Writing for The New York Times, graduate student John Urschel recounts how his high school football coaches motivated him, noting that similar tactics might encourage more children to study math. “There are many ways to be an effective teacher, just as there are many ways to be an effective coach,” writes Urschel. “But all good teachers, like good coaches, communicate that they care about your goals.”
Graduate student John Urschel speaks with Karen Given of WBUR’s Only a Game about how his mother helped encourage his passion for mathematics. "Most kids get their allowance by, you know, mowing the lawn — things like this," Urschel says. "My mom, because she recognized that I was strong in math, wanted to encourage me with respect to math."
TIME reporter Sean Gregory visits MIT to speak with graduate student John Urschel about his new book, and his passion for both mathematics and football. “The United States, more than any other culture, has the strange marriage of athletics and academics,” Urschel says. “I thought it was important to show that this is something that really can co-exist.”
Graduate student John Urschel discusses his new book and passion for both math and football on Fox and Friends. “Football coaches, they tell their best players to dream big,” says Urschel. “I would love to see math teachers telling their students you can be an elite mathematician, you can be a top physicist, you can even dream to be the next Einstein.”
Graduate student John Urschel visits the Today Show to discuss his new book and what inspired him to pursue a PhD in mathematics. Urschel explains that his mother tried to ensure that “whatever I wanted to be the only thing that would limit me was a lack of talent, bad luck, lack of hard work, but it wasn’t going to be the household I was born into or a lack of resources.”
Boston Globe reporter Ben Volin speaks with graduate student John Urschel about his new book “Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football.” “I love solving sort of interesting and tough problems that have to do with our world in some way,” says Urschel of his dreams for after he graduates from MIT. “And I also love teaching.”
In a piece about the growing field of origami, The Economist highlights Prof. Erik Demaine’s work proving that “any straight-sided figure—an octagon, a cityscape silhouette or a blocky Bart Simpson—can be extracted with exactly one straight cut if you fold the paper up the right way first.”
In this CBS This Morning segment, graduate student John Urschel discusses what inspired him to pursue a PhD in math and why he decided to stop playing professional football. "If you have dreams, if you have goals, don't shut these things down. Don't fit into certain stereotypes. Don't think you can't have multiple aspirations," says Urschel.
Rachel Crowell highlights the 2018 gala of the National Museum of Mathematics. The fundraiser featured a keynote speech from MIT graduate student and former NFL player John Urschel.
Prof. Angelika Amon is a recipient of this year’s Breakthrough Prize “for her work on aneuploidy, irregularities in the number of chromosomes,” which could lead to a new understanding of cancer, writes Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. Prof. Chenyang Xu, Prof. Matt Evans and research scientist Lisa Barsotti received New Horizons Prizes in physics, while Prof. Daniel Harlow received one in math.
TechRepublic reporter Nick Heath writes about Julia 1.0, a programming language created by MIT researchers. “The breadth of Julia's capabilities and ability to spread workloads across hundreds of thousands of processing cores have led to its use for everything from machine learning to large-scale supercomputer simulation,” writes Heath.
CNN reporter Don Lincoln writes that MIT researchers have discovered that it is possible to break a strand of dry spaghetti in two. Lincoln explains that the findings have applications "beyond making dinner. The calculations apply more generally to determining the crack formation of other rod-like structures, like poles used in pole vaulting and other engineering situations.”
Graduate student Vishal Patil speaks with NPR’s Rebecca Hersher about his work determining how to snap dry spaghetti in two. Patil found that, “when you twist it, you don't have to bend it as much before it breaks. When there's less bending in it, the snap-back — as the spaghetti tries to become a straight rod again — is weakened, so that no more fractures can occur.”
Using mathematical modeling, a mechanical fracture device and a camera, MIT researchers found that dry spaghetti can be split into two pieces, reports Allyson Chiu for The Washington Post. The findings could be applied to studying fracturing, explains graduate student Vishal Patil, who notes that, “there’s still a lot to be discovered about fracture control, and this is an example of fracture control.”
TODAY reporter Alessandra Bulow speaks with Prof. Jörn Dunkel about how he and his colleagues figured out how to snap a strand of spaghetti without it shattering into many pieces. Bulow notes that the noodles must be bent and twisted at the same time, and “you have to twist really strongly,” explains Dunkel.