SHASS News

Keeril Makan has been appointed vice provost for the arts at MIT, effective Feb. 1. In this role, Makan, who is the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor at MIT, will provide leadership and strategic direction for the arts across the Institute. Provost Anantha Chandrakasan announced Makan’s appointment in an email to the […]

For his research project, Dorst wants to answer questions about rationality and how people reason.

Born and raised in Japan as part of a military family, Christine Pilcavage knows first-hand about the value of an immersive approach to exploration.  “Any experience in a different context improves an individual,” says Pilcavage, who has also lived in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Kenya.  It’s that ethos that Pilcavage brings to her role as […]

As a graduate student, Leslie Tilley spent years studying and practicing the music of Bali, Indonesia, including a traditional technique in which two Balinese drummers play intricately interlocking rhythms while simultaneously improvising. It was beautiful and compelling music, which Tilley heard an unexpected insight about one day. “The higher drum is the bus driver, and […]

Consciousness is famously a “hard problem” of science: We don’t precisely know how the physical matter in our brains translates into thoughts, sensations, and feelings. But an emerging research tool called transcranial focused ultrasound may enable researchers to learn more about the phenomenon. The technology has entered use in recent years, but it isn’t yet […]