MIT Open House

Under the Dome: Come Explore MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Saturday, April 30, 2011

11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The MIT community is invited to visit the MIT campus on April 30 for an Open House that is part of MIT's 150th Anniversary celebration.

Technical Demonstrations
At the Open House, Lincoln Laboratory will be hosting a Tech Expo at which technical staff will give the following demonstrations:

  • Robotics
    Presenter: Michael Boulet, Control Systems Engineering Group
    11:00 am to 4:00 pm
    Rockwell Cage (Bldg. W33), Next to Johnson Athletic Center
    Demonstration of Lincoln Laboratory’s unmanned platforms and robot sensors. An additional video presentation will illustrate algorithms that enable autonomous systems.
  • Real-time voice transformation systems
    Presenter: Bob Dunn, Human Language Technology Group
    11:00 am to 2:00 pm
    Building 4-149
    Demonstration of a real-time voice transformation system that can change a person's voice. For example, a child's voice can be changed to sound like an adult. Volunteers from the audience will test the system.
  • Speaker and language identification
    Presenter: Doug Sturim, Human Language Technology Group
    11:00 am to 3:00 pm
    Building 4-145
     Hands-on demonstration of systems that can automatically determine who is speaking and what language is being spoken. As volunteers from the audience speak into a microphone, the system will determine, in near real time, who is talking and the language spoken.
  • Infrared camera
    Presenter: Joel Grimm, Surveillance Systems Group
    11:00 am to 2:00 pm
    Building 4-153
     Demonstration of a variety of cameras that form images using light from the visible to the infrared. "See" that invisible light that everyone is talking about.

Science on Saturday Demonstration: "How Computers Work"
Presenter: Masahiro Arakawa, Embedded and High Performance Computing Group
11:00 am and 1:00 pm
Stata Center (Bldg. 32), Kirsch Auditorium
 Two identical sessions of this interactive demonstration will illustrate

  • how computers use binary numbers
  • what AND and OR gates are
  • why computers have built-in clocks to time each step the computer makes
  • how to get computers to do what we want and how to make them go faster.

Ongoing events
Throughout the day, work being done in MIT's various departments, labs, and centers will be highlighted through lectures, tours, demonstrations, and other interactive programs. Many activities will emphasize the work of MIT students in order to spark in children and teenagers the excitement of discovery. Lincoln Laboratory's tech expo and science demonstration are geared to this educational outreach goal.

Music and other performances as well as a scavenger or trivia hunt are planned. In addition, attendees of the Open House may enjoy visiting the Cambridge Science Festival, which is coordinated by the MIT Museum in collaboration with the City of Cambridge, community groups, local businesses and other schools and universities, and which begins on April 30.