Profile

Forbes reporter Bruce Rogers profiles the work of Professor Tom Leighton, from his days teaching as an MIT professor to his work co-founding Akamai and serving as the company’s CEO. 

In an article for AAAS, Mark Parker spotlights the career of the “Queen of Carbon,” Professor Mildred Dresselhaus. “Dresselhaus earned the royal nickname through her definitive research on carbon, particularly her work on superconductivity and carbon nanotubes,” Parker writes.

Neil Swidey profiles Professor Alan Guth and his work developing the theory of cosmic inflation in a piece for The Boston Globe Magazine. “Perhaps you went to school with someone like Alan Guth, a child so preternaturally gifted that the teachers didn’t know what to do with him,” Swidey writes.

“On Wednesday, Jonas was announced as the artist who will officially represent the United States in its national pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” writes Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe on Professor Joan Jonas’ selection for the prestigious art exhibition, which is widely regarded as the world’s most important exhibition of contemporary art.

MIT senior Kirin Sinha talks with FOX 25 about the SHINE for Girls program, which uses dance to get young girls excited about math and science. Sinha, who founded the program, says SHINE provides a content-based curriculum that teaches self-confidence along with math skills.

“Sinha, a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is majoring in theoretical math and computer science and electrical engineering -- fields that have remained heavily dominated by men,” Boston Globe reporter Carolyn Johnson writes of the SHINE for Girls program, founded by Kirin Sinha, that teaches young girls math through dance.

“Artist and MIT professor emerita Joan Jonas, 77, has been chosen to represent the United States at the 56th Venice Biennale, the world’s most prestigious exhibition of contemporary art,” writes Sebastian Smee of The Boston Globe. Jonas is considered a pioneer in performance and video art.

New York Times reporter Carol Vogel writes that Professor Emerita Joan Jonas has been selected to represent the United States at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Paul C. Ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, nominated Jonas and will serve as commissioner of the exhibit.   

Lisa Mickey of The New York Times profiles retired professor Leon S. White, who researches poetry inspired by golf. In 2011 White published “Golf Course of Rhymes: Links between Golf and Poetry throughout the Ages,” a collection of golf poems he compiled from around the world.

Robin Young of NPR’s Here & Now interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and Institute Professor John Harbison on his work “Songs America Loves To Sing – Old and New Music for Winds, Strings, and Piano,” in which he applies unique progressions and arrangements to well-known, classic songs.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, spotlights Professor Alice Ting and her work developing a new technique that can, “produce a detailed molecular fingerprint of every compartment of a cell.”

New York Times reporter William Yardley explores the legacy of MIT alumnus Patrick McGovern. “He was often referred to as ‘Uncle Pat’ by the thousands of employees at his company, and he was known for a determinedly human gesture in the cyberworld: traveling the planet to hand-deliver Christmas bonus checks of $500 to everyone who worked for him,” writes Yardley.

“Patrick J. McGovern, who became a billionaire as founder and majority owner of Boston-based technology publisher International Data Group, died March 19 at a hospital in Palo Alto, California,” writes Lawrence Arnold in The Washington Post.

“Mr. McGovern, who with his wife, Lore, gave $350 million to open the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, died Wednesday in Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif,” writes J. M. Lawrence in The Boston Globe.

Technology writer Glenn Rifkin joins WBUR’s Bob Oakes to discuss the life and career of Patrick McGovern, an MIT alumnus who donated $350 million to create the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.