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Graduate student Nidhi Juthani was not content with just one graduate degree. Instead, she decided to earn two in one fell swoop, via MIT’s PhD in Chemical Engineering Practice (PhDCEP) program, which allows her to obtain a doctorate and an MBA concurrently. The combination is a perfect fit for Juthani, who wants to pursue a career bridging scientific research and industry.

An undergraduate internship helped spark her interest in combining the two fields. As a chemical engineering manufacturing process intern at Procter and Gamble, she worked in the business unit that produced feminine care products, starting her days on the manufacturing floor at 6:30 a.m. There, she gained an appreciation for the efficiency, procedures, and processes required to manufacture a product. “I could also see how a material [the absorbent core of the pads] that was conceivably once a lab project maybe 10 years ago had to be scaled up to get mass produced,” she says.

Now in her fifth year at MIT, Juthani has already completed her PhD, working in the lab of chemical engineering professor Patrick Doyle. Her research involved designing a microRNA-based diagnostic that could potentially help with early detection of certain cancers.  

Juthani began the MBA portion of the program at the Sloan School of Management last fall. She misses the freedom she had as a doctoral student to work on her own schedule. But the experience has been worthwhile. “My worldview has definitely been expanded,” she says. “I’ve learned about different industries and fields that I didn’t know existed, learned about different cultures and countries, ranging from Brazilian New Year’s traditions to how hierarchy works aboard a Navy ship, and developed a great support network.”

Finding a “perfect fit” graduate program

A native of Waterloo, Ontario, Juthani knew early on that she wanted to pursue a PhD. When she was 16, her family attended an open house at the University of Waterloo’s new Institute of Quantum Computing. The connections she made there led to the opportunity to work in Professor David Cory’s lab as a high schooler. She credits Cory, a physical chemist, with “opening up this whole world of academia to me, [a world] that I quite literally didn’t know existed before that.” Moreover, he planted the seed in her mind that she should pursue engineering and maybe a PhD. He even suggested that she consider MIT — a school that seemed out-of-reach to her at the time.

Juthani went on to study chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo. She was particularly enthralled by the school’s co-op program, which enabled her to try out a diverse array of careers. “You get to know what you like, but more importantly, you get to know what you don’t like,” she recalls.

Her first internship took her to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she did research in the Aizenberg Lab at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. “I had an immense amount of freedom to structure my entire project,” Juthani recalls. She immersed herself in her work, which ultimately helped lead to the publication of two papers.

Employing a different set of skills, Juthani worked at an energy sector-focused materials science and data analytics startup that had spun out of the Aizenberg Lab. As employee number five, she learned how to be a jack-of-all-trades doing anything and everything, including taking calls at 6 a.m. from customs officials to ensure orders arrived on time. (Happily, she also met her now-husband that summer, at another startup in the same building.)

In all, Juthani tackled five distinct internships during her undergraduate career. While each one helped inform her thinking about her professional trajectory, there was no question in her mind that she still wanted to pursue a PhD after graduation. However, she also recognized that a lifelong research career would not fulfill her. She desperately wanted the scientific foundation that can only be provided by a doctorate, but ultimately hoped to focus on the business management of science. To succeed at this kind of career, Juthani wanted to learn to be “bilingual” in both the language of science and the language of business, so that she can serve as a bridge between the technical and business teams on a project. 

A friend suggested that the unique PhD in Chemical Engineering Practice program at MIT would be a perfect fit. The program is very small, with only two to four students per year. “It’s so specifically geared for people who want to go into business out of a PhD that it just made sense for me,” Juthani says.

Making every minute count

Asked to describe her research, Juthani excitedly launches into a detailed technical discussion, noting that she hasn’t been able to explain her work in such depth to her MBA classmates. Her PhD focused on developing hydrogel microparticles for microRNA and extracellular vesicle detection (EVs), which both serve as biomarkers for a variety of diseases, including cancer, and may make cancer detection possible before it manifests into a tumor. “There is a need for better tools to enable research and diagnostics with EVs, since it is such a nascent field and there is much to learn,” she says.

Juthani developed a colorimetric assay using the microparticles, whose different shapes enable detection of multiple targets simultaneously. The round particles can be used for one specific microRNA, and the cuboid particles can be used to identify a different microRNA. Moreover, the process doesn’t require specialized equipment; the particles can be imaged with just a phone camera. Her animated description of the color theory involved in creating “perfect images” of the microparticles for her thesis is just one more manifestation of her many diverse passions.

Ever since she arrived at MIT, Juthani has had to grapple with the aggressive deadline of the PhDCEP program, which typically requires completing the PhD within three years. Despite a year-long setback due to the pandemic, she defended last August and started the MBA in September.

Changing gears has been eye-opening. “The MBA experience has been completely different from anything I’ve experienced in engineering — grad or undergrad — and in research,” she says. “There is a significant emphasis on group work, discussion-driven learning, and learning from each other’s experiences … and I’ve also learned how to think in a more systematic, framework-driven manner.” After she graduates, Juthani is considering life sciences consulting or venture capital, so she can use her business experience, satisfy her scientific side, and be exposed to a wide variety of companies and projects.

Outside the lab and classroom, Juthani seems to make the most of every minute. She has attended countless seminars, taken pottery classes, participated in MIT Figure Skating, joined a Bollywood dance group, and makes time for coffee dates with friends. And yet, her advice to other students is to “take time to look back and see how far you’ve come.” It’s a practice that has served her well. During some difficult weeks of her PhD experience, when she was overwhelmed by seemingly impossible problem sets, she would take a slow stroll down the Infinite Corridor. She says seeing the stream of flyers that line the walls prompted her to savor all the possibilities that MIT offers — and to remind herself of how lucky she is.

“I have this great opportunity to be here at MIT, and I want to try to do as much as possible,” she says. “I want to come out of MIT satisfied that I learned and tried new things.” True to form, Juthani politely says goodbye and rushes off to her glassblowing class, one of MIT’s most iconic experiences.

Source: Bridging the worlds of research and industry

Source: Top 10 Best PLR(Private Label Rights) Websites | Which One You Should Join in 2022?

During the virtual spring 2020 semester, Daniel Zhang, a senior majoring in biology, put his time at home to good use. In the garage of his home in San Diego, California, Zhang helped his 13-year-old brother build a lab to study dry eye disease.

This combination of mentorship and medicine feels like second nature to Zhang. When his parents opened a family-run optometry clinic, Zhang was their first patient and then their receptionist. And after a close family member passed away from leukemia, he remembers thinking, “Humans are susceptible to so many diseases — why don’t we have better cures?”

That question propelled him to spend his high school summers studying biomarkers for the early detection of leukemia at the University of California at San Diego. He was invited to present his research at the London International Youth Science Forum, where he spoke to scientists from almost 70 countries. Afterward, he was hooked on the idea of scientific research as a career.

“Research is like standing on the shoulders of giants,” he says. “My experience at the forum was when I knew I loved science and wanted to continue using it to find common ground with others from completely different cultures and backgrounds.”

Exploring the forefront of cancer research

As soon as he arrived at MIT as a first-year undergraduate, Zhang began working under the guidance of postdoc Peter Westcott in professor Tyler Jacks’ lab. The lab focuses on developing better mouse and organoid models to study cancer progression — in Zhang’s case, metastatic colorectal cancer.

One of the ways to model colorectal cancer is by injecting an engineered virus directly into the colons of mice. The viruses, called lentiviral agents, “knock out” tumor suppressor genes and activate the so-called oncogenes that drive cancer forward. However, the imprecise nature of this injection also unintentionally transforms many “off-target” cells into cancer cells, producing a cancer that’s far too widespread and aggressive. Additionally, rare tumors called sarcomas are often initiated rather than adenocarcinomas, the type of tumor found in 95 percent of human cases. As a result, these mouse models are limited in their ability to accurately model colorectal cancer.

To address this problem, Zhang and Westcott designed a method using CRISPR/Cas9 to target a special stem cell called LGR5+, which researchers believe are the types of cells that, when mutated, grow into colorectal cancer. His technique modifies only the LGR5+ cells, which would allow researchers to control the rate at which adenocarcinomas grow. Therefore, it generates a model that is not only much more similar to human colorectal cancer than other models, but also allows researchers to quickly test for other potential cancer driver genes with CRISPR/Cas9. Designing an accurate model is crucial for developing and testing effective new therapies for patients, Zhang says.

During MIT’s virtual spring and fall semesters of 2020, Zhang shifted his focus from benchwork in the lab to computational biology. Using patient data from the Cancer Genome Atlas, Zhang analyzed mutation rates and discovered three genes potentially involved in colorectal cancer tumor suppression. He plans to test their function in his new mouse model to further validate how the dysfunction of these genes drives colorectal cancer progression.

For his work on organoid modeling of colorectal cancer, a third project he’s worked on during his time at the Jacks lab, he also won recognition from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). As one of 10 winners of the Undergraduate Scholar Award, he had the opportunity to present his research at the virtual AACR conference in 2021 and again at the next AACR Conference in New Orleans in April 2022.

He credits MIT’s “mens et manus” philosophy, encouraging the hands-on application of knowledge, as a large part of his early success in research.

“I’ve found that, at MIT, a lot of people are pursuing projects and asking questions that have never been thought of before,” Zhang says. “No one has ever been able to develop a late-stage model for colorectal cancer that’s amenable to gene editing. As far as I know, other than us, no one in the world is even working on this.”

Inspiring future generations to pursue STEM

Outside of the lab, Zhang devotes a substantial amount of time to sharing the science he’s so passionate about. Not only has he been awarded the Gene Brown Prize for undergraduate teaching for his time as a teaching assistant for the lab class 7.002 (Fundamentals of Experimental Molecular Biology), but he’s also taken on leadership roles in science outreach activities.

During the 2020-21 academic year, he served as co-director of DynaMIT, an outreach program that organizes a two-week STEM program over the summer for underserved sixth to ninth graders in the greater Boston area. Although the program is traditionally held in-person, in summer 2021 it was held virtually. But Zhang and the rest of the board didn’t let the virtual format deter them from maximizing the fun and interactive nature of the program. They packed and shipped nearly 120 science kits focused on five major topics — astronomy, biology, chemistry, mechanical engineering, and math — allowing the students to explore everything from paper rockets to catapults and trebuchets to homemade ice cream.

“At first, we were worried that most of the students wouldn’t turn on their cameras, since we saw that trend all over MIT classes during the semester,” Zhang says. “But almost everyone had their cameras on the entire time. It was really gratifying to see students come in on Monday really shy, but by Friday be actively participating, making jokes with the mentors, and being really excited about STEM.”

To investigate the long-term impacts of the program, he also helped kick-start a project that followed up with DynaMIT alumni, some of whom have already graduated from college. Zhang says: “We were happy to see that 80-90 percent of DynaMIT alumni enjoyed the program, rating it four or five out of five, and close to 70 percent of them said that DynaMIT had a really positive impact on their trajectory toward a career in STEM.”

Zhang has also served as president of the MIT Pre-medical Society, with the goals of fostering an encouraging environment for premed undergraduates, and providing guidance and resources to first- and second-year students still undecided about the premed path. To achieve these objectives, he pioneered an MIT-hosted mixer with the premedical societies of other Boston colleges, including Wellesley College, Boston University, Tufts University, and Harvard University. At the mixer, students were able to network with each other and listen to guest speakers from the different universities talk about their experiences in medicine. He also started a “big/little” initiative that paired third- and fourth-year mentors with first- and second-year students.

Providing new opportunity and hope

The wealth of activities Zhang has participated in at MIT has inspired his choices for the future. After graduation, he plans to take a gap year and work as a research technician in pediatric oncology before applying to MD/PhD programs.

On the mentorship side, he’s currently working to establish a nonprofit organization called Future African Scientist with his former Ugandan roommate, Martin Lubowa, whom he met at a study abroad program during MIT’s Independent Activities Period in 2020. The organization will teach high schoolers in Africa professional skills and expose them to different STEM topics — a project Zhang plans to work on post-MIT and into the long term.

Ultimately, he hopes to lead his own lab at the intersection of CRISPR-Cas9 technology and cancer biology, and to serve as a mentor to future generations of researchers and physicians.

As he puts it: “All of the experiences I’ve had so far have solidified my goal of conducting research that impacts patients, especially young ones. Being able to provide new opportunity and hope to patients suffering from late-stage metastatic diseases with no current cures is what inspires me every day.”

Source: Mentorship and medicine

Are you looking for a new graphic design tool? Would you like to read a detailed review of Canva? As it's one of the tools I love using. I am also writing my first ebook using canva and publish it soon on my site you can download it is free.  Let's start the review.

Canva has a web version and also a mobile app

What is Canva?

Canva is a free graphic design web application that allows you to create invitations, business cards, flyers, lesson plans, banners, and more using professionally designed templates. You can upload your own photos from your computer or from Google Drive, and add them to Canva's templates using a simple drag-and-drop interface. It's like having a basic version of Photoshop that doesn't require Graphic designing knowledge to use. It’s best for nongraphic designers.

Who is Canva best suited for?

Canva is a great tool for small business owners, online entrepreneurs, and marketers who don’t have the time and want to edit quickly.

To create sophisticated graphics, a tool such as Photoshop can is ideal. To use it, you’ll need to learn its hundreds of features, get familiar with the software, and it’s best to have a good background in design, too.

Also running the latest version of Photoshop you need a high-end computer.

So here  Canva takes place, with Canva you can do all that with drag-and-drop feature. It’s also easier to use and free. Also an even-more-affordable paid version is available for $12.95 per month.

Free vs Pro vs Enterprise Pricing plan

The product is available in three plans: Free, Pro ($12.99/month per user or  $119.99/year for up to 5 people), and Enterprise ($30 per user per month, minimum 25 people).

Free plan Features

• 250,000+ free templates
• 100+ design types (social media posts, presentations, letters, and more)
• Hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics
• Invite members to your team
• Collaborate and comment in real-time
• 5GB of cloud storage
• Try Canva Pro for free for 30 days

Pro Plan Features 

• Everything Free, has plus:
• 100+ million premium and  stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics
• 610,000+ premium and free templates with new designs daily
• Access to Background Remover and Magic Resize
•  Create a library of your brand or campaign's colors, logos, and fonts with up to 100 Brand Kits
• Remove image backgrounds instantly with background remover
• Resize designs infinitely with Magic Resize
• Save designs as templates for your team to use
• 100GB of cloud storage
• Schedule social media content to 8 platforms

Enterprise Plan Features

• Everything Pro has plus:
• Establish your brand's visual identity with logos, colors and fonts across multiple Brand Kits
• Control your team's access to apps, graphics, logos, colors and fonts with brand controls
• Built-in workflows to get approval on your designs
• Set which elements your team can edit and stay on brand with template locking
• Unlimited Storage
• Log in with single-sign on (SSO) and have access to 24/7 Enterprise-level support.

How to Use Canva?

To get started on Canva, you will need to create an account by providing your email address, Google, Facebook or Apple credentials. You will then choose your account type between student, teacher, small business, large company, non-profit, or personal. Based on your choice of account type, templates will be recommended to you.

You can sign up for a free trial of Canva Pro, or you can start with the free version to get a sense of whether it’s the right graphic design tool for your needs.

Canva Sign Up

Designing with Canva

When you sign up for an account, Canva will suggest different post types to choose from. Based on the type of account you set up  you'll be able to see templates categorized by the following categories: social media posts, documents, presentations, marketing, events, ads, launch your business, build your online brand, etc.

 Start by choosing a template for your post or searching for something more specific. Search by social network name to see a list of post types on each network.

Templates

Next, you can choose a template. Choose from hundreds of templates that are ready to go, with customizable photos, text, and other elements.

You can start your design by choosing from a variety of ready-made templates, searching for a template matching your needs, or working with a blank template.

 Canva has a lot to choose from, so start with a specific search.if you want to create business card just search for it and you will see alot of templates to choose from

Elements

Inside the Canva designer, the Elements tab gives you access to lines and shapes, graphics, photos, videos, audio, charts, photo frames, and photo grids.The search box on the Elements tab lets you search everything on Canva.

To begin with, Canva has a large library of elements to choose from. To find them, be specific in your search query. You may also want to search in the following tabs to see various elements separately:

Photos

The Photos tab lets you search for and choose from millions of professional stock photos for your templates.

You can replace the photos in our templates to create a new look. This can also make the template more suited to your industry.

You can find photos on other stock photography sites like pexel, pixabay and many more or simply upload your own photos.

When you choose an image, Canva’s photo editing features let you adjust the photo’s settings (brightness, contrast, saturation, etc.), crop, or animate it.

 When you subscribe to Canva Pro, you get access to a number of premium features, including the Background Remover. This feature allows you to remove the background from any stock photo in  library or any image you upload.

Text

The Text tab lets you add headings, normal text, and graphical text to your design.

When you click on  text, you'll see options to adjust the font, font size, color, format, spacing, and text effects (like shadows). 

Canva Pro subscribers can choose from a large library of fonts on the Brand Kit or the Styles tab. Enterprise-level controls ensure that visual content remains on-brand, no matter how many people are working on it.

Audio

Create an animated image or video by adding audio to capture user’s attention in social news feeds.

If you want to use audio from another stock site or your own audio tracks, you can upload them in the Uploads tab or from the more option.

Video

Want to create your own videos? Choose from thousands of stock video clips. You’ll find videos that range upto 2 minutes

You can upload your own videos as well as videos from other stock sites in the Uploads tab. 

Once you have chosen a video, you can use the editing features in Canva to trim the video, flip it, and adjust its transparency.

Backgrounds

On the Background tab, you’ll find free stock photos to serve as backgrounds on your designs. Change out the background on a template to give it a more personal touch.

Styles

The Styles tab lets you quickly change the look and feel of your template with just a click. And if you have a Canva Pro subscription, you can upload your brand’s custom colors and fonts to ensure designs stay on brand.

Logos

If you have a Canva Pro subscription, you’ll have a Logos tab. Here, you can upload variations of your brand logo to use throughout your designs.

With Canva, you can also create your own logos. Note that you cannot trademark a logo with stock content in it.

Publishing with Canva

With Canva, free users can download and share designs to multiple platforms including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack and Tumblr.

Canva Pro subscribers can create multiple post formats from one design. For example, you can start by designing an Instagram post, and Canva's Magic Resizer can resize it for other networks, Stories, Reels, and other formats.

Canva Pro subscribers can also use Canva’s Content Planner to post content on eight different accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, and Tumblr.

Canva Team

Canva Pro allows you to work with your team on visual content. Designs can be created inside Canva, and then sent to your team members for approval. Everyone can make comments, edits, revisions, and keep track via the version history.

Canva Print

When it comes to printing your designs, Canva has you covered. With an extensive selection of printing options, they can turn your designs into anything from banners and wall art to mugs and t-shirts. 

Canva Print is perfect for any business seeking to make a lasting impression. Create inspiring designs people will want to wear, keep, and share. Hand out custom business cards that leave a lasting impression on customers' minds.

Canva Apps

The Canva app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The Canva app has earned a 4.9 out of five star rating from over 946.3K Apple users and a 4.5 out of five star rating from over 6,996,708 Google users.

In addition to mobile apps, you can use Canva’s integration with other Internet services to add images and text from sources like Google Maps, Emojis, photos from Google Drive and Dropbox, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Bitmojis, and other popular visual content elements.

Canva Pros and Cons

Pros:

• A user-friendly interface
• Canva is a great tool for people who want to create professional graphics but don’t have graphic design skills.
• Hundreds of templates, so you'll never have to start from scratch.
• Wide variety of templates to fit multiple uses
• Branding kits to keep your team consistent with the brand colors and fonts
• Creating visual content on the go
• You can find royalty free images, audio, and video without having to subscribe to another service.

Cons:

• Some professional templates are available for Pro user only
• Advanced photo editing features like blurring or erasing a specific area are missing.
• Some elements that fall outside of a design are tricky to retrieve.
• Features (like Canva presentations) could use some improvement.
• If you are a regular user of Adobe products, you might find Canva's features limited.
• Prefers to work with vectors. Especially logos.
• Expensive enterprise pricing

Conclusion

In general, Canva is an excellent tool for those who need simple images for projects. If you are a graphic designer with experience, you will find Canva’s platform lacking in customization and advanced features – particularly vectors. But if you have little design experience, you will find Canva easier to use than advanced graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator for most projects. If you have any queries let me know in the comments section.

Source: Canva Review 2022: Details, Pricing & Features

A debate about John Muir and racism thrust Ramón Cruz into a new leadership role.

Source: At the Sierra Club, a Focus on Race, Gender and the Environment, Too

When the air harbors harmful matter, such as a virus or toxic chemical, it's not always easy to promptly detect this danger. Whether spread maliciously or accidentally, how fast and how far could hazardous plumes travel through a city? What could emergency managers do in response?

These were questions that scientists, public health officials, and government agencies probed with an air flow study conducted recently in New York City. At 120 locations across all five boroughs of the city, a team led by MIT Lincoln Laboratory collected safe test particles and gases released earlier in subway stations and on streets, tracking their journeys. The exercise measured how far the materials traveled and what their concentrations were when detected.

The results are expected to improve air dispersion models, and in turn, help emergency planners improve response protocols if a real chemical or biological event were to take place. 

The study was performed under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate's (S&T) Urban Threat Dispersion Project. The project is largely driven by Lincoln Laboratory's Counter–Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Systems Group to improve homeland defenses against airborne threats. This exercise followed a similar, though much smaller, study in 2016 that focused mainly on the subway system within Manhattan.

"The idea was to look at how particles and gases move through urban environments, starting with a focus on subways," says Mandeep Virdi, a researcher in the CWMD Systems Group who helped lead both studies.

The particles and gases used in the study are safe to disperse. The particulates are primarily composed of maltodextrin sugar, and have been used in prior public safety exercises. To enable researchers to track the particles, the particles are modified with small amounts of synthetic DNA that acts as a unique "barcode." This barcode corresponds to the location from which the particle was released and the day of release. When these particles are later collected and analyzed, researchers can know exactly where they came from.

The laboratory's team led the process of releasing the particles and collecting the particle samples for analysis. A small sprayer is used to aerosolize the particles into the air. As the particles flow throughout the city, some get trapped in filters set up at the many dispersed collection sites. 

To make processes more efficient for this large study, the team built special filter heads that rotated through multiple filters, saving time spent revisiting a collection site. They also developed a system using NFC (near-field communication) tags to simplify the cataloging and tracking of samples and equipment through a mobile app. 

The researchers are still processing the approximately 5,000 samples that were collected over the five-day measurement campaign. The data will feed into existing particle dispersion models to improve simulations. One of these models, from Argonne National Laboratory, focuses on subway environments, and another model from Los Alamos National Laboratory simulates above-ground city environments, taking into account buildings and urban canyon air flows.

Together, these models can show how a plume would travel from the subway to the streets, for example. These insights will enable emergency managers in New York City to develop more informed response strategies, as they did following the 2016 subway study.

"The big question has always been, if there is a release and law enforcement can detect it in time, what do you actually do? Do you shut down the subway system? What can you do to mitigate those effects? Knowing that is the end goal," Virdi says. 

A new program, called the Chemical and Biological Defense Testbed, has just kicked off to further investigate those questions. Trina Vian at Lincoln Laboratory is leading this program, also under S&T funding.

"Now that we've learned more about how material transports through the subway system, this test bed is looking at ways that we can mitigate that transport in a low-regret way," Vian says.

According to Vian, emergency managers don't have many options other than to evacuate the area when a biological or chemical sensor is triggered. Yet current sensors tend to have high false-alarm rates, particularly in dirty environments. "You really can't afford to make that evacuation call in error. Not only do you undermine people's trust in the system, but also people can become injured, and it may actually be a non-threatening situation."

The goal of this test bed is to develop architectures and technologies that could allow for a range of appropriate response activities. For example, the team will be looking at ways through which air flow could be constrained or filtered in place, without disrupting traffic, while responders validate an alarm. They'll also be testing the performance of new chemical and biological sensor technologies.

Both Vian and Virdi stress the importance of collaboration for carrying out these large-scale studies, and in tackling the problem of airborne dangers in general. The test bed program is already benefiting by using equipment provided through the CWMD Alliance, a partnership of DHS and the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.

A team of nearly 175 personnel worked together on the air flow exercise, spanning the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York City Transit, New York City Police Department, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Energy National Laboratories, in addition to S&T and Lincoln Laboratory.

"It really was all about teamwork," Virdi reflects. "Programs like this are why I came to Lincoln Laboratory. Seeing how the science is applied in a way that has real actionable results and how appreciative agencies are of what we're doing has been rewarding. It's exciting to see your program through, especially one as intense as this."

Source: Research aims to mitigate chemical and biological airborne threats

The climate crisis is a novel and developing chapter in human and planetary history. As a species, humankind is still very much learning how to face this crisis, and the world’s frontline communities — those being most affected by climate change — are struggling to make their voices heard. How can communities imperiled by climate change convey the urgency of their situation to countries and organizations with the means to make a difference? And how can governments and other powerful groups provide resources to these vulnerable frontline communities?

The MIT Civic Design Initiative (CDI), an interdisciplinary confluence of media studies and design expertise, emerged in 2020 to tackle just these kinds of questions. It brings together the MIT Design Lab, a program originally founded in the School of Architecture and Planning with its research practices in design, and the Comparative Media Studies program (CMS/W) with its focus on the fundamentals of human connection and communication. Drawing on these complementary sources of scholarly perspective and expertise, CDI is a suitably broad umbrella for the range of climate-related issues that humanistic research and design can potentially address. 

Based in the CMS/W program of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, the initiative is responding to the climate crises with a spirit of inquiry, listening, and solid data. Reflecting on the mission, James Paradis, the Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of CMS/W and CDI faculty director, says the core idea is to address global issues by combining new and emerging technologies with an equally keen focus on the social and cultural contexts — the human dimensions of the issue — with many of their nuances.  

Working closely with Paradis on this vision are the two CDI co-directors: Yihyun Lim, an architect, urban designer, and MIT researcher; and Eric Gordon, a visiting professor of civic media in MIT CMS/W. Prior to CDI, when she was leading the MIT Design Lab research group, Lim says “At MIT Design Lab, I was working within the realm of applied research with industry partnerships, how we can apply user-centered design methods in creating connected experiences. Eric, Jim, and I wanted to shift the focus into a more civic realm, where we could bring all our collective expertise together to address tricky problems."

Deep listening

The initiative’s flagship project, the Deep Listening Project, is currently working with an initial group of frontline communities in Nepal and Indigenous tribes in the United States and Canada. The work is a direct application of communication protocols: understanding how people are communicating with and often without technologies — and how technologies can be better used to help people get the help they need, when they need it, in the face of the climate crisis.

The CDI team describes deep listening as “a form of institutional and community intake that considers diversity, tensions, and frictions, and that incorporates communities’ values in creating solutions.”

Globally, the majority of climate response funding currently goes toward mitigation efforts — such as reducing emissions or using more eco-friendly materials. It is only in recent years that more substantial funding has been focused on climate adaptation: making adjustments that can help a community adapt to present changes and impacts and also prepare for future climate-related crises. For the millions of people in frontline communities, such adaptation can be crucial to protecting and sustaining their communities.

Gordon describes the scope of the situation: “We know that over the next 10 years, climate change will drive over 100 million people to adapt where and how they live, regardless of the success of mitigation efforts. And in order for those adaptations to succeed, there must be a concerted collaborative effort between frontline communities and institutions with the resources to facilitate adaptation.

“Communication between institutions and their constituents is a fundamental planning problem in any context,” Gordon continues. “In the case of climate adaptation, there will not be a surplus of time to get things right. Putting communication mechanisms in place to connect affected communities with institutional resources is already imperative.

“This situation requires that we figure out, quickly, how to listen to the people who will rely on [those institutions] for their lives and livelihoods. We want to understand how institutions — from governments to universities to NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] — are adopting and adapting technologies, and how that is benefiting or hurting their constituencies.  People with direct frontline experience need to be supported in their speech and ideas, and institutions need to be able to take in the data from these communities, listen carefully to discern its significance, and then act upon it.”
 
Sensemaking: infrastructure for connection

One important aspect of meaningful, effective communication will be the ability of frontline and Indigenous communities to communicate likely or imagined futures, based on their own knowledge and desires. One potential tool is what the initiative calls “sensemaking:” producing and sharing data visualizations that can communicate to governments the experiences of frontline communities. The initiative also hopes to develop additional elements of the “deep listening infrastructure” — mechanisms to make sure important community voices carry and that important data isn’t lost to noise in the vast question of climate adaptability.

“Oftentimes in academia, the paper gets published or the website gets developed, and everybody says, ‘OK, we’ve done our work,’” Paradis observes. “What we’re aiming to do in the CDI is the necessary work that happens after the publication of research — where research is applied to actually improve peoples’ lives.”

The Deep Listening Project is also building a network of scholars and practitioners nationwide, including Henry Jenkins, co-founder and former faculty member at MIT CMS/W; Sangita Shresthova SM ’03 at the University of Southern California; and Darren Ranco at the University of Maine. Ranco, an anthropologist, Indigenous activist, and organizational leader, has been instrumental in connecting with Indigenous groups and tribal governments across North America. Meanwhile, Gordon has helped forge connections with groups like the International Red Cross/Red Crescent, the World Bank, and the UN Development. 

At the root of these connections is the impetus to communicate lived realities from the level of a small community to that of global relief organizations and governmental powers.

Potential human futures

Mona Vijaykumar, a second-year student in the SMArchS Architecture and Urbanism program in the Department of Architecture, and among the first student researcher assistants attached to the new initiative, is excited to have the chance to help build CDI from the ground up. “It’s been a great honor to be working with CDI's amazing team for the last eight months,” she says. With her background in urban design and research interest in climate adaptation processes, Vijaykumar has been engaged in developing the Deep Listening Project’s white paper as part of MIT Climate Grand Challenges. She works alongside the initiative’s two other inaugural research assistants: Tomas Guarna, a master’s student in CMS, and Gabriela Degetau, a master’s student in the SMarchS Urbanism program, with Vijaykumar.

“I was involved in analyzing the literature case study on community-based adaptation processes and co-writing the white paper,” Vijaykumar says, “and am currently working on conducting interviews with communities and institutions in India. Going forward, Gabriela and I will be presenting the white paper at gatherings such as the American Association of Geographers’ Conference in New York and the Climate and Social Impact Conference in Vancouver.”

“The support and collaboration of the team have been incredibly empowering,” reflects Degetau, who will be co-presenting the white paper with Vijaykumar in New York and Vancouver, British Columbia. “Even when working from different countries and through Zoom, the experience has been unique and cohesive.”

Both Degetau and Vijaykumar were selected as the first fellows of the Vuslat Foundation, organized by the MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative. In this one-year fellowship, they are seeking to co-design “climate imaginaries” through the Deep Listening Project. Vijaykumar’s work is also supported by the MIT Human Rights and Technology Fellowship for 2021-22, which guides her personal focus on what she refers to as the “dual sword” of technology and data colonialism in India.

As the Deep Listening Project continues to develop a sustainable and balanced communication infrastructure, Lim reflects that a vital part of that is sharing how potential futures are envisioned. Both large institutions and individual communities imagine, separately — and hopefully soon together — how the human world will reshape itself to be viable in profoundly shifting climate conditions. 

“What are our possible futures?” asks Lim. “What are people dreaming?”
 

Story prepared by MIT SHASS Communications
Editorial and design director: Emily Hiestand
Senior communications associate: Alison Lanier

Source: Conversations at the front line of climate

 

If you are looking for the best wordpress plugins, then you are at the right place. Here is the list of best wordpress plugins that you should use in your blog to boost SEO, strong your security and know every aspects of your blog . Although creating a good content is one factor but there are many wordpress plugins that perform different actions and add on to your success. So let's  start

1.Yoast SEO

Those users who are serious about SEO, Yoast SEO will do the work for them to reach their goals. All they need to do is select a keyword, and the plugin will then optimize your page according to the specified keyword

Yoast offers many popular SEO WordPress plugin functions. It gives you real-time page analysis to optimize your content, images, meta descriptions, titles, and kewords. Yoast also checks the length of your sentences and paragraphs, whether you’re using enough transition words or subheadings, how often you use passive voice, and so on. Yoast tells Google whether or not to index a page or a set of pages too.

Let me summarize these points in bullets:

• Enhance the readability of your article to reduce bounce rate
• Optimize your articles with targetted keywords
• Let Google know who you are and what your site is about
• Improve your on-page SEO with advanced, real-time guidance and advice on keyword usage, linking, and external linking.
• Keep your focus keywords consistent to help rank better on  Google.
• Preview how your page would appear in the search engine results page (SERP)
• Crawl your site daily to ensure Google indexes it as quickly as possible.
• Rate your article informing you of any mistakes you might have made so that you can fix them before publishing.
• Stay up-to-date with Google’s latest algorithm changes and adapt your on-page SEO as needed with smartsuggestionss from the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin is always up-to-date.
• Free Version is available 

Pricing

• Premium version=$89/year that comes with extra functions, allowing you to optimize your content up to five keywords, among other benefits.

2. WP Rocket

A website running WordPress can put a lot of strain on a server, which increases the chances that the website will crash and harm your business. To avoid such an unfortunate situation and ensure that all your pages load quickly, you need a caching plugin like WP Rocket.

WP Rocket plugin designed to increases your website speed. Instead of waiting for pages to be saved to cache, WP Rocket turns on desired caching settings, like page cache and gzip compression. The plugin also activates other features, such as CDN support and llazy image loadding, to enhance your site speed.

Features in bullets:

• Browser Catching
• Preloading the cache of pages
• Reducing the number of HTTP requests allows websites to load more quickly.
• Decreasing bandwidth usage with GZIP compression
• Apply optimal browser caching headers (expires)
• Minifying and combining JavaScript and CSS files
• Remove Unused CSS
• Deferred loading of images (LazyLoad)
• WebP compatibility
• Deferred loading of JavaScript files
• Delay JavaScript Execution
• Critical Path CSS generation and deferred loading of CSS files
• Database optimization
• WordPress Heartbeat API control
• DNS prefetch
• CDN integration
• Cloudflare integration
• Sucuri integration
• Easy import/export of settings
• Easy roll back to a previous version

Pricing

• Single License =$49/year for one website
• Plus License =$99/year for 3 websites
• Infinite License =$249/year for unlimited websites

3.Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is a WordPress firewall and security scanner that keeps your site safe from malicious hackers, spam, and other online threats. This Plugin comes with a web application firewall (WAF) called tthread Defence  Feed  that helps to prevents brute force attacks by ensuring you set stronger passwords and limiting login attempts. It searches for malware and compares code, theme, and plugin files with the records in the WordPress.org repository to verify their integrity and reports changes to you.

Wordfence security scanner provides you with actionable insights into your website's security status and will alert you to any potential threats, keeping it safe and secure. It also includes login security features that let you activate reCAPTCHA and two-factor authentication for your website.

Features in Bullets.

• Scans your site for vulnerabilities.
• Alerts you by email when new threats are detected.
• Supports advanced login security measures.
• IP addresses may be blocked automatically if suspicious activity is detected.

Pricing

• Premium Plan= $99/Year that comes with extra security features like the real time IP backlist and country blocking option and also support from highly qualified experts.

4. Akismet

Akismet can help prevent spam from appearing on your site. Every day, it automatically checks every comment against a global database of spam to block malicious content. With Akismet, you also won’t have to worry about innocent comments being caught by the filter or false positives. You can simply tell Akismet about those and it will get better over time. It also checks your contact form submissions against its global spam database and weed out unnecessary fake information.

Features in Bullets:

• The program automatically checks comments and filters out spam.
• Hidden or misleading links are often revealed in the comment body. 
• Akismet tracks the status of each comment, allowing you to see which ones were caught by Akismet and which ones were cleared by a moderator.
• A spam-blocking feature that saves disk space and makes your site run faster.
• Moderators can view a list of comments approved by each user.

Pricing

• Free to use for personal blog 

5. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a plug-in that allows you to create contact forms that make it easy for your users to send messages to your site. The plug-in was developed by Takayuki Miyoshi and lets you create multiple contact forms on the same site; it also integrates Akismet spam filtering and lets you customize the styling and fields that you want to use in the form. The plug-in provides CAPTCHA and Ajax submitting.

Features in bullets:

• Create and manage multiple contact forms
• Easily customize form fields
• Use simple markup to alter mail content
• Add Lots of third-party extensions for additional functionality
• Shortcode offers a way to insert content into pages or posts.
• Akismet spam filtering, Ajax-powered submitting, and CAPTCHA are all features of this plugin.

Pricing

• Free to use

6. Monster Insights

When you’re looking for an easy way to manage your Google Analytics-related web tracking services, Monster Insights can help. You can add, customize, and integrate Google Analytics data with ease so you’ll be able to see how every webpage performs, which online campaigns bring in the most traffic, and which content readers engage with the most. It’s same as Google Analytics

It is a powerful tool to keep track of your traffic stats. With it, you can view stats for your active sessions, conversions, and bounce rates. You’ll also be able to see your total revenue, the products you sell, and how your site is performing when it comes to referrals.

MonsterInsights offers a free plan that includes basic Google Analytics integration, data insights, and user activity metrics.

Features in bullets:

• Demographics and interest reports:
• Anonymize the  IPs of visitor
• See the results of how far visitors Scroll down
• Show the insights of multiple links to the same page and show you which links get more clicks
• See sessions of two related sites as a single session
• Google AdSense tracking
• Send you weekly analytics report of your blog you can download it as pdf

Pricing

• Premium plan= $99.50/year that comes with extra features like page and post tracking, Adsense tracking,  custom tracking and reports.

7. Pretty Links

Pretty Links is a powerful WordPress plugin that enables you to easily cloak affiliate links on your websiteIt even allows you to easily redirect visitors based on a specific request, including permanent 301 and temporary 302/307 redirects.

Pretty links also helps you to automatically shorten your url for your post and pages.

You can also enable auto-linking feature to automatically add affiliate links for certain keywords

Features

•  Create clean, easy-to-remember URLs on your website (301, 302, and 307 redirects only)
• Random-generator or custom URL slugs
• Track the number of clicks
• Easy to understand reports
• View click details including ip address, remote host, browser, operating system, and referring site
• You can pass custom parameters to your scripts when using pretty permalinks, and still have full tracking capability.
• Exclude IP Addresses from Stats
• Cookie-based system to track your activity across clicks
• Create nofollow/noindex links
• Toggle tracking on / off on each link.
• Pretty Link Bookmarklet
•  Update redirected links easily to new URLs!

Pricing

• Beginner Plan=$79/year that can be used on 1 site
• Marketer Plan: $99/year – that can be used on upto 2 sites
• Super Affiliate Plan: $149/year – that can be use on upto 5 sites

We hope you’ve found this article useful. We appreciate you reading and welcome your feedback if you have it.

Source: Top 7 Best Wordpress Plugin Of All Time

Ginger VS Grammarly: When it comes to grammar checkers, Ginger and Grammarly are two of the most popular choices on the market. This article aims to highlight the specifics of each one so that you can make a more informed decision about the one you'll use.

What is Grammarly?

If you are a writer, you must have heard of  Grammarly before. Grammarly has over 10M users across the globe, it's probably the most popular AI writing enhancement tool, without a doubt. That's why there's a high chance that you already know about Grammarly.

But today we are going to do a comparison between Ginger and Grammarly, So let's define Grammarly here. Like Ginger, Grammarly is an AI writing assistant that checks for grammatical errors, spellings, and punctuation. The free version covers the basics like identifying grammar and spelling mistakes

While the Premium version offers a lot more functionality, it detects plagiarism in your content, suggests word choice, or adds fluency to it.

Features of Grammarly

• Grammarly detects basic to advance grammatical errors and also help you why this is an error and suggest to you how you can improve it
• Create a personal dictionary 
• Check to spell for American, British, Canadian, and Australian English.
• Understand inconsistencies. 
• Detect unclear structure. 
• Detect Plagiarism.
• Explore overuse of words and wordiness. 
• Get to know about the improper tones. 
• Discover the insensitive language aligns with your intent, audience, style, emotion, and more.

What is Ginger

 Ginger is a writing enhancement tool that not only catches typos and grammatical mistakes but also suggests content improvements. As you type, it picks up on errors then shows you what’s wrong, and suggests a fix. It also provides you with synonyms and definitions of words and allows you to translate your text into dozens of languages.

Ginger Software: Features & Benefits

• Ginger's software helps you identify and correct common grammatical mistakes, such as consecutive nouns, or contextual spelling correction.
• The sentence rephrasing feature can help you convey your meaning perfectly.
• Ginger acts like a personal coach that helps you practice certain exercises based on your mistakes.
• The dictionary feature helps users understand the meanings of words.

In addition, the program provides a text reader, so you can gauge your writing’s conversational tone.

Ginger vs Grammarly

Grammarly and Ginger are two popular grammar checker software brands that help you to become a better writer. But if you’re undecided about which software to use, consider these differences:

• Grammarly only supports the English language while Ginger supports 40+ languages.
• Grammarly offers a wordiness feature while Ginger lacks a Wordiness feature.
• Grammarly shows an accuracy score while Ginger lacks an accuracy score feature.
• Grammarly has a plagiarism checker while ginger doesn't have such a feature.
• Grammarly can recognize an incorrect use of numbers while Ginger can’t recognize an incorrect use of numbers.
• Grammarly and Ginger both have mobile apps.
• Ginger and Grammarly offer monthly, quarterly, and annual plans.
• Grammarly allows you to check uploaded documents. while Ginger doesn't check uploaded documents.
• Grammarly Offers a tone suggestion feature while Ginger doesn't offer a tone suggestion feature.
• Ginger helps to translate documents into 40+ languages while Grammarly doesn't have a translation feature.
• Ginger Offers text to speech features while Grammarly doesn't have such features.

Grammarly Score: 7/10

Ginger:4/10

So Grammarly  wins here.

Ginger VS Grammarly: Pricing Difference

• Ginger offers a Premium subscription for 13.99$/month. it comes at $11.19/month for quarterly and $7.49/month for an annual subscription with 40$ off.
• On the other hand,  Grammarly offers a Premium subscription for $30/month for a monthly plan  $20/month for quarterly, and $12/month for an annual subscription.

For companies with three or more employees, the Business plan costs $12.50/month for each member of your team. 

Ginger Wins Here

Ginger vs Grammarly – Pros and Cons

Grammarly Pros

• Offers  free version
• All-in-one tool (grammar checker + spell checker + punctuation checker)
• Allows you to edit a document without affecting the formatting.
• Style checker (paid version)
• Active and passive voice checker
• Personal dictionary 
• Plagiarism checker (paid version)
• Available on all major devices and platforms
• Free mobile apps 
• User-friendly interface
• Browser extensions and MS word add-ons
• Can upload and download documents

Grammarly Cons

• Supports only English 
• Customer support only via email
• Limits to 150,000 words
• Subscription plans can be a bit pricey 
• Doesn’t offer a free trial
• No refund policy

Ginger Pros

• Offers free version
• All-in-one tool (grammar checker + spell checker + punctuation checker)
• Affordable Subscription plans (Additionals discounts are available)
• Active and passive voice changer
• Translates documents in 40+ languages 
• Personal dictionary
• Browser extension available 
•  Personal trainers help clients develop their knowledge of grammar.
• Text-to-speech feature reads work out loud
• Get a full refund within 7 days

Ginger Cons

• Mobile apps aren't free
• Limited monthly corrections for free users
• No style checker
• No plagiarism checker
• Not as user-friendly as Grammarly
• You are unable to upload or download documents; however, you may copy and paste files as needed.
• Doesn't offer a free trial

Summarizing the Ginger VS Grammarly: My Recommendation

While both writing assistants are fantastic in their ways, you need to choose the one you want. 

For example, go for Grammarly if you want a plagiarism tool included. 

Choose Ginger if you want to write in languages other than English. I will to the differences for you in order to make the distinctions clearer.

• Grammarly offers a plagiarism checking tool
• Ginger provides text to speech tool
• Grammarly helps you check uploaded documents
• Ginger supports over 40 languages
• Grammarly has a more friendly UI/UX

Which one you like let me know in the comments section also give your opinions in the comments section below.

Source: Ginger VS Grammarly: Which Grammar Checker is Better in (2022) ?

When most students are 17, they’re preparing college applications and planning for prom. When Sihao Huang was 17, he was meeting with officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration. For two years before arriving at MIT, Huang started and ran a company, designing small, customizable satellite modules. Huang, now a college senior double majoring in physics and electrical engineering and computer science, is as enterprising and curious as ever, and he still spends his time thinking about complex physics models and how to engineer better systems. But these days, what interests him isn’t satellite systems, but political ones.

During his childhood in China and Singapore, Huang taught himself electrical engineering and coding and started building circuit boards in his bedroom. At 14, when his family moved to the United States, he set off on a personal mission to launch something into space. Huang co-founded a company, Aphelion Orbitals, which he ran for three years. During that time, he recruited engineers from aerospace companies to design modular launch vehicles and propulsion systems to help make sending satellites into space accessible to more people.

Huang realized, though, that the real challenge for him in owning the company wasn’t the engineering; it was the people and business side of things. “I think I needed to grow more as a person before I could grow the company more,” he says of his decision to attend college. “It was so much more than just assembling parts.”

That early exposure to business, and its inherent challenges, remained in his mind as Huang arrived at MIT and began studying physics and engineering. It didn’t take long to realize that, for him, the most intriguing systems weren’t found in the natural sciences, but in the social sciences.

“Human systems are immensely complex,” Huang says, describing his interest in political science. “It’s a very difficult problem, far more difficult than understanding the arrangement of atoms in a lattice. But the impact on human life, from building more equitable societies to more responsive governments, is enormous.”

Surprisingly, Huang’s growing interest in politics was inspired, in part, by his research experience in the Engineering Quantum Systems Group for his first two years at MIT.

“That was an amazing experience,” Huang says of his time in the lab. His work taught him how to perform research and write papers and helped him fall in love with the process. It also exposed him to a wide variety of different ideas and fields of research.

“I think it’s really a special MIT thing that there’s such an interdisciplinary, that you have people talking about everything from philosophy to economics in a quantum computing lab, and doing world-class research on both subjects,” Huang says.

It was near the end of his second year that Huang met Alex Siegenfeld, a doctoral student in physics who was doing research in the Media Lab. Siegenfeld published a paper in Nature Physics in early 2020 using statistical models to understand instability in political elections. For Huang, reading that paper was revolutionary, and it provided a direct bridge between his long-standing curiosity about physics and growing interest in politics. Huang started working with Siegenfeld, attempting to expand his theories about single elections to systems of elections that interact and influence each other.

Huang describes this kind of emerging field of research as complex systems science, research on which was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021. “I was really happy about it,” Huang jokes of the Nobel announcement. “I can finally talk about complex systems science without people going, ‘What is that?’”

Huang’s approach to complex systems is about using insights and tools from engineering and physics to understand social systems. He sees the value in this approach as two-fold. First, it helps researchers see political institutions not as static objects, but as systems that constantly interact and evolve over space and time. Thinking about institutions as “learning organizations,” as Huang describes them, can provide innovative solutions to political problems. In addition, insights from physics and engineering can provide new tools and techniques for political science like graph theory and machine learning. “These things can help us build more quantitative, bottom-up models of politics,” Huang argues.

To expand his understanding of political science, though, Huang has sought opportunities to step outside of his quantitative comfort zone. His junior year, he took 17.407 (Chinese Foreign Policy) with Taylor Fravel, a professor of political science and director of the MIT Security Studies Program. In Fravel’s class, Huang got a taste for more traditional political science, using historical documents and interviews to understand the foreign policy impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a large-scale regional development project.

“I interviewed an ambassador at one point, worked on understanding China’s diplomatic strategy, and did a lot of qualitative research,” Huang says of his work with Fravel, which helped him to declare a minor in political science. “That was a completely different side of political science for me, and I was grateful to have people welcome me from the opposite corner of the Institute.”

Huang believes that his experience doing research on both ends of the spectrum — from his highly physics-oriented work with Siegenfeld to the historical approach of Fravel — has been essential to his development as a researcher.

“They absolutely have to be integrated together,” Huang says of the two approaches. “You have to be cautious applying these very quantitative methods to social systems.” Yet, he adds, a complex systems approach can provide valuable insight and rigor to social science research if the work is grounded in political reality and accounts for subjectivity.

Huang’s commitment to understanding all facets of the field has now taken him more than 3,000 miles away. This year, he’s studying abroad at Oxford University in their philosophy, politics, and economics program. “I wanted to be exposed to a very different way of thinking,” Huang says of his decision to go to Oxford. That global thinking will continue as he pursues a graduate degree as a 2023 Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing

As he has been at MIT, Huang is committed to interdisciplinarity during his time abroad, studying both condensed matter physics and political movements. For some, that might seem like an odd pairing. Huang explains, though, that condensed matter is just an assortment of different, strongly interacting constituents, just like social systems. So it turns out that physics and politics may not be so different after all.

Source: From modeling quantum devices to political systems