MacArthur Fellowship + Nobel Prize + neuroscience meets immunology

MIT Weekly October 15, 2022 Greetings! Here’s a roundup of the latest from the MIT community.  Want a daily dose of MIT in your inbox? [Subscribe to the MIT Daily](. Bridging Neuroscience and Immunology #[Gloria Choi sits in a roller chair at a lab bench facing the camera with a microscope behind her. ]( “Understanding the flow of information between the immune system and the nervous system can help us to understand why neurological conditions arise,” [Gloria Choi]( says, “and will help us to devise therapies that no one has thought about before.” [Full story via MIT News →]( Top Headlines Professor Danna Freedman receives 2022 MacArthur Fellowship MIT chemist designs novel molecules that could be used for quantum sensing and communication; visiting scholar Moriba Jah is also awarded, for work on space sustainability. [Full story via MIT News →]( [MIT Heat Island]( Ben Bernanke PhD ’79 awarded a share of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences MIT alumnus and two others honored for research on the role of banks in the economy, including during financial crises. [Full story via MIT News →]( [MIT Heat Island]( Astronomers find a “cataclysmic” pair of stars with the shortest orbit yet The stars circle each other every 51 minutes, confirming a decades-old prediction. [Full story via MIT News →]( [MIT Heat Island]( Professor Michel DeGraff named a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America Selection as LSA Fellow marks the highest honor in the field of linguistics. [Full story via MIT News →]( [MIT Heat Island]( Making quantum computers more accurate PhD student Alex Greene studies superconducting quantum computing systems while rounding out their busy schedule with water sanitation projects. [Full story via MIT News →]( [MIT Heat Island]( MIT releases financials and endowment figures for 2022 The Institute’s pooled investments lost 5.3 percent last year; endowment stands at $24.6 billion. [Full story via MIT News →]( #ThisisMIT #[six people pose at night in front of the exhibit]( [Follow @mitlistarts on Twitter →]( In the Media Rep. Ro Khanna and MIT president on economic competitiveness and jobs of the future // Washington Post Live President L. Rafael Reif discusses the state of innovation in America. “The U.S. is still innovating the way it once did, the problem is that the way it once did is not good enough now,” Reif says. “The global ecosystem is much more competitive. Others are doing very, very well. Others are catching up or running ahead of us. And we have to reassess our innovation ecosystem to figure out how to fine tune it to adapt to this new reality.” [Full story via Washington Post Live→]( Basketball fan, keyboard player, and now Nobel Prize winner in chemistry // The Boston Globe Professor Laura Kiessling discusses the work of Stanford University Professor Carolyn Bertozzi, who was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Massachusetts native, who is the daughter of Professor Emeritus William Bertozzi and a previous winner of the Lemelson-MIT Prize, has “changed the way people think about doing science,” says Kiessling. “There have been further advances, but they all build on her work.” [Full story via The Boston Globe →]( US income inequality hasn’t risen for a decade // Quartz Associate Professor Nathan Wilmers and his colleague used multiple measures of earnings to trace income inequality in the U.S. since the 1980s and found that “income inequality peaked in 2012 and has held steady or perhaps even fallen since.” [Full story via Quartz→]( How to make this cafe’s signature Puerto Rican roasted pork and Cubano sandwich // Good Morning America Milena Pagán ’11 discusses her inspiration for opening Little Sister Café, which is bringing a taste of Puerto Rico to Providence, Rhode Island. “This food is authentic to my experience, which is I lived half of my life in Puerto Rico,” says Pagán, “so I’m just putting all of it together, and in that sense it’s very authentic.” [Full story via ABC News→]( Scene at MIT #[Two children reach into the well lit SandScape exhibit in a large room of the MIT Museum]( Among the many Institute-related artifacts on exhibit at the new MIT Museum is [SandScape]( a tangible interface for designing and understanding landscapes through a variety of computational simulations using sand. Users can alter the form of the landscape model by manipulating sand, while seeing the resultant effects of computational analysis generated and projected on the surface of sand in real-time. This version was developed by MIT Professor Hiroshi Ishii, professor of the practice Carlo Ratti, MIT Senseable City Lab Associate Director Assaf Biderman, Yao Wang SM '02, Ben Piper SM '02, and students in the Tangible Media Group. [Browse the MIT Museum collections→]( [“] Explore what you like. Take risks. Stay open. Trust the process. Learn everything you can. Be a good team member. Focus on building great relationships. You can create your own journey. —Abisola Okuk, senior staff accountant on the Accounts Receivable team in the Office of the Vice President for Finance (VPF), on building a career at MIT [Full story via MIT VPF→]( This edition of the MIT Weekly was brought to you by [a]( goal](. ⚽ Have feedback to share? Email mitdailyeditor@mit.edu. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! —MIT News Office [Forward This Email]( [Subscribe]( [MIT Logo] Massachusetts Institute of Technology This email was sent to {EMAIL} because of your affiliation with MIT, or because you signed up for our newsletters. [subscribe]( [update preferences]( [unsubscribe]( [view in browser]( [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [Youtube]( [Instagram]( MIT News Office · 77 Massachusetts Avenue · Cambridge, MA 02139 · USA