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Melissa Choi, who has served as assistant director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory since 2019 and has decades of experience working across the lab’s different technical areas, has been named the next director of Lincoln Laboratory, reports Isabel Tehan for the Boston Business Journal. “Under Choi’s leadership, the lab will continue to focus on long-term development of defense systems,” writes Tehan, “as well as quick-moving prototyping, both with the goal of protecting the U.S. from advanced threats.” 

BioBuilder, a program spun out of MIT that is being used in 1,000 high schools across the country, aims to provide high school students with an opportunity to experience engineering and problem solving in the classroom, reports Kelly Sullivan for Boston 25 News. “We’re really hoping to help attract students to the field and get them interested and, train them up so that the industry can have the talent they need,” says BioBuilder Executive Director Natalie Kuldell. 

NBC News reporter Alex Koller spotlights Noubar Afeyan PhD '87 and the messages he shared as commencement speaker for the 2024 MIT graduating class. "I'm utterly unreasonable and an eternal optimist," said Afeyan, adding that to tackle improbable challenges having "a special kind of optimism" can help. 

Break Through Tech A.I., a new program hosted and supported by MIT and a number of other universities, is providing free artificial intelligence courses to “reduce obstacles to tech careers for underrepresented college students, including lower-income, Latina and Black young women,” reports Natasha Singer for The New York Times. The program “aims to help lower-income students, many of whom have part-time jobs on top of their schoolwork, learn A.I. skills, develop industry connections and participate in research projects they can discuss with job recruiters,” writes Singer. 

Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights “Drawing After Modernism,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum that showcases various architectural sketches in different mediums. “There are some 50 items on display, not just artworks but also colored pencils, an airbrush, and exhibition cards for a 1977 exhibition at New York’s Leo Castelli gallery,” explains Feeney. “The MIT show is pretty much an ideal size: small enough for a visitor to comfortably take everything in, big enough to be varied and wide-ranging.” 

A more than $40 million investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities to MIT.nano will significantly expand the center’s nanofabrication capabilities, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. The new equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside MIT, will allow “startups and students access to wafer-making equipment used by larger companies. These tools will allow its researchers to make prototypes of an array of microelectronic devices.”

Maya Levy '21 speaks with Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear about “The 24-Hour T Ride,” a play written by Levy and friends as part of their work with the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble group. The group is “known to produce 24-hour shows in which only the title is decided on beforehand,” explains Levy. “You can expect silly incredibly local scenes that would not hold up if you performed it anywhere else. You can expect the actors to be having a wonderful time.”

Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05 and Philip Abel '15 speak with GBH “Under The Radar” host Callie Crossley about Musah’s documentary, “Brief Tender Light,” which follows the life of four African-born students on their personal and academic experiences at MIT. “The takeaway for me is about how we all belong in all spaces all around the world,” says Musah. “For me, the film has always been about celebrating the lives of African students and Black people at institutions like MIT.”

MIT irradiation facilities engineer Andriy Tuz and Prof. Jacopo Buongiorno speak with Jennifer Hiller of the Wall Street Journal about Tuz’s path from Ukraine to MIT. Tuz joined the Institute “through the U.S. government’s Uniting for Ukraine program, which provides a way for Ukrainian citizens displaced by the war to stay temporarily in the U.S.,” writes Hiller.

WBUR reporter Solon Kelleher spotlights “List Projects 29” – the final show in a series at the MIT List Visual Arts Center that focuses on “collaborations between artists.” The show features work from Brittni Ann Harvey and Harry Gould Harvey IV. “The artists co-founded the Fall River Museum of Contemporary Art and share a vision for artist-led spaces and art that engages with the wider community,” writes Kelleher.

Chronicle of Higher Ed reporter Karin Fischer spotlights “A Brief Tender Light,” a documentary created by Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05 that follows four African undergraduates at MIT on their journey as international students studying and working in Boston. Musah’s “dream scenario is that such screenings could facilitate dialogue between groups represented in the documentary, such as international and African students, students of color, and gay and lesbian students,” writes Fischer.

Tech reporters Tina Zhang and Russel Ismael spotlight MIT’s Winterfest celebration, which brought the MIT community together to enjoy tasty treats and revelry. Graduate student Josh Marchant noted that the festivities were “a fun way to destress.” President Sally Kornbluth said that Winterfest is a “wonderful MIT tradition to mark the end of the fall semester and kick off the winter season by gathering with colleagues and friends for a well-deserved break.” Events like this, observed Kornbluth, “where we can be together as a community, are always important, but they are especially meaningful in difficult times.”
 

Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear spotlights MITHenge – a bi-annual occurrence where the sunset aligns with the Infinite Corridor. “A blast of orange sunlight spills through a window, lighting up the lengthy space with a warming glow,” explains Annear. “The phenomenon, which has amassed ‘a cult-like following,’ has been highly celebrated for years by both members of the school community and the public.”

In a cartoon for The Boston Globe, Sage Stossel spotlights how during the Cambridge Science Festival researchers from the MIT AgeLab spoke about their work during a special presentation at the Cambridge Senior Center. As part of an effort to spur innovations aimed at improving the quality of life for people in their later years, AgeLab researchers have “pursued an array of projects, from researching safer, more automated driving systems to collaborating on ‘smart home’ innovations for facilitating aging in place to the development of interactive robo-pets.”

“Brief Tender Light,” a documentary by Arthur Musah '04, MEng '05, spotlights four African-born MIT students and their experiences with adapting to the culture and challenges in and out of the classroom, reports Celina Colby for The Bay State Banner. “The story of international students, or specifically African students, in the U.S. hadn’t really been told,” says Musah. “Stats that I’ve learned more recently say there are about a million international students in any given year studying in the U.S., of which about 40,000 are African. That seems like a substantial portion of the fabric of American society.”