11, 2025This exhibition draws on archival materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC) to explore a century of cultural heritage preservation in Aleppo, Syria. It takes as its point of departure the work of Kamil al-Ghazzi (1853–1933), the pioneering Aleppine historian whose influential three-volume chronicle, Nahr al-Dhahab fī Tārīkh Ḥalab (The River of Gold in the History of Aleppo), was published between 1924 and 1926.Ink, Stone, and Silver Light presents three modes of documentation—manuscript, built form, and photography—through which Aleppo’s urban memory has been recorded and preserved. Featuring figures such as Michel Écochard and Yasser Tabbaa alongside al-Ghazzi, the exhibition traces overlapping efforts to capture the spirit of a city shaped by commerce, craft, and coexistence. At a time when Syria again confronts upheaval and displacement, these archival fragments offer models for preserving the past while envisioning futures rooted in dignity, knowledge, and place.

Enjoy lunch with distinguished alumnae, Kieran Kieckhefer and Hannah Bedard! This informal session is a great opportunity to gain insight into the legal profession, network and ask questions ranging from law school prep to life as an attorney.Kieran Kieckhefer is a partner in Gibson Dunn’s San Francisco office and a member of the Intellectual Property Practice Group. Kieran graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, and she received a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT in 2002.Hannah Bedard is an associate in Gibson Dunn’s Washington, D.C. office. She is a member of the firm’s litigation department, and her practice focuses on intellectual property litigation. Hannah received her Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and she received her Bachelor of Science in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT in 2011.This CAPD event is open to MIT undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and alumni. Lunch will be provided by Gibson Dunn.Registration is required for this event. Please register here

Donut hour hosted by the Polymer Graduate Student Association. Come by and enjoy some sweet treats while discussing polymers and soft matter (or not!) Open to all MIT graduate students.

"Acquisitions and Relational Management Practices" | Ameet Morjaria (MIT Sloan)

Speaker: Stefano Martiniani (NYU)Title: Though This Be Disorder, Yet There Is Order in’tAbstract:Understanding the relationship between structure and properties is crucial to designing materials with novel functions. Crystals have proven to be a highly versatile platform for engineering functions, as the periodicity of their atomic arrangement greatly facilitates the prediction and optimization of their properties. However, not all properties can be realized with periodic structures. Correlated disordered media — materials that do not exhibit conventional forms of long-range order — can achieve transport properties unattainable in periodic systems, such as the formation of isotropic photonic bandgaps, which are highly desirable in optoelectronic applications. By the very nature of disorder, identifying principles and approaches to engineer disordered functional materials is very challenging — in fact, what does it even mean to “engineer disorder”? In this talk, I will show how we established a new state of the art in the design of correlated disordered structures. This approach led us to the discovery of a new class of disordered functional materials that we termed “gyromorphs”, which uniquely combine liquidlike translational disorder with quasi-long-range rotational order, induced by a ring of delta peaks in their structure factor. We predict that gyromorphs outperform all existing isotropic photonic bandgap materials, paving the way for fine control over optical properties. Finally, I will provide an outlook and discuss recent results on how we are leveraging noisy processes to build generative AI models that will accelerate the discovery of novel materials across the periodic table. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” (Hamlet II.ii).References: 1. A. Shih, M. Casiulis, S. Martiniani, Fast generation of spectrally shaped disorder, Phys. Rev. E, 110(3), 034122 (2024) 2. M. Casiulis, A. Shih, S. Martiniani, Gyromorphs: a new class of functional disordered materials, arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.09023 (2024) 3. P. Hoellmer, T. Egg, M.M. Martirossyan, E. Fuemmeler, Z. Shui, A. Gupta, P. Prakash, A. Roitberg, M. Liu, G. Karypis, M. Transtrum, R.G. Hennig, E.B. Tadmor, S. Martiniani, Open Materials Generation with Stochastic Interpolants, Proc. 42nd Int. Conf. Mach. Learn. (ICML), PMLR 267 (2025) 4. M. Martirossyan, T. Egg, P. Höllmer, G. Karypis, M. Transtrum, A. Roitberg, M. Liu, R. Hennig, E.B. Tadmor, S. Martiniani, All that structure matches does not glitter, accepted at NeurIPS 2025, arXiv:2509.12178 (2025)

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: Ruijie Yang (University of Kansas)Title: p-adic zeta function, Hodge theory and hyperplane arrangementsAbstract:In 1988, Igusa observed a mysterious relationship between the poles of the p-adic zeta function and the roots of the Bernstein-Sato polynomial. This relationship was later formulated precisely by Denef and Loeser and is now known as the Strong Monodromy Conjecture. In the special case of hyperplane arrangements, Budur, Mustațǎ and Teitler proposed the n/d conjecture in 2009, which asserts that if a polynomial defines a central, essential, and indecomposable hyperplane arrangement of degree d in C^n, then -n/d must be a root of its b-function. They showed that the n/d conjecture implies the Strong Monodromy Conjecture for hyperplane arrangements.In this talk, I will discuss my recent joint work with Dougal Davis on a proof of the n/d conjecture, which draws on the theory of complex mixed Hodge modules of Sabbah and Schnell, as well as our new ''wall-crossing'' theory for V-filtrations of holonomic D-modules along local complete intersections. The latter is inspired by the recent breakthrough by Davis-Vilonen on the Schmid-Vilonen conjecture, which characterizes the unitarity of a representation of a real Lie group via Hodge theory. Furthermore, we also prove that the pole order of the Igusa zeta function is less than or equal to the multiplicity of the b-function along the real part of the pole. If time permits, I will discuss how to extend this idea to prove the Strong Monodromy Conjecture for multi-arrangements, as well as the multivariate n/d conjecture, both proposed by Budur in 2015.

MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM) invites you to our Distinguished Speaker event on the future of the defense industrial base.This session will explore how new technologies, manufacturing innovation, and industrial strategy are reshaping national security. Speakers will also examine the critical role the next generation of technical leaders will play in strengthening the defense industrial base.Agenda3:00–3:45 PMKeith Flynn, SVP of Manufacturing, Anduril Industries, in discussion with Dr. Ben Armstrong, Executive Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center3:45–4:30 PMPanel DiscussionSean Holly, CEO, AlloyChris Montferret, Vice President Strategy & Business Development, GDMS Maritime & Strategic SystemsLt. Col. Gregory "LAB" Bieler, US Air ForceJulie Shah, Department Head of MIT AeroAstro, will moderate the panelRegistration is required to attend.