Wednesday, February 24th, 2016

Time	Event
12:00a	In Profile: Pablo Jarillo-Herrero Scotch tape is a staple in Pablo Jarillo-Herrero’s lab. The sticky material is surprisingly effective at isolating graphene, a delicate lattice of carbon atoms that is both the thinnest and toughest material in the world. Since its discovery in 2005, graphene has been hailed as something of a miracle material, with the potential to revolutionize whole industries, from energy and electronics to health care and construction. Jarillo-Herrero sees graphene as a wild frontier, with endless opportunities to explore and exploit the material’s exceptional properties. With tape in hand and plenty of patience, Jarillo-Herrero peels off layers of graphite — the same stuff of pencil lead — in hopes of isolating a single, gossamer sheet of graphene, just a single atom thick. Then, the fun begins. “For a good fraction of our time, my grad students and I are just sort of playing, seeking to discover,” says Jarillo-Herrero, who was granted tenure this year, as associate professor of physics. Jarillo-Herrero studies the electrical and optical properties of graphene and other atomically thin materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides and topological insulators. These ultrathin materials exhibit quantum mechanical properties that can induce extraordinary behaviors in any electrons flowing through them. For example, electrons that flow through graphene can do so across long distances without colliding with obstacles — a quality that makes graphene the best electrical conductor in the world and a possible successor to silicon. Jarillo-Herrero is exploring the flow of electrons through single sheets of graphene as well as stacked configurations, and in combination with other ultrathin materials. He subjects these “graphene nanodevices” to a range of environmental conditions, including strong magnetic fields and ultracold temperatures. To do all this, he has equipped his lab with powerful magnets, cryostats of liquid helium, and ovens in which to grow new materials. In describing his experimental approach, Jarrillo-Herrero says that often, “we have something in mind, and we aim at that, but we’re secretly hoping something more interesting will happen, and we have fun exploring the unexpected behavior.” From theory to experiment Experimentation was far from his mind when Jarillo-Herrero was first contemplating a career in physics. As a high school student in Valencia, Spain, he participated in an international physics Olympiad and quickly took to the theoretical problems that the challenge posed. Later, when enrolling at the University of Valencia, he chose to study theoretical physics. “In Spain, the theorists were the professors who had more prestige,” Jarillo-Herrero recalls. “High-energy theoretical physics was the cool thing to do.” A professor suggested applying to graduate programs in the United States, and Jarillo-Herrero, following his advice, was accepted to the University of California at San Diego. He went with the intention of pursuing a PhD in theoretical physics. However, once there, he began attending seminars outside his concentration and was fascinated with research advances in experimental physics, in particular condensed matter physics, in which scientists attempt to manipulate matter to explore principles of quantum mechanics. With this newfound direction, Jarillo-Herrero headed to the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he earned a PhD in condensed matter physics. A little luck, a lot of work The transition from theory to experimental work was a rough one, as he recalls. Most graduate students in his program had already completed a master’s degree in experimental physics, while he was learning to do experimental work on the fly. “For the first two-and-a-half years, I had zero results, no prospects of any results, and was constantly asking myself if maybe this was a mistake, maybe I should be a theorist after all,” Jarillo-Herrero says. “Then one day, in one experiment, we discovered something completely unexpected, and there was this explosion of results.” That one experiment, in which he suspended a carbon nanotube between two electrodes and observed the symmetric behavior of electrons and holes in quantum dots, led to Jarillo-Herrero’s first publication, in the journal Nature. “People say, luck has to catch you working,” Jarillo-Herrero says. “When you’re working around things you think are interesting, surprises happen often. And in condensed matter physics, things are often surprising. I would say that’s been a theme throughout my career.” Playing with the unexpected In 2008, he joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor of physics, after a one-year fellowship at Columbia University. That first year, Jarillo-Herrero remembers being overwhelmed by the demands of teaching, research, and setting up his lab space. “I tend to think of myself as a pretty slow starter,” Jarillo-Herrero says. “Like my PhD, MIT was similar: a little struggle to get started, not much happening, and then, vroom, things picked up, and things have been going quite well. It’s funny how things evolve sometimes.” Indeed, his experimental work has earned him numerous awards, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which gave him the opportunity to meet briefly with President Obama and tour the White House. “As a foreigner, it’s relatively hard to actually visit the White House, so it was very inspiring,” Jarillo-Herrero says. He and his group are experimenting with new combinations of ultrathin materials, which may ultimately lead to more powerful computer chips and efficient solar cells. But for now, what motivates Jarillo-Herrero is the trove of basic knowledge yet to be discovered. “Now there are many materials similar in spirit to graphene, meaning they can be obtained in atomically thin dimensions,” Jarillo-Herrero says. “We’re just playing with all of them, and combining them into interesting structures. The properties of those materials are hard to predict and unexpected. And that’s exciting.” (Comment on this)
12:00a	Will we ever stop using fossil fuels? In recent years, proponents of clean energy have taken heart in the falling prices of solar and wind power, hoping they will drive an energy revolution. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor suggests otherwise: Technology-driven cost reductions in fossil fuels will lead us to continue using all the oil, gas, and coal we can, unless governments pass new taxes on carbon emissions.  “If we don’t adopt new policies, we’re not going to be leaving fossil fuels in the ground,” says Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “We need both a policy like a carbon tax and to put more R&D money into renewables.” While renewable energy has made promising gains in just the last few years — the cost of solar dropped by about two-thirds from 2009 to 2014 — new drilling and extraction techniques have made fossil fuels cheaper and markedly increased the amount of oil and gas we can tap into. In the U.S. alone, oil reserves have expanded 59 percent between 2000 and 2014, and natural gas reserves have expanded 94 percent in the same time. “You often hear, when fossil fuel prices are going up, that if we just leave the market alone we’ll wean ourselves off fossil fuels,” adds Knittel. “But the message from the data is clear: That’s not going to happen any time soon.” This trend — in which cheaper renewables are outpaced by even cheaper fossil fuels — portends drastic climate problems, since fossil fuel use has helped produce record warm temperatures worldwide. The study concludes that burning all available fossil fuels would raise global average temperatures 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100; burning oil shale and methane hydrates, two more potential sources of copious fossil fuels, would add another 1.5 to 6.2 degrees Fahrenheit to that. “Such scenarios imply difficult-to-imagine change in the planet and dramatic threats to human well-being in many parts of the world,” the paper states. The authors add that “the world is likely to be awash in fossil fuels for decades and perhaps even centuries to come.” The paper, “Will We Ever Stop Using Fossil Fuels?,” is published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The authors are Knittel, who is MIT’s William Barton Rogers Professor in Energy; Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics and the College at the University of Chicago; and Thomas Covert, an assistant professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. The scholars examine costs over a time frame of five to 10 years, stating that further forecasts would be quite speculative, although the trend of cheaper fossil fuels could continue longer. More efficient extraction At least two technological advances have helped lower fossil fuel prices and expanded reserves: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has unlocked abundant natural gas supplies, and the production of oil from tar sands. Canada, where this type of oil production began in 1967, did not recognize tar sands as reserves until 1999 — an energy-accounting decision that increased world oil reserves by about 10 percent. “There are hydrocarbons that we can now take out of the ground that 10 or 20 years ago we couldn’t,” Knittel observes. So whereas some energy analysts once thought the apparently limited amount of oil reserves would make the price of oil unfeasibly high at some point, that dynamic seems less likely now. To see how much better firms are at extracting fossil fuels from the Earth, consider this: The probability of an exploratory oil well being successful was 20 percent in 1949 and just 16 percent in the late 1960s, but by 2007 that figure had risen to 69 percent, and today it’s around 50 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As a result of these improved oil and gas extraction techniques, we have consistently had about 50 years’ worth of accessible oil and natural gas reserves in the ground over the last 30 years, the scholars note. All told, global consumption of fossil fuels rose significantly from 2005 through 2014: about 7.5 percent for oil, 24 percent for coal, and 20 percent for natural gas. About 65 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are derived from fossil fuels, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of those emissions, coal generates about 45 percent, oil around 35 percent, and natural gas about 20 percent. Renewable hope To be sure, renewable energy has seen an impressive decline in its prices within the last decade. But looking at the “levelized” cost of energy (which accounts for its long-term production and costs), solar is still about twice as expensive as natural gas. The need to handle sharp evening increases in power consumption — what energy analysts call the “duck curve” of demand — also means power suppliers, already wary of solar power’s potential to reduce their revenues, may continue to invest in fossil fuel-based power plants. The development of better battery technology, for storing electricity, is vital for increased use of renewables in both electricity and transportation, where electric vehicles can be plugged into the grid for charging. But the example of electric vehicles also shows how far battery technology must progress to make a large environmental impact. Currently only 12 percent of fossil fuel-based power plants are sufficiently green that electric vehicles powered by them are responsible for fewer emissions than a Toyota Prius. Alternately, look at it this way: Currently battery costs for an electric vehicle are about $325 per kilowatt-hour (KwH). At that cost, Knittel, Greenstone, and Covert calculate, the price of oil would need to exceed $350 per barrel to make an electric vehicle cheaper to operate. But in 2015, the average price of oil was about $49 per barrel. “It’s certainly the case that solar and wind prices have fallen dramatically and battery costs have fallen,” Knittel says. “But the price of gas is a third almost of what it used to be. It’s tough to compete against $1.50 gasoline. On the electricity side … the cheap natural gas still swamps, in a negative way, the cost of solar and even wind.” Emphasizing the case for a carbon tax That may change, of course. As Knittel observes, new solar techniques — such as thin-film layers that integrate solar arrays into windows — may lead to even steeper reductions in the price of renewables, especially as they could help reduce installation costs, a significant part of the solar price tag. Still, the immediate problem of accumulating carbon emissions means some form of carbon tax is necessary, Knittel says — especially given what we now know about declining fossil fuel costs. “Clearly we need to get out in front of climate change, and the longer we wait, the tougher it’s going to be,” Knittel emphasizes. Knittel supports the much-discussed policy lever of a carbon tax to make up for the disparity in energy costs. That concept could take several specific forms. One compelling reason for it, from an economists’ viewpoint, is that fossil fuels impose costs on society — “externalities” — that users do not share. These include the increased health care costs that result from fossil fuel pollution, or the infrastructure costs that are likely to result from rising sea levels.  “Taxes on externalities are not inconsistent with the free-market system,” Knittel says. “In fact, they’re required to make the free-market system achieve the efficient outcome. This idea that a pure free-market economy never has taxes is wrong.” Knittel adds: “The point of the paper is that if we don’t adopt policies, we’re not leaving fossils fuels in the ground.” (Comment on this)
1:00p	Media-sharing app for early education catches on nationwide As an MIT Sloan Fellow in 2011, Kin Lo MBA ’12 felt disconnected from his daughter, who had just started preschool in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon, the 3-year-old would be learning a host of things there, such as numbers or the alphabet, and Lo would never get to see. Then he had an epiphany. “Quickly I realized that, in preschool, educators want to share and document important developmental milestones, but they lack good tools to do it,” he says. “Teachers try to bridge that gap with text messaging and blogs and paper … but there was a disconnect with the way schools connect with the new generation of young, ‘digital-native’ parents.” Tapping MIT’s entrepreneurial resources, Lo created Kaymbu, an app and iPad system for preschools and elementary classrooms (K-5) that records and securely shares video and images of a child’s learning experiences with parents. Today, more than 3,000 teachers, who teach around 25,000 students in 350 schools across 43 states, use Kaymbu, sending out roughly a million messages monthly. “The feedback we get from teachers and parents about having a window into their child’s life, and seeing things they would have missed, is really inspiring,” Lo says. When teachers sign up for Kaymbu, they’re provided with an iPad preloaded with the app. Teachers can capture images and videos of students and tap a button to send them to designated parents instantly. Through the system, they can also send newsletters, emails, daily records, and emergency closings. As all recordings are stored and organized, they can also be used to build student portfolios or to assess a teacher’s lessons.   Similar online resources, such as popular photo-sharing sites and social media, are not suitable for preschool environments, due to privacy issues, Lo says. Kaymbu, he says, provides secure exchanges of media with no risk of anything going public: “We take all these technologies and behaviors that we use in our personal lives and integrate them in a way that works in a special environment.” A primary aim, Lo adds, is to help “schools and teachers to communicate easily and in a way that parents really engage with.” Competitive edge Most Kaymbu customers are preschools and private K-12 schools, while about 5 percent are public schools. Kaymbu, Lo says, gives these schools a competitive edge in a vast market. According to a 2012 report by market research organization IBIS World, in the United States there are about 53,000 commercial childcare facilities, including preschools, with combined annual revenue of $20 billion, and about 21,000 nonprofit facilities with combined annual revenue of about $13 billion. In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated daycare businesses could have some of the fastest employment growth of all industries through 2020. There are also about 30,860 private K-12 schools in the nation, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. “It’s a competitive market,” Lo says. “Parents have different options. [Schools are] looking to both stand out and develop relationships. In private K-12, their burden is to demonstrate that they can justify the cost of going to private school versus a public option.” One of the justifications is boosted engagement with parents, which is an important factor in student achievement, Lo says. “We see schools making a lot of effort to communicate with the community, whether through a website or a blog or a parent portal, but they get low engagement,” he says. “Parents have to log into something, or it’s in a format or channel they’re not used to accessing.” With Kaymbu, Lo says, communication is easier, so each of the million messages sent each month are usually opened twice on average. “We see amazing engagement by both parents and educators,” he says. Additionally, Kaymbu can aid in professional development, Lo adds. Teachers can share effective lessons with other teachers, and administrators have documentation of what’s going on in multiple classrooms, so they can offer praise and feedback. “This gives [teachers and administrators] visibility into different classrooms,” Lo says. Fake it ’til you make it A former marketer, Lo moved, along with his wife and daughter, from Florida to Cambridge, with entrepreneurial aspirations. “I’ve always known I wanted to do something entrepreneurial or create a new product or build something,” he says. “That was my inspiration for coming to the [MIT Sloan Fellows] program.” After dreaming up Kaymbu one day, Lo recruited MIT Sloan School of Management classmates to help develop the app out of the now-defunct MIT Beehive Cooperative, a space for MIT entrepreneurs. “Kaymbu” was Lo’s daughter way of pronouncing “Cambridge” when the family first moved to the city. But there was one problem: They didn’t really have the engineering chops to build a pilot app for customers. So they had to be creative. They downloaded onto a handful of iPads a free app that only allowed someone to take pictures and add captions. Then they delivered those iPads to eight different preschools in the Cambridge area, having received permission from teachers and parents. “We said, ‘Take pictures in class and add comments to them.’ At the end of the week, we’d pick the iPads up, bring them back to the Beehive, and fake the whole thing,” Lo says. They would download the images and craft emails manually to send to parents, as if it were an automated system. Parents could also click buttons in the emails that connected them to an online forum to discuss the app. “It was this rinky-dink thing,” Lo says. “But the main thing was it worked. We got great feedback; everybody loved it.” After a few weeks, two of the eight schools signed up as first customers for the product (and they remain customers today). In 2013, Kaymbu partnered with Boston-based app maker Rocket Insights to develop commercial Kaymbu apps and iPads. That summer, the company delivered the systems to schools across the state, before expanding nationally. Proving Kaymbu’s commercial viability through early experiments with local schools was key to the company’s success, Lo says. This was something engrained in him through MIT Sloan classes, and through mentors at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the Venture Mentoring Service. “That was a theme that came through on many different settings at MIT: experiment,” he says. “Don’t try to find the perfect solution, create things quickly and get rapid feedback and adapt, and adapt, and adapt. That was the initial catalyst to getting this off the ground.” (Comment on this)
2:55p	Suzy Nelson named vice president for student life Suzy M. Nelson, an academic leader with broad experience managing student affairs and residential life at Colgate University, Harvard University, Cornell University, and Syracuse University, has been named as MIT’s new vice president for student life, effective July 1. The appointment, following a comprehensive search, was announced today in a letter to the MIT community from Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart, to whom Nelson will report. She succeeds Costantino (Chris) Colombo, who last July announced his plans to retire as dean for student life. “Through her 32-year career in higher education, Suzy has served campus communities — Colgate, Harvard, Cornell, and Syracuse — as different from each other as they are from MIT,” Barnhart says. “Yet in each setting, she has built open, effective, lasting partnerships with students, faculty, and staff; used campus planning efforts to improve the quality of student life; and implemented student support systems that emphasize health, wellness, and safety. She comes to this new position with a keen appreciation for MIT’s unique cultures, traditions, and values, and an inspiring sense of how communities can flourish by working on hard problems together.” Nelson has served since 2012 as vice president and dean of the college at Colgate. She was previously associate dean of students and then dean of student life at Harvard, from 2005 to 2012, and associate dean of students for fraternity and sorority affairs at Cornell, from 1998 to 2005. “From our values and our mission to our sense of humor, the MIT community is unusual. I believe it is also unusually strong, and student life is the center of it all,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif says. “In Suzy Nelson, we have found someone who enjoys the qualities that make MIT different, and who demonstrates the kind of collaborative leadership and creative thinking that will help our community grow even stronger.” At MIT, Nelson will lead the Division of Student Life (DSL), which includes the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER) as well as the Institute’s offices of housing; dining; fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups; residential life programs; student citizenship; student outreach and support; student development; and religious life. Graduate and undergraduate housemasters will also work closely with Nelson. She will oversee a staff of more than 400, working to ensure the Institute’s commitment to a well-integrated student life program that values both formal and informal learning. “I am excited to begin this new opportunity: MIT is such a special place, with many creative and dedicated people who are thinking about new ways to better support students,” Nelson says. “Having now met several MIT faculty, staff, and students who care deeply about the quality of student life, I am eager to partner with others in creating a campus community where all students will thrive personally and intellectually.” Nelson currently oversees all aspects of the extracurricular experience for Colgate’s student body of roughly 3,000. She leads departments responsible for residential life; community service; religious life; cultural and LGBTQ programming; student wellness, counseling, and health services; campus safety; advising; crisis management; international student services; and fraternity and sorority affairs. Among other significant accomplishments during her tenure at Colgate, Nelson: restructured her division in ways that improved both the student experience and staff morale; developed a university-wide working plan on diversity and inclusion; co-developed a process for responding to sexual violence and bias incidents, and developed educational and prevention services to promote sexual health; designed a major renewal of residential facilities, creating faculty-led residential commons; implemented gender-neutral housing and preferred name/pronoun services; revamped the university’s emergency response to student crises and to students who abuse alcohol and other drugs; co-developed a program to support first-generation students through peer support, advising, and social programming; and expanded public service offerings and supported social entrepreneurship. Comprehensive search Nelson was selected as MIT’s new vice president for student life following a comprehensive search conducted by a committee of students, faculty, staff, and alumni appointed by Barnhart in the fall. Professor of physics Krishna Rajagopal, the chair of the MIT faculty, led the search committee. Members of the MIT community contributed to the search process at several points, including through meetings between committee members and students conducted by the Undergraduate Association and the Graduate Student Council, as well as by housemasters and DSL staff. A broad group of students, faculty, staff, and alumni were asked to identify priorities for the new vice president for student life and to discuss the challenges and opportunities currently facing DSL. Additionally, more than 30 undergraduate and graduate students were selected to interview several candidates and provide feedback to the search committee before a list of finalists was submitted to Barnhart. “The search committee members brought varied experience and perspectives to our task,” Rajagopal says. “After a semester of extensive, and intense, listening we came to a consistent view that we were looking for a partner for the chancellor who will engage with students, faculty, and staff in substantive and constructive ways and who will lead and inspire our Division of Student Life to new heights. As we entered the final stages of the search, I was asking myself how we would find a consensus. Suzy Nelson answered that question, eliciting broad support from a cross section of people across many sectors of our community and the unanimous enthusiasm of the committee. We are impressed with the breadth and depth of her knowledge and experience. She has a track record of meaningful engagement with students, faculty, and staff and has faced challenges with success. Suzy will be an outstanding student life leader for MIT.” “During our first committee meeting when the Chancellor charged us, it became very apparent that the due diligence the search required would be very high,” says junior Obasi Onuoha, a member of the search committee and vice president of the MIT Interfraternity Council. “Professor Rajagopal and the entire committee showed a strong commitment to gathering feedback from the community. As a student representative, I was sitting across the tables from deans, yet the concerns of the people I represented were given as much weight as anyone else. I am extremely pleased with both the search process and the result." Work at Harvard and Cornell In her work at Harvard, from 2005 to 2012, Nelson oversaw all matters related to undergraduate residential and student life, including responsibilities for athletics, public service, and policies related to alcohol, drug use, and sexual assault. As dean of student life, she led an organization comprising 13 faculty housemasters and an equal number of resident deans, 100 professional staffers, and 275 graduate student employees. Nelson’s achievements at Harvard include: spearheading a reorganization of Harvard’s offices of residential life and student activities, resulting in considerable cost savings; modifying recruitment strategies to increase the diversity of staff hires; facilitating a student-led sustained dialogue to address campus divisions related to race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and religion; serving on the executive planning team overseeing an extensive renovation of Harvard’s undergraduate residence halls; and implementing a multifaceted strategy to mitigate high-risk alcohol use among undergraduates. “The Graduate Student Council looks forward to the great opportunity to work with Suzy Nelson to continue to improve graduate student life at MIT,” says Michael McClellan, a member of the search committee and president of the Graduate Student Council. “The persistence, creativity, and collaborative spirit she brings to bear on graduate student issues will allow Suzy, along with the Graduate Student Council and the new dean for graduate education, to continue to enhance the vibrancy of the graduate student community.” At Cornell, Nelson oversaw the advisement and evaluation of 67 Greek-letter organizations with roughly 3,500 student members. During her tenure she introduced the university’s new fraternity and sorority strategic plan, including an assessment of student leaders’ organizational management and active engagement of alumni in supporting Greek life.  She managed 16 Cornell-owned facilities, many of which were renovated during her tenure. “What impressed me the most about Suzy was that she connected with everyone she met during her campus visits, particularly the students,” says senior Caitlin Heber, a member of the search committee and executive vice president of the Dormitory Council. “Her devotion to students, drive to solve difficult problems, and deep knowledge of the issues impacting student life — both nationally and at the campuses where she has worked — left each individual excited about her and desirous to work with her. I think Suzy is a fabulous fit for our community and I hope that after meeting her, all members of MIT will be as eager as I am to work with her to enhance student life at MIT.” Earlier in her career, Nelson worked at Syracuse University from 1993 to 1998, serving first as assistant director for leadership and student organizations and then as director of Greek life. She has also held student life positions at Siena College in Loudonville, New York, and at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, and has served as an instructor at various universities. A native of Oxford, New York, Nelson holds a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam, awarded in 1980; a master’s degree from Bowling Green State University, awarded in 1984; and a PhD in higher education administration from Syracuse University, awarded in 2010. (Comment on this)

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