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      Simulating discrimination in virtual reality

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      Have you ever been advised to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes?” Considering another person’s perspective can be a challenging endeavor — but recognizing our errors and biases is key to building understanding across communities. By challenging our preconceptions, we confront prejudice, such as racism and xenophobia, and potentially develop a more inclusive perspective about others.

      To assist with perspective-taking, MIT researchers have developed “On the Plane,” a virtual reality role-playing game (VR RPG) that simulates discrimination. In this case, the game portrays xenophobia directed against a Malaysian America woman, but the approach can be generalized. Situated on an airplane, players can take on the role of characters from different backgrounds, engaging in dialogue with others while making in-game choices to a series of prompts. In turn, players’ decisions control the outcome of a tense conversation between the characters about cultural differences.

      As a VR RPG, “On the Plane” encourages players to take on new roles that may be outside of their personal experiences in the first person, allowing them to confront in-group/out-group bias by incorporating new perspectives into their understanding of different cultures. Players engage with three characters: Sarah, a first-generation Muslim American of Malaysian ancestry who wears a hijab; Marianne, a white woman from the Midwest with little exposure to other cultures and customs; or a flight attendant. Sarah represents the out group, Marianne is a member of the in group, and the flight staffer is a bystander witnessing an exchange between the two passengers.“This project is part of our efforts to harness the power of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to address social ills, such as discrimination and xenophobia,” says Caglar Yildirim, an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) research scientist who is a co-author and co-game designer on the project. “Through the exchange between the two passengers, players experience how one passenger’s xenophobia manifests itself and how it affects the other passenger. The simulation engages players in critical reflection and seeks to foster empathy for the passenger who was ‘othered’ due to her outfit being not so ‘prototypical’ of what an American should look like.”

      Yildirim worked alongside the project’s principal investigator, D. Fox Harrell, MIT professor of digital media and AI at CSAIL, the Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing (CMS), and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and founding director of the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. “It is not possible for a simulation to give someone the life experiences of another person, but while you cannot ‘walk in someone else’s shoes’ in that sense, a system like this can help people recognize and understand the social patterns at work when it comes to issue like bias,” says Harrell, who is also co-author and designer on this project. “An engaging, immersive, interactive narrative can also impact people emotionally, opening the door for users’ perspectives to be transformed and broadened.” This simulation also utilizes an interactive narrative engine that creates several options for responses to in-game interactions based on a model of how people are categorized socially. The tool grants players a chance to alter their standing in the simulation through their reply choices to each prompt, affecting their affinity toward the other two characters. For example, if you play as the flight attendant, you can react to Marianne’s xenophobic expressions and attitudes toward Sarah, changing your affinities. The engine will then provide you with a different set of narrative events based on your changes in standing with others.

      To animate each avatar, “On the Plane” incorporates artificial intelligence knowledge representation techniques controlled by probabilistic finite state machines, a tool commonly used in machine learning systems for pattern recognition. With the help of these machines, characters’ body language and gestures are customizable: if you play as Marianne, the game will customize her mannerisms toward Sarah based on user inputs, impacting how comfortable she appears in front of a member of a perceived out group. Similarly, players can do the same from Sarah or the flight attendant’s point of view.In a 2018 paper based on work done in a collaboration between MIT CSAIL and the Qatar Computing Research Institute, Harrell and co-author Sercan Şengün advocated for virtual system designers to be more inclusive of Middle Eastern identities and customs. They claimed that if designers allowed users to customize virtual avatars more representative of their background, it might empower players to engage in a more supportive experience. Four years later, “On the Plane” accomplishes a similar goal, incorporating a Muslim’s perspective into an immersive environment.

      “Many virtual identity systems, such as avatars, accounts, profiles, and player characters, are not designed to serve the needs of people across diverse cultures. We have used statistical and AI methods in conjunction with qualitative approaches to learn where the gaps are,” they note. “Our project helps engender perspective transformation so that people will treat each other with respect and enhanced understanding across diverse cultural avatar representations.”

      Harrell and Yildirim’s work is part of the MIT IDSS’s Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism (ICSR). Harrell is on the initiative’s steering committee and is the leader of the newly forming Antiracism, Games, and Immersive Media vertical, who study behavior, cognition, social phenomena, and computational systems related to race and racism in video games and immersive experiences.

      The researchers’ latest project is part of the ICSR’s broader goal to launch and coordinate cross-disciplinary research that addresses racially discriminatory processes across American institutions. Using big data, members of the research initiative develop and employ computing tools that drive racial equity. Yildirim and Harrell accomplish this goal by depicting a frequent, problematic scenario that illustrates how bias creeps into our everyday lives.“In a post-9/11 world, Muslims often experience ethnic profiling in American airports. ‘On the Plane’ builds off of that type of in-group favoritism, a well-established finding in psychology,” says MIT Professor Fotini Christia, director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) and associate director or IDSS. “This game also takes a novel approach to analyzing hardwired bias by utilizing VR instead of field experiments to simulate prejudice. Excitingly, this research demonstrates that VR can be used as a tool to help us better measure bias, combating systemic racism and other forms of discrimination.”“On the Plane” was developed on the Unity game engine using the XR Interaction Toolkit and Harrell’s Chimeria platform for authoring interactive narratives that involve social categorization. The game will be deployed for research studies later this year on both desktop computers and the standalone, wireless Meta Quest headsets. A paper on the work was presented in December at the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. More

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      3 Questions: Why cybersecurity is on the agenda for corporate boards of directors

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      Organizations of every size and in every industry are vulnerable to cybersecurity risks — a dynamic landscape of threats and vulnerabilities and a corresponding overload of possible mitigating controls. MIT Senior Lecturer Keri Pearlson, who is also the executive director of the research consortium Cybersecurity at MIT Sloan (CAMS) and an instructor for the new MIT Sloan Executive Education course Cybersecurity Governance for the Board of Directors, knows how business can get ahead of this risk. Here, she describes the current threat and explores how boards can mitigate their risk against cybercrime.

      Q: What does the current state of cyberattacks mean for businesses in 2023?

      A: Last year we were discussing how the pandemic heightened fear, uncertainty, doubt and chaos, opening new doors for malicious actors to do their cyber mischief in our organizations and our families. We saw an increase in ransomware and other cyber attacks, and we saw an increase in concern from operating executives and board of directors wondering how to keep the organization secure. Since then, we have seen a continued escalation of cyber incidents, many of which no longer make the headlines unless they are wildly unique, damaging, or different than previous incidents. For every new technology that cybersecurity professionals invent, it’s only a matter of time until malicious actors find a way around it. New leadership approaches are needed for 2023 as we move into the next phase of securing our organizations.

      In great part, this means ensuring deep cybersecurity competencies on our boards of directors. Cyber risk is so significant that a responsible board can no longer ignore it or just delegate it to risk management experts. In fact, an organization’s board of directors holds a uniquely vital role in safeguarding data and systems for the future because of their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and their responsibility to oversee and mitigate business risk.

      As these cyber threats increase, and as companies bolster their cybersecurity budgets accordingly, the regulatory community is also advancing new requirements of companies. In March of this year, the SEC issued a proposed rule titled Cybersecurity Risk Management, Strategy, Governance, and Incident Disclosure. In it, the SEC describes its intention to require public companies to disclose whether their boards have members with cybersecurity expertise. Specifically, registrants will be required to disclose whether the entire board, a specific board member, or a board committee is responsible for the oversight of cyber risks; the processes by which the board is informed about cyber risks, and the frequency of its discussions on this topic; and whether and how the board or specified board committee considers cyber risks as part of its business strategy, risk management, and financial oversight.

      Q: How can boards help their organizations mitigate cyber risk?

      A: According to the studies I’ve conducted with my CAMS colleagues, most organizations focus on cyber protection rather than cyber resilience, and we believe that is a mistake. A company that invests only in protection is not managing the risk associated with getting up and running again in the event of a cyber incident, and they are not going to be able to respond appropriately to new regulations, either. Resiliency means having a practical plan for recovery and business continuation.

      Certainly, protection is part of the resilience equation, but if the pandemic taught us anything, it taught us that resilience is the ability to weather an attack and recover quickly with minimal impact to our operations. The ultimate goal of a cyber-resilient organization would be zero disruption from a cyber breach — no impact on operations, finances, technologies, supply chain or reputation. Board members should ask, What would it take for this to be the case? And they should ensure that executives and managers have made proper and appropriate preparations to respond and recover.

      Being a knowledgeable board member does not mean becoming a cybersecurity expert, but it does mean understanding basic concepts, risks, frameworks, and approaches. And it means having the ability to assess whether management appropriately comprehends related threats, has an appropriate cyber strategy, and can measure its effectiveness. Board members today require focused training on these critical areas to carry out their mission. Unfortunately, many enterprises fail to leverage their boards of directors in this capacity or prepare board members to actively contribute to strategy, protocols, and emergency action plans.

      Alongside my CAMS colleagues Stuart Madnick and Kevin Powers, I’m teaching a new  MIT Sloan Executive Education course, Cybersecurity Governance for the Board of Directors, designed to help organizations and their boards get up to speed. Participants will explore the board’s role in cybersecurity, as well as breach planning, response, and mitigation. And we will discuss the impact and requirements of the many new regulations coming forward, not just from the SEC, but also White House, Congress, and most states and countries around the world, which are imposing more high-level responsibilities on companies.

      Q: What are some examples of how companies, and specifically boards of directors, have successfully upped their cybersecurity game?

      A: To ensure boardroom skills reflect the patterns of the marketplace, companies such as FedEx, Hasbro, PNC, and UPS have transformed their approach to governing cyber risk, starting with board cyber expertise. In companies like these, building resiliency started with a clear plan — from the boardroom — built on business and economic analysis.

      In one company we looked at, the CEO realized his board was not well versed in the business context or financial exposure risk from a cyber attack, so he hired a third-party consulting firm to conduct a cybersecurity maturity assessment. The company CISO presented the results of the report to the enterprise risk management subcommittee, creating a productive dialogue around the business and financial impact of different investments in cybersecurity.  

      Another organization focused their board on the alignment of their cybersecurity program and operational risk. The CISO, chief risk officer, and board collaborated to understand the exposure of the organization from a risk perspective, resulting in optimizing their cyber insurance policy to mitigate the newly understood risk.

      One important takeaway from these examples is the importance of using the language of risk, resiliency, and reputation to bridge the gaps between technical cybersecurity needs and the oversight responsibilities executed by boards. Boards need to understand the financial exposure resulting from cyber risk, not just the technical components typically found in cyber presentations.

      Cyber risk is not going away. It’s escalating and becoming more sophisticated every day. Getting your board “on board” is key to meeting new guidelines, providing sufficient oversight to cybersecurity plans, and making organizations more resilient. More

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      Ad hoc committee releases report on remote teaching best practices for on-campus education

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      The Ad Hoc Committee on Leveraging Best Practices from Remote Teaching for On-Campus Education has released a report that captures how instructors are weaving lessons learned from remote teaching into in-person classes. Despite the challenges imposed by teaching and learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, the report says, “there were seeds planted then that, we hope, will bear fruit in the coming years.”

      “In the long run, one of the best things about having lived through our remote learning experience may be the intense and broad focus on pedagogy that it necessitated,” the report continues. “In a moment when nobody could just teach the way they had always done before, all of us had to go back to first principles and ask ourselves: What are our learning goals for our students? How can we best help them to achieve these goals?”

      The committee’s work is a direct response to one of the Refinement and Implementation Committees (RIC) formed as part of Task Force 2021 and Beyond. Led by co-chairs Krishna Rajagopal, the William A. M. Burden Professor of Physics, and Janet Rankin, director of the MIT Teaching + Learning Lab, the committee engaged with faculty and instructional staff, associate department heads, and undergraduate and graduate officers across MIT.

      The findings are distilled into four broad themes:

      Community, Well-being, and Belonging. Conversations revealed new ways that instructors cultivated these key interrelated concepts, all of which are fundamental to student learning and success. Many instructors focused more on supporting well-being and building community and belonging during the height of the pandemic precisely because the MIT community, and everyone in it, was under such great stress. Some of the resulting practices are continuing, the committee found. Examples include introducing simple gestures, such as start-of-class welcoming practices, and providing extensions and greater flexibility on student assignments. Also, many across MIT felt that the week-long Thanksgiving break offered in 2020 should become a permanent fixture in the academic calendar, because it enhances the well-being of both students and instructors at a time in the fall semester when everyone’s batteries need recharging. 
      Enhancing Engagement. The committee found a variety of practices that have enhanced engagement between students and instructors; among students; and among instructors. For example, many instructors have continued to offer some office hours on Zoom, which seems to reduce barriers to participation for many students, while offering in-person office hours for those who want to take advantage of opportunities for more open-ended conversations. Several departments increased their usage of undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) in ways that make students’ learning experience more engaging and give the UTAs a real teaching experience. In addition, many instructors are leveraging out-of-class communication spaces like Slack, Perusall, and Piazza so students can work together, ask questions, and share ideas. 
      Enriching and Augmenting the Learning Environment. The report presents two ways in which instructors have enhanced learning within the classroom: through blended learning and by incorporating authentic experiences. Although blended learning techniques are not new at MIT, after having made it through remote teaching many faculty have found new ways to combine synchronous in-person teaching with asynchronous activities for on-campus students, such as pre-class or pre-lab sequences of videos with exercises interspersed, take-home lab kits, auto-graded online problems that give students immediate feedback, and recorded lab experiences for subsequent review. In addition, instructors found many creative ways to make students’ learning more authentic by going on virtual field trips, using Zoom to bring experts from around the world into MIT classrooms or to enable interactions with students at other universities, and live-streaming experiments that students could not otherwise experience since they cannot be performed in a teaching lab.   
       Assessing Learning. For all its challenges, the report notes, remote teaching prompted instructors to take a step back and think about what they wanted students to learn, how to support it, and how to measure it. The committee found a variety of examples of alternatives to traditional assessments, such as papers or timed, written exams, that instructors tried during the pandemic and are continuing to use. These alternatives include shorter, more frequent, lower-stakes assessments; oral exams or debates; asynchronous, open-book/notes exams; virtual poster sessions; alternate grading schemes; and uploading paper psets and exams into Gradescope to use its logistics and rubrics to improve grading effectiveness and efficiency.
      A large portion of the report is devoted to an extensive, annotated list of best practices from remote instruction that are being used in the classroom. Interestingly, Rankin says, “so many of the strategies and practices developed and used during the pandemic are based on, and supported by, solid educational research.”

      The report concludes with one broad recommendation: that all faculty and instructors read the findings and experiment with some of the best practices in their own instruction. “Our hope is that the practices shared in the report will continue to be adopted, adapted, and expanded by members of the teaching community at MIT, and that instructors’ openness in sharing and learning from each will continue,” Rankin says.

      Two additional, specific recommendations are included in the report. First, the committee endorses the RIC 16 recommendation that a Classroom Advisory Board be created to provide strategic input grounded in evolving pedagogy about future classroom use and technology needs. In its conversations, the committee found a number of ways that remote teaching and learning have impacted students’ and instructors’ perceptions as they have returned to the classroom. For example, during the pandemic students benefited from being able to see everyone else’s faces on Zoom. As a result, some instructors would prefer classrooms that enable students to face each other, such as semi-circular classrooms instead of rectangular ones.

      More generally, the committee concluded, MIT needs classrooms with seats and tables that can be quickly and flexibly reconfigured to facilitate varying pedagogical objectives. The Classroom Advisory Board could also examine classroom technology; this includes the role of videoconferencing to create authentic engagement between MIT students and people far from campus, and blended learning that allows students to experience more of the in-classroom engagement with their peers and instructors from which the “magic of MIT” originates.

      Second, the committee recommends that an implementation group be formed to investigate the possibility of changing the MIT academic calendar to create a one-week break over Thanksgiving. “Finalizing an implementation plan will require careful consideration of various significant logistical challenges,” the report says. “However, the resulting gains to both well-being and learning from this change to the fall calendar make doing so worthwhile.”

      Rankin notes that the report findings dovetail with the recently released MIT Strategic Action Plan for Belonging, Achievement and Composition. “I believe that one of the most important things that became really apparent during remote teaching was that community, inclusion, and belonging really matter and are necessary for both learning and teaching, and that instructors can and should play a central role in creating structures and processes to support them in their classrooms and other learning environments,” she says.

      Rajagopal finds it inspiring that “during a time of intense stress — that nobody ever wants to relive — there was such an intense focus on how we teach and how our students learn that, today, in essentially every direction we look we see colleagues improving on-campus education for tomorrow. I hope that the report will help instructors across the Institute, and perhaps elsewhere, learn from each other. Its readers will see, as our committee did, new ways in which students and instructors are finding those moments, those interactions, where the magic of MIT is created.”

      In addition to the report, the co-chairs recommend two other valuable remote teaching resources: a video interview series, TLL’s Fresh Perspectives, and Open Learning’s collection of examples of how MIT faculty and instructors leveraged digital technology to support and transform teaching and learning during the heart of the pandemic. More

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      Empowering Cambridge youth through data activism

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      For over 40 years, the Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment Program (MSYEP, or the Mayor’s Program) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been providing teenagers with their first work experience, but 2022 brought a new offering. Collaborating with MIT’s Personal Robots research group (PRG) and Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) this summer, MSYEP created a STEAM-focused learning site at the Institute. Eleven students joined the program to learn coding and programming skills through the lens of “Data Activism.”

      MSYEP’s partnership with MIT provides an opportunity for Cambridge high schoolers to gain exposure to more pathways for their future careers and education. The Mayor’s Program aims to respect students’ time and show the value of their work, so participants are compensated with an hourly wage as they learn workforce skills at MSYEP worksites. In conjunction with two ongoing research studies at MIT, PRG and RAISE developed the six-week Data Activism curriculum to equip students with critical-thinking skills so they feel prepared to utilize data science to challenge social injustice and empower their community.

      Rohan Kundargi, K-12 Community Outreach Administrator for MIT Office of Government and Community Relations (OGCR), says, “I see this as a model for a new type of partnership between MIT and Cambridge MSYEP. Specifically, an MIT research project that involves students from Cambridge getting paid to learn, research, and develop their own skills!”

      Cross-Cambridge collaboration

      Cambridge’s Office of Workforce Development initially contacted MIT OGCR about hosting a potential MSYEP worksite that taught Cambridge teens how to code. When Kundargi reached out to MIT pK-12 collaborators, MIT PRG’s graduate research assistant Raechel Walker proposed the Data Activism curriculum. Walker defines “data activism” as utilizing data, computing, and art to analyze how power operates in the world, challenge power, and empathize with people who are oppressed.

      Walker says, “I wanted students to feel empowered to incorporate their own expertise, talents, and interests into every activity. In order for students to fully embrace their academic abilities, they must remain comfortable with bringing their full selves into data activism.”

      As Kundargi and Walker recruited students for the Data Activism learning site, they wanted to make sure the cohort of students — the majority of whom are individuals of color — felt represented at MIT and felt they had the agency for their voice to be heard. “The pioneers in this field are people who look like them,” Walker says, speaking of well-known data activists Timnit Gebru, Rediet Abebe, and Joy Buolamwini.

      When the program began this summer, some of the students were not aware of the ways data science and artificial intelligence exacerbate systemic oppression in society, or some of the tools currently being used to mitigate those societal harms. As a result, Walker says, the students wanted to learn more about discriminatory design in every aspect of life. They were also interested in creating responsible machine learning algorithms and AI fairness metrics.

      A different side of STEAM

      The development and execution of the Data Activism curriculum contributed to Walker’s and postdoc Xiaoxue Du’s respective research at PRG. Walker is studying AI education, specifically creating and teaching data activism curricula for minoritized communities. Du’s research explores processes, assessments, and curriculum design that prepares educators to use, adapt, and integrate AI literacy curricula. Additionally, her research targets how to leverage more opportunities for students with diverse learning needs.

      The Data Activism curriculum utilizes a “libertatory computing” framework, a term Walker coined in her position paper with Professor Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE, dean for digital learning, and head of PRG, and Eman Sherif, a then-undergraduate researcher from University of California at San Diego, titled “Liberty Computing for African American Students.” This framework ensures that students, especially minoritized students, acquire a sound racial identity, critical consciousness, collective obligation, liberation centered academic/achievement identity, as well as the activism skills to use computing to transform a multi-layered system of barriers in which racism persists. Walker says, “We encouraged students to demonstrate competency in every pillar because all of the pillars are interconnected and build upon each other.”

      Walker developed a series of interactive coding and project-based activities that focused on understanding systemic racism, utilizing data science to analyze systemic oppression, data drawing, responsible machine learning, how racism can be embedded into AI, and different AI fairness metrics.

      This was the students’ first time learning how to create data visualizations using the programming language Python and the data analysis tool Pandas. In one project meant to examine how different systems of oppression can affect different aspects of students’ own identities, students created datasets with data from their respective intersectional identities. Another activity highlighted African American achievements, where students analyzed two datasets about African American scientists, activists, artists, scholars, and athletes. Using the data visualizations, students then created zines about the African Americans who inspired them.

      RAISE hired Olivia Dias, Sophia Brady, Lina Henriquez, and Zeynep Yalcin through the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) and PRG hired freelancer Matt Taylor to work with Walker on developing the curriculum and designing interdisciplinary experience projects. Walker and the four undergraduate researchers constructed an intersectional data analysis activity about different examples of systemic oppression. PRG also hired three high school students to test activities and offer insights about making the curriculum engaging for program participants. Throughout the program, the Data Activism team taught students in small groups, continually asked students how to improve each activity, and structured each lesson based on the students’ interests. Walker says Dias, Brady, Henriquez, and Yalcin were invaluable to cultivating a supportive classroom environment and helping students complete their projects.

      Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior Nina works on her rubber block stamp that depicts the importance of representation in media and greater representation in the tech industry.

      Photo: Katherine Ouellette

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      Student Nina says, “It’s opened my eyes to a different side of STEM. I didn’t know what ‘data’ meant before this program, or how intersectionality can affect AI and data.” Before MSYEP, Nina took Intro to Computer Science and AP Computer Science, but she has been coding since Girls Who Code first sparked her interest in middle school. “The community was really nice. I could talk with other girls. I saw there needs to be more women in STEM, especially in coding.” Now she’s interested in applying to colleges with strong computer science programs so she can pursue a coding-related career.

      From MSYEP to the mayor’s office

      Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui visited the Data Activism learning site on Aug. 9, accompanied by Breazeal. A graduate of MSYEP herself, Siddiqui says, “Through hands-on learning through computer programming, Cambridge high school students have the unique opportunity to see themselves as data scientists. Students were able learn ways to combat discrimination that occurs through artificial intelligence.” In an Instagram post, Siddiqui also said, “I had a blast visiting the students and learning about their projects.”

      Students worked on an activity that asked them to envision how data science might be used to support marginalized communities. They transformed their answers into block-printed T-shirt designs, carving pictures of their hopes into rubber block stamps. Some students focused on the importance of data privacy, like Jacob T., who drew a birdcage to represent data stored and locked away by third party apps. He says, “I want to open that cage and restore my data to myself and see what can be done with it.”

      The subject of Cambridge Community Charter School student Jacob T.’s project was the importance of data privacy. For his T-shirt design, he drew a birdcage to represent data stored and locked away by third party apps. (From right to left:) Breazeal, Jacob T. Kiki, Raechel Walker, and Zeynep Yalcin.

      Photo: Katherine Ouellette

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      Many students wanted to see more representation in both the media they consume and across various professional fields. Nina talked about the importance of representation in media and how that could contribute to greater representation in the tech industry, while Kiki talked about encouraging more women to pursue STEM fields. Jesmin said, “I wanted to show that data science is accessible to everyone, no matter their origin or language you speak. I wrote ‘hello’ in Bangla, Arabic, and English, because I speak all three languages and they all resonate with me.”

      Student Jesmin (left) explains the concept of her T-shirt design to Mayor Siddiqui. She wants data science to be accessible to everyone, no matter their origin or language, so she drew a globe and wrote ‘hello’ in the three languages she speaks: Bangla, Arabic, and English.

      Photo: Katherine Ouellette

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      “Overall, I hope the students continue to use their data activism skills to re-envision a society that supports marginalized groups,” says Walker. “Moreover, I hope they are empowered to become data scientists and understand how their race can be a positive part of their identity.” More

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      Caspar Hare, Georgia Perakis named associate deans of Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing

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      Caspar Hare and Georgia Perakis have been appointed the new associate deans of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative in the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Their new roles will take effect on Sept. 1.

      “Infusing social and ethical aspects of computing in academic research and education is a critical component of the college mission,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “I look forward to working with Caspar and Georgia on continuing to develop and advance SERC and its reach across MIT. Their complementary backgrounds and their broad connections across MIT will be invaluable to this next chapter of SERC.”

      Caspar Hare

      Hare is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. A member of the MIT faculty since 2003, his main interests are in ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. The general theme of his recent work has been to bring ideas about practical rationality and metaphysics to bear on issues in normative ethics and epistemology. He is the author of two books: “On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects” (Princeton University Press 2009), about the metaphysics of perspective, and “The Limits of Kindness” (Oxford University Press 2013), about normative ethics.

      Georgia Perakis

      Perakis is the William F. Pounds Professor of Management and professor of operations research, statistics, and operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she has been a faculty member since 1998. She investigates the theory and practice of analytics and its role in operations problems and is particularly interested in how to solve complex and practical problems in pricing, revenue management, supply chains, health care, transportation, and energy applications, among other areas. Since 2019, she has been the co-director of the Operations Research Center, an interdepartmental PhD program that jointly reports to MIT Sloan and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, a role in which she will remain. Perakis will also assume an associate dean role at MIT Sloan in recognition of her leadership.

      Hare and Perakis succeed David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics, and Julie Shah, the H.N. Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, who will be stepping down from their roles at the conclusion of their three-year term on Aug. 31.

      “My deepest thanks to Dave and Julie for their tremendous leadership of SERC and contributions to the college as associate deans,” says Huttenlocher.

      SERC impact

      As the inaugural associate deans of SERC, Kaiser and Shah have been responsible for advancing a mission to incorporate humanist, social science, social responsibility, and civic perspectives into MIT’s teaching, research, and implementation of computing. In doing so, they have engaged dozens of faculty members and thousands of students from across MIT during these first three years of the initiative.

      They have brought together people from a broad array of disciplines to collaborate on crafting original materials such as active learning projects, homework assignments, and in-class demonstrations. A collection of these materials was recently published and is now freely available to the world via MIT OpenCourseWare.

      In February 2021, they launched the MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing for undergraduate instruction across a range of classes and fields of study. The specially commissioned and peer-reviewed cases are based on original research and are brief by design. Three issues have been published to date and a fourth will be released later this summer. Kaiser will continue to oversee the successful new series as editor.

      Last year, 60 undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs joined a community of SERC Scholars to help advance SERC efforts in the college. The scholars participate in unique opportunities throughout, such as the summer Experiential Ethics program. A multidisciplinary team of graduate students last winter worked with the instructors and teaching assistants of class 6.036 (Introduction to Machine Learning), MIT’s largest machine learning course, to infuse weekly labs with material covering ethical computing, data and model bias, and fairness in machine learning through SERC.

      Through efforts such as these, SERC has had a substantial impact at MIT and beyond. Over the course of their tenure, Kaiser and Shah have engaged about 80 faculty members, and more than 2,100 students took courses that included new SERC content in the last year alone. SERC’s reach extended well beyond engineering students, with about 500 exposed to SERC content through courses offered in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the School of Architecture and Planning. More

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      MIT ReACT welcomes first Afghan cohort to its largest-yet certificate program

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      Through the championing support of the faculty and leadership of the MIT Afghan Working Group convened last September by Provost Martin Schmidt and chaired by Associate Provost for International Activities Richard Lester, MIT has come together to support displaced Afghan learners and scholars in a time of crisis. The MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) has opened opportunities for 25 talented Afghan learners to participate in the hub’s certificate program in computer and data science (CDS), now in its fourth year, welcoming its largest and most diverse cohort to date — 136 learners from 29 countries.

      ”Even in the face of extreme disruption, education and scholarship must continue, and MIT is committed to providing resources and safe forums for displaced scholars,” says Lester. “We greatly appreciate MIT ReACT’s work to create learning opportunities for Afghan students whose lives have been upended by the crisis in their homeland.”

      Currently, more than 3.5 million Afghans are internally displaced, while 2.5 million are registered refugees residing in other parts of the world. With millions in Afghanistan facing famine, poverty, and civil unrest in what has become the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, the United Nations predicts the number of Afghans forced to flee their homes will continue to rise. 

      “Forced displacement is on the rise, fueled not only by constant political, economical, and social turmoil worldwide, but also by the ongoing climate change crisis, which threatens costly disruptions to society and has potential to create unprecedented displacement internationally,” says associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and ReACT’s faculty founder Admir Masic. During the orientation for the new CDS cohort in January, Masic emphasized the great need for educational programs like ReACT’s that address the specific challenges refugees and displaced learners face.

      A former Bosnian refugee, Masic spent his teenage years in Croatia, where educational opportunities were limited for young people with refugee status. His experience motivated him to found ReACT, which launched in 2017. Housed within Open Learning, ReACT is an MIT-wide effort to deliver global education and professional development programs to underserved communities, including refugees and migrants. ReACT’s signature program, CDS is a year-long, online program that combines MITx courses in programming and data science, personal and professional development workshops including MIT Bootcamps, and opportunities for practical experience.

      ReACT’s group of 25 learners from Afghanistan, 52 percent of whom are women, joins the larger CDS cohort in the program. They will receive support from their new colleagues as well as members of ReACT’s mentor and alumni network. While the majority of the group are residing around the world, including in Europe, North America, and neighboring countries, several still remain in Afghanistan. With the support of the Afghan Working Group, ReACT is working to connect with communities from the region to provide safe and inclusive learning environments for the cohort. ​​

      Building community and confidence

      Selected from more than 1,000 applicants, the new CDS cohort reflected on their personal and professional goals during a weeklong orientation.

      “I am here because I want to change my career and learn basics in this field to then obtain networks that I wouldn’t have got if it weren’t for this program,” said Samiullah Ajmal, who is joining the program from Afghanistan.

      Interactive workshops on topics such as leadership development and virtual networking rounded out the week’s events. Members of ReACT’s greater community — which has grown in recent years to include a network of external collaborators including nonprofits, philanthropic supporters, universities, and alumni — helped facilitate these workshops and other orientation activities.

      For instance, Na’amal, a social enterprise that connects refugees to remote work opportunities, introduced the CDS learners to strategies for making career connections remotely. “We build confidence while doing,” says Susan Mulholland, a leadership and development coach with Na’amal who led the networking workshop.

      Along with the CDS program’s cohort-based model, ReACT also uses platforms that encourage regular communication between participants and with the larger ReACT network — making connections a critical component of the program.

      “I not only want to meet new people and make connections for my professional career, but I also want to test my communication and social skills,” says Pablo Andrés Uribe, a learner who lives in Colombia, describing ReACT’s emphasis on community-building. 

      Over the last two years, ReACT has expanded its geographic presence, growing from a hub in Jordan into a robust global community of many hubs, including in Colombia and Uganda. These regional sites connect talented refugees and displaced learners to internships and employment, startup networks and accelerators, and pathways to formal undergraduate and graduate education.

      This expansion is thanks to the generous support internally from the MIT Office of the Provost and Associate Provost Richard Lester and external organizations including the Western Union Foundation. ReACT will build new hubs this year in Greece, Uruguay, and Afghanistan, as a result of gifts from the Hatsopoulos family and the Pfeffer family.

      Holding space to learn from each other

      In addition to establishing new global hubs, ReACT plans to expand its network of internship and experiential learning opportunities, increasing outreach to new collaborators such as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), companies, and universities. Jointly with Na’amal and Paper Airplanes, a nonprofit that connects conflict-affected individuals with personal language tutors, ReACT will host the first Migration Summit. Scheduled for April 2022, the month-long global convening invites a broad range of participants, including displaced learners, universities, companies, nonprofits and NGOs, social enterprises, foundations, philanthropists, researchers, policymakers, employers, and governments, to address the key challenges and opportunities for refugee and migrant communities. The theme of the summit is “Education and Workforce Development in Displacement.”

      “The MIT Migration Summit offers a platform to discuss how new educational models, such as those employed in ReACT, can help solve emerging challenges in providing quality education and career opportunities to forcibly displaced and marginalized people around the world,” says Masic. 

      A key goal of the convening is to center the voices of those most directly impacted by displacement, such as ReACT’s learners from Afghanistan and elsewhere, in solution-making. More

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      in Data Management & Statistics

      MIT Center for Real Estate launches the Asia Real Estate Initiative

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      To appreciate the explosive urbanization taking place in Asia, consider this analogy: Every 40 days, a city the equivalent size of Boston is built in Asia. Of the $24.7 trillion real estate investment opportunities predicted by 2030 in emerging cities, $17.8 trillion (72 percent) will be in Asia. While this growth is exciting to the real estate industry, it brings with it the attendant social and environmental issues.

      To promote a sustainable and innovative approach to this growth, leadership at the MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT CRE) recently established the Asia Real Estate Initiative (AREI), which aims to become a platform for industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and the academic community to find solutions to the practical concerns of real estate development across these countries.

      “Behind the creation of this initiative is the understanding that Asia is a living lab for the study of future global urban development,” says Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.

      An investment in cities of the future

      One of the areas in AREI’s scope of focus is connecting sustainability and technology in real estate.

      “We believe the real estate sector should work cooperatively with the energy, science, and technology sectors to solve the climate challenges,” says Richard Lester, the Institute’s associate provost for international activities. “AREI will engage academics and industry leaders, nongovernment organizations, and civic leaders globally and in Asia, to advance sharing knowledge and research.”

      In its effort to understand how trends and new technologies will impact the future of real estate, AREI has received initial support from a prominent alumnus of MIT CRE who wishes to remain anonymous. The gift will support a cohort of researchers working on innovative technologies applicable to advancing real estate sustainability goals, with a special focus on the global and Asia markets. The call for applications is already under way, with AREI seeking to collaborate with scholars who have backgrounds in economics, finance, urban planning, technology, engineering, and other disciplines.

      “The research on real estate sustainability and technology could transform this industry and help invent global real estate of the future,” says Professor Siqi Zheng, faculty director of MIT CRE and AREI faculty chair. “The pairing of real estate and technology often leads to innovative and differential real estate development strategies such as buildings that are green, smart, and healthy.”

      The initiative arrives at a key time to make a significant impact and cement a leadership role in real estate development across Asia. MIT CRE is positioned to help the industry increase its efficiency and social responsibility, with nearly 40 years of pioneering research in the field. Zheng, an established scholar with expertise on urban growth in fast-urbanizing regions, is the former president of the Asia Real Estate Society and sits on the Board of American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. Her research has been supported by international institutions including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

      “The researchers in AREI are now working on three interrelated themes: the future of real estate and live-work-play dynamics; connecting sustainability and technology in real estate; and innovations in real estate finance and business,” says Zheng.

      The first theme has already yielded a book — “Toward Urban Economic Vibrancy: Patterns and Practices in Asia’s New Cities” — recently published by SA+P Press.

      Engaging thought leaders and global stakeholders

      AREI also plans to collaborate with counterparts in Asia to contribute to research, education, and industry dialogue to meet the challenges of sustainable city-making across the continent and identify areas for innovation. Traditionally, real estate has been a very local business with a lengthy value chain, according to Zhengzhen Tan, director of AREI. Most developers focused their career on one particular product type in one particular regional market. AREI is working to change that dynamic.

      “We want to create a cross-border dialogue within Asia and among Asia, North America, and European leaders to exchange knowledge and practices,” says Tan. “The real estate industry’s learning costs are very high compared to other sectors. Collective learning will reduce the cost of failure and have a significant impact on these global issues.”

      The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow shed additional light on environmental commitments being made by governments in Asia. With real estate representing 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the Asian real estate market is undergoing an urgent transformation to deliver on this commitment.

      “One of the most pressing calls is to get to net-zero emissions for real estate development and operation,” says Tan. “Real estate investors and developers are making short- and long-term choices that are locking in environmental footprints for the ‘decisive decade.’ We hope to inspire developers and investors to think differently and get out of their comfort zone.” More

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      in Data Management & Statistics

      Physics and the machine-learning “black box”

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      Machine-learning algorithms are often referred to as a “black box.” Once data are put into an algorithm, it’s not always known exactly how the algorithm arrives at its prediction. This can be particularly frustrating when things go wrong. A new mechanical engineering (MechE) course at MIT teaches students how to tackle the “black box” problem, through a combination of data science and physics-based engineering.

      In class 2.C161 (Physical Systems Modeling and Design Using Machine Learning), Professor George Barbastathis demonstrates how mechanical engineers can use their unique knowledge of physical systems to keep algorithms in check and develop more accurate predictions.

      “I wanted to take 2.C161 because machine-learning models are usually a “black box,” but this class taught us how to construct a system model that is informed by physics so we can peek inside,” explains Crystal Owens, a mechanical engineering graduate student who took the course in spring 2021.

      As chair of the Committee on the Strategic Integration of Data Science into Mechanical Engineering, Barbastathis has had many conversations with mechanical engineering students, researchers, and faculty to better understand the challenges and successes they’ve had using machine learning in their work.

      “One comment we heard frequently was that these colleagues can see the value of data science methods for problems they are facing in their mechanical engineering-centric research; yet they are lacking the tools to make the most out of it,” says Barbastathis. “Mechanical, civil, electrical, and other types of engineers want a fundamental understanding of data principles without having to convert themselves to being full-time data scientists or AI researchers.”

      Additionally, as mechanical engineering students move on from MIT to their careers, many will need to manage data scientists on their teams someday. Barbastathis hopes to set these students up for success with class 2.C161.

      Bridging MechE and the MIT Schwartzman College of Computing

      Class 2.C161 is part of the MIT Schwartzman College of Computing “Computing Core.” The goal of these classes is to connect data science and physics-based engineering disciplines, like mechanical engineering. Students take the course alongside 6.C402 (Modeling with Machine Learning: from Algorithms to Applications), taught by professors of electrical engineering and computer science Regina Barzilay and Tommi Jaakkola.

      The two classes are taught concurrently during the semester, exposing students to both fundamentals in machine learning and domain-specific applications in mechanical engineering.

      In 2.C161, Barbastathis highlights how complementary physics-based engineering and data science are. Physical laws present a number of ambiguities and unknowns, ranging from temperature and humidity to electromagnetic forces. Data science can be used to predict these physical phenomena. Meanwhile, having an understanding of physical systems helps ensure the resulting output of an algorithm is accurate and explainable.

      “What’s needed is a deeper combined understanding of the associated physical phenomena and the principles of data science, machine learning in particular, to close the gap,” adds Barbastathis. “By combining data with physical principles, the new revolution in physics-based engineering is relatively immune to the “black box” problem facing other types of machine learning.”

      Equipped with a working knowledge of machine-learning topics covered in class 6.C402 and a deeper understanding of how to pair data science with physics, students are charged with developing a final project that solves for an actual physical system.

      Developing solutions for real-world physical systems

      For their final project, students in 2.C161 are asked to identify a real-world problem that requires data science to address the ambiguity inherent in physical systems. After obtaining all relevant data, students are asked to select a machine-learning method, implement their chosen solution, and present and critique the results.

      Topics this past semester ranged from weather forecasting to the flow of gas in combustion engines, with two student teams drawing inspiration from the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

      Owens and her teammates, fellow graduate students Arun Krishnadas and Joshua David John Rathinaraj, set out to develop a model for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout.

      “We developed a method of combining a neural network with a susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) epidemiological model to create a physics-informed prediction system for the spread of Covid-19 after vaccinations started,” explains Owens.

      The team accounted for various unknowns including population mobility, weather, and political climate. This combined approach resulted in a prediction of Covid-19’s spread during the vaccine rollout that was more reliable than using either the SIR model or a neural network alone.

      Another team, including graduate student Yiwen Hu, developed a model to predict mutation rates in Covid-19, a topic that became all too pertinent as the delta variant began its global spread.

      “We used machine learning to predict the time-series-based mutation rate of Covid-19, and then incorporated that as an independent parameter into the prediction of pandemic dynamics to see if it could help us better predict the trend of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Hu.

      Hu, who had previously conducted research into how vibrations on coronavirus protein spikes affect infection rates, hopes to apply the physics-based machine-learning approaches he learned in 2.C161 to his research on de novo protein design.

      Whatever the physical system students addressed in their final projects, Barbastathis was careful to stress one unifying goal: the need to assess ethical implications in data science. While more traditional computing methods like face or voice recognition have proven to be rife with ethical issues, there is an opportunity to combine physical systems with machine learning in a fair, ethical way.

      “We must ensure that collection and use of data are carried out equitably and inclusively, respecting the diversity in our society and avoiding well-known problems that computer scientists in the past have run into,” says Barbastathis.

      Barbastathis hopes that by encouraging mechanical engineering students to be both ethics-literate and well-versed in data science, they can move on to develop reliable, ethically sound solutions and predictions for physical-based engineering challenges. More