My dear fellow alumni and friends,

The summer 2024 issue of Science@MIT explores the grand opening of the new climate hub at MIT, Building 55, the Tina and Hamid Moghadam Building. Not only is the building visually stunning — transparent and open in contrast to the brutalist tower above — but it is also functionally a new era for climate research here at MIT. One based on collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Environmental Solutions Initiative, and all the players and partners within the
Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. If you have the opportunity when you’re next on campus, I urge you to take a walk through the entrance of the glass facade and into the intriguing and inviting space of our newest building.

Additionally, the Green Building’s interior received an impressive restyling with the renovation of the 54-100 auditorium, now proudly named for MIT’s first degree recipient in geology, Dixie Lee Bryant, Class of 1891. She was one of MIT’s many trailblazing women in her field, in a time before women’s suffrage in this country. And if you turn to the end of this issue, you can read about innovators like her, including this year’s advanced degree ceremony speaker, Lydia Villa-Komaroff. She and others are featured in the MIT Libraries’ exhibition, entitled “Under the Lens: Women Biologists and Chemists at MIT 1865–2024.”

If you couldn’t join us for reunion or Commencement this spring, I urge you to visit our website and listen to Villa-Komaroff ‘s speech for this year’s graduates.

This issue also brings you profiles of modern-day biology researchers, including Professors Yadira Soto-Feliciano and Seychelle Vos, who are both studying different aspects of gene regulation and expression. Leading researchers in their labs include graduate students Annette Jun Diao and Renee Barbosa, two recipients of the Cleo and Paul Schimmel Scholars award through the MIT Schimmel Family Program for Life Sciences. This transformative $50 million pledge supports the training of our graduate students — the vital network of researchers that drives our discoveries here at MIT.

Other research profiles include those of Mark Harnett, an associate professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Mark is looking at the brain’s “silent synapses” — neurons that remain inactive and immature until they are called into service to engrain memories or learn. This new finding runs against a prevailing understanding of memory as a rewriting or rewiring of mature synapses between neurons.

In the Department of Physics, Professor Netta Engelhardt is also pushing on the central tenets of her field, asking what happens to information when black holes evaporate (and how), and what about a black hole’s quantum gravity? She is investigating how many pillars of gravitational physics need a closer look.

In the Department of Chemistry, our issue delves a bit deeper into the connections between discoveries and industries. You can learn about chemist Brad Pentelute’s delivery systems that may revolutionize the development of therapeutics. You can also learn about how Nobel Prize winner Moungi Bawendi backed into the revolution of quantum dots with a lot of trial and, not error, but failure.

Professor Nuno Loureiro too sees a field on the verge of transformation as the new director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). These coming years will produce, Nuno says, a “watershed moment” as experiments such as those in collaboration with PSFC and SPARC produce a burning plasma that yields more energy than it consumes — the holy grail for fusion power.

Finally, and certainly no less important, is an article acknowledging our most recent recipients of the MIT Open Data Prize. The brainchild of Associate Dean Rebecca Saxe and MIT Libraries director Chris Bourg, these awards encourage our research community to create infrastructure and excellence in open data sharing. The research we describe in this issue can only be enhanced and furthered with a commitment to scholarship characterized by the norm of open sharing.

In closing, I want to honor a member of my team who is retiring from MIT this summer — Associate Dean for Development Elizabeth Chadis. I will miss her wise counsel and fiery advocacy. Her passion for science and scientists has enabled us to recruit and retain faculty and support our graduate students with fellowships, including the Schimmel Scholars Fund. The School of Science is in excellent shape in no small part because of Elizabeth’s efforts. Please do reach out to her and join me in wishing her well (echadis@mit.edu).

With my very best wishes,
Dean Nergis Mavalvala PhD ’97

Read more of the Summer 2024 issue of Science@MIT.