A team of students from MIT and Harvard are biking across the country in an effort to spread enthusiasm for STEM fields, writes Eden Shulman for BetaBoston. During their journey, the students will “host workshops in a variety of STEM fields, providing hands-on science experience to kids that might not otherwise get it.”
Syncopasian, a co-ed a cappella group at MIT, advanced to the final round of the new WGBH singing competition Sing That Thing! Syncopasian competed against high school, college and adult singing groups to make it to the finals, where they were crowned the college champions.
Washington Post reporter Joey LoMonaco writes about incoming freshman Jake Stein’s decision to matriculate at MIT, where he will be playing on the lacrosse team.
Team Raptor Maps received the top prize in MIT’s annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, reports Nidhi Subbaraman for BetaBoston. Founded by three MIT students, Raptor Maps “proposes to use camera-carrying drones to survey farmland and pinpoint damage before pests and diseases can decimate crops.”
Nidhi Subbaraman writes for BetaBoston about WaitChatter, a new application developed by MIT students that could help teach users a foreign language while they chat online. “The application uses the brief window when the ellipses dominate the screen as an opportunity to spring a vocabulary quiz,” Subbaraman explains.
WGBH reporter Cristina Quinn reports on this year’s 2.007 robot competition, during which student-built robots faced off on a course inspired by the movie Back to the Future. “We really try to stress real life skills in this class and one of the biggest as a designer is realizing things don’t work as you thought they would,” says Prof. Amos Winter.
MIT freshman Isabel "Izzy" Lloyd has launched a campaign aimed at fostering dialogue between students, reports Priska Neely for NPR. Lloyd created and distributed wristbands that read, “TMAYD MIT” or “Tell Me About Your Day.” She explains that "it's a good way to check in and it spans all different kinds of conversations.”
Boston.com reporter Dialynn Dwyer writes about how graduate student Steven Keating “fought his cancer with curiosity.” Dwyer explains that Keating “gathered his health data in order to understand the science behind what his body was going through” and even filmed his brain surgery.
Marvin Pave of The Boston Globe speaks with MIT junior and softball catcher Tori Jensen about her development as a student and an athlete. “I’ve become mentally tougher, knowing my teammates always have my back,” says Jensen, who holds MIT’s single-season records for both doubles and RBIs.
Boston Globe reporter Jon Garelick writes about the MIT Wind Ensemble and MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, detailing the history of both performance groups. Garelick writes that a new album by the two groups, “Infinite Winds,” is “one of the most compelling CDs of the year.”
Curt Woodward writes for BetaBoston about how MIT graduate student Ben Letham developed a formula for measuring the misery and difficulty of a particular winter. Woodward explains that Letham’s formula, which gave more weight to snowfall concentrated in short periods of time, showed that “this winter’s snow was more relentless, and more miserable to live through, than any other.”
MIT students launched a balloon the size of a small house as part of the Global Space Balloon Challenge last weekend, reports Amanda Hoover for Boston Magazine. The group’s balloon was dedicated to Shriners Hospital for Children in Boston, "flying high to raise support and awareness for the institution and its patients.”
MIT graduate student Maia Majumder speaks with Nidhi Subbaraman of BetaBoston about her digital habits. Subbaraman writes that Majumder, “uses Twitter as a professional tool to discuss her research and to interact with colleagues around the world.”
BetaBoston reporter Nidhi Subbaraman writes about how graduate student Steven Keating's thirst for knowledge may have saved his life. After experiencing phantom odors, Keating urged his doctors to perform a brain scan, which revealed a tumor. Since then, Keating has “open-sourced” his illness, and become a “champion of a movement to provide patients with more information about their health.”
Steve Lohr of The New York Times writes about how allowing patients like brain cancer survivor and MIT graduate student Steven Keating greater access to their medical records can not only improve patient health, but also benefit medical research. The sharing of medical records could be a “huge crowdsourcing opportunity for research,” Keating explains.