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Stylized and Designed

Refreshingly Simple

Matters of Opinion

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REFRESHINGLY SIMPLE

Succinct in nature, these sites tend to be geared for professional use and sometimes function as resumes or CVs. The page count is kept low (usually one to four pages) and students make good use of hyperlinks where appropriate. Clean and organized is the key to these sites with a strong sense of the audience for the page.

Brevity

The nature photos on the homepage give a sense of hydrology, ecology, and geomorphology graduate student Daniel Collins' personality, there isn't too much text, and the links are relevant. Two links offer MIT news coverage--one of his ecological change and erosion research in northern New Mexico, another to a project of establishing a flood-warning system in Honduras.

Linguistics graduate student Ken Hiraiwa highlights what he needs to on his site without falling into wordiness. He provides an outline of his dissertation, "Dimensions of Symmetry in Syntax," and a description of his fieldwork in Ghana on Ghanaian languages.

Just eight words adorn the homepage of electrical engineering and computer science graduate student James Psota's efficiently designed site. Other pages include short quotes by Einstein, Voltaire, and Theodore Roosevelt, and optical illusion graphics such as "Rotation" in which static circles appear to move and "Elephant" of an animal with an indeterminate number of legs.

Visual Focus

The ultimate in simplicity--just one perfect photo for electrical engineering and computer science major Saba Gul's page.

Opting for Americana photos of truck drivers and a 1940s supermarket over text, science, technology, and society graduate student Shane Hamilton creates a pleasing effect and a reflection of his dissertation, "Trucking Country: Food Politics and the Transformation of Rural Life in Postwar America." There's also a cow car photo worth looking at and information about his band, self-defined as "Boston's sexiest lounge country band."

Personal touches

Resume-like at first glance, electrical engineering and computer science graduate student Kevin Fu also provides samples of his photojournalism, a tribute to bread (he's quite the baker), and a time-lapsed video of the MIT tennis bubble collapsing during a blizzard.

Color provides a pleasing effect in Brian A. Heng's site. An electrical engineering and computer science graduate student, Heng also provides an illustrated look at his research on multiple description video coding, and an image gallery with night shots of Hong Kong and some enviable fireworks shots.

Although black and white in design and straightforward in organization, electrical engineering and computer science graduate student Mike Rolish's Web site also provides opportunities for reflection, such as the links to burning questions that define his life and the life lessons he's learned.

Strong organization

Mathematics major Ivan Christov provides an informative and easy to navigate site with rotating home page graphics such as a Poincare section of the Lorenz strange attractor and a page on the history of his home country Bulgaria.

Sara Su's site has no graphics, but it's so clean and organized, you don't miss them. You can also pick up recipes for banana cake, nutty fudge, and peanut butter cup pie from the electrical engineering and computer science graduate student.

...go on to Part III: Matters of Opinion