Open House

Arts, Humanities, and Social Science

MIT's arts, humanities, and social sciences play crucial roles in generating positive change around the globe. Open house activities reflected a wide range of topics—language and the mind. The future of media, technology in our lives, computer-aided musicology, reducing global poverty, exploring new cultures, and more. Visitors were able to meet authors, enjoy musical concerts and readings, and even tour a game lab.

AHS theme banner

Scheduled Activities

The list below includes descriptions of events that open-house visitors were invited to attend.

The future of humanities education

Researchers from MIT's Comparative Media Studies' "HyperStudio" group will demonstrate its amazing projects around the future of humanities education. Perfect for kids looking for how to combine a love of gadgets and technology with a love of history and books.

Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies

Change the world through media

Researchers from MIT's Comparative Media Studies program will chat with families and visitors about what it's like to change the world through media.

Scot Osterweil will be on hand to demonstrate "Vanished," a Smithsonian-sponsored video game where students work together to solve a climate mystery.

Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies

Celebrating discovery at MIT: an undergraduate research poster session

Since 1969, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, commonly known as “UROP," has been facilitating research collaborations between faculty and students, across all disciplines. Today, UROP is considered MIT’s "signature" program, and more than 85 percent of undergraduates participate.

This poster session will showcase current UROP students conducting research in a diverse and interesting array of areas that potentially include engineering, cancer, energy, linguistics, humanities, social science, robotics, media studies, artificial intelligence, and others.

Sponsor: Undergraduate Advising and Academic Programming

Wiesner Student Art Gallery

The Wiesner Student Art Gallery is an exhibition space for currently enrolled MIT students and groups.

Featured exhibit: Iran: the unguarded moments.

In contrast with many recent exhibitions on Iran, which tend to attract attention by focusing on the political tensions of present day, this exhibit focuses on the daily implications of cultural and habitual behaviors.

Throughout this exhibition the viewer is confronted by colorful and harmonious images displaying the unguarded moment, the essential sense of being, and the experience of contentment.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Creative talents: music performances, yo-yo's, and more

A showcase of the creative talents of MIT students. Everything from music to yo yo's and much more.

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

MIT Museum inside out

Free admission all day at the MIT Museum, as it turns itself inside out for the Institute's Under the Dome: Come Explore MIT! (and the first day of the Cambridge Science Festival). Go behind the scenes of the museum and explore unique artifacts from MIT's history, as well as innovations in art, science and technology in Cambridge and beyond.

The day's programs will feature tours, hands-on activities, and a chance for visitors of all ages to see and chat with the people behind the Museum's MIT150 exhibition.

Sponsor: MIT Museum

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Gradated Field

Come to the Eastman Court and experience the exhibits.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Use brain wave sensors in SCRATCH

SCRATCH is a programming language people use to create interactive objects, games, music, and art, and share them online.

Come and interact with a SCRATCH project using brain waves. Kids will have an opportunity to change a sprite's scripts to change what their brain waves affect on the screen.

Co-sponsored by the MIT Student Branch of ACM/IEEE (Association for Computing Machinery/Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).

Sponsor: Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

A day of discovery, music, and great ideas presented by MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

You are invited to go behind the scenes as we showcase MIT's innovations in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Major units of the School will be on hand, in one central location, for a day of discovery about great ideas that change the world.

Brainpower You will find Idea Stations set up in Kresge Auditorium, where you can look behind the scenes at leading-edge research, find opportunities to participate in our many open events, and enjoy refreshments and conversations with world-renowned thinkers and innovators from more than a dozen fields from science writing to history, music and theater to economics.

In videos and other media, you'll find insights into how this MIT community serves the nation and the world. Check out our pioneering international internship program, learn about projects in many foreign countries, including China, Panama, Ireland, France, and Brazil.

Discover research that helps safeguard America's voting technology, lift countries out of poverty, as well as research designed to improve health policy, guide NASA missions, save endangered languages, illuminate the U.S. Constitution, and create new forms at the juncture of art and science.

Lights, camera, action! Inside Kresge auditorium itself, you'll find excellent seats for a series of special music and theater performances by MIT's renowned music and theater arts groups, and readings and presentations by award-winning faculty.

Discover it A rare look behind-the-scenes at one of MIT's five great Schools; home to five Nobel laureates (so far); 4 Pulitzer prize-winners, top-rated departments, a conservatory-level music section, and world-class innovators in every field. We look forward to welcoming you to this day of discovery. Meanwhile, take a look at the School's great ideas website: shass.mit.edu

Sponsor: School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): voltaDom

A vaulted passageway as you've never seen it! voltaDom utilizes an innovative fabrication technique that creates complex double curved vaults through the simple rolling of a sheet of material.

Location: 56-66 Connector. By Skylar Tibbits, Lecturer, Department of Architecture

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Music, theatre, comedy, and more performed by MIT students

Performances in the arts by MIT students.

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

Center for Bits and Atoms Digital Fabrication Facility and Fab Lab network

MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms manages a unique digital fabrication facility for making and measuring things from nanometers to meters.

This event will provide interactive, hands-on introductions to CBA's tools for producing and scanning nano/micro/meso/macro-structures, and to their use in its global network of field fab labs.

Sponsor: Program in Media Arts and Sciences

Preserving your family's history

Visit the Wunsch Conservation Lab where the MIT Libraries preserve their collections using modern science and traditional craft. MIT Libraries' conservator and preservation librarian will explain how to care for your family papers, photographs, home videos, and digital media.

Hand-outs with basic information and sources of archival supplies will be available. Sessions will last 45 minutes.

Sponsor: MIT Libraries

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Soft Rockers

Using ZipShape computer aided fabrication methods and solar powered technology, these rockers invite repose while powering your electronic devices. By Sheila Kennedy, MIT Professor of the Practice of Architecture

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Mens et Manus: reinterpreting the seal of MIT in a display of origami, wood, and glass

See MIT's seal represented in origami, wood, and glass. Also an origami exhibit.

Sponsor: MIT150 Committee

Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning

Originally built in 1938 as part of the William Barton Rogers Building designed by William Welles Bosworth with Harry J. Carlson, MIT's Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning is one of the premier architecture libraries in the United States, supporting the first architecture program in the country, with the first professor hired in 1865 and the first classes taught in 1868 at the original Boston campus.

Sponsor: MIT Libraries

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Dis[Course]4

A light-catching demonstration of student imagination and ingenuity.

Location: Stairwell 3, Infinite Corridor. By Craig Boney, James Coleman and Andrew Manto, graduate students in the Department of Architecture

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Compton Gallery — MIT150 exhibition

Located in the heart of campus under the big dome, the MIT Museum's Compton Gallery is a changing exhibition space where visitors encounter a wide range of exhibitions that encompass the varied fields of science, technology, architecture, history, and art.

Sponsor: MIT Museum

MIT Portugal program video

As part of the Engineering Systems Division's MIT150 activities, we will be showing a video on the MIT Portugal program.

Sponsor: MIT-Portugal program

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): MIT Mood Meter

Is the smile a barometer of happiness? MIT Mood Meter is designed to assess and display the overall mood of the MIT community. The collected data is viewable at: http://moodmeter.media.mit.edu/

By Javier Hernandez and M. Ehsan Hoque, graduate students of Media( Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

MIT student mini-concerts: the sounds of minds and hands at work

MIT Music and Theater Arts presents: A showcase marathon of 30-minute mini-concerts featuring selected students and ensembles of the MIT music program.

Concerts will feature:

MITSOlite (chamber orchestra), Adam K. Boyles, conductor, in Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland; The MIT Chamber Chorus, William Cutter, conductor, in Libby Larsen's The Settling Years; The MIT Wind Ensemble, Frederick Harris, Jr., conductor, in Stravinsky, Octet for Winds.

In addition, there will be performances by the MIT Chamber Music Society, the MIT Jazz Combo and solo performances by MIT Emerson Fellows.

Sponsor: Music and Theater Arts Section

MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI)—poster session

MISTI: The MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives—better known as MISTI—connects MIT students and faculty with research and innovations around the world. MIT's primary international program, MISTI, is a pioneer in applied international studies—a distinctively MIT concept.

For Students; Working closely with a network of premier corporations, universities, and research institutes, MISTI matches hundreds of MIT students (undergraduates, graduates, and recent grads) annually with all-expenses-paid internships and research abroad.

For Faculty; MISTI Global Seed Funds provide funding for MIT faculty to jump-start international projects and encourage student involvement in faculty-led international research.

Sponsor: School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Glass Lab tours and demonstrations

Glass Lab instructors will demonstrate the art and the science of glassblowing in the hottest spot on campus.

Sponsor: Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Night of Numbers

A lighting installation using powerful LCD projectors to enliven the architecture at the Ames Street pedestrian crossway with numbers that hold special or historical significance to the Institute. Can you decode them all?

Location: 66-68 Connector. By Praveen Subramani, graduate student in Media Arts and Sciences, and Anna Kotova, undergraduate student in Architecture

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Celebrating MIT's public art collection

The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present an afternoon of hands on art-making activities, refreshments, and tours of MIT's campus public art collection.

This family oriented event features a number of art-making activities inspired by public sculpture on MIT's campus!

Sponsor: List Visual Arts Center

What is the Engineering Systems Division (ESD)?

Watch a video about the MIT Engineering Systems Division, talk to students and staff, and take some ESD materials.

There also will be videos about and info tables for the Leaders for Global Operations program and the MIT Portugal program.

Sponsor: Engineering Systems Division

Turning metals into medals

Metallurgy, one of MIT's first fields of study, is still alive today. Watch students pour liquid metal and make MIT medallions in the foundry.

Sponsor: Department of Materials Science and Engineering

WMBR 88.1 FM: broadcasting live

MIT student radio station, WMBR 88.1, will be broadcasting live all day from McDermott Court.

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

Confronting the climate change challenge

Come learn about the science and policy of climate change! Hands-on activities and demonstrations will help you visualize the current state of climate knowledge and what earth will look like when MIT is 300 years old. Students and researchers from a wide range of expertise will be on hand to answer questions and discuss global change issues.

Specific Activities include:

Take a spin on the Greenhouse Gamble! The Greenhouse Gamble roulette-style wheels demonstrate the likelihood of potential global temperature change in 2100. Try spinning both the "with policy" and "without policy" wheels to see two different features and learn about the climate impacts associated with the temperature you spin!

Weather-in-a-tank: explore weather and ocean systems with rotating fluid experiments from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Three experiments will be conducted throughout the day, including demonstrations of how earth’s rotation affects atmosphere/ocean circulation, the “ingredients" that make weather (temperature difference and earth rotation), and the circulation of ocean gyres that create the “Great Garbage Patch"

Climate complexity: our climate is intertwined with many elements of life—from traditional agriculture to the modern industrial economy, and with many current issues—from energy security to economic development. Explore our graphic representations of the different aspects of our daily lives that are incorporated into climate models. Challenge yourself with our scavenger hunt to learn how the earth and human systems impact, and are impacted by, climate change.

What will you be when you grow up? Will you be the next climate scientist or environmental economist or energy policy maker? Come meet climate experts and watch streaming videos of students and researchers talking about their work and why it's important.

How much carbon dioxide is really up there? Know the number! Watch a replica of the nearly 70-foot electronic carbon counter sign in the heart of midtown Manhattan, New York. This carbon counter is a "real-time" estimate of the total amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, based on calculations from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Sponsor: MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change

Literature at MIT

Come learn about our expansive mission of textual study from a variety of perspectives. We are linked by a common interest in problems of narrative, aesthetics, genre, and media, but our diverse, distinctive global curriculum explores a broad array of written, oral, and visual forms, ranging from the ancient world to the 21st century. Over the course of the day, professors will open their fields of research to the audience. We look forward to seeing you there!

Sponsor: Literature Section

GAMBIT game lab open house

Game on! It's playtime at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab!

Find out what a game research lab does: take a tour of the lab, talk to its researchers and developers who spend their days pushing the envelope of video game innovation, and, of course, play our latest game prototypes.

For a preview, go to gambit.mit.edu to play our online games.

Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies

Exhibits from the MIT Glass Lab, Student Art Association, and the MIT Hobby Shop

Each group will display piece produced in their lab, studio and shop. In some cases the creator will be there to explain their artwork.

Sponsor: Campus Activities Complex

The Student Art Association (SAA) open house

Arts scholars will guide tours through the Student Art Association (SAA) and other pertinent arts sites on campus, as well as direct some hands on arts making workshops.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Overliner

Origami on a large scale, Taking cues from a stairwell's spiraling geometry, Overliner highlights the architectural idiosyncrasies of a public space, transforming a familiar and busy passageway into a moment of surprise and repose.

Location: Medical Center Lobby. By Joel Lamere, Lecturer, Department of Architecture, and Cynthia Gunadi.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Technology through time: 150 years of MIT history at the MIT Libraries' Maihaugen Gallery

This multimedia exhibition showcases in words, documents, photos, video and sound, the broad and varied history of MIT.

View original MIT documents and historically significant materials that played a role in making MIT the unique place it is today. The exhibit also features items from the MIT Museum's 150 Exhibition, as well as Infinite Histories, video stories of those who have shaped—and been shaped by—MIT.

Sponsor: MIT Libraries

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Wind Screen

A shimmering curtain of light creates a visual register of the replenishable source of wind energy, created by micro-turbines.

Location: Green Building facade. By Meejin Yoon, Associate Professor of Architecture.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Eliot K. Wolk Gallery — design competition exhibit

The public face of MIT is 77 Massachusetts Avenue. The building, with its imposing Ionic porch and lofty interior, is not only an architectural landmark in its own right, but also the gateway into the world of MIT. Since its construction in 1939, the four plinths that define the corners of the great rotunda have remained empty. They were originally intended as the bases for statues celebrating Aristotle, Ictinus, Archimedes and Callicrates.

This year, in celebration of MIT’s 150th anniversary, the Class of 1954 issued a grand challenge to the students of MIT to present ideas about how to fill the four Lobby 7 plinths. Designs were to be created in the spirit of MIT’s official creed mens et manus and to celebrate the past, present, and future spirit of MIT innovation.

The Lobby 7 Design Competition Committee received fifty-four student entries from across the Institute's schools and departments. Of those, fourteen entries were chosen. The winners of that first round were then invited to refine their projects. From these, the jury selected the six finalists, and prize winners, in the undergraduate and graduate categories.

Sponsor: Department of Architecture

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): String Tunnel

A diaphonous tunnel creates a sense of entry to and from the Infinite Corridor, and frames the surrounding landscape.

Location: Between the Dreyfus & Whitaker Buildings (Suspended from the sky bridge). By Yuna Kim, Kelly Shaw and Travis Williams, graduate students in Architecture.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

Hart Nautical Gallery exhibit

MIT Museum's Hart Nautical Collections were formed in 1924 under MIT's Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, which was renamed the Department of Ocean Engineering in the 1970s. In 2005, ocean engineering merged with the Department of Mechanical Engineering to become one of seven major research focus areas.

Featured exhibit: "The evolution of ship design"

Forty of the museum's finest full-hull ship models depict one thousand years of ship building, from a fifteenth century iron-clad warship to the swiftest clipper ships. Also included is an extraordinary model of N.G. Herreshoff's Reliance.

Sponsor: MIT Museum

A showcase of invention as public service at MIT

A window to the work of public service innovators who are tackling barriers to well-being faced by people around the world. Learn about projects and meet teams competing for $150,000 in implementation grants in this year's IDEAS Competition and MIT Global Challenge.

Also join us in Kresge Auditorium on May 2 when we'll announce this year's winners at the awards celebration and reception.

Sponsor: MIT Museum

Koch Institute Public Galleries

The Koch Institute Public Galleries were established to connect the community in Kendall Square and beyond with the work of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Within the Galleries, visitors can explore current cancer research projects, examine striking biomedical images, hear first-person reflections on cancer and cancer research, and investigate the historical, geographical and scientific contexts out of which the Koch Institute emerged.

Sponsor: David H Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

Build a city with urban planners

Come join with Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) alum, James Rojas, and help us build a model of a city—and learn about city design and development in the process!

Sponsor: Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Festival of Art + Science + Technology Installations (FAST): Bibliodoptera

Newly emerged from the chrysalis of MIT's diverse library pages, a cloud of butterflies flutters above, reacting to the movement of passersby.

Sponsor: Office of the Arts

MIT OpenCourseWare: unlocking knowledge and empowering minds

Come learn about MIT OpenCourseWare – a website that makes course materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT’s undergraduate and graduate subjects available, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. Hear about our milestones as we celebrate our 10th anniversary, and find out about our next decade initiatives.

Sponsor: OpenCourseWare

Participate in video game research

Wanted: video game lab rats!

GAMBIT is conducting research on our past games, and we need your help! You ll play our games, and then be asked what you thought through interviews, surveys, or group discussions. Expect to spend about 45 minutes.

All ages and levels of experience welcome. We will be running groups at 11am, noon, 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm. Questions? Ask Konstantin Mitgutsch at k_mitgut@mit.edu.

See you there, and thanks for your help!

Sponsor: Comparative Media Studies

Meet MIT authors! Book signing with Sandy Pentland, author of "Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World"

Please join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a series of book signings with celebrated faculty authors. Each of our special guests has recently published a book with the MIT Press, MIT's renowned publishing house. Come and meet the authors, learn about their research, and check out the newly expanded bookstore!

11:30am — Alex (Sandy) Pentland

"Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World"

How understanding the signaling within social networks can change the way we make decisions, work with others, and manage organizations.

Sponsor: MIT Press

Panel discussion: What can a graduate degree do for you?

Are you considering graduate school? Join us at noon for a lively and informative panel discussion about the value of graduate education when pursuing careers in academia, industry, or public service.

Bring your questions and comments about trends in graduate education nationally, internationally, and right here at MIT.

Panelists include: Dr. Christine Ortiz, MIT Dean for Graduate Education Steve Isakowitz, Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Energy Dr. Sophie Vandebroek, Chief Technology Officer for Xerox Corporation. Moderated by Ulric Ferner, President of the MIT Graduate Student Council.

Sponsor: Office of the Dean for Graduate Education and the Graduate Student Council

Showcase of performing arts: from dance to gospel

Showcase of performing arts ranging from dance to gospel music performed by MIT students.

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

Ballroom dance: learning session and performance

Ballroom dance performance and learning session.

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

Meet MIT authors! Book signing with Jay Keyser, author of "Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows"

Please join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a series of book signings with celebrated faculty authors. Each of our special guests has recently published a book with the MIT Press, MIT's renowned publishing house. Come and meet the authors, learn about their research, and check out the newly expanded bookstore!

12:30pm — Samuel Jay Keyser

"Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows" A memoir of MIT life, from being Noam Chomsky's boss to negotiating with student protesters.

Sponsor: MIT Press

Meet MIT authors! Book signing with Jay Keyser, author of "Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows"

Please join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a series of book signings with celebrated faculty authors. Each of our special guests has recently published a book with the MIT Press, MIT's renowned publishing house. Come and meet the authors, learn about their research, and check out the newly expanded bookstore!

12:30pm — Samuel Jay Keyser

"Mens et Mania: The MIT Nobody Knows" A memoir of MIT life, from being Noam Chomsky's boss to negotiating with student protesters.

Sponsor: MIT Press

Media Laboratory project demonstrations

Designers, engineers, artists, and scientists at the MIT Media Lab apply an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life technologies which promise to fundamentally transform our most basic notions of human capabilities.

Research topics range from neuroengineering, to how children learn, to the future of story and music, to re-imagining the city.

Researchers present examples of the Media Lab's inventions, many of which can be experienced hands-on.

Sponsor: Media Laboratory

Poems/duets

Professors Margery Resnick and Stephen Tapscott read originals in Spanish and translations into English: Love poems by Pablo Neruda, poems of passion and witness by Angela Figurera, and other writings from Latin America and Spain.

Sponsor: Literature Section

MIT Public Service Center

Through the MIT Public Service Center's suite of programs, MIT students have developed and implemented a potable water system in Ecuador’s Amazonian communities, designed a "smart pill-box" to help TB patients with their rigorous regime of TB medication, and helped middle-school students in Cambridge with their reading, to name a few of the many projects in which MIT students engage their hearts and minds.

Meet the staff and learn more about these and other projects at the Public Service Center's snack break.

Sponsor: Public Service Center

Soapbox talks: US Civil War, making fire, Pluto, camouflage and everything in between

Join faculty and students from the Program in Science, Technology and Society (STS) as they give five-minute “soapbox" talks about their research topics.

STS members study a wide variety of areas which include the American Civil War, the color wheel, Pluto, camouflage, zoo animals, and energy in Africa.

There's something for everyone!

Sponsor: Program in Science, Technology, and Society

Do-It Tours by the Hobby Shop, Edgerton Center Student Shop, and D-Lab

MIT has a long history of invention and innovation. Please join us for a tour of some spaces that support the vibrant "do-it" culture on campus, where you will be exposed to the learning-by-doing philosophy first hand. You will have a chance to work in the Hobby Shop, Edgerton Center Student Shop, and D-Lab on a project to make bamboo crayons, which we are developing as an income-generating project for our community partners in Ghana and India. Tours will meet in the Student Center Lobby (W20) at 1 pm and 2:30pm and are limited to 15 people. You can also feel free to just stop by the Hobby Shop (W31 basement) and D-Lab (E34 floor 1-2) to see some student projects and technology demonstrations from 1pm-4pm during the Open House.

The Hobby Shop (http://hobbyshop.mit.edu) is a fully equipped wood and metal shop that teaches students the art of thoughtful design. It has been fostering MIT's spirit of learning by doing for over 70 years by providing tools, training and assistance to all MIT students, faculty, staff and alums interested in turning their ideas into reality.

The Edgerton Center Student Shop (http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/www/Shop.html) provides hands-on training in the use of machine tools, access to them, and guidance in project planning, to any current MIT student. The shop has a long history of supporting student groups at MIT including the Solar Electric Vehicle Team, Formula SAE Team and FIRST Robotics Team.

D-Lab (http://d-lab.mit.edu) is a program that fosters the development of appropriate technologies and sustainable solutions within the framework of international development. D-Lab's mission is to improve the quality of life of low-income households through the creation and implementation of low cost technologies. With projects and partnerships in 20+ countries and 12+ classes at MIT falling into the broad categories of Development, Design and Dissemination, D-Lab engages over 300 students a year through experiential learning, using technology to address poverty, and building the local creative capacity for innovation.

Sponsor: Edgerton Center

Stopping time at the Edgerton Center

VIsit Strobe Alley, home of professor Harold Edgerton's Stroboscopic Light Laboratory. Operate the displays of levitating water drops. Have your photo taken as you pop a balloon (and see the balloon in mid-pop).

Enjoy the exhibits of Edgerton's life and work. See how MIT is continuing his legacy of learning through doing.

Sponsor: Edgerton Center

Language and the human mind

We will showcase a variety of examples of research on language and the human mind. Experts on some very interesting languages (such as the Mayan languages of Central America, and the Wampanoag language of the native inhabitants of Massachusetts) will be available to answer your questions about these languages and explain how they differ and do not differ from English.

You can also watch and learn about some experiments which were designed to reveal the unconscious mechanisms by which people generalize from examples when they learn a language, and by which fluent speakers produce and interpret speech and text.

Sponsor: Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

Distinguished faculty lectures with chemist Richard Schrock and economists Peter Diamond and Esther Duflo

Lectures by chemist Richard Schrock and economists Peter Diamond and Esther Duflo.

Sponsor: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology

Meet MIT authors! Book signing with Philip Alexander, author of "A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT"

Please join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a series of book signings with celebrated faculty authors. Each of our special guests has recently published a book with the MIT Press, MIT's renowned publishing house. Come and meet the authors, learn about their research, and check out the newly expanded bookstore!

1:30pm — Philip N. Alexander

"A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT"

How MIT's first nine presidents helped transform the Institute from a small technical school into a major research university.

Sponsor: MIT Press

Bagpipes and ballads

The traditional sound of the bagpipes and the ancient strains of the ballad, so dear to the hearts of poets and novelists since the days of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott will be featured by the Literature Faculty. Professor Ruth Perry will sing one of the famous old sung tales known as “ballads"and Dr. William Donaldson will play light music and piobaireachd on the Highland Bagpipe. A selection of poems and prose extracts about these traditional art-forms will be available at the performance.

Sponsor: Literature Section

Meet MIT authors! Book signing with Erik Brynjolfsson, author of "Wired for Innovation: How IT is Reshaping the Economy"

Please join us at the MIT Press Bookstore for a series of book signings with celebrated faculty authors. Each of our special guests has recently published a book with the MIT Press, MIT's renowned publishing house. Come and meet the authors, learn about their research, and check out the newly expanded bookstore!

2:00pm — Erik Brynjolfsson

"Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology is Reshaping the Economy"

An expert on the information economy explore the true economic value of technology and innovation.

Sponsor: MIT Press

Distinguished faculty lecture with Professor Peter Diamond, 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Lecture with Professor Peter Diamond, 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Sponsor: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology

Gender, race, and the complexities of science and technology

From 2:45 - 4 PM, join the GCWS for an interactive series of presentations in Rehearsal Room A of the Kresge Building.

During that time, graduate students from all nine Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies member institutions (Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, MIT, Northeastern University, Simmons College, and UMass Boston) in an exploration of gender and race as it applies to the disciplines of science and technology.

Students from the GCWS course Gender, Race, and the Complexities of Science and Technology: A Problem-based learning approach taught by Sally Haslanger (Professor of Philosophy, MIT) and Peter Taylor (Professor in the Science in a Changing World program at UMass Boston) will present their ongoing research on topics as diverse as race and technology access, anarchism and science, the radical science movement, and more.

Sponsor: School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Distinguished faculty lecture with Esther Duflo, Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics

Lecture with Esther Duflo, Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Sponsor: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology

Learn to folk dance

Come learn some easy circle dances from Eastern Europe and around the world, in time signatures you've never heard of (plus some you have).

Sponsor: Association of Student Activities, Undergraduate Association, Campus Activities Complex, and Student Activities Office

Alan Lightman in conversation about "Mr. g"

The MIT Museum and MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies proudly present Alan Lightman in conversation about Mr. g.

Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams, presents his latest work, Mr. g: A Novel about the Creation. The book presents a view of the creation of the world through God's eyes.

Sponsor: MIT Museum and MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies

AMIT Festival Jazz Ensemble

Fourth Annual Herb Pomeroy memorial concert, honoring MIT's "Father of Jazz—one of the most influential jazz performers and educators of the last 50 years.

MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, Frederick Harris, Jr., Music Director. Special Guests Ray Santisi and Frank Tiberi.

Sponsor: Music and Theater Arts Section