Friday, November 7th, 2014

Time	Event
12:00a	3 Questions: Lita Nelsen and the Technology Licensing Office Lita Nelsen has been part of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office (TLO) since 1986, and has been its director since 1992, helping to shape the Institute’s highly successful culture of technology spinoffs. This month, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the organization Global University Venturing. MIT News asked her to talk about how the TLO has achieved its outstanding record of success. Q. What do you think are the key factors that have made MIT such a fertile ground for entrepreneurial ventures? A. A lot of factors, growing from our history. Among them: A high volume of state-of-the-art research. The best and the brightest in faculty and students. “Mens et manus”:  the best science coupled with a desire to have impact in the real world, and a very long tradition of working collaboratively with the industrial world. Encouragement to take (intelligent) risk; failure is a learning experience, not a black mark. Many decades of companies spinning out of MIT: My husband and I graduated from MIT in the ’60s, and each of us joined our professors’ startup companies. An infrastructure that has developed in the region to support startup companies (venture-capital firms, lawyers, real-estate people, accountants, and so on, who understand startup companies) — which grew up symbiotically with MIT over those decades. Role models: If you are a student here, you are bound to meet many people here who have started companies; ditto for faculty who have colleagues who have already done it. And now, the MIT internal “entrepreneurial ecosystem” — the Enterprise Forum, Venture Mentoring Service, the Deshpande Center, the Trust Center, the $100K contest, and so on — all are there to educate and support people with ideas and entrepreneurial ambitions. Q. What is the TLO’s role in helping innovations that come out of MIT’s labs make the leap to becoming successful products in the marketplace? A. We protect the intellectual property ­— mostly through patents, so as to provide a good “dowry” to incentivize entrepreneurs to start companies. Then, we emphasize “getting the deal done fairly” rather than “getting the best deal.”  We can do this because we have excellent support and understanding from MIT’s senior administration. Together we understand: “Impact, not income”: It’s not about the money. Sure, we like it when our ships come in, but the primary focus is getting the deal done so that the technology gets developed.  Clearly articulated and simple, consistently enforced policies — so that every deal doesn’t involve a committee, and we can be very creative within policy. Senior staff with both technical background and extensive business experience so that they are “bilingual” in academia and industry. And each is personally devoted to the mission. It’s a great gang. And we really like our students and faculty; that’s highly motivating. Q. What kinds of lessons have you learned that might help people at other institutions foster the creation of new businesses based on their research? A. In addition to the factors enumerated above, I would add: Keep it simple: clear policies, with consistent support from above. Don’t try to get rich from tech transfer. The statistics are against you; you might get lucky occasionally, but that’s not the purpose. Give it time; the current internal/external infrastructures in Kendall Square have developed over 50 years or more. Hire bright, creative people with a sense of mission. (Comment on this)
12:00a	Weekend adventures Unbeknownst to most of MIT’s daytime denizens, an underground guild of “assassins” roams Building 36 on Saturday nights during the school year. Armed with brightly colored rubber-dart blasters, these members of the Institute’s “Assassins’ Guild” — a live-action role-playing society — strategize with one another, working with allies to outwit enemy teams.  The weekly games continue a tradition begun at the Institute some three decades ago. “Patrol,” a high-action game of dart-gun combat, is the group’s gateway offering, focused more on combat strategy than on propelling a character through an interactive world. Senior Tom Boning, brandishing a bright orange plastic blaster and wearing the skull-and-crossbones headband that identifies him as game master, is in charge of explaining the rules of the game to newcomers. “The objective is to have fun,” Boning explains. “You do this by ‘shooting’ people and dodging other people’s ‘bullets.’” The plastic dart shooters come exclusively in fluorescent colors — the better to avoid confusion with actual weapons — and require users to load the darts one-by-one in a very specific orientation. “They don’t fire very far,” Boning cautions. “To rectify this, we have a technique called ‘throwing the dart,’ where you throw your arm forward as you fire, and you get about twice the distance.”  Besides having to keep a safe distance from those throwing darts, players are forbidden from shooting others in the face. Those who’ve been shot can “resurrect” themselves, as many times as they want, simply by proceeding to a stairwell. “Schemes, trickery, and death” Beyond the weekly sessions of Patrol, many weekends are booked for more complex Assassins’ Guild games — some of them stretching for up to 10 days. “In our games, every player becomes a character in a real-time, real-space game of schemes, trickery, and death,” the Assassins’ Guild website says. “Come with us and experience the ancient past, the distant future, or both at the same time. Travel to a different star system as a desperate captain willing to do anything to stay alive. Become a mage and work a ritual to cast the most powerful spell ever. Become the ultimate super-spy and defeat the menacing agents of SWORD before they have the whole world under the control of their orbital mind-control lasers.” For many students, each game is much-anticipated — for some, beginning long before they even apply to MIT. Freshman and Patrol player Victoria Longe says, “When I was looking up MIT and looking for things that I wanted to do, I also found their Assassins’ Guild and I was like, ‘I have to do this.’” Boning first read about the Assassins’ Guild on a poster in the Infinite Corridor during a campus visit while still in high school. Susan Shepherd, also a senior, discovered the group on MIT’s website two years before she applied.  A three-decade tradition The Assassins’ Guild’s allure to students is not a new phenomenon: The group arose out of meetings that began in 1983. Key members in the group’s early days included Stephen Balzac ’85, SM ’87, Charles Goldman ’86, and the late Bob Baldwin ’82, SM ’82, PhD ’87.  Balzac had been participating in interactive role-playing games and applied to MIT’s Association of Student Activities (ASA) to form a group that would allow students to reserve rooms for gaming and to fund attendance at interactive gaming conferences. Initially, he says, ASA staffers “were a little weirded out by this Assassins’ Guild thing.” But throughout the group’s existence, members have worked closely with the ASA — and with the MIT Police — to ensure that it all remains in good fun. About a year and a half ago, Capt. Craig Martin of the MIT Police began working with the Assassins’ Guild. “I reached out to them to make sure that we’re all on the same page and make sure that their games are safe for everyone,” he says. “They were pretty forthcoming. They agreed to notify me whenever they were going to have games. We talked about the importance of not using realistic-looking weapons, and making it apparent to [bystanders] that it was a game.” Indeed, the scene of enthusiastic MIT students wielding rubber-dart guns in shades of neon is more reminiscent of analog laser tag than of anything as nefarious as an actual assassination. Balzac, who says he now applies interactive game-playing principles to his work running a management consulting business and writing books on organizational psychology, explains that some of the Assassins’ Guild’s enduring appeal lies in its ability to transport people outside of their everyday worlds.  “When you’re playing in a fantasy in this type of game and you’re essentially playing an alter ego, it is possible to learn from your mistakes in ways that are very difficult when you’re being who you are,” he says. The Assassins’ Guild brings people together in intense situations both collaborative and competitive. For Balzac, it even sparked a longstanding romance: He met his wife, Aimee Yermish ’88, while the two were role-playing as students at MIT. (Comment on this)
1:30p	Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook dies at 60 Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, associate dean for international students and director of MIT’s International Students Office (ISO), passed away Wednesday at her home in Newton, Mass., surrounded by family. She was 60. Her death was announced by her husband’s employer, radio station WBUR, which said the cause was cancer. An immigrant of French and German descent, Guichard-Ashbrook received her BA in 1977 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and married her high-school sweetheart, Tom Ashbrook, now the host of the nationally syndicated NPR program “On Point.” She received a master's degree in education from Harvard University in 1982. Her early career included positions as an academic coordinator for a Japan-based U.S. educational company, and as a program supervisor for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Guichard-Ashbrook joined MIT in 1988 as a staff assistant for international students in the Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and was promoted to staff associate in 1990 and to assistant dean in Student Assistance Services in 1993. In 1995, the organization moved under the oversight of the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education and was renamed as the International Students Office. In 2000, Guichard-Ashbrook was appointed interim director of the ISO; she was named director and associate dean for international students in 2001.  “Danielle was a dear colleague, as well as a nationally recognized expert in international student issues and global education,” says Christine Ortiz, MIT’s dean for graduate education. “She led one of the most complex and critically important organizations at the Institute with grace, passion, excellence, dedication, and warmth — her contributions to our students, to our office, and to MIT were immense. Danielle was a steadfast champion for the well-being of our students, and continually strived to create a welcoming and inclusive climate for all. She was a cherished member of our team, and of our community, and we will miss her greatly.” Robert Randolph, now chaplain to the Institute, worked with Guichard-Ashbrook throughout her time at MIT. He praises her as “extremely knowledgeable in her area of expertise. She and Tom had travelled widely before they settled here in Boston, and she had good instincts about what it meant to be a stranger in a strange land.” As ISO director, Guichard-Ashbrook oversaw an extensive array of services associated with maintaining the legal immigration status of all of MIT’s international students, their dependents, and the approximately 650 international alumni each year who have recently graduated and are working in the United States on work authorization. She led the ISO through a period of extraordinary change: Not only did the Institute’s international student population nearly double during her tenure, but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the scale and complexity of immigration regulations in the United States increased dramatically. The ISO now interfaces with three times as many government agencies as it did when Guichard-Ashbrook became its director; reporting requirements have increased greatly; and the Institute’s students travel internationally more often. “She was able to hold steady in changing times while keeping up with what students needed,” Randolph says. “Never drawing attention to herself, she served her students and MIT with grace and wisdom.” Personal support became a focus of the ISO under Guichard-Ashbrook’s leadership. In 2013, the entire ISO staff was selected as a team recipient of an MIT Infinite Mile Award, having “continuously shown above-and-beyond dedication, expertise, commitment, effort, and excellence in their support and service to MIT students,” Ortiz said at the time. ISO advisors note that many conversations initiated to address practical arrangements naturally grow to include other happenings in a student’s life. ISO staff members always make themselves available to provide caring and specialized support, advising, and mentoring to international students, as Guichard-Ashbrook had been doing since 1988. Over the decades, as the immigration landscape changed, Guichard-Ashbrook shared her own knowledge and expertise as a regular presenter at regional gatherings of the Association of International Educators. The organization awarded her a Distinguished Service Award in 1997 for regularly bringing together the Boston-area community of international educators. In recent years, she had also served as a member of the Government Regulatory Advisory Committee, offering critical feedback and logistical advice as new regulations and policies were distributed from government agencies. Her advice shaped the way policy is executed not only at MIT, but at universities across the country. Guichard-Ashbrook is survived by her husband, Tom Ashbrook, of Newton; her children, Dylan Ashbrook of San Francisco, Benjamin Ashbrook of Los Angeles, and Lauren Ashbrook of New Haven, Conn.; and her granddaughter, Evie Ashbrook. The daughter of Robert and Barbara Guichard, she is also survived by her sisters, Elisabeth Hiltabrand, Peg Watters, and Natalie Milby. A memorial service will be held Saturday, Nov. 15, at 2 p.m. at Wilson Chapel on the campus of Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, Mass. Arrangements are being made for charitable contributions in Guichard-Ashbrook’s memory; for more information, contact Heather Konar, communications officer for the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education, at konar@mit.edu. (Comment on this)

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