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Wednesday, January 27th, 2016
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| 1:30a |
MIT joins collaboration to bring connected learning experiences to Indian students and teachers Tata Trusts, a philanthropic organization that works to advance community and educational development in India, will collaborate with MIT and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to launch the Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx), a program to create new learning experiences and educational opportunities for secondary school students in India, in grades 8 through 11.
Over 1,000 schools across four Indian states — Mizoram, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh — have agreed to participate in CLIx, allowing it to reach an estimated 165,000 students by 2018-19. The program will offer content in both English and regional languages, starting with Hindi and Telugu, and will offer curricula in English, science, mathematics, and professional values. An additional major focus will be professional development for roughly 4,400 teachers in the four states.
Today’s announcement of the launch of CLIx, in Mumbai, was attended by Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Trusts; MIT President L. Rafael Reif; S. Ramadorai, chairperson of the board at TISS; S. Parasuraman, director of TISS; and representatives of the four Indian states that will participate in CLIx and of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development.
“Tata Trusts have initiated partnership with the finest institutions globally to find innovative solutions to pressing social issues in India,” Mr. Tata says. “Indian education is at a crossroads: With large numbers of students entering secondary education for the first time in Indian education history, on one hand, and new advances in technology and connectivity, on another, we have a unique opportunity to provide quality education at scale. Through focus on English, science, mathematics, and values for work preparedness, CLIx promises to break new ground.”
CLIx will align technology-integrated offerings with existing school curricula. In sync with India’s national goal of improving the quality of secondary education, the initiative intends to leverage new technologies, enhance professional development of teachers, and create an open ecosystem to foster collaboration for innovation.
CLIx has its roots in a visit Mr. Tata made to MIT several years ago, in which President Reif and others from MIT’s Office of Digital Learning described edX — an online-learning platform, launched by MIT and Harvard University, that offers university-level coursework to learners worldwide. Inspired by the potential to use digital tools to enhance secondary education on a very large scale, Mr. Tata began the conversations that led to CLIx. After a year of work by Tata Trusts, MIT, and TISS, CLIx will leverage Open edX, along with other educational technology, to deliver active learning resources and experiences to students in Indian secondary schools.
“At MIT, we believe online learning technologies can offer teachers (and learners) everywhere the tools to transform the educational experience by engaging students in active learning that stimulates their curiosity, makes every lesson more memorable, and helps build skills relevant to students’ experiences,” President Reif says. “CLIx is the most ambitious effort to date to put these ideas into practice, and we are honored to be working with the Tata Trusts toward our shared vision of quality learning for all.”
CLIx will offer young people, especially from lower- and middle-income rural areas of India, access to interactive, hands-on learning experiences to advance their knowledge and skills, and to instill values to help them succeed as professionals and citizens, with a focus on cultivating students’ sense of professionalism.
CLIx’s instruction is largely interactive and hands-on, making it a valuable complement to the education currently offered in India’s secondary schools. It augments the existing curriculum in grades 8, 9, and 11, so that it does not interfere with the all-important Board Exams that Indian students take in grades 10 and 12.
A central focus for CLIx is building capacity in the system to help these educational enhancements take root and spread. Accordingly, the initiative will not only prepare teachers to blend online technologies into their teaching, but also build a cadre of educators prepared to become digital-learning innovators themselves.
The Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research has been created at TISS to incubate CLIx, and will serve as the key Indian collaborator with MIT.
“We believe that the CLIx initiative will help to energize and transform secondary schools by providing innovative and powerful experiences for students and for teachers,” says TISS Director S. Parasuraman. “The scale proposed and the effort to reach and connect with rural and semi-rural schools using Indian languages makes CLIx a unique initiative. Indian education needs scalable solutions to improve quality education for the large cohort of youth who are first-generation school-goers. It is a privilege for us to be working with the Tata Trusts and MIT and to lead CLIx in India.”
A strong focus on research, measurement, and impact assessment will inform the future scale-up of CLIx. Agreements signed with the four state governments participating in CLIx will leverage and strengthen existing infrastructure in those states’ high schools. The project will also draw upon the expertise of carefully selected curriculum development partners such as Eklavya, the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, as well as implementation partners like Mizoram University, State Council for Education Research and Training (SCERT) Telangana, the Centre for Education Research and Practice, and UNICEF Chhattisgarh. | | 10:15a |
New chip fabrication approach Today, computer chips are built by stacking layers of different materials and etching patterns into them.
But in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, MIT researchers and their colleagues report the first chip-fabrication technique that enables significantly different materials to be deposited in the same layer. They also report that, using the technique, they have built chips with working versions of all the circuit components necessary to produce a general-purpose computer.
The layers of material in the researchers’ experimental chip are extremely thin — between one and three atoms thick. Consequently, this work could abet efforts to manufacture thin, flexible, transparent computing devices, which could be laminated onto other materials. “The methodology is universal for many kinds of structures,” says Xi Ling, a postdoc in the Research Laboratory of Electronics and one of the paper’s first authors. “This offers us tremendous potential with numerous candidate materials for ultrathin circuit design.”
The technique also has implications for the development of the ultralow-power, high-speed computing devices known as tunneling transistors and, potentially, for the integration of optical components into computer chips.
“It’s a brand new structure, so we should expect some new physics there,” says Yuxuan Lin, a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and the paper’s other first author.
Ling and Lin are joined on the paper by Mildred Dresselhaus, an Institute Professor emerita of physics and electrical engineering; Jing Kong, an ITT Career Development Professor of Electrical Engineering; Tomás Palacios, an associate professor of electrical engineering; and by another 10 MIT researchers and two more from Brookhaven National Laboratory and Taiwan’s National Tsing-Hua University.
Strange bedfellows
Computer chips are built from crystalline solids, materials whose atoms are arranged in a regular geometrical pattern known as a crystal lattice. Previously, only materials with closely matched lattices have been deposited laterally in the same layer of a chip. The researchers’ experimental chip, however, uses two materials with very different lattice sizes: molybdenum disulfide and graphene, which is a single-atom-thick layer of carbon.
Moreover, the researchers’ fabrication technique generalizes to any material that, like molybdenum disulfide, combines elements from group six of the periodic table, such as chromium, molybdenum, and tungsten, and elements from group 16, such as sulfur, selenium, and tellurium. Many of these compounds are semiconductors — the type of material that underlies transistor design — and exhibit useful behavior in extremely thin layers.
Graphene, which the researchers chose as their second material, has many remarkable properties. It’s the strongest known material, but it also has the highest known electron mobility, a measure of how rapidly electrons move through it. As such, it’s an excellent candidate for use in thin-film electronics or, indeed, in any nanoscale electronic devices.
To assemble their laterally integrated circuits, the researchers first deposit a layer of graphene on a silicon substrate. Then they etch it away in the regions where they wish to deposit the molybdenum disulfide.
Next, at one end of the substrate, they place a solid bar of a material known as PTAS.
They heat the PTAS and flow a gas across it and across the substrate. The gas carries PTAS molecules with it, and they stick to the exposed silicon but not to the graphene. Wherever the PTAS molecules stick, they catalyze a reaction with another gas that causes a layer of molybdenum disulfide to form.
In previous work, the researchers characterized a range of materials that promote the formation of crystals of other compounds, any of which could be plugged into the process.
Future electronics
The new fabrication method could open the door to more powerful computing if it can be used to produce tunneling-transistor processors. Fundamentally, a transistor is a device that can be modulated to either allow a charge to cross a barrier or prohibit it from crossing. In a tunneling transistor, the charge crosses the barrier by means of a counterintuitive quantum-mechanical effect, in which an electron can be thought of as disappearing at one location and reappearing at another.
These effects are subtle, so they’re more pronounced at extremely small scales, like the one- to three-atom thicknesses of the layers in the researchers’ experimental chip. And, because electron tunneling is immune to the thermal phenomena that limit the efficiency of conventional transistors, tunneling transistors can operate at very low power and could achieve much higher speeds.
"This work is very exciting,” says Philip Kim, a physics professor at Harvard University. “The MIT team demonstrated that controlled stitching of two completely different, atomically thin 2-D materials is possible. The electrical properties of the resulting lateral heterostructures are very impressive." | | 11:00a |
Mapping regulatory elements All the tissues in the human body are made from proteins, and for every protein, there’s a stretch of DNA in the human genome that “codes” for it, or describes the sequence of amino acids that will produce it.
But these coding regions constitute only about 1 percent of the genome, and scattered throughout the other 99 percent are sequences involved in regulating gene expression, or determining which coding regions will be translated into proteins. And when.
In the latest issue of Nature Biotechnology, researchers at MIT and Harvard Medical School describe a new technique for systematically but efficiently searching long stretches of the genome for regulatory elements. And in their first application of the technique, they find evidence that current thinking about gene regulation is incomplete.
“Conventional assays have chopped out little pieces of the genome and asked whether they’re sufficient for driving gene expression,” says David Gifford, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and one of the new paper’s senior authors. “There are two limitations to that. The first is that it may be that something is sufficient for gene activation, but that does not mean that it’s necessary. And vice versa: If something is necessary, it may not be sufficient. So these assays really don’t reveal the complete story on the function of genomic DNA.”
“The other problem with these assays is that they are not done in a native context,” Gifford adds — that is, the excised segments of DNA are not in their normal location within the genome. “We were interested in using a direct assay that revealed the necessity of a genomic sequence in its native context — in the cell, in the place in the genome where it normally resides. We mutate it right where it normally functions.”
Nisha Rajagopal, a postdoc in Gifford’s group, is lead author on the paper. Richard Sherwood, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, is the other senior author, and they’re joined by seven other researchers in both Gifford’s and Sherwood’s groups.
Unmarked paths
In recent years, one of the main techniques for identifying regulatory elements in the genome has been the use of so-called histone marks. In the cell, DNA is usually wrapped into tight coils around proteins called histones. The ends of the histones frequently have modifications — such as the addition of acetyl or methyl groups.
Those modifications are the histone marks, and certain marks appear to be associated with the suppression or promotion of gene expression. Biologists find histones bearing these marks, slice out the segments of DNA wrapped around them, and sequence the DNA. When they find the corresponding sequences in the map of the genome, they can begin conducting narrowly targeted experiments to try to identify regulatory elements.
The MIT and Harvard researchers’ technique, however, has identified regions of the genome that appear to play a crucial role in gene regulation, but which have not previously been associated with histone marks. “Science is always subject to a set of assumptions,” Gifford says. “What this whole study demonstrates, in my opinion, is that it’s important to think carefully about our assumptions. It doesn't disprove the assumptions categorically, but it in some sense demands further exploration of what is necessary for genomic function.”
Gifford and his colleagues’ technique is an application of the CRISPR gene-editing system. CRISPR is a method for cutting DNA; the researchers found a way to space those cuts at regular intervals around a protein-coding region of interest. In the new paper, they report experiments in which they exhaustively searched spans of tens of thousands of base pairs, or DNA letters, around each of four known protein-coding regions.
RNA guides
To make cuts at regular intervals, the researchers designed 4,000 guide RNAs, small biological molecules that lead the CRISPR cutting enzyme to the right locations in the genome.
In the researchers’ experiments, the guide RNAs are manufactured inside the cell. For all the guide RNAs, the researchers constructed DNA templates, which the cells naturally absorbed. On average, each DNA template showed up in about 1,000 cells. Each cell converted exactly one DNA template into a guide RNA, which led the CRISPR cutting enzyme to a specific location in the genome.
At each of those locations, the CRISPR enzyme cut the DNA. When the cells tried to repair those cuts, the DNA sequences at the repair sites became garbled. In some cases, the garbling prevented the cells from manufacturing the appropriate proteins, indicating regions of functional importance.
The researchers then conducted a second set of experiments, targeting just those regions, to determine the precise sequences whose modification interrupted protein production. Around each of the four protein-coding sequences they investigated, they found multiple stretches of roughly 1,000 base pairs that showed strong signs of regulatory activity, but which histone marks had not previously identified.
It could be, Gifford says, that those stretches were present in only a subset of cells, and that they were in fact associated with histone marks; the standard technique for identifying histone modifications relies on average measurements across the cell population, so it could miss outliers. Gifford, Rajagopal, and colleagues are continuing to investigate these regions, to determine just what’s going in them. | | 11:00a |
Christine Ortiz to step down as dean for graduate education Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart announced today that Christine Ortiz will step down as MIT’s dean for graduate education at the end of this academic year, concluding six years of distinguished service.
In an email to the MIT community, Barnhart thanked Ortiz for leading the Office of Dean for Graduate Education (ODGE), which includes the International Students Office (ISO) and Graduate Student Council (GSC) staff. Barnhart noted that Ortiz, who is the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, plans to take a one-year leave from the Institute.
“An enthusiastic and strategic champion for innovations in graduate programming, student success, academic excellence, and diversity and inclusion, Christine has helped build a graduate student community renowned for its talent, curiosity, and commitment to making the world a better place,” Barnhart wrote.
“From the moment she began as dean, Christine’s commitment to MIT’s graduate student body has been inspiring,” adds MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “From housing to professional development, admissions to diversity, she has dedicated herself to understanding our students’ needs and driving positive change. I am personally grateful that, as a member of Academic Council, she has kept the evolving needs of our graduate student community at the center of our thoughts.”
Collaboration across MIT’s schools, academic departments, and administrative offices has been a hallmark of Ortiz’s tenure. By acting as the catalyst and convener for cross-institutional initiatives and encouraging the regular sharing of best practices, Ortiz has strengthened diversity and support networks and developed new initiatives for professional development, global education, and recruitment.
“Leading the ODGE and the graduate student community has been a great honor,” Ortiz says. “I am forever grateful for the dedication and expertise of the ODGE, ISO, and GSC staff, as well as staff and faculty partners across the Institute, who have been incredible colleagues, thinking partners, and friends.”
“A particular highlight of my time as dean was partnering with the Graduate Student Council, an exemplar organization of student governance, collegiality, and effective advocacy,” Ortiz says. “I am also grateful to the thousands of amazing MIT students whom I had the opportunity to interact with and who brought so much joy to my life and taught me more than I could ever teach them.”
Since 2010, the underrepresented minority graduate student population has increased by 30 percent, thanks in part to Ortiz’s focus on increasing and sustaining fellowship funding and external recruitment and retention programs. She also played a critical role in securing a major grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a University Center of Exemplary Mentoring for the recruitment, mentoring, and retention of underrepresented minority doctoral students.
In addition to accelerating departmental diversity efforts, Ortiz made strengthening support systems for graduate students a central priority. She championed the expansion of the Resources for Easing Friction and Stress (REFS) program to serve all MIT graduate students in partnership with the GSC, and convened a Working Group on International Student Support that led to more resources for the ISO to develop cultural acclimation programming and other initiatives.
Ortiz also placed focus on support for student families, collaborating with the MIT Work-Life Center in the creation of a backup childcare initiative and a pilot family childcare network program in MIT family housing.
On the professional development, global education, and recruitment fronts, Ortiz supported online platforms as well as programming such as the Imperial Global Fellows Program, and acted as a mentor through Graduate Women at MIT. She also assembled an Institute-wide Committee on Graduate Admissions in 2011 and supported the Institute’s transition to the centralized, electronic graduate admissions platform developed by Professors Frans Kaashoek and Robert Morris.
Ortiz worked with the GSC and the vice president for research to convene an inclusive committee that will recommend Institute graduate stipend rates annually.
Ortiz joined the MIT faculty after receiving a BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MS and PhD degrees from Cornell University. She has authored more than 175 scientific publications, and supervised over 80 students across 10 academic disciplines. Ortiz has received honors including the MIT Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award, and is the founding and current faculty director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Israel Program.
Barnhart wrote in her letter to the community that she plans to consult broadly with the MIT community in the coming weeks about Ortiz’s transition and the opportunities it presents for ODGE. Community members are encouraged to share their insights about the office and role by emailing grad-input@mit.edu. |
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