Virginia Norwood ’47, a pioneer in satellite land imaging, dies at age 96

“Mother of Landsat” Virginia Norwood, a 1947 MIT mathematical physics alumna, was the founding figure in satellite land imaging who developed technology to scan the surface of the moon for safe landing sites and map our planet from space. She died April 2, 2023, at the age of 96.   Norwood is best known for […]

“This is the type of life that I want”

Poet, student advocate, and math/physics double-major Catherine Ji is living boldly at MIT. January 26, 2023 Read more in the MIT News.

Wiggling toward bio-inspired machine intelligence

Juncal Arbelaiz Mugica is a native of Spain, where octopus is a common menu item. However, Arbelaiz appreciates octopus and similar creatures in a different way, with her research into soft-robotics theory.  More than half of an octopus’ nerves are distributed through its eight arms, each of which has some degree of autonomy. This distributed sensing […]

Prof. Lisa Piccirillo Explores Mysteries of Knots

Lisa Piccirillo explores the mysteries of knots with podcast host Steven Strogatz and mathematician Colin Adams. Read more at Quanta.

That image of a black hole you saw everywhere? Thank Katie Bouman for making it possible

By Michelle Lou and Saeed Ahmed, CNN Updated 11:46 PM ET, Wed April 10, 2019 (CNN)Imagine trying to take a photo of an orange that’s on the moon with your smartphone. It seems impossible. That’s what it was like for scientists trying to capture an image of a black hole in space. Despite the tall […]