Author: mantulin

With the growing use of AI in many disciplines, the popularity of MIT’s four “blended” majors has intensified.

Adam Zewe | MIT News

September 28, 2023

Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion.

Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain and human cognition.

It’s an area of research she wasn’t aware of before she arrived at MIT in the fall of 2018, and one Patel likely wouldn’t have considered if she hadn’t enrolled in a newly launched blended major, Course 6-9: Computation and Cognition, the following spring.

Patel was drawn to the flexibility offered by Course 6-9, which enabled her to take a variety of courses from the brain and cognitive sciences major (Course 9) and the computer science major (Course 6). For instance, she took a class on neural computation and a class on algorithms at the same time, which helped her better understand some of the computational approaches to brain science she is currently using in her research.

After earning her undergraduate degree last spring, Patel enrolled in the 6-9 master’s program and is now pursuing a PhD in computation and cognition. While a PhD wasn’t initially on her radar, the blended major opened her eyes to unique opportunities in cross-disciplinary research. In the future, she hopes to study motor control and the computational building blocks that our brains use for movement.

“Looking back on my experience at MIT, being in Course 6-9 really led me up to this moment. You can’t just think of the world through one lens. You need to have both perspectives so you can tackle these complex problems together,” she says.

Blending disciplines

The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences’ Course 6-9 is one of four blended majors available through the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Each of the majors is offered jointly by the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a different MIT department. Course 6-7, Computer Science and Molecular Biology, is offered with the Department of Biology; Course 6-14, Computer Science, Economics, and Data Science, is offered with the Department of Economics; and Course 11-6, Urban Science and Planning with Computer Science, is offered with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

Each major is designed to give students a solid grounding in computational fundamentals, such as coding, algorithms, and ethical AI, while equipping them to tackle hard problems in different fields like neurobiology, economics, or urban design, using tools and insights from the realm of computer science.

The four majors, all launched between 2017 and 2019, have grown rapidly and now encompass about 360 undergraduates, or roughly 8 percent of MIT’s total undergraduate enrollment.

With so much focus on generative AI and machine learning in many disciplines, even those not traditionally associated with computer science, it is no surprise to associate professor Mehrdad Jazayeri that blended majors, and Course 6-9 in particular, have grown so rapidly. Course 6-9 launched with 40 students and has since quadrupled its enrollment.

Many students who come to MIT are enamored with machine-learning tools and techniques, so the opportunity to utilize those skills in a field like neurobiology is a great opportunity for students with varied interests, says Jazayeri, who is also director of education for the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

“It is pretty clear that new developments and insights in industry and technology will be heavily dependent on computational power. Fields related to the human mind are no different from that, from the study of neurodegenerative diseases, to research into child development, to understanding how marketing affects the human psyche,” he says.

Computation to improve medicine

Using the power of computer science to make an impact in biological research inspired senior Charvi Sharma to major in Course 6-7.

Though she was interested in medicine from a young age, it wasn’t until she came to MIT that she began to explore the role computation could play in medical care.

Coming to college with interests in both computer science and biology, Sharma considered a double major; however, she soon realized that what really interested her was the intersection of the two disciplines, and Course 6-7 was a perfect fit.

Sharma, who is planning to attend medical school, sees computer science and medicine dovetail through her work as an undergraduate researcher at MIT’s Koch Institute for Cancer Research. She and her fellow researchers seek to understand how signaling pathways contribute to a cell’s ability to escape from cell cycle arrest, or the inability of a cell to continue dividing, after DNA damage. Their work could ultimately lead to improved cancer treatments.

The data science and analysis skills she has honed through computer science courses help her understand and interpret the results of her research. She expects those same skills will prove useful in her future career as a physician.

“A lot of the tools used in medicine do require some knowledge of technology. But more so than the technical skills that I’ve learned through my computer science foundation, I think the computational mindset — the problem solving and pattern recognition — will be incredibly helpful in treatment and diagnosis as a physician,” she says.

AI for better cities

While biology and medicine are areas where machine learning is playing an increasing role, urban planning is another field that is rapidly becoming dependent on big data and the use of AI.

Interested in learning how computation could enhance urban planning, senior Kwesi Afrifa decided to apply to MIT after reading about the blended major Course 11-6, urban sciences and planning with computer science.

His experiences growing up in the Ghanian capital of Accra, situated in the midst of a rapidly growing and sprawling metro area of about 5.5 million people, convinced Afrifa that data can be used to shape urban environments in a way that would make them more livable for residents.

The combination of fundamentals from Course 6, like software engineering and data science, with important concepts from urban planning, such as equity and environmental management, has helped him understand the importance of working with communities to create AI-driven software tools in an ethical manner for responsible development.

“We can’t just be the smart engineers from MIT who come in and tell people what to do. Instead, we need to understand that communities have knowledge about the issues they face, and tools from tech and planning are a way to enhance their development in their own way,” he says.

As an undergraduate researcher, Afrifa has been working on tools for pedestrian impact analysis, which has shown him how ideas from planning, such as spatial analysis and mapping, and software engineering techniques from computer science can build off one another.

Ultimately, he hopes the software tools he creates enable planners, policymakers, and community members to make faster progress at reshaping neighborhoods, towns, and cities so they meet the needs of the people who live and work there.

Sixteen professors join the departments of Biology; Chemistry; Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; Mathematics; and Physics.

School of Science

September 25, 2023

Last spring, the School of Science welcomed seven new faculty members.

Erin Chen PhD ’11 studies the communication between microbes that reside on the surface of the human body and the immune system. She focuses on the largest organ: the skin. Chen will dissect the molecular signals of diverse skin microbes and their effects on host tissues, with the goal of harnessing microbe-host interactions to engineer new therapeutics for human disease.

Chen earned her bachelor’s in biology from the University of Chicago, her PhD from MIT, and her MD from Harvard Medical School, and she completed her medical residency at the University of California at San Francisco. Chen was also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Hanna Gray Fellow at Stanford University and an attending dermatologist at UCSF and at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Chen returns to MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology, a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and an attending dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Robert Gilliard’s research is multidisciplinary and combines various aspects of organic, inorganic, main-group, and materials chemistry. The Gilliard group specializes in the chemical synthesis of new molecules that impact the development of new catalysts and reagents, including the discovery of unknown transformations of environmentally relevant small-molecules [e.g., carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and dihydrogen (H₂)]. In addition, he investigates the design, characterization, and reactivity of boron-based luminescent and redox-active heterocycles for use in optoelectronic applications (e.g., stimuli-responsive materials, thermochromic materials, chemical sensors).

Gilliard earned his bachelor’s degree from Clemson University and his PhD from the University of Georgia. He completed joint postdoctoral studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and Case Western Reserve University. He served on the faculty at the University of Virginia from 2017-22. Gilliard spent time in the MIT Department of Chemistry as a 2021-22 Dr. Martin Luther King Visiting Professor. He returns as the Novartis Associate Professor of Chemistry with tenure.

Sally Kornbluth is president of MIT and a professor of biology. Before she closed her lab to focus on administration, her research focused on the biological signals that tell a cell to start dividing or to self-destruct — processes that are key to understanding cancer as well as various degenerative disorders. She has published extensively on cell proliferation and programmed cell death, studying both phenomena in a variety of organisms. Her research has helped to show how cancer cells evade this programmed death, or apoptosis, and how metabolism regulates the cell death process; her work has also clarified the role of apoptosis in regulating the duration of female fertility in vertebrates.

Kornbluth holds bachelor’s degrees in political science from Williams College and in genetics from Cambridge University. She earned her PhD in molecular oncology from Rockefeller University in 1989 and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California at San Diego. In 1994, she joined the faculty of Duke University and served in the administration as vice dean for basic science at the Duke School of Medicine (2006-2014) and later as the university’s provost (2014-2022). She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Daniel Lew uses fungal model systems to ask how cells orient their activities in space, including oriented growth, cell wall remodeling, and organelle segregation. Different cells take on an astonishing variety of shapes, which are often critical to be able to perform specialized cell functions like absorbing nutrients or contracting muscles. Lew studies how different cell shapes arise and how cells control the spatial distribution of their internal constituents, taking advantage of the tractability of fungal model systems, and addressing these questions using approaches from cell biology, genetics, and computational biology to understand molecular mechanisms.

Lew received a bachelor’s degree in genetics from Cambridge University followed by a PhD in molecular biology from Rockefeller University. After postdoctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute, he joined the Duke University faculty in 1994. Lew joins MIT as a professor of biology with tenure.

Eluned Smith uses rare beauty decays measured with the LHCb detector at CERN to search for new fundamental particles at mass scales above the collision energy of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Her group leverages data to elucidate the physics of beauty quarks, whose behavior cannot be explained by the Standard Model of particle physics. In doing so, her work aims to resolve whether the anomalies are misunderstood quantum chromodynamics or the first sign of beyond-the-Standard-Model-physics at the LHC.

Smith joins MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. She earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees at Imperial College London, which she completed in 2017. She did her first postdoc at RWTH Aachen before winning an Ambizione Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Zürich.

Gaia Stucky de Quay explores topographic signals and landscape evolution, in order to both de-convolve and quantify primary driving forces such as tectonics, climate, and local geological processes. She integrates fieldwork, lab work, modeling, and remote sensing to improve our quantitative understanding of such processes at compelling geological sites such as Martian valleys and lakes, the surfaces of icy moons, and volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

Stucky de Quay joins the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences as an assistant professor. Most recently, she was a Daly Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Previously, she was a postdoc at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting student at the University of Chicago. Stucky de Quay earned her MS from the University College of London and a PhD from Imperial College London.

Brandon “Brady” Weissbourd uses the jellyfish, Clytia hemisphaerica, to study nervous system evolution, development, regeneration, and function. With a foundation is in systems neuroscience, his lab uses genetic and optical techniques to examine how behavior arises from the activity of networks of neurons; they investigate how the Clytia nervous system is so robust; and they use Clytia’s evolutionary position to make inferences about the ultimate origins of nervous systems.

Weissbourd received a BA in human evolutionary biology from Harvard University in 2009 and a PhD from Stanford University in 2016. He then completed postdoctoral research at Caltech and The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He joins MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and an investigator in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

This fall, the School of Science welcomes nine new faculty members.

Facundo Batista studies the fundamental biology of the immune system to develop the next generation of vaccines and therapeutics. B lymphocytes are the fulcrum of immunological memory, the source of antibodies, and the focus of vaccine development. His lab has investigated how, where, and when B cell responses take shape. In recent years, the Batista group has expanded into preclinical vaccinology, targeting viruses including HIV, malaria, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2.

Batista is an MIT professor of biology with tenure as well as the associate director and scientific director of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. He received his PhD from the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Prior to MIT, Batista was a tenured member of the Francis Crick Institute, a professor at Imperial College London, and a professor of microbiology and immunology at Harvard Medical School.

Anna-Christina Eilers is an observational astrophysicist. Her research focuses on the formation of the first galaxies, quasars, and supermassive black holes in the early universe, during an era known as the Cosmic Dawn. In particular, Eilers is interested in the growth of the first supermassive black holes which reside in the center of luminous, distant galaxies known as quasars, to understand how black holes evolve from small stellar remnants to billion-solar-mass black holes within very short amounts of cosmic time.

Previously, Eilers received a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Goettingen, a master’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Heidelberg, and a PhD in astrophysics from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. In 2019, she was awarded a NASA Hubble Fellowship and the Pappalardo Fellowship to continue her research at MIT. Eilers remains at MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Masha Elkin combines catalyst development, natural products synthesis, and machine learning to tackle important chemical challenges. Her group develops new transition metal catalysts that enable efficient bond disconnections and access to value-added compounds, leveraging these transformations for the synthesis of bioactive natural products that address outstanding needs in human health, and uses computational tools to explore all possible molecules and accelerate reaction discovery.

Elkin joins MIT as the D. Reid (1941) and Barbara J. Weedon Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014, and her PhD from Yale University in 2019, then began as a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley.

Mikhail Ivanov’s research has developed at the interface of theoretical physics and data analysis, bridging state-of-the-art theoretical ideas with observational data. The overarching aim of his research is to use Effective Field Theory in combination with astrophysical data in order to resolve fundamental challenges of modern physics, such as the nature of dark matter, dark energy, inflation, and gravity.

Ivanov joins MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and the Center for Theoretical Physics in the Laboratory for Nuclear Science. He obtained his PhD from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2019. During his PhD studies, he spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, as a fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Subsequently, he was a postdoc at New York University and a NASA Einstein Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Efforts to target pathogenic proteins with drugs or chemical probes can often be analogized to a lock and key, where the protein target is the “lock” and the molecule is the “key.” However, what happens when the target is flexible or lacks a defined structure? In all living things, molecular chaperone proteins have evolved to support proper folding of these moving targets. Yet, protein misfolding and aggregation is a hallmark of many myopathies and neurodegenerative diseases. Oleta Johnson uses chemical and biophysical tools to understand and tune the activity of molecular chaperone proteins in protein misfolding diseases. Thus, her research group will reveal the molecular underpinnings of molecular chaperone dysfunction in a broad array of disorders including Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. These tools and finding will be further developed to develop novel treatments for patients of these diseases.

Johnson joins the Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in 2013, and her PhD from the University of Michigan in 2018. Prior to MIT, Johnson completed postdoctoral research at the University of California at San Francisco.

Nicole Xike Nie is an isotope geo/cosmochemist using the chemical and isotopic compositions of extraterrestrial materials to understand the formation of our solar system. Her research is driven by fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of the early solar system. Leveraging geochemical methods, she wants to understand questions such as why all planetary bodies are depleted of volatile elements when their building block materials aren’t, and why the Earth’s chemical signatures are distinct from other planetary bodies.

Nie joins MIT as an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Nie received a BS in geology from China University of Geosciences in 2010, an MS in geochemistry from Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013, and a PhD in geo/cosmochemistry from the University of Chicago in 2019. After graduating she was a Carnegie Postdoc Fellow at Carnegie Institution for Science and a postdoc researcher at Caltech.

Tristan Ozuch works in the field of geometric analysis and focuses on Einstein manifolds and Ricci flows. His work has shed light on the moduli space of Einstein metrics in four dimensions, addressing questions that have lingered since the 1980s. These questions originated from the systematic study of Einstein’s equations and their degenerations since the 1970s, in both physics and mathematics.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and PhD from École Normale Supérieure, Tristan Ozuch joined MIT as a C.L.E. Moore Instructor of Mathematics. He continues in the Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor.

Climate scientist Talia Tamarin-Brodsky’s research is driven by questions on the interface between weather and climate. In her work, Tamarin-Brodsky combines theory, computational methods, and observational data to study Earth’s climate and weather and how they respond to climate change. Her interests include atmospheric dynamics, temperature variability, weather and climate extremes, and subseasonal-to-seasonal predictability. For example, she studies how nonlinear wave breaking events in the upper atmosphere influence surface weather and extremes, and the mechanisms shaping the spatial distribution of Earth’s near-surface temperature.

Tamarin-Brodsky received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and geophysics as well as a master’s in physics from Tel Aviv University, Israel, before earning her PhD from the Weizmann Institute. She completed a postdoctoral project at the University of Reading, U.K., and a postdoctoral fellowship at Tel Aviv University. She joins the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Studies as an assistant professor.

John Urschel PhD ’21 is a mathematician focused on matrix analysis and computations, with an emphasis on theoretical results and provable guarantees for practical problems. His research interests include numerical linear algebra, spectral graph theory, and topics in theoretical machine learning.

Urschel earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University, then completed a PhD in mathematics at MIT in 2021. He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study and a junior fellow at Harvard University before returning to MIT as an assistant professor of mathematics this fall.

In a visit to MIT, the educator and author led a lively and inspiring Q&A with students.

Lillian Eden | Department of Biology

August 9, 2023

A group of more than 50 individuals recently had the pleasure of sitting down for an informal chat at MIT with distinguished educator, author, and mathematician Freeman Hrabowski. The group was predominantly composed of MIT Summer Research Program in Biology (MSRP-Bio) students and alumni and current students from the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Hrabowski is widely credited for transforming UMBC into a world-renowned, innovative institution while serving as its president from 1992 to 2022. The educator also ushered in a generation of Black students to earn PhDs in science and engineering, co-founding the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC. Founded in 1988, the program has become a national model for increasing diversity in STEM. Hrabowski was also a member of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans during the Obama administration.

Hrabowski began by quoting poet William Carlos Williams: “It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserable every day for lack of what is found there,” and leading a call-and-response recitation of the poem “Dreams,” by Langston Hughes, as well as a mantra encouraging students to use their words, actions, and habits to shape their character and their destiny. Afterward, the students asked Hrabowski about his life and experiences.

“The audience of high-achieving students asked terrific, insightful questions reflecting their contemplation of their own paths,” says Department of Biology head Amy Keating. “When students spoke up, Hrabowski engaged with them, and their ideas and perspectives were welcomed and respected. By the end of his time with them, almost everyone had their hand up and wanted to contribute to the lively discussion.”

Tobias Coombs, a Meyerhoff Scholars program alumnus and current graduate student in the Spranger Lab, says the event was an example of “classic Freeman Hrabowski:” Hrabowski injected the crowd with excitement and energy. Coombs also remarked that Hrabowski, named by Time as one of the world’s most influential people in 2012, acknowledged to the group that he’s shy, something Hrabowski is still pushing himself to overcome.

“He makes a point of being this down-to-earth person that you feel you can talk to about real issues and have real conversations with,” Coombs says. “He genuinely wants to motivate you to think science and math are cool.”

Before taking questions from the students in attendance, Hrabowski posed one to them: What do you think it takes to be successful in research in STEM? Among the responses were passion, curiosity, and a supportive community. After each response, Hrabowski encouraged a round of applause for each student brave enough to stand and give an answer because “everybody needs support.”

“The way that you think about yourselves, the language that you use, the way that you interact with each other, and the values that you hold, will be so important. You become like the things that you love,” Hrabowski says.

For his lifetime of accomplishments increasing diversity in STEM, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute recently announced a new program named after Hrabowski. The HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholars were selected for their potential to become leaders in their research fields and to foster diverse and inclusive lab environments. The inaugural class of 31 scholars includes MIT biology faculty members Seychelle Vos, the Robert A. Swanson Career Development Professor of Life Sciences, and Hernandez Moura Silva, an assistant professor and Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard core member, as well as MIT biology and Cheeseman lab alumna Kara McKinley PhD ’16.

Vos and Moura Silva were among the faculty attending the event, and both say Hrabowski was an inspiring guest to have on campus.

“Dr. Hrabowski’s smile, energy, and words are a true force of nature,” Hernandez says. “His words of wisdom showed us that we can all make the impossible possible by bringing a positive attitude to build a strong, supportive, and diverse community. It was such an honor to have him here.”

Biology department undergraduate officer Adam Martin says he noticed the pride in Hrabowski’s eyes when Hrabowski discussed what his trainees and faculty in his programs have accomplished. Biology department graduate officer Mary Gehring said his visit made her remember why she wanted to be a professor: “to help others follow their passions to their full potential.”

Hrabowski reflected on many topics, including the recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action. He pointed out that this was not the first time the Supreme Court had ruled on a racially conscious initiative, namely the 1995 decision that a UMBC scholarship program was unconstitutional. To continue the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, which was affected by the Supreme Court decision at the time, Hrabowski worked with Maryland’s attorney general, found language and methods to encourage broad participation of diverse individuals, and focused on what the program was trying to achieve.

“My message to everyone was ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ If the institution wants to continue to build diversity and broader participation, we can do it,” he says. “What we’re working to achieve in the Meyerhoff program and in the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars program is to have everybody included.”

Hrabowski also offered advice on more everyday challenges: good students, himself included, can focus too much, forgetting to make time for other important aspects of their lives. He has learned to make time for tai chi, acupuncture, and getting his steps in; he encouraged the students similarly to take time for themselves outside work or school.

“When you can have fun and laugh, you’re a much better person. You can be a better thinker if you take care of yourself overall,” he says. “It’s the healthy person who can be most effective.”

As for being intimidated or nervous to talk to a superior, Hrabowski had the room roaring with laughter at his advice: “Just remember they go to the bathroom, too.”

Keating noted that Hrabowski engaged with the audience with energy, compassion, and humor.

She also observed, “No one can hide in Dr. Hrabowski’s classroom.”

“He put students front and center in his presentation, and his emphasis on the joys and importance of learning, knowledge, and achievement inspired us all to go back to the lab and classroom and be our best selves,” Keating says. “He acknowledged that paths in STEM demand much of us, and he encouraged students to have the discipline needed to stay the course while also taking care of themselves.”

Faculty members were recently granted tenure in the departments of Biology, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, EAPS, and Physics.

School of Science

August 8, 2023

In 2022, nine MIT faculty were granted tenure in the School of Science:

Gloria Choi examines the interaction of the immune system with the brain and the effects of that interaction on neurodevelopment, behavior, and mood. She also studies how social behaviors are regulated according to sensory stimuli, context, internal state, and physiological status, and how these factors modulate neural circuit function via a combinatorial code of classic neuromodulators and immune-derived cytokines. Choi joined the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences after a postdoc at Columbia University. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and her PhD from Caltech. Choi is also an investigator in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

Nikta Fakhri develops experimental tools and conceptual frameworks to uncover laws governing fluctuations, order, and self-organization in active systems. Such frameworks provide powerful insight into dynamics of nonequilibrium living systems across scales, from the emergence of thermodynamic arrow of time to spatiotemporal organization of signaling protein patterns and discovery of odd elasticity. Fakhri joined the Department of Physics in 2015 following a postdoc at University of Göttingen. She completed her undergraduate degree at Sharif University of Technology and her PhD at Rice University.

Geobiologist Greg Fournier uses a combination of molecular phylogeny insights and geologic records to study major events in planetary history, with the hope of furthering our understanding of the co-evolution of life and environment. Recently, his team developed a new technique to analyze multiple gene evolutionary histories and estimated that photosynthesis evolved between 3.4 and 2.9 billion years ago. Fournier joined the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in 2014 after working as a postdoc at the University of Connecticut and as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He earned his BA from Dartmouth College in 2001 and his PhD in genetics and genomics from the University of Connecticut in 2009.

Daniel Harlow researches black holes and cosmology, viewed through the lens of quantum gravity and quantum field theory. His work generates new insights into quantum information, quantum field theory, and gravity. Harlow joined the Department of Physics in 2017 following postdocs at Princeton University and Harvard University. He obtained a BA in physics and mathematics from Columbia University in 2006 and a PhD in physics from Stanford University in 2012. He is also a researcher in the Center for Theoretical Physics.

A biophysicist, Gene-Wei Li studies how bacteria optimize the levels of proteins they produce at both mechanistic and systems levels. His lab focuses on design principles of transcription, translation, and RNA maturation. Li joined the Department of Biology in 2015 after completing a postdoc at the University of California at San Francisco. He earned an BS in physics from National Tsinghua University in 2004 and a PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2010.

Michael McDonald focuses on the evolution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and the role that environment plays in dictating this evolution. This research involves the discovery and study of the most distant assemblies of galaxies alongside analyses of the complex interplay between gas, galaxies, and black holes in the closest, most massive systems. McDonald joined the Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in 2015 after three years as a Hubble Fellow, also at MIT. He obtained his BS and MS degrees in physics at Queen’s University, and his PhD in astronomy at the University of Maryland in College Park.

Gabriela Schlau-Cohen combines tools from chemistry, optics, biology, and microscopy to develop new approaches to probe dynamics. Her group focuses on dynamics in membrane proteins, particularly photosynthetic light-harvesting systems that are of interest for sustainable energy applications. Following a postdoc at Stanford University, Schlau-Cohen joined the Department of Chemistry faculty in 2015. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical physics from Brown University in 2003 followed by a PhD in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley.

Phiala Shanahan’s research interests are focused around theoretical nuclear and particle physics. In particular, she works to understand the structure and interactions of hadrons and nuclei from the fundamental degrees of freedom encoded in the Standard Model of particle physics. After a postdoc at MIT and a joint position as an assistant professor at the College of William and Mary and senior staff scientist at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Shanahan returned to the Department of Physics as faculty in 2018. She obtained her BS from the University of Adelaide in 2012 and her PhD, also from the University of Adelaide, in 2015.

Omer Yilmaz explores the impact of dietary interventions on stem cells, the immune system, and cancer within the intestine. By better understanding how intestinal stem cells adapt to diverse diets, his group hopes to identify and develop new strategies that prevent and reduce the growth of cancers involving the intestinal tract. Yilmaz joined the Department of Biology in 2014 and is now also a member of Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. After receiving his BS from the University of Michigan in 1999 and his PhD and MD from University of Michigan Medical School in 2008, he was a resident in anatomic pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School until 2013.

In 2023, five MIT faculty were granted tenure in the School of Science:

Physicist Riccardo Comin explores the novel phases of matter that can be found in electronic solids with strong interactions, also known as quantum materials. His group employs a combination of synthesis, scattering, and spectroscopy to obtain a comprehensive picture of these emergent phenomena, including superconductivity, (anti)ferromagnetism, spin-density-waves, charge order, ferroelectricity, and orbital order. Comin joined the Department of Physics in 2016 after postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Universita’ degli Studi di Trieste in Italy, where he also obtained a MS in physics in 2009. Later, he pursued doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada, earning a PhD in 2013.

Netta Engelhardt researches the dynamics of black holes in quantum gravity and uses holography to study the interplay between gravity and quantum information. Her primary focus is on the black hole information paradox, that black holes seem to be destroying information that, according to quantum physics, cannot be destroyed. Engelhardt was a postdoc at Princeton University and a member of the Princeton Gravity Initiative prior to joining the Department of Physics in 2019. She received her BS in physics and mathematics from Brandeis University and her PhD in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Engelhardt is a researcher in the Center for Theoretical Physics and the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University.

Mark Harnett studies how the biophysical features of individual neurons endow neural circuits with the ability to process information and perform the complex computations that underlie behavior. As part of this work, his lab was the first to describe the physiological properties of human dendrites. He joined the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research in 2015. Prior, he was a postdoc at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus. He received his BA in biology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin.

Or Hen investigates quantum chromodynamic effects in the nuclear medium and the interplay between partonic and nucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclei. Specifically, Hen utilizes high-energy scattering of electron, neutrino, photon, proton and ion off atomic nuclei to study short-range correlations: temporal fluctuations of high-density, high-momentum, nucleon clusters in nuclei with important implications for nuclear, particle, atomic, and astrophysics. Hen was an MIT Pappalardo Fellow in the Department of Physics from 2015 to 2017 before joining the faculty in 2017. He received his undergraduate degree in physics and computer engineering from the Hebrew University and earned his PhD in experimental physics at Tel Aviv University.

Sebastian Lourido is interested in learning about the vulnerabilities of parasites in order to develop treatments for infectious diseases and expand our understanding of eukaryotic diversity. His lab studies many important human pathogens, including Toxoplasma gondii, to model features conserved throughout the phylum. Lourido was a Whitehead Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research until 2017, when he joined the Department of Biology and became a Whitehead Member. He earned his BS from Tulane University in 2004 and his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 2012.