Special events and guest speakers

Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston writes about the ‘Descience’ fashion show held at the MIT Media Lab. The science-themed fashion show brought together researchers and designers to create garments that reflected each group’s line of study.

In a piece for The Boston Globe, Jennifer Smith writes about the Math Prize for Girls competition held at MIT over the weekend. “Now in its sixth year, the Math Prize for Girls competition is aimed at deflating gender stereotypes that organizers say dissuade young women from entering technology-based fields,” writes Smith. 

Heather Kelly of CNN writes about the breast pump hackathon hosted at MIT recently. The winning design, the Mighty Mom utility belt, turned a “pump into a hands-free portable device that is worn discreetly under clothes and can work while the wearer goes about her regular routine,” writes Kelly. 

Nathan Matias, Ph.D. student at the MIT Center for Civic Media, will lead a discussion at the Mozilla Festival in London on creating better online social interactions, writes Steve Annear for Boston Magazine. “Hopefully we will be able to create a guide to partying on the Internet,” says Matias.

A hackathon held over the weekend at the MIT Media Lab sought to develop a better design for the breast pump, writes Rachel Ehrenberg for The Atlantic. “[M] ost women will tell you that the experience of using the breast pump sucks, literally and figuratively,” says Media Lab researcher Catherine D'Ignazio.

In a piece for The New Yorker, Michelle Nijhuis writes about the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck! hackathon, held at the MIT Media Lab. The winning team came up with an idea for a, “portable, hands-free pump that could be used while commuting or caring for small children,” writes Nijhuis. 

Aviva Rutkin of New Scientist writes about the breast pump hackathon held at the MIT Media Lab. "These days, we have smart everything," says Catherine D’Ignazio, a research affiliate at MIT who co-organized the event. "Why isn't the breast pump a little bit smarter too?"  

Carey Goldberg of WBUR writes about the winning designs from the MIT Media Lab’s breast-pump hackathon held over the weekend. The “Mighty Mom” utility belt “a fashionable, discreet, hands-free wearable pump that automatically logs and analyzes your personal data” took the first prize. 

Melissa Lott of Scientific American reports on the third annual Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) women’s initiative symposium co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative. The group works in partnership with governments around the world to increase the participation of women in the energy field.

Marc Abrahams writes for BetaBoston about ‘The Breast Pump Hackathon,' which is scheduled to take place Sept. 20-21 at the MIT Media Lab. The event will bring together a wide variety of people to collaborate on designing a better breast pump.

The Economist spotlights increasing concerns about how private consumer data is accessed and employed, highlighting the recent White House big data privacy conference hosted at MIT and Professor Vinod Vaikuntanathan’s work with homomorphic encryption.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger writes for The Wall Street Journal about this year’s MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. This year’s symposium focused on the importance of cloud, data science, social and mobile technology that are transforming the economy and driving companies to digitize all aspects of their business, writes Wladawsky-Berger.

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray reports on the 50^th anniversary of MIT’s Project MAC. “When this started in 1963, the dream was to let multiple people use computers simultaneously,” Daniela Rus explains. “Fifty years later we’re now in a world where we find computing indispensable.”

Mark Shanahan and Meredith Goldstein of The Boston Globe report on a World Cup kick-off party hosted by the MIT Museum and the MIT-Brazil program. “The day’s program included a ball juggling competition, music, and a lesson from MIT applied mathematics professor John Bush about the physics of the sport,” they write.

Hailey Lee reports on how Boston area college students are remembering the Boston Marathon bombings last year, highlighting the memorial ceremony for Officer Sean Collier, as well as the rally held in support of the MIT strong marathon team in a USA Today article.