Recent Event Highlights: MIT's 145th Commencement Exercises, Open House, MIT150 Symposium: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything, MIT150 Symposium: Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything, The Next Century Convocation, Next Century Convocation, and 285 more...
Created by MIT150 on Nov 15, 2010
Last updated: 07/20/11 at 09:23 AM
Thousands of guests raise a glass, have a slice of the anniversary cake, and connect with alumni, students, and friends of MIT gather to celebrate the close of the sesquicentennial celebration in this Toast to Tech! This festive event for MIT alumni, faculty, staff, and students features live entertainment—including fireworks over the Charles River.
MIT’s holds its 145th Commencement Exercises. The guest speaker at the ceremony is Ursula M. Burns, mechanical engineer and chairman and CEO of Xerox Corporation. Joining the families and guests of graduates in the audience are members of the Class of 1961, MIT's centennial class.
http://youtu.be/I44aBO9hYUU
FAST Light, the two-day finale event of the three-month-long Festival of Art + Science + Technology, illuminated MIT’s campus and the Charles River. Onlookers filled campus and the banks of the river to see the 20-plus projects that used light as a focal point.
MIT holds its first open house in more than 30 years. Approximately 20,000 people descend on campus for “Under the Dome,” where visitors of all ages got an up-close and often hands-on view of MIT’s cutting-edge work.
The Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything symposium looks at the transformative power of the information age and MIT's role in it.The event brings together early and recent pioneers from a variety of fields to review the role computation has played in the past and present and to explore frontiers that lie ahead.
http://mit150.mit.edu/symposia/computation
MIT celebrates Charter Day with The Next Century Convocation at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center
http://mit150.mit.edu/events/convocation
The Conquering Cancer through the Convergence of Science and Engineering symposium celebrates the unique role that life sciences and engineering have played in the history of cancer research
The Conquering Cancer through the Convergence of Science and Engineering symposium celebrates the unique role that life sciences and engineering have played in the history of cancer research
http://mit150.mit.edu/symposia/conquering-cancer
“'Technology' through Time: 150 Years of MIT History," a multimedia exhibition that showcases the history of MIT, opens in the MIT Libraries Gallery.
MIT Sesquicentennial celebrations begin
http://mit150.mit.edu/
MIT faculty adopt a policy to make their scholarly articles available to the public for free on the Web. This unanimous vote aims to broaden access to MIT's research and scholarship.
The MIT-Israel Program is created within MISTI to train and send MIT students to Israel for internships; strengthen collaborations between MIT and Israel; and organize workshops, conferences, symposia and lectures at MIT and in Israel
The report is made by the Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons to the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The report reviews MIT
http://web.mit.edu/committees/edcommons/documents/tf_full_report.pdf
The MIT-Spain Program is created within MISTI to send MIT students to Spain for internships.
The 14th Dalai Lama meets at MIT with neuroscientists and Buddhist scholars to explore how the human mind is understood in Tibetan Buddhism and Western science
DSpace@MIT, an open source digital repository, is developed to save, share, and search MIT's digital research materials
The Laboratory for Energy and the Environment (LFEE) is established to make significant innovative contributions to energy and environmental sustainability
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/lfee/
MIT Press publishes "Technology and the Dream, Reflections on the Black Experience at MIT" by Clarence G. Williams, a compilation of oral histories meant to document the history and ongoing legacy of black students, staff and faculty at MIT.
MIT and Caltech join forces to develop an easy-to-use, reliable, affordable and secure United States voting machine that will prevent a recurrence of the problems that plagued the 2000 presidential election
MIT celebrates the start of the 21st century with the Millennium Ball. The number of students, faculty, and staff in attendance is more than double the number expected.
MIT and Cambridge University in England establish The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI), a program that includes integrated research and an exchange program for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty
MIT-Italy Program is created within MISTI to send MIT students to Italy for internships. Today, the program also fosters research collaboration between faculty at MIT and in Italy through the Progetto Roberto Rocca and MITOR Project.
The School of Engineering establishes the Engineering Systems Division (ESD), focused on the development of new approaches, frameworks, and theories to better understand engineering systems behavior and design
http://esd.mit.edu/Headline/esd-founded.htm
The Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Health (BEH) begins operation with the mission of fostering MIT education and research fusing engineering with biology
The Singapore-MIT Alliance is established as an innovative engineering and life science educational and research collaboration among the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and MIT
http://web.mit.edu/sma/
Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) is developed by Lincoln Laboratory to detect and catalogue near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that may threaten Earth. Applying technology originally developed for the surveillance of Earth-orbiting satellites, LINEAR uses two ground-based electro-optical deep-space surveillance telescopes. LINEAR has discovered more than one-third of all known NEAs to date, nearly half of large NEAs, and more than 40% of all known potentially hazardous asteroids.
BankBoston releases its report "MIT: The Impact of Innovation," demonstrating the economic impact of MIT education and research
MIT establishes the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor Program, an expansion of the MLK Visiting Scholar Program established in 1991. The inaugural MLK visiting professors are Wesley Harris, Richard Joseph, Steven Lee and Oliver McGee.
http://web.mit.edu/mlking/visiting/former_visitors.html
The Lemelson-MIT Prize Program awards its first $500,000 national prize for American invention and innovation to 34-year-old automotive engineer William J. Bolander
http://mit150.mit.edu/events/30000-lemelson-mit-student-prize-ceremony
The MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) are created to connect MIT students to internships and research around the world. MIT’s primary international program, MISTI is a pioneer in applied international studies—a distinctively MIT concept. Today, MISTI sends hundreds of MIT students abroad each year and facilitates international faculty collaboration through MISTI Global Seed Funds.
The MIT-China Program is created within MISTI to send MIT students to China for internships. Today, MIT-China also manages the China Educational Technology Initiative (CETI), which sends teams of MIT students to introduce MIT OpenCourseWare and iLabs content at ten Chinese universities; and the MIT Greater China Fund for Innovation, a MISTI Global Seed Fund that establishes new research collaborations between MIT faculty and their counterparts at Chinese institutions.
Professor Sheila Widnall, '64, is sworn in as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, the first woman to head one of the military branches
MIT institutes the General Institute Requirement in modern biology, becoming the first major academic institution to require such a subject for all of its undergraduate students
Phillip Clay becomes head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the first black academic department head at MIT. Clay currently holds the position of Chancellor of MIT and Professor of City Planning.
http://mit150.mit.edu/infinite-history/phillip-l-clay-phd-%E2%80%9975
Students, in a friendly hack, hide President Vest's Office door behind a fake bulletin board on his first day of work
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1990/vest_bboard/
The Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR)-9, developed at Lincoln Laboratory, provides air traffic control (ATC) personnel with a display free of clutter and a telephone bandwidth data stream for transmitting information to ATC facilities. The technology was later transferred to Westinghouse Corporation, which deployed the ASR-9 at 137 sites in the United States for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Professor Stephen Benton, '63, creates the first free-standing hologram. In 1985, Benton began generating synthetic holograms from 3-D digital databases, initially creating a 3-D image of a green car floating in front of the Boston skyline.
Mildred Dresselhaus becomes the first woman to be appointed Institute Professor and the first female tenured professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering
http://mit150.mit.edu/infinite-history/mildred-dresselhaus
The Gender and Science Seminar Series leads to the establishment of the Program in Women's Studies
http://web.mit.edu/wgs/about/history.html
Ronald E. McNair, PhD '76, becomes the first African American scientist-astronaut to go into space. McNair is killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster. In 2005, a professorship in Astronautics at MIT is named in his honor.
http://www.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/_203822/uiconf_id/1898102/entry_id/1_rxm9fho4/
Mary Frances Wagley, '47, becomes the first female president of MIT Alumni Association
http://mit150.mit.edu/infinite-history/mary-frances-wagley-%E2%80%9947
MIT Professor Alan Guth describes "cosmic inflation," his model for the development of the universe in the first few seconds subsequent to the Big Bang
Aga Khan endows an Islamic architecture program at MIT
Sheila Widnall, '60, becomes the first woman elected chairman of MIT Faculty
http://mit150.mit.edu/infinite-history/sheila-e-widnall-%E2%80%9960-sm-%E2%80%9961-scd-%E2%80%9964
Whitaker College of Health Sciences, Technology, and Management is established to strengthen MIT's ability to engage in health related research and education
The Department of Linguistics and Philosophy is created. Philosophy had previously been taught in the Department of Humanities, and Linguistics had previously been taught in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics.
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/mithistory/research/schools-and-departments/school-of-humanities-arts-and-social-sciences/department-of-linguistics-and-philosophy/
Between 1976 and 1982, Lincoln Laboratory participates in the Department of Energy's solar photovoltaics program, focusing on design and test of solar systems for both nonresidential and residential sites. During the course of program, the Laboratory advances the state of photovoltaic technology and installed more than 11,000 modules in 33 field sites.
MIT becomes the first Massachusetts institution designated as a Sea Grant College
The Office of Minority Education is established, with Associate Professor Wesley L. Harris, Sr., as its Director
http://mit150.mit.edu/infinite-history/wesley-l-harris
The Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science (MITES) program is established to provide a rigorous six-week residential, academic summer program for promising high school juniors who are interested in careers in science and engineering.
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