President will be announced tomorrow
MIT will announce its 17th president tomorrow morning after a special meeting of the MIT Corporation, according to a press release from the MIT News Office. The Corporation will elect Susan J. Hockfield’s successor, who has been picked after a 3-month long search process conducted by a joint faculty-Corporation committee.
Reif is new MIT president
Provost L. Rafael Reif was elected MIT’s 17th president this morning at a special meeting of the MIT Corporation. He will officially replace President Susan J. Hockfield, who has served for seven years, on July 2, 2012.
Kyaw report closed
The investigation into the Dec. 27, 2011 death of Phyo Kyaw ’10 is complete, and it has been ruled an accident. Kyaw was killed when his bicycle and a J. P. Noonan tanker truck collided as the truck turned right from Massachusetts Avenue onto Vassar Street in rainy weather after dark that evening.
Warnings said to be unheeded by JPMorgan Chase
In the years leading up to JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss, risk managers and some senior investment bankers raised concerns that the bank was making increasingly large investments involving complex trades that were hard to understand. But even as the size of the bets climbed steadily, these former employees say, their concerns about the dangers were ignored or dismissed.
IS&T deploying cell antennas
Information Services and Technology is deploying antennas and amplifiers in buildings across campus to improve cellular reception.
CoolChip within rules
On April 11, Chancellor Eric Grimson PhD ’80 concluded a review of an intellectual property rights situation with CoolChip Technologies, winner of the 2011 MIT $200K Clean Energy Prize (CEP) Contest. He found that the CoolChip did not violate the rules of the competition, but “was misleading in some of its public presentations.” Grimson said in an interview with The Tech in September that he would be working with the leadership of the CEP to review their rules regarding intellectual property and attribution issues. Since then, he said, he has personally conducted interviews with the three CoolChip founders, the relevant faculty, staff, and students, and the staff of Sandia National Laboratories, which invented the technology in question. Grimson also reviewed CoolChip’s contest submission and the CEP’s rules.
Prepared remarks by L. Rafael Reif, president-elect
Reif gave the following remarks at events throughout the day Wednesday. Via the MIT News Office:
The Tech’s news digest for May 15
The Tech’s new biweekly digest is the best way to hear news from around campus fast! Take five minutes to listen to the latest happenings at MIT and in the community.
CORRECTIONS
An article published Friday about Wi-Fi on Boston Common stated that the project began in February 2012, and gave the impression wireless Internet was added to the park recently. Wi-Fi was deployed on Boston Common over a year ago, in April of 2011, not 2012. The project began in February 2011.
Special podcast; Reif elected president
L. Rafael Reif has been named the 17th President of MIT. Reif has spent the past several months heading the MITx and EdX initiatives, stressing MIT’s commitment to improving residential education using online technologies. He was born in Venezuela, received a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford, and spent many years in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Listen to our podcast for more on Reif.
Three floors of Baker vandalized
Baker residents were rudely awakened by fire alarms twice on Saturday morning, once at 2 a.m. and again at 4 a.m. On the second instance, someone also “maliciously” discharged a fire extinguisher on the first, second, and third floors before disposing of it in a third-floor trash can. Baker was evacuated for several hours as a result, according to Baker President Michael E. Plasmeier ’13 and information from Baker House minutes. The fire alarms were pulled in the west wing of the first floor, from where the fire extinguisher was also taken.
The Tech has an audio news digest!
In the time that it takes to walk down the Infinite, you can now catch up on campus news! Just listen to The Tech’s new biweekly news digest. It will cost you 10 minutes each week — or less than 0.1% of your time. You can subscribe to the podcast at http://tech.mit.edu/rss/newsdigest.xml.
Shorts (right)
Conflicting signs are emerging in Washington over whether JPMorgan Chase’s surprise trading loss will spur tighter regulation on Wall Street.
Shorts (left)
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered a stinging defeat in elections in Germany’s most populous state on Sunday, one likely to embolden her political opponents both at home and abroad as the European debt crisis enters a critical new phase.
Colleges begin to confront higher costs and students’ debt
COLUMBUS, Ohio — In a wood-paneled office lined with books, sports memorabilia and framed posters (including John Belushi in “Animal House”), E. Gordon Gee, the president of The Ohio State University, keeps a framed quotation that reads, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
Pattern of rainy weekdays, nice weekends to continue
After letting up for a warm, sunny weekend, rain will return to Cambridge today and tomorrow. While unfortunate for those who wish to enjoy the outdoors, the rain should help ease the drought conditions that plague part of every state on the Atlantic seaboard. Drought combined with record high temperatures are also taking a toll on the Southwest, where wildfires have already forced evacuations in Arizona, and many other regions sit at high fire risk.
Iran sees success in stalling on nuclear issue
TEHRAN, Iran — As Iran starts a critical round of talks over its nuclear program, its negotiating team may be less interested in reaching a comprehensive settlement than in buying time to further establish its enrichment program, Iranian officials and analysts said.
Facebook needs to turn data trove into investor gold
SAN FRANCISCO — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief, has managed to amass more information about more people than anyone else in history.
Greek turmoil may spur new bargaining in eurozone
BERLIN — As gridlock among Greece’s political parties made new elections and another month of uncertainty there all but inevitable, European markets dropped significantly Monday amid concerns that Greece’s departure from the euro was near, and right behind it a new round of financial instability for Europe and the outside world.
An action plan for the UA
How exactly can students make a difference on campus? Is there anything that students who care about MIT can do to influence Institute policy? There are concrete things the new Undergraduate Association leadership can — and should — do to enhance the student experience.
Educate Tami
In 2010, back in my home, New York, I worked with a local grassroots organization to advocate for legalizing same-sex marriage. My organization and I went up to Albany to speak with legislators personally, worked to rally protestors in the suburban and conservative towns of New York, and took every opportunity we had to educate strangers about what the legalization of marriage of a man with a man, and a woman with a woman, meant.
UA-GSC joint vision for the MIT community
For too long have we viewed the MIT community as being artificially demarcated by the labels of “undergraduate” or “graduate.” Instead of dividing issues between our constituencies in the year to come, we propose an approach that leverages a shared set of priorities to solve our common problems. Today we present a vision which bridges the artificial boundaries of undergraduate, graduate, post-doc, faculty, and staff. This is the vision of a single community driving MIT forward, and not the monolith of MIT servicing disparate communities.
Culture versus politics
I didn’t really know what to expect when I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to hear a talk by Marjane Satrapi. After all, I had only heard of her from a discussion in my French IV class that same week when we watched her movie Persepolis.
Return of the superheroes
The slew of Marvel superhero movies in recent years has culminated with Joss Whedon’s multimillion dollar brainchild, The Avengers. Each Marvel installment had a pleasant dosage of witty lines and heroic bravado, but when all of these characters come together, there is a little too much of everything. Still, the special effects, comical dialogue, and some stellar acting make the movie worth both the money and the time.
Mother, I’m hungry
Just a month before the end of the semester — and my life at MIT — I decided to go out and have a nice, stress-relieving dinner. On Tuesday we went to Hungry Mother, a tiny restaurant just in the corner of Portland and Bristol streets, in front of the Kendall Square Cinema. I discovered it by luck and since then I had always planned to visit it. What an amazing surprise!
Return of the superheroes
When I found out that Marvel was making a movie called The Avengers where they dumped all their famous superheroes together, I figured it was just another franchise film. Marvel films are known for their explosions, ruggedly handsome actors, and romantic subplots. After watching so many of such films, I anticipated the typical formula. While The Avengers did follow that formula to some extent, it also showed Hollywood how real entertainment should be done.
Women’s Ultimate fifth at regionals
Although sMITe, MIT’s Women’s Ultimate, finished the season placing fifth at Division I regionals, they are not done with the sport. Many team members plan to continue playing during the summer, and next weekend a few will volunteer at the Northeastern High School Regionals.
Men’s track takes sixth at New England Championship
MIT served as the host of the All-New England Championship over the weekend, welcoming teams from across the region in Divisions I, II, and III to the Steinbrenner Stadium. The Engineers had a number of impressive performances during the meet and finished sixth as a team, the highest finish among Division III squads. Tech had 39 points, bolstered by second-place showings in three events.
Predictions for the NBA Conference Semifinals
It just doesn’t get much better than this. A matchup of two franchises with a well-established rivalry, from the days of Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell to Julius Erving and Larry Bird, the 76ers and Celtics go way back. As of late, the Celtics have dominated the Sixers, especially since Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen arrived in Boston, but this year, it appears Philadelphia may be competitive again. The 76ers have taken two of three in the season series this year against the Celtics, with both wins coming in blowouts. In all fairness to Boston, the first loss was after two straight overtime games and both were on the second night of a back-to-back. The Celtics struggled with Atlanta’s athleticism in the first round, but in the end, Boston’s playoff experience simply wore down the Hawks. Almost no one expected the 76ers to be in this position at the beginning of the playoffs, but after Andre Iguodala’s clutch free throws with 2.2 seconds remaining to send Chicago home, Philly looks to continue its improbable run.
The art of advocacy at MIT
On May 1, MIT Corporation Member Barun Singh ENG ’06 called for MIT students to advocate for themselves. This is difficult with MIT’s current structure of advocacy, which lacks proper forums to share problems and ideas. Students advocate through the student groups they are a part of, and student groups are forced to make advocacy entertainment. Events such as Alpha Chi Omega’s Lipsync for raising domestic violence awareness and the Chorallaries’ Bad Taste, which makes fun of scandalous occurrences on campus, are fun but students do not leave the show with a heightened sense of awareness — they are often focused on the event itself, and not the issue at hand. I would like to explain why advocacy currently happens as it does and make suggestions for how to get students more involved in politics.
