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MIT experts outline issues, offer hope for climate action

June 12, 2021

Across the Institute, work is underway to understand and address Earth’s changing climate and to mitigate the impacts of these changes on human populations. Spectrum asked three MIT faculty members who have engaged deeply with this work to provide insight into the challenges that lie ahead and suggest paths forward.

Sallie (Penny) Chisholm is an Institute Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Biology. Her award-winning research explores the biology, ecology, and evolution of marine phytoplankton, photosynthetic microbes that shape aquatic ecosystems.

 Kerry A. Emanuel ’76, PhD ’78 is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and co-director of the Lorenz Center at MIT, an advanced climate research center. A prominent meteorologist and climate scientist, Emanuel is best known for his research on hurricanes and atmospheric convection.

 Susan Solomon is the Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies in EAPS and a professor of chemistry. Solomon, who researches interactions between chemistry and climate, is renowned for her work advancing the understanding of the global ozone layer.

What are the biggest scientific challenges we face in addressing climate change?

SOLOMON: One of the biggest scientific challenges is understanding how much and how fast biological processes will be affected by a warmer world. For example, we need to better understand the drivers of wildfires in the North American West, the roles of ocean acidification and warming in damaging marine life, and how climate change will affect the spread of diseases. The coupling between biology and the physical and chemical system is well recognized as important, but a lot more needs to be done. Another key challenge is better understanding extreme events, because neither humans nor ecosystems have sufficient ability to deal with them.

EMANUEL: In my view, the greatest scientific challenge we face is quantifying the risks of climate change. We spend too much time calculating and talking about global mean temperature and sea level when in fact the most serious problems are bound to arise from extreme events, such as storms, droughts, and wildfires. There is much evidence that the risk of such events, which are also the main source of insurance payouts involving naturally occurring phenomena, has already evolved well beyond historical levels, rendering obsolete the financial basis of the global insurance and reinsurance markets. It is absolutely essential that science help the world come to grips with current levels of natural hazard risk and with how such risks are likely to evolve.

CHISHOLM: It appears to me that the biggest immediate challenge is in the social sciences. Broadly speaking, natural scientists know what causes global warming and what is needed to curb it. But until the public at large accepts that anthropogenic climate change is real and the consequences dramatic, it will be impossible to implement solutions.

How do we rise to this challenge and get the public to feel the urgency? I am reminded of the popularized wisdom of Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forester: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; and we will understand only what we are taught.” I too like to think that if people understood how our planet functions as a living system and how the climate system is embedded in that system, it would help move the needle.

Kerry Emanuel has produced a compelling climate primer, for example, that beautifully displays the essence of what one must understand to fully appreciate the climate challenge. I am so impressed by it that I have put a link to it in my email signature line. For my part, I have coauthored a series of children’s picture books—The Sunlight Series—that describe how our planet functions as a living system and the role of fossil fuels and climate in that system. These efforts are just drops in a bucket. What is needed is a global educational movement to bring Earth system science to the forefront.

What are you working on that gives you hope for the future?

EMANUEL: I have been working on a method for downscaling tropical cyclones from climate models in a way that allows one easily to generate hundreds of thousands of storms in a given climate. The important step was applying a rigorous understanding of tropical cyclone physics to the problem so as to achieve maximum computational speed with minimum loss of fidelity. This could not have been accomplished by machine learning. My work has already been applied by the nonprofit First Street Foundation to estimate flood risk, including from tropical cyclones, for every single piece of private property in the United States. Flood-risk estimates resulting from this work are communicated to current and prospective property owners through websites such as those used to shop for real estate.

By bringing quantitative measures of climate risk right down to the level of our homes, this work promises to make people much more aware of their current climate risk and how it is evolving over time. My hope is that this work will make the impact of climate change personal, and citizens will agitate for action.

SOLOMON: I’ve been doing a lot of work on fully understanding the sources and sinks of fluorochemicals, including chlorofluorocarbons and their substitutes, the hydrochlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons. The fluorochemicals are potent greenhouse gases, so phasing them out has great benefits for climate. Some of my group’s recent work has shown that there are “banks” of old chlorofluorocarbons (for example, in old building chillers or even home freezers) that are still leaking and contributing to global warming. Additionally, there is some evidence that the continuing use of certain fluorochemicals as feedstocks to make other chemicals is far more problematic for the environment than it should be and could be.

What makes me hopeful is that the governments of the world are taking notice of these issues, in part because they’ve been so successful at dealing with these chemicals in the past. For example, concerns about damage to the stratospheric ozone layer that shields all life on Earth from damaging ultraviolet light from the sun led to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a globally agreed-upon phaseout of the production of the worst ozone-damaging gases. There is evidence that the ozone layer is slowly starting to heal so that is a tremendous success story. Today, there is much more policy attention on what could be done to curb emissions and address global warming, so I’m optimistic that we can make improvements.

CHISHOLM: My lab does not work on climate science directly. We study marine phytoplankton, photosynthetic microbes at the base of  aquatic food webs. Like plants on land, they use solar energy to draw CO₂ out of the atmosphere and fix it into the organic carbon, feeding the rest of life in the sea. This so-called “invisible pasture” is responsible for nearly half of the annual flow of CO₂ from the atmosphere into the global biosphere. More importantly, the planktonic food web functions as a “biological pump,” securing an enormous cache of CO₂ in the deep sea. Like so many other biospheric processes, this “ecosystem service” is something we take for granted. But if the oceans were not alive—if the pump did not function—CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere would be dramatically higher.

But you asked what gives me hope. The short answer is: the wisdom and commitment of the younger generation to fight for their future. I can see a passion and commitment for change in young people that has been lacking for a few generations. Because my lab works on photosynthesis and I have written some children’s books about it, I frequently get emails from K–12 students looking for answers.

Recently, a 14-year-old wrote to ask, “What’s stopping us from mass adoption of  ‘CO₂ bioreactors’ to offset carbon emissions? Cost? Efficiency? Another factor?” That a 14-year-old is thinking along these lines is just one small example of things that give me hope.

What role do you think MIT and other research universities have to play in addressing climate change?

SOLOMON: MIT and other research universities have fantastic potential to help move the needle. For one thing, we have relevant experts in the physics, chemistry, and biology related to climate change under one roof. We also have key experts in the engineering and policy aspects of climate change. In short, we have all the research expertise needed to make progress. The problem is that it’s tough to get funding for interdisciplinary work via the traditional national funding mechanisms. Fortunately, that’s slowly changing.

EMANUEL: Universities can play a crucial role in bringing the dangers of climate change right to the front doors of ordinary people by catalyzing a revolution in the risk-modeling industry. We need to produce a new stream of talent that has a deep understanding of the physics of weather hazards; of numerical modeling; and of risk, risk-affected industries and government entities, and the risk-modeling industry. Such talent could then be employed to bring physical modeling to bear on weather hazard risk assessment. At the moment, almost all global risk modeling is done by just two firms and is extrapolated from historical records that are grossly insufficient for estimating long-term risk.

Fortunately, the insurance and reinsurance industries are rapidly coming to understand the woeful state of risk modeling and are eager to catalyze change. They are ready and willing to help fund positions in universities (e.g., postdoctoral research positions) that would produce the stream of new talent that’s badly needed to revolutionize the way we quantify and respond to climate risks.

CHISHOLM: Climate change, as well as most of the environmental challenges we face today, has emerged because we have accelerated dramatically the natural flows of energy and materials through the biosphere. The weight of human-made components on Earth now equals that of natural components, and we have appropriated roughly one-quarter of the Earth’s net plant production—the foundation of life for all other species. How has this human footprint changed the way the planet functions, and how will it change it as we move forward in the Anthropocene? And what about the unintended consequences of potential climate intervention through geoengineering? Clearly, we have a planet that is shifting dramatically from its natural self-assembling trajectory. There is little hope of making rational plans for our future until we begin to study the biosphere—and all the functions it mediates—with the same intensity as we study human biology.

So, what role should MIT play? Our late colleague Henry Kendall, a Nobel Laureate in Physics, once advised me to “never make small plans,” so here is my wish for MIT: Lead the equivalent of a Manhattan Project for the development of renewable energy and CO₂-removal technologies. Create a College of Biocomplexity to consolidate and greatly expand the environmental research and education that is scattered throughout the Institute. Ensure that all new campus construction is a showcase for energy efficiency and the use of sustainable materials. Finally, advance economic frameworks that assign value to ecosystem services in the world economy. As one of the premier education and research institutions in the world, we should be leading the way.

Ten principal investigators from seven MIT departments and labs will receive up to $150,000 for two years, overhead-free, for innovative research on global food and water challenges.

Andi Sutton | Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab

June 9, 2021

The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT has announced its seventh round of seed grant funding to the MIT community. J-WAFS is MIT’s Institute-wide initiative to promote, coordinate, and lead research related to water and food that will have a measurable and international impact as humankind adapts to a rapidly expanding population on a changing planet. The seed grant program is J-WAFS’ flagship funding initiative, aimed at catalyzing innovative research across the Institute that solves the challenges facing the world’s water and food systems.

This year, eight new projects will be funded, led by nine faculty principal investigators (PIs) across six MIT departments. The winning projects address challenges that range from climate-resilient crops, food safety technologies and innovations that can remove contaminants from water, research supporting smallholder farmers’ productivity and resilience, and more.

Many of the projects that were selected for funding this year are focused on agriculture and food systems challenges, and these innovations could not be more timely. “Agriculture and food production are responsible for more than 30 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we could completely shut down fossil fuel emissions today, agricultural emissions would prevent us from meeting the targets of the Paris accords. Simply fixing energy systems will not be enough,” says J-WAFS Director John H. Lienhard V. “It will take researchers working in all sectors and disciplines working together to address these challenges to meet the needs of current and future populations despite the challenges posted by climate change. The innovations that are being developed at MIT, such as those that we selected for funding this year, are truly inspiring and can lead the way toward a food-secure future.”

Water and food systems challenges are inspiring a growing number of faculty across the Institute to pursue solutions-oriented research. Over 190 MIT faculty members from across all five schools at MIT as well as the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing have submitted proposals to J-WAFS’ grant programs since its launch in 2015. In 2021 alone, 37 principal investigators from 17 departments across all five schools proposed to the J-WAFS seed grant program. Competing for funding were established experts in water and food-related research areas as well as professors who are only recently applying their disciplinary expertise to the world’s water and food challenges. Engineering faculty from four departments were funded, including the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. Additional funded principal investigators are from the Department of Biology in the School of Science, the Sloan School of Management, and the MIT Media Lab in the School of Architecture and Planning.

The eight projects selected for J-WAFS seed grant funding and detailed below will receive $150,000, overhead-free, for two years.

Ensuring climate resilience in agriculture and crop production

Climate change poses a grave risk to water availability and rain-fed agriculture, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. “Impact of Near-term Climate Change on Water Availability and Food Productivity in Africa,” a project led by Elfatih A. B. Eltahir, the Breene M. Kerr Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, aims to better understand the projected near-term effects of the climate crisis on agricultural production at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Eltahir’s research will focus on integrating regional climate modeling with an analysis of archived observations on rainfall, temperature, and yield. His goal is to better understand how impacts of climate change on crop yields vary at the regional level. His team will work closely with other scientists and the policymakers in Africa who are in charge of planning climate change adaptation in the water and agriculture sectors to support a transition to resilient agriculture planning.

The climate crisis is projected to affect agricultural productivity worldwide. In nature, species adapt to environmental changes through the natural genetic variation that exists within a specific population. However, the time frame for this process is long and cannot meet the urgent need for food crops that are adaptable in a changing climate. With her project, “A New Approach to Enhance Genetic Diversity to Improve Crop Breeding,” Mary Gehring, an associate professor in the Department of Biology, is re-imagining the future of plant breeding beyond current practices that rely on natural variation. Supported by a J-WAFS seed grant, she will develop methods that rapidly produce genetic variations in order to increase the genetic diversity of food crop species. Using pigeon pea, a legume that is widely grown as a food, they will then test these variations against environmental stresses such as heat and drought in order to identify strains that could be more adapted to climate change.

Food loss and waste, which accounted for 32 percent of all food produced in the world in 2009, presents grand societal, economic, and environmental challenges, especially when climate change threatens current and future food supplies. In developing countries where food security is still a great concern, food loss is largely due to lack of adequate refrigeration for post-harvest food. Technologies exist for crop storage that use evaporative cooling, but they are less effective in hot and humid climates. Jeffrey C. Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has teamed up with Evelyn N. Wang, the Gail E. Kendall Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, to find a solution. With their project, “Hybrid Evaporative and Radiative Cooling as a Passive Low-cost High-performance Solution for Food Shelf-life Extension,” they are developing a low-cost device using an innovative combination of two methods of cooling: evaporative and radiative technologies. Their structure will use solar-reflecting materials and highly porous insulation to double the shelf life of perishable foods in remote and rural settings, without the need for electricity.

Addressing pathogens and pesticide contamination with novel technology

Food-borne illness represents a major source of both human morbidity and economic loss; however, current pathogen detection methods used across the United States are time- and labor-intensive. This means that food contamination is often not detected until it is already in the hands of consumers, requiring costly recalls. While rapid tests have emerged to address this challenge, they are do not have the sensitivity to detect a wide variety of contaminants. Rohit Karnik, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has teamed up with Pratik Shah, a principal research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, to develop a food safety test that is rapid, sensitive, and easy to use. The device that they are developing with their project, “On-site Analysis of Foodborne Pathogens Using Density-Shift Immunomagnetic Separation and Culture,” will use a novel technology called density-shift immunomagnetic separation (DIMS) to detect a wide variety of pathogens on-site within a matter of hours to enable on-site testing at food processing plants.

Pesticide ingestion by humans poses another health challenge. A class of chemicals called organophosphates (OPs) — commonly used for pesticides — is particularly toxic. Though some OPs have been discontinued, many of these toxic chemicals remain widely available and continue to be used for weed control in agriculture and to reduce mosquito populations. Currently, OP can only be detected in blood or urine after a person has been exposed, and the methods for detection are costly. With her project, “Engineered Microbial Co-Cultures to Detect and Degrade Organophosphates,” Ariel L. Furst, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is developing a technology to more quickly and effectively detect and remove this chemical. She is engineering specific strains of bacteria to work together to both detect and degrade OPs. These bacteria will be deployed using a single electronic device, which will provide a modular, adaptable strategy to detect and degrade these harmful toxins before they are ingested.

Aquaculture is widely recognized as an efficient system that can enable the production of healthy protein for human consumption with a minimal impact on the environment. With 85 percent of the world’s marine stocks fully exploited, it plays a pivotal role in current and future food production. However, the industry is challenged by the spread of preventable infectious diseases that cripple farmed fish populations and can cause substantial economic losses. Fish vaccines are in use for certain diseases, but effective delivery is challenging and costly, and can lead to adverse effects to the fish. Benedetto Marelli, the Paul M. Cook Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is developing a solution. With his project, “Precise Fish Vaccine Injection Using Silk-based Microneedles for Sustainable Aquaculture,” he is creating a microneedle for fish vaccination that is made of silk. This novel technology will enable controlled drug release in fish and will also naturally degrade in water, which will support the health of fish populations and reduce losses for aquaculture farms.

Improving the resilience of rural populations and smallholder farmers

Regions around the world that don’t have access to safe or abundant supplies of freshwater often rely on small-scale, decentralized groundwater desalination devices that use reverse osmosis. Unfortunately, these systems are extremely energy-intensive, and therefore are both expensive to operate and environmentally unsustainable. Amos G. Winter V, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is working on a new design for desalination devices for settings such as these that has the potential to make reverse osmosis water treatment more affordable and better able to be powered by renewable energy. With his project, “A Sliding Vane Energy Recovery Device (ERD) for Photovoltaic-Powered Brackish Water Reverse Osmosis Desalination (PV-BWRO),” Winter and his research team will focus on affordability, energy efficiency, and ease of use in their design to ensure that the resulting technology is accessible to poor and rural communities around the world.

Agricultural supply chains in developing countries are highly fragmented and opaque. Millions of smallholder farmers worldwide are the main producers, and often sell through a complex network of traders and intermediaries. Due to the highly fragmented nature of this system, these farmers persistently struggle with low productivity and high poverty. In an effort to find a solution, many countries have invested in mobile technologies that are intended to improve farmers’ market and information access. However, there remains a disconnect between the data that are collected and distributed via these mobile platforms and their effective use by smallholders. Yanchong Zheng, associate professor of operations management at the Sloan School of Management, aims to fill this gap with her project, “Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Welfare with AI-driven Technologies,” by developing AI-driven market tools that can sift through the data to develop unbiased weather, crop planning, and pricing information. Additionally, she and her research team will develop recommendations based on these data that can more effectively inform farmers’ investments. The team will work in close collaboration with public and private sector organizations on the ground in order to ensure that their solutions are informed by the specific needs of the smallholder farmers that they seek to support.

With the addition of these eight newly funded projects, J-WAFS will have supported 53 seed grant research projects since the program launched in 2014. The J-WAFS seed funding catalyzes new solutions-oriented research at MIT and supports MIT researchers who bring a wide variety of disciplinary tools and knowledge from working in other sectors to apply their expertise to water and food systems challenges. The results of this investment are already evident: to date, J-WAFS’ seed grant PIs have brought in nearly $15 million in follow-on funding, have published numerous papers in internationally recognized journals and publications, obtained patents, and launched spinout companies. Each project yields fresh insights and engages J-WAFS with new partners and thought leaders who drive the development of solutions at and beyond MIT.

MIT instructors honored for creating multidimensional, multidisciplinary online courses that help learners everywhere address real-world problems.

MIT Open Learning

June 7, 2021

On May 14, six MIT instructors were honored with the 2021 MITx Prize for Teaching and Learning in MOOCs. The prize, established in 2016, honors excellence in creating Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for MITx on edX. Anyone in the MIT community can submit nominations, including MITx MOOC creators, and awardees are selected by the MITx Faculty Advisory Committee.

The award was given to two courses this year, honoring faculty and instructors from four disciplines. Jonathan Gruber, Ford Professor of Economics, was honored for his 14.01x (AP Microeconomics) course, which uses MIT materials geared toward high school learners to help them prepare for the College Board exam. The other course recognized, 15.480x (The Science and Business of Biotechnology), was created by professors Andrew Lo of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Harvey Lodish of the Department of Biology, along with graduate students Zied Ben Chaouch of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Kate Koch of the Department of Biology, as well as Shomesh Chaudhuri ’14, PhD ’18, an EECS graduate.

The MITx Faculty Advisory Committee assesses prize nominees on four criteria: effective and engaging teaching methods, learner-focused innovation, residential impact and reuse, and global reach and impact. It is that last criterion that has drawn the most focus over the past year; in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, demand for the established, high-quality resources offered by MIT Open Learning has been higher than ever.

“Now more than ever, by opening MIT teaching and learning to the world, our MITx courses are making a global impact,” says Dean for Digital Learning Krishna Rajagopal. “The courses honored with this award are exemplars of the best of MITx, and of MIT. They reach quite different audiences; high school students in one case, current and future leaders in biotechnology in the other. In both cases, they are doing so in ways that are sparking new curiosity and interest and opening new opportunities for their learners worldwide.”

Gruber’s Microeconomics course is a perfect example of a learning resource that has grown beyond its original purpose to reach a diverse international audience. Gruber first designed the course in 2017 to fill the void of preparatory materials available to U.S. students planning to take the AP Microeconomics exam; he notes that few high schools offer any kind of support or formal training for the test. The MOOC is structured around the exam curriculum, to serve either as standalone training or as a supplement to instructor-led courses. But perhaps in part because of its wide-ranging, pop-culture savvy appeal (Gruber uses LeBron James’ basketball career, Kim Kardashian’s Instagram account, and the pros and cons of attending university as just a few of his real-world economics examples) the course has found a truly global audience with learners from 180 countries.

Gruber has also used the course to develop and implement a very practical economic policy of his own. He has done away with assigning a required — and costly — textbook for his students in his residential MIT version of the course, instead assigning materials from the MOOC and other free, open source MIT learning materials as a supplement to class lectures and notes. David Autor, Ford Professor of Economics, in support of the course’s nomination, commended the “labor of love” that is Gruber’s course, and how with each new iteration of the MOOC, his colleague builds bridges for high school students, “[opening] pathways that were previously cloudy or just invisible.” Over time, says Autor, the course will “foster diversity and inclusion by seeding opportunity where it was absent.”

The Science and Business of Biotechnology course team was no less ambitious in creating their multidisciplinary exploration of the industry, setting up the course based on the comprehensive, research-led approach they’d like to see companies adopt. Like Gruber, course leaders Andrew Lo and Harvey Lodish have personal connections to their subject: Lo was moved to make change in the sector after experiencing disillusionment with biotech during loved ones’ battles with cancer. Lodish has witnessed the enormous impact of the biotech industry on both personal and professional levels: years after he co-founded Genzyme, his daughter gave birth to a son who depends on one of the company’s medicines for treatment of a chronic health condition.

The team’s dedication and well-balanced approach to a multifaceted industry has been a smashing success. Calling Lo and Lodish “superstars” in his letter of support, Institute Professor Robert Langer lauded the course’s comprehensive approach to the subject matter, finding it essential for those who would seek to make a real impact on the biotech industry. Heidi Pickett, assistant dean for the MIT Sloan Master of Finance Program, also praised the combination of subject areas explored throughout the course, citing its ability to redress weaknesses in individual learners’ skill sets; those coming from a finance background, for example, would benefit from a deeper engagement with the science of biotech, while still gaining knowledge in their primary field. She also spoke to the course’s wide appeal: “Considering the importance of topics discussed presented in 15.480x, it is no wonder the course attracted learners from around the world bringing different backgrounds and perspectives,” she says, adding that lively exchanges between users on the course’s discussion boards greatly enhanced the learning experience.

After a year when so many learners struggled to adapt to a sudden shift to remote education, MITx Director Dana Doyle finds ample reason to celebrate the power of intentional online teaching and learning. “In a time when people everywhere have felt both increasingly isolated and increasingly connected by the experience of the pandemic, it’s so heartening to witness how these courses have brought learners together to dive into important, complex global issues.”

A lifelong interest in teaching brought Mandana Sassanfar to MIT, where she has established programs to engage diverse students and forged partnerships with institutes across the country.

Raleigh McElvery

May 25, 2021

Of all the offices in Building 68, Mandana Sassanfar’s is perhaps the most colorful. Her walls are lined with photos of students past and present, each of whom completed one or more of the six outreach programs she heads as the Department of Biology’s director of outreach. Over the last two decades, Sassanfar has forged partnerships with communities across the country, in an effort to engage historically underrepresented groups in science — and increase access to MIT’s on-site and online resources. 

 Although she was born in Switzerland, Sassanfar spent most of her childhood moving between France and Iran for her father’s job. No matter where her family lived, she always attended French-speaking schools. As early as fourth grade, she remembers analyzing her instructors’ teaching strategies, and practicing how she would explain the same concepts to make them clearer. While this interest in education continued to percolate, she also discovered that her favorite subjects were chemistry and math.

By 1983, she’d earned a master’s in biochemistry from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, and moved to the US to start a PhD at Cornell University. Although she nearly switched tracks to study plant science, she ultimately stuck with biochemistry in the hopes of studying under well-known scientist Jeffery Roberts. Although Roberts was not taking new students at the time, Sassanfar convinced him to let her complete an eight-week rotation in his lab.

“I scheduled that rotation as my last, so I would have made every mistake before working with Jeff’s group,” she says. “At the end of the eight weeks, I literally told him, ‘If you don’t take me, I’m going back to France.’ And he took me in.”

While everyone else was probing various aspects of transcription antitermination, Sassanfar was an outlier investigating the role of DNA replication in the bacterial SOS repair pathway following DNA damage. She was among the first researchers to design a quantitative western blot assay to measure the level of LexA and RecA proteins in vivo. “Jeff’s lab was a wonderful place to work and I received a rigorous scientific training,” she recalls. “He was an excellent mentor.”

After graduating from Cornell in 1988, Sassanfar completed two postdocs: one with Leona Samson at the Harvard School of Public Health, and another with Jack Szostak at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Szostak later went on to earn a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and telomerase enzymes. While Sassanfar was in his lab, she overlapped with many prominent scientists, including David Bartel, Jennifer Doudna, Rachel Green, and John Lorsch.

As Sassanfar’s time at MGH drew to a close, Szostak introduced her to Paul Schimmel, a long-time faculty member at the MIT Department of Biology, who was hiring research scientists for his new biotech startup, Cubist, which he had co-founded with chemistry professor Julius Rebek. The company intended to explore aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases as potential antibiotic targets. Sassanfar already knew Schimmel as the co-author of one of her favorite books, Biophysical Chemistry. But working with him for nearly four years taught her additional skills that she couldn’t have gleaned from a book.

“I came to understand a tremendous amount about the biotech culture while I was at Cubist,” she says. “Paul was a great mentor, and I learned a lot from him about writing papers, and watching the even-keeled way he interacts with people.”

When Schimmel eventually moved to The Scripps Research Institute, Sassanfar joined Harvard University’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology as a teaching fellow. There, professor Stephen Harrison, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHIM) Investigator, offered her a chance to become involved in her first outreach program — a week-long workshop for high school teachers that she continues to run today from MIT. She was also charged with coordinating a summer program that placed non-Harvard undergraduates in campus labs each summer. But, in 2002, just a couple months before a student cohort was slated to arrive, the program was abruptly canceled and Sassanfar resigned.

“I had to transfer six undergraduates to other summer programs and find a space for the teacher’s summer workshop,” she remembers. “I just needed some lab space for two weeks.”

She called the MIT Department of Biology, and within a few days she not only had lab spaces for the teachers workshop, but a job offer as well. She accepted, and teamed up with professor Graham Walker. Together, they worked to expand the department’s pre-college and undergraduate outreach programs, creating a pipeline to graduate school in the process.

While many graduate institutions are quick to recruit students from Ivy League schools, Sassanfar saw an opportunity to widen the applicant pool. “If you decide that all the top students are from the Ivies — which is not true — then you’re missing out on many phenomenal applicants,” she says. “So I started reaching out to undergraduate institutions with limited research resources that serve diverse student bodies. Graham and I wanted to offer these students a comprehensive summer research experience, which would inspire them to apply to rigorous PhD programs like MIT Biology.”

MIT already offered some programs in this vein — such as the MIT Summer Research Program (now called “MSRP General”) — but none of them focused specifically on the life sciences. However, MSRP General was not specifically designed to be a recruiting tool for the Department of Biology. As a result, Walker and Sassanfar decided to establish the MIT Summer Research Program in Biology (MSRP-Bio), which would offer additional, biology-specific programming to help these trainees succeed and prepare them for the next stage of their careers.

Walker was the long-time program director of the HHMI Undergraduate Science Education Program at MIT, and was also named an HHMI professor the year Sassanfar arrived. He and Sassanfar used some of the accompanying funds to establish synergetic programs focused on education outreach and diversity. These included MSRP-Bio, the Quantitative Biology Workshop, the HHMI special seminar series, and a summer mini-sabbatical for faculty at institutions serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds and minority groups.

At first, Sassanfar says, she didn’t know much about the MIT Biology philosophy or the graduate program. “I spent a lot of time just talking to the grad students. And I realized that if we were going to use MSRP-Bio as a recruiting tool, then we had to set admission standards similar to those of the graduate program.”“When Mandana began at MIT, she realized that to compete for the most talented students we needed to strengthen the biology component of MIT’s summer research programs, by increasing our outreach efforts and developing an enriched summer experience,” Walker recalls. “Since then, her leadership, energy, enthusiasm, and humanity have helped MSRP-Bio develop into the strikingly successful, high-impact program that it is today.”

She began by tweaking the admissions process, raising the minimum GPA and requiring additional letters of recommendation. That first summer, Sassanfar and Walker had only a few months to prepare, so the inaugural 2003 cohort was just 11 students.

Today, the program is known as the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program in Biology (BSG-MSRP-Bio), and hosts up to 20 students. Participants perform full-time research for 10 weeks between June and August. They also attend academic seminars and weekly meetings with faculty. They visit biotech labs, take tours of Boston, learn about the grad school application process, practice their presentation skills, and share their research projects at the MSRP poster session and other conferences around the country.

In order to attract applicants from across the country, Sassanfar began traveling annually to schools with large populations of under-represented minority students, such as historically black colleges and universities; Hispanic-serving institutions; and large state schools in Texas, Florida, New York, Maryland, and Puerto Rico. She often relied on MSRP-Bio alumni to introduce her to science faculty during her campus visits.

At first it was difficult to connect with administrators and meet students. But Sassanfar slowly built sturdy relationships, and even started inviting faculty to join their students at MIT for seminars and summer sabbaticals. In 2004, the biotechnology program at the University Puerto Rico at Mayagüez honored Sassanfar with an award to celebrate her work.

“It’s really important to create opportunities that allow diverse students and faculty to benefit from MIT, rather than the other way around,” she says. “You have to show that you are doing this because you care, and not because you want something in return.”

Since 2003, over 400 students from 39 countries have participated in MSRP-Bio. Over 75% have gone on to graduate school (including 87 at MIT), 12 have become professors, and many others are leading successful careers in industry or medicine. One alumnus from the 2005 cohort, Eliezer Calo, is now a faculty member in the Department of Biology, and another from the 2007 cohort, Francisco Sánchez-Rivera, will start his own lab at the Koch Institute in 2022. Many of the MSRP-Bio alumni who complete their PhDs and postdocs at MIT stay actively engaged in outreach programs until they graduate, and help Sassanfar with many of the programs she coordinates.

Mary Lee, a member of MSRP-Bio’s inaugural cohort who later completed her PhD at MIT, says she applied to the program in hopes of experiencing cutting-edge biology research in a new city. “Mandana was an integral part of my experience in MSRP-Bio,” she explains. “From my first encounter with her to even now, 20 years later, it is clear how committed she is to connecting students like myself to MIT and the research community. It was a short summer but the experience unlocked opportunities for me that I would not have had otherwise.”

Sassanfar also serves as the director of diversity and science outreach for the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, as well as the diversity coordinator for the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. These additional roles have allowed her to expand MSRP-Bio and the Quantitative Biology Workshop, now known as the Quantitative Methods Workshop. In addition, she’s spearheaded programs for local high school students, including field trips and the LEAH Knox Scholars Program.

Beyond her outreach work, each winter during MIT’s Independent Activities Period she teaches a class for first-year MIT undergraduates to introduce them to biology lab techniques. “My favorite thing is seeing the looks on students’ faces when they have been working so hard to learn and apply techniques, and they finally can see and interpret the results of their experiments,” she says. “That’s what I love.”

Although Sassanfar has mentored hundreds of students over the past 20 years, she works hard to connect with each while they’re on campus, and has stayed in touch with many of them. She enjoys getting visits and emails from summer program alums who share their successes and thank her for the role she’s played.

“The fact that we have so many students who have finished their PhDs and gone on to become postdocs, faculty, doctors and important players in industry is, I think, truly where the success lies,” she says. “My hope is to build a strong network of alums who are excited to meet current students and create a community.”

Most recently, Sassanfar has teamed up with students, staff, and faculty from the Department of Biology to begin a new initiative, which provides research training opportunities to local community college students.

“What has really worked for me is that the Biology Department gives me free rein,” she says. “They provide their full support, and let me take it from there.”

Computer Science + Biology — and powerful insights from a Women's & Gender Studies minor

MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

May 21, 2021

When graduating senior Natasha Joglekar ’21 faced some serious medical issues in the fall of 2018, she found comfort in one particular class that term: WGS.229 / Race, Culture, and Gender in the US and Beyond: A Psychological Perspective. “I think that class was sometimes the only time I talked to people all week,” she recalls.

Following a medical leave, Joglekar was able to return to MIT full-time in the fall of 2020, and soon took another class in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS): WGS.250 HIV/AIDS in American Culture. “That’s the class that made me want to be a WGS minor,” she says. “It was nice to get a broader perspective on illness, one that was not rooted in medicine, treatment, and doctors.”

Insight into societal outcomes

A Computer Science + Biology major (Course 6-7), Joglekar found that her WGS coursework provided her with meaningful insight into the human factors that drive so many societal outcomes. “WGS studies helped give me a framework for understanding the world,” she says, “in the same way that my Physics and Math classes did.” She adds that WGS classes helped her understand myths about various minority groups, as well as the ways children are socialized to believe them.

Joglekar, who was named a Burchard Scholar in 2019 for excellence in her humanistic WGS classes, says she always knew she wanted to study the humanities, as well as the STEM fields, in college. But she didn’t choose MIT only because the Institute pairs extraordinary technical and scientific education with a world-class School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. She was also impressed by the gender parity she saw on a visit to campus.

Support for women in tech

While at high school in a Boston suburb, her techie classes were predominantly male; at MIT, she saw both men and women pursuing science, technology, and math. “You come here and see, omigod, here are all these girls doing all these cool things,” she says. “I knew I would go into a technical field, and I wanted to go to a place with a lot of women in tech and a support system for women in tech.”

One of the supportive networks Joglekar found at the Institute was the lab of Tyler Jacks, a leader in the field of cancer genetics, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology, and Director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Working through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Joglekar conducted cancer research in the Jacks lab, investigating the combination therapy potential of a small molecule inhibitor on tumor heterogeneity.

“The lab was a wonderful place to learn,” she says. “They were the community I needed.”

Detail, “The Ties That Bind,” artwork by Ekua Holmes; emblem for MIT Women’s & Gender Studies

Joglekar plans to work as a research assistant in a hospital, and says she expects her experience in Women and Gender Studies will help her understand patients better — and perhaps even address some of the social determinants of health.

Friendship and community

Community is of central important to Joglekar, whose family always emphasized the importance of friendship. That’s why she has spent much of her extracurricular time at MIT supporting community-building efforts. She is on the Executive Council of the Biology Undergraduate Student Association, which runs departmental study breaks and faculty dinners. She also serves on the Undergraduate Student Advisory Group for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), which works to improve systemic issues, such as departmental communications.

The latter experience in particular gave Joglekar the chance to work directly with leaders in the EECS department. “That has been one of the highlights of my undergraduate experience,” she notes. “They’re all so good at listening and taking feedback, and they have influenced how I want to be one day if ever I’m in a leadership position.”

Leadership

In fact, Joglekar has served in several leadership roles already. In addition to her committee work, she serves as editor in chief of the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal, the Institute’s only peer-reviewed scientific journal serving the undergraduate population. And, like a good leader she is candid about her journey. “I don’t want people to think, ‘look at this person who’s flying through life.’ Far from it. I struggled at different times for different reasons,” she says. “But I’d still do it all over again!”

Joglekar is now planning to work as a research assistant in a hospital, and expects her experience in WGS will help her understand patients better — and perhaps even address some of the social determinants of health. “WGS gives you the tools to understand so many things, including underlying biases,” she says. “I think everybody should take a WGS class for this reason. it’s relevant regardless of what you do.”