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

Time:Location: Rome, GA / Berry College

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.

Join us on Thursday, October 16 to learn about MIT’s combined engineering and management master’s degree!In this session, we’ll give you an overview of our master of science degree and the unique integrated core course. Program staff will answer your questions about the application process. Current students will also join us to share their stories and what it’s really like to be a student at MIT. Our engineering and management degree provides you with tools to help you solve real-world problems as a leader in any organization.

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.

MLK Scholars Presentation (Leslie Jonas)This talk focuses on the power of indigenous land management and relationship practices that have taken place for thousands of years. Leslie shares on the importance of traditional ecological knowledge in the preservation of these pristine old growth forests that are home to native ecological systems of insects, plants, trees, winged, finned, and 2 and 4-leggeds and keep all of the natural world in balance, but have been severely damaged by human and industry impact for the past hundreds of years. This presentation leads us beyond land acknowledgments to a more collaborative and rights of nature-based approach to saving our forests, our native woodlands, through an Indigenous lens. Leslie examines our human relationship to trees and nature and our responsibility to help her heal by being and living in relationship, reciprocity and gratitude of all living things.

"Protect or Prepare? Crop Insurance and Adaptation to a Changing Climate" | Marguerite Obolensky (Columbia)

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

Talk Title: NeuroAIAbstract: NeuroAI creates synergies between the study of brains and AI based on neural architectures with massively parallel processing units highly connected by weights and trained by learning algorithms. ChatGPT was an overnight success that took 40 years to achieve. Insights from AI may help us better understand cognitive processing in brains.Bio: Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Chair at the Salk Institute and a Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at UC San Diego. He is a leader in NeuroAI, the recent convergence between neuroscience and AI. He is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, and Inventors. He was awarded the Brain Prize in 2024 and was elected a Fellow the Royal Society in 2025.https://www.hhmi.org/scientists/terrence-j-sejnowskiFollowed by a reception with food and drink in 3rd floor atrium

Speaker: Tom Bohman (Carnegie Mellon University)Title: Two point concentration of the domination number of the random graphAbstract:We show that the domination number of the binomial random graph G_{n,p} with edge probability p =n^{-\gamma} is concentrated on two values for \gamma < 2/3 and not concentrated on two values for \gamma > 2/3.The main ingredient in the proof is a Poisson type approximation for the probability that a random bipartite graph has no isolated vertices in a regime where standard tools are not available.Joint work with Lutz Warnke and Emily Zhu.

Matias Cattaneo (Princeton University)

Ayca Kaya University of Miami (joint with Aniko Oery and Anne-Katrine Roesler)

Title: “Exploring synthetic mechanochemistry”Website: https://www.icredd.hokudai.ac.jp/kubota-koji

A series of talks on OR-related topics. For more information see: https://orc.mit.edu/seminars-events/

Speaker: Sourav Chatterjee (Stanford)Title: Neural networks can learn any low complexity patternAbstract:Neural networks have taken over the world, but research on why they work so well is still in its infancy. I will present a baby step in this direction, based on joint work with my student Tim Sudijono. We show, with quantitative bounds, that a certain kind of neural network can quickly learn any pattern that can be expressed as a short program. An example is as follows. Let N be a large number, and suppose we have data consisting of a sample of X’s and Y’s, where each X is a randomly chosen number between 1 and N, and the corresponding Y is 1 if X is a prime and 0 if not. The sample size n is negligible compared to N. If we fit a neural network to this data which is “sparsest” in a suitable sense, it turns out that the network will be able to accurately predict if a newly chosen X is a prime or not, with a sample of size as small as (log N)^2 — even though the network does not know, a priori, that we are asking it to detect primality. The talk will be accessible to those with no background in neural networks; I will define all necessary concepts.*Pre-reception held in 2-290 at 4pm.

Speaker: Chi Hong Chow (Virginia Tech)Title: Mirror symmetry and Gamma conjectures for flag varietiesAbstract: Mirror symmetry predicts that the quantum 𝐷-module of a Fano manifold should be isomorphic to the Gauss-Manin system of its mirror Landau-Ginzburg model. Furthermore, the Betti integral structure on the latter should correspond to an explicit integral structure on the former involving the Gamma class. Closely related is Gamma conjecture I proposed by Galkin, Golyshev and Iritani. In this talk, I will discuss this story in the context of flag varieties.

Speaker: Jane Shi (MIT)Title: Katz's proof of the Riemann hypothesis for curvesAbstract:Reference: Katz, A Note on Riemann Hypothesis for Curves and Hypersurfaces Over Finite Fields, Sections 1-4.

Fireside chat with Tang Tan, OpenAI Chief Hardware Officer, former Apple VP of iPhone Product Design, and MIT Course 2 alum.

Create solutions for a better future! Explore the intersection of art and social entrepreneurship with IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge and the Arts Startup Incubator. Hear from program managers about each one’s offerings—funding, mentorship, workshops, and stakeholder engagement—while you eat snacks and meet other students with creative ideas for positive change.MIT alum Blake Blaze will share about his experience participating in both programs with two different ventures: Front Row Fantasy, an interactive music discovery platform for up-and-coming artists, and SamWise, a personalized education platform for incarcerated students.October 16, 2025 5–6:15pm | E38-579 | iHQ Fifth Floor

This talk traces the political power of motherhood and childrearing in Arabic thought between 1850 and 1939. It shows how writers used ideas about childrearing (tarbiya in Arabic) to address key issues in modern social thought, such as freedom, labor, and democracy. While debates about childrearing in Arabic led to expansions in girls' education and women writers' authority, they also attached the fate of nations to women's unwaged labor in the home. Highlighting Arab women's writing offers a new way to think about the devaluation of social reproduction under capitalism, the stubborn maleness of the liberal subject, and why the idea of embodied, binary gender difference has proven so difficult to overcome.

Silent Meditation in the Chapel on Thursdays 6-8pm, open to everyone in the MIT Community. Some sessions include Guided Meditation at 6:30pm.

All are welcome to join our visiting monks and MIT Prajnopaya - the Buddhist Community for Prayers for Healing and Peace. A part of Healing the Divide: Unity, Compassion & Flourishing, 2025 Mandala @ MIT.Please bring an MIT i.d. or govt-issued i.d. for access.

Vincent Anioke, ’17, returns to MIT to read from his book of short stories, Perfect Little Angels, published to acclaim last year by Arsenal Pulp Press.Set in both Nigeria and Canada, these stunning stories have been praised for their candor, tenderness, and deep humanity, and described as “brilliant and harrowing.” Through masterful writing, Anioke evokes complex and unforgettable characters who “grapple with the harsh consequences of unforgiving traditions and defiant desires”.Anioke was born and raised in Nigeria, now lives in Canada, and works as a software engineer at Google. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Split Lip Magazine, Carve, and Pithead Chapel. He was the 2021 Austin Clarke Fiction Prize Winner and was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.At MIT, Anioke was an Admissions blogger and Course 6 major. He won numerous writing prizes, including CMS/W’s Robert A. Boit Prize for short stories, Boit Manuscript Prizes for essays and fiction, the King Prize for Science Fiction Writing, and the Louis Kampf Writing Prize in Women’s & Gender Studies.

MIT Tango Club invites you to our Fall Milonga! Join us in the iconic Sala de Puerto Rico, and enjoy light snacks and refreshments while dancing to the music of DJ Nanying! Dress up and experience Argentine Tango at its finest.Tickets must be purchase online: https://cglink.me/2cy/r916484$5 MIT Students $10 Non-MIT Students $10 MIT Community (Alumni, Staff, Affiliates) $25 GeneralLocation: MIT Stratton Student Center, Sala de Puerto Rico (W20-202), 84 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/MpghbEYgTSt2i6F89)MIT Tango Club has been promoting Argentine Tango at MIT for nearly 25 years. For more information, see our website: https://sites.google.com/site/mittangoclub/home