June 2010

Alumnus Discusses McChrystal/Petraeus Shake Up

by Liv on June 30, 2010

in In the News

Owen Coté, associate director of MIT's Security Studies Program. Photo: MIT

Last week, as many alumni are no doubt aware, Afghan war commander and four-star U.S. general Stanley McChrystal lost his job after deriding and mocking President Obama and other civilian leaders in a controversial feature story in Rolling Stone magazine. Shortly thereafter, Obama announced that General David Petraeus had been selected to be McChrystal’s replacement.

Alumnus Owen Coté, associate director of MIT’s Security Studies Program, has been following the story, and a few days ago he offered his analysis on Minnesota Public Radio.

During the interview, Coté PhD ’96 said he wasn’t surprised that McChrystal was fired: “It’s just not acceptable for the civil-military relationship or the political-military relationship to function the way that article shows it’s functioning.” Regarding the unusual candor of McChrystal and his aides, Coté said it was probably a result of the general letting his guard down (after being with the reporter for multiple weeks) combined with a false sense of political invincibility.

Listen to the full interview to learn more about Coté’s perspective.

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15 Minutes that Could Save Five Years

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on June 29, 2010

in Health,Management,Research

Will everyone be working until age 70? Those are the facts of contemporary life, according to Michael Schrage, research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business.

In a recent guest Harvard Business Review blog post, Schrage describes the end of retirement as the ever-hopeful Baby Boomers thought it would be.

Knowledge workers in particular can forget about retiring at 65. Although he offers little hope for people 60 and older, he does have some advice:

“Everyone reading this should take 15 hard minutes to ruthlessly reassess the reality of the ‘new’ final years of their future career. The finish line has become elusive; the goal posts have been pushed back. Based on your current skill set and competences, what do you think your workday will look like when you’re 70?”

Since he’s a specialist in innovation, all the news is not bad. Read the full post by the author of Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate and Shared Minds—The New Technologies of Collaboration.

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Car Talk's Ray Magliozzi '72 on Woodworking

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on June 28, 2010

in In the News

Copyright Richard Howard, Courtesy Ray Magliozzi

Copyright Richard Howard, Courtesy Ray Magliozzi

NPR’s famous Car Talk brothers, Tom ’58 and Ray Magliozzi ’72, are good with their hands. Although neither majored in engineering,* they both got their hands under the hood at the Good News Garage in Cambridge and perhaps even more so, in their hilarious radio program answering automotive questions from perplexed car owners.

What you may not have known, however, is about Ray’s penchant for woodworking. A MIT News Office 3 Questions interview tells the story, starting with Ray’s pre-freshman venture into the Hobby Shop with a harpsichord kit.

In June, he was on campus to attend the 2010 Furniture Society Conference, Fusions: Minds & Hands Shaping Our Future. Hmmmm. That sounds familiar…

You can hear excerpts from their 1999 MIT Commencement address on the Car Talk site or read the transcript.

* N.B. Tom’s SB was in Course 14A, Economics, Politics & Engineering; Ray earned his degree in Course 21B, Humanities and Science.

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Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—June 26, 2010

by Amy Marcott on June 26, 2010

in Franken Photo of the Week

The late comedian John Belushi, in a bumble bee costume, skates at the Rockefeller Center ice rink for a skit on Saturday Night Live in 1975The late comedian John Belushi, in a bumble bee costume, skates at the Rockefeller Center ice rink for a skit on Saturday Night Live in 1975 (© Owen Franken for CORBIS).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his Web site.

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Water, Clean Water…Should Be Everywhere

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on June 25, 2010

in Research

Water, the ultimate resource for life, is high on the world’s agenda—and MIT’s.

In May, a workshop focused on Rethinking Water: A Critical Resource.

The spring issue of Spectrum, a newsletter published by the Resource Development department, focuses on the diverse range of research and action undertaken by more than 50 faculty from each of the Institute’s five schools. Here are a few highlights:

  • Current methods of desalination do not nearly meet the world’s water needs John Lienhard, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Clean Water and Clean Energy at MIT and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals is using using “classical methods of thermodynamics” to improve humidification-dehumidification desalination.
  • Better water management is the goal of Sarah Slaughter ’82, SM ’87, PhD ’91, a senior lecturer of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategic management. “The way we manage water now, it’s equivalent to renting the entire Hancock Building for a two-person start-up company,” Slaughter says. “It’s a burden to manage the excess capacity.”
  • Prof. Martin Polz is part of a team of MIT faculty considered to be national leaders in the relatively new field of environmental microbiology. “Respect the microbes, he says. “They’ve been on Earth longest, and they run the show.”

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Pick the Winner of the MIT Around the World Photo Contest

by Amy Marcott on June 24, 2010

in Alumni Life,Arts,Modern Geekhood,Travel

Mind and hands and a foot/Photo: Ryan Smith '93. This photo was taken on my travels to Marrakech, Morocco, in April 2010. The man photographed had a homemade lathe that he's used to carve wooden dowels into chess pieces, kabob skewers, and handles for toys. It's an ingenious and very entrepreneurial rig. He wraps the string of a bow around the wood to be carved and then uses a back-and-forth motion with the bow to spin the piece, carving the wood with a chisel held at various angles and steadied with his foot. Like our friend the beaver, he can chew through the wood very quickly, finishing a dowel in just a minute or two.

Mind and hands and a foot/Photo: Ryan Smith ’93. This photo was taken on my travels to Marrakech, Morocco, in April 2010. The man photographed had a homemade lathe that he's used to carve wooden dowels into chess pieces, kabob skewers, and handles for toys. It's an ingenious and very entrepreneurial rig. He wraps the string of a bow around the wood to be carved and then uses a back-and-forth motion with the bow to spin the piece, carving the wood with a chisel held at various angles and steadied with his foot. Like our friend the beaver, he can chew through the wood very quickly, finishing a dowel in just a minute or two.

The MIT Alumni Travel Program recently sponsored a photo contest designed in part to show the world from the eyes of MIT alumni. Entrants were asked to submit images of people, places, or things beyond the walls of the ’Tute that are reminiscent of MIT culture or have been impacted by MIT.

Ten finalists have been chosen from scores of entries and now it’s up to you. View the gallery, read the captions, and click the Like icon for any photo you think deserves a special nod. The photo with the most Likes by Friday, July 23, wins a great prize as well as exposure—the favorite image will appear on the Alumni Association homepage and in the annual Explorer travel catalog.

Photos indicate ingenuity, like the one shown here, engineering prowess, physical agility, and more. There’s even an entrant who took the phrase MIT Around the World literally. But you’ll have to check out the gallery to see what I mean.

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Do Engineers Dislike Twitter?

by Liv on June 23, 2010

in Modern Geekhood

According to an EE Times survey, yes.

The electronics industry news site asked 285 engineers about their impressions of Twitter–and a whopping 85% said they don’t use it.

The EE Times story went on to say that more than half of the engineers surveyed indicated that the statement, “I don’t really care what you had for breakfast,” best summed up their feelings. Others called it a “a ridiculous waste of time and electrons” and said they hoped it would “go away.”

The small sample size in conjunction with the fact that EE Times did not reveal their survey methods or post raw data makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions from the survey results.

Nevertheless, the story generated strong reactions on Slashdot:

If your reason for not liking Twitter is “I don’t really care what you had for breakfast,” the problem isn’t Twitter – it’s that you need to find some more interesting friends. (Kelson (129150) *)

Twitter is one those ideas that anyone could have thought up over a beer and implemented in a long weekend of hacking, and it could also have been done in 1995. Why didn’t I get rich by doing just that? (Man On Pink Corner (1089867))

I like Twitter because it’s an easy way for me and my developer friends to share transient tidbits like new tools, quick questions and interesting links. I don’t follow people who use it as a journal and I don’t really concern myself with those who follow me. I don’t see why more IT people use it this way. It beats sending e-mail or trying to maintain contacts via multiple IM networks (some of which are blocked by various employers). (decipher_saint (72686))

So, engineer and non-engineer alumni, what do you think? Do engineers actually dislike Twitter? If so, does their non-participation take something away from the tool’s overall value? The MIT Alumni Association Twitter feed has over 2300 followers–how many are engineers? Send (or tweet) us your thoughts.

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Take a Look at this: Reunions 2010 in Pictures

by Amy Marcott on June 22, 2010

in Alumni Life,Tech Reunions

Check out all the action from Commencement and Tech Reunions on the Alumni Association’s new media galleries, which allow you to quickly indicate which photos and videos you especially like, search galleries by filters, and see related content.

More galleries will be added in the coming days as we make the transition to the new system, so keep checking back.

View a Reunions overview gallery, which includes shots from the Tech Challenge Games and Tech Night at the Pops (additional photos are below), among other festivities, as well as a gallery from the Class of 1960′s 50th reunion, where they donned their red jackets for the first time. Also read more highlights from the weekend.

Cheering on the orange team at the Tech Challenge Games.

Cheering on the orange team at the Tech Challenge Games.

Tech Night at the Pops is a rousing family affair. And there are balloons!

Tech Night at the Pops is a rousing family affair. And there are balloons!

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Prof. Dave Staelin: 54 Years at MIT and Counting

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on June 21, 2010

in Alumni Life,Remember When...,Research

Historic glimpse of Dave Staelin in his lab.

Historic glimpse of Staelin in his lab.

“When I arrived in 1956 my tuition was $1100, there were one or two coeds per section, we had mandatory ROTC, surplus battleship gray paint graced the halls, porters cleaned dormitory rooms daily and changed the linens, and Cambridge chocolate, soap, and other factories helped signal the wind direction,” says Dave Staelin ’60, SM ’61, ScD ’65 in a recent EECS newsletter interview.

Staelin’s MIT experiences have been vast. He has been a member of the EECS faculty and Research Laboratory on Electronics 1965, he co-founded the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, and has  served on a host of NASA committees and working groups, including the Space Applications Advisory Committee; the Advanced Microwave Sounder Working Group; the Geostationary Platform-Earth Science Steering Committee; and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Science Steering Group.

Read the article to learn how his career evolved from radioastronomy to working at Lincoln Labs to starting three companies and now working on theories of neuronal computation.

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Impressive people

by Patrick on June 20, 2010

in Alumni Life,Campus Culture,Prof. Winston's Ideas

Professor Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70

One reason I never left MIT is that a lot of impressive people show up in the course of a year. During the past twelve months, I myself was most impressed by Barack Obama, Will.I.Am, and David Goggins, all who started from nothing in particular and made it to the top of what they do. One showed it is ok to be interested in science and engineering, use words like finite, and be President; another, that is ok to be interested in science and engineering, go to a lecture on AI, and be pop music star; and the third, that you can do what you hate for a good enough cause. If you are on the planet, you have heard of President Obama; and if you are under 30, you have heard of Will.I.Am and the Black Eyed Peas.

Maybe you haven’t heard of David Goggins. He is a Navy Seal who runs and bikes to raise money for the Special Operations Warriers Foundation, which among other things, provides college scholarships to the children of soldiers killed in combat. By run, I mean run in races such as the Badwater Ultra Marathon, a race of 135 miles, from Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level and very hot, to Whitney Portals, 8360 feet above sea level, and mercifully cool. By bike, I mean 500 miles, non stop.

Goggins came to MIT with some other Special Operations folks to speak on the subject of mental toughness. All were on a panel put together by Betty Lou McClanahan, a Senior Administrative Assistant in the Department of Chemistry, who in another life teaches the Seals about combat swimming.

I always admire people who can do what I can’t, so I was spellbound as Goggins described how and why he transformed himself from a 290 pound tub of a man to a fat-free Seal and ultramarathoner with the motto “Show no weakness.” He could have let sickle cell anemia or atrial septum defect slow him down. Neither has.

Goggins says he will keep going until he has raised a million dollars. I hope he gets to that goal without doing too many more of those races. Mental toughness is a good thing, and you need it to survive MIT, but in the end, we are all just a bag of vulnerable biological stuff with lots of parts that can wear out when overstressed.

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