Residential Scholar Events Fall 2010

Residential scholar events occur most Friday nights. The events are organized by the Simmons Hall Residential Scholars, Graduate Resident Tutors, Residential Life Associate, and Associate Housemaster. Most events are open to the MIT community. Some smaller events, such as cooking events, are open to Simmons Hall residents only.

The diversity of the events is impressive, and limited only by the imagination of the Residential Scholars. The events for the Fall 2008 term are listed below; you can also see events from the Spring 2009 term. You can click on the the poster for each event to see a full-sized image.

Adinkra Jazz

Organizers: Jim Gates, Chris Jones, Rachel Jones

Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room
November 19, 2010
6:00 PM

Prof. Jim Gates led an interdisciplinary team of mathematicians and physicists that discovered, hidden in supersymmetric equations, strings of bits and Adinkras - their symbolic representations which Prof. Alexander asserts possess symmetries reminiscent of the western musical scale. Adinkra Jazz will open with a discussion by Dr. Stephon Alexander on the role of symmetry in physics, music and cosmology and end in a performance with pieces inspired by Adinkra diagrams. Dr. Alexander will be accompanied by world-renowned composer and guitarist Dr. Daniel Lippel to perform original compositions that are based on symmetries found in fundamental physics.

S. James Gates is the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and serves on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory and has been featured on several PBS Nova programs.

Stephon Alexander is an Associate Professor of Physics at Haverford College. Focusing on theoretical cosmology, quantum gravity and particle physics, he has studied at Brown University and done postdoctoral research at Imperial College, London and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory. Alexander plays jazz saxophone and sees improvisation as an extension of his scholarship, having played with 3-time Grammy Award Winner Will Calhoun and collaborated with Brian Eno.

Guitarist Daniel Lippel is active as a soloist, chamber musician, and recording artist. Recent performances include a solo tour of Germany, recitals in Istanbul, Chicago, and New York, and chamber music performances on Helsinki's Musica Nova Festival, the Macau International Music Festival in China, and on the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Alice Tully Hall.

A Taste of Poland

Simmons Hall Country Kitchen
Friday November 14, 2008
6 pm

Organizers: Michael and Irene Podowski, Jordan Allison

Please join us for a fun event, organized by Simmons Residential Scholar Michael Podowski and his wife Irene Podowski, "A Taste of Poland." Come make and taste traditional Polish dishes with a hands-on experience: “Pierogi” - dumplings of different styles, butter cookies, and other Polish sweets. Followed with a slide show about the geography, history, science and culture of Poland and a short film.

Don Morrison

Integrity and Inner Transformation: A Talk by Don Morrison, Chief Operating Officer of Research In Motion (RIM-Blackberry)

Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room
Thursday, November 4, 2010
7:00 pm

Organizers: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Kartik Trehan

Introduced by Professor Murial Medard

Don Morrison is the Chief Operating Officer of Research In Motion. Don oversees all domestic and international operations focusing on the development and execution of a world-class, customer-driven organization to support the BlackBerry wireless solution. Before joining RIM in 2000, Don undertook a number of senior leadership positions in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East with AT&T and Bell Canada. Don is the founder of the Golden Thread Charitable Foundation and the Morrison Centre for Peace and Conflict Research. He is on the board of HealthyKids International and is a member of the Strategic Planning Committee for SickKids Hospital Foundation. Don holds an MBA and BA from the University of Toronto and also participated in the Executive Program at the University of Virginia, Darden Business School.

Muriel Médard is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a member of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 1995 to 1998, she was a Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Optical Communications and the Advanced Networking Groups. Professor Médard received B.S. degrees in EECS and in Mathematics in 1989, a B.S. degree in Humanities in 1990, a M.S. degree in EE 1991, and a Sc D. degree in EE in 1995, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. She has served as an Associate Editor for the Optical Communications and Networking Series of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, as an Associate Editor in Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and as an Associate Editor for the OSA Journal of Optical Networking. She has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, the Joint special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking on Networking and Information Theory and the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensic and Security: Special Issue on Statistical Methods for Network Security and Forensics. She serves as an associate editor for the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.

Mpho Tutu

Made for Goodness: A Talk by Mpho Tutu

Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room
Saturday, October 23, 2010
4:00 pm

Organizers: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Hans Rinderknecht, Mariah Steele

Introduced by Philip F. Mangano,
President and CEO The American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness
Former Executive Director, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness

(This event will be followed by a book signing by the author. Books will be available for purchase.)

The Reverend Mpho A. Tutu, an Episcopal priest, is the founder and Executive Director of the Tutu Institute for Prayer & Pilgrimage.

Ms. Tutu has run ministries for children in the downtown Worcester, Massachusetts; for rape survivors in Grahamstown, SA; and for refugees from South Africa and Namibia at the Phelps Stokes Fund in New York City. She earned her MDiv from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and began her ordained ministry at Historic Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Ms. Tutu is an experienced preacher, teacher, and retreat facilitator. With her father, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, she has authored the recently published book, “Made for Goodness”.

The Reverend Mpho Tutu is the Chairperson Emeritus of the board of the Global AIDS Alliance, the Chairperson of the Board of Advisors of the 911 Unity Walk, and a trustee of Angola University.

Ms Tutu is married to Joseph Burris; they have two daughters, Nyaniso and Onalenna.

Robert Taylor

Reconciling Peace-Making: A Transformative Ethic: A Talk by Robert Taylor

Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room
Thursday, October 21, 2010
7:00 pm

Organizer: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi

Robert V. Taylor is Chair of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation in New York. Born and raised in South Africa, Robert saw firsthand the potential for peace making when oppressed people find the courage to be who they are through discovering their voices and trusting their imagination. In 1980 his mentor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu sent Robert to the United States to avoid imprisonment for his anti-apartheid activity. A graduate of Rhodes University in South and Union Theological Seminary in New York he eventually became the highest ranking openly gay clergy person in the Episcopal Church at the time. He lectures nationally on compassion, peace-making and reconciliation engaging audience across the United States in realizing their full human potential and impact in the world.

His lecture will address the way in which reconciling peacemaking is a grounding transformative ethic in our personal lives and in society reorienting how we perceive ourselves and others. He will explore the ways in which technology and social media offer ground breaking opportunities for creating a new normalcy to local and global peace-making and reconciliation, and how this expands our understanding of the inter-connectedness of all people with implications for reframing the landscape of power dynamics among diverse peoples. He will draw on his own involvement in creating an open source peace platform with its potential for a transformative ethic of human engagement.

Co-sponosored by Technology and Culture Forum at MIT

Switzerland: The Land of the Alps, Cheese and Chocolate

Simmons Hall Country Kitchen
October 15, 2010
6:00 pm

Organizers: Henning and Anja Colsman-Freyberger, Patrick Schmid, Candice Chow

Join our new residential scholars Henning and Anja in the Country Kitchen this Friday for a cooking event. We will be making Chässpätzli (cheese spätzle) from scratch, using a spätzle press. All kitchen proficiencies are welcome for this easy-to-make delicious meal, which we will be enjoying with a fresh salad. Well nourished, we will discover the the Swiss Alps by rail along the routes of world-famous panoramic trains Glacier Express, Golden Pass Panoramic and the Bernina Express (the train line is a UNESCO World Heritage Site!). By then, you've gained an appetite for more things Swiss, so it is good that Henning and Anja brought chocolate from their recent tour of the oldest chocolate factory in Switzerland.

Game Night

October 1, 2010
6:00 pm
Simmons Dining Hall

Organizers: Steven Hall, Tyler DeWitt

Come join us for an evening of fun and games. We'll bring board games (Cranium, Jenga, etc.) and pizza. If you have a favorite game, feel free to bring it! Bring your friends!

The Fall of The Iron Curtain: From the Birth of Solidarity in Poland to the fall of Berlin Wall in Germany

September 24, 2010
6:00 pm
Simmons Hall Multi-Purpose Room

Organizers: Michael Z Podoski, Irene Podowski, Patrick Schmid, Candice Chow

Come join us for the showing of the comedy/drama “Good Bye Lenin!” which will be preceded by a brief overview of the events in Eastern Europe in the 1980s that led up to the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany.

From IMDB: East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot!

A Taste of Thailand

Simmons Hall Country Kitchen
September 17, 2010
5:00 pm

Organizers: John Essigmann, Jon Gibbs

Today we have an extra special Resident Scholars event.

You are cordially invited to enjoy an evening of Thai culture and cuisine! Learn to make authentic appetizers and take part in a Wai Kru ceremony to celebrate the start of the Thai academic year. Meet ThaiROPs: MIT students who spent their summer in Thailand and learn about their (and potentially your future!) experiences.

Simmons Hall Home Page The Residential Scholars Program Fall 2009 Events Spring 2009 Events Fall 2008 Events Life as a Residential Scholar Residential Scholars Emeriti contact	Residential Scholar Events Fall 2010 Residential scholar events occur most Friday nights. The events are organized by the Simmons Hall Residential Scholars, Graduate Resident Tutors, Residential Life Associate, and Associate Housemaster. Most events are open to the MIT community. Some smaller events, such as cooking events, are open to Simmons Hall residents only. The diversity of the events is impressive, and limited only by the imagination of the Residential Scholars. The events for the Fall 2008 term are listed below; you can also see events from the Spring 2009 term. You can click on the the poster for each event to see a full-sized image.
	Adinkra Jazz Organizers: Jim Gates, Chris Jones, Rachel Jones Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room November 19, 2010 6:00 PM Prof. Jim Gates led an interdisciplinary team of mathematicians and physicists that discovered, hidden in supersymmetric equations, strings of bits and Adinkras - their symbolic representations which Prof. Alexander asserts possess symmetries reminiscent of the western musical scale. Adinkra Jazz will open with a discussion by Dr. Stephon Alexander on the role of symmetry in physics, music and cosmology and end in a performance with pieces inspired by Adinkra diagrams. Dr. Alexander will be accompanied by world-renowned composer and guitarist Dr. Daniel Lippel to perform original compositions that are based on symmetries found in fundamental physics. S. James Gates is the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and serves on President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is known for his work on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory and has been featured on several PBS Nova programs. Stephon Alexander is an Associate Professor of Physics at Haverford College. Focusing on theoretical cosmology, quantum gravity and particle physics, he has studied at Brown University and done postdoctoral research at Imperial College, London and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory. Alexander plays jazz saxophone and sees improvisation as an extension of his scholarship, having played with 3-time Grammy Award Winner Will Calhoun and collaborated with Brian Eno. Guitarist Daniel Lippel is active as a soloist, chamber musician, and recording artist. Recent performances include a solo tour of Germany, recitals in Istanbul, Chicago, and New York, and chamber music performances on Helsinki's Musica Nova Festival, the Macau International Music Festival in China, and on the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Alice Tully Hall.
	A Taste of Poland Simmons Hall Country Kitchen Friday November 14, 2008 6 pm Organizers: Michael and Irene Podowski, Jordan Allison Please join us for a fun event, organized by Simmons Residential Scholar Michael Podowski and his wife Irene Podowski, "A Taste of Poland." Come make and taste traditional Polish dishes with a hands-on experience: “Pierogi” - dumplings of different styles, butter cookies, and other Polish sweets. Followed with a slide show about the geography, history, science and culture of Poland and a short film.
	Integrity and Inner Transformation: A Talk by Don Morrison, Chief Operating Officer of Research In Motion (RIM-Blackberry) Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room Thursday, November 4, 2010 7:00 pm Organizers: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Kartik Trehan Introduced by Professor Murial Medard Don Morrison is the Chief Operating Officer of Research In Motion. Don oversees all domestic and international operations focusing on the development and execution of a world-class, customer-driven organization to support the BlackBerry wireless solution. Before joining RIM in 2000, Don undertook a number of senior leadership positions in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East with AT&T and Bell Canada. Don is the founder of the Golden Thread Charitable Foundation and the Morrison Centre for Peace and Conflict Research. He is on the board of HealthyKids International and is a member of the Strategic Planning Committee for SickKids Hospital Foundation. Don holds an MBA and BA from the University of Toronto and also participated in the Executive Program at the University of Virginia, Darden Business School. Muriel Médard is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She was previously an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and a member of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. From 1995 to 1998, she was a Staff Member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Optical Communications and the Advanced Networking Groups. Professor Médard received B.S. degrees in EECS and in Mathematics in 1989, a B.S. degree in Humanities in 1990, a M.S. degree in EE 1991, and a Sc D. degree in EE in 1995, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge. She has served as an Associate Editor for the Optical Communications and Networking Series of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, as an Associate Editor in Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and as an Associate Editor for the OSA Journal of Optical Networking. She has served as a Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology, the Joint special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking on Networking and Information Theory and the IEEE Transactions on Information Forensic and Security: Special Issue on Statistical Methods for Network Security and Forensics. She serves as an associate editor for the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology. She is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.
	Made for Goodness: A Talk by Mpho Tutu Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room Saturday, October 23, 2010 4:00 pm Organizers: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, Hans Rinderknecht, Mariah Steele Introduced by Philip F. Mangano, President and CEO The American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness Former Executive Director, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (This event will be followed by a book signing by the author. Books will be available for purchase.) The Reverend Mpho A. Tutu, an Episcopal priest, is the founder and Executive Director of the Tutu Institute for Prayer & Pilgrimage. Ms. Tutu has run ministries for children in the downtown Worcester, Massachusetts; for rape survivors in Grahamstown, SA; and for refugees from South Africa and Namibia at the Phelps Stokes Fund in New York City. She earned her MDiv from Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and began her ordained ministry at Historic Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia. Ms. Tutu is an experienced preacher, teacher, and retreat facilitator. With her father, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, she has authored the recently published book, “Made for Goodness”. The Reverend Mpho Tutu is the Chairperson Emeritus of the board of the Global AIDS Alliance, the Chairperson of the Board of Advisors of the 911 Unity Walk, and a trustee of Angola University. Ms Tutu is married to Joseph Burris; they have two daughters, Nyaniso and Onalenna.
	Reconciling Peace-Making: A Transformative Ethic: A Talk by Robert Taylor Simmons Hall Multip-Purpose Room Thursday, October 21, 2010 7:00 pm Organizer: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Robert V. Taylor is Chair of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation in New York. Born and raised in South Africa, Robert saw firsthand the potential for peace making when oppressed people find the courage to be who they are through discovering their voices and trusting their imagination. In 1980 his mentor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu sent Robert to the United States to avoid imprisonment for his anti-apartheid activity. A graduate of Rhodes University in South and Union Theological Seminary in New York he eventually became the highest ranking openly gay clergy person in the Episcopal Church at the time. He lectures nationally on compassion, peace-making and reconciliation engaging audience across the United States in realizing their full human potential and impact in the world. His lecture will address the way in which reconciling peacemaking is a grounding transformative ethic in our personal lives and in society reorienting how we perceive ourselves and others. He will explore the ways in which technology and social media offer ground breaking opportunities for creating a new normalcy to local and global peace-making and reconciliation, and how this expands our understanding of the inter-connectedness of all people with implications for reframing the landscape of power dynamics among diverse peoples. He will draw on his own involvement in creating an open source peace platform with its potential for a transformative ethic of human engagement. Co-sponosored by Technology and Culture Forum at MIT
	Switzerland: The Land of the Alps, Cheese and Chocolate Simmons Hall Country Kitchen October 15, 2010 6:00 pm Organizers: Henning and Anja Colsman-Freyberger, Patrick Schmid, Candice Chow Join our new residential scholars Henning and Anja in the Country Kitchen this Friday for a cooking event. We will be making Chässpätzli (cheese spätzle) from scratch, using a spätzle press. All kitchen proficiencies are welcome for this easy-to-make delicious meal, which we will be enjoying with a fresh salad. Well nourished, we will discover the the Swiss Alps by rail along the routes of world-famous panoramic trains Glacier Express, Golden Pass Panoramic and the Bernina Express (the train line is a UNESCO World Heritage Site!). By then, you've gained an appetite for more things Swiss, so it is good that Henning and Anja brought chocolate from their recent tour of the oldest chocolate factory in Switzerland.
	Game Night October 1, 2010 6:00 pm Simmons Dining Hall Organizers: Steven Hall, Tyler DeWitt Come join us for an evening of fun and games. We'll bring board games (Cranium, Jenga, etc.) and pizza. If you have a favorite game, feel free to bring it! Bring your friends!
	The Fall of The Iron Curtain: From the Birth of Solidarity in Poland to the fall of Berlin Wall in Germany September 24, 2010 6:00 pm Simmons Hall Multi-Purpose Room Organizers: Michael Z Podoski, Irene Podowski, Patrick Schmid, Candice Chow Come join us for the showing of the comedy/drama “Good Bye Lenin!” which will be preceded by a brief overview of the events in Eastern Europe in the 1980s that led up to the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany. From IMDB: East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot!
	A Taste of Thailand Simmons Hall Country Kitchen September 17, 2010 5:00 pm Organizers: John Essigmann, Jon Gibbs Today we have an extra special Resident Scholars event. You are cordially invited to enjoy an evening of Thai culture and cuisine! Learn to make authentic appetizers and take part in a Wai Kru ceremony to celebrate the start of the Thai academic year. Meet ThaiROPs: MIT students who spent their summer in Thailand and learn about their (and potentially your future!) experiences.