Being pre-med at MIT: Chloe McCreery ’23 and Joanna Lin ’23
Chloe McCreery ’23 and Joanna Lin ’22, both alumni of The Tech, sat down to reflect on their journeys in medicine. McCreery graduated with a degree in Biological Engineering, and is a research associate in the Engreitz Lab at Stanford Medicine. Lin graduated with degrees in Biology and French in 2021, and then studied abroad in France. She is a 2nd-year medical student at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Silicon Souls: Priming beliefs about AI in chatbot conversations
I“The robotic shell or the human soul: Which one actually makes the AI? Is it the observable behavior that we see when we think of AI, or what we imagine the AI is on the inside that made it affect you?”
MIT Free Speech Alliance assembles a panel to debate whether STEM is systemically racist
"Polls show that many people do not dare to discuss this topic or other topics about racial justice, for fear of being accused of causing harm.”
Siddhu Pachipala ’27 on why politics is a necessary complement to scientific research
Siddhu Pachipala ’27 intends to study Course 17 (political science) at MIT. He believes there is a need to become fluent in both the languages of science and politics in order to change the world for the better. He sat down with The Tech to discuss his journey from a psychology researcher to an aspiring politician.
Drone deliveries will leave privacy concerns up in the air
Drone delivery services may become ubiquitous soon enough as drone operating prices decrease and demand for rapid delivery options increase. But what will they imply for consumer privacy?
LIGO researchers surpass the quantum limit
On Oct. 23, LIGO researchers at MIT, Caltech, and other institutions reported that they had surpassed the quantum limit. This marked a significant advance in quantum squeezing, a method for reducing quantum noise to obtain more precise measurements. Researchers will now be able to measure a larger volume of the universe by analyzing gravitational frequencies.
Your immune system could be the cause of memory loss
The immune response damages our ability to learn and remember things, even before symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease become apparent.
Data-driven policy for a better world
Developing strategies to lower the kidney discard rate and improve the kidney placement rate is one of the many problems MIT’s Blueprint Labs focuses on — it's an interdisciplinary group that uses economics- and data-oriented approaches to tackle problems in healthcare, education, and workforce policy.
Nuclear thermal propulsion: a key technology for space exploration
Research and development of nuclear thermal propulsion was stagnant between the end of the Space Race and the 2010s.
Discovering nature’s properties through nonlinear solid mechanics
The study of nonlinear solid mechanics subjects materials to extreme stress or strain to observe their properties and behavior. Examining these extremes enables a more complete understanding of these materials.
What’s it like to design a meal that floats?
What happens to astronauts when dinners, normally served off plates here on Earth, are instead squirted from shriveled plastic packages fitted with sphincters and tubes? When the movement and music of cooking is replaced with the injection of warm water into said packages?
For the love of broccoli
There is broccoli at MIT’s dining halls almost every week. The broccoli is usually steamed or roasted. Although I miss the garlic, ginger, oil, onions, coriander seed, chili, methi, and masala that go well with broccoli, I enjoy eating it bland. I should instead say that I love staring at its details. When broccoli is cooked well with spices, either the details get destroyed or the spices obscure the details. On the other hand, with steamed, unseasoned broccoli, I can look at its hierarchy of stalks that are self-similar at all levels and detailed heads to the point that my food gets cold.
Biosensing with fluorescent emulsions
Moreover, while the published work on this Janus detection system was for Listeria, this method is hardly limited to Listeria. By switching out the antibody from one to another, this system can be applied to practically any pathogen, whether bacterial or viral.
How the leopard gets its spots
Turing showed that with a combination of chemical kinetics (reaction speeds) and diffusion, structures now eponymously known as Turing patterns emerge.
Hen’s hunt for neutrinos
The Hen Lab is an experimental nuclear physics group, and they study the structure of the nucleus through scattering experiments.
Simulating galactic formation
The Caterpillar Project is made to simulate the formation of a large number of Milky Way-like galaxies at a high resolution from a statistical standpoint. The Caterpillar Project aims to understand galaxy formations by using dark-matter-only simulations.
Scientific collaboration in the era of COVID-19
Scientists across MIT and neighboring institutions are coming together to study the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2.
Fighting coronavirus through research
As one of the few labs authorized to conduct research on biosafety level three (BSL-3) viruses, the Gehrke Lab is studying pathologies of SARS-CoV-2 at the Ragon Institute.
Engineering nuclear policy
Interdisciplinary symbiosis inspires Scott Kemp’s work in MIT’s Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy (LNSP).
The Holten-Andersen Group’s approach to bio-inspired materials
There is no question that nature is the best engineer. As hard as material scientists try, replicating nature’s intricate processes and networks is a holy grail that often seems nearly unattainable. Instead of attempting to copy nature, some scientists draw inspiration from nature’s mechanisms and apply them to the synthesis of goods for human use. The field of producing materials using design principles from nature is known as bio-inspired material research.