Fostering research and mentorship in materials science

Published on August 8, 2023

Online MICRO internship program brings remote opportunities to undergrads
MIT News has a great article covering the MICRO internship program, an effort by professors Alfredo Alexander-Katz and Christine Ortiz supported by a J-WEL Education Innovation Grant in 2021.  Implemented by DMSE graduate students Cécile Chazot and Max L’Etoile, and Digital Learning Lab scientist Jessica Sandland, MICRO provides internship opportunities to a diverse population of undergraduate students at non-MIT institutions who are considering graduate school or a career in a research-related field. The MIT News article shares the story of one such participant:

Now a junior at University of Maryland Baltimore County majoring in chemical engineering, Myers is one of seven undergraduates from around the United States to participate in the new Materials Initiative for Comprehensive Research Opportunity (MICRO) program, a fully remote, online research internship from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). Myers’s research interests are focused on using nanoparticles as drug delivery therapeutics for breast cancer and other chronic diseases, and the MICRO program offered an unprecedented opportunity to access expertise, mentorship, and approaches to biomedicine that might otherwise have stayed out of reach for undergraduates.
“My favorite part of the program has been the relationships that we’ve been able to build with the MICRO faculty and our mentors in an online environment. It was really well-planned, and it gave us the confidence we needed to progress as scientists,” says Myers. “A lot of us haven’t had as extensive an experience at school as we wanted to because of Covid, and this program has really helped us overcome that. They were really intentional about instilling confidence in us.”

Read more.

Other news

Helping Students of All Ages Flourish in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

August 8, 2023
Daniel Ackerman | MIT News OfficeResponsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) seeks to empower more people to participate in, and benefit from, AI.A new cross-disciplinary research initiative at MIT aims to promote the understanding and use of AI across all segments of society. The effort, called Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE), will develop new teaching

Fostering media literacy in the age of deepfakes

August 8, 2023
MIT News is featuring an article on the Media Literacy in the Age of Deepfakes project, an effort by Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory professor D. Fox Harrell and The MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality that was supported by a grant in higher education innovation from the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). Professor Harrell and the MIT Center for Advanced Virtual