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How to Reopen? Tools Visualizing Covid-19 Data Provide Concrete Guidance
Kara Baskin | Slice of MIT
July 14, 2020

Where could another Covid-19 spike happen? During the next major hurricane, will residents have access to food and appropriate shelter?

Ellie Graeden PhD ’11 answers questions like these as founder and CEO of Talus Analytics, a Colorado-based research and consulting firm. She’s a scientific interpreter, deciphering natural-disaster and public-health data for decision makers who must act sensibly—and quickly.

Talus is currently focused on modeling the spread of Covid-19 to guide response efforts, working closely with academic and research partners and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a range of efforts, several of which are publicly available.“Often, those kinds of data aren’t communicated in a way that’s immediately useful,” she explains. “We translate the data and the modeling results to inform practical decisions that need to get made on a day-in, day-out basis.”

COVID Local is a data-driven decision framework that helps policymakers determine when and how to reopen during each phase. A dashboard uses clear metrics to determine the parameters for each threshold. It’s a joint initiative from the Global Biological Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the Center for Global Development, and the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, where Graeden is an adjunct professor.

“COVID Local is focused on getting concrete guidance in place for those local decision makers so that they have a checklist that they can work through, driven by some of the best experts in global public health, who have managed outbreaks for Ebola in 2014 and elsewhere,” she says.

A second tool, Re:Public COVID Log, is a map-based platform that tracks communities visually, providing views of hazard risk, infrastructure, and population. It was developed with support from the US Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, and it’s simple enough for a nonexpert to use.

“A lot of the current tools are very expert focused. This is targeted for use by those without hazard-specific expertise—for example, by the communications office for a mayor,” she says.

In collaboration with Georgetown University, Talus has also built a large-scale database to track the effectiveness of various mitigation policies, helping to guide policymakers who might need to close for a second wave.

“We let them know what worked the first time,” she says.

All of this might seem like a leap for a microbiologist. Graeden earned her doctorate in cell biology at MIT, where she studied brain development in zebrafish under Professor Hazel L. Sive.

“I learned how to tell scientific stories visually, which is essentially what microscopy is. You’re telling stories with pictures,” she says.

She founded her 10-person firm in 2015 to do the same with global health issues: There was plenty of data, she felt, that nobody was looking at under a microscope and bringing to light. (Fellow MIT alum Trae Wallace MBA ’10 guides Talus’s development as its head of data.)

The company first made a name for itself during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, when Talus deployed to FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center to deduce how many people would be impacted by the storm’s wrath.

Her team harnessed data from the Department of Energy, looking at real-time power outages, and merged them with inland and coastal flood modeling to determine counties that would be hit. Next, they leveraged census data to capture the total number of people affected. While all the data from each source had been previously available, the questions being asked required real-time integration of the information for the response effort.

Since then, Talus has become a go-to for government and academic partners when “integrating different types of information and doing that storytelling,” Graeden says. “Flood modelers didn’t feel comfortable pulling in energy data or outage data or coastal modeling data. It was really a data analysis and storytelling problem,” she says.

Now, she tells these number stories from her perch in Colorado, where she moved in 2015 to be farther from what she calls “power-driven” Washington. It’s also closer to northern Idaho, where she grew up. Still, she looks back fondly on her time in Cambridge, where she jogged in the Arboretum and played competitive Ultimate Frisbee off campus, practicing up to 16 hours on the weekends. She also leaves a legacy of service to the school community as the founder of MIT BioREFS (Resource for Easing Friction and Stress), a peer mentorship program within the biology department, after a friend died by suicide.

“MIT was the first place I’d ever been where the response to an idea was routinely, ‘Well, is that the right thing to do?’ Whereas prior, the response had always been, ‘Well, can it be done right?’ At MIT, it’s not ‘Can it be done?’ but ‘What is the right way to solve it?’” she says.

As for the right thing to be doing about Covid, her assessment is stark.

“In the US, we are functionally no different from where we were three months ago. We have better treatments and a better sense for what works on the treatment side, but we have no preventative measures. We have no vaccine. We have no way to prevent people from getting sick, except social distancing measures,” she warns.

She hopes for equitable distribution of an eventual vaccine, using transparent data with demographic information layered in to target vulnerable communities.

“We need to be clear-eyed about what is happening. We need to collect data with demographic details attached. Florida, for example, decided at one point not to allow its coroners to report Covid deaths, and those limitations on data release really hamstring our ability to respond in an informed way. We have to collect the data, we need to be able to analyze it, and we need to be able to integrate data so that we can make decisions on the basis of it,” she says.

Lindsay Case

Education

  • PhD, 2014, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • BA, 2008, Biology, Franklin and Marshall College

Research Summary

We study how cells regulate the spatial organization of signaling molecules at the plasma membrane to control downstream signaling. For example, receptor clustering and higher-order assembly with cytoplasmic proteins can create compartments with unique biochemical and biophysical properties. We use quantitative experimental approaches from biochemistry, molecular biophysics, and cell biology to study transmembrane signaling pathways and how they are misregulated in diseases like cancer.

Awards

  • NSF Career Award, 2025
  • Searle Scholar, 2022
  • NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, 2022
  • AFOSR Young Investigator Award, 2021
  • Brown-Goldstein Award, 2020
  • Damon Runyon-Dale F. Frey Breakthrough Scientist, 2020
Yukiko Yamashita

Education

  • PhD, 1999, Kyoto University
  • BS, Biology, 1994, Kyoto University

Research Summary

Two remarkable feats of multicellular organisms are generation of many distinct cell types via asymmetric cell division and transmission of the germline genome to the next generation, essentially in eternity. Studying these processes using the Drosophila male germline as a model system has led us to venture into new areas of study, such as functions of satellite DNA, a ‘genomic junk,’ and how they might be involved in speciation.

Awards

  • National Academy of Sciences, 2025
  • Tsuneko and Reiji Okazaki Award, 2016
  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Investigator, 2014
  • MacArthur Fellow, 2011
  • Women in Cell Biology Early Career Award, American Society for Cell Biology, 2009
  • Searle Scholar, 2008
Seemingly similar, two neurons show distinct styles as they interact with the same muscle partner
Picower Institute
July 7, 2020

A new study by MIT neuroscientists into how seemingly similar neuronal subtypes drive locomotion in the fruit fly revealed an unexpected diversity as the brain’s commands were relayed to muscle fibers. A sequence of experiments revealed a dramatic difference between the two nerve cells – one neuron scrambled to adjust to different changes by the other, but received no requital in response when circumstances were reversed.

The findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggest that these subclasses of neurons, which are also found abundantly in people and many other animals, exhibit a previously unappreciated diversity in their propensity to respond to changes, a key property known as “synaptic plasticity.” Synaptic plasticity is considered an essential mechanism of how learning and memory occur in the brain, and aberrations in of the process are likely central to disorders such as autism.

“By seeing that these two different types of motor neurons actually show very distinct types of plasticity, that’s exciting because it means it’s not just one thing happening,” said senior author Troy Littleton, a member of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Menicon Professor of Neuroscience in MIT’s Departments of Biology and of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. “There’s multiple types of things that can be altered to change connectivity within the neuromuscular system.”

Tonic and phasic neurons

Both of the neurons work in the same way, by emitting the neurotransmitter glutamate onto their connections, or synapses, with the muscles. But these two neurons do so with different styles. The “tonic” neuron, which connects only to a single muscle, emits its glutamate at a constant but low rate while the muscle is active. Meanwhile, the “phasic” neuron connects to a whole group of muscles and jumps in with a strong quick pulse of activity to spring the muscles into action.

Heading into the study Littleton and lead author Nicole Aponte-Santiago were curious to explore whether these different neurons compete or cooperate to drive the muscle fibers, and if they exhibited different plasticity when their functions were altered. To get started on what ultimately became her dissertation research, Aponte-Santiago developed the means to tailor genetic alterations specifically in each of the two neurons.

“The reason we were able to answer these questions in the first place was because we produced tools to start differentially manipulating one neuron versus the other one, or label one versus the other one,” said Aponte-Santiago, who earned her PhD in Littleton’s lab earlier this spring and is now a postdoc at the University of California at San Francisco.

With genetic access to each neuron, Aponte-Santiago distinctly labeled them to watch each one grow in fly larvae as they developed. She saw that the tonic neuron reached the muscle first and that the phasic one connected to the muscle later. She also observed that unlike in mammals, the neurons did not compete to control the muscle but remained side by side, each contributing in its characteristic way to the total electrical activity needed to drive movement.

To study the neurons’ plasticity, Aponte-Santiago employed two manipulations of each neuron. She either wiped them out completely by making them express a lethal protein called “reaper” or she substantially tamped down their glutamate activity via expression of tetanus toxin.

When she wiped out the phasic neuron with reaper, the tonic neuron quickly stepped up its signaling, attempting to compensate as much as it could. But in flies where she wiped out the tonic neuron, the phasic neuron didn’t budge at all, continuing as if nothing had changed.

Similarly when Aponte-Santiago reduced the activity of the phasic neuron with the toxin, the tonic neuron increased the number of boutons and active zone structures in its synapses to respond to the loss of its partner. But when she reduced the activity of the tonic neuron the phasic neuron again didn’t appear to respond.

In all the experiments, the muscle received less overall drive from the neurons than when everything was normal. And while the phasic neuron  apparently didn’t bother to make up for any loss on the part of the tonic neuron, the tonic neuron employed different means to compensate – either increasing its signaling or by enhancing the number of its connections on the muscle – depending on how the phasic neuron was diminished.

“It was quite intriguing that Nicole found that when the phasic input wasn’t there, there was a unique form of plasticity that the tonic neuron showed,” Littleton said, “but if the phasic neuron was there and wasn’t working, the tonic neuron behaved in a very different way.”

Another intriguing aspect of the study is the role of the muscle itself, which may be an active intermediary of the plasticity, Littleton said. The neurons may not sense when each other have been wiped out or inactivated. Instead the muscle appears to call for those changes.

“Even though a muscle has two distinct inputs, it can sort of uniquely control those two,” Littleton said. “When the muscle is getting glutamate, does it know whether it is coming from the tonic or the phasic neuron and does it care? It appears that it does care, that it really needs the tonic more than the phasic. When the phasic is gone it shifts some of the plasticity, but when the tonic is gone the phasic can’t do much about it.”

In new work, the lab is now looking at differences in gene expression between the two neurons to identify which proteins are responsible for the unique properties and plasticity of the tonic and phasic neurons. By defining the genetic underpinnings of their unique properties, the lab hopes to begin to get a handle on the molecular underpinnings of neuronal diversity in the brain.

In addition to Aponte-Santiago and Littleton, the paper’s other authors are Kiel Ormerod and Yulia Akbergenova.

The National Institutes of Health and the JPB Foundation supported the study.

Nine MIT School of Science professors receive tenure for 2020

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.

Parasite research heats up
Greta Friar | Whitehead Institute
July 7, 2020

Apicomplexan parasites infect hundreds of millions of people around the world each year. Several species of apicomplexan parasites in the Plasmodium genus cause malaria, while another apicomplexan species, Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), causes toxoplasmosis, a disease with flu-like symptoms that can be lethal for people with weakened immune systems. In spite of their impact, the biology of these disease-causing parasites is not very well understood and treatment options for infection are limited.

One potential approach to treat infection could be drugs that disrupt the parasites’ calcium signaling, which they rely on to spread from cell to cell in their hosts. The parasites need an influx of calcium in order to burst out of an infected host cell—a process called egress—and move through the host’s body and invade other cells. In previous work, a researcher from Whitehead Institute Member Sebastian Lourido’s lab, Saima Sidik, had tested a large collection of molecules and identified one called enhancer 1 (ENH1), which perturbed the parasites’ calcium levels and prevented egress, as a promising anti-parasitic lead. However, the original experiments did not determine how ENH1 acts. In research published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology on June 29, Alice Herneisen, a graduate student in Lourido’s lab, and Lourido, who is also an assistant professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used an approach called thermal proteome profiling to discover how ENH1 prevents T. gondii parasites from egress. They identified the main target of ENH1 as a calcium-dependent molecule called CDPK1 that parasites use to prepare for egress, moving between cells, and invasion of host cells. ENH1 binds to and prevents CDPK1 from functioning.

“Advances over the past few decades have made discovering a molecule’s potentially therapeutic activity much easier, but the next step of figuring out how the molecule works is often still a challenge,” Lourido says. “By applying newer expansive approaches, we are starting to build a more holistic picture of the parasites’ cell biology.”

Understanding the biology responsible for a potential drug’s observed effects is important because most drugs require modification before they are ready for human use—they may need to be made less toxic, more potent, or more amenable to the environment of the human body—and these sorts of modifications cannot be made until the molecule and its activity are understood.

Herneisen decided to use a relatively new approach in parasites, thermal proteome profiling, to discover the targets of ENH1—the molecules it binds to, leading to its therapeutic effects. The approach works by graphing how each of the proteins inside the parasite reacts to changes in heat with and without being exposed to ENH1. One advantage of this approach is that it is unbiased, meaning that instead of researchers picking likely targets up front to test, they investigate as many molecules as possible, which can lead to unexpected findings. For example, Lourido has been investigating CDPK1 in other contexts for many years, and based on his lab’s previous understanding of its role would not have expected it to be a main target of ENH1—such surprises can direct research in exciting new directions.

Although CDPK1 is ENH1’s main target, the investigations did not uncover the target that allows ENH1 to cause oscillations in the parasites’ calcium levels. Finding this missing target is one of the lab’s next goals.

“The fact that ENH1 affects multiple aspects of calcium signaling may be what makes it such an effective antiparasitic agent,” Herneisen says. “It’s messing with the parasites on several levels.”

Translation of the research for clinical testing is a long way off, but there are multiple indicators that this is a promising direction for investigation. Not only is calcium signaling key to the parasites’ life cycle and ability to spread inside of a host, but the molecules and mechanisms that the parasites use to modulate calcium levels are very different from the ones found in mammals. This means that a drug that disrupts the parasites’ calcium signaling is unlikely to interfere with calcium signaling in human patients, and so could be deadly to the parasites without harming the patients’ cells.

Written by Greta Friar

***

Sebastian Lourido’s primary affiliation is with Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where his laboratory is located and all his research is conducted. He is also an assistant professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

***

Herneisen, Alice L. et al. “Identifying the target of an antiparasitic compound in Toxoplasma using thermal proteome profiling.” ACS Chemical Biology, June 29, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.0c00369

Ruth Lehmann

Education

  • Dr. rer. nat., 1985, University of Tübingen
  • MS, 1981, Biology, University of Freiburg

Research Summary

We study germ cells, the only cells in the body naturally able to generate completely new organisms. In addition to the nuclear genome, cytoplasmic information is passed though the egg cell to the next generation. We analyze the organization and regulation of germ line specific RNA-protein condensates, and explore mechanisms used by endosymbionts such as mitochondria and the intracellular bacterium, Wolbachia, to propagate through the cytoplasm of the female germ line.

Awards

  • Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, 2022
  • Gruber Genetics Prize, 2022
  • Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal, Genetics Society of America, 2021
  • Francis Amory Prize in Reproductive Medicine and Reproductive Physiology, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2020
  • Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, 2020
  • Keith R. Porter Award, American Society for Cell Biology, 2018
  • Inaugural Klaus Sander Prize, German Society for Developmental Biology, 2017
  • European Molecular Biology Organization, Foreign Associate, 2012
  • Conklin Medal of the Society of Developmental Biology, 2011
  • National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Associate, 2005; Member, 2008
  • American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member, 1998
  • Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Investigator, 1990 and 1997
LEAH Knox Scholars Program celebrates fourth summer with kick-off event

The science program for local high school students will be remote this year, as MIT instructors create at-home lab experiences.

Raleigh McElvery
July 2, 2020

A kick-off event on June 24 commenced a summer of science for local high school students. Established in 2017 as a biomedical research track within the Leaders through Education, Action, and Hope (LEAH) Project, the LEAH Knox Scholars Program is a collaboration between MIT and Health Resources in Action (HRiA), providing mentorship and hands-on lab experience in the field of biology.

Each summer, 24 rising juniors and seniors from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds enrolled in Boston, Cambridge, and Everett public schools attend a five-week lab course at MIT. They receive a stipend, learn basic laboratory and quantitative techniques, and attend workshops to develop other professional skills. The next summer, they join research groups throughout the Boston area to complete a six-week internship.

The kick-off event was held via Zoom, and brought together over 63 current and former students, donors, partners, parents, and instructors.

“The LEAH Project has a concept called ‘FamiLEAH,’ and so the kick-off event is all about welcoming everyone into that community,” says Lisa Aslan, director of HRiA’s LEAH Project.

Ryan Elbashir, LEAH Knox teaching assistant and incoming first-year Biology graduate student, says she knew when she was applying to MIT that she wanted to interact with the greater Boston community.

“Programs like LEAH Knox inspire other students from under-represented groups to get excited about science and form meaningful connections with higher education institutions like MIT,” she adds. “My impression from the kick-off event was that this program aims to not only provide students with an educational experience, but also a support network and source of mentorship for the remainder of their academic careers.”

Participants split into breakout rooms for icebreaker activities, and then reconvened for a live Q&A with Lynn Porter. A pediatrician and advisor to the program, Porter is the granddaughter of the man who inspired the LEAH Knox Program: William J. Knox.

Knox was the grandson of slaves, and went on to earn degrees from Harvard and MIT, contributed to the Manhattan Project, and had a fruitful career at the technology company Eastman Kodak. Despite his many accomplishments, he faced adversity simply because of the color of his skin. For instance, as a student at Harvard he was forced to sleep in the kitchen because Black men were not allowed in the dorms.

Porter recounted her grandfather’s life and discussed why it’s crucial for people of color to pursue science degrees. She encouraged the LEAH Knox Scholars to work hard, form lasting relationships with mentors, and never give up on their dreams.

Following Porter’s Q&A, the keynote speech was delivered by Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and a founding member of the McGovern Institute. She shared her love of research, and explained her work studying the functional organization of the human brain. The LEAH Knox Scholars had the chance to ask Kanwisher questions, before a brief orientation for their families.

Rothsaida Sylvaince, a former LEAH Knox Scholar, says the program introduced her to another world where she transformed into a scientist. As she entered her second year, she realized “that I could be a scientist not only within MIT’s lab, but anywhere. It gave me the confidence and support network to pursue science with all of my energy.”

Person in lab teaching to iPhone
Vanessa Cheung teaches lab techniques remotely

This year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, students will not be conducting lab work on MIT’s campus. Instead, Director of Outreach Mandana Sassanfar and Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung partnered with MIT’s Edgerton Center to enable participants to bring their research home. Sassanfar and Cheung created “Bags of Science” containing specialized DNA and protein modeling kits, as well as tubes, pipettes, and other lab equipment. These tools, Cheung says, will help students participate in hands-on activities — like extracting DNA from fruit and running an agarose gel — from the comfort of their own kitchens.

“The hope is that even though the students can’t physically be in the lab this summer, they will still get a chance to practice some basic lab techniques and gain a better appreciation for molecular biology research,” she adds.

HRiA will be providing their college and career readiness programing for all students virtually, and second-years will complete their research internships remotely. Eight have been placed in labs at MIT, and started their six-week internships on June 29.

Sassanfar says that, despite the current circumstances, it was very important to offer second-year students the opportunity to work on remote research projects.

“The eight students placed at MIT will gain very valuable coding skills,” she adds. “It was even more important to offer a virtual lab course to the first-years this summer, so they can apply for internships next summer. The LEAH Knox Scholars Program is all about teaching students underrepresented in the STEM fields how to do research, and to prepare them for a career in STEM.”

Don Pinkerton, a biology teacher at Revere High School and LEAH Knox intern supervisor, says he admires the program’s mission to bring STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) opportunities to low-income students of color.

“Even though we won’t be in the lab this summer,” he says, “our students will be able to conduct real science through the exploration of data. In addition to reading and discussing papers and other media, I hope to bring in engaging guest speakers and possibly run some at-home experiments.”

Posted: 7.2.20
Twelve MIT faculty honored as “Committed to Caring” for 2020-2021

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.