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.

Join the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative for a conversation with Professor Jason Jay and Hibah Khan (MBA ’25) to explore the emerging field of systemic investing. Unlike traditional investing, which often focuses on standalone transactions or near-term outcomes, systemic investing is about engaging with the root causes and system interdependencies to create lasting change.This session will introduce the Systemic Investing for Social Change Starter Kit, a new resource co-created by MBA students and practitioners that offers practical tools to help investors, ecosystem builders and leaders align multiple forms of capital toward systems change. The toolkit includes frameworks for stakeholder engagement, systems mapping, multicapital deployment strategies and other practical ways to turn systems thinking into action.We’ll discuss how the Starter Kit was developed through hands-on collaboration with host investors and how it reflects the growing demand for leaders who can use systems thinking, collaborate across sectors and design for impact at scale. So, whether you’re curious about systemic investing, preparing for a career in impact or looking for tools to bring into your own work, this session will offer an introduction to an approach that redefines what it means to invest for meaningful and lasting change.

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: How to Grow a Lexicon: Evidence from Babies & their WorldsAbstract: While a longstanding view in language development holds that infants don't understand words until they begin talking (around age 1), recent research in our lab and others has revealed that infants begin understanding words months earlier. In this talk I will explore two branches of my lab’s work that tackle the mechanisms of early language development, largely focused on building the early lexicon. First, I will discuss eyetracking data revealing infants’ initially imature expectations about how words sound and what they mean, and how their representations eventually become more adult-like over infancy and toddlerhood. Synthesizing across studies, I will discuss recent results showing a robust, non-linear, and arguably qualitative improvements in infants’ real-time word comprehension just after the first birthday. Second, drawing from SEEDLingS, my lab’s audio and video corpus of home recordings, I will argue that this “comprehension boost” is not well-explained by changes in language input for common words, but rather, by postulating that infants learn to take better advantage of relatively stable input data. I will propose complementary theoretical accounts of what makes older infants “better learners.” Finally, I will also discuss the dynamics of language learning in infants who are blind and infants who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing, considering how their unique perceptual experiences dovetail with their accruing linguistic knowledge.Bio: Dr. Bergelson is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in Harvard University’s Psychology Department. She received her PhD in 2013 from UPenn, completed postdoctoral work at the University of Rochester, and was a professor at Duke prior to Harvard (where she moved in 2023). Her work has been funded by the NSF, NIH, NEH, and FDA as well as various intramural and extramural foundations. She has published over 50 articles, and has received early career awards from the Fed. of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, the American Psychology Foundation, the International Society for Infant Studies, the Association for Psychological Science, and Forbes Magazine, among others. Her work focuses on how young children learn language from the world around them, with a particular focus on experimental and observational measures of infants’ during the early phases of word learning.I am happy to send copies of any of our articles upon email request (or you can snag them from my Publications page).Followed by a reception with food and drink in 3rd floor atrium

Francesca Molinari (Cornell University)

Francesco Fabbri UC Berkeley

Speaker: George Barbastathis (MIT)

Have you ever wondered what truly shapes the future you’re working toward—whether in a project, passion, or everyday decision?In this interactive workshop, hosted by the Global Health Alliance in collaboration with MIT Radius, you’ll explore what drives your work and where your decisions take you. Using a simple yet powerful framework, we’ll reflect on:The futures you’re envisioning (big or small)The people your actions touchThe values behind your choicesThe moments when small decisions really matterBring a passion, project, or activity you care about, and we’ll guide you through thought-provoking questions designed to open up new perspectives and possibilities. You’ll leave with sharper insight into how your actions fit into the bigger picture and a clearer understanding of what truly matters to you.

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

Time: 6:00 PMLocation: Cambridge, MA