First Year Advising Seminars: Fall 2025

Below are descriptions of the first year advising seminars (FASes) that are being offered in Fall 2025.

In choosing a FAS, try not to focus too sharply on what you think your major might be. Many MIT students find themselves as seniors following very different paths than they anticipated when they were first-year students. Keep your mind open to other possibilities.

Seminars are one way to explore some of MIT’s richness right at the beginning of your college career, and are also a chance to try out a topic you might be interested in pursuing later in more depth. Most seminars are 3 units of credit.

All students select their preferred advising option via our online advising application.

Fall 2025 First Year Advising Seminars

2.A20 Building Muscle-Powered Robots

Prof. Ritu Raman, Mechanical Engineering
Justin Buck, Biological Engineering

Biological materials sense and respond to their environment. When you exercise, you get stronger. When you cut your skin, you heal. But the built environment and the machines that surround us don’t do this… why not? Because they aren’t built with biological materials, like we are! What if, instead of building machines with metals and plastics, mechanical engineers could build machines powered by biology? This is the motivation underlying the new field of bio-hybrid robotics. This class will introduce you to robots that use living skeletal muscles to move, and teach you how to build muscles from scratch in the lab.

Ritu Raman is the Eugene Bell Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her research and teaching interests are focused on helping mechanical engineers build with biological materials.

Justin Buck is a principle lecturer in the departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the director of MIT’s Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space. Dr. Buck’s interests are in water, energy, and environment, and his training is a blend of engineer, scientist, and entrepreneur.

2.A49 The Engineering and Physics of Radio Controlled Flying

Prof. Daniel Frey, Mechanical Engineering
Mr. Carter Jernigan, ESG

In this seminar, students will learn about the technologies underlying radio controlled airplanes. The topics will include flight mechanics, structures, propulsion, electronics, and mechanical design of actuation systems for control surfaces. Students will have the opportunity to experience both simulated and real flying and well as construction and/or modification of fixed wing aircraft.

Dan Frey is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and faculty director of D-Lab. His research concerns design processes and methods including robust design — ways of making systems work despite adverse conditions like manufacturing variability, wear, and deterioration. He is a commercially rated pilot and RC flying and model building enthusiast.

Carter Jernigan is an MIT Course 6-3 graduate with a master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Carter is an entrepreneur (3 businesses) and inventor (22 issued patents), whose latest venture is developing AI to enhance psychological well-being.

3.A04 Blacksmithing and Physical Metallurgy

Mr. Michael Tarkanian, Materials Science and Engineering

Physical metallurgy encompasses the relationships between the composition, structure, processing history and properties of metallic materials. In this seminar you’ll be introduced to metallurgy in a particularly “physical” way. We will focus on blacksmithing forging hot iron but may also venture into metal casting, machining, and welding, using both traditional and modern methods. The seminar meets once per week for an evening laboratory session, and once per week for discussion of issues in materials science and engineering that tie in to the laboratory work. Students will begin by completing some specified projects and progress to fabricating pieces of their own design.

Mike Tarkanian is a lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. His career as a materials scientist began in 1996 when he enrolled in a freshman advising seminar dealing with ancient technology and culture. Mike has been a member of the DMSE since then, as a student (BS ’00 and MS ’03), research affiliate, and staff member. Mike’s career and educational path is evidence that, at MIT, the simple choice of an advising seminar can result in profound experiences and unexpected opportunities.

4.A02 DesignPlus: Exploring Design Across MIT

Prof. John Ochsendorf, Architecture
Paul Pettigrew, Architecture

This seminar will help first-year students to explore possibilities in design across many fields at MIT. Design is a creative and interdisciplinary means of discovering problems and solutions. This seminar will help first-year students connect with design-oriented peers and faculty, and learn about ways to build design into the rest of their MIT education, regardless of major. The seminar is flexible to account for diverse student interests within the field of design. Through guest speakers, design exercises, and site visits, students will gain a broad perspective on designing and making across MIT.

Enrollment limited to students in the DesignPlus First Year Learning Community.

John Ochsendorf is professor in Course 1 (Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Course 4 (Architecture). He knows the MIT campus very well, having lived on campus as a head of house for seven years from 2010-2017 and having chaired the 2016 campus centennial celebrations. Like most professors, he is a student at heart and he looks forward to learning as we explore MIT together in this seminar.

4.A20 DNA Origami Art

Matej (Matt) Vakula, Architecture

Fold DNA to create nanometer-scale art! Learn the basic theory, CAD tools, and methods for folding DNA to create designed geometric shapes. This seminar will provide participants with hands-on experience in creating art using DNA origami technology, from design to assembly. We will also explore DNA imaging techniques utilizing atomic force microscopy. Students will integrate scientific approaches with aesthetics and design, considering the cultural implications of this emerging technology.

Matej (Matt) Vakula teaches at the Art, Culture, and Technology department at the School of Architecture at MIT. His courses and artistic practice examine the role of culture and aesthetics in emerging biotechnologies and the field of artificial intelligence. Matej studies the cultural implications of computation and nanotechnologies on biology, DIY (bio)maker movement, and broader society.
Matej has collaborated with notable institutions like the Center for Molecular Imaging and Nanotechnologies at Memorial Sloan Kettering and CUNY’s Advanced Science Research Center. He worked at IBM’s Cognitive and Immersive Systems Laboratory and was involved with the Rensselaer BAT Lab and Genspace in Brooklyn. In 2009, he served as an artist-in-residence at the SciArt Center in New York City. His art has been exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica and the Sixth Prague Biennale. His research appeared in Technoetic Arts Journal, and his automation work in biodesign was a finalist for Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica in 2023.

6.A06 First.nano – Fabricate Your Own Solar Cell in MIT.nano Clean Room

Prof. Jesus del Alamo, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Jorg Scholvin, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Take a peek at the nanoworld at the brand new clean-room facilities of MIT.nano and become the nano-engineer that you have always wanted to be! Decked out in a bunny suit at the ultra-clean facilities of MIT.nano, this seminar will offer you a hands-on experience fabricating and testing a silicon solar cell. With us, you will learn about Si nanotechnology and solar cells physics and testing. Marvel at how awesome and mysterious the world looks and behaves at the nanoscale.

Jesus del Alamo is the Donner Professor and Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He became fascinated with semiconductors as an undergraduate student at the Polytechnic University of Madrid where he was involved in solar cell research. His current research interests are focused on nanoelectronics based on novel semiconductors and new material systems and physical principles such as ferroelectrics and ionic devices.

Jorg Scholvin grew up in Germany and came to MIT as an undergraduate in 6-3. A fascination with microfabrication resulted in a switch to 6-1 and a Ph.D. on CMOS technology for RF power applications. After working at UBS in CT for three years, Jorg returned to MIT working on research combining microfabrication and neuroengineering, and co-founded an SBIR-funded company that commercialized the devices. In 2018, Jorg joined MIT.nano as the Assistant Director of User Services at Fab.nano, where he acts as technical consultant to researchers joining and using the fabrication facility.

6.A48 The Physics of Energy

Prof. Steven Leeb, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Welcome to MIT! If you are coming because you love building, let this seminar be your red carpet. You will be meeting once a week with three faculty who love building cool systems. We will learn about MIT together while we are understanding and building exciting systems that use and convert energy. We will drive an electric go-cart and compare it to a gasoline-powered vehicle. You will design and build your own set of stereo speakers and a power amplifier to audio system you can keep. Well look at motors and circuits to control these devices. We will be working in an amazing new prototyping laboratory, and you will get to develop an energy experiment of your own design. Join us!

Steven Leeb will be the advisor to the freshmen in this seminar. Steve is an electrical engineer interested in making things move. Among other research pursuits, he is working to develop synthetic muscles from a polymer material and to make fluorescent lights that talk. He enjoys teaching, swimming, cooking, eating, and making things work.

6.A51 Prosody and Gesture: The Music and Dance of Language

Dr. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, Research Laboratory of Electronics

Spoken language is characterized not only by words and sentences, but also by prosody, that is, the variations in pitch, timing, amplitude and voice quality that signal how words are grouped into phrases and which words are more prominent. For example, we can tell the difference between “It broke, out in Washington” and “It broke out, in Washington” by the location of the phrase boundary (represented in writing by a comma). Similarly, “Don’t TELL him about it” differs from “Don’t tell HIM about it”, because different words have more forceful pronunciation (represented here by the capital letters). At the same time, speakers often move their hands and other body parts (eyes, face, torso) as they speak, in ways that enhance communication. In this seminar we will examine current theories of prosody and how it functions in typical healthy adults, consider some examples of co-speech gesture, and then consider how these two streams of communicative behavior may interact in models of speech production planning. There will be opportunity to learn how to label prosody in speech from both adults and children, and to examine the question of how spoken prosody interacts with the gestures of hands, head, eyes and torso that often accompany spoken utterances. This topic will be especially appealing if you are considering taking classes in EECS, Brain and Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence, Music, Foreign Languages, Linguistics, or Biology.

For more information: http://www.rle.mit.edu/speech/

Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel is a Principal Research Scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) and has been active since 1980 working with the Speech Communication Group, a multidisciplinary laboratory engaged in teaching and research on the production and perception of speech by humans and machines. She investigates the cognitive structures and processes involved in speech production planning, particularly at the level of speech sound sequencing and context-governed phonetic variation. Stefanie received her BA in Philosophy from Wellesley College and her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from MIT.

7.A03 Stitching a Frankenstein’s Protein

Eric Chu, Biology

Are you fascinated by the marvelous shape and structure of a protein? There are many open source and MIT licensed software readily available to assist you on the journey to find or build your favorite protein. You will learn to predict genes from a DNA sequence and verify the predictions from exploring genomic and protein databases. You will also learn to visualize and examine the 3D structures of proteins from these databases. Basic molecular cloning techniques and protein engineering will be discussed to guide your decisions to modify or assemble protein fragments to build your 3D Frankenstein’s protein de novo.

Eric Chu is an instructor in the Bioteaching Laboratory in the Department of Biology. He received a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and completed his postdoc there researching microfluidics and single cell multi-omics. Currently he uses his expertise in biochemical engineering and bioinformatics to plan and create new lab-related contents for 7.002 (Fundamentals of Experimental Molecular Biology), and 7.003 (Applied Molecular Biology Laboratory). He enjoys teaching, eating, hiking, skiing, and traveling.

7.A18 Genes in the News

Dr. Ky Lowenhaupt, Biology

A lesson from current biology – you are not alone. In fact, you are not all one. Every human is a village, or maybe a universe made of human cells, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and we have not finished taking the census. Every player has a role in health or disease, and the microbiome are not just interlopers who are growing on or in you. We will select topics of interest to the members of the seminar with a focus on the human microbiome. Would you like to know more about fecal transplantation as therapy? The role of the gut microbiome in mental health? The lung microbiome is being investigated as a weapon against CoVID-19. You will suggest questions that intrigue you and use our seminar to investigate some of them. Each student will select a favorite from among our topics and lead a discussion on it. Everyone will be expected to read about all topics and actively participate in lively discussions.

Ky Lowenhaupt is a Lab Manager in the Center for Synthetic Biology. As a researcher, she used a variety of biochemical and biophysical approaches to study the ways in which structural features of DNA affect cell function. Her interests are broadened by her artistic daughter, her involvement in theater, and her general curiosity about things. No matter what the subject, she likes to know what we really know, and how we know it.

8.A06 Accounting, Corporate Finance, and the Real World

Matthew Cubstead, Physics

Starts with a basic introduction to financial accounting (the ABCs of accounting principles, cash flow, and balance sheets) and then delves into issues of corporate finance. Topics include the time value of money, the corporate cost of capital, balance sheet analysis, fraud, and financial forecasting. There will be a few real-life case studies and discussions of actual events/mergers/market crashes, etc. No prior accounting or economics experience required.

Matt Cubstead is the Administrative Officer of the Physics Department. He has an MBA in Finance and worked for several years as a financial consultant and then as a Vice-President in the corporate lending area of a major national bank.

8.A13 Geek Book Club

Joseph A. Formaggio, Physics

The seminar will center around a number of science-based topics as presented in both film and literature. Themes to be discussed in the course include time travel, (dys)utopian futures, machine self-awareness, and interstellar travel. But really, it is an opportunity for students to discuss a number of popular books and movies focused on science fiction. Students will be encouraged to engage in weekly discussions on these topics, as well as write one or more short papers based on these broad themes. Love of books and movies a must!

Joseph Formaggio received his B. S. degree from Yale University in physics in 1996. Thereafter, he received his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University, where he did his dissertation on neutrino physics. In 2001, he joined the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, where he was later appointed as a research assistant professor. He arrived at MIT in 2005, where he continues to work on experimental neutrino physics (To learn more, see formaggio.mit.edu).

10.A01 Hands-on Making in Chemical Engineering

Prof. Kristala Prather, Chemical Engineering
Justin Buck, Biological Engineering

Chemical engineers are behind virtually all of things you encounter on a daily basis! Chemical engineers remediate environmental contaminants, produce clean water, and generate clean energy. A ChemE can harness reactions to power and control a car. Chemical engineers engineer proteins and produce chemicals leveraging biology! Chemical engineering principles can even be used to remove CO2 from the air. Join us to experience chemical engineering hands-on through a project which may include: ChemE Car, Water Treatment & Reuse, Bioreactors and Metabolic Engineering, Bacterial Photography & Optogenetic E. coli, Lateral Flow Assays, and ChemE Cube.

Kristala Prather

Justin Buck is a Principal Lecturer in the Departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the director of MITs Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space. Dr. Bucks interests are in water, energy, and environment, and his training is a blend of engineer, scientist and entrepreneur.

10.A02 Hands-On Engineering, Squishy Style Making with Biology and Chemistry

Justin Buck, Chemical Engineering

Engineers build, tinker, invent, and solve; we learn through the successes and failures of doing; wet lab engineers are no exception. Excited by what the breakthroughs in biochemical technologies will bring to the 21st century and beyond? Do you want to create using tools other than the hard materials (e.g., wood, metal, plastic, silicon) of traditional makerspaces? Are you considering majoring in Course 10 or Course 20 and want a first-hand experience? Join us in the Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space to see what you can engineer in the realm of the wet lab…with the squishy chemical and biological materials! Can you program a bacteria to take a photograph? Want to use CRISPR to genetically engineer yeast? Interested in engineering proteins for biotechnological application? Want to leverage microbes to treat water or produce chemicals or energy in a bioreactor? Want to build microfluidic devices? Do all of this and more in Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space as you explore how your engineering capabilities can meaningfully improve the human condition. Students will pick two hands-on projects for the term.

NOTE: This seminar meets on Monday 2pm-5pm (cannot co-enroll in 6.100A/B due to conflict)

Justin Buck is a Principal Lecturer in the Departments of Biological and Chemical Engineering and the director of MIT’s Huang-Hobbs BioMaker Space. Dr. Buck’s interests are in water, energy, and environment, and his training is a blend of engineer, scientist and entrepreneur.

10.A16 Exploring ChemE: Because the Molecules Matter!

Fikile Brushett, Chemical Engineering

Question: What do chemical engineers actually do? Answer: Just about anything and everything! This seminar is for those who are deciding what to study at MIT and would like more information about Chemical Engineering as a possible major. We will discuss adapting to college in your first year and address how to approach the choice-of-major decision. You will learn the basics of the ChemE curriculum and hear from a wide-range of guest speakers who studied chemical engineering on their various career paths. By the end of term, you will have a better understanding of what chemical engineers do, and hopefully you will have confidence in your choice of major, whatever it turns out to be!

11.A13 Environmental Justice: Law and Literature

Justin Steil, Urban Studies and Planning

This seminar introduces frameworks for analyzing and addressing inequalities in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, particularly by race and by class. It will start by exploring the foundations of the environmental justice movement from the perspectives of law and social science. The seminar will introduce students to basic principles of the U.S. legal system, with a focus on constitutional law, civil rights law, and environmental law. The course will also engage literary representations of environmental justice and injustice and relate them to relevant legal cases. Through the course, students will be able to apply basic U.S. legal principles and conceptions of environmental justice to contemporary issues such as policy responses to climate change.

Justin Steil is an Associate Professor of Law and Urban Planning in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research examines legal and spatial dimensions of socio-economic inequality and strategies for advancing racial justice, particularly in the realms of housing policy, land use regulation, environmental justice, and immigration policy. He previously worked as advocacy director for a non-profit fighting predatory lending, planner for an environmental justice organization working with young people in the Bronx, program manager for a project bringing youth and prisoners into critical dialogues about justice, and trainer with a domestic violence crisis center instructing Ciudad Juarez police in the support of survivors of sexual assault.

12.A31 Build Your Own Climate Model

Glenn Flierl, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Models play a critical role in understanding how the climate system works and predicting how climate will change. We will build and analyze models from the simple to the complex to understand both climate dynamics and the process of constructing computer models (in Python or Matlab or…). We will start with simple overall energy balance, adding absorption of infrared radiation by greenhouse gases, then examining stochastic effects such as volcanic eruptions. Next we will examine the latitudinal structure and seasonal effects and the possibility of multiple climate states. When variations in both latitude and longitude are allowed, models can also have “weather” in the atmosphere and strong currents like the Gulf Stream or Kuroshio in the ocean. We may also look at data from more complex Earth-system models.

Glenn Flierl grew up in Ohio and, of course, became fascinated by the oceans. At least they certainly seemed more interesting than Lake Erie, and physical oceanography appeared to have better job prospects than building sets for Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He now uses physics, math, and computers to help understand the Gulf Stream and ocean vortices, as well as the Great Red Spot.

12.A56 GPS: Where Are You?

Prof. Thomas Herring, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

The use of Global Positioning System (GPS) in a wide variety of applications has exploded in the last few years. Hikers, drivers, sailors, and aviators use the system as a navigation aid but many others use GPS in ways that were not considered during its design. Some of the most stringent uses come from meteorology, where the system is used to track water vapor in the atmosphere, and from geophysics, where it is used to measure continental drift, deformation leading up to earthquakes, and mean sea-level rise. In this seminar we explore how positions on the Earth were determined before GPS, how GPS and other Global Navigations Satellites Systems (GNSS) work, and the range of applications in which GPS/GNSS is now a critical element. In this seminar you will explore how to find locations using simple household items (simple, at least by MIT standards). You will use hand held GPS units to hunt for candy around campus and have access to expensive units (and inexpensive ones) to write messages that can be can be seen from space. We also explore emerging technologies that will allow low cost GNSS equipment and cell phones to determine where they are to within a few millimeters to centimeters. This seminar is followed by an optional UROP in the spring semester where results from precise GPS measurements will be analyzed and displayed on the web.

Thomas Herring is Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. He uses GNSS to measure millimeter-level motions of the Earth’s surface in many regions around the world, including recently tall buildings, with the long-term aim of understanding earthquakes and other deformation processes. He also studies the Earth’s atmosphere with GPS through the refraction of GPS signals.

15.A03 Operations Research in Our Everyday Lives

Prof. Stephen Graves, Sloan School of Management

Who says that mathematics isn’t fun or useful? We will explore a branch of mathematics called operations research (OR), which is defined as the science of decision making. The origins of operations research date back to World War II, when the development of new mathematical methods was instrumental in locating enemy submarines. The application of these methods dramatically altered the course of the battle in the North Atlantic. Mathematical models developed with OR techniques can be applied to things that affect our daily lives, such as allocation of dormitory assignments, optimization of your diet, the deployment of ambulance services in a large city, classroom scheduling, sports, or even gambling. Operations research has also been used in finding lost treasures as well as in determining strategies for fighting AIDS. By examining interesting applications, we will take a close look at this fascinating field. The seminar will be organized around weekly sessions learning about OR applications that provide a survey of OR methods and models.

Steve Graves is the Abraham J. Siegel Professor, Post Tenure, at the Sloan School. His professional interests are in the broad area of manufacturing systems and supply chains, which are rich areas for the application of operations research methods. Steve is an avid sports fan with interests in all of the local sports teams.

15.A04 Startups and Entrepreneurship: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the MIT Galaxy

Christopher Moses
Alfred Spector, EECS

One of the things that makes MIT great is its rich and continuing legacy of entrepreneurship. A study done by MIT’s Martin Trust Center showed that the companies founded by MIT Alums would collectively form the 10th biggest economy in the world! More broadly, entrepreneurship is a powerful tool that is the basis for creating successful start-ups, but also a critical professional skill for leading a large organization or pursuing successful research. This seminar provides a window on MIT based on the concepts and pragmatics of entrepreneurship. Led by a dynamic team of entrepreneurs in residence from the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and the MIT Department of EECS, it provides an overview of an entrepreneurial approach to professional life, as well as the specifics of the sometimes complex MIT entrepreneurial ecosystem. The seminar will take the students’ perspective, helping students understand how to apply entrepreneurship in ways appropriate to them — whether they intend to start a business or be a leader in a university, not-for-profit, government entity, or corporation. Guided by the seminar’s leaders, there will also be a diverse and dynamic group of guest speakers who lived the entrepreneurial journey themselves. Among the specifics, the class will discuss tools like the Orbit online entrepreneurship community platform, MIT’s 70+ innovation and entrepreneurship-focused courses, mentoring options like the Trust Center’s Entrepreneurs in Residence or the Venture Mentoring Service, and organizations like StartLabs and MIT Sandbox.

Alfred Spector is a Visiting Scholar at MIT. For five years ending in mid-2020, he was Chief Technology Officer and Head of Engineering at Two Sigma, a firm dedicated to using information to optimize diverse economic challenges. Prior to joining Two Sigma, Dr. Spector spent nearly eight years as Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives, at Google, where his teams delivered a range of successful technologies including machine learning, speech recognition, and translation. Prior to Google, Dr. Spector held various senior-level positions at IBM, including Vice President of Strategy and Technology (or CTO) for IBM Software and Vice President of Services and Software research across the company. He previously founded and served as CEO of Transarc Corporation, a pioneer in distributed transaction processing and wide-area file systems, and he was a tenured professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Spector received a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, where he was a Hertz Fellow. He is a Fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE. He is an active member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Defense Science Board. Dr. Spector won the 2001 IEEE Kanai Award for Distributed Computing and the 2016 ACM Software Systems Award, the latter for his work on the Andrew File System (AFS).

17.A90 Politics, Policy, and Political Science: What Does It All Mean?

Prof. Andrea Campbell, Political Science
Dr. Katherine Hoss, Political Science

Ever wonder why it takes 3 minutes to vote in some parts of the U.S. and hours in others? Or why dictators arise in some societies? Or how high the threat of nuclear war is now compared to the Cold War past? Or ever ask yourself whether misinformation can be successfully combatted? Or why some widespread problems get addressed by government policy and others don’t? If you are curious about politics and policy, or about current events and why they happen, join us for a tour through the world of political science. Each week faculty will share their insights on the topics they love. They will demonstrate how political scientists approach these questions and how they explore causes, consequences, and implications. Perhaps you wonder how politics and policy might affect your future career. Perhaps you are wondering where to apply the data science and analytical skills you plan to acquire at MIT. Perhaps you’ve always followed current events and want to go deeper, or perhaps you’re a little unsure of politics and policy and want to know more. Join us for a lively exploration of some of the most profound questions of our time. This seminar will explore the scope of political science, policy, and politics through conversations with faculty who research across the field. Topics include misinformation and democracy, dictatorships, nuclear war and AI, and why governments make the policy decisions they do. The seminar will give a broad overview of the role of methods and data in political science.

Professor Andrea Campbell has taught political science and public policy at MIT since 2005. Her interests include American politics, political behavior, public opinion, and political inequality. She is the author of many books: Policy Feedback: How Policies Shape Politics with Daniel Beland and R. Kent Weaver, Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Provision with Kimberly J. Morgan, and How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Citizen Activism and the American Welfare State. Professor Campbell completed her undergraduate education at Harvard University and her PhD at UC Berkeley. Professor Campbell serves as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Course 17 and has recently been awarded a MacVicar Fellowship for undergraduate teaching. Her off-campus interests include playing clarinet in the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, baking, and travel.

Dr. Katherine Hoss joined the MIT community in 2019. Dr. Hoss is a lecturer and undergraduate academic administrator for Course 17 and the Administrative Director of MIT Washington Summer Internship Program. Dr. Hoss’ interests include political theory, American political thought, corruption, and the intersection of ancient and modern political thought. Dr. Hoss recently co-authored a book chapter, “Corruption and Congressional Design: the Federalist’s Dual Fear of the Abuse of Power and Abuse Of Liberty” in Scandal and Corruption in Congress. Dr. Hoss’ off campus interests include kickboxing, cooking, and raising her two toddlers.

18.A03 Knot Theory

Prof. Tomasz Mrowka, Mathematics

The mathematics of knots turns out to be a rich and fascinating subject touching many parts of mathematics (and even high energy physics). This seminar will expose students to various topics in knot theory and related parts of mathematics, including geometry and algebra.

Tom Mrowka was an undergraduate here at MIT from 1979 to 1983. He received his PhD in mathematics in 1988 from UC Berkeley. After positions at the Mathematical Science Research Institute, Stanford, and Caltech, he returned to MIT in 1994 as a professor of mathematics. His mathematical interests are in the partial differential equations of mathematical physics like the Yang-Mills equations and, in particular, applying these equations to the study of low dimensional topology. He like swimming, running, and climbing when he has time.

18.A11 Mathematical Ways of Thinking

Larry Guth, Mathematics

In this seminar, we’ll explore some ways that people study math, from how we learn math in classes to how researchers explore new ideas. We’ll talk about things like this: How do people find questions to think about? How do people learn a complicated new math idea? What do people do when they’re working on a problem and they get stuck? We’ll discuss different approaches to questions like these — different ways of thinking about math. Each week in seminar, we’ll try out one of these approaches on an example. And each week between classes, you can try it out on some math you’re thinking about in your other classes, or maybe something you’re interested in thinking about on your own.

I like teaching math, and I’ve wondered for a while about having a class about the process, instead of about certain material. When I was younger, I liked doing acting classes and tai chi classes. I have two dear kids at home now. It’s neat to see them grow up and see what they get excited about — mostly very different stuff from anything I was into.

18.A34 Mathematical Problem Solving (Putnam Seminar)

Prof. Henry Cohn, Mathematics

Note: Special note to students applying to 18.A34: in your first essay response, please include a brief statement highlighting your mathematical background, top accomplishments in math competitions, participation in math camps, research, advanced readings. This is the only FAS that is 6- units.

The seminar prepares students for the Putnam Mathematical Competition in December. Each week, one meeting will be a lecture (often a guest lecture by an upperclassman) on a specific topic, and the other meeting will be student presentations of homework problems, where there will be emphasis on developing good classroom presentation skills. There will be weekly problem sets where students are asked submit six problems from a longer list of problems with ranging difficulty levels related to the topic of the week’s lecture. Participation in the Putnam Competition (first Saturday of December) is required. This seminar is most suitable for students with previous experience in mathematical Olympiads.

20.A04 BioMaker Training

Maxine Jonas, Biological Engineering

Develop biological wet lab skills to apply to your independent projects or to UROPs. This first-year advising seminar gives you a jump start to your BioMaker Credential Certification. Twelve hands-on laboratory sessions step you through skills ranging from basic micropipetting to cutting-edge fluorescence activated cell sorting (FACS). After the training session, demonstrate your proficiency on the assessment to earn your certification for that technique and wow your future UROP mentors with your skill mastery! Sessions include: Lab Safety & Lab Math & Solutions, Micropipette Use & UV/Vis Spectroscopy, Microbial Culture & Sterile Technique, DNA Isolation & Purification, Agarose Gel Electrophoresis, Restriction Digestion, Polymerase Chain Reaction, DNA Assembly, Microbial Transformation, Mammalian Cell Culture, Microscopy, and FACS.

20.A06 Hands-on Making in Biological Engineering

Douglas Lauffenburger, Biological Engineering
Justin Buck, Biological Engineering

Biological engineers harness the power of living systems to solve problems! Biological engineers develop cutting edge therapeutics, medical devices, and diagnostics. Biological engineers design synthetic genetic circuits and engineer proteins for improved function. Biological engineers tackle problems in materials, sustainability, and agriculture. Join us in MIT’s BioMaker Space to see a glimpse of what you can make as a biological engineer. Students will join a hands-on engineering project which may include: Bacterial Photography & Optogenetic E. coli, Biobots, Lateral Flow Assays, Gene Editing with CRISPR, DNA Origami, Continuous Evolution of Proteins with Phage, and Biocementing.

Douglas Lauffenburger

21T.A16 Beyond Immersive Performance

Jay Scheib, Music and Theater Arts

Complimented by video viewings and readings, guest speakers, and outings to some of the Boston area’s storied museums, and performing arts venues, this first year seminar explores immersive performance, experience design, and filmmaking as a personal and radically-social mode of artistic expression. Exploring by Making, this seminar includes studio exercises that engage students at all levels of experience and culminating in performances and screenings of YOUR collaborative live film or experiential projects.

A 2011-12 Guggenheim Fellow, and Head of Music and Theater Arts, Jay Scheib is an acclaimed writer, director, and designer of plays, operas, musicals, and installations. Scheib’s recent works include the west end musical Bat Out of Hell, at the London Coliseum; an augmented reality (AR) fueled production of Richard Wagner’s opera Parsifal, as part of the Bayreuther Festspiele; Bellona, Destroyer of Cities premiered at The Kitchen followed by performances at the Maison des Arts Creteil (MAC) Exit Festival in Paris.

21W.A01 Working With Others, Finding Yourself

Jane Abbott, Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication
Kristen Selheim, Residential and Community Life

MIT is an astonishing community of makers, doers, problem-solvers, creators. As a member of the MIT community, you will find yourself making, doing, solving, and creating in concert with others. Collaboration is an art and a science, and inherently complex. Learning key concepts and strategies that power effective teams will give you lifelong advantages in this interconnected world. In this seminar, you will explore how to listen and be heard, how to manage the complexity of your brain, how to build trust, how to disagree productively, and build confidence in the face of difficult conversations. You will develop lasting relationships and challenge your sense of yourself. You will leave this experience a more skilled teammate as well as a more adept influencer of others.

Jane Abbott is a lecturer in Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication, where she has taught communication and collaboration in robotics, physics, finance, astronomy, and atmospheric sciences, as well as in the MIT Prison Initiative. Prior to coming to MIT, she worked with teams in industry that were not producing as well as expected, where she learned a lot about what it takes to thrive in a collaborative setting. She is certified as a coach of Emotional Intelligence and has studied Constructive Dialogue, among other communication tools.

Kristen Selheim is the Associate Dean in Residential and Community Life. Kristen has over 15 years of working with students to become the best version of themselves. Kristen works with the many residential communities at MIT, and has lived on campus since she arrived at MIT over 10 years ago. She has extensive experience training and teaching in the areas of leadership, identity development, navigating and managing conflict, intercultural competence, and constructive dialogue. She currently serves as Head of House in the graduate residence 70 Amherst Street.

21W.A03 MIT, Explained

Christopher Peterson, CMS/Admissions

The word “Institute” comes from the Latin for “custom,” or “way of habit.” More than brick and mortar, glass and steel, an institution is a thing made by people, over time. In this seminar, we will learn more about MIT as a organization with a past, present, and future, by hearing from leaders of major entities and initiatives that constitute the university (and what it is that they do all day), and reading selections that provide a “usable history” of contemporary relevance. This seminar may be especially well suited to anyone who is interested in effective, constructive student leadership at MIT by helping render visible the processes and principles that animate it, and so developing an accurate mental model of the Institute as a complex system.

Chris Peterson SM ‘13 is Director of Communications and Special Projects at MIT Admissions + Student Financial Services, where he oversees a range of creative and strategic initiatives. He also occasionally teaches courses on the Internet and society as a Lecturer in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, from which he earned his graduate degree, and is the staff advisor for the MIT Spinning Arts Club. When not judging, teaching, or extinguishing students, he can usually be found at the Z center’s leftmost powerlifting rack or at home in a thicket of tropical houseplants.

CC.A10 Concourse Seminar

Prof. Anne McCants and Concourse Staff, Concourse Program
Meets: F12-2 (16-128)

Note: Special sign up instructions: If you are interested in being part of the Concourse Learning Community, you must list CC.A10 as your first choice on the Freshman Advising Seminars application. Concourse teaching staff will be the freshman advisors to all students who join the Concourse

The Concourse Fall Seminar supplements Becoming Human, our 12-unit fall humanities course. In Becoming Human, we consider a range of fundamental questions about such topics as the nature of happiness, justice, knowledge, love, and truth, taking as our guides the founders of the western intellectual tradition, the ancient Greeks. In the seminar every Friday, we further our understanding of these questions by examining more modern thinkers and by exploring intellectual and ethical quandaries at the heart of science, politics and philosophy. The seminar is a gathering of our whole community, students and faculty, for intellectual fellowship and lunch.

For more information: http://concourse.mit.edu

Anne McCants studied economics, German, and history at Mount Holyoke College, and then completed her Masters degree in economics and Ph.D. in history at UCLA and UC Berkeley, respectively. She came to MIT in 1991 and is now a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow. Her teaching is focused in the areas of European economic and social history and social science research methods. She is the author of Civic Charity in a Golden Age: Orphan Care in Early Modern Amsterdam (1997), and numerous articles on historical demography, material culture, and the standard of living in the Dutch Republic. She is currently engaged in two major projects: one examining the long-term roots of economic development with a particular focus on the role played by institutions of the family and gender equity, and developing new measures for the study of wellbeing; and the other an economic and institutional history of the movement to build cathedrals and other major churches in the Gothic style in northwestern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. She serves as President of the International Economic History Association and Editor of the journal Social Science History. Her favorite ways to unwind are walking her dog Katie, cooking, working with fibers and textiles, and digging in the garden.

EC.A06 FLI into Fall

J. Alex Hoyt, Undergraduate Advising Center

FLI into Fall is a community of first generation and/or low-income (FLI) first-year students that meets weekly to discuss your unique journey and shared experiences as FLI students at MIT. Throughout the semester, we will learn how to navigate the opportunities MIT offers in the classroom and beyond. Discussions will focus on adapting to MIT’s academic rigors, time management and study strategies, identifying personal strengths, participating in experiential learning, network building, and professional development exploration. The seminar will include contributions from current MIT undergraduates, guest presentations from MIT resources (e.g., Student Financial Services (SFS), Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD), and UROP), plus more.

Alex Hoyt is the Assistant Dean for FLI Student Advising & Success in the Undergraduate Advising Center. In addition to leading FLI into Fall, Alex directs FLIPOP, MITs pre-orientation program for FLI incoming first-year students and oversees the FLI Student Executive Board. Prior to joining the UAC, Alex worked in the Office of the First Year and Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). In both these roles Alex’s work has focused on supporting undergraduate students as they navigate MIT and beyond.

EC.A07 IHTFP: I Have These Finances Planned

Stu Schmill, OVC/Admissions
Erica Aguiar, Student Financial Services

Upon graduating from the institute, MIT students enter an array of fields and graduate programs, but in some form or fashion, become “adults” with “adult money.” Regardless of course or industry, you’ll be faced with the reality that you are now responsible for your own finances. But don’t worry, we’re here to help! The purpose of this course is to lay the foundation of handling one’s finances through a series of workshops, activities, and guest lectures to set you up to be financially fit. Regardless of your experience, this course will put the “personal” in personal finance. This course will cover a variety of topics, from the concrete (“What is a budget? How do I plan for retirement?”) to the more abstract (“What is my personal spending philosophy? What’s my comfort level when it comes to investing?”). Each lesson will build on itself so that, by the end of the term, you are left with a finance action plan for your first year, and resources to help you maintain your financial health throughout your MIT career. This course will focus on sustainable, scalable interventions that are easy enough for you to accomplish during the course but substantial enough to have a significant impact on your finances.

Stu is the dean of admissions and student financial services at MIT. He has been leading the admissions office since 2007 and added student financial services to his portfolio in 2016. Dean Schmill graduated from MIT with a bachelor’s degree in 1986.

Erica is the associate director for Financial Education in Student Financial Services and has been part of the MIT community since 2021. She joined MIT to build the first dedicated financial literacy curriculum at MIT with a focus on approachable and sustainable financial interventions. When not leading presentations or advising students on how to achieve their financial goals, Erica is an avid baker and can usually be found exploring local Boston and Cambridge restaurants in search of the best food deals around.

EC.A790 Engineering, Art, and Science

Mr. Edward Moriarty, Edgerton Center
Christian Cardozo, Edgerton Center

There is a surprising amount of context for the things we learn in our first year at the Institute. However, sometimes, when we go on to take the classes that reveal that context to us, the pressures of their deadlines, exams, and psets can get in the way of our qualitative understanding and appreciation of their material. It’s not unusual to hear people thinking more about deadlines than actual ideas…

Such is the genesis of this seminar: a “sneak peek” of the interesting and essential classes at MIT, without the pressure of actually being in them—learning for learning’s sake!

No prereqs, no psets, no pressure.

We will learn about quantum mechanics, derive computer architecture, photograph explosions, laser cut pendulums, build circuits, write code, and break down AI. Your all-in-one Swiss army knife into MIT.

A course by Christian Cardozo, an MIT alum and long-time teacher and advisor at the Institute. Joined this year by the award-winning Ed Moriarty, who also has socks older than Christian. Join us for the ride.

Ed Moriarty ’76, an instructor with the MIT Edgerton Center, has been around MIT off and on ever since he showed up as a freshman in 1971. He has worked in various departments and labs around the institute and has been involved in numerous projects ranging from large scale electric generation analysis packages, to the MIT Shakespeare Electronic Archive. He has been a member of the MIT Logarhythms, Chorallaries, and the BackLogs Quartet. As a resident of “strobe alley” Ed relies mostly on fun, hands-on, in-lab, experience for presenting concepts … a refreshing change of approach from most of the book-learning done around here. He is active with many MIT student clubs and teams as well as with high-school engineering outreach.

Christian Cardozo has been with MIT, in one capacity or another, since 2013: as a student and TA, as a coordinator for the Interphase program, as a lecturer at the Experimental Study Group (ESG), and now as an Instructor at the Edgerton Center. Christian’s passion is helping students tap into their *intrinsic* motivations for learning a subject, outside the pressures of deadlines and exams. Ultimately, he has seen that this helps students perform in their MIT classes and remain excited and curious everywhere else too! He has experienced MIT from the inside out, and loves mentoring and being present for his students. For more, see Christian’s website at christiancardozo.com

ES.A100 An Introduction to Maker Skills

David Custer, Experiential Study Group

Introduction to making and use of MIT’s maker spaces intended to build skills needed for designing, conducting, and completing experiments and design projects, such as may be encountered in undergraduate classwork and research activities. Includes maker space training (i.e., wood shop, digital fabrication, and electronics fabrication) and open-ended design projects, with work evenly divided between class, homework, and maker space activities. Limited to [8] by makerspace training and scheduling; priority given to ESG students.

Dave Custer has been teaching hands-on, interdisciplinary subjects at MIT’s Experimental Study Group since he was a student in the program, over 40 years ago. After graduation, he spent a few years as an electrical engineer before returning to teach at MIT. He is also a long-standing lecturer in WRAP, the Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication unit of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Writing program where he teaches communication, primarily in mechanical and electrical engineering CI-Ms. In 2013, he was a recipient of the James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. He is a member and former president of the UIAA Safety Commission, the global standards organization for climbing and mountaineering equipment. Dave spends his free time in the vertical world

MAS.A21 Choosing Problems Wisely

Prof. Kevin Esvelt, Media Arts & Sciences

Which problems are so important that you should devote years of your life to solving them? It’s easy to say important, tractable, and neglected, but hard to determine whether any of those is true of a particular field or idea. We will explore evolutionary game theory, cognitive heuristics and biases, the history of technology, and various ethical frameworks to provide a toolkit for answering this critical question in time for you to do something about it. Finally, we’ll choose and conduct in-depth analyses of topics relevant to the future of technology and civilization.

Kevin Esvelt leads the Sculpting Evolution Group at the MIT Media Lab. Recognizing that gene drive systems based on CRISPR could alter wild populations of organisms, he and his colleagues chose to break with scientific tradition by revealing their findings and calling for open discussion and safeguards before demonstrating the technology in the lab. An outspoken advocate of open science as a way to accelerate discovery, improve safety, and build public trust, he hopes to use gene drive as a catalyst to reform the scientific enterprise. Apart from ecological engineering, research interests include molecular evolution, biological information transfer, and the neurogenetic bases of suffering and euphoria.