Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Recent history, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) latest history

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Recent history

The MIT Media Lab houses researchers developing novel uses of computer technology. Shown here is the 1982 building, designed by IM Pei, with an extension (right of photo) designed by Fumihiko Maki opened in March 2010.

MIT has kept pace and has helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff and faculty members at the Project MAC, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer games like Spacewar ! and created much of modern slang and hacker culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman's GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI ​​Lab, the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology, the organization World Wide Web Consortium standards was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002, and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.

MIT was named University of sea-grant in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite the decline in government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus, the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research, and a number of new buildings "backlot" on Vassar Street including the Stata Center. Construction on the campus in the 2000s included the expansion of the Media Lab, East Campus Sloan School and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the Energy Research Council to investigate MIT interdisciplinary challenges posed by rising global energy consumption.

In 2001, inspired by the free software and open access movement, MIT OpenCourseWare launched to make notes, problem sets, curricula, examinations and conferences of the vast majority of online courses available at no cost, but not formal accreditation for course completion. While the cost of support and host the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently has more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, MIT announced that it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) of the participants who completed the online courses in its "MITx", for a small fee. The online platform "edx" MITX support was initially developed in collaboration with Harvard and similar initiative "Harvardx". The platform is open source courses, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content.

Three days after the attacks of 2013 Boston Marathon in April, police MIT Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects and compensation of violent persecution that closed the campus and much of the greater Boston area for a day. Collier Funeral, attended by more than 4,000 people, including Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren.