In MIT.nano’s laboratories, researchers use silicon wafers as the platform to shape transformative technologies such as quantum circuitry, microfluidic devices, or energy-harvesting structures. But these substrates can also serve as a canvas for an artist, as MIT Professor W. Craig Carter demonstrates in the latest One.MIT mosaic.

The One.MIT project celebrates the people of MIT by using the tools of MIT.nano to etch their collective names, arranged as a mosaic by Carter, into a silicon wafer just 8 inches in diameter. The latest edition of One.MIT — including 339,537 names of students, faculty, staff, and alumni associated with MIT from 1861 to September 2023 — is now on display in the ground-floor galleries at MIT.nano in the Lisa T. Su Building (Building 12).

“A spirit of innovation and a relentless drive to solve big problems have permeated the campus in every decade of our history. This passion for discovery, learning, and invention is the thread connecting MIT’s 21st-century family to our 19th-century beginnings and all the years in between,” says Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano and the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. “One.MIT celebrates the MIT ethos and reminds us that no matter when we came to MIT, whatever our roles, we all leave a mark on this remarkable community.”

A team of students, faculty, staff, and alumni inscribed the design on the wafer inside the MIT.nano cleanrooms. Because the names are too small to be seen with the naked eye — they measure only microns high on the wafer — the One.MIT website allows anyone to look up a name and find its location in the mosaic.

Finding inspiration in the archives

The first two One.MIT art pieces, created in 2018 and 2020, were inscribed in silicon wafers 6 inches in diameter, slightly smaller than the latest art piece, which benefited from the newest MIT.nano tools that can fabricate 8-inch wafers. The first designs form well-known, historic MIT images: the Great Dome (2018) and the MIT seal (2020).

Carter, who is the Toyota Professor of Materials Processing and professor of materials science and engineering, created the designs and algorithms for each version of One.MIT. He started a search last summer for inspiration for the 2024 design. “The image needed to be iconic of MIT,” says Carter, “and also work within the constraints of a large-scale mosaic.”

Carter ultimately found the solution within the Institute Archives, in the form of a lithograph used on the cover of a program for the 1916 MIT rededication ceremony that celebrated the Institute’s move from Boston to Cambridge on its 50th anniversary.

Incorporating MIT nerdiness

Carter began by creating a black-and-white image, redrawing the lithograph’s architectural features and character elements. He recreated the kerns (spaces) and the fonts of the letters as algorithmic geometric objects.

The color gradient of the sky behind the dome presented a challenge because only two shades were available. To tackle this issue and impart texture, Carter created a Hilbert curve — a hierarchical, continuous curve made by replacing an element with a combination of four elements. Each of these four elements are replaced by another four elements, and so on. The resulting object is like a fractal — the curve changes shape as it goes from top to bottom, with 90-degree turns throughout.

“This was an opportunity to add a fun and ‘nerdy’ element — fitting for MIT,” says Carter.

To achieve both the gradient and the round wafer shape, Carter morphed the square Hilbert curve (consisting of 90-degree angles) into a disk shape using Schwarz-Christoffel mapping, a type of conformal mapping that can be used to solve problems in many different domains.

“Conformal maps are lovely convergences of physics and engineering with mathematics and geometry,” says Carter.

Because the conformal mapping is smooth and also preserves the angles, the square’s corners produce four singular points on the circle where the Hilbert curve’s line segments shrink to a point. The location of the four points in the upper part of the circle “squeezes” the curve and creates the gradient (and the texture of the illustration) — dense-to-sparse from top-to-bottom.

The final mosaic is made up of 6,476,403 characters, and Carter needed to use font and kern types that would fill as much of the wafer’s surface as possible without having names break up and wrap around to the next line. Carter’s algorithm alleviated this problem, at least somewhat, by searching for names that slotted into remaining spaces at the end of each row. The algorithm also performed an optimization over many different choices for the random order of the names. 

Finding — and wrangling — hundreds of thousands of names

In addition to the art and algorithms, the foundation of One.MIT is the extensive collection of names spanning more than 160 years of MIT. The names reflect students, alumni, faculty, and staff — the wide variety of individuals who have always formed the MIT community.

Annie Wang, research scientist and special projects coordinator for MIT.nano, again played an instrumental role in collecting the names for the project, just as she had for the 2018 and 2020 versions. Despite her experience, collating the names to construct the newest edition still presented several challenges, given the variety of input sources to the dataset and the need to format names in a consistent manner.

“Both databases and OCR-scanned text can be messy,” says Wang, referring to the electronic databases and old paper directories from which names were sourced. “And cleaning them up is a lot of work.”

Many names were listed in multiple places, sometimes spelled or formatted differently across sources. There were very short first and last names, very long first and last names — and also a portion of names in which more than one person had nearly identical names. And some groups are simply hard to find in the records. “One thing I wish we had,” comments Wang, “is a list of long-term volunteers at MIT who contribute so much but aren’t reflected in the main directories.”

Once the design was completed, Carter and Wang handed off a CAD file to Jorg Scholvin, associate director of fabrication at MIT.nano. Scholvin assembled a team that reflected One.MIT — students, faculty, staff, and alumni — and worked with them to fabricate the wafer inside MIT.nano’s cleanroom. The fab team included Carter; undergraduate students Akorfa Dagadu, Sean Luk, Emilia K. Szczepaniak, Amber Velez, and twin brothers Juan Antonio Luera and Juan Angel Luera; MIT Sloan School of Management EMBA student Patricia LaBorda; staff member Kevin Verrier of MIT Facilities; and alumnae Madeline Hickman '11 and Eboney Hearn '01, who is also the executive director of MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering and Science (MITES).

When Paula Hammond first arrived on MIT’s campus as a first-year student in the early 1980s, she wasn’t sure if she belonged. In fact, as she told an MIT audience yesterday, she felt like “an imposter.”

However, that feeling didn’t last long, as Hammond began to find support among her fellow students and MIT’s faculty. “Community was really important for me, to feel that I belonged, to feel that I had a place here, and I found people who were willing to embrace me and support me,” she said.

Hammond, a world-renowned chemical engineer who has spent most of her academic career at MIT, made her remarks during the 2023-24 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award lecture.

Established in 1971 to honor MIT’s 10th president, James Killian, the Killian Award recognizes extraordinary professional achievements by an MIT faculty member. Hammond was chosen for this year’s award “not only for her tremendous professional achievements and contributions, but also for her genuine warmth and humanity, her thoughtfulness and effective leadership, and her empathy and ethics,” according to the award citation.

“Professor Hammond is a pioneer in nanotechnology research. With a program that extends from basic science to translational research in medicine and energy, she has introduced new approaches for the design and development of complex drug delivery systems for cancer treatment and noninvasive imaging,” said Mary Fuller, chair of MIT’s faculty and a professor of literature, who presented the award. “As her colleagues, we are delighted to celebrate her career today.”

In January, Hammond began serving as MIT’s vice provost for faculty. Before that, she chaired the Department of Chemical Engineering for eight years, and she was named an Institute Professor in 2021.

A versatile technique

Hammond, who grew up in Detroit, credits her parents with instilling a love of science. Her father was one of very few Black PhDs in biochemistry at the time, while her mother earned a master’s degree in nursing from Howard University and founded the nursing school at Wayne County Community College. “That provided a huge amount of opportunity for women in the area of Detroit, including women of color,” Hammond noted.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1984, Hammond worked as an engineer before returning to the Institute as a graduate student, earning her PhD in 1993. After a two-year postdoc at Harvard University, she returned to join the MIT faculty in 1995.

At the heart of Hammond’s research is a technique she developed to create thin films that can essentially “shrink-wrap” nanoparticles. By tuning the chemical composition of these films, the particles can be customized to deliver drugs or nucleic acids and to target specific cells in the body, including cancer cells.

To make these films, Hammond begins by layering positively charged polymers onto a negatively charged surface. Then, more layers can be added, alternating positively and negatively charged polymers. Each of these layers may contain drugs or other useful molecules, such as DNA or RNA. Some of these films contain hundreds of layers, others just one, making them useful for a wide range of applications.

“What’s nice about the layer-by-layer process is I can choose a group of degradable polymers that are nicely biocompatible, and I can alternate them with our drug materials. This means that I can build up thin film layers that contain different drugs at different points within the film,” Hammond said. “Then, when the film degrades, it can release those drugs in reverse order. This is enabling us to create complex, multidrug films, using a simple water-based technique.”

Hammond described how these layer-by-layer films can be used to promote bone growth, in an application that could help people born with congenital bone defects or people who experience traumatic injuries.

For that use, her lab has created films with layers of two proteins. One of these, BMP-2, is a protein that interacts with adult stem cells and induces them to differentiate into bone cells, generating new bone. The second is a growth factor called VEGF, which stimulates the growth of new blood vessels that help bone to regenerate. These layers are applied to a very thin tissue scaffold that can be implanted at the injury site.

Hammond and her students designed the coating so that once implanted, it would release VEGF early, over a week or so, and continue releasing BMP-2 for up to 40 days. In a study of mice, they found that this tissue scaffold stimulated the growth of new bone that was nearly indistinguishable from natural bone.

Targeting cancer

As a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Hammond has also developed layer-by-layer coatings that can improve the performance of nanoparticles used for cancer drug delivery, such as liposomes or nanoparticles made from a polymer called PLGA.

“We have a broad range of drug carriers that we can wrap this way. I think of them like a gobstopper, where there are all those different layers of candy and they dissolve one at a time,” Hammond said.

Using this approach, Hammond has created particles that can deliver a one-two punch to cancer cells. First, the particles release a dose of a nucleic acid such as short interfering RNA (siRNA), which can turn off a cancerous gene, or microRNA, which can activate tumor suppressor genes. Then, the particles release a chemotherapy drug such as cisplatin, to which the cells are now more vulnerable.

The particles also include a negatively charged outer “stealth layer” that protects them from being broken down in the bloodstream before they can reach their targets. This outer layer can also be modified to help the particles get taken up by cancer cells, by incorporating molecules that bind to proteins that are abundant on tumor cells.

In more recent work, Hammond has begun developing nanoparticles that can target ovarian cancer and help prevent recurrence of the disease after chemotherapy. In about 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients, the first round of treatment is highly effective, but tumors recur in about 85 percent of those cases, and these new tumors are usually highly drug resistant.

By altering the type of coating applied to drug-delivering nanoparticles, Hammond has found that the particles can be designed to either get inside tumor cells or stick to their surfaces. Using particles that stick to the cells, she has designed a treatment that could help to jumpstart a patient’s immune response to any recurrent tumor cells.

“With ovarian cancer, very few immune cells exist in that space, and because they don’t have a lot of immune cells present, it’s very difficult to rev up an immune response,” she said. “However, if we can deliver a molecule to neighboring cells, those few that are present, and get them revved up, then we might be able to do something.”

To that end, she designed nanoparticles that deliver IL-12, a cytokine that stimulates nearby T cells to spring into action and begin attacking tumor cells. In a study of mice, she found that this treatment induced a long-term memory T-cell response that prevented recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Hammond closed her lecture by describing the impact that the Institute has had on her throughout her career.

“It’s been a transformative experience,” she said. “I really think of this place as special because it brings people together and enables us to do things together that we couldn’t do alone. And it is that support we get from our friends, our colleagues, and our students that really makes things possible.”

A new set of advanced nanofabrication equipment will make MIT.nano one of the world’s most advanced research facilities in microelectronics and related technologies, unlocking new opportunities for experimentation and widening the path for promising inventions to become impactful new products.

The equipment, provided by Applied Materials, will significantly expand MIT.nano’s nanofabrication capabilities, making them compatible with wafers — thin, round slices of semiconductor material — up to 200 millimeters, or 8 inches, in diameter, a size widely used in industry. The new tools will allow researchers to prototype a vast array of new microelectronic devices using state-of-the-art materials and fabrication processes. At the same time, the 200-millimeter compatibility will support close collaboration with industry and enable innovations to be rapidly adopted by companies and mass produced.

MIT.nano’s leaders say the equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside of MIT, will dramatically enhance their facility’s capabilities, allowing experts in the region to more efficiently explore new approaches in “tough tech” sectors, including advanced electronics, next-generation batteries, renewable energies, optical computing, biological sensing, and a host of other areas — many likely yet to be imagined.

“The toolsets will provide an accelerative boost to our ability to launch new technologies that can then be given to the world at scale,” says MIT.nano Director Vladimir Bulović, who is also the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. “MIT.nano is committed to its expansive mission — to build a better world. We provide toolsets and capabilities that, in the hands of brilliant researchers, can effectively move the world forward.”

The announcement comes as part of an agreement between MIT and Applied Materials, Inc. that, together with a grant to MIT from the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub, commits more than $40 million of estimated private and public investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities at MIT.nano.

“We don’t believe there is another space in the United States that will offer the same kind of versatility, capability, and accessibility, with 8-inch toolsets integrated right next to more fundamental toolsets for research discoveries,” Bulović says. “It will create a seamless path to accelerate the pace of innovation.”

Pushing the boundaries of innovation

Applied Materials is the world’s largest supplier of equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, displays, and other advanced electronics. The company will provide at MIT.nano several state-of-the-art process tools capable of supporting 150- and 200-millimeter wafers and will enhance and upgrade an existing tool owned by MIT. In addition to assisting MIT.nano in the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the equipment, Applied Materials engineers will develop new process capabilities to benefit researchers and students from MIT and beyond.

“This investment will significantly accelerate the pace of innovation and discovery in microelectronics and microsystems,” says Tomás Palacios, director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and the Clarence J. Lebel Professor in Electrical Engineering. “It’s wonderful news for our community, wonderful news for the state, and, in my view, a tremendous step forward toward implementing the national vision for the future of innovation in microelectronics.”

Nanoscale research at universities is traditionally conducted on machines that are less compatible with industry, which makes academic innovations more difficult to turn into impactful, mass-produced products. Jorg Scholvin, associate director for MIT.nano’s shared fabrication facility, says the new machines, when combined with MIT.nano’s existing equipment, represent a step-change improvement in that area: Researchers will be able to take an industry-standard wafer and build their technology on top of it to prove to companies it works on existing devices, or to co-fabricate new ideas in close collaboration with industry partners.

“In the journey from an idea to a fully working device, the ability to begin on a small scale, figure out what you want to do, rapidly debug your designs, and then scale it up to an industry-scale wafer is critical,” Scholvin says. “It means a student can test out their idea on wafer-scale quickly and directly incorporate insights into their project so that their processes are scalable. Providing such proof-of-principle early on will accelerate the idea out of the academic environment, potentially reducing years of added effort. Other tools at MIT.nano can supplement work on the 200-millimeter wafer scale, but the higher throughput and higher precision of the Applied equipment will provide researchers with repeatability and accuracy that is unprecedented for academic research environments. Essentially what you have is a sharper, faster, more precise tool to do your work.”

Scholvin predicts the equipment will lead to exponential growth in research opportunities.

“I think a key benefit of these tools is they allow us to push the boundary of research in a variety of different ways that we can predict today,” Scholvin says. “But then there are also unpredictable benefits, which are hiding in the shadows waiting to be discovered by the creativity of the researchers at MIT. With each new application, more ideas and paths usually come to mind — so that over time, more and more opportunities are discovered.”

Because the equipment is available for use by people outside of the MIT community, including regional researchers, industry partners, nonprofit organizations, and local startups, they will also enable new collaborations.

“The tools themselves will be an incredible meeting place — a place that can, I think, transpose the best of our ideas in a much more effective way than before,” Bulović says. “I’m extremely excited about that.”

Palacios notes that while microelectronics is best known for work making transistors smaller to fit on microprocessors, it’s a vast field that enables virtually all the technology around us, from wireless communications and high-speed internet to energy management, personalized health care, and more.

He says he’s personally excited to use the new machines to do research around power electronics and semiconductors, including exploring promising new materials like gallium nitride, which could dramatically improve the efficiency of electronic devices.

Fulfilling a mission

MIT.nano’s leaders say a key driver of commercialization will be startups, both from MIT and beyond.

“This is not only going to help the MIT research community innovate faster, it’s also going to enable a new wave of entrepreneurship,” Palacios says. “We’re reducing the barriers for students, faculty, and other entrepreneurs to be able to take innovation and get it to market. That fits nicely with MIT’s mission of making the world a better place through technology. I cannot wait to see the amazing new inventions that our colleagues and students will come out with.”

Bulović says the announcement aligns with the mission laid out by MIT’s leaders at MIT.nano’s inception.

"We have the space in MIT.nano to accommodate these tools, we have the capabilities inside MIT.nano to manage their operation, and as a shared and open facility, we have methodologies by which we can welcome anyone from the region to use the tools,” Bulović says. “That is the vision MIT laid out as we were designing MIT.nano, and this announcement helps to fulfill that vision.”

One of our favourite things is sharing the stories of amazing young people, volunteers, and educators who are using their passion for technology to create positive change in the world around them.

Recently, we had the pleasure of speaking with Isabel, a computer science teacher at Barton Peveril Sixth Form College in Eastleigh, England. She told us her fascinating journey from industry to education, along with how she is helping to make the tech space inviting to all.

From industry to the classroom: Isabel’s journey to encourage diversity in tech

Isabel’s path to working in the tech sector started with her early exposure to engineering thanks to her father’s career in telecoms.

“I find this is true for a lot of female engineers my age: you will find that their dad or their uncle was an engineer. I remember that when I made the decision to study engineering, my teachers asked me if I was sure that it was something I wanted to do.”

Isabel pursued a degree in engineering because she loved the technical aspects, and during her studies she found a passion for programming. She went to work as a software engineer in Hampshire, contributing to the development of 3G mobile phone technology.

Despite enjoying her career in tech, Isabel felt a strong pull towards teaching due to her long-standing involvement with youth groups and a desire to give back to the community.

“While I was at university in London, I took part in a scheme where we could go into local primary schools and help with their science teaching. At the time, I just thought this was my way of giving back, I hadn’t really thought of it as a career. But actually, after a while, I thought ‘I’m enjoying this programming, but I really liked helping the young kids as well’.”

The transition wasn’t easy, as Computer Science was not widely taught in schools at the time, but Isabel persevered, teaching IT and Media to her classes as well.

Once Isabel settled into her teaching role, she began thinking about how she could tackle a problem she noticed in the STEM field.

Championing diversity in tech

Having experienced first-hand what it was like to be the only woman in STEM spaces, Isabel’s commitment to diversity in technology is at the core of her teaching philosophy. She works hard to create an inclusive environment and a diversity of opportunities in her classroom, making sure girls feel encouraged to pursue careers in tech through exploring various enrichment activities.

Isabel focuses on enrichment activities that bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world application. She runs various projects and competitions, ensuring a balanced representation of girls in these initiatives, and gives her students the opportunity to participate in programs like the Industrial Cadets, Student Robotics, and Coolest Projects. 

Isabel told us that she feels these opportunities provide essential soft skills that are crucial for success in any career.

“The A level environment is so academic; it is heavily focused on working on your own on very abstract topics. Having worked in industry and knowing the need to collaborate, I found that really hard. So I’ve always made sure to do lots of projects with my students where we actually work with real engineers, do real-world projects. I believe strongly in teaching soft skills like team working, project management, and time management.”

Harnessing trusted resources

A key resource in Isabel’s teaching toolkit is the Ada Computer Science platform. She values its reliability and the timely updates to the topics, which are crucial in a rapidly evolving subject like Computer Science.

She said she encourages both her students and fellow teachers, especially those who have retrained in Computer Science, to use the platform as a resource. 

“Ada Computer Science is amazing. We know we can rely on saying to the students ‘look on Ada, the information will be correct’ because I trust the people creating the resources. And we even found ourselves as teachers double-checking things on there. We struggle to get Computer science teachers, so actually only two of us are Computer Science teachers, and the other three are Maths teachers we have trained up. To be able to say ‘if you are not sure about something, look on Ada’ is a really nice thing to have.”

The ongoing challenge and hope for the future

Despite her efforts, Isabel acknowledges that progress in getting more girls to pursue tech careers is slow. Many girls still view tech as an uninviting space and feel like they don’t belong when they find themselves as one of a few girls — if not the only one — in a class. But Isabel remains hopeful that continuous exposure and positive experiences can change these perceptions.

“I talk to students who are often the only girl in the class and they find that really hard. So, if at GCSE they are the only girl in the class, they won’t do [the subject] at A level. So, if we leave it until A level, it is almost too late. Because of this, I try as much as I can to get as many girls as possible onto my engineering enrichment projects to show them as many opportunities in engineering as possible early on.”

Her work with organisations like the UK Electronics Skills Foundation reflects her commitment to raising awareness about careers in electronics and engineering. Through her outreach and enrichment projects, Isabel educates younger students about the opportunities in these fields, hoping to inspire more girls to consider them as viable career paths.

Looking ahead

As new technology continues to be built, Isabel recognises the challenges in keeping up with rapid changes, especially with fields like artificial intelligence (AI). She stays updated through continuous learning and collaborating with her peers, and encourages her students to be adaptable and open to new developments. “The world of AI is both exciting and daunting,” she admits. “We need to prepare our students for a future that we can hardly predict.”

Isabel’s dedication to teaching, her advocacy for diversity, and her efforts to provide real-world learning opportunities make her an inspiring educator. Her commitment was recognised by the Era Foundation in 2023: Isabel was named as one of their David Clark Prize recipients. The award recognises those who “have gone above and beyond the curriculum to inspire students and showcase real-world engineering in the classroom”.

Isabel not only imparts technical knowledge — she inspires her students to believe in their potential, encouraging a new generation of diverse tech professionals. 

If Isabel’s story has inspired you to encourage the next generation of young tech creators, check out the free teaching and training resources we provide to support your journey.

If you are working in Computer Science teaching for learners age 14 and up, take a look at how Ada Computer Science will support you. 

The post Celebrating the community: Isabel appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

NBA 2K24 runs on the new ProPLAY system, which translates real-life NBA footage into the game as animations. The smoothness and realism of the game that we have repeatedly praised in this review can be attributed to this change. The new animations we see from this system include dribble moves, jump shots, dunks, and even celebrations. This makes every single NBA player feel unique to use. Because 2K is ultimately a video game, the animations they used have generally been a lot more fast-paced when compared to its real-life counterpart to make it match with the programming. This time around, the animations are exactly how they are in real life, slowing the game down a little bit and further resembling real basketball games.

Is $69.99 Worth It? Evaluating NBA 2K24's Pricing

Despite being the best basketball game right now, NBA 2K24 is priced starting at $69.99. This is not the kind of title for players used to buy cheap PS5 games, however, some retailers manage to lower the price a little, so you can benefit from the reduction. It may seem like a reasonable price, and to most it is. However, players who enjoy online MyPlayer game modes are once again going to have to go through either a tedious grind or a 99OVR-sized hole in their pockets. It’s excellent value for the money for players who enjoy their quick-play games and MyLeagues, but there’s no doubt that the MyPlayer game modes are going to require big investments, whether it be time-wise or financially.

An Annual Tradition: NBA 2K24's Release Pattern

Despite the annual release pattern that 2K still implements, NBA 2K24 has succeeded in taking the right steps for the development of basketball games. Apart from improvements in terms of visuals, the gameplay here feels so authentic and fluid thanks to the responsive controls. Even though there are changes, veteran players will still feel familiar with the gameplay presented. If you are one of those people who buy annual games only when there are big changes, now is the time for you to buy NBA 2K24.

Authenticity and Fluidity: NBA 2K24's Gameplay

The NBA 2K24 Gameplay reveal is live, marking the first of many expected to arrive over the next three-plus weeks. As many fans know, gameplay is everything in video games and consists of the very essence each caters. In sports video games, this is especially the case, where the smallest of blemishes can stick out like a sore thumb and cause an unpleasant experience. NBA 2K24's soundtrack harmonizes seamlessly with the on-screen action, elevating the gaming experience to a sensory masterpiece that resonates with every pass and slam dunk. Everything works together to provide the best sports simulation possible.

Conclusion: Unveiling the Future of NBA 2K

Overall, I'll say NBA 2K24 delivers an enjoyable gameplay experience. Both casual and hardcore players will have fun (and some complaints) playing NBA 2K24. While it doesn't introduce drastic changes, this decision aligns with the incremental delivery philosophy, or in other words: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Maintaining the core gameplay experience seems to be the guiding idea, and it is a good one, guaranteeing a predictable result. As it is, NBA 2K24 is among the best sports video games today. However, a minor issue arises when players occasionally move too quickly into the paint, leading to turnovers with minimal input. While this doesn't happen frequently, it's worth noting.

"Assassin's Creed Mirage" invites me into its meticulously designed world where every sensation is amplified, moments are art forms unto themselves and stealthy visuals form an adventure lasting far after my controller has been put aside.

Moonlit Chases and Rooftop Escapes in "Assassin's Creed Mirage"

Under the moonlit sky of Baghdad, I found my sense of adventure through "Assassin's Creed Mirage." In these intimate nighttime moments of playback, visuals, and gameplay combined harmoniously for an incredible gaming experience that left an imprintful memory behind. Baghdad comes alive when illuminated by its soft moonlight at nightfall. From street corners and rooftops alike, I enjoy exploring this fascinating dreamscape, where architectural masterpieces light up beautifully against each building's historical importance.

Stealth takes on new meaning during moonlit pursuits. Following my targets through narrow alleyways and alleys becomes like hunting prey at night - my shadowy presence becomes like that of an invisible predator of the night! Buy new PS5 games and experience the grandeur of Assassin's Creed Mirage. Visuals capture all the tension and thrill associated with encounters such as this; making every leap or rooftop confrontation a sensory delight that further immerses me into "Assassin's Creed Mirage!"

"Assassin's Creed Mirage" Offers Time-bending Stealth in Baghdad

At the center of Baghdad's history and mystery lies "Assassin's Creed Mirage," I find myself involved in a web of conspiracies as I play Basim in "Assassin's Creed Mirage." Visuals blend seamlessly between past and present time periods creating an unforgettable tapestry as time is warped to my benefit as Basim manipulates time to his benefit.

Stealth becomes my specialty as I navigate this mysterious landscape. I become an unseen observer, peering around corners while listening in on conversations or following leads through winding alleyways. Much like the intricate web of conspiracies in Assassin's Creed Mirage, your gaming experience becomes more enthralling when you buy cheap PS5 games. Blending seamlessly with this vibrant crowd becomes essential, with my hooded figure seemingly dissolving into its chaos almost imperceptibly.

Assassin's Creed Mirage: Light and Shadow

The sensory richness of this experience was truly stunning. From tantalizing spices wafting through the air, tantalizing my senses and transporting me right back into Baghdad; merchant chatter ranging from haggling and friendly bantering all the way through haggling; cacophonous merchant traffic providing depth and dimension into this virtual reality world; even distant calls to prayer sending haunting melodies across cityscapes enveloped me completely, blurring reality from virtuality altogether.

Uncover Baghdad's Hidden Gems in "Assassin's Creed Mirage"

Exploring Baghdad as Basim from "Assassin's Creed Mirage", I find myself drawn deeper into its ancient beauty and history. Assassin's Creed Mirage is a masterpiece that deserves its place among the best PS4 games, offering unparalleled storytelling and captivating gameplay.

Baghdad comes to life vividly as I explore its historic landmarks with unparalleled detail, their intricate details reflecting all of the hard work gone into recreating this remarkable city. Walking the streets I feel immersed in an active, evolving world where every artifact or relic I encounter provides another treasure chest of history to uncover.

Conclusion

Experience something beyond simple gameplay by becoming immersed in an atmosphere in which every sense is amplified and every moment charged with significance. I am so happy I've bought Assassin's Creed Mirage! I no longer play but inhabit Baghdad itself through Basim; being part of its intricate tapestry will leave an unforgettable memory on your mind long after putting away your controller!

Discover the Overwatch Coach Chatbot, a new tool designed to help players improve their skills with custom improvement plans. Try it out and provide feedback to help us make it better!

The post Introducing the Overwatch Coach Chatbot: Your Personalized Path to Improvement first appeared on Two Average Gamers.

The post Introducing the Overwatch Coach Chatbot: Your Personalized Path to Improvement appeared first on Two Average Gamers.

Apex Legends developer Respawn has admitted it "could have handled its Battle Pass changes better" and says it will "improve the overall value and experience across its Battle Pass offerings."

Earlier this month, Respawn announced a change in pricing for its Apex Legends battle passes, revealing that from the next season onwards, passes would only be available to purchase with real-world money.

Before the proposed change, players could used in-game currency to purchase their passes.

Read more

In MIT.nano’s laboratories, researchers use silicon wafers as the platform to shape transformative technologies such as quantum circuitry, microfluidic devices, or energy-harvesting structures. But these substrates can also serve as a canvas for an artist, as MIT Professor W. Craig Carter demonstrates in the latest One.MIT mosaic.

The One.MIT project celebrates the people of MIT by using the tools of MIT.nano to etch their collective names, arranged as a mosaic by Carter, into a silicon wafer just 8 inches in diameter. The latest edition of One.MIT — including 339,537 names of students, faculty, staff, and alumni associated with MIT from 1861 to September 2023 — is now on display in the ground-floor galleries at MIT.nano in the Lisa T. Su Building (Building 12).

“A spirit of innovation and a relentless drive to solve big problems have permeated the campus in every decade of our history. This passion for discovery, learning, and invention is the thread connecting MIT’s 21st-century family to our 19th-century beginnings and all the years in between,” says Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano and the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. “One.MIT celebrates the MIT ethos and reminds us that no matter when we came to MIT, whatever our roles, we all leave a mark on this remarkable community.”

A team of students, faculty, staff, and alumni inscribed the design on the wafer inside the MIT.nano cleanrooms. Because the names are too small to be seen with the naked eye — they measure only microns high on the wafer — the One.MIT website allows anyone to look up a name and find its location in the mosaic.

Finding inspiration in the archives

The first two One.MIT art pieces, created in 2018 and 2020, were inscribed in silicon wafers 6 inches in diameter, slightly smaller than the latest art piece, which benefited from the newest MIT.nano tools that can fabricate 8-inch wafers. The first designs form well-known, historic MIT images: the Great Dome (2018) and the MIT seal (2020).

Carter, who is the Toyota Professor of Materials Processing and professor of materials science and engineering, created the designs and algorithms for each version of One.MIT. He started a search last summer for inspiration for the 2024 design. “The image needed to be iconic of MIT,” says Carter, “and also work within the constraints of a large-scale mosaic.”

Carter ultimately found the solution within the Institute Archives, in the form of a lithograph used on the cover of a program for the 1916 MIT rededication ceremony that celebrated the Institute’s move from Boston to Cambridge on its 50th anniversary.

Incorporating MIT nerdiness

Carter began by creating a black-and-white image, redrawing the lithograph’s architectural features and character elements. He recreated the kerns (spaces) and the fonts of the letters as algorithmic geometric objects.

The color gradient of the sky behind the dome presented a challenge because only two shades were available. To tackle this issue and impart texture, Carter created a Hilbert curve — a hierarchical, continuous curve made by replacing an element with a combination of four elements. Each of these four elements are replaced by another four elements, and so on. The resulting object is like a fractal — the curve changes shape as it goes from top to bottom, with 90-degree turns throughout.

“This was an opportunity to add a fun and ‘nerdy’ element — fitting for MIT,” says Carter.

To achieve both the gradient and the round wafer shape, Carter morphed the square Hilbert curve (consisting of 90-degree angles) into a disk shape using Schwarz-Christoffel mapping, a type of conformal mapping that can be used to solve problems in many different domains.

“Conformal maps are lovely convergences of physics and engineering with mathematics and geometry,” says Carter.

Because the conformal mapping is smooth and also preserves the angles, the square’s corners produce four singular points on the circle where the Hilbert curve’s line segments shrink to a point. The location of the four points in the upper part of the circle “squeezes” the curve and creates the gradient (and the texture of the illustration) — dense-to-sparse from top-to-bottom.

The final mosaic is made up of 6,476,403 characters, and Carter needed to use font and kern types that would fill as much of the wafer’s surface as possible without having names break up and wrap around to the next line. Carter’s algorithm alleviated this problem, at least somewhat, by searching for names that slotted into remaining spaces at the end of each row. The algorithm also performed an optimization over many different choices for the random order of the names. 

Finding — and wrangling — hundreds of thousands of names

In addition to the art and algorithms, the foundation of One.MIT is the extensive collection of names spanning more than 160 years of MIT. The names reflect students, alumni, faculty, and staff — the wide variety of individuals who have always formed the MIT community.

Annie Wang, research scientist and special projects coordinator for MIT.nano, again played an instrumental role in collecting the names for the project, just as she had for the 2018 and 2020 versions. Despite her experience, collating the names to construct the newest edition still presented several challenges, given the variety of input sources to the dataset and the need to format names in a consistent manner.

“Both databases and OCR-scanned text can be messy,” says Wang, referring to the electronic databases and old paper directories from which names were sourced. “And cleaning them up is a lot of work.”

Many names were listed in multiple places, sometimes spelled or formatted differently across sources. There were very short first and last names, very long first and last names — and also a portion of names in which more than one person had nearly identical names. And some groups are simply hard to find in the records. “One thing I wish we had,” comments Wang, “is a list of long-term volunteers at MIT who contribute so much but aren’t reflected in the main directories.”

Once the design was completed, Carter and Wang handed off a CAD file to Jorg Scholvin, associate director of fabrication at MIT.nano. Scholvin assembled a team that reflected One.MIT — students, faculty, staff, and alumni — and worked with them to fabricate the wafer inside MIT.nano’s cleanroom. The fab team included Carter; undergraduate students Akorfa Dagadu, Sean Luk, Emilia K. Szczepaniak, Amber Velez, and twin brothers Juan Antonio Luera and Juan Angel Luera; MIT Sloan School of Management EMBA student Patricia LaBorda; staff member Kevin Verrier of MIT Facilities; and alumnae Madeline Hickman '11 and Eboney Hearn '01, who is also the executive director of MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering and Science (MITES).

When Paula Hammond first arrived on MIT’s campus as a first-year student in the early 1980s, she wasn’t sure if she belonged. In fact, as she told an MIT audience yesterday, she felt like “an imposter.”

However, that feeling didn’t last long, as Hammond began to find support among her fellow students and MIT’s faculty. “Community was really important for me, to feel that I belonged, to feel that I had a place here, and I found people who were willing to embrace me and support me,” she said.

Hammond, a world-renowned chemical engineer who has spent most of her academic career at MIT, made her remarks during the 2023-24 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award lecture.

Established in 1971 to honor MIT’s 10th president, James Killian, the Killian Award recognizes extraordinary professional achievements by an MIT faculty member. Hammond was chosen for this year’s award “not only for her tremendous professional achievements and contributions, but also for her genuine warmth and humanity, her thoughtfulness and effective leadership, and her empathy and ethics,” according to the award citation.

“Professor Hammond is a pioneer in nanotechnology research. With a program that extends from basic science to translational research in medicine and energy, she has introduced new approaches for the design and development of complex drug delivery systems for cancer treatment and noninvasive imaging,” said Mary Fuller, chair of MIT’s faculty and a professor of literature, who presented the award. “As her colleagues, we are delighted to celebrate her career today.”

In January, Hammond began serving as MIT’s vice provost for faculty. Before that, she chaired the Department of Chemical Engineering for eight years, and she was named an Institute Professor in 2021.

A versatile technique

Hammond, who grew up in Detroit, credits her parents with instilling a love of science. Her father was one of very few Black PhDs in biochemistry at the time, while her mother earned a master’s degree in nursing from Howard University and founded the nursing school at Wayne County Community College. “That provided a huge amount of opportunity for women in the area of Detroit, including women of color,” Hammond noted.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1984, Hammond worked as an engineer before returning to the Institute as a graduate student, earning her PhD in 1993. After a two-year postdoc at Harvard University, she returned to join the MIT faculty in 1995.

At the heart of Hammond’s research is a technique she developed to create thin films that can essentially “shrink-wrap” nanoparticles. By tuning the chemical composition of these films, the particles can be customized to deliver drugs or nucleic acids and to target specific cells in the body, including cancer cells.

To make these films, Hammond begins by layering positively charged polymers onto a negatively charged surface. Then, more layers can be added, alternating positively and negatively charged polymers. Each of these layers may contain drugs or other useful molecules, such as DNA or RNA. Some of these films contain hundreds of layers, others just one, making them useful for a wide range of applications.

“What’s nice about the layer-by-layer process is I can choose a group of degradable polymers that are nicely biocompatible, and I can alternate them with our drug materials. This means that I can build up thin film layers that contain different drugs at different points within the film,” Hammond said. “Then, when the film degrades, it can release those drugs in reverse order. This is enabling us to create complex, multidrug films, using a simple water-based technique.”

Hammond described how these layer-by-layer films can be used to promote bone growth, in an application that could help people born with congenital bone defects or people who experience traumatic injuries.

For that use, her lab has created films with layers of two proteins. One of these, BMP-2, is a protein that interacts with adult stem cells and induces them to differentiate into bone cells, generating new bone. The second is a growth factor called VEGF, which stimulates the growth of new blood vessels that help bone to regenerate. These layers are applied to a very thin tissue scaffold that can be implanted at the injury site.

Hammond and her students designed the coating so that once implanted, it would release VEGF early, over a week or so, and continue releasing BMP-2 for up to 40 days. In a study of mice, they found that this tissue scaffold stimulated the growth of new bone that was nearly indistinguishable from natural bone.

Targeting cancer

As a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Hammond has also developed layer-by-layer coatings that can improve the performance of nanoparticles used for cancer drug delivery, such as liposomes or nanoparticles made from a polymer called PLGA.

“We have a broad range of drug carriers that we can wrap this way. I think of them like a gobstopper, where there are all those different layers of candy and they dissolve one at a time,” Hammond said.

Using this approach, Hammond has created particles that can deliver a one-two punch to cancer cells. First, the particles release a dose of a nucleic acid such as short interfering RNA (siRNA), which can turn off a cancerous gene, or microRNA, which can activate tumor suppressor genes. Then, the particles release a chemotherapy drug such as cisplatin, to which the cells are now more vulnerable.

The particles also include a negatively charged outer “stealth layer” that protects them from being broken down in the bloodstream before they can reach their targets. This outer layer can also be modified to help the particles get taken up by cancer cells, by incorporating molecules that bind to proteins that are abundant on tumor cells.

In more recent work, Hammond has begun developing nanoparticles that can target ovarian cancer and help prevent recurrence of the disease after chemotherapy. In about 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients, the first round of treatment is highly effective, but tumors recur in about 85 percent of those cases, and these new tumors are usually highly drug resistant.

By altering the type of coating applied to drug-delivering nanoparticles, Hammond has found that the particles can be designed to either get inside tumor cells or stick to their surfaces. Using particles that stick to the cells, she has designed a treatment that could help to jumpstart a patient’s immune response to any recurrent tumor cells.

“With ovarian cancer, very few immune cells exist in that space, and because they don’t have a lot of immune cells present, it’s very difficult to rev up an immune response,” she said. “However, if we can deliver a molecule to neighboring cells, those few that are present, and get them revved up, then we might be able to do something.”

To that end, she designed nanoparticles that deliver IL-12, a cytokine that stimulates nearby T cells to spring into action and begin attacking tumor cells. In a study of mice, she found that this treatment induced a long-term memory T-cell response that prevented recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Hammond closed her lecture by describing the impact that the Institute has had on her throughout her career.

“It’s been a transformative experience,” she said. “I really think of this place as special because it brings people together and enables us to do things together that we couldn’t do alone. And it is that support we get from our friends, our colleagues, and our students that really makes things possible.”

A new set of advanced nanofabrication equipment will make MIT.nano one of the world’s most advanced research facilities in microelectronics and related technologies, unlocking new opportunities for experimentation and widening the path for promising inventions to become impactful new products.

The equipment, provided by Applied Materials, will significantly expand MIT.nano’s nanofabrication capabilities, making them compatible with wafers — thin, round slices of semiconductor material — up to 200 millimeters, or 8 inches, in diameter, a size widely used in industry. The new tools will allow researchers to prototype a vast array of new microelectronic devices using state-of-the-art materials and fabrication processes. At the same time, the 200-millimeter compatibility will support close collaboration with industry and enable innovations to be rapidly adopted by companies and mass produced.

MIT.nano’s leaders say the equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside of MIT, will dramatically enhance their facility’s capabilities, allowing experts in the region to more efficiently explore new approaches in “tough tech” sectors, including advanced electronics, next-generation batteries, renewable energies, optical computing, biological sensing, and a host of other areas — many likely yet to be imagined.

“The toolsets will provide an accelerative boost to our ability to launch new technologies that can then be given to the world at scale,” says MIT.nano Director Vladimir Bulović, who is also the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. “MIT.nano is committed to its expansive mission — to build a better world. We provide toolsets and capabilities that, in the hands of brilliant researchers, can effectively move the world forward.”

The announcement comes as part of an agreement between MIT and Applied Materials, Inc. that, together with a grant to MIT from the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub, commits more than $40 million of estimated private and public investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities at MIT.nano.

“We don’t believe there is another space in the United States that will offer the same kind of versatility, capability, and accessibility, with 8-inch toolsets integrated right next to more fundamental toolsets for research discoveries,” Bulović says. “It will create a seamless path to accelerate the pace of innovation.”

Pushing the boundaries of innovation

Applied Materials is the world’s largest supplier of equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, displays, and other advanced electronics. The company will provide at MIT.nano several state-of-the-art process tools capable of supporting 150- and 200-millimeter wafers and will enhance and upgrade an existing tool owned by MIT. In addition to assisting MIT.nano in the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the equipment, Applied Materials engineers will develop new process capabilities to benefit researchers and students from MIT and beyond.

“This investment will significantly accelerate the pace of innovation and discovery in microelectronics and microsystems,” says Tomás Palacios, director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and the Clarence J. Lebel Professor in Electrical Engineering. “It’s wonderful news for our community, wonderful news for the state, and, in my view, a tremendous step forward toward implementing the national vision for the future of innovation in microelectronics.”

Nanoscale research at universities is traditionally conducted on machines that are less compatible with industry, which makes academic innovations more difficult to turn into impactful, mass-produced products. Jorg Scholvin, associate director for MIT.nano’s shared fabrication facility, says the new machines, when combined with MIT.nano’s existing equipment, represent a step-change improvement in that area: Researchers will be able to take an industry-standard wafer and build their technology on top of it to prove to companies it works on existing devices, or to co-fabricate new ideas in close collaboration with industry partners.

“In the journey from an idea to a fully working device, the ability to begin on a small scale, figure out what you want to do, rapidly debug your designs, and then scale it up to an industry-scale wafer is critical,” Scholvin says. “It means a student can test out their idea on wafer-scale quickly and directly incorporate insights into their project so that their processes are scalable. Providing such proof-of-principle early on will accelerate the idea out of the academic environment, potentially reducing years of added effort. Other tools at MIT.nano can supplement work on the 200-millimeter wafer scale, but the higher throughput and higher precision of the Applied equipment will provide researchers with repeatability and accuracy that is unprecedented for academic research environments. Essentially what you have is a sharper, faster, more precise tool to do your work.”

Scholvin predicts the equipment will lead to exponential growth in research opportunities.

“I think a key benefit of these tools is they allow us to push the boundary of research in a variety of different ways that we can predict today,” Scholvin says. “But then there are also unpredictable benefits, which are hiding in the shadows waiting to be discovered by the creativity of the researchers at MIT. With each new application, more ideas and paths usually come to mind — so that over time, more and more opportunities are discovered.”

Because the equipment is available for use by people outside of the MIT community, including regional researchers, industry partners, nonprofit organizations, and local startups, they will also enable new collaborations.

“The tools themselves will be an incredible meeting place — a place that can, I think, transpose the best of our ideas in a much more effective way than before,” Bulović says. “I’m extremely excited about that.”

Palacios notes that while microelectronics is best known for work making transistors smaller to fit on microprocessors, it’s a vast field that enables virtually all the technology around us, from wireless communications and high-speed internet to energy management, personalized health care, and more.

He says he’s personally excited to use the new machines to do research around power electronics and semiconductors, including exploring promising new materials like gallium nitride, which could dramatically improve the efficiency of electronic devices.

Fulfilling a mission

MIT.nano’s leaders say a key driver of commercialization will be startups, both from MIT and beyond.

“This is not only going to help the MIT research community innovate faster, it’s also going to enable a new wave of entrepreneurship,” Palacios says. “We’re reducing the barriers for students, faculty, and other entrepreneurs to be able to take innovation and get it to market. That fits nicely with MIT’s mission of making the world a better place through technology. I cannot wait to see the amazing new inventions that our colleagues and students will come out with.”

Bulović says the announcement aligns with the mission laid out by MIT’s leaders at MIT.nano’s inception.

"We have the space in MIT.nano to accommodate these tools, we have the capabilities inside MIT.nano to manage their operation, and as a shared and open facility, we have methodologies by which we can welcome anyone from the region to use the tools,” Bulović says. “That is the vision MIT laid out as we were designing MIT.nano, and this announcement helps to fulfill that vision.”

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It's a car in Gran Turismo 7.

Gran Turismo 7 players have flocked to social media to share examples of, uh, unusual driving physics after the racer's 1.49 update added a new setting that seemingly fills vehicles with helium.

Where developer Polyphony Digital had hoped to introduce "more natural weight" for players, cars are instead launching themselves into the air, making for some extraordinarily amusing clips:

Read more

In MIT.nano’s laboratories, researchers use silicon wafers as the platform to shape transformative technologies such as quantum circuitry, microfluidic devices, or energy-harvesting structures. But these substrates can also serve as a canvas for an artist, as MIT Professor W. Craig Carter demonstrates in the latest One.MIT mosaic.

The One.MIT project celebrates the people of MIT by using the tools of MIT.nano to etch their collective names, arranged as a mosaic by Carter, into a silicon wafer just 8 inches in diameter. The latest edition of One.MIT — including 339,537 names of students, faculty, staff, and alumni associated with MIT from 1861 to September 2023 — is now on display in the ground-floor galleries at MIT.nano in the Lisa T. Su Building (Building 12).

“A spirit of innovation and a relentless drive to solve big problems have permeated the campus in every decade of our history. This passion for discovery, learning, and invention is the thread connecting MIT’s 21st-century family to our 19th-century beginnings and all the years in between,” says Vladimir Bulović, director of MIT.nano and the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology. “One.MIT celebrates the MIT ethos and reminds us that no matter when we came to MIT, whatever our roles, we all leave a mark on this remarkable community.”

A team of students, faculty, staff, and alumni inscribed the design on the wafer inside the MIT.nano cleanrooms. Because the names are too small to be seen with the naked eye — they measure only microns high on the wafer — the One.MIT website allows anyone to look up a name and find its location in the mosaic.

Finding inspiration in the archives

The first two One.MIT art pieces, created in 2018 and 2020, were inscribed in silicon wafers 6 inches in diameter, slightly smaller than the latest art piece, which benefited from the newest MIT.nano tools that can fabricate 8-inch wafers. The first designs form well-known, historic MIT images: the Great Dome (2018) and the MIT seal (2020).

Carter, who is the Toyota Professor of Materials Processing and professor of materials science and engineering, created the designs and algorithms for each version of One.MIT. He started a search last summer for inspiration for the 2024 design. “The image needed to be iconic of MIT,” says Carter, “and also work within the constraints of a large-scale mosaic.”

Carter ultimately found the solution within the Institute Archives, in the form of a lithograph used on the cover of a program for the 1916 MIT rededication ceremony that celebrated the Institute’s move from Boston to Cambridge on its 50th anniversary.

Incorporating MIT nerdiness

Carter began by creating a black-and-white image, redrawing the lithograph’s architectural features and character elements. He recreated the kerns (spaces) and the fonts of the letters as algorithmic geometric objects.

The color gradient of the sky behind the dome presented a challenge because only two shades were available. To tackle this issue and impart texture, Carter created a Hilbert curve — a hierarchical, continuous curve made by replacing an element with a combination of four elements. Each of these four elements are replaced by another four elements, and so on. The resulting object is like a fractal — the curve changes shape as it goes from top to bottom, with 90-degree turns throughout.

“This was an opportunity to add a fun and ‘nerdy’ element — fitting for MIT,” says Carter.

To achieve both the gradient and the round wafer shape, Carter morphed the square Hilbert curve (consisting of 90-degree angles) into a disk shape using Schwarz-Christoffel mapping, a type of conformal mapping that can be used to solve problems in many different domains.

“Conformal maps are lovely convergences of physics and engineering with mathematics and geometry,” says Carter.

Because the conformal mapping is smooth and also preserves the angles, the square’s corners produce four singular points on the circle where the Hilbert curve’s line segments shrink to a point. The location of the four points in the upper part of the circle “squeezes” the curve and creates the gradient (and the texture of the illustration) — dense-to-sparse from top-to-bottom.

The final mosaic is made up of 6,476,403 characters, and Carter needed to use font and kern types that would fill as much of the wafer’s surface as possible without having names break up and wrap around to the next line. Carter’s algorithm alleviated this problem, at least somewhat, by searching for names that slotted into remaining spaces at the end of each row. The algorithm also performed an optimization over many different choices for the random order of the names. 

Finding — and wrangling — hundreds of thousands of names

In addition to the art and algorithms, the foundation of One.MIT is the extensive collection of names spanning more than 160 years of MIT. The names reflect students, alumni, faculty, and staff — the wide variety of individuals who have always formed the MIT community.

Annie Wang, research scientist and special projects coordinator for MIT.nano, again played an instrumental role in collecting the names for the project, just as she had for the 2018 and 2020 versions. Despite her experience, collating the names to construct the newest edition still presented several challenges, given the variety of input sources to the dataset and the need to format names in a consistent manner.

“Both databases and OCR-scanned text can be messy,” says Wang, referring to the electronic databases and old paper directories from which names were sourced. “And cleaning them up is a lot of work.”

Many names were listed in multiple places, sometimes spelled or formatted differently across sources. There were very short first and last names, very long first and last names — and also a portion of names in which more than one person had nearly identical names. And some groups are simply hard to find in the records. “One thing I wish we had,” comments Wang, “is a list of long-term volunteers at MIT who contribute so much but aren’t reflected in the main directories.”

Once the design was completed, Carter and Wang handed off a CAD file to Jorg Scholvin, associate director of fabrication at MIT.nano. Scholvin assembled a team that reflected One.MIT — students, faculty, staff, and alumni — and worked with them to fabricate the wafer inside MIT.nano’s cleanroom. The fab team included Carter; undergraduate students Akorfa Dagadu, Sean Luk, Emilia K. Szczepaniak, Amber Velez, and twin brothers Juan Antonio Luera and Juan Angel Luera; MIT Sloan School of Management EMBA student Patricia LaBorda; staff member Kevin Verrier of MIT Facilities; and alumnae Madeline Hickman '11 and Eboney Hearn '01, who is also the executive director of MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering and Science (MITES).

When Paula Hammond first arrived on MIT’s campus as a first-year student in the early 1980s, she wasn’t sure if she belonged. In fact, as she told an MIT audience yesterday, she felt like “an imposter.”

However, that feeling didn’t last long, as Hammond began to find support among her fellow students and MIT’s faculty. “Community was really important for me, to feel that I belonged, to feel that I had a place here, and I found people who were willing to embrace me and support me,” she said.

Hammond, a world-renowned chemical engineer who has spent most of her academic career at MIT, made her remarks during the 2023-24 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award lecture.

Established in 1971 to honor MIT’s 10th president, James Killian, the Killian Award recognizes extraordinary professional achievements by an MIT faculty member. Hammond was chosen for this year’s award “not only for her tremendous professional achievements and contributions, but also for her genuine warmth and humanity, her thoughtfulness and effective leadership, and her empathy and ethics,” according to the award citation.

“Professor Hammond is a pioneer in nanotechnology research. With a program that extends from basic science to translational research in medicine and energy, she has introduced new approaches for the design and development of complex drug delivery systems for cancer treatment and noninvasive imaging,” said Mary Fuller, chair of MIT’s faculty and a professor of literature, who presented the award. “As her colleagues, we are delighted to celebrate her career today.”

In January, Hammond began serving as MIT’s vice provost for faculty. Before that, she chaired the Department of Chemical Engineering for eight years, and she was named an Institute Professor in 2021.

A versatile technique

Hammond, who grew up in Detroit, credits her parents with instilling a love of science. Her father was one of very few Black PhDs in biochemistry at the time, while her mother earned a master’s degree in nursing from Howard University and founded the nursing school at Wayne County Community College. “That provided a huge amount of opportunity for women in the area of Detroit, including women of color,” Hammond noted.

After earning her bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1984, Hammond worked as an engineer before returning to the Institute as a graduate student, earning her PhD in 1993. After a two-year postdoc at Harvard University, she returned to join the MIT faculty in 1995.

At the heart of Hammond’s research is a technique she developed to create thin films that can essentially “shrink-wrap” nanoparticles. By tuning the chemical composition of these films, the particles can be customized to deliver drugs or nucleic acids and to target specific cells in the body, including cancer cells.

To make these films, Hammond begins by layering positively charged polymers onto a negatively charged surface. Then, more layers can be added, alternating positively and negatively charged polymers. Each of these layers may contain drugs or other useful molecules, such as DNA or RNA. Some of these films contain hundreds of layers, others just one, making them useful for a wide range of applications.

“What’s nice about the layer-by-layer process is I can choose a group of degradable polymers that are nicely biocompatible, and I can alternate them with our drug materials. This means that I can build up thin film layers that contain different drugs at different points within the film,” Hammond said. “Then, when the film degrades, it can release those drugs in reverse order. This is enabling us to create complex, multidrug films, using a simple water-based technique.”

Hammond described how these layer-by-layer films can be used to promote bone growth, in an application that could help people born with congenital bone defects or people who experience traumatic injuries.

For that use, her lab has created films with layers of two proteins. One of these, BMP-2, is a protein that interacts with adult stem cells and induces them to differentiate into bone cells, generating new bone. The second is a growth factor called VEGF, which stimulates the growth of new blood vessels that help bone to regenerate. These layers are applied to a very thin tissue scaffold that can be implanted at the injury site.

Hammond and her students designed the coating so that once implanted, it would release VEGF early, over a week or so, and continue releasing BMP-2 for up to 40 days. In a study of mice, they found that this tissue scaffold stimulated the growth of new bone that was nearly indistinguishable from natural bone.

Targeting cancer

As a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Hammond has also developed layer-by-layer coatings that can improve the performance of nanoparticles used for cancer drug delivery, such as liposomes or nanoparticles made from a polymer called PLGA.

“We have a broad range of drug carriers that we can wrap this way. I think of them like a gobstopper, where there are all those different layers of candy and they dissolve one at a time,” Hammond said.

Using this approach, Hammond has created particles that can deliver a one-two punch to cancer cells. First, the particles release a dose of a nucleic acid such as short interfering RNA (siRNA), which can turn off a cancerous gene, or microRNA, which can activate tumor suppressor genes. Then, the particles release a chemotherapy drug such as cisplatin, to which the cells are now more vulnerable.

The particles also include a negatively charged outer “stealth layer” that protects them from being broken down in the bloodstream before they can reach their targets. This outer layer can also be modified to help the particles get taken up by cancer cells, by incorporating molecules that bind to proteins that are abundant on tumor cells.

In more recent work, Hammond has begun developing nanoparticles that can target ovarian cancer and help prevent recurrence of the disease after chemotherapy. In about 70 percent of ovarian cancer patients, the first round of treatment is highly effective, but tumors recur in about 85 percent of those cases, and these new tumors are usually highly drug resistant.

By altering the type of coating applied to drug-delivering nanoparticles, Hammond has found that the particles can be designed to either get inside tumor cells or stick to their surfaces. Using particles that stick to the cells, she has designed a treatment that could help to jumpstart a patient’s immune response to any recurrent tumor cells.

“With ovarian cancer, very few immune cells exist in that space, and because they don’t have a lot of immune cells present, it’s very difficult to rev up an immune response,” she said. “However, if we can deliver a molecule to neighboring cells, those few that are present, and get them revved up, then we might be able to do something.”

To that end, she designed nanoparticles that deliver IL-12, a cytokine that stimulates nearby T cells to spring into action and begin attacking tumor cells. In a study of mice, she found that this treatment induced a long-term memory T-cell response that prevented recurrence of ovarian cancer.

Hammond closed her lecture by describing the impact that the Institute has had on her throughout her career.

“It’s been a transformative experience,” she said. “I really think of this place as special because it brings people together and enables us to do things together that we couldn’t do alone. And it is that support we get from our friends, our colleagues, and our students that really makes things possible.”

A new set of advanced nanofabrication equipment will make MIT.nano one of the world’s most advanced research facilities in microelectronics and related technologies, unlocking new opportunities for experimentation and widening the path for promising inventions to become impactful new products.

The equipment, provided by Applied Materials, will significantly expand MIT.nano’s nanofabrication capabilities, making them compatible with wafers — thin, round slices of semiconductor material — up to 200 millimeters, or 8 inches, in diameter, a size widely used in industry. The new tools will allow researchers to prototype a vast array of new microelectronic devices using state-of-the-art materials and fabrication processes. At the same time, the 200-millimeter compatibility will support close collaboration with industry and enable innovations to be rapidly adopted by companies and mass produced.

MIT.nano’s leaders say the equipment, which will also be available to scientists outside of MIT, will dramatically enhance their facility’s capabilities, allowing experts in the region to more efficiently explore new approaches in “tough tech” sectors, including advanced electronics, next-generation batteries, renewable energies, optical computing, biological sensing, and a host of other areas — many likely yet to be imagined.

“The toolsets will provide an accelerative boost to our ability to launch new technologies that can then be given to the world at scale,” says MIT.nano Director Vladimir Bulović, who is also the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology. “MIT.nano is committed to its expansive mission — to build a better world. We provide toolsets and capabilities that, in the hands of brilliant researchers, can effectively move the world forward.”

The announcement comes as part of an agreement between MIT and Applied Materials, Inc. that, together with a grant to MIT from the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition (NEMC) Hub, commits more than $40 million of estimated private and public investment to add advanced nano-fabrication equipment and capabilities at MIT.nano.

“We don’t believe there is another space in the United States that will offer the same kind of versatility, capability, and accessibility, with 8-inch toolsets integrated right next to more fundamental toolsets for research discoveries,” Bulović says. “It will create a seamless path to accelerate the pace of innovation.”

Pushing the boundaries of innovation

Applied Materials is the world’s largest supplier of equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, displays, and other advanced electronics. The company will provide at MIT.nano several state-of-the-art process tools capable of supporting 150- and 200-millimeter wafers and will enhance and upgrade an existing tool owned by MIT. In addition to assisting MIT.nano in the day-to-day operation and maintenance of the equipment, Applied Materials engineers will develop new process capabilities to benefit researchers and students from MIT and beyond.

“This investment will significantly accelerate the pace of innovation and discovery in microelectronics and microsystems,” says Tomás Palacios, director of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and the Clarence J. Lebel Professor in Electrical Engineering. “It’s wonderful news for our community, wonderful news for the state, and, in my view, a tremendous step forward toward implementing the national vision for the future of innovation in microelectronics.”

Nanoscale research at universities is traditionally conducted on machines that are less compatible with industry, which makes academic innovations more difficult to turn into impactful, mass-produced products. Jorg Scholvin, associate director for MIT.nano’s shared fabrication facility, says the new machines, when combined with MIT.nano’s existing equipment, represent a step-change improvement in that area: Researchers will be able to take an industry-standard wafer and build their technology on top of it to prove to companies it works on existing devices, or to co-fabricate new ideas in close collaboration with industry partners.

“In the journey from an idea to a fully working device, the ability to begin on a small scale, figure out what you want to do, rapidly debug your designs, and then scale it up to an industry-scale wafer is critical,” Scholvin says. “It means a student can test out their idea on wafer-scale quickly and directly incorporate insights into their project so that their processes are scalable. Providing such proof-of-principle early on will accelerate the idea out of the academic environment, potentially reducing years of added effort. Other tools at MIT.nano can supplement work on the 200-millimeter wafer scale, but the higher throughput and higher precision of the Applied equipment will provide researchers with repeatability and accuracy that is unprecedented for academic research environments. Essentially what you have is a sharper, faster, more precise tool to do your work.”

Scholvin predicts the equipment will lead to exponential growth in research opportunities.

“I think a key benefit of these tools is they allow us to push the boundary of research in a variety of different ways that we can predict today,” Scholvin says. “But then there are also unpredictable benefits, which are hiding in the shadows waiting to be discovered by the creativity of the researchers at MIT. With each new application, more ideas and paths usually come to mind — so that over time, more and more opportunities are discovered.”

Because the equipment is available for use by people outside of the MIT community, including regional researchers, industry partners, nonprofit organizations, and local startups, they will also enable new collaborations.

“The tools themselves will be an incredible meeting place — a place that can, I think, transpose the best of our ideas in a much more effective way than before,” Bulović says. “I’m extremely excited about that.”

Palacios notes that while microelectronics is best known for work making transistors smaller to fit on microprocessors, it’s a vast field that enables virtually all the technology around us, from wireless communications and high-speed internet to energy management, personalized health care, and more.

He says he’s personally excited to use the new machines to do research around power electronics and semiconductors, including exploring promising new materials like gallium nitride, which could dramatically improve the efficiency of electronic devices.

Fulfilling a mission

MIT.nano’s leaders say a key driver of commercialization will be startups, both from MIT and beyond.

“This is not only going to help the MIT research community innovate faster, it’s also going to enable a new wave of entrepreneurship,” Palacios says. “We’re reducing the barriers for students, faculty, and other entrepreneurs to be able to take innovation and get it to market. That fits nicely with MIT’s mission of making the world a better place through technology. I cannot wait to see the amazing new inventions that our colleagues and students will come out with.”

Bulović says the announcement aligns with the mission laid out by MIT’s leaders at MIT.nano’s inception.

"We have the space in MIT.nano to accommodate these tools, we have the capabilities inside MIT.nano to manage their operation, and as a shared and open facility, we have methodologies by which we can welcome anyone from the region to use the tools,” Bulović says. “That is the vision MIT laid out as we were designing MIT.nano, and this announcement helps to fulfill that vision.”

We love hearing from members of the community and sharing the stories of amazing young people, volunteers, and educators who are using their passion for technology to create positive change in the world around them.

In our latest story, we’re heading to London to meet Yang, a Manager in Technology Consulting at EY specialising in Microsoft Business Applications, whose commitment to CoderDojo is truly inspiring. Yang’s passion for volunteering has grown since she first volunteered at a CoderDojo club at a local museum. In recent years, she has actively searched for ways to bring the CoderDojo movement to more children, and encouraged her colleagues to come along on the journey too.

Introducing Yang

When Yang was growing up, both of her parents worked in STEM, but her own journey into a career in technology took a varied route. After initially studying journalism in China, her path shifted when she pursued a Master’s in Digital Humanities at UCL, London, broadening her digital skills and paving the way for her current role.

On a weekend visit to a museum, Yang found the opportunity to volunteer at their CoderDojo. This experience sparked an enthusiasm to create more opportunities for young people to explore the world of computing, and this soon evolved into a plan to implement clubs at the EY offices. 

Building a community of mentors

With support from the EY Corporate Responsibility team, and fellow colleagues, Yang started to deliver Dojo sessions at the EY office in London. From the very first session, Yang was blown away by the level of enthusiasm among her colleagues, and their willingness to volunteer their time to support the club. She soon realised it was possible to roll this initiative out to other offices around the country, expanding the volunteer network and increasing their impact.

Clubs have now been run in four EY offices across the UK, and the team has even seen the first international club take place, at the EY office in Baku, Azerbaijan. In total, EY clubs have seen around 350 young people attend and give coding a go.

Championing diversity in tech

As a woman in tech, Yang is all too aware of the gender imbalance in the industry, and this is something she wanted the clubs at the EY offices to address. 

“If there are some female role models, I think for a little girl grow up that means so much. Because if they can see somebody thrive in this industry, they will see themselves there one day. And that’s the inspiration.” – Yang

Yang actively encourages female participation in Dojo sessions, for example through holding sessions with a focus on engaging girls to mark International Women’s Day and Ada Lovelace Day. Through her leadership, she creates an inclusive environment where girls can envision themselves as future leaders. 

Yang’s motivation doesn’t only inspire the young people attending her clubs, but also resonates with those who work with her on a daily basis, including colleagues like Iman and Elizabeth, who shared how much they admire Yang’s dedication and energy.

“I would love to have had a role model like [Yang] when I was younger. She’s just so inspiring. She’s so full of energy. I mean, from my personal experience, when I was younger, we didn’t have anything to do with coding.

There were situations where I was vaguely interested [in computing] but was told that it wasn’t for girls. And now with Yang running these events, seeing the girls come here and being so interested and wanting to learn, it really opens up so many more doors for them that they don’t even realise.” – Elizabeth, colleague and CoderDojo volunteer

Seeing the impact of her mentorship and the enthusiasm of young participants has fueled Yang’s passion even further. 

“This has been a great opportunity to set up CoderDojo sessions for young people. I’ve had a lot of support from colleagues and other volunteers who have helped to run the sessions […] I feel super proud of what we’ve achieved so far.” – Yang

For Yang, mentorship isn’t just about teaching technical skills; it’s about helping young people develop confidence and resilience, and letting everyone know there is a place for them in computing should they want one.

Continuing to make a difference in her community and beyond, Yang recently participated in the 68th annual UN Women’s Commission on the Status of Women, which is the UN’s largest annual gathering on gender equality and women’s empowerment. 

We’re delighted to be part of Yang’s journey, and can’t wait to see what she contributes to the world of tech next.

Help us celebrate Yang and her inspiring journey by sharing her story on X, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The post Celebrating the community: Yang appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.