[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, 12/6/2005

[Elizabeth Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from December 6, 2005*

This was one of the more productive Editors' Club meetings of late as 
we brainstormed about MMIT trends. What is hot in *your* 
department/area? Before I get into that, however, I wanted to make 
a....

*NEWS OFFICE NEWS FLASH*

For those of you who wondered about the collective sigh of relief 
coming from the News Office last week, let me explain:

Last Thursday was Pamela Dumas Serfes' first day as interim director 
of the News Office. Many of you may recognize her name. That's 
because Pamela is also director of Communications and Donor Relations 
(among many other things, these are the folks who produce Spectrum).

Pamela (and, yes, she goes by Pamela) has extensive experience in 
news and communications; she was Director of Communications at 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College prior to coming to MIT. She'll be 
splitting her time between both the News Office and ComDoR for the 
next six months.

A new search for a permanent News Office director will begin in about 
two months.

*MIT Trends*

To prepare for a lunch yesterday with reporters from the Boston 
bureau of the Wall Street Journal, my colleagues Denise Brehm, Patti 
Richards and I have been brainstorming about cool MIT trends, or 
what's particularly hot across the campus right now. It occurred to 
me that this meeting of Editors' Club would be a good venue for 
hearing from others about trends in their areas. And boy was I ever 
right!

Here are some of the cool trends that came up:

--The Libraries have been receiving LOTS of calls about DSpace, their 
digital archiving program. Heather Denny, director of communications 
for the libraries, explained that the opensource program is being 
used by over 100 different universities and other institutions around 
the world. Most recently, a Chinese museum instituted the program!

According to Heather, the proliferation of digital information and 
the challenge of preserving and making it accessible for years to 
come has become a huge issue for cultural and academic institutions, 
business, government, etc. Attached is an article Heather sent over 
after the meeting. It's by MIT Libraries Associate Director for 
Technology MacKenzie Smith, who discusses the challenge (and DSpace).

Turns out that one of the Wall Street Journal reporters covers....the 
imaging industry, so when I got back to the office I sent him 
MacKenzie's article. (Cross your fingers!)

--Ever since Katrina, supply chains have been in the news....and it 
turns out that MIT has a major program in that area. As Debbie Levey 
of Civil and Environmental Engineering explained, Prof. David 
Simchi-Levi is looking at "supply chains from WalMart to Mars." (If 
you didn't see it in Tech Talk, go to the following URL about a new 
MIT base on the North Pole that is being used, among other things, to 
explore supply chains to remote areas like Mars. Levi is involved. 
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2005/northpole-1116.html)

--MIT brain research has, of course, been dominating the news of late 
due to the opening of the new brain/cog complex.

--and what about WATER? Recently the Institute ran a series on the 
topic, and several research groups are tackling water issues here and 
around the world.

--When people ask *me* about hot areas of science, I invariably 
answer: "sugar." Yep, do a search for Ram Sasisekharan from the News 
Office home page. In 1999 I wrote about a technique he developed to 
determine the structure of the complex sugars that are key to lots of 
important processes in our bodies. Turns out that the darn things are 
much more complicated than DNA or proteins....

Anyway, he told me at the time that he thought the work could have an 
impact on any number of fields. And he's proving to be right. I've 
written about one story a year since '99 on how Ram's technique has 
led to insights on everything from the production of the 
blood-clotting drug Heparin to the biology of cancer cells to the yin 
and yang of ginseng.

*Next Meetings*

I haven't yet scheduled the 2006 meetings of Editors Club, but I plan 
to do so early next year. I'll send out a note at that time.

Cheers,

Elizabeth


-- 


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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Assistant Director, Science & Engineering News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
News Office, Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
617-258-5402 (ph); 617-258-8762 (fax)
<thomson at mit.edu>

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www>
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