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      Studying learner engagement during the Covid-19 pandemic

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      While massive open online classes (MOOCs) have been a significant trend in higher education for many years now, they have gained a new level of attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Open online courses became a critical resource for a wide audience of new learners during the first stages of the pandemic — including students whose academic programs had shifted online, teachers seeking online resources, and individuals suddenly facing lockdown or unemployment and looking to build new skills.

      Mary Ellen Wiltrout, director of online and blended learning initiatives and lecturer in digital learning in the Department of Biology, and Virginia “Katie” Blackwell, currently an MIT PhD student in biology, published a paper this summer in the European MOOC Stakeholder Summit (EMOOCs 2021) conference proceedings evaluating data for the online course 7.00x (Introduction to Biology). Their research objective was to better understand whether the shift to online learning that occurred during the pandemic led to increased learner engagement in the course.Blackwell participated in this research as part of the Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) in Biology, during the uniquely remote MSRPx-Biology 2020 student cohort. She collaborated on the project while working toward her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, and collaborated on the research while in Texas. She has since applied and been accepted into MIT’s PhD program in biology.

      “MSRP Biology was a transformative experience for me. I learned a lot about the nature of research and the MIT community in a very short period of time and loved every second of the program. Without MSRP, I would never have even considered applying to MIT for my PhD. After MSRP and working with Mary Ellen, MIT biology became my first-choice program and I felt like I had a shot at getting in,” says Blackwell.

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      Many MOOC platforms experienced increased website traffic in 2020, with 30 new MOOC-based degrees and more than 60 million new learners.

      “We find that the tremendous, lifelong learning opportunities that MOOCs provide are even more important and sought-after when traditional education is disrupted. During the pandemic, people had to be at home more often, and some faced unemployment requiring a career transition,” says Wiltrout.

      Wiltrout and Blackwell wanted to build a deeper understanding of learner profiles rather than looking exclusively at enrollments. They looked at all available data, including: enrollment demographics (i.e., country and “.edu” participants); proportion of learners engaged with videos, problems, and forums; number of individual engagement events with videos, problems, and forums; verification and performance; and the course “track” level — including auditing (for free) and verified (paying and receiving access to additional course content, including access to a comprehensive competency exam). They analyzed data in these areas from five runs of 7.00x in this study, including three pre-pandemic runs of April, July, and November 2019 and two pandemic runs of March and July 2020. 

      The March 2020 run had the same count of verified-track participants as all three pre-pandemic runs combined. The July 2020 run enrolled nearly as many verified-track participants as the March 2020 run. Wiltrout says that introductory biology content may have attracted great attention during the early days and months of the Covid-19 pandemic, as people may have had a new (or renewed) interest in learning about (or reviewing) viruses, RNA, the inner workings of cells, and more.

      Wiltrout and Blackwell found that the enrollment count for the March 2020 run of the course increased at almost triple the rate of the three pre-pandemic runs. During the early days of March 2020, the enrollment metrics appeared similar to enrollment metrics for the April 2019 run — both in rate and count — but the enrollment rate increased sharply around March 15, 2020. The July 2020 run began with more than twice as many learners already enrolled by the first day of the course, but continued with half the enrollment rate of the March 2020 course. In terms of learner demographics, during the pandemic, there was a higher proportion of learners with .edu addresses, indicating that MOOCs were often used by students enrolled in other schools. 

      Viewings of course videos increased at the beginning of the pandemic. During the March 2020 run, both verified-track and certified participants viewed far more unique videos during March 2020 than in the pre-pandemic runs of the course; even auditor-track learners — not aiming for certification — still viewed all videos offered. During the July 2020 run, however, both verified-track and certified participants viewed far fewer unique videos than during all prior runs. The proportion of participants who viewed at least one video decreased in the July 2020 run to 53 percent, from a mean of 64 percent in prior runs. Blackwell and Wiltrout say that this decrease — as well as the overall dip in participation in July 2020 — might be attributed to shifting circumstances for learners that allowed for less time to watch videos and participate in the course, as well as some fatigue from the extra screen time.

      The study found that 4.4 percent of March 2020 participants and 4.5 percent of July 2020 participants engaged through forum posting — which was 1.4 to 3.3 times higher than pre-pandemic proportions of forum posting. The increase in forum engagement may point to a desire for community engagement during a time when many were isolated and sheltering in place.

      “Through the day-to-day work of my research team and also through the engagement of the learners in 7.00x, we can see that there is great potential for meaningful connections in remote experiences,” says Wiltrout. “An increase in participation for an online course may not always remain at the same high level, in the long term, but overall, we’re continuing to see an increase in the number of MOOCs and other online programs offered by all universities and institutions, as well as an increase in online learners.” More

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      MIT collaborates with Biogen on three-year, $7 million initiative to address climate, health, and equity

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      MIT and Biogen have announced that they will collaborate with the goal to accelerate the science and action on climate change to improve human health. This collaboration is supported by a three-year, $7 million commitment from the company and the Biogen Foundation. The biotechnology company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Kendall Square, discovers and develops therapies for people living with serious neurological diseases.

      “We have long believed it is imperative for Biogen to make the fight against climate change central to our long-term corporate responsibility commitments. Through this collaboration with MIT, we aim to identify and share innovative climate solutions that will deliver co-benefits for both health and equity,” says Michel Vounatsos, CEO of Biogen. “We are also proud to support the MIT Museum, which promises to make world-class science and education accessible to all, and honor Biogen co-founder Phillip A. Sharp with a dedication inside the museum that recognizes his contributions to its development.”

      Biogen and the Biogen Foundation are supporting research and programs across a range of areas at MIT.

      Advancing climate, health, and equity

      The first such effort involves new work within the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change to establish a state-of-the-art integrated model of climate and health aimed at identifying targets that deliver climate and health co-benefits.

      “Evidence suggests that not all climate-related actions deliver equal health benefits, yet policymakers, planners, and stakeholders traditionally lack the tools to consider how decisions in one arena impact the other,” says C. Adam Schlosser, deputy director of the MIT Joint Program. “Biogen’s collaboration with the MIT Joint Program — and its support of a new distinguished Biogen Fellow who will develop the new climate/health model — will accelerate our efforts to provide decision-makers with these tools.”

      Biogen is also supporting the MIT Technology and Policy Program’s Research to Policy Engagement Initiative to infuse human health as a key new consideration in decision-making on the best pathways forward to address the global climate crisis, and bridge the knowledge-to-action gap by connecting policymakers, researchers, and diverse stakeholders. As part of this work, Biogen is underwriting a distinguished Biogen Fellow to advance new research on climate, health, and equity.

      “Our work with Biogen has allowed us to make progress on key questions that matter to human health and well-being under climate change,” says Noelle Eckley Selin, who directs the MIT Technology and Policy Program and is a professor in the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Further, their support of the Research to Policy Engagement Initiative helps all of our research become more effective in making change.”

      In addition, Biogen has joined 13 other companies in the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), which is supporting faculty and student research and developing impact pathways that present a range of actionable steps that companies can take — within and across industries — to advance progress toward climate targets.

      “Biogen joining the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium represents our commitment to working with member companies across a diverse range of industries, an approach that aims to drive changes swift and broad enough to match the scale of the climate challenge,” says Jeremy Gregory, executive director of the MCSC. “We are excited to welcome a member from the biotechnology space and look forward to harnessing Biogen’s perspectives as we continue to collaborate and work together with the MIT community in exciting and meaningful ways.”

      Making world-class science and education available to MIT Museum visitors

      Support from Biogen will honor Nobel laureate, MIT Institute professor, and Biogen co-founder Phillip A. Sharp with a named space inside the new Kendall Square location of the MIT Museum, set to open in spring 2022. Biogen also is supporting one of the museum’s opening exhibitions, “Essential MIT,” with a section focused on solving real-world problems such as climate change. It is also providing programmatic support for the museum’s Life Sciences Maker Engagement Program.

      “Phil has provided fantastic support to the MIT Museum for more than a decade as an advisory board member and now as board chair, and he has been deeply involved in plans for the new museum at Kendall Square,” says John Durant, the Mark R. Epstein (Class of 1963) Director of the museum. “Seeing his name on the wall will be a constant reminder of his key role in this development, as well as a mark of our gratitude.”

      Inspiring and empowering the next generation of scientists

      Biogen funding is also being directed to engage the next generation of scientists through support for the Biogen-MIT Biotech in Action: Virtual Lab, a program designed to foster a love of science among diverse and under-served student populations.

      Biogen’s support is part of its Healthy Climate, Healthy Lives initiative, a $250 million, 20-year commitment to eliminate fossil fuels across its operations and collaborate with renowned institutions to advance the science of climate and health and support under-served communities. Additional support is provided by the Biogen Foundation to further its long-standing focus on providing students with equitable access to outstanding science education. More

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      Differences in T cells’ functional states determine resistance to cancer therapy

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      Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the most common type of lung cancer in humans. Some patients with NSCLC receive a therapy called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) that helps kill cancer cells by reinvigorating a subset of immune cells called T cells, which are “exhausted” and have stopped working. However, only about 35 percent of NSCLC patients respond to ICB therapy. Stefani Spranger’s lab at the MIT Department of Biology explores the mechanisms behind this resistance, with the goal of inspiring new therapies to better treat NSCLC patients. In a new study published on Oct. 29 in Science Immunology, a team led by Spranger lab postdoc Brendan Horton revealed what causes T cells to be non-responsive to ICB — and suggests a possible solution.

      Scientists have long thought that the conditions within a tumor were responsible for determining when T cells stop working and become exhausted after being overstimulated or working for too long to fight a tumor. That’s why physicians prescribe ICB to treat cancer — ICB can invigorate the exhausted T cells within a tumor. However, Horton’s new experiments show that some ICB-resistant T cells stop working before they even enter the tumor. These T cells are not actually exhausted, but rather they become dysfunctional due to changes in gene expression that arise early during the activation of a T cell, which occurs in lymph nodes. Once activated, T cells differentiate into certain functional states, which are distinguishable by their unique gene expression patterns.

      The notion that the dysfunctional state that leads to ICB resistance arises before T cells enter the tumor is quite novel, says Spranger, the Howard S. and Linda B. Stern Career Development Professor, a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the study’s senior author.

      “We show that this state is actually a preset condition, and that the T cells are already non-responsive to therapy before they enter the tumor,” she says. As a result, she explains, ICB therapies that work by reinvigorating exhausted T cells within the tumor are less likely to be effective. This suggests that combining ICB with other forms of immunotherapy that target T cells differently might be a more effective approach to help the immune system combat this subset of lung cancer.

      In order to determine why some tumors are resistant to ICB, Horton and the research team studied T cells in murine models of NSCLC. The researchers sequenced messenger RNA from the responsive and non-responsive T cells in order to identify any differences between the T cells. Supported in part by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, they used a technique called Seq-Well, developed in the lab of fellow Koch Institute member J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and a co-author of the study. The technique allows for the rapid gene expression profiling of single cells, which permitted Spranger and Horton to get a very granular look at the gene expression patterns of the T cells they were studying.

      Seq-Well revealed distinct patterns of gene expression between the responsive and non-responsive T cells. These differences, which are determined when the T cells assume their specialized functional states, may be the underlying cause of ICB resistance.

      Now that Horton and his colleagues had a possible explanation for why some T cells did not respond to ICB, they decided to see if they could help the ICB-resistant T cells kill the tumor cells. When analyzing the gene expression patterns of the non-responsive T cells, the researchers had noticed that these T cells had a lower expression of receptors for certain cytokines, small proteins that control immune system activity. To counteract this, the researchers treated lung tumors in murine models with extra cytokines. As a result, the previously non-responsive T cells were then able to fight the tumors — meaning that the cytokine therapy prevented, and potentially even reversed, the dysfunctionality.

      Administering cytokine therapy to human patients is not currently safe, because cytokines can cause serious side effects as well as a reaction called a “cytokine storm,” which can produce severe fevers, inflammation, fatigue, and nausea. However, there are ongoing efforts to figure out how to safely administer cytokines to specific tumors. In the future, Spranger and Horton suspect that cytokine therapy could be used in combination with ICB.

      “This is potentially something that could be translated into a therapeutic that could increase the therapy response rate in non-small cell lung cancer,” Horton says.

      Spranger agrees that this work will help researchers develop more innovative cancer therapies, especially because researchers have historically focused on T cell exhaustion rather than the earlier role that T cell functional states might play in cancer.

      “If T cells are rendered dysfunctional early on, ICB is not going to be effective, and we need to think outside the box,” she says. “There’s more evidence, and other labs are now showing this as well, that the functional state of the T cell actually matters quite substantially in cancer therapies.” To Spranger, this means that cytokine therapy “might be a therapeutic avenue” for NSCLC patients beyond ICB.

      Jeffrey Bluestone, the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California-San Francisco, who was not involved with the paper, agrees. “The study provides a potential opportunity to ‘rescue’ immunity in the NSCLC non-responder patients with appropriate combination therapies,” he says.

      This research was funded by the Pew-Stewart Scholars for Cancer Research, the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology, the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program through the Kathy and Curt Mable Cancer Research Fund, and the National Cancer Institute. More

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      Taming the data deluge

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      An oncoming tsunami of data threatens to overwhelm huge data-rich research projects on such areas that range from the tiny neutrino to an exploding supernova, as well as the mysteries deep within the brain. 

      When LIGO picks up a gravitational-wave signal from a distant collision of black holes and neutron stars, a clock starts ticking for capturing the earliest possible light that may accompany them: time is of the essence in this race. Data collected from electrical sensors monitoring brain activity are outpacing computing capacity. Information from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)’s smashed particle beams will soon exceed 1 petabit per second. 

      To tackle this approaching data bottleneck in real-time, a team of researchers from nine institutions led by the University of Washington, including MIT, has received $15 million in funding to establish the Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data-Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute. From MIT, the research team includes Philip Harris, assistant professor of physics, who will serve as the deputy director of the A3D3 Institute; Song Han, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who will serve as the A3D3’s co-PI; and Erik Katsavounidis, senior research scientist with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

      Infused with this five-year Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea grant, and jointly funded by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, A3D3 will focus on three data-rich fields: multi-messenger astrophysics, high-energy particle physics, and brain imaging neuroscience. By enriching AI algorithms with new processors, A3D3 seeks to speed up AI algorithms for solving fundamental problems in collider physics, neutrino physics, astronomy, gravitational-wave physics, computer science, and neuroscience. 

      “I am very excited about the new Institute’s opportunities for research in nuclear and particle physics,” says Laboratory for Nuclear Science Director Boleslaw Wyslouch. “Modern particle detectors produce an enormous amount of data, and we are looking for extraordinarily rare signatures. The application of extremely fast processors to sift through these mountains of data will make a huge difference in what we will measure and discover.”

      The seeds of A3D3 were planted in 2017, when Harris and his colleagues at Fermilab and CERN decided to integrate real-time AI algorithms to process the incredible rates of data at the LHC. Through email correspondence with Han, Harris’ team built a compiler, HLS4ML, that could run an AI algorithm in nanoseconds.

      “Before the development of HLS4ML, the fastest processing that we knew of was roughly a millisecond per AI inference, maybe a little faster,” says Harris. “We realized all the AI algorithms were designed to solve much slower problems, such as image and voice recognition. To get to nanosecond inference timescales, we recognized we could make smaller algorithms and rely on custom implementations with Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processors in an approach that was largely different from what others were doing.”

      A few months later, Harris presented their research at a physics faculty meeting, where Katsavounidis became intrigued. Over coffee in Building 7, they discussed combining Harris’ FPGA with Katsavounidis’s use of machine learning for finding gravitational waves. FPGAs and other new processor types, such as graphics processing units (GPUs), accelerate AI algorithms to more quickly analyze huge amounts of data.

      “I had worked with the first FPGAs that were out in the market in the early ’90s and have witnessed first-hand how they revolutionized front-end electronics and data acquisition in big high-energy physics experiments I was working on back then,” recalls Katsavounidis. “The ability to have them crunch gravitational-wave data has been in the back of my mind since joining LIGO over 20 years ago.”

      Two years ago they received their first grant, and the University of Washington’s Shih-Chieh Hsu joined in. The team initiated the Fast Machine Lab, published about 40 papers on the subject, built the group to about 50 researchers, and “launched a whole industry of how to explore a region of AI that has not been explored in the past,” says Harris. “We basically started this without any funding. We’ve been getting small grants for various projects over the years. A3D3 represents our first large grant to support this effort.”  

      “What makes A3D3 so special and suited to MIT is its exploration of a technical frontier, where AI is implemented not in high-level software, but rather in lower-level firmware, reconfiguring individual gates to address the scientific question at hand,” says Rob Simcoe, director of MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the Francis Friedman Professor of Physics. “We are in an era where experiments generate torrents of data. The acceleration gained from tailoring reprogrammable, bespoke computers at the processor level can advance real-time analysis of these data to new levels of speed and sophistication.”

      The Huge Data from the Large Hadron Collider 

      With data rates already exceeding 500 terabits per second, the LHC processes more data than any other scientific instrument on earth. Its future aggregate data rates will soon exceed 1 petabit per second, the biggest data rate in the world. 

      “Through the use of AI, A3D3 aims to perform advanced analyses, such as anomaly detection, and particle reconstruction on all collisions happening 40 million times per second,” says Harris.

      The goal is to find within all of this data a way to identify the few collisions out of the 3.2 billion collisions per second that could reveal new forces, explain how dark matter is formed, and complete the picture of how fundamental forces interact with matter. Processing all of this information requires a customized computing system capable of interpreting the collider information within ultra-low latencies.  

      “The challenge of running this on all of the 100s of terabits per second in real-time is daunting and requires a complete overhaul of how we design and implement AI algorithms,” says Harris. “With large increases in the detector resolution leading to data rates that are even larger the challenge of finding the one collision, among many, will become even more daunting.” 

      The Brain and the Universe

      Thanks to advances in techniques such as medical imaging and electrical recordings from implanted electrodes, neuroscience is also gathering larger amounts of data on how the brain’s neural networks process responses to stimuli and perform motor information. A3D3 plans to develop and implement high-throughput and low-latency AI algorithms to process, organize, and analyze massive neural datasets in real time, to probe brain function in order to enable new experiments and therapies.   

      With Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (MMA), A3D3 aims to quickly identify astronomical events by efficiently processing data from gravitational waves, gamma-ray bursts, and neutrinos picked up by telescopes and detectors. 

      The A3D3 researchers also include a multi-disciplinary group of 15 other researchers, including project lead the University of Washington, along with Caltech, Duke University, Purdue University, UC San Diego, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It will include neutrinos research at Icecube and DUNE, and visible astronomy at Zwicky Transient Facility, and will organize deep-learning workshops and boot camps to train students and researchers on how to contribute to the framework and widen the use of fast AI strategies.

      “We have reached a point where detector network growth will be transformative, both in terms of event rates and in terms of astrophysical reach and ultimately, discoveries,” says Katsavounidis. “‘Fast’ and ‘efficient’ is the only way to fight the ‘faint’ and ‘fuzzy’ that is out there in the universe, and the path for getting the most out of our detectors. A3D3 on one hand is going to bring production-scale AI to gravitational-wave physics and multi-messenger astronomy; but on the other hand, we aspire to go beyond our immediate domains and become the go-to place across the country for applications of accelerated AI to data-driven disciplines.” More

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      New integrative computational neuroscience center established at MIT’s McGovern Institute

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      With the tools of modern neuroscience, researchers can peer into the brain with unprecedented accuracy. Recording devices listen in on the electrical conversations between neurons, picking up the voices of hundreds of cells at a time. Genetic tools allow us to focus on specific types of neurons based on their molecular signatures. Microscopes zoom in to illuminate the brain’s circuitry, capturing thousands of images of elaborately branched dendrites. Functional MRIs detect changes in blood flow to map activity within a person’s brain, generating a complete picture by compiling hundreds of scans.

      This deluge of data provides insights into brain function and dynamics at different levels — molecules, cells, circuits, and behavior — but the insights remain compartmentalized in separate research silos for each level. An innovative new center at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research aims to leverage them into powerful revelations of the brain’s inner workings.

      The K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience (ICoN) Center will create advanced mathematical models and computational tools to synthesize the deluge of data across scales and advance our understanding of the brain and mental health.

      The center, funded by a $24 million donation from philanthropist Lisa Yang and led by McGovern Institute Associate Investigator Ila Fiete, will take a collaborative approach to computational neuroscience, integrating cutting-edge modeling techniques and data from MIT labs to explain brain function at every level, from the molecular to the behavioral.

      “Our goal is that sophisticated, truly integrated computational models of the brain will make it possible to identify how ‘control knobs’ such as genes, proteins, chemicals, and environment drive thoughts and behavior, and to make inroads toward urgent unmet needs in understanding and treating brain disorders,” says Fiete, who is also a brain and cognitive sciences professor at MIT.

      “Driven by technologies that generate massive amounts of data, we are entering a new era of translational neuroscience research,” says Yang, whose philanthropic investment in MIT research now exceeds $130 million. “I am confident that the multidisciplinary expertise convened by the ICoN center will revolutionize how we synthesize this data and ultimately understand the brain in health and disease.”

      Connecting the data

      It is impossible to separate the molecules in the brain from their effects on behavior — although those aspects of neuroscience have traditionally been studied independently, by researchers with vastly different expertise. The ICoN Center will eliminate the divides, bringing together neuroscientists and software engineers to deal with all types of data about the brain.

      “The center’s highly collaborative structure, which is essential for unifying multiple levels of understanding, will enable us to recruit talented young scientists eager to revolutionize the field of computational neuroscience,” says Robert Desimone, director of the McGovern Institute. “It is our hope that the ICoN Center’s unique research environment will truly demonstrate a new academic research structure that catalyzes bold, creative research.”

      To foster interdisciplinary collaboration, every postdoc and engineer at the center will work with multiple faculty mentors. In order to attract young scientists and engineers to the field of computational neuroscience, the center will also provide four graduate fellowships to MIT students each year in perpetuity. Interacting closely with three scientific cores, engineers and fellows will develop computational models and technologies for analyzing molecular data, neural circuits, and behavior, such as tools to identify patterns in neural recordings or automate the analysis of human behavior to aid psychiatric diagnoses. These technologies and models will be instrumental in synthesizing data into knowledge and understanding.

      Center priorities

      In its first five years, the ICoN Center will prioritize four areas of investigation: episodic memory and exploration, including functions like navigation and spatial memory; complex or stereotypical behavior, such as the perseverative behaviors associated with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder; cognition and attention; and sleep. Models of complex behavior will be created in collaboration with clinicians and researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

      The goal, Fiete says, is to model the neuronal interactions that underlie these functions so that researchers can predict what will happen when something changes — when certain neurons become more active or when a genetic mutation is introduced, for example. When paired with experimental data from MIT labs, the center’s models will help explain not just how these circuits work, but also how they are altered by genes, the environment, aging, and disease. These focus areas encompass circuits and behaviors often affected by psychiatric disorders and neurodegeneration, and models will give researchers new opportunities to explore their origins and potential treatment strategies.

      “Lisa Yang is focused on helping the scientific community realize its goals in translational research,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science and the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics. “With her generous support, we can accelerate the pace of research by connecting the data to the delivery of tangible results.” More

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      Study: Global cancer risk from burning organic matter comes from unregulated chemicals

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      Whenever organic matter is burned, such as in a wildfire, a power plant, a car’s exhaust, or in daily cooking, the combustion releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — a class of pollutants that is known to cause lung cancer.

      There are more than 100 known types of PAH compounds emitted daily into the atmosphere. Regulators, however, have historically relied on measurements of a single compound, benzo(a)pyrene, to gauge a community’s risk of developing cancer from PAH exposure. Now MIT scientists have found that benzo(a)pyrene may be a poor indicator of this type of cancer risk.

      In a modeling study appearing today in the journal GeoHealth, the team reports that benzo(a)pyrene plays a small part — about 11 percent — in the global risk of developing PAH-associated cancer. Instead, 89 percent of that cancer risk comes from other PAH compounds, many of which are not directly regulated.

      Interestingly, about 17 percent of PAH-associated cancer risk comes from “degradation products” — chemicals that are formed when emitted PAHs react in the atmosphere. Many of these degradation products can in fact be more toxic than the emitted PAH from which they formed.

      The team hopes the results will encourage scientists and regulators to look beyond benzo(a)pyrene, to consider a broader class of PAHs when assessing a community’s cancer risk.

      “Most of the regulatory science and standards for PAHs are based on benzo(a)pyrene levels. But that is a big blind spot that could lead you down a very wrong path in terms of assessing whether cancer risk is improving or not, and whether it’s relatively worse in one place than another,” says study author Noelle Selin, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems and Society, and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.

      Selin’s MIT co-authors include Jesse Kroll, Amy Hrdina, Ishwar Kohale, Forest White, and Bevin Engelward, and Jamie Kelly (who is now at University College London). Peter Ivatt and Mathew Evans at the University of York are also co-authors.

      Chemical pixels

      Benzo(a)pyrene has historically been the poster chemical for PAH exposure. The compound’s indicator status is largely based on early toxicology studies. But recent research suggests the chemical may not be the PAH representative that regulators have long relied upon.   

      “There has been a bit of evidence suggesting benzo(a)pyrene may not be very important, but this was from just a few field studies,” says Kelly, a former postdoc in Selin’s group and the study’s lead author.

      Kelly and his colleagues instead took a systematic approach to evaluate benzo(a)pyrene’s suitability as a PAH indicator. The team began by using GEOS-Chem, a global, three-dimensional chemical transport model that breaks the world into individual grid boxes and simulates within each box the reactions and concentrations of chemicals in the atmosphere.

      They extended this model to include chemical descriptions of how various PAH compounds, including benzo(a)pyrene, would react in the atmosphere. The team then plugged in recent data from emissions inventories and meteorological observations, and ran the model forward to simulate the concentrations of various PAH chemicals around the world over time.

      Risky reactions

      In their simulations, the researchers started with 16 relatively well-studied PAH chemicals, including benzo(a)pyrene, and traced the concentrations of these chemicals, plus the concentration of their degradation products over two generations, or chemical transformations. In total, the team evaluated 48 PAH species.

      They then compared these concentrations with actual concentrations of the same chemicals, recorded by monitoring stations around the world. This comparison was close enough to show that the model’s concentration predictions were realistic.

      Then within each model’s grid box, the researchers related the concentration of each PAH chemical to its associated cancer risk; to do this, they had to develop a new method based on previous studies in the literature to avoid double-counting risk from the different chemicals. Finally, they overlaid population density maps to predict the number of cancer cases globally, based on the concentration and toxicity of a specific PAH chemical in each location.

      Dividing the cancer cases by population produced the cancer risk associated with that chemical. In this way, the team calculated the cancer risk for each of the 48 compounds, then determined each chemical’s individual contribution to the total risk.

      This analysis revealed that benzo(a)pyrene had a surprisingly small contribution, of about 11 percent, to the overall risk of developing cancer from PAH exposure globally. Eighty-nine percent of cancer risk came from other chemicals. And 17 percent of this risk arose from degradation products.

      “We see places where you can find concentrations of benzo(a)pyrene are lower, but the risk is higher because of these degradation products,” Selin says. “These products can be orders of magnitude more toxic, so the fact that they’re at tiny concentrations doesn’t mean you can write them off.”

      When the researchers compared calculated PAH-associated cancer risks around the world, they found significant differences depending on whether that risk calculation was based solely on concentrations of benzo(a)pyrene or on a region’s broader mix of PAH compounds.

      “If you use the old method, you would find the lifetime cancer risk is 3.5 times higher in Hong Kong versus southern India, but taking into account the differences in PAH mixtures, you get a difference of 12 times,” Kelly says. “So, there’s a big difference in the relative cancer risk between the two places. And we think it’s important to expand the group of compounds that regulators are thinking about, beyond just a single chemical.”

      The team’s study “provides an excellent contribution to better understanding these ubiquitous pollutants,” says Elisabeth Galarneau, an air quality expert and PhD research scientist in Canada’s Department of the Environment. “It will be interesting to see how these results compare to work being done elsewhere … to pin down which (compounds) need to be tracked and considered for the protection of human and environmental health.”

      This research was conducted in MIT’s Superfund Research Center and is supported in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Basic Research Program, and the National Institutes of Health. More

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      MIT appoints members of new faculty committee to drive climate action plan

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      In May, responding to the world’s accelerating climate crisis, MIT issued an ambitious new plan, “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade.” The plan outlines a broad array of new and expanded initiatives across campus to build on the Institute’s longstanding climate work.

      Now, to unite these varied climate efforts, maximize their impact, and identify new ways for MIT to contribute climate solutions, the Institute has appointed more than a dozen faculty members to a new committee established by the Fast Forward plan, named the Climate Nucleus.

      The committee includes leaders of a number of climate- and energy-focused departments, labs, and centers that have significant responsibilities under the plan. Its membership spans all five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. Professors Noelle Selin and Anne White have agreed to co-chair the Climate Nucleus for a term of three years.

      “I am thrilled and grateful that Noelle and Anne have agreed to step up to this important task,” says Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. “Under their leadership, I’m confident that the Climate Nucleus will bring new ideas and new energy to making the strategy laid out in the climate action plan a reality.”

      The Climate Nucleus has broad responsibility for the management and implementation of the Fast Forward plan across its five areas of action: sparking innovation, educating future generations, informing and leveraging government action, reducing MIT’s own climate impact, and uniting and coordinating all of MIT’s climate efforts.

      Over the next few years, the nucleus will aim to advance MIT’s contribution to a two-track approach to decarbonizing the global economy, an approach described in the Fast Forward plan. First, humanity must go as far and as fast as it can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions using existing tools and methods. Second, societies need to invest in, invent, and deploy new tools — and promote new institutions and policies — to get the global economy to net-zero emissions by mid-century.

      The co-chairs of the nucleus bring significant climate and energy expertise, along with deep knowledge of the MIT community, to their task.

      Selin is a professor with joint appointments in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. She is also the director of the Technology and Policy Program. She began at MIT in 2007 as a postdoc with the Center for Global Change Science and the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Her research uses modeling to inform decision-making on air pollution, climate change, and hazardous substances.

      “Climate change affects everything we do at MIT. For the new climate action plan to be effective, the Climate Nucleus will need to engage the entire MIT community and beyond, including policymakers as well as people and communities most affected by climate change,” says Selin. “I look forward to helping to guide this effort.”

      White is the School of Engineering’s Distinguished Professor of Engineering and the head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. She joined the MIT faculty in 2009 and has also served as the associate director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Her research focuses on assessing and refining the mathematical models used in the design of fusion energy devices, such as tokamaks, which hold promise for delivering limitless zero-carbon energy.

      “The latest IPCC report underscores the fact that we have no time to lose in decarbonizing the global economy quickly. This is a problem that demands we use every tool in our toolbox — and develop new ones — and we’re committed to doing that,” says White, referring to an August 2021 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN climate science body, that found that climate change has already affected every region on Earth and is intensifying. “We must train future technical and policy leaders, expand opportunities for students to work on climate problems, and weave sustainability into every one of MIT’s activities. I am honored to be a part of helping foster this Institute-wide collaboration.”

      A first order of business for the Climate Nucleus will be standing up three working groups to address specific aspects of climate action at MIT: climate education, climate policy, and MIT’s own carbon footprint. The working groups will be responsible for making progress on their particular areas of focus under the plan and will make recommendations to the nucleus on ways of increasing MIT’s effectiveness and impact. The working groups will also include student, staff, and alumni members, so that the entire MIT community has the opportunity to contribute to the plan’s implementation.  

      The nucleus, in turn, will report and make regular recommendations to the Climate Steering Committee, a senior-level team consisting of Zuber; Richard Lester, the associate provost for international activities; Glen Shor, the executive vice president and treasurer; and the deans of the five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. The new plan created the Climate Steering Committee to ensure that climate efforts will receive both the high-level attention and the resources needed to succeed.

      Together the new committees and working groups are meant to form a robust new infrastructure for uniting and coordinating MIT’s climate action efforts in order to maximize their impact. They replace the Climate Action Advisory Committee, which was created in 2016 following the release of MIT’s first climate action plan.

      In addition to Selin and White, the members of the Climate Nucleus are:

      Bob Armstrong, professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and director of the MIT Energy Initiative;
      Dara Entekhabi, professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences;
      John Fernández, professor in the Department of Architecture and director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative;
      Stefan Helmreich, professor in the Department of Anthropology;
      Christopher Knittel, professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research;
      John Lienhard, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab;
      Julie Newman, director of the Office of Sustainability and lecturer in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning;
      Elsa Olivetti, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and co-director of the Climate and Sustainability Consortium;
      Christoph Reinhart, professor in the Department of Architecture and director of the Building Technology Program;
      John Sterman, professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the Sloan Sustainability Initiative;
      Rob van der Hilst, professor and head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences; and
      Chris Zegras, professor and head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. More

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      in Data Management & Statistics

      MIT welcomes nine MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars for 2021-22

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      In its 31st year, the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Visiting Professors and Scholars Program will host nine outstanding scholars from across the Americas. The flagship program honors the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by increasing the presence and recognizing the contributions of underrepresented minority scholars at MIT. Throughout the year, the cohort will enhance their scholarship through intellectual engagement with the MIT community and enrich the cultural, academic, and professional experience of students.

      The 2021-22 scholars

      Sanford Biggers is an interdisciplinary artist hosted by the Department of Architecture. His work is an interplay of narrative, perspective, and history that speaks to current social, political, and economic happenings while examining their contexts. His diverse practice positions him as a collaborator with the past through explorations of often-overlooked cultural and political narratives from American history. Through collaboration with his faculty host, Brandon Clifford, he will spend the year contributing to projects with Architecture; Art, Culture and Technology; the Transmedia Storytelling initiatives; and community workshops and engagement with local K-12 education.

      Kristen Dorsey is an assistant professor of engineering at Smith College. She will be hosted by the Program in Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab. Her research focuses on the fabrication and characterization of microscale sensors and microelectromechanical systems. Dorsey tries to understand “why things go wrong” by investigating device reliability and stability. At MIT, Dorsey is interested in forging collaborations to consider issues of access and equity as they apply to wearable health care devices.

      Omolola “Lola” Eniola-Adefeso is the associate dean for graduate and professional education and associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan. She will join MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE). Eniola-Adefeso will work with Professor Paula Hammond on developing electrostatically assembled nanoparticle coatings that enable targeting of specific immune cell types. A co-founder and chief scientific officer of Asalyxa Bio, she is interested in the interactions between blood leukocytes and endothelial cells in vessel lumen lining, and how they change during inflammation response. Eniola-Adefeso will also work with the Diversity in Chemical Engineering (DICE) graduate student group in ChemE and the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers.

      Robert Gilliard Jr. is an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia and will join the MIT chemistry department, working closely with faculty host Christopher Cummins. His research focuses on various aspects of group 15 element chemistry. He was a founding member of the National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers UGA section, and he has served as an American Chemical Society (ACS) Bridge Program mentor as well as an ACS Project Seed mentor. Gilliard has also collaborated with the Cleveland Public Library to expose diverse young scholars to STEM fields.

      Valencia Joyner Koomson ’98, MNG ’99 will return for the second semester of her appointment this fall in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Based at Tufts University, where she is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Koomson has focused her research on microelectronic systems for cell analysis and biomedical applications. In the past semester, she has served as a judge for the Black Alumni/ae of MIT Research Slam and worked closely with faculty host Professor Akintunde Akinwande.

      Luis Gilberto Murillo-Urrutia will continue his appointment in MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative. He has 30 years of experience in public policy design, implementation, and advocacy, most notably in the areas of sustainable regional development, environmental protection and management of natural resources, social inclusion, and peace building. At MIT, he has continued his research on environmental justice, with a focus on carbon policy and its impacts on Afro-descendant communities in Colombia.

      Sonya T. Smith was the first female professor of mechanical engineering at Howard University. She will join the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Her research involves computational fluid dynamics and thermal management of electronics for air and space vehicles. She is looking forward to serving as a mentor to underrepresented students across MIT and fostering new research collaborations with her home lab at Howard.

      Lawrence Udeigwe is an associate professor of mathematics at Manhattan College and will join MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He plans to co-teach a graduate seminar course with Professor James DiCarlo to explore practical and philosophical questions regarding the use of simulations to build theories in neuroscience. Udeigwe also leads the Lorens Chuno group; as a singer-songwriter, his work tackles intersectionality issues faced by contemporary Africans.

      S. Craig Watkins is an internationally recognized expert in media and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He will join MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society to assist in researching the role of big data in enabling deep structural changes with regard to systemic racism. He will continue to expand on his work as founding director of the Institute for Media Innovation at the University of Texas at Austin, exploring the intersections of critical AI studies, critical race studies, and design. He will also work with MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality to develop computational systems that support social perspective-taking.

      Community engagement

      Throughout the 2021-22 academic year, MLK professors and scholars will be presenting their research at a monthly speaker series. Events will be held in an in-person/Zoom hybrid environment. All members of the MIT community are encouraged to attend and hear directly from this year’s cohort of outstanding scholars. To hear more about upcoming events, subscribe to their mailing list.

      On Sept. 15, all are invited to join the Institute Community and Equity Office in welcoming the scholars to campus by attending a welcome luncheon. More