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.

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)

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

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.

Speaker: Mikhail Sodin (Tel Aviv University)Title: A curious Lagrange-Ivanov-Yomdin-type lemmaAbstract: Suppose 𝑓 is an 𝑚-smooth function on the unit ball that is small (for instance, vanishes) on an epsilon-net 𝐸 for a sufficiently small epsilon. Then the maximum of 𝑓 is controlled by the 𝐿1- norm of its 𝑚 − 𝑡ℎ derivative and its uniform norm on 𝐸. This estimate is dimensionless. The proof is not long and uses only undergraduate analysis.The talk is based on an ongoing joint work with Aleksei Kulikov and Fedor Nazarov on multi-dimensional Fourier uniqueness.

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.

As the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience and the PI of the Andersen Lab at CalTech, Prof. Richard Andersen researches visual physiology, specifically translational research to humans in the field of neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and cortical repair. The Andersen Lab examines decision-making, stages in motor planning, sensory-guided movements and motion perception.Title: From Thought to Movement: Helping Paralyzed People with Brain-Machine InterfacesAbstract: Tetraplegia, the loss of movement and feeling in all four limbs, can result from spinal cord injuries at the level of the neck. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) can help people with tetraplegia by allowing them to control assistive devices with their thoughts. A BMI consists of arrays of tiny electrodes that can record the activity of large numbers of cortical neurons and provide electrical stimulation to restore the sense of touch. The Andersen Lab has implanted arrays in a variety of specialized cortical areas rather than just the motor cortex. Using this approach, we can explore the science of how these areas process sensory and motor information and apply that knowledge to developing neural prosthetics. The lab has found that small patches of the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), a sensorimotor association cortical area, encodes preconsciously the intended actions of all parts of the body. Among its more sensory and cognitive functions, PPC encodes the awareness of touch, internal speech, and the observation of others. Lastly, Prof. Andersen will show a neural prosthetic application in which bimanual brain control is used in a real environment in which a participant drives a commercial vehicle.

Alex Carrasco Martinez (MIT)

Speaker: David Roberts (University of Minnesota, Morris)Title: Wild Ramification in Hypergeometric MotivesAbstract:The bulk of my talk will be an overview of the current state of knowledge of wild ramification in general hypergeometric motives at a fixed prime $p$. The presentation will be as elementary and visual as possible, using p-adic ordinals of field discriminants of trinomials $x^n - n t x + (n-1) t$ and their underlying Galois theory as a continuing example. It will be revealed that the general situation is very complicated, but exhibits enough patterns that one can still reasonably hope for a universal formula identifying all numerical invariants of wild p-adic ramification in all hypergeometric motives.If one restricts to the case where $\operatorname{ord}_p(t)$ is coprime to $p$ then the situation simplifies considerably. The ramp conjecture of Section 13 of my survey on Hypergeometric Motives with Fernando Rodriguez Villegas predicts conductor exponents. I will conclude with a new refinement of the ramp conjecture that predicts, via Feynman-like diagrams, how the conductor exponents decompose as a sum of slopes. The refinement reveals much more structure than the original ramp conjecture, and I hope will point the way to a proof.

Mastering Change: Lessons from Berklee, iZotope, and The Studio Reflections on how sound, tools, and aesthetics evolve.Mastering Change: Lessons from Berklee, iZotope, and The Studio. Reflections on how sound, tools, and aesthetics evolve - and what remains timeless.What persists across decades of change in music and technology? What truths, pitfalls, and recurring mistakes keep showing up? Drawing on a lifetime at the crossroads of music and technology—as a producer and mastering engineer, an educator at Berklee, and a collaborator with developers and product designers—I’ll share observations about music, perception, and human behavior. Through stories and examples, this talk highlights enduring lessons that can help us navigate and shape the future of our craft.Speaker Bio: Jonathan Wyner is Chief Engineer at M Works Studios in Somerville, MA, Professor of Music Production and Engineering at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Past President of the Audio Engineering Society, former Education Director for iZotope and currently an advisor at Suno.He combines a focus on production, engineering and education with experience as a product design consultant. How work includes leveraging technology and product innovations to create engaging experiences to creative and technical users.A producer, engineer, musician and performer, he's mastered and produced thousands of recordings during the last 35 years. Credits include Jean-Claude Risset, James Taylor, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Kiri Te Kanawa, Aimee Mann, London Symphony, Miles Davis, Semisonic, Thelonius Monk, Pink Floyd, Cream, Bruce Springsteen and Nirvana.He has several accolades, including production of the Grammy Nominated soundtrack for PBS special Invention and Alchemy (Deborah Henson-Conant, 2005), the mastering of the first recording of a full length opera (Madame Butterfly 1912, BBC), and the first interactive CD game (Play it By Ear, Rykodisc). In 2012 he authored the text 'Audio Mastering: Essential Practices' published by Hal Leonard/Berklee Press along with undergraduate and graduate courses for Berkleemusic Online.He remembers very clearly, the time before the look ahead limiter/compressor changed the sound of produced musicFree and Open to the PublicRoom 4-237 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 182 Memorial Drive Rear Cambridge, MA 02139https://whereis.mit.edu/?go=4

Get outside and play! Bananagrams, Connect Four, Hopscotch, Scrabble, Corn Hole, and more.Choose from a fun and varied selection of board games and lawn games, all free to borrow during your visit. Plenty of options available for adults, kids, small groups and pairs.Picnics, dogs, and groups are welcome! Just make sure to follow our guidelines.Free and open to all! Please note that this event is weather dependent.Special Play+ events in this series:7/22 - Free ice cream sandwiches while supplies last! 🍦7/29 - Rescheduled8/5 - The theme this week is Board Games!8/19 and 9/2 - Free lemonade while supplies last! 🍋10/14 Pet Rock Painting

Join us for a dynamic event that will gather an audience of investors, founders, students, and academics in conversation about advances in AI models and the implications for training, inference, and robotics.​You'll gain practical insights on overcoming operational hurdles and learn how investors evaluate data moats, compute costs, and go-to-market strategies to cut through the AI hype.A reception in the galleries will follow after the panels.​Panel 1: From Idea to Market: Scaling AI & Robotics Startups Moderator: Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor, MIT Media Lab​Vaikkunth Mugunthan, Founder & CEO, Dynamo AI​Tim Kraska, MIT CSAIL; Co-founder, Einblick Analytics​Alexander Amini, Co-founder & CSO, Liquid AI​Panel 2: Investor Perspective: Funding AI-Native Startups Moderator: Diane Choi, investor, Samsung Next​Tuan Ho, Partner, Xfund​Ali Mahmoud, Principal, Glasswing Ventures​Boaz Fachler, Principal, Link Ventures

Time: 6:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA