Classroom

Mobile Gaming Jam Captures Network Data

by Maddy Myers on May 23, 2013

in Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, Research, Student Life, Uncategorized

Tiffany Chen and Ravi Netravali at the Stata Center.

What did MIT students do last weekend? Some of them hosted a game jam.

Research students in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Networks and Mobile Systems group extended an open invitation to local mobile game developers to come to the Stata Center and participate in a weekend-long challenge: create a game that encourages its players to go forth and explore new places.

The event resulted in a new mobile game made by a small group of developers; the team hopes to officially release it in the next two weeks. Game design teams who missed last weekend’s game jam can find the NetMap Game Client on Github.com should they wish to aid these researchers in their quest.

The hosts of the game jam have already been collecting data on their own about wireless and cellular networks via a tool called NetMap, as a class project for 6.829 Computer Networks. Three PhD students in the class–Tiffany Chen, Ravi Netravali, and Victor Costan ’07 MNG ’08—believed that their research project could extend beyond just a class assignment. They wanted to collect more data to analyze from mobile users all over the world.

How could the team get users everywhere to find out about NetMap, install it, and provide more data for the researchers to analyze? Make a game, of course.

The Teaching Assistant of the students’ Computer Networks class, PhD student Jonathan Perry SM ’12, took this idea one step further. He suggested the team host a game jam, a hackathon-like event for game developers to meet up and make a game in a single weekend.

“We needed an easy way to collect a large volume of measurements,” Perry explains. “If you’re going to go big-scale, why have one game when you can have many?”

Although the game jam event produced only one game so far, the team hopes for further development with NetMap in the future.

“Our wildest dream would be to have these collections everywhere where there are wireless device users,” says Netravali. “The problems of a poor connection can plague you anywhere.”

“You could find out if AT&T works better in this area or T-Mobile works better in this area,” Tiffany Chen explains. “You could know which service you should choose. Everybody can use that information.”

Perry hopes the data collected via NetMap and the team’s subsequent research and analysis will help network researchers. “When you make new network equipment or when you design new standards—later versions of 4G, for example or the next version of Wi-Fi—you can take into account data.”

The game jam focused on development for Android devices so that the games and the entire NetMap project can remain open source and freely available for future researchers and developers.

{ 0 comments }

Senior Gets Animated about the Infinite Connection

by Joe McGonegal on May 12, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Classroom, Media, Modern Geekhood, Student Life

Did you see Jeffrey Lin’s video tutorial on how to navigate the MIT Alumni Directory?

MIT’s Class of 2013 should find it useful next month as they earn their official listing in it, and the thousands of alumni who haven’t yet logged in to the Infinite Connection should check it out as well. You know who you are. Jeffrey Lin shot

Lin didn’t just make the video for the $300 gift card prize offering in the MIT Alumni Association contest. An avid designer, Lin enjoys fooling with film technologies and says he made this video on the night before deadline.

“I saw the listing and figured I had a shot,” he said. “And I thought, ‘what better way to do this quickly than with animation?’ I grabbed a Wacom tablet, which you can hook to your laptop and use for drawing by hand. I used QuickTime screen capturing.”

A big fan of RSA Animate, Lin designed the directory tutorial with its instructional, straightforward style in mind, telling the story of a login through clever animated slides.

“I hadn’t really done something like it before and wanted to see how it would work out,” he recalled.

Whether experimenting with live-action or animation, Lin enjoys storytelling. His short documentary on the MIT lightweight crew team and his moving profile of Emma Nelson ’14 demonstrate his attention to a film’s narrative arc.

Though Lin is a course 4 (architecture) major, he has enjoyed Professor Vivek Bald’s documentary filmmaking course and Angel Nevarez’s intro to video class. In the latter, Lin directed A Proper Meal, which won the undergraduate CMS Media Spectacle Award last year.

Lin has also been active in the Asian American Association and the DynaMIT engineering camp, where he mentors middle school-aged students in math and science.

Whether Lin pursues film or architecture or design or none of the above, he clearly knows how to use the alumni directory for reaching out to fellow beavers. During IAP in 2011, he interned at the Brand Union in New York, working under its North American CEO Robert Scalea ’77, an experience he chronicled on Slice.

{ 0 comments }

Master of Science Becomes Master of the Stage

by Joe McGonegal on May 3, 2013

in Alumni Life, Arts, Classroom, Learning, Student Life

Guest Blogger: Debbie Levey, CEE Technical Writer

Kortney Adams SM ’00.

Kortney Adams SM ’00 transformed herself from environmental engineer to professional actor in the past decade, a process that has been at best a complicated one. Although she dabbled in drama in high school, Adams describes herself as “a classic engineering kid who took things apart and put them back together to see how they worked.”

As an engineering undergraduate at Washington University at St. Louis, Adams continued to act in her spare time. In her first job with an environmental consulting company, Adams traveled continuously to supervise hazardous waste cleanup sites. She no longer had time for theater, and that made her miss it more.

Coming to MIT to pursue graduate work, Adams assumed that her future professional responsibilities would likewise make acting impossible. She decided that it was “my last chance, so I was almost constantly in shows,” she says. “My advisor, Professor Trish Culligan, was very patient.”

“I have a special fondness for MIT because I feel like I found my art there,” says Adams. “I loved working with so many creative people and not feeling blocked out just because I was an engineer.”

Among her many memorable parts on campus: the title role in the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble’s production of Richard III.

After graduating with a master’s in engineering, the private sector beckoned but Adams demurred.

“I enjoyed consulting, but something else was calling me,” said Adams. While she felt that she could be perfectly content with environmental engineering, “I wanted to shoot for blissfully happy.”

Adams spent the next year working in a travel agency while figuring out what direction to take. “When 9/11 happened, suddenly the travel business tanked. Everyone reexamined what they were doing in their lives,” she remembered.

As a new year’s resolution that winter, Adams decided to become an actor.

Adams performing at the Central Square Theater. Photo: Elizabeth Stewart.

Other people who made a transition to acting after their MIT years gave Adams advice. These included Teresa Huang ’97, a script writer, producer and actress in Los Angeles. After a year, Adams accumulated enough jobs to quit her temporary job as bartender and has been a full-time actor ever since. Her credits include movies, commercials, plays, and other performances. Adams narrated Make Way For Ducklings with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra in 2003.

Clearly, her work has paid off. The Boston Globe praised Adams’s portrayal of a pregnant artist in From Orchids and Octopi, citing both her “warmth and intelligence” in her character’s “complex, changing, and utterly believable relationship with her husband.” Reviews for other roles described her as “classy and elegant” and complimented her “layered and intelligent performance.”

This spring, Adams will star in the Wheelock Family Theater’s production of Pippi Longstocking in Boston.

“One of my favorite things about being an actor is how much I learn that I wasn’t exposed to as a math and science kid,” Adams says. “I love getting to step into the shoes of all these different people and different cultures. Now I’ll get to learn about Pippi Longstocking and why kids love her.”

{ 0 comments }

How Do We Love Thee, River Charles? Let Us Count the Ways…

by Joe McGonegal on April 22, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, IAP, Science, Student Life

Happy Earth Day! As you read this, teams are vying to be named champions in the annual MIT Earth Day Challenge this week. Many community members will contribute to the (rescheduled) 14^th annual Charles River Cleanup this weekend.
earth day_transparent1

Being a school on a shoreline, MIT’s celebration of Earth any day is also, quite often, a celebration of the water, and in particular, the Charles River.

Like so many civilizations before us, MIT’s has been built upon a river.

How does this river sustain our work? Ocean engineering majors can tell you; they surveyed the muddy Charles’s depths in 2007. Civil engineers plumb its depths annually: check out this 2012 project to destratify it with turbulent jets. Art, Culture,and Technology Associate Professor Gediminas Urbonas designed last winter’s IAP “Learning from the River” around it. CSAIL’s lecture series bears its name.

There was Proteus the penguin boat and the pre-Columbian raft. We’ve done sonar tests, problem sets with fictional “Charles River” companies, studied ice patterns, and silt formation.

And the Charles is our playground, too, as any runner, rower or sailor will attest. Maybe you played the MUVE game “Charles River City” a few years back, or watched the 4^th of July fireworks from any available rooftop.

Always moving and yet always still, the Charles is a muse for photographers, romantics, barflys, philanthropists, and soul-searchers. Remember how Ernie Knight ’28, for his 70^th reunion, took a single scull out for one more row?

Photo: Lydia Krasilnikova.

Seems logical to trek out there once a year—at least, to work on keeping the Charles clean.

In a unique sense of the word, the Charles River is also an MIT invention. Karl Haglund’s 2002 book, Inventing the Charles River, is a great exploration into how engineers (MIT alums included) shaped Boston and Cambridge’s shorelines over the years into a “Back Bay” with stabilized riverfronts. How would one’s MIT experience be different, do you think, if we looked out at mud flats and salt marshes every day?

{ 0 comments }

MIT Alumnus Finally Finds Fulfillment in Teaching

by Joe McGonegal on April 5, 2013

in Alumni Life, Campus Culture, Classroom, Learning, Modern Geekhood, Student Life

“Long story short: you’re awesome, and deserve more recognition than you’ll ever get.”

With those concluding words, Eli Gray, an MIT junior, nominated a favorite high school teacher, Yong Joo ’95, to receive a 2013 MIT Inspirational Teaching Award. Joo was one of 29 educators to receive the award, which is granted at regional club ceremonies across the country each spring.

Yong Joo ’95. Photo: Eli Nemzer.

Joo is a chemistry and computer science teacher at Alameda High School in northern California. How did a mechanical engineering and chemistry major become a teacher? After working for seven years in telecommunications and IT, Joo felt unfulfilled. “I was warned that teaching is a profession with unique frustrations,” he says. “But I saw in it the possibility of making the world a better place one student at a time.”

Joo says his pedagogy is as ordinary as it is admirable: in teaching over 1,000 students, one at a time, since he began, Joo wins students over by connecting personally. He talks with them at lunch, attends their games, and keeps his classroom open late into the afternoon for extra help or hanging out.

In his nomination of Joo, Eli Gray also wrote:

[Joo] gave positive feedback to my independent programming projects that I did in his room after school, where many people hung out, talking, working, and asking questions while he was working away at a big stack of papers…because he was a completely likable and kind person, students respected him… an interesting and hardworking man.

“If they know that I care and have some respect for this relationship, the discipline is easier and the teaching is easier,” says Joo. “It’s a kind of credibility that you earn.”

At MIT, he witnessed another key to great teaching—Professor Dan Kemp’s zealous affection for organic chemistry in 5.12. Joo learned that such passion for a subject is quickly contagious.

“Before teaching, nothing really did it for me. This is the first thing I’ve tried that I think I can do for a long time,” he says.

{ 3 comments }

The Streak Continues: MIT’s Grad Engineering Program again Tops Rankings

by Amy Marcott on March 13, 2013

in Campus Culture, Classroom, Student Life

In case you were holding your breath about the U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings, you can rest easy now. MIT has retained its top spot as the best engineering school nationwide—a position it’s held since the graduate engineering rankings began in 1990.

The MIT Sloan School of Management tied for fourth with Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in the top MBA programs category.

Scroll down and look at the graphics to see what other schools are at the top, as well as rankings for various specialties.

Last year, MIT ranked first in four engineering disciplines. This year that number jumped to seven.

How are the rankings determined?

Professional school programs in business, education, engineering, law, and medicine are ranked annually. Other disciplines are reviewed periodically. The rankings are based on “expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research, and students,” according to the U.S. News website.

Engineering Methodology

In fall 2012/winter 2013, appropriate data were collected from 191 schools out of 199 surveyed. Rankings were calculated based on a weighted average of 10 indicators below. Read about the methodology.

Quality assessment (weighted by 0.40)

Peer assessment score (0.25)
(Corporate/company) recruiter assessment score (0.15)

Student selectivity (weighted by 0.10)

Mean GRE quantitative scores (0.0675)
Acceptance rate (0.0325)

Faculty resources (weighted by 0.25)

Student-faculty ratio: Full-time doctoral students to full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty (0.075) and full-time master’s students to full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty (0.0375) in fall 2012.
Percent of faculty in the National Academy of Engineering (0.075)
Doctoral degrees awarded (0.0625)

U.S. News rankings, engineering specialties

MIT’s rankings in various engineering specialties.

Research activity (weighted by 0.25)

Total research expenditures (0.15)
Average research expenditures per faculty member (0.10)

Overall rank: Data were standardized about their means, and standardized scores were weighted, totaled, and rescaled so that the top-scoring school received 100; others received their percentage of the top score.

Business Methodology

In fall 2012/winter 2013, 140 master’s programs in business provided sufficient data to calculate the MBA rankings, out of 448 surveyed. Rankings were calculated based on a weighted average of the indicators below. Read about the methodology.

Quality assessment (weighted by 0.40)

Peer assessment score (0.25)
Recruiter assessment score (0.15)

Placement success (weighted by 0.35)

Mean starting salary and bonus (0.14)
Employment rates for full-time master’s program in business graduates: Employment rates at graduation (0.07) and three months after graduation (0.14) are used

MIT’s rankings in various business specialties.

Student selectivity (weighted by 0.25)

Mean GMAT and GRE scores (0.1625)
Mean undergraduate GPA (0.075)
Acceptance rate (0.0125)

Overall rank: In order to be included in the full-time MBA rankings, a full-time MBA program had to have 20 or more of its 2012 full-time MBA graduates who were seeking employment. For a school to have its employment data considered in the ranking model, at least 50 percent of its 2012 full-time MBA graduates needed to be seeking work.

Specialty rankings for engineering are based solely on the peer assessments by department heads in each specialty area. Specialty rankings for business are based on ratings by business school deans and directors of accredited master’s programs from the list of schools surveyed. They were asked to nominate up to 10 programs for excellence in each of the areas listed.

{ 0 comments }

Ancient Greek Heroes? Global Poverty? Sign Up for New edX Courses

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on January 14, 2013

in Classroom

After a hugely successful start last year, MITx’s initial free, online course morphed into edX, a partnership with Harvard and other peer universities with a burgeoning array of offerings. You can sign up now for spring edX courses including the first options in the humanities and social sciences.

The prototype course, Circuits and Electronics 6.002, was offered by MIT Professor Anant Agarwal, president of edX. “In eight months, we’ve attracted more than half a million unique users from around the world. Now we’re offering a wider range of courses from the humanities and social sciences. It’s an exciting, watershed moment,” Agarwal said.

New this spring:

Justice from Michael Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher focuses on the moral and civic dilemmas facing societies.
Introduction to Statistics from Ani Adhikari, the UC Berkeley lecturer who received UC Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
The Challenges of Global Poverty from Esther Duflo, the MIT economist who has led a comprehensive evaluation of the roots of poverty in developing nations.
The Ancient Greek Hero from Gregory Nagy, the professor of ancient Greek literature at Harvard who specializes in linguistic analysis.
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation from Umesh Vazirani, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who works on the relationship between information and quantum physics.
Human Health and Global Environmental Change from Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment and Aaron Bernstein, a physician who studies climate change and biodiversity.

EdX is also bringing back several courses from the fall 2012 semester: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming; Introduction to Solid State Chemistry; Introduction to Artificial Intelligence; Software as a Service I; Software as a Service II; Foundations of Computer Graphics; and Circuits and Electronics. Get descriptions and register online.

The edX consortium now includes MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, the University of Texas System, Wellesley, and Georgetown. All edX courses are open for registration and available to anyone at no cost.

{ 0 comments }

Is This the Future of News?

by Amy Marcott on December 27, 2012

in Classroom, Media

Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline with a VR code embedded within and the NewsFlash app interprets the high-frequency red and green light.

Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline embedded with a VR code and the NewsFlash app interprets the high-frequency red and green light and displays the web page on the phone.

Move over, QR codes. There’s a new player in town: VR (video response) codes. Unlike the clunky, square QR code, VR codes are invisible to the naked eye. They use high-frequency red and green light to transmit data to a smartphone’s camera.

The technology was initiated by Grace Woo SM ’07, PhD ’12 as part of her PhD thesis and work with Andrew Lippman ’71, senior research scientist and head of the Viral Spaces group at the MIT Media Lab.

One potential use for VR codes is an app called NewsFlash. Point a smartphone camera at a digital headline (on an iPad in the demonstration below) and the app sees the high-frequency light, interprets those flashes, and displays either a mobile version of the website with the same content or a translation, if the text is in a foreign language.

See it in action.

VR codes are currently being developed by Pixels.IO as a spinoff of the Viral Spaces group.

{ 2 comments }

Full Circle

by Patrick on December 16, 2012

in Classroom, Learning, Prof. Winston's Ideas

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

It was quite a semester. More than 300 students showed up in my subject, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, and through various accidents of nature, I was the only faculty member involved. I wondered, “How can I supply the enrichment normally provided by recitation instructors?”

I decided to sprinkle in what I called right-now lectures. These would be given by people talking about their current research on topics I was introducing in my lectures. So, my students would get organized instruction from me plus inspiration from eight right-now speakers, each of whom is the best in the world at what s/he does. With EDx coming on fast, it occurred to me that inspiration is a big part of the value added when you take a subject taught in person.

Marvin Minsky was the final speaker in the series. I could have introduced him by enumerating all his awards, but I decided to tell a story instead:

When I was a student, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I majored in electrical engineering, which is what people majored in back then when they didn’t know what they wanted to do. We figured we had flexibility, because everything had electrical stuff in it. Not much has changed, except that everything has computer stuff in it, so students major now in EE&CS.

I did know I wanted to understand what went on in my head, so I cast about, learning about psychology from Hans-Lucas Teuber, about neuroanatomy from Wally Nauta, about frogs’ brains from Jerry Lettvin, and about communications from Irwin Jacobs.

All were terrific, but what they did was not exactly what I wanted to do. Then, one day, another student told me about a class in which the professor talked about a program that performed symbolic integration.

So, I went to one of those classes. It wasn’t much like what I was used to—more a genius thinking out loud than a standard lecture. But, at the end, I had it figured out. `I want to do what he does,’ I said to myself.

That was the introduction. Then, Marvin said, “We’ve come full circle. I want to do what you do.” That was the ultimate in positive feedback.

And Marvin was Marvin, a little rambling but a lot of inspiration. Once again, I expect there were students out there in 10-250 thinking, as I had, “I want to do what he does.”

{ 0 comments }

Student’s ‘Meltdown’ Generates Stress Survey, Important Discussion

by Amy Marcott on December 11, 2012

in Campus Culture, Classroom, Remember When..., Student Life

There’s been a lot of talk about meltdowns on campus this semester, prompted by a student blogger for the Admissions Office, Lydia A. Krasilnikova ’14, who offered a moving account of dealing with the stress of being an MIT student in a post called “Meltdown.” It sparked a letter to the editor in the Tech by President Reif, who remarked on the outpouring of support the post received.

Admissions blogger Lydia A. Krasilnikova ’14, whose Oct. 29 blog post “Meltdown” netted over 4,000 likes on Facebook and coverage by NPR's Boston branch—in addition to sparking a campus-wide discussion of stress at MIT.

Admissions blogger Lydia A. Krasilnikova ’14, whose Oct. 29 blog post “Meltdown” was covered by NPR’s Boston branch and sparked a campus-wide discussion of stress at MIT. Two weeks following the post, walk-in visits to Student Support Services had tripled over the previous year. Read an interview with her.

Recently, the Tech surveyed the student body about stress, and 3,191—about 29% of all students (35% of undergrads)—responded. The result is Under Pressure, a feature containing compelling—and interactive—infographics (you can filter results by a number of variables) as well as a list of supporting multimedia, such as videos, letters to the editor, a talk with the director of mental health at the Institute, profiles of student support groups, playlists for de-stressing, and more. A few of the survey results are highlighted below.

According to the editor’s note to Under Pressure, 52% of students have, at one point, felt like they don’t belong at the Institute. There’s a nice interview with Dean of Admissions Stu Schmill ’86 assuring students their admission to MIT was not a fluke.

The work that went into Under Pressure is impressive as is the MIT community’s support of this important topic. The Tech and the chancellor’s office will cosponsor a forum for students during IAP to discuss issues surrounding pressure and stress at MIT, and the Institute recently launched MIT Together, a portal to support resources for students.

Classes that stress students out the most. Click image to go to the interactive graphic.

Under Pressure Snapshot
Just a few of the findings are below, but you have to check out the interactive graphics, which break down stress by dorm, year, major, gender, and age; reveal how students split their time among sleep, work, and play as well as when they sleep; and show the single most stressful class by year or major. For freshmen, it’s 8.01 (physics, classical mechanics) and 7.012 (introductory biology). Sound familiar?

Grad students living in Edgerton House spend the most hours per week doing homework on average: 50.12.
Among undergrad dorms, McCormick works the hardest with 33.71 hours.
Residents of Next House spend the least amount of time on average, 23.04 hours.
The happiest residence is Baker House.
On average, students have four close friends.

The following are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being not stressed at all and 7 being extremely stressed.
Courses with the highest levels of stress (5.3 or 5.4 on the scale)

4 (architecture)
17 (political science)
11 (urban studies and planning)
22 (nuclear science and engineering)

Courses with the lowest levels of stress (4 on the scale)

18 (mathematics)
24 (linguistics and philosophy)
15 (management)

Some of the most poignant parts of the survey were the comments generated when students were asked to share any stories or thoughts they had about pressure at MIT. Tech editors published some of the 500+ responses:

“I don’t feel good when I’m over-committed and over-worked, but I don’t feel good about myself if I’m not like that.”
“I don’t feel like I’m learning anymore. Instead, I feel like I’m living from p-set to p-set.”
“MIT has done a wonderful job of discouraging competition among peers, but has not done anything about competition with one’s self.”

The editors said that themes emerged among the comments: feelings of insecurity, of not fitting in, and of concern about research, to name a few, but that a sense of optimism was present as well. Says the Tech, “Tying together the dozens of stories about how MIT can be hell was the thread of hope; MIT is a shared experience—we are all in this together….You might have a love-hate relationship with the Institute, but you are not alone.”

Alumni, add your voices. What advice do you have for stressed-out students?

{ 4 comments }

← Previous Entries

Classroom

Mobile Gaming Jam Captures Network Data

Senior Gets Animated about the Infinite Connection

Master of Science Becomes Master of the Stage

How Do We Love Thee, River Charles? Let Us Count the Ways…

MIT Alumnus Finally Finds Fulfillment in Teaching