Science communication competition brings research into the real world

Laurence Willemet remembers countless family dinners where curious faces turned to her with shades of the same question: “What is it, exactly, that you do with robots?”

It’s a familiar scenario for MIT students exploring topics outside of their family’s scope of knowledge — distilling complex concepts without slides or jargon, plumbing the depths with nothing but lay terms. “It was during these moments,” Willemet says, “that I realized the importance of clear communication and the power of storytelling.”

Participating in the MIT Research Slam, then, felt like one of her family dinners.

The finalists in the 2024 MIT Research Slam competition met head-to-head on Wednesday, April 17 at a live, in-person showcase event. Four PhD candidates and four postdoc finalists demonstrated their topic mastery and storytelling skills by conveying complex ideas in only 180 seconds to an educated audience unfamiliar with the field or project at hand.

The Research Slam follows the format of the 3-Minute Thesis competition, which takes place annually at over 200 universities around the world. Both an exciting competition and a rigorous professional development training opportunity, the event serves an opportunity to learn for everyone involved.

One of this year’s competitors, Bhavish Dinakar, explains it this way: “Participating in the Research Slam was a fantastic opportunity to bring my research from the lab into the real world. In addition to being a helpful exercise in public speaking and communication, the three-minute time limit forces us to learn the art of distilling years of detailed experiments into a digestible story that non-experts can understand.”

Leading up to the event, participants joined training workshops on pitch content and delivery, and had the opportunity to work one-on-one with educators from the Writing and Communication Center, English Language Studies, Career Advising and Professional Development, and the Engineering Communication Labs, all of which co-sponsored and co-produced the event. This interdepartmental team offered support for the full arc of the competition, from early story development to one-on-one practice sessions.

The showcase was jovially emceed by Eric Grunwald, director of English language learning. He shared his thoughts on the night: “I was thrilled with the enthusiasm and skill shown by all the presenters in sharing their work in this context. I was also delighted by the crowd’s enthusiasm and their many insightful questions. All in all, another very successful slam.”

A panel of accomplished judges with distinct perspectives on research communication gave feedback after each of the talks: Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT; Denzil Streete, senior associate dean and director of graduate education; and Emma Yee, scientific editor at the journal Cell.

Deborah Blum aptly summed up her experience: “It was a pleasure as a science journalist to be a judge and to listen to this smart group of MIT grad students and postdocs explain their research with such style, humor, and intelligence. It was a reminder of the importance the university places on the value of scientists who communicate. And this matters. We need more scientists who can explain their work clearly, explain science to the public, and help us build a science-literate world.”

After all the talks, the judges provided constructive and substantive feedback for the contestants. It was a close competition, but in the end, Bhavish Dinakar was the judges’ choice for first place, and the audience agreed, awarding him the Audience Choice award. Omar Rutledge’s strong performance earned him the runner-up position. Among the postdoc competitors, Laurence Willemet won first place and Audience Choice, with Most Kaniz Moriam earning the runner-up award.

Postdoc Kaniz Mariam noted that she felt privileged to participate in the showcase. “This experience has enhanced my ability to communicate research effectively and boosted my confidence in sharing my work with a broader audience. I am eager to apply the lessons learned from this enriching experience to future endeavors and continue contributing to MIT’s dynamic research community. The MIT Research Slam Showcase wasn’t just about winning; it was about the thrill of sharing knowledge and inspiring others. Special thanks to Chris Featherman and Elena Kallestinova from the MIT Communication Lab for their guidance in practical communication skills. ”

Double winner Laurence Willemet related the competition to experiences in her daily life. Her interest in the Research Slam was rooted in countless family dinners filled with curiosity. “‘What is it exactly that you do with robots?’ they would ask, prompting me to unravel the complexities of my research in layman’s terms. Each time, I found myself grappling with the task of distilling intricate concepts into digestible nuggets of information, relying solely on words to convey the depth of my work. It was during these moments, stripped of slides and scientific jargon, that I realized the importance of clear communication and the power of storytelling. And so, when the opportunity arose to participate in the Research Slam, it felt akin to one of those family dinners for me.”

The first place finishers received a $600 cash prize, while the runners-up and audience choice winners each received $300.

Last year’s winner in the PhD category, Neha Bokil, candidate in biology working on her dissertation in the lab of David Page, is set to represent MIT at the Three Minute Thesis Northeast Regional Competition later this month, which is organized by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.

A full list of slam finalists and the titles of their talks is below.

 PhD Contestants: 

  • Pradeep Natarajan, Chemical Engineering (ChemE), “What can coffee-brewing teach us about brain disease?”
  • Omar Rutledge, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, “Investigating the effects of cannabidiol (CBD) on social anxiety disorder”
  • Bhavish Dinakar, ChemE, “A boost from batteries: making chemical reactions faster”
  • Sydney Dolan, Aeronautics and Astronautics, “Creating traffic signals for space”

 Postdocs: 

  • Augusto Gandia, Architecture and Planning, “Cyber modeling — computational morphogenesis via ‘smart’ models”
  • Laurence Willemet, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, “Remote touch for teleoperation”
  • Most Kaniz Moriam, Mechanical Engineering, “Improving recyclability of cellulose-based textile wastes”
  • Mohammed Aatif Shahab, ChemE, “Eye-based human engineering for enhanced industrial safety” 

Research Slam organizers included Diana Chien, director of MIT School of Engineering Communication Lab; Elena Kallestinova, director of MIT Writing and Communication Center; Alexis Boyer, assistant director, Graduate Career Services, Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD); Amanda Cornwall, associate director, Graduate Student Professional Development, CAPD; and Eric Grunwald, director of English Language Studies. This event was sponsored by the Office of Graduate Education, the Office of Postdoctoral Services, the Writing and Communication Center, MIT Career Advising and Professional Development, English Language Studies, and the MIT School of Engineering Communication Labs.

To understand cognition — and its dysfunction — neuroscientists must learn its rhythms

It could be very informative to observe the pixels on your phone under a microscope, but not if your goal is to understand what a whole video on the screen shows. Cognition is much the same kind of emergent property in the brain. It can only be understood by observing how millions of cells act in coordination, argues a trio of MIT neuroscientists. In a new article, they lay out a framework for understanding how thought arises from the coordination of neural activity driven by oscillating electric fields — also known as brain “waves” or “rhythms.”

Historically dismissed solely as byproducts of neural activity, brain rhythms are actually critical for organizing it, write Picower Professor Earl Miller and research scientists Scott Brincat and Jefferson Roy in Current Opinion in Behavioral Science. And while neuroscientists have gained tremendous knowledge from studying how individual brain cells connect and how and when they emit “spikes” to send impulses through specific circuits, there is also a need to appreciate and apply new concepts at the brain rhythm scale, which can span individual, or even multiple, brain regions.

“Spiking and anatomy are important, but there is more going on in the brain above and beyond that,” says senior author Miller, a faculty member in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. “There’s a whole lot of functionality taking place at a higher level, especially cognition.”

The stakes of studying the brain at that scale, the authors write, might not only include understanding healthy higher-level function but also how those functions become disrupted in disease.

“Many neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s, involve disruption of emergent properties like neural synchrony,” they write. “We anticipate that understanding how to interpret and interface with these emergent properties will be critical for developing effective treatments as well as understanding cognition.”

The emergence of thoughts

The bridge between the scale of individual neurons and the broader-scale coordination of many cells is founded on electric fields, the researchers write. Via a phenomenon called “ephaptic coupling,” the electrical field generated by the activity of a neuron can influence the voltage of neighboring neurons, creating an alignment among them. In this way, electric fields both reflect neural activity and also influence it. In a paper in 2022, Miller and colleagues showed via experiments and computational modeling that the information encoded in the electric fields generated by ensembles of neurons can be read out more reliably than the information encoded by the spikes of individual cells. In 2023 Miller’s lab provided evidence that rhythmic electrical fields may coordinate memories between regions.

At this larger scale, in which rhythmic electric fields carry information between brain regions, Miller’s lab has published numerous studies showing that lower-frequency rhythms in the so-called “beta” band originate in deeper layers of the brain’s cortex and appear to regulate the power of faster-frequency “gamma” rhythms in more superficial layers. By recording neural activity in the brains of animals engaged in working memory games, the lab has shown that beta rhythms carry “top-down” signals to control when and where gamma rhythms can encode sensory information, such as the images that the animals need to remember in the game.

Some of the lab’s latest evidence suggests that beta rhythms apply this control of cognitive processes to physical patches of the cortex, essentially acting like stencils that pattern where and when gamma can encode sensory information into memory, or retrieve it. According to this theory, which Miller calls “Spatial Computing,” beta can thereby establish the general rules of a task (for instance, the back-and-forth turns required to open a combination lock), even as the specific information content may change (for instance, new numbers when the combination changes). More generally, this structure also enables neurons to flexibly encode more than one kind of information at a time, the authors write, a widely observed neural property called “mixed selectivity.” For instance, a neuron encoding a number of the lock combination can also be assigned, based on which beta-stenciled patch it is in, the particular step of the unlocking process that the number matters for.

In the new study, Miller, Brincat, and Roy suggest another advantage consistent with cognitive control being based on an interplay of large-scale coordinated rhythmic activity: “subspace coding.” This idea postulates that brain rhythms organize the otherwise massive number of possible outcomes that could result from, say, 1,000 neurons engaging in independent spiking activity. Instead of all the many combinatorial possibilities, many fewer “subspaces” of activity actually arise, because neurons are coordinated, rather than independent. It is as if the spiking of neurons is like a flock of birds coordinating their movements. Different phases and frequencies of brain rhythms provide this coordination, aligned to amplify each other, or offset to prevent interference. For instance, if a piece of sensory information needs to be remembered, neural activity representing it can be protected from interference when new sensory information is perceived.

“Thus the organization of neural responses into subspaces can both segregate and integrate information,” the authors write.

The power of brain rhythms to coordinate and organize information processing in the brain is what enables functional cognition to emerge at that scale, the authors write. Understanding cognition in the brain, therefore, requires studying rhythms.

“Studying individual neural components in isolation — individual neurons and synapses — has made enormous contributions to our understanding of the brain and remains important,” the authors conclude. “However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that, to fully capture the brain’s complexity, those components must be analyzed in concert to identify, study, and relate their emergent properties.”

Funko Fusion Preview – Get Your Head In The Game – Game Informer

If you’re a fan of a popular movie or TV show from any time in the last several decades, chances are, they’ve made a Funko Pop figurine of the main characters. The brand is ubiquitous in pop culture, so it was only a matter of time before it got a big video game adaptation. This sort of game could easily be a cheap cash grab, but after watching a preview demo and listening to one of the head developers speak about it, I’m confident that Funko Fusion is much more than that.

You’ve never played a game by developer 10:10 Games, but you probably know the work of its staff – the founders of the studio are some of the former architects of the Lego games developed by Traveler’s Tales, including CEO Jon Burton, COO Paul Flanagan, and design director Arthur Parsons, who leads the demo. He boots up a level based on John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic The Thing, which signifies one of the main elements that separates this title from the kid-friendly Lego titles; this game is rated T for Teen and references loads of media properties that are decidedly not for children. Still, the world is charming and lighthearted, so when a Funko Pop is impaled through the side of the head, it’s more goofy than ghastly.

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Parsons, playing as Kurt Russel’s MacReady, fights off some Norwegians using the game’s third-person shooting mechanics. According to Parsons, all characters have melee and ranged options, though they had to get creative for some characters. While He-Man uses his signature sword, OJ (the protagonist from Jordan Peele’s Nope) swings around a miniature version of one of the inflatable tube men from his movie. Parsons dispatches enemies easily, which I imagine is due to the game’s relatively low difficulty, his experience working on it as a developer, and the fact that every enemy has an outrageously large head, ideal for headshots.

Funko Fusion will ultimately feature over 20 IPs in the game, mostly from NBCUniversal properties, though they’ve also made licensing deals with other companies.

Here’s a list of some that we know so far:

  • Back to the Future
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Child’s Play
  • Five Nights at Freddy’s
  • Hot Fuzz
  • Invincible
  • Jaws
  • Jurassic World
  • Knight Rider
  • Masters of the Universe
  • Megan
  • The Mummy
  • Nope
  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
  • Shaun of the Dead
  • The Thing
  • The Umbrella Academy
  • Voltron
  • The Walking Dead
  • Xena: Warrior Princess

Each IP will include playable characters, and many will include levels, though the scope of each level will vary by the franchise. Some, like The Thing, will get a proper, full-sized level, while others exist as secret cameo levels players can unlock in other worlds. Poking around the frozen outpost in the demo, Parsons travels through a portal to reach a world based on Shaun of the Dead, where he has to escort a car of civilians to the safety of the Winchester. While there, he transforms into He-Man and shows off the zombie enemies, which turn the hero into a zombified version of himself. Even though it’s just a cameo level, it’s much larger than I initially expected, likely packing plenty of easter eggs in for fans of the movie.

Players can move through these levels in whatever order they want to progress through the game’s main story. Parsons explains that this modular approach allows them to continue to support the game after launch by easily adding new characters and levels into the mix. The first instance of this is with the game’s pre-order bonus, which includes Rick Grimes and Michonne from The Walking Dead, complete with alternate outfits.

It’s been years since the last Lego game, and with this team of developers, I’m excited to watch them attempt to fill that gap. Luckily, I won’t have to wait long. Funko Fusion is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC on September 13. 

Star Wars: Hunters Gets June Release Date For Switch In New Trailer

Zynga has released a new trailer for its upcoming competitive multiplayer game, Star Wars: Hunters, revealing a June 4 release date alongside a new cinematic look at some of the characters. Star Wars: Hunters will hit Switch and iOS and Android devices on that day, giving players the chance to compete with others in iconic locations like the forest moon of Endor, the icy planet of Hoth, and elsewhere while controlling Hunters like J-3DI, a droid who thinks he’s a Jedi, Utooni which is two Jawas stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, and more. 

Zynga says each Hunter boasts their own unique set of abilities to aid them in the Arena, which is the marquee attraction of the new planet of Vespaara. “Star Wars: Hunters features a number of game modes for players to test their mettle, such as Squad Brawl, in which opposing teams will battle to rack up the most eliminations, and Trophy Chase, where competing teams will vie for control of the elusive droid TR-F33,” a press release reads. 

Check out the action in the new Star Wars: Hunters trailer below: 

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“We are beyond excited to welcome fans across the globe to Vespaara,” Zynga vice president Sam Cooper writes in a press release. “We can’t wait for gamers to meet our Hunters and hop into the Arena. There are so many fun twists and winks to recognizable, beloved Star Wars settings, creatures, and themes within our game that we also are eager to see players worldwide get the chance to discover.” 

Star Wars: Hunters will be available worldwide on Switch, iOS, and Android devices. It will be free, and on Switch, it does not require a Nintendo Switch Online membership to download and play.

For more, watch the Star Wars: Hunters reveal trailer, and then check out some gameplay from it here. 

Are you going to check out Star Wars: Hunters in June? Let us know in the comments below!

MITdesignX in Dubai

MIT has nurtured and celebrated its entrepreneurial culture for decades, with programs and courses supporting innovative startups. MITdesignX — the venture accelerator founded in 2016 in the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and now part of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design — has extended that ethos across the globe.

Over the past four years, SA+P faculty have led venture-building workshops in Reykjavik, Iceland and Venice, Italy, along with academic programs and ideation sessions in Mexico City and Hong Kong. Collaborating with MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) — the Institute’s hub for global education based in the Center for International Studies — MITdesignX recently completed its first program in Dubai.

The MITdesignX Dubai accelerator (MDXB), facilitated by MIT faculty and staff, works with early-stage ventures from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, offering a framework for these startups to move toward their commercial aims, engage with one another, and gain added value from hosting MIT interns.

It’s a new and exciting frontier for an accelerator that works with startups primarily focused on sustainability. In Dubai, the call for applications to participate specified the topic of “Sustainable Growth of Urban Environments.”

“We unite each of our international cohorts behind themes that are connected and important to SA+P and the world,” says Gilad Rosenzweig, executive director of MITdesignX. “We are aware of the incredible growth of cities, especially in developing nations, and that growth must be done sustainably for the sake of the environment and the people who will live in them. Each team in Dubai had to identify an important problem with the way we build, consume, supply, move, or live in cities, have a feasible solution for it, and propose a viable business opportunity to effectively deploy the solution.” David Dolev, associate director of MISTI and managing director of MISTI’s programs in the MENA region, has been cultivating relationships in Dubai for several years while searching for the right opportunity to involve MITdesignX. For Dolev, key requirements exist for a program to be a good match abroad for the Institute.

“We’re always looking for ways to bring MIT’s ’mind and hand’ methodology around the world to make an impact,” says Dolev. “We also have the capacity to bring people together who might not have this opportunity without MIT’s engagement. Our core mission at MISTI is to offer our students the chance to develop a deeper understanding of countries and cultures so that they can take one step forward on their path to becoming the global leaders that the world deeply needs.”

Taking the program to another level

MDXB received more than 100 applications, from which 12 teams were selected to join the program in November 2023. MIT, with international entrepreneurship development company Global Growth Hub, engaged the Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority, a quasi-governmental organization with large development parks across the city, to provide program funding for the workshops and internships, 24-hour workspace, access to labs and industry collaborators, and local support for the teams. MDXB was housed in the Dubai Silicon Oasis Park at the rapidly developing eastern edge of the city.

On campus, MITdesignX works with students, faculty, and research staff at the early-stage development of their ventures over a five-month span that includes two academic courses. Abroad, the program has different scope and cadence, with early-to-mid-stage venture teams required to work full time for three to four months. Rosenzweig, together with MITdesignX faculty director Svafa Gronfeldt, Monique Fuchs, Yscaira Jimenez, and other instructors, conduct two day-long workshops every three to four weeks.

Rosenzweig says that the Dubai cohort was unique in its diversity: in addition to the United Arab Emirates, there were participants from Egypt, India, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian territories, the U.K., and even Norway. 

“It was amazing to have this group working together and supporting each other in the midst of another cycle of war and violence in the Middle East,” says Rosenzweig. “Through MISTI and MITdesignX, we’re working beyond and through borders as a collection of entrepreneurs, students, and change-makers to truly build a better world.”

In addition to the MIT-designed curriculum, one MIT student was embedded with each team during January’s Independent Activity Period (IAP). For Dolev, this was a win-win for MIT students and the Dubai cohort.

“These entrepreneurs were very excited to have our students working with them,” he says. “The students brought a concrete tech background and that fresh, cutting-edge student mind.”

Interest from students who applied for the IAP opportunity was overwhelming. Says Dolev, “It’s not a secret that sustainability and climate change are among the most important things the world is dealing with today. It doesn’t matter what our students are studying; they all care about the climate.” 

Nicolas Stone Perez, a junior double majoring in computer science/economics/data science and management, was among the 12 students who spent IAP in Dubai. He found Dubai to be “a beautiful blend of cultures.” Stone Perez worked with Fuse AE, a startup that is looking to convert fleets of fuel vehicles to electric. He says he was impressed with the technical background for cars and passion for sustainability exhibited by its co-founders.

“Something I took away was feeling empowered and confident that I can do good work elsewhere in the world with people from different backgrounds and cultures,” says Stone Perez. “That’s something I didn’t expect to gain coming into the program.”

Stone Perez’s prior MISTI experiences have been solo, so the opportunity to encounter a foreign country with other MIT students offered “bonding experiences” he welcomed. On weekends the students explored the city, took part in alumni events, toured the desert on camels, and visited other countries in the region.

An experience that stands out for Stone Perez’s fellow intern, Andrea Aude, was riding bicycles in the desert where an Arabian oryx stepped onto the path. Captivated by their history of near extinction and recent resurgence in the Arabian desert, Aude delighted to see the bright white bovid.

The MIT senior majoring in chemical engineering interned with Othalo, a company that upcycles plastic waste into affordable housing building systems using recycled plastic materials as a feedstock to manufacture modular building systems.

“What pulled me to this opportunity was the chance to work at a startup that specifically has an impact in sustainability and experience the work culture in a different country,” she says.

She found the work environment in Dubai to be much less structured than in the United States.

“In the U.S., it’s very much go, go, go, and very formal,” she says. “In Dubai, we would have work meetings over tea and conversations that were more personal. I really appreciated that. It made me wonder about other cultures and how they manage work environments and what we could incorporate in our work environments here.”

Like Perez, Aude says working for her startup was inspiring and increased her desire to explore entrepreneurial opportunities following graduate study.

“I’m very interested in bringing technology to scale,” says Aude, who will begin doctorate work in chemical engineering at Princeton University this fall. “I think this is how you change the world. You commercialize your technology.”

Up next

Reflecting on the dozen companies in the first MDXB cohort, Rosenzweig says that each made changes to their project or business model and are in a better position to go to market and raise money. Applications for the second cohort will be announced this summer, with an expanded theme to include agritech solutions. Dubai’s growing startup ecosystem, as well as its central location with quick access to Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe, makes it a prime spot to attract international entrepreneurs.

Dolev also sees MISTI’s first engagement in the UAE as a success.

“The demand for this type of program is only going to grow. Both our MIT students and many global investors want to engage with impact-driven ventures — something that this accelerator is really bringing both to the region and to our MIT community. I hope that this MISTI-designX proof of concept is something that we can replicate across the region and the world.”

Alison Badgett named director of the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center

Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education Ian A. Waitz announced recently that Alison Badgett has been appointed the new associate dean and director of the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center. She succeeds Jill Bassett, who left that role to become chief of staff to Chancellor Melissa Nobles.

“Alison is a thought leader on how to integrate community-engaged learning with systematic change, making her ideally suited to actualize MIT’s mission of educating transformative leaders,” Waitz says. “I have no doubt she will make the PKG Center a model for all of higher ed, given her wealth of experience, finely honed skills, and commitment to social change.”

“I’m excited to help the PKG Center, and broader MIT community, develop a collective vision for public service education that builds on the PKG Center’s strength in social innovation programming, and leverages the Institute’s unique culture of innovation,” Badgett says. “MIT’s institutional commitment to tackling complex societal and environmental challenges, taking responsibility for outcomes and not just inputs, is exceedingly rare. I’m also especially excited to engage STEM majors, who may be less likely to enter the nonprofit or public sector, but who can have a tremendous impact on social and environmental outcomes within the systems they work.”

Badgett has over 20 years of experience leading public policy and nonprofit organizations, particularly those addressing challenging issues like affordable housing and homelessness, criminal justice, and public education. She is the founding principal of a consulting firm, From Charity to Change, which works with nonprofit leaders, educators, and philanthropists to apply systems-change strategies that target the root causes of complex social problems.

Prior to her consulting role, Badgett was executive director of the Petey Greene Program, which recruits and trains 1,000 volunteers annually from 30 universities to tutor justice-impacted students in 50 prisons and reentry programs. In addition, the program educates volunteers on the injustice of our prison system and encourages both volunteers and students to advocate for reforms.

She also served as executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas, an organization that aims to improve education by piloting innovative learning practices. During her tenure, the organization launched a five-year, $10 million initiative to showcase and scale blended learning, and a 10-year, $50 million initiative to improve teacher preparation and the status of teaching.

Before leading Raise Your Hand Texas, Badgett was executive director of several organizations related to housing and homelessness in New York and New Jersey. During that time, she developed a $3.6 million demonstration program to permanently house the chronically homeless, which served as a model for state and national replication. She also served as senior policy advisor to the governor of New Jersey, providing counsel on land use, redevelopment, and housing. 

Badgett holds a global executive EdD from the University of Southern California, an MA from Columbia University Teachers College in philosophy and education, and an BA in politics from Princeton University. 

Her appointment at the PKG Center is especially timely. Student demand for social impact experiential learning opportunities has increased significantly at MIT in recent years, and the center is expected to play a sizable role in increasing student engagement in social impact work and in helping to integrate social innovation into teaching and research.

At the same time, the Institute has made a commitment to help address complex issues with global impacts, such as climate change, economic inequality, and artificial intelligence. As part of that effort, the Office of Experiential Learning launched the Social Impact Experiential Learning Opportunity initiative last year, which has awarded nearly $1 million to fund hundreds of student opportunities. Projects cater to a broad range of interests and take place around the world — from using new computational methods to understand the role of special-interest-group funding in U.S. public policy to designing and testing a solar-powered, water-vapor condensing chamber in Madagascar.

Badgett, who is currently writing a book on re-imagining civic education at elite private schools, will begin her new role at the PKG Center in July. In the meantime, she is looking forward to bringing her experience to bear at MIT. “While leading public interest organizations was highly rewarding, I recognized that I could have a far greater impact educating future public interest leaders, and that higher education was the place to do it,” she says.

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Explore the transformative potential of Direct View LED technology in enhancing the illumination of sacred spaces while preserving their cultural and spiritual significance. Discover how modern innovation harmonizes seamlessly with timeless aesthetics, enriching the sacred ambiance and deepening the connection to these revered environments.

Understanding Sacred Spaces:
Sacred spaces hold profound cultural and spiritual importance, transcending their physical structures to become pillars of community identity and unity. Direct View LED technology offers unparalleled clarity and brilliance, respecting the sanctity of these environments while providing customizable lighting solutions tailored to their unique needs.

Harmonizing Tradition and Technology:
Integrating advanced lighting technology into sacred spaces requires a delicate balance between honoring tradition and embracing innovation. Explore how subtle lighting enhancements can add depth to spiritual experiences, fostering a harmonious blend of tradition and modernity.

Collaborative Solutions for Respectful Integration:
Collaboration between religious leaders, cultural experts, and technical specialists ensures that lighting solutions seamlessly integrate into the physical and spiritual fabric of sacred spaces, respecting their sanctity while enhancing their visual allure.

The Future of Lighting in Sacred Spaces:
Looking ahead, advancements in LED technology will continue to expand the role of technology in sacred spaces, offering new possibilities for respectful and transformative lighting solutions. Our commitment to treating these spaces with reverence remains steadfast, preserving them as symbols of cultural heritage and spiritual sanctity.

Read the full article from Commercial Integrator HERE