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.

To mark the U.S. premiere of Lighten Up! — a traveling exhibition originally shown at the EPFL Pavilions in Lausanne, Switzerland that explores circadian rhythms through artistic and scientific lenses — Swissnex, in collaboration with the MIT Museum, is holding a one day interdisciplinary symposium, bringing together artists, scientists, and the wider community to explore themes of light, rhythm, time, sleep, and perception.Framed by the metaphor of a prism – breaking light into its constituent colors – the day is structured into thematic segments that pair artists and scientists in dialogue, performance, or experiment. The prism can refract light into a spectrum, symbolizing how one event, idea or reality can be seen in multiple ways, depending on the angle or context. Like a rainbow appearing out of storm and light, multiplicity reveals itself in layers of color – each hue a different voice, a different view.Departing from the classical symposium format, the event will be enriched with artistic interventions that shift the sensory and conceptual register throughout the day, along with slow lighting transitions, rhythm-based exercises, dream writing stations, and guided moments of reflection. These elements invite participants to not only talk about circadian rhythms, but to inhabit them.To see full program details and register, visit Swissnex.org.October 29 10am - 4pm MIT Museum

Immersive real-time 3D ultrasound imaging in augmented reality: Contextual overlays for medical training & practiceDATE: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 TIME: 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET LOCATION: Virtual (register for webinar link); limited in-person spots available SPEAKERS: Jason Hou, PhD Student in the MIT Media Lab, Conformable Decoders Group and April Anlage, PhD candidate, MIT Mechanical EngineeringREGISTERABSTRACT #1Ultrasound imaging is non-radiative, portable, and widely used—but interpreting two dimensional (2D) slices in real time poses significant cognitive challenges, especially when spatial understanding is critical. Hou proposes a novel system for immersive, real-time, three dimensional (3D) ultrasound visualization using augmented reality (AR). Their approach reconstructs incoming ultrasound data into a dynamic 3D voxel representation that is overlaid directly on top of a real-world visual feed within an AR environment. This contextual overlay provides critical spatial reference points, ensuring operators remain oriented during live exploration of volumetric data. In medicine, it can enhance guidance during critical procedures or live-examination and create intuitive training tools. Outside of healthcare, potential uses include nondestructive testing in manufacturing, biomechanical analysis, and immersive STEM education, where dynamic structure changes within an object are contextualized in real-time spatiotemporal resolution.ABSTRACT #2Ultrasound is a safe, portable, and inexpensive medical imaging modality. However, it can be difficult for inexperienced users to accurately and completely image a target. By tracking where a user has scanned, an ultrasound volume can be built. Using the information contained in the volume, scan-specific user guidance can be communicated. In this talk, Anlage will describe the ongoing development of a HoloLens 2 augmented reality (AR) application designed to efficiently guide a user through collecting a complete ultrasound scan over a given volume. With guided volume ultrasound, there is the potential to improve the education, training, and accessibility of ultrasound for medical imaging.SPEAKER BIOSJason Hou is a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab and MIT HEALS Graduate Fellow. He has a broad range of interests and experiences spanning brain-machine-interfaces to augmented reality imaging systems. His current work explores immersive, real-time 3D ultrasound visualization in augmented reality, creating contextual overlays that enhance surgical guidance, live diagnostics, and training. A systems builder with broad interests across electronics, materials, and biomedicine, Jason is passionate about developing chronically implantable and wearable technologies that seamlessly monitor and modulate human health.April Anlage is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her research focuses on clinical applications of volume ultrasound for improved repeatability. Prior to her Ph.D., April completed a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at MIT with research focused on self-efficacy and community in remote engineering design classes. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho, Southern Africa, teaching high school math and physics from 2016-18 and graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2016. Her other interests include hiking, participatory design practices, and STEM education.The IMMERSED seminar series is an exploration into how immersive technology and new modalities for manipulating and understanding data are shaping innovations across science, engineering, and art. These events—a mixture of lectures, demonstrations, and tutorials—will offer a deep dive into a capability or set of capabilities and how they can be applied to various fields.IMMERSED is sponsored by the MIT.nano Immersion Lab, which provides space, tools, and a platform to connect the physical to the digital, joining researchers through creative projects that bridge multiple disciplines.

Speaker: Elinor Karlsson (University of Massachusetts Medical School / Broad Institute)In person or on Zoom at https://mit.zoom.us/j/93513735220

Computers can get lost or stolen. Data can become corrupted. Hardware can fail. Setting up a solid backup system is key to avoiding data loss and restoring your data when catastrophe strikes. This session will cover what a good backup system looks like and what resources are available at MIT to help you confidently back up your stuff.

Professor Rochelle Terman from the University of Chicago at will speak at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.Summary: Public perceptions and representations of global affairs are central to International Relations (IR) scholarship, yet existing methodologies—such as surveys and media analysis—face temporal and coverage constraints. In this paper, we introduce a new, comprehensive dataset of country representations in millions of English-language books over 120 years. Harnessing the massive Google Books Ngram Corpus and cutting-edge text-as-data methods, we track the distribution of attention and meaning attached to 256 countries in both American and British print culture from 1900 to 2019. We measure both the frequency of country mentions and the semantic associations attached to them using dynamic word embeddings. Our analysis reveals enduring and evolving discursive frames—such as China’s association with growth/decline and Russia’s with grand strategy—demonstrating the persistence of country images in American public discourses. We validate our measures against established benchmarks and highlight their utility for studying international reputation, status, and public discourse. By expanding the temporal and substantive scope of text-based IR research, this study provides a valuable resource for examining long-term trends in public perceptions of global affairs and international relations.Dr. Austin Long will offer some reflections on the development of US nuclear policy, drawing on his experience as the Joint Staff deputy director, Strategic Stability Strategy, Plans and Policy Directorate within the Department of Defense's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Do you have a long-term home for your research data? Somewhere it can be persistently accessed so that other researchers can replicate your research or to comply with journal or funder requirements? There are many options out there, but we're here to help you narrow it down. This short workshop runs through MIT Libraries' recommendations for data repositories, as well as some of the main characteristics to consider as you decide where your data should be made available.

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

PPSM Seminar

Speaker: Torsten Wedhorn (TU Darmstadt)Title: Moduli of truncated thingsAbstract: G-shtukas (classical and p-adic) for a reductive group G and their moduli spaces play an important role in the Langlands program (equi-characteristic and p-adic). Similarly, moduli spaces of G-displays can be viewed as period spaces for Shimura varieties in mixed characteristic. In this talk I will explain a general formalism how to construct moduli spaces of G-bundles on certain algebraic stacks. I will apply this formalism to construct and study moduli spaces of (truncated) G-shtukas, (truncated) G-displays, and (truncated) prismatic Breuil-Kisin-Fargues modules, focussing on the case of local G-shtukas

Date: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 Location: 46-3002 (Singleton Auditorium)Speaker: Aakanksha Singhvi, Ph.D. Affiliation: Associate Professor, Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutch Cancer Research CenterHost: Dr. Steve FlavellTalk title: Glial molecular heterogeneity and roles in neural function, aging, and Parkinson’s diseaseAbstract: Molecular interactions between the two major cell types of the nervous system, glia and neurons, underlie neural development and functions. Compared to neurons, however, molecular understanding of glial functions remains sparse. Beyond fundamental insight into how the nervous system works, this critical knowledge gap is also disease-relevant, given that glial dysfunction is seen in many neurological disorders.My lab investigates glia biology in vivo at single-cell resolution using C. elegans as a powerful molecular-genetic platform that we helped establish. We previously identified glial factors that modulate neuron properties, uncovered that tricellular epithelia-glia-neuron mechanobiology coupling impacts neural aging, and built the complete molecular atlas of C. elegans glia – which revealed extensive molecular heterogeneity and sex-dimorphism across nervous system glia.We had also previously discovered that glial engulfment/pruning is a conserved function in C. elegans and found that glia dynamically modulate engulfment based on neuron activity. Engulfment of neuron-fragments is a critical and disease-linked, but molecularly less-defined, glial function. We now report our finding that multiple genes linked to Parkinson’s disease (PD), the fastest growing neurodegenerative disorder, act in glia to regulate glial engulfment downstream of neuron activity. Further, mechanistically these genes act differently in glia compared to their reported neuronal roles, via a pathway conserved in humans. Thus, our findings link glial engulfment to PD; and highlight the importance of evaluating disease-gene functions by (glial) cell-context for complete assessment of their roles in disease etiology.

TBD

Becoming Ungovernable: Hill Peoples, Decentralized Resistance and Buddhist Nationalism in Southeast Asiapresented by : Dr David Thang Moe, Research Affiliate, MIT Center for International StudiesWhy does the central state, shaped by Buddhist nationalism, become an enemy of ethnic and religious minorities in Hill Southeast Asia—a region referred to as Zomia by James Scott and others? In what ways do decentralized resistance movements across Southeast Asia’s villages and valleys—particularly in Myanmar and its diasporic communities—challenge the military power of the central state? How might ungovernable communities in these hill areas reimagine a new nation that moves beyond Buddhist state nationalism and military dictatorship? Drawing on his firsthand experiences and his forthcoming monograph, Beyond Buddhist Nationalism (Oxford University Press), David Moe will explore the politics of civil war, Buddhist nationalism, ethnic conflict, everyday forms of decentralized resistance, diasporic mobilization, efforts toward ethnic reconciliation, and a new vision for a democratic and inclusive future of nationhood.

Student authors will read from their work collected in this year's edition of Angles. There will be light refreshments.Co-hosted by Comparative Media Studies/Writing and MIT Libraries.

On Wednesday nights you are invited to come to The Table for peaceful Christian worship in the Chapel at 5:15 pm and dinner in the Main Dining Room of W11 at around 6:30 pm.We worship with beautiful songs, open conversation about the Scriptures, prayers and a simple sharing of communion around the altar. Then we enjoy dinner together and good company together. Whether you come every week or just drop by once in a while, there is a caring community for you at the Table.You are truly welcome to come as you are: undergrad, grad, or post-doc; sure of your faith or wondering what it is all about; gay, straight, bi, trans, questioning. Please join us for no-pressure worship and fellowship.Hosted by the Lutheran Epsicopal Ministry @ MIT. For more information, or to verify gathering times during holiday and vacation periods, please contact chaplains Andrew Heisen (heisen@mit.edu) and Kevin Vetiac (kvet246@mit.edu).Please note that we will not meet during the week of Thanksgiving nor between Christmas and New Year's Day. Please see our website (le-ministry.mit.edu) for updates on meeting times and locations as well as additional details.

Time: 7:00 PMLocation: Springfield, MA

Time: 7:00 PMLocation: Worcester, MA

Come join the MIT Women’s Chorale as we experience the joy of making music together! New singers from throughout the MIT community are welcome on Wednesdays evenings, beginning on September 10, from 7 to 9 pm in Building 4 as we practice for our December concert.The Chorale, a concert choir focused on music for treble voice, is led by our talented music director, Nhung Truong, who makes each rehearsal a pleasure.We ask that prospective singers contact us at mitwc@mit.edu to register with us and be placed on an e mail list to receive necessary information. Further details are available on our website.https://web.mit.edu/womensleague/womenschorale/