October / November 2007

Risk

Risk is an inherent part of life—from genetic predispositions to financial decision making to traveling. Learn how members of the MIT community seek to mitigate everyday dangers through research and dive headfirst into unpredictable situations. Experts work to improve the safety of nuclear energy. Alumni astronauts explore the great unknown. And statistical whizzes make a living by playing numbers and cards. Even find out what some alumni and students consider their riskiest decision and what they gained by taking a gamble.

Taking Chances

©iStockphoto.com/Harry Thomas

MIT alumni and students were asked: What's the riskiest thing you've ever done, and was it worth it?

Biggest risk: "Actually coming to MIT. I felt I was leaving behind aspirations of becoming a professional classical guitarist in order to gain a technical understanding of the world, and I had no idea if I'd like studying engineering or if I'd find something else that I was as passionate about as music."
Worth it?: "Absolutely. I am surprised at how much my situation has reversed. Music still means everything to me, but I've been exposed to incredible people, ideas, and emotions. At this point, I can't imagine myself anywhere else."
—Ariadne Smith '10

Biggest risk: "Cliff jumping into a lake in Arizona."
Worth it?: "Definitely!"
—Jameel Khalfan '06

Biggest risk: "Leaving my native Colombia some 20 years ago and moving permanently to the U.S. It entailed leaving behind a secure professional career, a magnificent life style, and an extended circle of friends and family."
Worth it?: "The rewards proved to be immense beyond words. Human warmth, opportunity, and new horizons opened up at every turn, and to a large extent continue to happen almost daily."
—Riccardo Di Capua '72

Biggest risk: "Becoming employee #1 of an MIT start-up company. In 1990 I became the operations manager of Micracor, Inc., a Rothschild Ventures-funded company using advanced laser technology developed at MIT Lincoln Labs under the leadership of Dr. Aram Mooradian. The company existed for six years and eventually the technology was sold to a company called Coherent."
Worth it?: "Although we never got to have an IPO and make millions, it was worth it due to the challenges we faced and overcame. We designed, built, and shipped products, continued to do outstanding research, grew to 45 people, and made lifelong friends. It was an experience I would do over in a minute."
—John Golden '65

Biggest risk: "Climbing Mt. Rainier in Washington state (several attempts before success)."
Worth it?: "Yes."
—Mike Scott '73

Biggest risk: "Playing hide-and-seek on the rooftops of old buildings in Taiwan when I was 11. We leaped from rooftop to rooftop (many were closely connected), until one day when I jumped on top of a thinly built and weakly reinforced aluminum roof. Before I understood what happened, I—like what you call a 'free-falling body' in 8.01—dropped through to the basement of the house. I woke up in bed with friends and family around me."
Worth it?: "Definitely! Now I have no gut to even stand on rooftops, but I'm still very pleased that I had such a painful yet beautiful experience (mentally, I was actually very pleased from this free fall), which I dare not do again."
—Steven Mo '10

Biggest risk: "Leaving Exxon in 1984 and joining a three-person start-up. This was before the dot com and Internet eras, and some friends thought I was crazy to leave a secure job for something uncertain. The start-up became a pioneer in the area of advanced planning and scheduling prior to its sale in 1998. I had great coworkers and worked internationally with companies like BP, DuPont, Exxon, and IBM. I also ran the company's operations when we doubled our size and tripled our revenues. I participated in the sale of the company, which gave me the financial security to do interesting things like mentor start-ups, design next-generation software products, consult, and get more heavily involved with MIT."
Worth it?: "I think it worked out pretty well."
—Don Shobrys '75

Biggest risk: "I try to reduce risk and seek the secure, but I do have a tendency to dart across streets when I'm not suppose to. There were a couple of close calls."
Worth it?: "It definitely was not worth the 20 seconds I saved. Yet, because I am impatient by nature, I still do it. I think there's a term for it: foolishness. LOL."
—Katherine Lin '10

What's the riskiest thing you've ever done? Share your story on the Discussion Network.

Risks & Rewards

MIT tool determines landslide risk in tropics
Engineers have devised a simple yet effective system for determining an area's landslide risk, a tool that could help planners improve building codes and determine zoning in mountainous, typhoon-prone tropical regions.

OpenCourseWare

Advanced Corporate Risk Management
A Sloan course on how corporations make use of the insights and tools of risk management. Topics include how companies manage risk; instruments for hedging; liability management; and organization, governance, and control.

Network and Computer Security
An electrical engineering and computer science course covering such topics as security in multi-user and distributed computer systems, electronic commerce, viruses, and cryptography.

Medical examiner supports prevention
Christina Stanley '85, San Diego county's chief deputy medical examiner, balances the grim nature of her work by focusing on her office's contributions to preventing avoidable deaths.

34 MIT astronauts and counting
Perhaps no other job is as risky as flying into the great unknown, and MIT has educated more astronauts than any other private university.

Stroke victim aims to build awareness
A staff associate who suffered a stroke at age 33 is sharing her experience and working to raise awareness of the dangers of the country's number three killer.

New technologies protect athletes' heads
Scientists are designing football helmets that can detect when a blow could cause serious injury and developing technologies to spot concussions on the field and assess when it's safe for concussion-recoverers to resume play.

MIT develops measures to predict performance of complex systems
MIT researchers and others have developed a list of 13 measures that engineers can use to predict how well a system—or project—will perform before it's even finished.

MIT-developed Kerberos lives on through cooperation
The MIT Kerberos Consortium, a joint effort between MIT and corporate sponsors, will respond to the demand for development, testing, and support of one of the most widely adopted authentication methods in the history of computer networks.

Course aims to help at-risk cities
CityScope, a new School of Architecture and Planning course in which first-year students use a multidisciplinary approach to assess and solve urban problems, kicked off in the spring with a focus on New Orleans.

Securing your data
Computer security tips offered by Information Services and Technology include how to safely remove data from phones, PDAs, and computers and pamphlets on managing sensitive data, using wireless hotspots, peer-to-peer file sharing, and more.

Genomic mapping of one of the markers for Alzheimer's disease. Photo: ©iStockphoto.com/Andrei Tchernov

Public Security

Predicting highway crashes
A new traffic model pinpoints where and when accidents happen, flagging particularly dangerous stretches of highway.

Soldier Design Competition seeks engineering creativity
Designing a surface sampling tool to reduce food-borne bacterial illness or a personal cooling system for a tactical helmet are just two of the challenges in this year's competition sponsored by the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. Any MIT community member (including alumni and parents) may enter.

MIT Press: Privacy on the Line
Whitfield Diffie '65 and Susan Landau PhD '83
A study of telecommunications privacy and security in a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world.

Nuclear expert focuses on national security and public safety
David Overskei PhD '76 chaired a task force that assessed the state of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and is now developing software for data sharing among fire, police, EMTs, and other local, state, and federal agencies.

MIT's launches Airline Data Project
The online databank, a joint venture of MIT's Global Airline Industry Program and the International Center for Air Transportation, compares the largest U.S. carriers on numerous measures, including fleet utilization, labor costs, cash flow, and profitability.

Walking like a bomber
Radar and gait-analysis software can detect when someone is carrying a bomb well before he or she reaches a security checkpoint.

MIT grad student tracks the 'jihad effect'
The research investigates how wars impact the trajectory of terrorist movements, particularly the Iraq war and al Qaeda.

OpenCourseWare

Comparative Security and Sustainability
A political science course on the complexities associated with security and sustainability of states in international relations.

Technology in a Dangerous World
A science, technology, and society course whose topics include the connection between technology and terrorism and how a human-built world can foster insecurity and danger and the human response to this.

Causes of War: Theory and Method
A political science course exploring the causes of modern war with a focus on preventable causes.

Science fiction: Osama Phone Home
Read a short story by David Marusek about what happens when an ideological, technologically adept, highly determined group of conspirators are American.

MIT's intelligent aircraft fly, cooperate autonomously
MIT researchers and collaborators have laid the groundwork for an intelligent airborne fleet of small, unmanned vehicles for military use that would require little human supervision.

Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group
Analyses of technical problems in the international security field include risk assessments of a Chinese anti-satellite weapon test and U.S. and Russian clashes over an Eastern European missile system.

PBS film features MIT bioweapons expert
Jeanne Guillemin, a senior advisor in MIT's Security Studies Program, is among those featured in the PBS documentary, "American Experience: The Living Weapon," that looks at America's top-secret program to develop biological weapons.

Boosting knowledge of nuclear energy systems
MIT's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems works to develop and apply methods for the design, operation, and regulation of current and advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycles. Recent research includes studying the public's attitudes toward energy and nuclear power safety.

What Matters: Is LNG Safe?
Offshore LNG terminals are much safer than their onshore counterparts, yet few of the existing or proposed U.S. terminals are of this type. Why? Because the LNG industry eschews change, argues James A. Fay SM '47.

MIT World Videos

Two More Things to Worry About
MIT Sloan Professor Arnold Barnett PhD '73 discusses improvements to the U.S. Electoral College and aviation safety.

Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons
A primer on the standoff with Iran on its nuclear program.

Studying security
The MIT Security Studies Program, a graduate-level research and educational program analyzing national and international security problems, launched the SSP Alumni Initiative to foster connections between alumni and students and to promote the work of alumni. Read profiles online. The Center for International Studies, at which SSP is based, also offers a list of op-eds written by its researchers in publications worldwide on topics such as the Iraq war and Chinese imports.

New office coordinates campus security policies
The Security and Emergency Management Office serves as a formal bridge between the MIT Police and the Environment, Health, and Safety Office and devised and implemented the Institute's emergency communications system. The MIT Police Web site offers security information and crime statistics in accordance with the Clery Act.

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