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.

Join a member of our Visitor Experience Team for this 45-minute introductory tour of the MIT Museum. Learn about the collection, our history, and get your questions answered by our gallery experts. Space is limited, please speak to a visitor experience representative at the admission desk when purchasing museum tickets if you would like to participate in the tour.Every Wednesday at 11am Free with museum admission

If you need extra time to work on your writing projects this spring, join in-person Writing Together Retreats. These structured writing sessions are designed to help you make progress on your projects while being productive with the peer support of other students and scholars. Additionally, some sessions will feature MIT Librarians, who will be available to provide advice.This program is open to all MIT students, postdocs, faculty, and staff who are actively writing papers, proposals, manuscripts, or thesis chapters.All sessions will take place on Wednesdays. We will provide lunch, drinks, and a conducive ambiance for writing.NOTE: These sessions are co-sponsored by the Writing and Communication Center, MIT Libraries, the Office of Graduate Education, and the Graduate Student Council.

As MIT continues work on its campus decarbonization plan, we’re bringing the community together to explore the technologies and strategies that could shape our path forward. This webinar is the next installment in our speaker series, designed to engage the MIT community and examine key solutions for reducing campus carbon emissions. This session will focus on Central District Geothermal systems, a large-scale approach that uses a single, centralized heat pump to serve multiple buildings via an underground pipe network. Our featured speaker, Denise McKahn, Associate Provost and Associate Professor of Engineering at Smith College, will share insights from Smith’s ambitious $210 million geothermal transition, which is replacing their college’s fossil-fuel-fired steam system with an electrically powered, central district geothermal network.Key Topics:Why Central District Geothermal? Understanding the efficiency, scalability, and infrastructure needs of centralized vs. decentralized geothermal systems.Lessons from Smith’s Experience: The financial and business case, governance and decision-making processes, and technical details of Smith’s new energy districts.The Role of the Campus as a Testbed: How large-scale energy transitions can support research, education, and hands-on learning, and vice-a-versa.Join us for an in-depth discussion on this technology, lessons we can learn from Smith’s experience and the continuing conversation shaping MIT’s sustainable energy future.

A martial art known for its many health benefits, tai chi is a moving study in meditation.Designed for small spaces, this class covers fundamental skills including postures, hand, and footwork. A short Yang style tai chi form will be taught.Special clothing is not necessary, but athletic shoes and loose fitting pants are recommended.Registration is required on our wellness class website. If you do not already have an account on this website, you'll need to create one. This is fee-based class and open to the entire MIT community.

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. [As of Feb 26, this calendar is defaulting to the year 1899. Click "today" to be brought to the current month.]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.

Add some pluck to your lunch hour with Big Cypress, the Boston-based Americana quartet defying expectations and breaking genre barriers.While you listen, enjoy a delicious hot cup of soup from Souper Roll Up Cafe (on us, while supplies last!). To keep things sustainable, we encourage you to bring your own mug or bowl. If you do, you’ll get a special sweet treat!This event is presented as part of Artfinity: A celebration of creativity and community at MIT.

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 lobby with the big mirror, right inside the Collier Memorial entrance to Stata. 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 26, this calendar is defaulting to the year 1899. Click "today" to be brought to the current month.]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.

Cultural capital and access to opportunity: Evidence from subcaste norms in India | Paul Novosad

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

Feeling that winter slump? This workshop will introduce evidence-based skills from MGH’s Resilience and Prevention Program to help you build emotional strength, manage stress, and overcome challenges. This session is a precursor to April’s Resilience Training Series, but can be attended as a stand-alone workshop.

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation! No need to RSVP: just show up with your friends!

Please join us on Wednesday, March 5, at 4 pm in Room 2-190 for the C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series with Dr. Trent Northen.Abstract Title: The Chemical Underground: Are Rhizosphere Microbes Hooked on Root Exudates?Abstract:Plants release a large fraction of the carbon they fix into the soil surrounding roots (the rhizosphere), shaping soil microbial communities to support plant health and productivity. Understanding rhizosphere processes is critical for sustainable agriculture and managing soil carbon cycling. However, these interactions remain poorly understood due to the inherent complexity and inaccessibility of these ecosystems. Progress has been further hindered by the lack of standard, replicable experimental systems, making it difficult for scientists to build on each other’s findings.In this talk, I will describe our approach to constructing fabricated rhizosphere ecosystems and share results from the first multilaboratory microbiome reproducibility study. Additionally, I will highlight recent discoveries from our work, including the unexpected exudation of dopamine—a key human neurotransmitter—by plant roots, and discuss the potential role of catecholamines in directing rhizosphere microbial community assembly.Bio:Dr. Trent Northen is Deputy Division Director and a Senior Scientist within the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division at Berkeley Lab. His laboratory focuses on understanding the role of exogenous small molecule metabolites in mediating microbial interactions with other microbes and plant hosts and how these processes impact soil carbon cycling. A long-term goal of the Northen lab is to help harness plants and microbes for sustainable agriculture—including to restore soil carbon and improve soil health. Towards these goals the Northen lab has developed a range of metabolomic, cheminformatic, and bioinformatic capabilities for metabolite identification and analysis. Dr. Northen has also championed the development of fabricated ecosystems spanning scales and complexity.The C.C. Mei Distinguished Speaker Series was founded and has been organized in honor of Prof. Chiang C. Mei. It aims to provide a vibrant forum for highly distinguished speakers, from around the world, to share their research with the CEE, MIT, and local Boston community.

Speaker: Hao Peng (MIT)

Date: Wednesday, March 5, 2025 Location: 46-3002 (Singleton Auditorium)Speaker: Haitham Amal, PhD Affiliation: Associate Professor (Tenured), The School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Visiting Professor, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Harvard UniversityHost: Dr. Alan JasanoffTalk title: The NO Answer for Autism Spectrum DisorderAbstract: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that shares core behavioral deficits. A few molecular mechanisms have been identified in ASD when most of the studies focus on a single pathway/target. To date, no effective single-drug treatment has been found for ASD, which raises the need for new drug targets. We hypothesize that multi-molecular pathways parallelly may lead to synaptic/neuronal dysfunctions and eventually to ASD phenotype. Our multi-proteomic approach using clinical and mouse model samples identified three novel potential targets possibly orchestrating in ASD: (1) de novo S-nitrosylation (NO-mediated protein modification) of the TSC2 protein. In this talk, I will focus on the role of NO (nitric oxide) in ASD. (2) Upregulation of Gephyrin phosphorylation at specific sites, which affects synaptic plasticity and functions. (3) An abnormal upregulation of the catalytic subunit of the mitochondrial ATP synthase, which may affect the integrity of the inner mitochondrial membrane. Here, we used ASD human plasma samples, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), and mouse models to perform a comprehensive study of the mechanisms underlying ASD pathology. The three-way pathological mechanisms were investigated using a state-of-the-art multi-proteomics platform coupled with sophisticated systems biology analyses to filter out ASD-relevant molecular changes. Pharmacological and CRISPR/Cas9 tools were used to validate the targets and explore the molecular and synaptic features following interventions. Three mouse models of ASD (Shank3, Cntnap2, and Nlgn3) were used to evaluate the behavioral outcomes of the pharmacological treatment. This talk will focus on deciphering unknown multi-way molecular mechanisms underlying ASD pathology that may uncover novel drug targets for ASD.

Speaker: Serena An (MIT) & Katherine Tung (Harvard)Title: Newton polytopes of dual Schubert polynomialsAbstract: The M-convexity of dual Schubert polynomials was first proven by Huh, Matherne, Mészáros, and St. Dizier in 2022. We give a full characterization of the supports of dual Schubert polynomials, which yields an elementary alternative proof of the M-convexity result, and furthermore strengthens it by explicitly characterizing the vertices of their Newton polytopes combinatorially. Using this characterization, we give a polynomial-time algorithm to determine if a coefficient of a dual Schubert polynomial is zero, analogous to a result of Adve, Robichaux, and Yong for Schubert polynomials. This is a joint work with Yuchong Zhang, and there is a companion paper titled “Postnikov–Stanley Polynomials are Lorentzian.”

Time: 6:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA

Blueprint for Tough Tech entrepreneurshipThis event is for the MIT Community. Please register with an MIT.edu email.Please join us as Emily Knight, President and CEO of The Engine, presents our first MITEI Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition seminar of the spring 2025 semester.The transition to a clean energy future depends on breakthrough technologies—but these solutions often require long development timelines, specialized infrastructure, and patient capital. At MIT and beyond, Tough Tech startups working at the intersection of science, engineering, and impact face significant barriers to scaling. Emily Knight, the president and CEO of The Engine (built by MIT) will discuss how The Engine provides the critical resources these early-stage teams need—from lab and fabrication space to deep networks—to advance innovations in industries like clean energy, industrial decarbonization, and sustainability. Join us to explore what it takes to bring these climate solutions to scale and drive real impact.Light refreshments will follow.