Burchard Scholars
The Burchard Scholars Program is accepting applications for the 2026 cohort. The Burchard Scholars experience offers students a chance to expand their intellectual and social horizons. Burchard Scholars meet once a month with MIT SHASS faculty for a delicious dinner and seminar, followed by a stimulating discussion. All MIT sophomores and juniors in good standing are eligible to apply. We are looking for breadth and commitment to studies beyond the MIT requirements. The application deadline is November 21.
MISTI India Summer 2026 Opportunities
Explore India with MISTI and TATA! Intern with India’s largest conglomerate, work on high-tech, industry-driven projects tackling some of the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges. Internships with leading TATA companies offer fully funded opportunities in high impact projects focused on Green Steel, New Materials, Hydrogen Economy, Energy Storage, Innovation in Mobility, and Materials, Circularity and Valorization. Participants will gain hands-on experience at the intersection of technology, research, and industrial innovation, contributing to real-world solutions for a more sustainable future. This opportunity is ideal for students eager to apply their technical expertise to large scale, industry-relevant challenges in a global context.
Introduction to American Sign Language: Non-credit Activity for IAP 2026
Global Languages is offering a non-credit IAP activity: Introduction to American Sign Language. This virtual course will run from January 6–20, 2026, with ten sessions held via Zoom from 10:00–11:30 AM (ET). Designed for beginners with no prior experience, the class introduces the fundamentals of ASL and Deaf culture. Participants will develop basic signing skills and explore topics such as ASL’s role in Deaf history and contemporary culture. The course provides a strong foundation for future ASL study. Sessions will be led by Andrew Bottoms, a native ASL user born into a Deaf family in North Carolina. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees in American Sign Language and Deaf Studies from Gallaudet University. Enrollment: Limited to 20 participants Attendance: Full participation in all ten sessions is required Eligibility: Open to all members of the MIT community Registration Timeline Opens: Monday, November 24 at 2:00 PM Closes: December 8 (or earlier if capacity is reached) Notifications: All applicants will be informed of their enrollment status by December 15 Due to high demand, seats will only be offered to those who can commit to attending all ten sessions—no exceptions. See GL website for more details and access to online registration form.
How to Build a Hip-Hop Deep-Space Monument
Presentation summary: The Hip-Hop Deep-Space Monument / Mission (HHDSM) is a planned time capsule consisting of 50-100 of the culture’s musical masterworks; the recordings with which, if the world was destroyed, one could perhaps start the culture over again.
The objective, in 2029 — the 50th anniversary of “Rapper’s Delight’s release — is to launch this archive on an interstellar journey toward a nearby exoplanet.
In Harry’s talk, he will discuss the reasoning behind the HHDSM. Harry will explain the early and ongoing experiences which led him to become fascinated with hip-hop, outer space, and, especially, the time capsule as a unique form of spatio-temporal communication and monument-making. Also, Harry will elaborate on the unique challenges the project faces.
Finally, though hip-hop has gone from relative insignificance to planetary dominance, he will reason on the need for it to claim its most expansive territory yet: The universe.
Register here
Take an IAP class or workshop with EAPS!
12.S594: Special Seminar in EAPS — Auditory Perception of Natural Data, Part I (Direct Sonification of Oscillatory Signals)
Most of the wave-like phenomena in nature are far outside of the range of our direct perception, above and below, in spatial and temporal scales. Data representing such processes comes from sensors with often sparse, incomplete information. Usually, as scientists, we look at these signals and then design processing schemes to make inferences. However, our visual perception is not necessarily optimized for extracting meaning from waves. Often, we can gain significant, complementary or deeper insight by listening to it. So why don’t we? Sonification is the process of turning data of any kind into an audible representation. Any oscillatory signal can be frequency-shifted into our audible range and played as a sound. Our auditory perception has better temporal resolution than our visual perception, and is particularly attuned to interpretation of dynamics, including cause and effect, forcing and response. Combining visual and auditory representations of data can help us understand complex spatial-temporal interactions among events.
In this short, project-based course, we will first provide methods for sonification of oscillatory data (in python), and discuss simple to increasingly complex implementations (filtering, time compression/expansion), and spatialized audio for listening to multiple sensors simultaneously. We will also discuss when these methods break down (for non-oscillatory, non-stationary data). During the first two class sessions, we will explain and illustrate these methods with some of our current work on the wide range of length and time scales of earthquakes in a range of settings (including volcanoes, geothermal heat mines, tectonic faults, and the laboratory). Most of the class (days 3-5) will be for student projects. Please bring ideas for your own datasets to sonify, from your research or otherwise, from any domain. I can also provide datasets. At the end of the week, everyone will present their sounds, explain the phenomenon, the sensing method, and the research questions being explored through their sonification, and discuss questions generated in the process of making and listening.
Instructor: Ben Holtzman
Level: G(undergrads welcome, check with instructor)
Schedule: January 12-16, 2026; 2:00-5:00 pm
Units: 2
Asteroid Impact Alert! A Planetary Defense Simulation Workshop
(Non-credit | Open to all MIT students | Prerequisite: Basic Python coding ability)
An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth — can you help save the planet?
In this interactive IAP workshop, participants will simulate a real planetary defense mission: assessing asteroid impact risks, designing a spacecraft to deflect it, and calculating what happens if the mission fails. Along the way, you’ll explore orbital mechanics, impact physics, and spacecraft imaging — and maybe even avenge the dinosaurs.
Schedule:
- Wed, Jan 14 | 9:30–11:30 AM
- Fri, Jan 16 | 2:00–4:00 PM
- Wed, Jan 21 | 9:30–11:30 AM
- Fri, Jan 23 | 2:00–4:00 PM
Lecturer: Dr. Saverio Cambioni
Format: Short lectures and collaborative coding exercises
💫 No credit, no stress — just science, strategy, and saving the world. Sign up here.
Thanksgiving Shuttles From Campus
The Parking & Transportation Office will once again provide shuttle service to Logan Airport for Thanksgiving break. Shuttles will be available on Monday, November 24th, Tuesday, November 25th, and Wednesday, November 26th, at specific scheduled departure times.
Advance reservations are required.
Please refrain from making multiple reservations as it reduces the availability for others to find a time slot.
Visit the Parking & Transportation website shuttle page to reserve a seat at a cost of $15.00. All reservations will be processed via the website, and the shuttle fee will be billed to the student bursar account or via employee payroll deduction.
Shuttles will depart from the Chapel shuttle stop on Amherst Street at the scheduled times. Please make sure you arrive on time as the shuttles need to maintain the posted scheduled departures. The average trip to Logan Airport is about a half-hour, however you should allow up to an hour as traffic, construction, and airport security delays should be expected.
Senior Crash Course with SFS
Seniors, join us for a crash course in everything you need to know as you approach graduation! We’ll discuss understanding your new salary, prepping for a move out of Cambridge, how to plan for retirement, and help you build a budget that covers your needs and wants!
Computation: An Illuminating Tool for Science and Engineering
A lot of the most important action in science and engineering happen in places we can’t see, for example: water seeping through rock deep underground, oil moving through tiny pores, heat and pollutants spreading in ways that are hard to measure directly. We can’t just slice the Earth open or build a new planet for every experiment; so how do we look inside these hidden worlds?
In this talk, Maurice will show how computation can act like a flashlight. By running numerical experiments on a computer, we can watch fluids move through tangled rock, try out extreme scenarios that would be impossible or dangerous in the lab, and explore “what if” questions at much lower physical cost. Maurice will share a few examples where simulations surprised us, corrected our intuition, and, in some cases, turned out to be misleading.
Along the way, we’ll talk about how to assess computer simulation results, why small modeling choices can change the picture we see, and how treating simulations like scientific instruments, with lenses, blind spots, and the need for calibration, can make computation a powerful and honest guide in modern science and engineering.