High-performance reusable rocket engines recently developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, and newer ones in development for low-cost heavy-lift launch vehicles, will enable next-generation space economics and accessibility. This talk will describe the work of MIT AeroAstro’s Zachary Cordero and his group along these lines, leveraging modern materials design, advanced manufacturing, and computational design tools to develop and manufacture the specialized materials that will power the future of spaceflight.

Speaker: Michal Shavit (NYU)Title: Weak turbulence of 2D internal gravity wavesAbstract:Our work addresses a long-standing problem: describing internal wave turbulence in the ocean from the governing equations. A promising avenue lies in the kinetic approach. But the stratified Euler equations form an anisotropic, non-canonical Hamiltonian system, making the classical wave-turbulence approach inapplicable. We take a new route: studying the singular limit of vanishing rotation, where rotation acts as a regulator near the curve of zero-frequency slow modes. This regime is both mathematically tractable and oceanographically relevant. In this limit, we derive the turbulent spectrum of 2D weakly interacting internal gravity waves, which matches the celebrated Garrett–Munk spectrum known from observations, for the first time from first principles.

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

As a graduate student or postdoc, you will continue to advance in your teaching practice, particularly if you intend to pursue a career in academia. Your role as an educator can seem to take quantum leaps, from grading problem sets and papers to running recitations, taking responsibility for an entire class or section, and eventually advancing to instructor of record as you begin to teach classes of your own design. This compound workshop and panel event will help you to place these transitions within a developmental perspective that focuses on your own learning as an emerging educator.Registration is required for this event. Please register here.

Speaker: Christopher Hacon (University of Utah)Title: The cone theorem for Kähler varietiesAbstract:There has been substantial recent progress towards the minimal model program for Kähler varieties. In this talk I will discuss a recent proof of the Cone Theorem for Kähler varieties of arbitrary dimension and related results such as the canonical bundle formula, subadjunction and Wenhao Ou's recent breakthrough result on the characterization of uniruled compact Kähler manifolds.

You’re invited to a special Open Access Week event to highlight the value of open data at MIT and to celebrate the winners of the 2025 MIT Prize for Open Data. The program will feature short talks from prize winners about their research. After the program, enjoy a reception featuring refreshments and an opportunity to meet the winners, honorable mention recipients, and other open data advocates and practitioners from across campus.RegisterCo-sponsored by the MIT School of Science and the MIT Libraries

Join us for a program in honor of the 2025 winners of the Victor K. McElheny Award for Local and Regional Journalism.After formally presenting the award, members of the award-winning team will join a panel of journalists for a discussion of how journalists and media outlets can help to build trust in both science and journalism.Learn more about the Victor K. McElheny Award.October 21 3:00 - 4:00pm Free with Mueseum admission

Speaker: Lauren Goins, StanfordHost: Adam MartinTitle: "Spatial and temporal coordination of cell cycle and cell fate during blood cell development"The Biology Colloquium is a weekly seminar held throughout the academic year — featuring distinguished speakers in many areas of the biological sciences from universities and institutions worldwide. More information on speakers, their affiliations, and titles of their talks will be added as available. Unless otherwise stated, the Colloquium will be held live in Stata 32-123 (Kirsch auditorium) Contact Margaret Cabral with questions.

Free and open to all!Refresh your fall wardrobe with a warm clothing SWAP! Bring in gently used warm clothing for adults - jackets, sweaters, cardigans, coats, boots, unworn socks, and other cozy items to trade. No need to bring clothes to participate, but please bring bags to take home your new finds. Leftover items will be donated to a local non-profit organization.

Kyle Herkenhoff (Univ. of Minnesota)

Time: 6:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA

Time: 7:00 PMLocation: Springfield, MA

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.

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references or PDFs is common and important in today’s academic world. These tools will help you to save citations from your favorite databases and websites, store related PDFs or attachments, annotate PDFs, and quickly build a bibliography for your papers and publications. We’ll focus on how to use Zotero, but will also discuss other options, such as Mendeley.

Speaker: Kishwar Shafin (Google)In person or on Zoom at https://mit.zoom.us/j/93513735220

Looking for an interesting read?The Book Discussion group will host virtual meetings via Zoom. Please write to Maxine Jonas (jonas_m@mit.edu) to be added to their mailing list. They (almost always) meet on the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 11:30am – 1pm.Our book line-up this year will be:September 24: Kristin Hannah, The Women October 22: Asmaa Alghoul, A Rebel in Gaza December 10: Edwidge Danticat, Brother I'm Dying January 28: Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men February 25: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca March 25: Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence April 22: Percival Everett, James May 27: Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

Professor Michael Horowitz from the University of Pennsylvania will speak at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.Summary: In this seminar, Professor Horowitz will address the question: are nuclear weapons useful for coercion, and, if so, what factors increase the credibility and effectiveness of nuclear threats? While prominent scholars like Thomas Schelling argue that nuclear brinkmanship, or the manipulation of nuclear risk, can effectively coerce adversaries, others contend nuclear weapons are not effective tools of coercion, especially coercion designed to achieve offensive and revisionist objectives. Simultaneously, there is broad debate about the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) into military systems, especially nuclear command and control. We develop a theoretical argument that explicit nuclear threats implemented with automated nuclear launch systems are potentially more credible compared to ambiguous nuclear threats or explicit nuclear threats implemented via non-automated means. By reducing human control over nuclear use, leaders can more effectively tie their hands and thus signal resolve. While automated nuclear weapons launch systems may seem like something out of science fiction, the Soviet Union deployed such a system during the Cold War and the technology necessary to automate the use of force has developed considerably in recent years due to advances in AI. Preregistered survey experiments on an elite sample of United Kingdom Members of Parliament and two public samples of UK citizens provide support for these expectations, showing that, in a limited set of circumstances, nuclear threats backed by AI integration have credibility advantages, no matter how dangerous they may be. The findings Professor Horowitz will discuss in this seminar contribute to the literatures on coercive bargaining, weapons of mass destruction, and emerging technology.

Do you have intermediate to advanced skills in Python? Are you interested in learning how to work with geospatial data in your research? In this workshop, you will learn how to work with both vector and raster data using Python. You will explore how to import, visualize, crop, and assess spatial datasets to focus on areas of interest. You will conduct a hands-on case study analyzing the impact of the 2023 wildfire on Rhodes, Greece, working with real-world satellite and topographical data, calculating NDVI, identifying scorched areas, and comparing pre- and post-disaster landscapes. This session will help integrate powerful spatial tools into your data science or research workflows.