Author: mantulin

School of Science

September 9, 2020

Despite the upheaval caused by the coronavirus pandemic, 10 new faculty members have joined MIT in the departments of Biology; Chemistry; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Mathematics; and Physics. The School of Science welcomes these new faculty, most of whom began their appointment July 1, amidst efforts to update education and research plans for the fall semester. They bring exciting and valuable new areas of strength and expertise to the Institute.

Camilla Cattania is an earthquake scientist. She uses continuum mechanics, numerical simulations, and statistics to study fault mechanics and earthquake physics at different scales, from small repeating events to fault interaction on regional and global scales. The models she has developed can help forecast earthquake sequences caused by seismic or aseismic events, such as aftershocks and swarms induced by forcing mechanisms like magma moving under the Earth’s surface. She has also developed theoretical models to explain why certain faults rupture in predictable patterns while others do not. Cattania’s research plans include widening her focus to other tectonic settings and geometrically complex fault structures.

Cattania earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cambridge University in experimental and theoretical physics in 2011, after which she completed a PhD in Germany at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences and the University of Potsdam in 2015. Subsequently, she spent a few months as a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and as a postdoc at Stanford University and her doctoral institution. She joins the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences as an assistant professor.

Richard Fletcher researches quantum physics using atomic vapors one-millionth the density of air and one-millionth the temperature of deep space. By manipulating the gas with intricately sculpted laser beams and magnetic fields, he can engineer custom-made quantum worlds, which provide both a powerful test bed for theory and a wonderful playground for discovering new phenomena. The goal is to understand how interesting collective behaviors emerge from the underlying microscopic complexity of many interacting particles. Fletcher’s interests include superfluidity in two-dimensional gases, methods to probe the correlations between individual atoms, and how the interplay of interactions and magnetic fields leads to novel physics.

Fletcher is a graduate of Cambridge University, where he completed his bachelor’s in 2010. Before returning to Cambridge University to earn his PhD in 2015, he was a research fellow at Harvard University. He originally came to MIT as a postdoc in 2016 and now joins the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. Fletcher is a member of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms.

William Frank investigates deformation of the Earth’s crust. He combines seismology and geodesy to explore the physical mechanisms that control the broad continuum of rupture modes and fault instabilities within the Earth. His research has illuminated the cascading rupture dynamics of slow fault slip and how the aftershocks that follow a large earthquake can reveal the underlying behavior of the host fault. Frank considers shallow shifts that cause earthquakes down to deep creep that is all-but-invisible at the surface. His insights work to improve estimates of seismic hazards induced by tectonic dynamics, volcanic processes, and human activity, which can then inform risk prediction and mitigation.

Frank holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in earth systems science, which he received in 2009. The Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris awarded him a master’s degree in geophysics in 2011 and a PhD in 2014. He first joined MIT as a postdoc in 2015 before moving to the University of Southern California as an assistant professor in 2018. He now returns as an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz advances research on fundamental physics and nuclear structure largely through the development of novel laser spectroscopy techniques. He investigates the properties of subatomic particles using atoms and molecules made up of short-lived radioactive nuclei. Garcia Ruiz’s experimental work provides unique information about the fundamental forces of nature and offers new opportunities in the search beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. His previous research at CERN focused on the study of the emergence of nuclear phenomena and the properties of nuclear matter at the limits of existence.

Garcia Ruiz’s bachelor’s degree in physics was achieved in 2009 at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. After earning a master’s in physics in 2011 at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, he completed a doctoral degree in radiation and nuclear physics at KU Leuven in 2015. Prior to joining MIT, he was first a research associate at the University of Manchester from 2016-17 and then a research fellow at CERN. Garcia Ruiz has now joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. He began his appointment Jan. 1. He is also affiliated with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science.

Ruth Lehmann studies germ cells. The only cells in the body capable of producing an entire organism on their own, germ cells pass genomic information from one generation to the next via egg cells. By analyzing the organization of their informational material as well as the mechanics they regulate, such as the production of eggs and sperm, Lehmann hopes to expose germ cells’ unique ability to enable procreation. Her work in cellular and developmental biology is renowned for identifying how germ cells migrate and lead to the continuation of life. An advocate for fundamental research in science, Lehmann studies fruit flies as a model to unveil vital aspects of early embryonic development that have important implications for stem cell research, lipid biology, and DNA repair.

Lehmann earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Tubingen in Germany. She took an interlude from her education to carry out research at the University of Washington in the United States before returning to Germany. There, she earned a master’s equivalent from the University of Freiburg and a PhD from the University of Tubingen. Lehmann was subsequently a postdoc at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the UK, after which she joined MIT. A faculty member and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research member from 1988 to 1996, she now returns after 23 years at New York University. Lehmann joins as a full professor in the Department of Biology and is the new director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

As an astrochemist, Brett McGuire is interested in the chemical origins of life and its evolution. He combines physical chemistry experiments and analyses with molecular spectroscopy in a lab, the results of which he then compares against astrophysics observation. His work ties together questions about the formation of planets and a planet’s ability to host and create life. McGuire does this by investigating the generation, presence, and fate of new molecules in space, which is vast and mostly empty, providing unique physical challenges on top of chemical specifications that can impact molecular formation. He has discovered several complex molecules already, including benzonitrile, a marker of carbon-based reactions occurring in an interstellar medium.

McGuire’s BS degree was awarded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. He completed a master’s in physical chemistry in 2011 at Emory University and a PhD in 2015 at Caltech. He then pursued a postdoc at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He joins the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor.

Dor Minzer works in the fields of mathematics and theoretical computer science. His interests revolve around computational complexity theory, or — more explicitly — probabilistically checkable proofs, Boolean function analysis, and combinatorics. With collaborators, he has proved the 2-to-2 Games Conjecture, a central problem in complexity theory closely related to the Unique-Games Conjecture. This work significantly advances our understanding of approximation problems and, in particular, our ability to draw the border between computationally feasible and infeasible approximation problems.

Minzer is not new to online education. After earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 2014 and a PhD in 2018, both from Tel-Aviv University, he became a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He joins the Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor.

Lisa Piccirillo is a mathematician specializing in the study of three- and four-dimensional spaces. Her work in four-manifold topology has surprising applications to the study of mathematical knots. Perhaps most notably, Piccirillo proved that the Conway knot is not “slice.” For all other small knots, “sliceness” is readily determined, but this particular knot had remained a mystery since John Conway presented it in the mid-1900s. After hearing about the problem at a conference, Piccirillo took only a week to formulate a proof. She is broadly interested in low-dimensional topology and knot theory, and employs constructive techniques in four-manifolds.

Piccirillo earned her BS in mathematics in 2013 from Boston College. Her PhD in mathematics was earned from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019, and from 2019-20 she was a postdoc at Brandeis University. She joins the Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor.

Jonathan Weissman’s research interest is protein folding and structure, an integral function of life. His purview encompasses the expression of human genes and the lineage of cells, as well as protein misfolding, which can cause diseases and other physiological issues. He has made discoveries surrounding protein folding mechanisms, the development of CRISPR gene-editing tools, and other new therapeutics and drugs, and in the process generated innovative experimental and analytical methods and technologies. One of his novel methods is the ribosome profiling approach, which allows researchers to observe in vivo molecular translation, the process by which a protein is created according to code provided by RNA, a major advancement for health care.

Weissman earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University in 1998 and a PhD from MIT in 1993. After completing his doctoral degree, he left MIT to become a postdoc at Yale University for three years, and then a faculty member at the University of California at San Francisco in 1996. He returns to MIT to join the Department of Biology as a full professor and a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Yukiko Yamashita, a stem cell biologist, delves into the origins of multicellular organisms, asking questions about how genetic information is passed from one generation to the next, essentially in perpetuity, via germ cells (eggs and sperm), and how a single cell (fertilized egg) becomes an organism containing many different types of cells. The results of her work on stem cell division and gene transmission has implications for medicine and long-term human health. Using fruit flies as a model in the lab, she has revealed new areas of knowledge. For example, Yamashita has identified the mechanisms that enable a stem cell to produce two daughter cells with distinct fates, one a stem cell and one a differentiating cell, as well as the functions of satellite DNA, which she found to be crucial, unlike the “waste” they were previously thought to be.

Yamashita received her bachelor’s degree in biology in 1994 and her PhD in biophysics in 1999, both from Kyoto University. After being a postdoc at Stanford University for five years, she was appointed a faculty member at the University of Michigan in 2007. She joined the Department of Biology as a full professor with a July 1 start. She also became a member of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research and is a standing investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Professor of biology discusses a scientist’s responsibility to speak out about important issues that affect our nation and the world.

Raleigh McElvery | Department of Biology

July 29, 2020

In an open letter published on July 16 in Science, four MIT professors and nearly 70 additional scientific leaders called upon fellow researchers to urge U.S. government officials to halt plans to restart nuclear weapons testing. Corresponding author and professor of biology Jonathan King sat down to discuss the history of nuclear testing, his personal ties to the issue, and his responsibilities as a scientist. He also co-chairs the Nuclear Disarmament Working Group of Massachusetts Peace Action, MIT’s annual Reducing the Threat of Nuclear War conference, and the editorial board of the MIT Faculty Newsletter.

Q: What events have made you passionate about the issue of nuclear weapons testing?

A: I grew up in the shadow of nuclear war, participating in drills at school where you would duck under your desk. During the Cold War, the world’s nations exploded hundreds of dangerous nuclear tests, releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere in order to develop these weapons. I was a college student during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and remember vividly the fear of a nuclear exchange.

Around that time, it became clear to our nation’s leaders that this was not the way to go. In his famous speech at American University, President Kennedy reversed direction. Professor of chemistry at Caltech Linus Pauling led an effort with his wife to back Kennedy and collect 9,000 signatures from scientists endorsing the president’s Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This was before the internet, so getting 9,000 signatures was not easy, and it had a national impact. I was actually a graduate student at Caltech, following up on Pauling’s work on proteins, when the treaty was ratified and he was awarded the Nobel peace prize for his work.

When I arrived at MIT as an assistant professor, Jerome Wiesner was the Institute president. He was also a key player in pushing the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and Kennedy had previously named him chair of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). MIT was full of world leaders in nuclear disarmament, including physicists who had worked on the bomb and decided it was a mistake. I’m not a physicist, but I was among the generation at MIT that was very vocal about these issues.

Q: What is the current state of nuclear weapon testing and regulation in the United States, and what concerns do you have about renewed testing?

A: The U.S. hasn’t tested a nuclear weapon since 1992. In that period of time, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was developed by many nations, agreeing not to conduct a nuclear weapons test of any yield. The Senate hasn’t ratified it, but in 2016 the U.S. did adopt UN Security Council Resolution 2310, agreeing to uphold the goal of the CTBT and withhold nuclear testing.

However, the current administration is proposing to modernize nuclear weapons and restart testing, which is both provocative and dangerous. Even if these tests are small, contained, and underground, they will still open the door for other nations to restart testing of their own, and possibly lead to a new nuclear weapons arms race.

When a nuclear weapon — either a conventional bomb or hydrogen bomb — explodes, many radioactive isotopes are produced. Some of them are short-lived and decay quickly, but others like strontium-90 are much longer-lived. These ones can make you sick very slowly, and some can mutate or damage DNA. Even underground tests can leak radioactivity into the atmosphere and environment.

Q: What spurred you and your colleagues to write an open letter to Science, and what was your goal in doing so?

A: Our letter was signed by 70 scientific leaders and Nobel Prize winners, and calls upon the scientific community to warn the nation that this is a dangerous way to go. We also urged the Senate to ratify the CTBT, and pass a new bill introduced by Senator Ed Markey called the Preserving Leadership Against Nuclear Explosives Testing (PLANET) Act — which would prevent spending money on the renewal of testing.

I come from a culture that views scientists as public servants. All my research has been funded by taxpayer dollars, and with that comes a responsibility to help address threats to the community. The very history of my department, the MIT Department of Biology, is tied to scientists taking a stand against social and political issues. I was just a young assistant professor when faculty members like David Baltimore and Ethan Signer led demonstrations to oppose the Vietnam War. It was a very open environment and we supported one another.

These days, science is simply a career. You do your work and you keep your eyes to the bench. But the world can be a better place if we take our eyes off the bench occasionally. So this letter is a reminder to our colleagues: Get involved, and consider it our contribution to the general public who support our research.

Professors earn tenure in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics.

School of Science

July 6, 2020

Beginning July 1, nine faculty members in the MIT School of Science have been granted tenure by MIT. They are appointed in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics.

Physicist Ibrahim Cisse investigates living cells to reveal and study collective behaviors and biomolecular phase transitions at the resolution of single molecules. The results of his work help determine how disruptions in genes can cause diseases like cancer. Cisse joined the Department of Physics in 2014 and now holds a joint appointment with the Department of Biology. His education includes a bachelor’s degree in physics from North Carolina Central University, concluded in 2004, and a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, achieved in 2009. He followed his PhD with a postdoc at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris and a research specialist appointment at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus.

Jörn Dunkel is a physical applied mathematician. His research focuses on the mathematical description of complex nonlinear phenomena in a variety of fields, especially biophysics. The models he develops help predict dynamical behaviors and structure formation processes in developmental biology, fluid dynamics, and even knot strengths for sailing, rock climbing and construction. He joined the Department of Mathematics in 2013 after completing postdoctoral appointments at Oxford University and Cambridge University. He received diplomas in physics and mathematics from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2004 and 2005, respectively. The University of Augsburg awarded Dunkel a PhD in statistical physics in 2008.

A cognitive neuroscientist, Mehrdad Jazayeri studies the neurobiological underpinnings of mental functions such as planning, inference, and learning by analyzing brain signals in the lab and using theoretical and computational models, including artificial neural networks. He joined the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences in 2013. He achieved a BS in electrical engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 1994, an MS in physiology at the University of Toronto in 2001, and a PhD in neuroscience from New York University in 2007. Prior to joining MIT, he was a postdoc at the University of Washington. Jazayeri is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Yen-Jie Lee is an experimental particle physicist in the field of proton-proton and heavy-ion physics. Utilizing the Large Hadron Colliders, Lee explores matter in extreme conditions, providing new insight into strong interactions and what might have existed and occurred at the beginning of the universe and in distant star cores. His work on jets and heavy flavor particle production in nuclei collisions improves understanding of the quark-gluon plasma, predicted by quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculations, and the structure of heavy nuclei. He also pioneered studies of high-density QCD with electron-position annihilation data. Lee joined the Department of Physics in 2013 after a fellowship at CERN and postdoc research at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT. His bachelor’s and master’s degrees were awarded by the National Taiwan University in 2002 and 2004, respectively, and his doctoral degree by MIT in 2011. Lee is a member of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science.

Josh McDermott investigates the sense of hearing. His research addresses both human and machine audition using tools from experimental psychology, engineering, and neuroscience. McDermott hopes to better understand the neural computation underlying human hearing, to improve devices to assist hearing impaired, and to enhance machine interpretation of sounds. Prior to joining MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, he was awarded a BA in 1998 in brain and cognitive sciences by Harvard University, a master’s degree in computational neuroscience in 2000 by University College London, and a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences in 2006 by MIT. Between his doctoral time at MIT and returning as a faculty member, he was a postdoc at the University of Minnesota and New York University, and a visiting scientist at Oxford University. McDermott is also an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and an investigator in the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines.

Solving environmental challenges by studying and manipulating chemical reactions is the focus of Yogesh Surendranath’s research. Using chemistry, he works at the molecular level to understand how to efficiently interconvert chemical and electrical energy. His fundamental studies aim to improve energy storage technologies, such as batteries, fuel cells, and electrolyzers, that can be used to meet future energy demand with reduced carbon emissions. Surendranath joined the Department of Chemistry in 2013 after a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley. His PhD was completed in 2011 at MIT, and BS in 2006 at the University of Virginia. Suendranath is also a collaborator in the MIT Energy Initiative.

A theoretical astrophysicist, Mark Vogelsberger is interested in large-scale structures of the universe, such as galaxy formation. He combines observational data, theoretical models, and simulations that require high-performance supercomputers to improve and develop detailed models that simulate galaxy diversity, clustering, and their properties, including a plethora of physical effects like magnetic fields, cosmic dust, and thermal conduction. Vogelsberger also uses simulations to generate scenarios involving alternative forms of dark matter. He joined the Department of Physics in 2014 after a postdoc at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Vogelsberger is a 2006 graduate of the University of Mainz undergraduate program in physics, and a 2010 doctoral graduate of the University of Munich and the Max Plank Institute for Astrophysics. He is also a principal investigator in the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Adam Willard is a theoretical chemist with research interests that fall across molecular biology, renewable energy, and material science. He uses theory, modeling, and molecular simulation to study the disorder that is inherent to systems over nanometer-length scales. His recent work has highlighted the fundamental and unexpected role that such disorder plays in phenomena such as microscopic energy transport in semiconducting plastics, ion transport in batteries, and protein hydration. Joining the Department of Chemistry in 2013, Willard was formerly a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and then the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, achieved in 2009, and a BS in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Puget Sound, granted in 2003.

Lindley Winslow seeks to understand the fundamental particles shaped the evolution of our universe. As an experimental particle and nuclear physicist, she develops novel detection technology to search for axion dark matter and a proposed nuclear decay that makes more matter than antimatter. She started her faculty position in the Department of Physics in 2015 following a postdoc at MIT and a subsequent faculty position at the University of California at Los Angeles. Winslow achieved her BA in physics and astronomy in 2001 and PhD in physics in 2008, both at the University of California at Berkeley. She is also a member of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science.

Honor recognizes faculty mentors who devote true attention to students’ well-being.

Ellie Immerman | Office of Graduate Education

June 30, 2020

The term “mentor” traces back to the ancient Greek author Homer. When Odysseus sets off for Troy, he entrusts his son Telemachus to a close friend, Mentor. Finding Telemachus floundering, the goddess Athena takes on the guise of Mentor, visiting and counseling Telemachus throughout “The Odyssey.” Athena, as Mentor, embodies this transfer of wisdom, compassion, and guidance; the term “mentor” has gone on to capture these sentiments.

Numerous professors at MIT echo this generosity of attention and care in their mentoring relationships with graduate students. The Committed to Caring (C2C) program recognizes outstanding mentors and promotes thoughtful, engaged mentorship throughout the Institute.

For considerate and humanizing acts such as validating students’ identities, inviting students to join in lab and departmental decision-making, and going to great lengths to ensure continuity in funding for students, 12 MIT faculty members were recently honored by their graduate students as stalwart mentors. These new honorees join 48 previous C2C honorees.

The following faculty members are the 2020-21 Committed to Caring Honorees:

• Daron Acemoglu, Department of Economics;
• Alfredo Alexander-Katz, Department of Materials Science and Engineering;
• Kristin Bergmann, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences;
• Kerri Cahoy, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics;
• Catherine Drennan, departments of Biology and Chemistry;
• Colette Heald, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering;
• Caroline Jones, Department of Architecture;
• Jesse Kroll, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering;
• Gene-wei Li, Department of Biology;
• Anna Mikusheva, Department of Economics;
• Gigliola Staffilani, Department of Mathematics; and
• Lawrence Susskind, Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Selecting for generous guidance

Every other year, the Office of Graduate Education invites graduate students to nominate professors for the Committed to Caring honor. A selection committee composed of graduate students and MIT staff members reads the nomination letters, settling on a pool of awardees who devote true attention to their students’ well-being. Selection criteria include the depth and breadth of faculty members’ caring actions, promoting the development of scholarly excellence in students, and the support of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the research groups and the wider community.

This year’s committee included Associate Dean for Graduate Education Suraiya Baluch (chair); Renée Caso (academic programs manager, Department of Architecture); and graduate students Courtney Lesoon (2017-19 C2C graduate community fellow; History, Theory, and Criticism section, Department of Architecture), Ellie Immerman (2019-20 C2C graduate community fellow, departments of History and Science, Technology, and Society), Noam Buckman (Department of Mechanical Engineering), Grace Putka Ahlqvist (Department of Chemistry), and Shayna Hilburg (Department of Materials Science and Engineering).

Baluch writes that she “was deeply moved to read about the many … acts of humanity and compassion that prioritized the well-being of graduate students. So many of the nomination letters spoke to the lasting impact these advisors had on their students’ professional and personal development.” The letters illustrated faculty advisors’ remarkable compassion and eagerness to wholeheartedly support their students.

In particular, these faculty tend to personalize their advising styles to the individual student; work collaboratively with students to navigate distressing life events; reassure students and help renew their love of the discipline when research results go awry; and empower students to guide their own research agendas. In the coming months, each of these honorees will be featured in an MIT News article and an accompanying poster campaign.

Faculty Peer Mentorship Program

During fall 2019, the Office of Graduate Education and Associate Provost Tim Jamison launched a pilot Faculty Peer Mentorship Program (FPMP). Ten of 29 entering untenured faculty members chose to participate. Each was matched with a previous Committed to Caring honoree.

The goal is for pairs to connect regularly throughout the year, discussing how to intentionally craft caring mentoring relationships with graduate students and postdocs. In building mentorship networks, the FPMP will help the Institute enact excellent mentorship as a community value.

Pilot faculty participants come from the schools of Science; Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; Architecture and Planning; and Engineering. Blanche Staton, senior associate dean for graduate education, is “enthused by the wealth of advising wisdom and the eagerness of faculty members to help build a stronger MIT.”

Amid times of uncertainty and great stress, C2C honorees provide a foundation of support for the community, helping us to weather the strains and take care of each other, as well as ourselves.

Whether seeking a career change or rediscovering intellectual pursuits, learners worldwide turn to <i>MITx</i> courses.

Kate Stringer | MIT Open Learning

June 29, 2020

Despite the extraordinary pressures of adapting to the realities of the Covid-19 pandemic, learners have increasingly sought out MITx courses as a way to stay intellectually active, work toward longstanding goals, and affect change in themselves and in the world around them. MITx courses have seen over 500,000 enrollments since the start of the pandemic.

“It’s been humbling to witness the role our courses have played in learners’ lives these past few months,” says Dana Doyle, director of the MITx Program. “The number of people who are using their time at home to learn something new or make a change in their lives is inspiring.”

MITx instructors and staff have heard from learners from over a dozen countries across the globe, sharing their experiences during the pandemic. Some have used MITx courses to rediscover subjects they had once been passionate about; some are leveraging a career change; still others hope to pass on new knowledge to the next generation. The following represent just a few of their stories.

Between careers and countries

Paula Unger was just finishing up an internship in Peru when Covid-19 hit. “The first case was discovered in March, and the lockdown began eight days later,” she recalls. Unger, who recently received her degree in agricultural studies from the University of Bonn, had spent several months analyzing DNA sequencing data at the International Potato Center in Lima.

A Peruvian national, Unger had planned to return to her home in Aachen, Germany immediately following the internship to begin looking for jobs. Instead, she sheltered in place with her family in Lima, where lockdown was strictly enforced. “You could not even go outside for a walk, it’s totally prohibited,” she says.

Unable to leave the house, Unger turned to a project she’d been putting off for some time: taking Professor Eric Lander’s Introduction to Biology MITx course. Though she earned her degree in a science-based field, Unger had spent a few years moving between majors and universities across Germany, and felt that a stronger background in biology would help her career. She didn’t count on how much she would enjoy the course for its own sake.

“I’m mind-blown by how well the course is made,” she says, citing Lander’s engaging lectures and the course’s challenging, interactive problems sets as particularly valuable. “A lot of universities should learn to create courses that are as well-conceived pedagogically as these are.” Thanks to her MITx learning journey, Unger felt she was able to keep moving forward even while stuck in one place: “I could keep growing as a person, even though my life had been put on hold.”

Happily, Unger’s life and career were able to resume sooner than expected. Not long into lockdown, the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne contacted her about a position, conducted an e-interview, and hired her with the promise that they would wait for her until she could return to Germany.

Now back in Aachen, Unger has started her new job, but has no plans to abandon her learning journey. She enrolled in the MITx Quantitative Biology Workshop, and plans eventually to return to school to complete a master’s degree. “I wish more people would realize the potential of what’s possible through online learning,” she says.

Between flights, Australian pilot learns to engineer spacecraft

When he’s not flying U.S. and Australian citizens back to their home countries as part of pandemic-related repatriation efforts, Sydney-based pilot Andrew Wangler necessarily has a lot of time on his hands.

While Wangler’s company maintains the “minimum viable international network” of flights, he’s been on and off furlough throughout the pandemic. When called up, he commutes 10 hours to Melbourne International Airport before flying to San Francisco or Los Angeles to drop off American nationals and pick up returning Australians.

Wangler joined Qantas after a 15-year career in the Royal Australian Air Force. He graduated from the Australian Defence Force Academy with a double major in mathematics and political science, and minors in physics and computer science, before completing an MBA; it’s safe to say that he loves to learn. So when he found himself stuck in a pattern of self-isolation at home and in hotels before and after each flight, Wangler was thrilled to find MITx courses that helped him rediscover yet another academic passion: spaceflight.

“Professor Hoffmann’s passion for the subject material and teaching style are very infectious and engaging,” says Wangler. Finding Hoffman’s Introduction to Aerospace Engineering course brought back fond memories of his interest in the subject as an undergraduate. These days, Wangler hopes to channel his own enthusiasm and what he’s learned from MITx to help his 12 year-old son, “hell-bent on being an engineer,” to find the right learning resources.

“As my son gets older, it will be helpful to have the engineering background, just to open his eyes and point him in the right direction,” says Wangler. Last year, father and son visited the Boeing facilities near Seattle as well as the Museum of Flight, including a session in the Space Shuttle Crew Trainer. They are planning more educational trips in the future, including Houston, Texas and Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In the meantime, Wangler’s enthusiasm for his online learning journey shows no signs of abating: while preparing for another flight to LAX, he emails, “I am actually enjoying Professor Hoffman’s archived course on Engineering the Space Shuttle as we speak!”

Under lockdown in Madrid, retiree rediscovers a love of physics 

Miguel Doñate has witnessed the effects of Covid-19 more directly than many. Under strict lockdown since March 15 in Madrid, Spain, Doñate is surrounded by reminders of the pandemic’s worst outcomes.

“We have been in a very difficult situation here, with a lot of deaths, including people I know,” Doñate says. “Five hundred meters away from where I live, they created a morgue within a shopping mall.” Police keep tight control of the streets, regulating all forms of traffic. Doñate hasn’t been able to leave the house except to buy necessities.

Doñate feels fortunate to have found intellectual stimulation and a welcome distraction in MITx courses on quantum mechanics, taught by Professor Barton Zwiebach. After retiring last year from a long career in information technology, Doñate, who earned his undergraduate degree in physics in 1978, turned to online courses as a way to reconnect with the field. After exploring a variety of options, he gravitated toward MITx courses for their rigor, engaging problem sets, and the support of the professor and an online community of learners.

When the pandemic began, all these qualities became even more important to him. “I’m very grateful to be able to do what I enjoy,” Doñate says. “These courses prevent me from turning on the TV to watch the news, or from looking at my phone, seeing people post negative things,” noting that deep political divisions have sprung up in his country.

Physics coursework has become an integral part of Doñate’s daily routine, helping him stay focused on the things that make him happy. He studies every weekday morning for three to four hours before moving on to chores and other household activities. This “productive isolation” allows him to stay positive, instead of dwelling on circumstances outside his control, including the future of his wife’s optics business, which has suffered as a result of the crisis.

Still, unlike many in his situation, Doñate says he is determined to take life one day at a time: “I’m not just counting the days until this is over.” After 40 years away from the field, he’s fully occupied catching up on physics: “I’m very focused on the present; I have a lot of things to do.”