As a boy, Eric Plosky ’99, MCP ’00, rode the New York subway with his grandmother to every city attraction on the map. “Whenever anyone asks me how I got into transportation, I always ask them, ‘How did you get out of it?’” he says. “Every little kid seems to love trains and subways and buses and cars and planes, and for some reason they ‘grow out of it.’ I never did.” Now,...

On February 11, I got a call from MIT’s executive director of Institute events and protocol, Gayle Gallagher. President Reif had just announced that MIT would again be conducting commencement online—and to open the ceremony, we needed a compelling piece of music that would evoke renewal as we began to emerge from the pandemic.  After nearly a year of socially distanced teaching,...

Abbie (Carlstein) Gregg ’74 remembers giving up on wearing lab gloves during her undergraduate research at MIT. There weren’t any small enough to fit her, at a time when undergraduate men outnumbered women on campus 15 to 1. Even so, it was the first time she’d met other women interested in engineering and technology—and she quickly found a home in the Metallurgy Department (now Materials...

Linda (Getch) Dawson ’71 grew up during the height of the space race between the US and the USSR. She recalls driving with her family to an observatory to hear the beeping of the Soviet satellite Sputnik as it passed overhead. “It’s funny how your path takes different turns, but I always came back to that first love: aerospace,” she says. Dawson’s path took her from MIT to NASA, then...

A record-breaking total of more than 5,000 alumni and friends attended this year’s MIT Tech Reunions, held online June 4–6. There were special events for reunion-year classes, and the entire MIT community was invited to watch the online Tech Night at Pops, learn from faculty during Technology Day, and take virtual campus tours. Symphony Hall…

Last spring, strings of bistro lights and outdoor seating in a courtyard behind the Student Center beckoned students to gather safely outside. The lights were a hit—and the plan is to make them permanent.

Reshmaan Hussam ’09, PhD ’15, once dreamed of becoming a “psychohistorian” like the protagonist in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels who combines sociology, history, and statistics to save the world. Maybe, she thought, such a psychohistorian would be able to make sense of the stark and unnerving contrasts that marked her childhood living in suburban Virginia and visiting her parents’...

Continuing an annual tradition, Technology Day offered alumni an inside view of MIT’s role in solving global challenges. The online symposium focused on online learning, cancer research, computing, and climate change. The first three topics were covered in updates from Curt Newton, director of MIT OpenCourseWare; Matthew Vander Heiden, director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer...

One of the things Rod Bayliss III ’20, MEng ’21, remembers most clearly from his childhood is his father’s 1964 Ford Mustang. “I was fascinated by that car,” says Bayliss. “Especially by the engine, this thing that converted oxygen and fuel into power.” Bayliss grew up in Augusta, Georgia. Math and physics came easily to him, and in high school he developed a passion for Latin,...

Patrice Langford ’95 Paul Chai ’99 Claude Gerstle ’68 with his wife, Ellen Gerstle Claire DeRosa ’11, MEng ’12, and Kimberly Gonzalez ’11 John Paul Mattia ’86, SM ’91, Eng ’96, PhD ’96 Tara Chang Pettus ’08 with daughter Celeste and father Clifton Chang ’71...