Dear Physics Community,

Summer is ending and our seniors and a few other students will return on Sept. 29.  Testing continues to do well, slides here and classroom scheduling is being finalized. We are ready for what Krishna Rajagopal calls A thoughtfully remote semester.

Some numbers for Fall: Total subjects: 1,377, Virtual subject: 1,181, Hybrid (in-person and virtual) 115, in-person: 81.  On-campus graduate students: 1,900, on-campus seniors: 660, other undergraduates on-campus: 240.  Needed testing rate: 14,000-30,000 per week.

What are other colleges and universities doing?  Here is a breakdown from today’s NYT:

• 6 percent will be online-only

• 27 percent will be primarily online

• 15 percent will be a hybrid of online and in-person

• 20 percent will be primarily in-person

• 2.5 percent will be solely in-person

• 6 percent are doing something else entirely

• 24 percent of schools have still not yet finalized their plans

We are excited to have some of our students coming back: it is a step into a new world and we will begin to learn how to operate so everyone can be back. Here we go…

Above the Fold

• New Communic.8 Piazza forum — thanks to PGSC liaison Matt Hodel,  SPS liaison Kaylee de Soto, and Faculty Liason Jesse Thaler
• Thanks to Anjali Nambrath, Sujay Kavi, Isebelle Phinney for the Inaugural PRIZM Conference last week.
• Thanks for Jun Yang and Or Hen for organizing the first post doc walk on
  Sunday
• NSF awards Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions centered at MIT Physics

Society of Physics Students and Physics Graduate Student Council Announcements

In case you missed it…

Physics events and news this week

• Community Lunch, Thursday, 12 pm, Speaker: Erin Kara
• New graduate student orientation, Tuesday, August 25, 10-11 am
• No office hours this week – getting ready for term.
• New: Career Advising and Professional Development – Physics is working with CAPD to bring much needed resources to students.  Prof. Mike Williams is acting as liaison, Maya Reese and Quin Brodsky represent SPS and Eugene Knyazev and Joseph Johnston represent PGSC.  They will advise the Department on needed resources.

Physics

• LIGO observation of mis-matched black holes
• Wigner’s friend – just when we thought all the loop holes for quantum mechanical entanglement were closed, someone remembered Wigner’s friend
• Physics of Living Systems group has observed turbulence on a starfish embryo member here.

Peter Fisher, Stella Schindler, and Anjali Nambrath

Dear Physics Community,

I would like to call your attention to Pres. Reif’s letter from yesterday. and focus on two key sentences.  First, from the third paragraph,

“…we are ready to try something more difficult: bringing back a portion of our undergraduates to live on campus.”

This does not sound like much, but it is huge:  In the past week, MIT has stress-tested every aspect of its operations with students back on campus.  Our testing capacity, which averaged 200 tests/day over the summer, was a key test because our testing operation needs to operate at 2,000 tests/day for students to return.  In the past week, MIT Medical ramped testing and yesterday carried out 1,930 tests. You can read the details here.  The average time from test to result is about 20 hours, with all tests being returned within 24 h.

Why is testing so important?  The mean time between infection and the appearance of symptoms for COVID-19 is 5 days, so to catch people early, MIT needs to test twice a week.  MIT will have about 2,800 students (1,900 grads, 900 undergrads) on-campus in two weeks.  Adding about 4,000 faculty and staff (about 30% of normal) coming and going during the week means at least 14,000 tests per week in order to ensure the safety of everyone.  If MIT had not been able to carry out 1,930 tests yesterday, Pres. Reif’s sentence above would have been much different.

The other critical sentence is from the sixth paragraph:

“…while we continue to celebrate and learn from each other’s individuality, we cannot afford individualism. I must take care, for your health; you must take care, for mine.”

What does this mean?  It certainly means wear your mask, wash your hands, keep six feet apart.  It also means being diligent about getting tested if you are coming on campus. The IDSS crew has done a series of studies that show that if 20% of the MIT population “opt-out”, I.e. consistently fail to get tested regularly, COVID-19 will spread at MIT regardless of what the other 80% do.  If you are coming on campus in any capacity, getting your COVID-19 test done is a key part of taking care of yourself and each other.

Everyone should read the guidance for returning students here.  These are the expectations for our students, but versions of this apply to everyone.

Yes, there may be standing in a long line (but that’s getting better).  Or coming at 5 am when they open to avoid lines.  But, it is what we need to do to avoid a repeat of last March when we all had to leave MIT and work remotely.  The next weeks will be a tough adjustment and there will be some positive tests, but if we all stick with it, it will be okay.

Above the Fold

• Expectations for Fall
• PRISM 2020 is starting TOMORROW! We hope you are as excited as we are.
  • Slack workspace dedicated to this conference (https://join.slack.com/t/prism2020/shared_invite/zt-g9uiyofr-7qy9riWa_W11icfJk6JPsg) and familiarize yourself with the various channels.
  • Zoom link to join Talk Session 1 (“Particles”), taking place on Thursday, August 20, 2020 (TOMORROW) from 11:00 to 13:00 EDT (08:00 to 10:00 PDT): https://mit.zoom.us/j/99574775725​
  • Zoom link to join Talk Session 2 (“Quantum”), taking place on Friday, August 21, 2020 (DAY AFTER TOMORROW) from 11:00 to 13:00 EDT (08:00 to 10:00 PDT): https://mit.zoom.us/j/92963301366
  • Zoom link to join Talk Session 3 (“Astro”), taking place on Friday, August 21, 2020 (DAY AFTER TOMORROW) from 19:00 to 21:00 EDT (16:00 to 18:00 PDT): https://mit.zoom.us/j/95036080764​

Other Announcements

• New course for Fall7.00 COVID-19
• Announcement about Testing of graduate students living off-campus
• Access to other parts of camps: Thunder committee
• Ohter COVID-19 testing at MIT news
• Office Access letter from Maria Zuber
• Cybersecurity workshop from Kevin Fu

Stay Safe,

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

In an effort to improve communication between different parts of the department during these physically-distant times, I have decided to add to my weekly message updates and events from our student governments, the Physics Graduate Student Council (PGSC) and the Society of Physics Students (SPS), as well as a special announcements section, Above the Fold.  On my website, I am also starting to compile a list ​of activities that we as a department are undertaking in addition to our regular duties to help support all of you during these tough times.

Today’s message is longer than usual as we there is much to report.  Also, we are still working out the format and frequency of messages.  Thank you to SPS President Anjali Nambrath and PGSC President Stella Schindler for their reports, and thank you to all of the faculty and staff who have been working tirelessly to support our community.

Peter

Above the Fold

• PRISM workshop – presentations and posters by MIT affiliated undergraduates on their work over the summer.  Register here.
• PRISM is also looking for postdocs and grad students to serve as mentors to the presenters and give them some constructive feedback on their presentation skills. The signup sheet is here, and here are our general guidelines for feedback.
• Congratulations to Nergis, the new Dean of Science, and many thanks to Mike Sipser, outgoing Dean.  Mike did a lot for the Department and I was very happy to work with him over the past seven years. The transition takes place on Sept. 1.
• Guidance for instructors on assessments for Fall term related to the APART recommendations

Physics Department Events

• Departmental Office Hours – 4-5 pm Wednesday
• Community lunch – Thursday 12-1:30 pm

Physics Graduate Student Council

The PGSC is currently working on a number of ideas and projects to improve the graduate student experience, including:

• Crafting and improving opportunities for students to maintain a sense of community while physically apart, via our student Slack workspace, Zoom events, and other ways to stay connected online
• Creating new opportunities for peer-to-peer advising, support, and mentoring
• Informing students about non-academic career opportunities
• Communicating both immediate/urgent as well as longstanding graduate student needs to department leadership and faculty committees that make important decisions
• Ensuring equitable administration of the diagnostic exams (formerly the “written qual”) during the pandemic
• Working towards implementation of the PGSC/PWG social justice recommendations
• Coordinating with other student organizations and coalitions on their goals

This week, student leadership has no tangible output to report, though we have made major headway on important backend work such as research, consultation with stakeholders, as well as planning and deliberation of potential actions we can take in each area.

The PGSC is still looking for volunteers for the following:

• 1-2 volunteers from each division to join a PGSC Task Force to create a graduate student handbook
• A new officer on PGSC: Careers Czar
• Liaison(s) to a national grad student physics anti-racism coalition

To the many students who are struggling out there, know that we are here for you. The Department is working day and night to support you all, and a great many of your peers have effectively dropped their research for the past couple of months to work with them to get it done. I know things may seem confusing or frustrating at times, but please bear with us, and know that we’re trying our best. To the students who have stepped up to help your peers, everyone in the Department is truly grateful. Please feel free to reach out to student leadership at any time with questions, comments, concerns, or if you would like to learn how to get involved.

Society of Physics Students

SPS has been working on a variety of projects this summer:

• the inaugural PRISM conference for undergraduates, happening this Thursday and Friday

• advocating for fewer high-stakes assessments in undergraduate classes for the upcoming fall

• conducting a survey to understand students’ advising needs and communicating that to the department

• starting to act on the SPS equity and inclusion recommendations

• working towards informing students of career opportunities (here’s a starting point)

• partnering with Harvard’s SPS on a series of weekly talks

This week, most of our work has been focused on the upcoming conference. If you’d like to see what ~40 undergraduates have spent their summers working on, please sign up to attend! This will give you access to the Zoom links for the talk sessions and the Slack for access to posters and Q&A.

For undergrads hoping to get more involved with SPS: we will be holding elections for the 2020-21 year early in September. If you have any questions, please email sps-exec@mit.edu, and we can tell you more about the projects we’re working on and the new ideas we’re hoping to start work on in the fall!

MIT and other Announcements

• New Title IX policies and resources
• International remote graduate student appointments, slides
• Imposture syndrome in the time of COVID-19
• American Association of Physics Teachers Career Center announcements
• COVID-19 testing at MIT slides
• New MIT COVID-19 website – now.mit.edu

Physics

• New results from MIT’s OLYMPUS experiment in Germany
• Quantum blackjack
• Positronium lifetime saga continues…
• Some parts of the government do work:  COVID-19 herd immunity

Physics Department Activities and Announcements

• The Department is working through establishing policies for the Written General Exam, graduate courses, and breadth requirements.  We had excellent input from a team of graduate students and are now making sure that we are within the guidance from APART, which they have promised for today.   We will get guidance out to our students as soon as we hear from GCP
• We are in the process of developing a new, first-year graduate research seminar with an online component.  We are looking for faculty, Pappalardo Fellows, and graduate students to give 30-minute talks on their research.  Please look for an announcement from the Department this week.
• As part of an effort to ensure we are communicating everything, the Department is doing to support our students, here is a list of things the Department has done or is working on.
• Guidance for instructors on assessments for Fall term related to the APART recommendations

Dear Physics Community,

LOTS of things are happening.  Massachusetts is moving to Phase 3 of the opening while MIT moves to its Phase 2.  For more about MIT in the Fall, Chancellor Barnhardt wrote to the City of Cambridge a letter detailing what will happen in the Fall and Medical Director Cecilia Stuopis made a presentation to the City of Cambridge about MIT’s plans for testing a medical care in the Fall.  There are also updated travel policies for the MIT community.

In the Fall, remote teaching and community building will start.  Here are two new tools that MIT has acquired to help online. Teach remote has training sessions for faculty and new TA’s.  If you are planning to send off-campus students, see this information on remote making about the rules surrounding sending things off-campus.

More Friday…

Stay safe,

Peter

Dear Physics Community,

Fall is beginning to define itself.  This week, we had a lunch discussion with Janet Rankin about low-stakes assignments, slides here, TLL resources here, and my letter to instructors here. On a related theme, I’ve just finished David Kaiser’s book, “Quantum Legacies” and there is an interesting essay, “Training Quantum Mechanics” about the different approaches to teaching the subject.  David kindly sent me a pdf of the essay for our inspiration.

MIT has developed policies for returning students: undergraduates here and graduate students here.  Just in case, faculty/staff concerns can be reported here and student concerns here.

Announcements and opportunities

• Looking for another course?  Biology is offering a course in COVID-19.
• AAPT Virtual Coffee hour on remote learning
• Apply for a MathWorks
• Do you have a grant from the NSF?  New disclosure requirements here

Physics

• I have always wondered how knives get dull cutting tomatoes or a razor get dull shaving.  Now we know MIT News story, Science article.
• Last year, a definition based on the meter and second replaced the kilogram artifact kept at BIPM outside Paris.  I thought we were all set, but no – the radian is becoming an issue. Currently defined as a dimensionless derived quantity, advocates want 1 rad=1 m.m.

Los Endos

Back by popular demand: email guidelines.

Peter