dissertation mit

MIT Libraries logo MIT Libraries

MIT Specifications for Thesis Preparation

Approved November 2022 for use in the 2022-2023 academic year. Updated March 2023 to incorporate changes to MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 Intellectual Property Not Owned by MIT .

View this page as an accessible PDF .

Table of Contents

• Thesis Preparation Checklist

Timeline for submission and publication

• Bachelor’s degree thesis
• Graduate degree thesis

Dual degree theses

Joint theses, what happens to your thesis, title selection, embedded links.

• Special circumstances

Signature page

Abstract page.

• Acknowledgments

Biographical notes

Table of contents, list of figures.

• List of tables
• List of supplemental material

Notes and bibliographic references

Open licensing, labeling copyright in your thesis, use of previously published material in your thesis, digital supplementary material, physical supplementary material, starting with accessible source files, file naming.

• How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Placing a temporary hold on your thesis

Changes to a thesis after submission, permission to reuse or republish from mit theses, general information.

This guide has been prepared by the MIT Libraries, as prescribed by the Committee on Graduate Programs and the Committee on Undergraduate Program, to assist students and faculty in the preparation of theses. The Institute is committed to the preservation of each student’s thesis because it is both a requirement for the MIT degree and a record of original research that contains information of lasting value.

In this guide, “department” refers to a graduate or undergraduate program within an academic unit, and “thesis” refers to the digital copy of the written thesis. The official thesis version of record, which is submitted to the MIT Libraries, is the digital copy of the written thesis that has been approved by the thesis committee and certified by the department in fulfillment of a student’s graduation requirement.

The requirements in this guide apply to all theses and have been specified both to facilitate the care and dissemination of the thesis and to assure the preservation of the final approved document. Individual departments may dictate more stringent requirements.

Before beginning your thesis research, remember that the final output of this research—your thesis document—should only include research findings that may be shared publicly, in adherence with MIT’s policy on Open Research and Free Interchange of Information . If you anticipate that your thesis will contain content that requires review by an external sponsor or agency, it is critical that you allow sufficient time for this review to take place prior to thesis submission. 

Questions not answered in this guide should be referred to the appropriate department officer or to the MIT Libraries ( [email protected] ).

• Final edited and complete thesis PDF is due to your department on the date specified in the Academic Calendar.
• Hold requests should be submitted to the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education or TLO concurrent with your thesis submission.
• Thesis information is due to the MIT Libraries before your date of graduation.
• Departments must transfer theses to the MIT Libraries within 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• One week later (30 days from the last day of classes + 7 days) or one week after the degree award date (whichever is later) the MIT Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT.
• If you have requested and received a temporary (up to 90-day) hold on the publication of your thesis from the Vice Chancellor, your thesis will be placed on hold as soon as it is received by the Libraries, and the 90-day hold will begin 30 days from the last day of class (end of term).
• If your thesis research is included in a disclosure to the TLO, the TLO may place your thesis on temporary hold with the Libraries, as appropriate.

Submitting your thesis document to your department

Your thesis document will be submitted to your department as a PDF, formatted and including the appropriate rights statement and sections as outlined in these specifications. Your department will provide more specific guidance on submitting your files for certification and acceptance.

Your department will provide information on submitting:

• A PDF/A-1  of your final thesis document (with no signatures)
• Signature page (if required by your department; your department will provide specific guidance)
• Original source files used to create the PDF of your thesis (optional, but encouraged)
• Supplementary materials  (optional and must be approved by your advisor and program)

Degree candidates must submit their thesis to the appropriate office of the department in which they are registered on the dates specified in the Academic Calendar. ( Academic Calendar | MIT Registrar ). September, February, and May/June are the only months in which degrees are awarded.

Bachelor’s degree theses

Graduate degree theses, submitting your thesis information to the libraries.

Information about your thesis must be submitted to the Libraries thesis submission and processing system  prior to your day of graduation. The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . See How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries section for more details .

The academic department is required to submit the thesis to the MIT Libraries within one month after the last day of the term in which the thesis was submitted ( Faculty Regulation 2.72 ). The thesis document becomes part of the permanent archival collection. All thesis documents that have been approved will be transferred electronically to the MIT Libraries by a department representative via the MIT Libraries thesis submission and processing system .

The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT . A bibliographic record will appear in the MIT Libraries’ catalog, as well as the OCLC database WorldCat, which is accessible to libraries and individuals worldwide. Authors may also opt-in to having their thesis made available in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.

Formatting specifications

Your work will be a more valuable research tool for other scholars if it can be located easily. Search engines use the words in the title, and sometimes other descriptive words, to locate works. Therefore,

• Be sure to select a title that is a meaningful description of the content of your manuscript; and
• Do: “The Effects of Ion Implantation and Annealing on the Properties of Titanium Silicide Films on Silicon Substrates”
• Do: “Radiative Decays on the J/Psi to Two Pseudoscalar Final States”

You may include clickable links to online resources within the thesis file. Make the link self-descriptive so that it can stand on its own and is natural language that fits within the surrounding writing of your paragraph. The full URL should be included as a footnote or bibliography citation (dependent on citation style).

• Sentence in thesis: Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website . The full-text PDF of each thesis is made publicly available in DSpace@MIT .
• Footnote or Bibliography: follow the rules of your chosen citation style and include the full website URL, in this case http://libraries.mit.edu/mit-theses

Sections of your thesis

Required (all information should be on a single page)

The title page should contain the title, name of the author (this can be the author’s preferred name), previous degrees, the degree(s) to be awarded at MIT, the date the degree(s) will be conferred (May/June, September, or February only), copyright notice (and legend, if required), and appropriate names of thesis supervisor(s) and student’s home department or program officer.

The title page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing) :

Thesis title as submitted to registrar

Author’s preferred name

Previous degree information, if applicable

Submitted to the [department name] in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree(s) of

[degree name]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Month and year degree will be granted (May or June, September, February ONLY)

Copyright statement

This permission legend MUST follow: The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.

[Insert 2 blank lines]

Note: The remaining fields are left aligned and not centered

Authored by: [Author name]

[Author’s department name] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the previous line)

[Date thesis is to be presented to the department] (align with the beginning of the author’s name from the first line)

Certified by: [Advisor’s full name as it appears in the MIT catalog]

   [Advisor’s department as it appears in the MIT catalog] (align with the beginning of the advisor’s name from the previous line), Thesis supervisor

Accepted by: [name]

[title – line 1] (align with the beginning of the name from the previous line)

[title – line 2] (align with the beginning of the name from the first line)

Note: The name and title of this person varies in different degree programs and may vary each term; contact the departmental thesis administrator for specific information

• Students in joint graduate programs (such as Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) should list both their MIT thesis supervisor and the supervisor from the partner academic institution.
• The name and title of the department or the program officer varies in different degree programs and may vary each term. Contact the departmental graduate administrator for specific information.
• For candidates receiving two degrees, both degrees to be awarded should appear on the title page. For candidates in dual degree programs, all degrees and departments or programs should appear on the title page, and the names of both department heads/committee chairs are required. Whenever there are co-supervisors, both names should appear on the title page.

Here are some PDF examples of title pages:

• Bachelor’s Degree – using a Creative Commons license
• PhD candidate – using a Creative Commons license
• Master’s candidate – dual degrees
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors
• Masters’ candidates – multiple authors with dual degrees and extra committee members
• Bachelor’s Degree – change of thesis supervisor

Title page: Special circumstances – change of thesis supervisor

If your supervisor has recently died or is no longer affiliated with the Institute:

• Both this person and your new supervisor should be listed on your title page
• Under the new supervisor’s name, state that they are approving the thesis on behalf of the previous supervisor
• An additional page should be added to the thesis, before the acknowledgments page, with an explanation about why a new supervisor is approving your thesis on behalf of your previous supervisor. You may also thank the new supervisor for acting in this capacity
• Review this PDF example of a title page with a change in supervisor

If your supervisor is external to the Institute (such as an industrial supervisor):

• You should acknowledge this individual on the Acknowledgements page as appropriate, but should not list this person on the thesis title page
• The full thesis committee and thesis readers can be acknowledged on the Acknowledgements page, but should not be included on the title page

Not Required

Please consult with your department to determine if they are requiring or requesting an additional signature page.

Each thesis must include an abstract of generally no more than 500 words single-spaced. The abstract should be thought of as a brief descriptive summary, not a lengthy introduction to the thesis. The abstract should immediately follow the title page.

The abstract page should have the following fields in the following order and centered (including spacing):

• Thesis title

Submitted to the [Department] on [date thesis will be submitted] in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of [Name of degree to be received]

[Insert 1 blank line]

Single-spaced summary; approximately 500 words or less; try not to use formulas or special characters

Thesis supervisor: [Supervisor’s name]

Title: [Title of supervisor]

The Abstract page should include the same information as on the title page. With the thesis title, author name, and submitting statement above the abstract, the word “ABSTRACT” typed before the body of the text, and the thesis supervisor’s name and title below the abstract.

Acknowledgements

An acknowledgement page may be included and is the appropriate place to include information such as external supervisor (such as an industrial advisor) or a list of the full thesis committee and thesis readers. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

The thesis may contain a short biography of the candidate, including institutions attended and dates of attendance, degrees and honors, titles of publications, teaching and professional experience, and other matters that may be pertinent. Please note that your thesis will be publicly available online at DSpace@MIT , which is regularly crawled and indexed by Google and other search-engine providers.

List of Tables

List of supplemental material.

Whenever possible, notes should be placed at the bottom of the appropriate page or in the body of the text. Notes should conform to the style appropriate to the discipline. If notes appear at the bottom of the page, they should be single-spaced and included within the specified margins.

It may be appropriate to place bibliographic references either at the end of the chapter in which they occur or at the end of the thesis.

The style of quotations, footnotes, and bibliographic references may be prescribed by your department. If your department does not prescribe a style or specify a style manual, choose one and be consistent. Further information is available on the MIT Writing and Communications Center’s website .

Ownership of copyright

The Institute’s policy concerning ownership of thesis copyright is covered in Rules and Regulations of the Faculty, 2.73 and MIT Policies and Procedures 13.1.3 . Copyright covers the intellectual property in the words and images in the thesis. If the thesis also includes patentable subject matter, students should contact the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) prior to submission of their thesis.

Under these regulations, students retain the copyright to student theses.

The student must, as a condition of a degree award, grant to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license. The MIT Libraries publish the thesis on DSpace@MIT , allowing open access to the research output of MIT.

You may also, optionally, apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. For more information about CC: https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ . To determine which CC license is right for you, you can use the CC license chooser .

You must include an appropriate copyright notice on the title page of your thesis. This should include the following:

• the symbol “c” with a circle around it © and/or the word “copyright”
• the year of publication (the year in which the degree is to be awarded)
• the name of the copyright owner
• the words “All rights reserved” or your chosen Creative Commons license
• Also include the following statement below the ©“ The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”
• Also include the following statement below the © “The author hereby grants to MIT a nonexclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free license to exercise any and all rights under copyright, including to reproduce, preserve, distribute and publicly display copies of the thesis, or release the thesis under an open-access license.”

You are responsible for obtaining permission, if necessary, to include previously published material in your thesis. This applies to most figures, images, and excerpts of text created and published by someone else; it may also apply to your own previous work. For figures and short excerpts from academic works, permission may already be available through the MIT Libraries (see here for additional information ). Students may also rely on fair use , as appropriate. For assistance with copyright questions about your thesis, you can contact [email protected] .

When including your own previously published material in your thesis, you may also need to obtain copyright clearance. If, for example, a student has already published part of the thesis as a journal article and, as a condition of publication, has assigned copyright to the journal’s publisher, the student’s rights are limited by what the publisher allows. More information about publisher policies on reuse in theses is available here.

Students can hold onto sufficient rights to reuse published articles (or excerpts of these) in their thesis if they are covered by MIT’s open access policy. Learn more about MIT’s open access policy and opt-in here . Contact [email protected] for more information.

When including your own previously published articles in your thesis, check with your department for specific requirements, and consider the following:

• Ensure you have any necessary copyright permissions to include previously published material in your thesis.
• Be sure to discuss copyright clearance and embargo options with your co-authors and your advisor well in advance of preparing your thesis for submission.
• Include citations of where portions of the thesis have been previously published.
• When an article included has multiple authors, clearly designate the role you had in the research and production of the published paper that you are including in your thesis.

Supplemental material and research data

Supplemental material that may be submitted with your thesis is the materials that are essential to understanding the research findings of your thesis, but impossible to incorporate or embed into a PDF. Materials submitted to the MIT Libraries may be provided as supplemental digital files or in some cases physical items. All supplementary materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. The MIT Libraries can help answer questions you may have about managing the supplementary material and other research materials associated with your research.

Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine the best way to include supplemental materials with your thesis.

You may also have other research data and outputs related to your thesis research that are not considered supplemental material and should not be submitted with your thesis. Research materials include the facts, observations, images, computer program results, recordings, measurements, or experiences on which a research output—an argument, theory, test or hypothesis, or other output—is based. These may also be termed, “research data.” This term relates to data generated, collected, or used during research projects, and in some cases may include the research output itself. Research materials should be deposited in appropriate research data repositories and cited in your thesis . You may consult the MIT Libraries’ Data Management Services website for guidance or reach out to Data Management Services (DMS)( [email protected] ), who can help answer questions you may have about managing your thesis data and choosing suitable solutions for longer term storage and access.

• Supplementary information may be submitted with your thesis to your program after approval from your thesis advisor. 
• Supplemental material should be mentioned and summarized in the written document, for example, using a few key frames from a movie to create a figure.
• A list of supplementary information along with brief descriptions should be included in your thesis document. For digital files, the description should include information about the file types and any software and version needed to open and view the files.
• Issues regarding the format of non-traditional, supplemental content should be resolved with your advisor.
• Appendices and references are not considered supplementary information.
• If your research data has been submitted to a repository, it should not also be submitted with your thesis.
• Follow the required file-naming convention for supplementary files: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_supplemental.ext
• Captioning ( legally required ): text versions of the audio content, synchronized with the video: ways to get your video captioned
• Additional content, not required:
• For video, an audio description: a separate narrative audio track that describes important visual content, making it accessible to people who are unable to see the video
• Transcripts: should capture all the spoken audio, plus on-screen text and descriptions of key visual information that wouldn’t otherwise be accessible without seeing the video

For physical components that are integral to understanding the thesis document, and which cannot be meaningfully conveyed in a digital form, the author may submit the physical items to the MIT Libraries along with their thesis document. When photographs or a video of a physical item (such as a model) would be sufficient, the images should be included in the thesis document, and a video could be submitted as digital supplementary material.

An example of physical materials that would be approved for submission as part of the thesis would be photographs that cannot be shared digitally in our repository due to copyright restrictions. In this case, the photographs could be submitted as a physical volume that is referred to in the thesis document.

As with digital supplementary information and research materials, physical materials must be approved for submission by your advisor. Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine if physical materials should accompany your thesis, and if so how to schedule a transfer of materials to the MIT Libraries.

Creating your thesis document/digital format

You are required to submit a PDF/A-1 formatted thesis document to your department. In addition, it is recommended that original files, or source files, (such a .doc or .tex) are submitted alongside the PDF/A-1 to better ensure long-term access to your thesis.

You should create accessible files that support the use of screen readers and make your document more easily readable by assistive technologies. This will expand who is able to access your thesis. By creating an accessible document from the beginning, there will be less work required to remediate the PDF that gets created. Most software offers a guide for creating documents that are accessible to screen readers. Review the guidelines provided by the MIT Libraries .

In general:

• Use styles and other layout features for headings, lists, tables, etc. If you don’t like the default styles associated with the headings, you can customize them.
• Avoid using blank lines to add visual spacing and instead increase the size of the spaces before and/or after the line.
• Avoid using text boxes.
• Embed URLs.
• Anchor images to text when inserting them into a doc.
• Add alt-text to any images or figures that convey meaning (including, math formulas).
• Use a sans serif font.
• Add basic embedded metadata, such as author, title, year of graduation, department, keywords etc. to your thesis via your original author tool.

Creating a PDF/A-1

PDF/A-1 (either a or b) is the more suitable format for long term preservation than a basic PDF. It ensures that the PDF format conforms to certain specifications which make it more likely to open and be viewable in the long term. It is best for static content that will not change in the future, as this is the most preservation-worthy version and does not allow for some complex elements that could corrupt or prevent the file from being viewable in the future. Guidelines on how to convert specific file types to PDF/A .

In general: (should we simplify these bullets)

• Convert to PDF/A directly from your original files (text, Word, InDesign, LaTeX, etc.). It is much easier and better to create valid PDF/A documents from your original files than from a regular PDF. Converting directly will ensure that fonts and hyperlinks are embedded in the document.
• Do not embed multimedia files (audio and video), scripts, executables, lab notebooks, etc. into your PDF. Still images are fine. The other formats mentioned may be able to be submitted as supplemental files.
• Do not password protect or encrypt your PDF file.
• Validate your PDF/A file before submitting it to your department.

All digital files must be named according to this scheme: authorLastName-kerb-degree-dept-year-type_other.ext

• Thesis PDF: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-thesis.pdf
• Signature page: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-dusp-2023-sig.pdf
• Original source file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-source.docx
• Supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_1.mov
• Second supplemental file: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplmental_2.mov
• Read Me file about supplemental: macdonald-mssimon-mcp-2023-supplemental-readme.txt

How to submit thesis information to the MIT Libraries

Before your day of graduation, you should submit your thesis title page metadata to the MIT Libraries  prior to your day of graduation. The submission form requires Kerberos login.

Student submitted metadata allows for quicker Libraries processing times. It also provides a note field for you to let Libraries’ staff know about any metadata discrepancies.

The information you provide must match the title page and abstract of your thesis . Please have a copy of your completed thesis on hand to enter this information directly from your thesis. If any discrepancies are found during processing, Libraries’ staff will publish using the information on the approved thesis document. You will be asked to confirm or provide:

• Preferred name of author(s)as they appear on the title page of the thesis
• ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher. The goal is to support the creation of a permanent, clear, and unambiguous record of scholarly communication by enabling reliable attribution of authors and contributors. Read ORCID FAQs to learn more
• Department(s)
• A license is optional, and very difficult to remove once published. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. Read more information about CC .
• Thesis supervisor(s)
• If you would like the full-text of your thesis to be made openly available in the ProQuest Dissertation & Theses Global database (PQDT), you can indicate that in the Libraries submission form.
• Open access inclusion in PQDT is at no cost to you, and increases the visibility and discoverability of your thesis. By opting in you are granting ProQuest a license to distribute your thesis in accordance with ProQuest’s policies. Further information can be found in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Author FAQ .
• Full-text theses and associated supplemental files will only be sent to ProQuest once any temporary holds have been lifted, and the thesis has been published in DSpace@MIT.
• Regardless of opting-in to inclusion in PQDT, the full text of your thesis will still be made openly available in DSpace@MIT . Doctoral Degrees: Regardless of opting-in the citation and abstract of your thesis will be included in PQDT.

Thesis research should be undertaken in light of MIT’s policy of open research and the free interchange of information . Openness requires that, as a general policy, thesis research should not be undertaken on campus when the results may not be published. From time to time, there may be a good reason for delaying the distribution of a thesis to obtain patent protection, or for reasons of privacy or security. To ensure that only those theses that meet certain criteria are withheld from distribution and that they are withheld for the minimum period, the Institute has established specific review procedures.

Written notification of patent holds and other restrictions must reach the MIT Libraries before the thesis in question is received by the MIT Libraries. Theses will not be available to the public prior to being published by the MIT Libraries. The Libraries may begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

Thesis hold requests should be directed to the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) ( [email protected] ) when related to MIT-initiated patent applications (i.e., MIT holds intellectual property rights; patent application process via TLO). Requests for a thesis hold must be made jointly by the student and advisor directly to the MIT Technology Licensing Office as part of the technology disclosure process.

Thesis hold or restricted access requests should be directed to the Office of the Vice Chancellor ([email protected]) when related to:

• Student-initiated patents (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO) [up to 90-day hold]
• Pursuit of business opportunities (student holds intellectual property rights as previously determined by TLO)[up to 90-day hold]
• Government restrictions [up to 90-day hold]
• Privacy and security [up to 90-day hold]
• Scholarly journal articles pending publication [up to 90-day hold]
• Book publication [up to 24-month hold]

In the unusual circumstance that a student wants to request a hold beyond the initial 90-day period, they should contact the Office of Vice President for Research , who may consult with the TLO and/or the Office of the Vice Chancellor, as appropriate to extend the hold. Such requests must be supported by evidence that explains the need for a longer period.

Find information about each type of publication hold, and to learn how to place a hold on your thesis

After publication

Your thesis will be published on DSpace@MIT . Theses are processed by the MIT Libraries and published in the order they are transferred by your department. The Libraries will begin publishing theses in DSpace@MIT one month and one week from the last day of classes.

All changes made to a thesis, after it has been submitted to the MIT Libraries by your department, must have approval from the Vice Chancellor or their designee. Thesis documents should be carefully reviewed prior to submission to ensure they do not contain misspellings or incorrect formatting. Change requests for these types of minor errors will not be approved.

There are two types of change requests that can be made:

• Errata: When the purpose is to correct significant errors in content, the author should create an errata sheet using the form and instructions (PDF)  and obtain approval first from both the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.
• Substitution: If the purpose of the change is to excise classified, proprietary, or confidential information, the author should fill out the  application form (PDF) and have the request approved first by the thesis supervisor or program chair, before submitting for review by the Vice Chancellor.

Students and supervisors should vet thesis content carefully before submission to avoid these scenarios whenever possible.

You are always authorized to post electronic versions of your own thesis, in whole or in part, on a website, without asking permission. If you hold the copyright in the thesis, approving and/or denying requests for permission to use portions of the thesis in third-party publications is your responsibility.

MIT Libraries Thesis Team https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq [email protected] | https://thesis-submit.mit.edu/

Distinctive Collections Room 14N-118 | 617-253-5690 https://libraries.mit.edu/distinctive-collections/

Technology Licensing Office [email protected] | 617-253-6966 http://tlo.mit.edu/

Office of the General Counsel [email protected]  | 617-452-2082 http://ogc.mit.edu/

Office of Graduate Education Room 3-107 | 617-253-4680 http://oge.mit.edu/ [email protected]

MIT Libraries,  Scholarly Communications https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/ [email protected]

Office of  the Vice Chancellor Room 7-133 | 617-253-6056 http://ovc.mit.edu [email protected]

Office of the Vice President for Research Room 3-234 | 617-253-8177 [email protected]

MIT Writing and Communications Center Room E18-233 [email protected] | https://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center/

Search form

Doctor of philosophy (phd), general information.

The term in which you plan to defend, submit your dissertation, and graduate, you must be registered for Thesis (4.THG - 36 units). Your dissertation defense takes place in the presence of your full Dissertation Committee consisting of at least three members including your dissertation supervisor.

Upon satisfactory defense and submission of the dissertation, the supervisor will assign a grade. ("SA" is the final satisfactory grade for PhD.) The grade will not be submitted to the Registrar until the final approved dissertation document is submitted to the department portal by the thesis deadline provided on the departmental thesis deadlines calendar. For help with formatting of your full document, see the Formatting, Specifications & Thesis Submission page for more information.

You are responsible for working directly with your dissertation committee and area administrators to schedule your defense. The defense must not be scheduled for any later than two weeks prior to the thesis submission deadline. Each area may handle the logistics differently, so it is important to touch base with your group early in the defense planning process. For example, many faculty are not available during winter holidays or summer session, and may wish to schedule the defense early in December for a February degree.

Registration Deadline:

• Register for 36 units of   4.THG
• Degree list: Put yourself on the upcoming degree list by applying for a degree .
• Be mindful of the Institute deadline to change your thesis title in WebSIS
• Register your final thesis title: You must return to the online site of your application and add or make a change to your thesis title by this deadline. The title on your final thesis must be an exact match of the one you submit on your Application for Degree. If you add your title after this date, you will be charged a late fee.

One Week Prior to Institute Thesis Deadline:

• Be sure to provide your exact spelling of your name (either legal name or preferred name — whichever you have provided to your degree administrator) when submitting your thesis book to the portal. Using a different name will result in a submission error.
• Max file size: 10MB or less. If file is too large, a submission error will result.

Institute Thesis Deadline:

• All final edits and adjustments to the final dissertation book must be submitted to the department on or before this deadline. Final grade submission by your advisor also must be submitted on or before this deadline. 

One Week After Institute Thesis Deadline:

• Last day to come off the degree list (contact Tessa Haynes )
• Degree conferral date (see Academic Calendar or Department Thesis Deadlines)

Specific Deadlines & Procedure

February 2022 theses deadlines, friday, september 10, 2021.

• Registration Deadline: Fall term registration (4.THG) (Pre-registration for fall deadline is June 17, 2021.
• Degree list: Put yourself on the February degree list by applying for a degree .

Friday, December 10, 2021

• Register your final thesis title: You must return to the online site of your application and add or make a change to your thesis title by this deadline. The title on your final dissertation must be an exact match of the one you submit on your Application for Degree. If you add your title after this date, you will be charged a late fee; but you may still update your thesis title until the actual submission date.

Monday, December 31, 2021

• If you are having difficulty when logged into Office 365 or Sharepoint under a different log in, try clearing your cache on your browser so that you can log in to the form with your MIT Kerberos account.

May 2024 Theses Deadlines

Friday, february 9, 2024.

• Registration Deadline: Fall term registration (4.THG) (Pre-registration for spring deadline is January 19, 2024.
• Degree list: Put yourself on the May degree list by applying for a degree .

Friday, April 12, 2024

Monday, april 29, 2024.

• Your final dissertation book is due by 9am on Monday, April 29 to the Department Thesis Submission Tool ( choose "Single Sign On" and log in with your MIT email address ) for formatting review. This is for the purpose of making certain the document is in compliance with MIT archive requirements. You will be contacted quickly if adjustments are needed. Your signed signature page must also be submitted at this time.

Friday, May 3, 2024

• Final, corrected, approved, electronic version uploaded to the Department Thesis Submission Tool ( choose "Single Sign On" and log in with your MIT email address )

Formatting, Specifications & Thesis Submission

Important : Consult the Formatting, Specifications and Thesis Submission information page for advice and templates on how to format your book. Please pay particular attention to the templates for the frontmatter (Title Page, Committee Page, Abstract, and Table of Contents.) Following the templates now means fewer edits to make later!

PhD Thesis Contacts

• Program Director: Leslie K. Norford
• Director of Computation PhD: George Stiny
• Director of Building Technology PhD: Christoph Reinhart
• Director of HTC PhD: Timothy Hyde
• PhD degree administrator and thesis submission: Tessa Haynes

MIT Thesis FAQ: Student Frequently Asked Questions

• New Degree Candidates
• Thesis Checklist
• Creating an Accessible Thesis
• Saving Your Thesis as a PDF/A-1
• Student Frequently Asked Questions
• Access and Availability Questions

Preparing my thesis

Starting with February 2022 degrees, students no longer need to pay a thesis fee to MIT Libraries.

Journal publishers usually acquire the copyright to scholarly articles through a publication agreement with the author. Their policies then determine what authors can do with their work. Visit Theses and Article Publishing to see if your publisher's policy is already listed.  If your publisher is not listed or if you have any questions about a listed publisher, contact [email protected]  

Each student is responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions for including previously published materials as part of the thesis. Visit Scholarly Communications for additional information.  If permission is given, published material can be used in its original typeset form as long as the thesis formatting requirements are met.  

Styles of quotations, footnotes, and bibliographic references may be prescribed by your department. If your department does not prescribe a style or specify a style manual, choose one and be consistent.

Listing thesis readers is not a thesis requirement. If you would like to list thesis readers or extra committee members, you can do so on the second page of your thesis like in this example.

Supplemental material that may be submitted with your thesis is the materials that are essential to understanding the research findings of your thesis, but impossible to incorporate or embed into a PDF. Contact [email protected] early in your thesis writing process to determine the best way to include supplemental materials with your thesis.

You may also have other research data and outputs related to your thesis research that are not considered supplemental material and should not be submitted with your thesis. Research materials should be deposited in appropriate research data repositories and cited in your thesis. You may consult the MIT Libraries’ Data Management Services website for guidance or reach out to Data Management Services (DMS)( [email protected] ), who can help answer questions you may have about managing your thesis data and choosing suitable solutions for longer term storage and access.

Students can use this Overleaf Template . Please contact [email protected] with any questions about the template.

There are nuances to accessibility with different thesis formats, and there often isn't one perfect solution. If your thesis is in the form of a graphic novel or comic strip and alt text for images feel cumbersome, you could forgo alt text in favor of an Appendix with transcripts or long descriptions for the story(ies) depicted in graphics. Here are a couple of resources you can view for more information:

"Accessible Comics???" by Abby Kingman, LastCallMedia.

"Alternative Descriptions for Graphic Novels" from the University of Illinois, Accessible IT.

Starting with the June 2023 degree period and as reflected in the MIT Thesis Specifications , all students retain the copyright of their thesis.

For theses prior to 2023, MIT generally holds ownership of the copyright to MIT theses. To request permission to republish contact [email protected]

You may optionally choose to apply a Creative Commons License to your thesis. The Creative Commons License allows you to grant permissions and provide guidance on how your work can be reused by others. If you choose to apply a CC license to your MIT thesis please follow these guidelines .

The copyright year on the thesis title page is the same year your degree is issued. For example, if you are graduating in February 2014 but submit your thesis to the Institute Archives and Special Collections during the fall of 2013, your copyright date will be 2014.

The student is authorized to post electronic versions of the student’s own thesis, in whole or in part, on the internet. If it is an older thesis where the copyright is held by the Institute, students and third parties should contact the [email protected] to obtain permission to reuse thesis content in other publications.

Access to my thesis

The two offices authorized to temporarily restrict access to theses are the Office of Graduate Education (for government restrictions, privacy and security) and Technology Licensing Office (for patent claims).

For information about requesting a temporary publication hold on your thesis from the OGE:  https://oge.mit.edu/gpp/degrees/thesis/restrictions-on-thesis-publication/

Request for temporary holds must be submitted prior to graduation

There is currently no policy on removing theses from public view after degrees are granted. Thesis publication online is considered part of the process of completion of the MIT degree. Each thesis is part of the legal and scholarly record of work completed at MIT, and neither the paper copy nor the electronic copy can be removed from public viewing.

If your thesis is available in DSpace here , you can download the thesis free of charge. Otherwise, a request can be made through the Distinctive Collections Request System here , or contact the Department of Distinctive Collections [email protected]

Holds, errata, and page substitutions

Request for temporary holds must be submitted prior to graduation.

Thesis holds are temporary restrictions on the distribution of theses, which may be granted from the Technology Licensing Office (TLO) or the Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC). Holds can be authorized by the TLO for MIT-initiated patent applications. The Office of the Vice Chancellor (OVC) can grant holds for student-initiated patents, business pursuits, government restrictions, organization reviews, privacy and security, and scholarly journal and book publication.

For more information on requesting OGE temporary thesis publication holds:   https://oge.mit.edu/gpp/degrees/thesis/restrictions-on-thesis-publication/

Once certified by your thesis supervisor, accepted by the chair, and transferred to the MIT Libraries, all thesis content becomes part of the formal record. Changes, including the excision of content or the correction of significant errors in content, must be approved by the thesis supervisor or department chair and by the Vice Chancellor or their designee, in consultation with the Vice President for Research & Associate Provost.

Both errata and page substitutions require approval. When the purpose is to correct significant errors in content, the student should create an errata sheet using the form and instructions and obtain approval from both thesis supervisor or program chair and the Vice Chancellor or their designee.

If the purpose of change is to excise classified, proprietary, or confidential information, the student should fill out the application form and have the request approved by the thesis supervisor or program chair and the Vice Chancellor or their designee. Students and supervisors should vet thesis content carefully before submission to avoid both scenarios whenever possible.

Types of questions

Preparing your thesis

Access to your thesis

Holds and changes to your thesis

Access and availability

Scanned theses in DSpace@MIT

Quick links

• Thesis Specifications
• Distinctive Collections
• Scholarly Publishing@MIT
• About DSpace@MIT
• Dissertation/Theses

Have questions?

Contact us at [email protected] .

• << Previous: Saving Your Thesis as a PDF/A-1
• Next: Access and Availability Questions >>
• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2023 4:55 PM
• URL: https://libguides.mit.edu/mit-thesis-faq

Curriculum and Thesis

In their first and second years, PhD students are required to complete a series of core classes, coursework in their major and minor fields of study, and an advanced research methods course before proceeding to the thesis-writing stage.

Core courses

Students must satisfy the requirements in at least 10 of 12 half-semester first-year core courses (14.384 and 14.385 are considered second-year courses). The requirements can be met by earning a grade of B or better in the class or by passing a waiver exam.

Waiver exams are offered at the start of the semester in which the course is offered and graded on a pass-fail basis. Students who receive a grade of B- or below in a class can consult the course faculty to determine whether to take the waiver exam or re-take the course the following year. These requirements must all be satisfied before the end of the second year.

Course list

• 14.121: Microeconomic Theory I
• 14.122: Microeconomic Theory II
• 14.123: Microeconomic Theory III
• 14.124: Microeconomic Theory IV
• 14.380: Statistical Methods in Economics
• 14.381: Estimation and Inference for Linear Causal and Structural Models
• 14.382*: Econometrics
• 14.384*: Time Series Analysis (2nd year course)
• 14.385*: Nonlinear Econometric Analysis (2nd year course)
• 14.451: Dynamic Optimization Methods with Applications
• 14.452: Economic Growth
• 14.453: Economic Fluctuations
• 14.454: Economic Crises

*Courses 14.382, 14.384, and 14.385 are each counted as two half-semester courses.

Most students will also take one or more field courses (depending on whether they are waiving core courses) during their first year. Feel free to ask your graduate research officer, field faculty, and advanced students for advice on how you structure your first-year coursework.

Second year students must also successfully complete the two-semester course 14.192: Advanced Research Methods and Communication. The course, which is graded on a pass-fail basis, guides students through the process of writing and presenting the required second-year research paper.

Major field requirement

By the end of year two, PhD students must complete the requirements for two major fields in economics. This entails earning a B or better in two designated courses for each field. Some fields recommend additional coursework or papers for students intending to pursue research in the field.

Major fields must be declared by the Monday following the spring break of your second year. Your graduate registration officer must approve your field selections.

Minor field requirement

PhD students are also required to complete two minor fields, taking two courses in each field and earning a grade of B or better. Your graduate registration officer must approve your field selections.

Minor coursework is normally completed by the end of year two, but in some cases students can defer the completion of one field until after general exams. Students must consult with their graduate registration officer before making a deferment.

Options for minor fields include the eleven economics major fields, plus computation and statistics (from the interdisciplinary PhD in Economics and Statistics).

Students who wish to satisfy one of the minor field requirements by combining two courses from different fields–for example, environmental economics and industrial organization II–can petition the second-year graduate registration officer for permission.

At least one minor field should be from the department’s standard field list.

The fields in which the Department offers specialization and the subjects that will satisfy their designation as a minor field are given in the chart below. Some fields overlap so substantially that both cannot be taken by a student. In any event, the same subject cannot be counted towards more than a single minor field. Students must receive the approval of their Graduate Registration Officer for their designated major and minor fields.

List of fields

• Development
• Econometrics
• Industrial organization
• International
• Macroeconomics
• Organizational
• Political economy
• Public finance
• Computation and statistics (minor only)

Subjects satisfying major and minor requirements

Advanced economic theory.

Minor: Any subset adding up to two full semesters from 14.125, 14.126, 14.127, 14.130, 14.137, 14.147, 14.160, 14.281 and Harvard Ec 2059. Major: At least two of 14.125, 14.126, 14.281, and Harvard Ec 2059. Recommended for major: 14.126, 14.281, and at least one of 14.125, 14.127, 14.130, 14.147, and Harvard Ec 2059.

Econometrics and Statistics

Minor: 14.382 in addition to one of 14.384 or 14.385. Major: Any one of 14.386, 14.387, 14.388 in addition to one of 14.384 or 14.385. Recommended for major: 14.384 and 14.385. *Dual PhD in Economics and Statistics has an additional requirement of 14.386.

Economic Development

Major and minor: 14.771 and 14.772 or 14.773

Minor: Any two of 14.416J, 14.440J, 14.441J, 14.442J, 14.448. Major: 14.416J and 14.441J

Industrial Organization

Minor: 14.271 and 14.272 or 14.273. Major: 14.271 and 14.272 or 14.273. Recommended for major: 14.271, 14.272, and 14.273.

International Economics

Major and minor: 14.581 and 14.582

Labor Economics

Major: 14.661 and 14.662A. Minor: Two subjects chosen from 14.193, 14.661, and 14.662

Monetary Economics

Major and minor: Two subjects chosen from 14.461, 14.462, and 14.463

Organizational Economics

Major and minor: 14.282 and one of 14.283-284, 14.441J, or an approved substitute

Political Economy

Major and minor: 14.770 and 14.773

Public Economics

Major and minor: 14.471 and 14.472

General exams

MIT requires doctoral candidates to complete an advanced course of study that includes general exams at its completion. Beginning in 2019-20, the Economics Department will operationalize this requirement to include successful completion of: the core and other required courses; course exams and other requirements of courses in each of a student’s two major and two minor fields; the written research paper and oral presentation components of 14.192. Students may present for the general exams while having one remaining minor field to complete. The faculty will review these components together with the candidate’s overall course record to determine whether students have passed the general exam requirement and can proceed to the thesis writing stage.

Typical course schedule

Math Camp begins on the second Monday in August.

Fall Semester

14.121/14.122 (Micro Theory I/II) 14.451/14.452 (Macro Theory I/II) 14.380/14.381 (Statistical Method in Economics & Applied Econometrics) Field Course (major or minor)

Spring Semester

14.123/14.124 (Micro Theory III/IV) 14.453/14.454 (Macro Theory III/IV) 14.382 (Econometrics) Field Course (major or minor)

2-3 Field Courses 14.192 (Advanced Research and Communication) 14.384  or  14.385 (Advanced Econometrics)

3 Field Courses 14.192 (Advanced Research and Communication)

Years 3 and up

Field workshop Field lunch Thesis writing

Upon satisfying the core and field requirements, PhD candidates embark on original research culminating in a completed dissertation. A PhD thesis normally consists of three research papers of publishable quality. The thesis must be approved by a student’s primary and secondary thesis advisors, and by an anonymous third reader. These three faculty members will be the candidate's thesis committee and are responsible for its acceptance. Collaborative work is acceptable and encouraged, but there must be at least one paper in the dissertation without a co-author who was a faculty member when the research started.

Criteria for satisfactory progress

Third-year students.

• Meet regularly with their advisor
• Participate consistently in their primary field advising lunch, their primary field workshop, and the third-year student research lunch
• Complete their third-year paper
• Participate in third-year meetings organized by the thesis graduate research officer

Students should present on their research in progress at least once in both the third-year student research lunches and their field advising lunch. Presentations provide opportunities for early and broad feedback on research ideas and the chance to develop oral presentation skills. Research ideas or early stage work in progress is encouraged and expected.

Fourth-year and later students

• Participate consistently in their primary field advising lunch and their primary field workshop
• Present at least once per year in their field advising lunch or field workshop. A presentation each semester in the field advising lunch is strongly recommended by most fields; consult your advisors for more information

Satisfactory progress toward a dissertation will be evaluated based on progress assessments by the student’s primary advisor, regular participation in the lunches and workshops, and field lunch or workshop presentations that show continued progress.

MIT Libraries home DSpace@MIT

• DSpace@MIT Home
• MIT Libraries

This collection of MIT Theses in DSpace contains selected theses and dissertations from all MIT departments. Please note that this is NOT a complete collection of MIT theses. To search all MIT theses, use MIT Libraries' catalog .

MIT's DSpace contains more than 58,000 theses completed at MIT dating as far back as the mid 1800's. Theses in this collection have been scanned by the MIT Libraries or submitted in electronic format by thesis authors. Since 2004 all new Masters and Ph.D. theses are scanned and added to this collection after degrees are awarded.

MIT Theses are openly available to all readers. Please share how this access affects or benefits you. Your story matters.

If you have questions about MIT theses in DSpace, [email protected] . See also Access & Availability Questions or About MIT Theses in DSpace .

If you are a recent MIT graduate, your thesis will be added to DSpace within 3-6 months after your graduation date. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Permissions

MIT Theses may be protected by copyright. Please refer to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy for permission information. Note that the copyright holder for most MIT theses is identified on the title page of the thesis.

Theses by Department

• Comparative Media Studies
• Computation for Design and Optimization
• Computational and Systems Biology
• Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Department of Architecture
• Department of Biological Engineering
• Department of Biology
• Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Department of Chemical Engineering
• Department of Chemistry
• Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
• Department of Economics
• Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
• Department of Humanities
• Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
• Department of Materials Science and Engineering
• Department of Mathematics
• Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering
• Department of Ocean Engineering
• Department of Physics
• Department of Political Science
• Department of Urban Studies and Planning
• Engineering Systems Division
• Harvard-MIT Program of Health Sciences and Technology
• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
• Media Arts & Sciences
• Operations Research Center
• Program in Real Estate Development
• Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
• Science, Technology & Society
• Science Writing
• Sloan School of Management
• Supply Chain Management
• System Design & Management
• Technology and Policy Program

Collections in this community

Doctoral theses, graduate theses, undergraduate theses, recent submissions, intracellular sensor spatial multiplexing via rna scaffolds , conducting polymers for electrochemically mediated separations , mechanistic insight on a chimeric cas9 protein's specificity for dna target with 5 '-naa-3' pam .

Smart. Open. Grounded. Inventive. Read our Ideas Made to Matter.

Which program is right for you?

Through intellectual rigor and experiential learning, this full-time, two-year MBA program develops leaders who make a difference in the world.

A rigorous, hands-on program that prepares adaptive problem solvers for premier finance careers.

A 12-month program focused on applying the tools of modern data science, optimization and machine learning to solve real-world business problems.

Earn your MBA and SM in engineering with this transformative two-year program.

Combine an international MBA with a deep dive into management science. A special opportunity for partner and affiliate schools only.

A doctoral program that produces outstanding scholars who are leading in their fields of research.

Bring a business perspective to your technical and quantitative expertise with a bachelor’s degree in management, business analytics, or finance.

A joint program for mid-career professionals that integrates engineering and systems thinking. Earn your master’s degree in engineering and management.

An interdisciplinary program that combines engineering, management, and design, leading to a master’s degree in engineering and management.

Executive Programs

A full-time MBA program for mid-career leaders eager to dedicate one year of discovery for a lifetime of impact.

This 20-month MBA program equips experienced executives to enhance their impact on their organizations and the world.

Non-degree programs for senior executives and high-potential managers.

A non-degree, customizable program for mid-career professionals.

PhD Program

Program overview.

Now Reading 1 of 4

Rigorous, discipline-based research is the hallmark of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. The program is committed to educating scholars who will lead in their fields of research—those with outstanding intellectual skills who will carry forward productive research on the complex organizational, financial, and technological issues that characterize an increasingly competitive and challenging business world.

Start here.

Learn more about the program, how to apply, and find answers to common questions.

Admissions Events

Check out our event schedule, and learn when you can chat with us in person or online.

Start Your Application

Visit this section to find important admissions deadlines, along with a link to our application.

Click here for answers to many of the most frequently asked questions.

PhD studies at MIT Sloan are intense and individual in nature, demanding a great deal of time, initiative, and discipline from every candidate. But the rewards of such rigor are tremendous:  MIT Sloan PhD graduates go on to teach and conduct research at the world's most prestigious universities.

PhD Program curriculum at MIT Sloan is organized under the following three academic areas: Behavior & Policy Sciences; Economics, Finance & Accounting; and Management Science. Our nine research groups correspond with one of the academic areas, as noted below.

MIT Sloan PhD Research Groups

Behavioral & policy sciences.

Economic Sociology

Institute for Work & Employment Research

Organization Studies

Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Strategic Management

Economics, Finance & Accounting

Accounting  

Management Science

Information Technology

System Dynamics  

Those interested in a PhD in Operations Research should visit the Operations Research Center .  

PhD Program Structure

Additional information including coursework and thesis requirements.

MIT Sloan Predoctoral Opportunities

MIT Sloan is eager to provide a diverse group of talented students with early-career exposure to research techniques as well as support in considering research career paths.

Rising Scholars Conference

The fourth annual Rising Scholars Conference on October 25 and 26 gathers diverse PhD students from across the country to present their research.

Now Reading 2 of 4

The goal of the MIT Sloan PhD Program's admissions process is to select a small number of people who are most likely to successfully complete our rigorous and demanding program and then thrive in academic research careers. The admission selection process is highly competitive; we aim for a class size of nineteen students, admitted from a pool of hundreds of applicants.

What We Seek

• Outstanding intellectual ability
• Excellent academic records
• Previous work in disciplines related to the intended area of concentration
• Strong commitment to a career in research

MIT Sloan PhD Program Admissions Requirements Common Questions

Dates and Deadlines

Admissions for 2024 is closed. The next opportunity to apply will be for 2025 admission. The 2025 application will open in September 2024. 

More information on program requirements and application components

Students in good academic standing in our program receive a funding package that includes tuition, medical insurance, and a fellowship stipend and/or TA/RA salary. We also provide a new laptop computer and a conference travel/research budget.

Funding Information

Throughout the year, we organize events that give you a chance to learn more about the program and determine if a PhD in Management is right for you.

PhD Program Events

May phd program overview.

During this webinar, you will hear from the PhD Program team and have the chance to ask questions about the application and admissions process.

June PhD Program Overview

July phd program overview, august phd program overview.

Complete PhD Admissions Event Calendar

Unlike formulaic approaches to training scholars, the PhD Program at MIT Sloan allows students to choose their own adventure and develop a unique scholarly identity. This can be daunting, but students are given a wide range of support along the way - most notably having access to world class faculty and coursework both at MIT and in the broader academic community around Boston.

Now Reading 3 of 4

Profiles of our current students

MIT Sloan produces top-notch PhDs in management. Immersed in MIT Sloan's distinctive culture, upcoming graduates are poised to innovate in management research and education.

Academic Job Market

Doctoral candidates on the current academic market

Academic Placements

Graduates of the MIT Sloan PhD Program are researching and teaching at top schools around the world.

view recent placements 

MIT Sloan Experience

Now Reading 4 of 4

The PhD Program is integral to the research of MIT Sloan's world-class faculty. With a reputation as risk-takers who are unafraid to embrace the unconventional, they are engaged in exciting disciplinary and interdisciplinary research that often includes PhD students as key team members.

Research centers across MIT Sloan and MIT provide a rich setting for collaboration and exploration. In addition to exposure to the faculty, PhD students also learn from one another in a creative, supportive research community.

Throughout MIT Sloan's history, our professors have devised theories and fields of study that have had a profound impact on management theory and practice.

From Douglas McGregor's Theory X/Theory Y distinction to Nobel-recognized breakthroughs in finance by Franco Modigliani and in option pricing by Robert Merton and Myron Scholes, MIT Sloan's faculty have been unmatched innovators.

This legacy of innovative thinking and dedication to research impacts every faculty member and filters down to the students who work beside them.

Faculty Links

• Accounting Faculty
• Economic Sociology Faculty
• Finance Faculty
• Information Technology Faculty
• Institute for Work and Employment Research (IWER) Faculty
• Marketing Faculty
• Organization Studies Faculty
• System Dynamics Faculty
• Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management (TIES) Faculty

Student Research

“MIT Sloan PhD training is a transformative experience. The heart of the process is the student’s transition from being a consumer of knowledge to being a producer of knowledge. This involves learning to ask precise, tractable questions and addressing them with creativity and rigor. Hard work is required, but the reward is the incomparable exhilaration one feels from having solved a puzzle that had bedeviled the sharpest minds in the world!” -Ezra Zuckerman Sivan Alvin J. Siteman (1948) Professor of Entrepreneurship

Sample Dissertation Abstracts - These sample Dissertation Abstracts provide examples of the work that our students have chosen to study while in the MIT Sloan PhD Program.

We believe that our doctoral program is the heart of MIT Sloan's research community and that it develops some of the best management researchers in the world. At our annual Doctoral Research Forum, we celebrate the great research that our doctoral students do, and the research community that supports that development process.

The videos of their presentations below showcase the work of our students and will give you insight into the topics they choose to research in the program.

How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?

2020 PhD Doctoral Research Forum Winner - Avinash Collis

Watch more MIT Sloan PhD Program  Doctoral Forum Videos

• [email protected]

Keep Exploring

Ask a question or register your interest

Faculty Directory

Meet our faculty.

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

Inside the new world of online dissertation defenses

Press contact :, media download.

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license . You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT."

Previous image Next image

Call it another MIT innovation. When PhD student Jesse Tordoff passed her dissertation defense this month, she learned about the outcome in a new way: Her professors sent a thumbs-up emoji on the Zoom screen they were all sharing.

Welcome to the new world of the online dissertation defense, one of many changes academia is making during the Covid-19 pandemic. For generations, dissertation defenses have been crowning moments for PhD candidates, something they spend years visualizing. At a defense, a student presents work and fields questions; the professors on the dissertation committee then confer privately, and render their verdict to the student.

Which, in Tordoff’s case, was delivered in good humor, via a familiar little symbol.

“That was my most 2020 moment, learning I passed my defense by Zoom emoji,” says Tordoff, a biological engineer specializing in self-assembling structures.

With the pandemic limiting activity on the MIT campus from mid-March onward, moving dissertation defenses to Zoom has been a necessary adjustment. MIT students who defended dissertations this spring say they have had a variety of reactions to the change: They appreciated that family members could suddenly watch their defenses online, and some felt more relaxed in the format. But students also felt it was more challenging to engage with their audiences on Zoom.

And, inevitably, social distancing meant students could not gather in person with advisors, friends, and family to rejoice, as per the usual MIT tradition.

“That feeling of celebration — it is not something you generate by yourself,” says André Snoeck, who in late March defended his dissertation on last-mile issues in supply chains, for MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics.

That moment when you learn you have passed your doctoral dissertation defense. Congratulations to @MITSloan 's Dr. Maarten Meeuwis! @MIT @MITGradStudents @MIT_alumni @MITSloanAlumni pic.twitter.com/U7wNdmBPx7 — MIT Sloan PhD (@MITSloanPhD) April 21, 2020

On Zoom, grandparents in the room

Dissertation defenses are typically quasipublic events, where an audience can attend the student’s presentation but then leaves before faculty tell a student if the defense was successful. Many MIT departments stage parties afterward.

A defense on Zoom means the circle of attendees is no longer restricted by geography — something students appreciated. 

“My mom logged on in South Africa from her retirement village and watched online,”  says Ian Ollis, from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, who in May defended his dissertation about public perceptions of mass transit in the Boston area. “She wouldn’t have been able to do that if it was done in person.”

Julia Zhao, a Department of Chemistry PhD student, says the defense was a unique opportunity for family and friends to watch her in a professional setting.

“It was nice to see all my friends, and my family could attend too,” Zhao says, whose research focuses on polymers that have both metal and organic components. “They were going to fly in for graduation but not attend my defense, so they got to sit in on that and listen to me talk about what I’ve been doing the last five years. So that was really cool.”

Tordoff also felt that on Zoom, she could focus more easily on her remarks.

“I was less nervous than if I had been standing up there in front of a group of people,” Tordoff says. “I was sitting on my couch.” One reason for that good feeling, Tordoff adds, is that when she logged on to Zoom before the defense, the only other people already there were her grandparents, watching from England.

“I was so happy,” Tordoff says. “That never would have happened in person.”

And in Snoeck’s case, his advisors did orchestrate a virtual toast after the defense, so they could celebrate simultaneously, if not in the same room.

Congratulations Dr. Julia Zhao ( @jouleszhao )!!! Today was her defense through zoom!!! We are so proud of how you finished your PhD through a pandemic in such an impressive fashion!!! @ChemistryMIT #PhDone #AcademicChatter pic.twitter.com/En5gCtDZjQ — The ~Remote~ Jeremiah Johnson Group (@johnsonchem) May 1, 2020

Kudos from strangers

At the same time, MIT students note, being on Zoom limited their interaction with the audience, compared with the nature of an in-person talk. 

“You can’t read the room,” Ollis says, adding: “It’s different. You don’t have a complete perspective on the audience — you see squares of people’s faces, whereas if you do it live, you get a sense of who you’re talking to by seeing faces you recognize.”

The slightly mysterious nature of Ollis’ audience became apparent to him almost immediately after he wrapped up his online defense.

“There were quite a few people watching, who, well, I didn’t know who they were,” Ollis says. “I’ve been staying in the Ashdown grad dorm, and I was walking to the elevator after doing the defense, and somebody walked past who I didn’t recognize, and said, ‘Hey! Good job! I enjoyed that!’ I had no idea who the person was.”

Overall, Ollis says, “I thought it was a good experience. I got good feedback from people.” Even so, he adds, “I prefer being in a room with people.”

For his part, Snoeck, who has accepted a job with Amazon, felt his defense was somewhat “more like a series of Q&As, rather than a conversation” — simply due to the dynamics of the format, like the segmented nature of Zoom and its slight delays in audio transmission.

“It is weird to have a conversation with some lag in it,” notes Zhao, who will soon begin a job with a Boston-area startup, developing hydrophobic coatings. “But I made an effort to say, ‘If I interrupted, please continue.’ It is a little awkward.”

I am very happy, honored and thankful to announce I successfully defended my PhD at MIT last Monday! Special thanks to all mentors and colleagues for your guidance and support during the last five years. pic.twitter.com/bsn4RA2nbk — Felipe-Oviedo (@felipeoviedop) May 14, 2020

The blended defense

That said, for years now, academic faculty have sometimes been participating in dissertation defenses via Skype, Zoom, and other platforms. That typically happens when dissertation committee members are located at multiple universities, or when a professor is traveling for research or a conference. In Snoeck’s case, one of his committee members was already going to join remotely from the Netherlands anyway.

Zhao noticed a student in her department webcasting their defense last year, which seemed “a little out of the ordinary” in 2019, she recalls. But from 2020 onward, it may become standard.

“It’s kind of nice to have an extra component of people who aren’t in town but want to participate in the closing of your degree,” Zhao says. “It will definitely be more normalized, I think.”

Not all MIT PhD students defend dissertations. In MIT’s Department of Economics, the thesis consists of three papers that must be approved, and there is no formal defense, although finishing students do give fall-term presentations. Still, even for economics students, this year seems different.

“The biggest challenge has been a feeling of a lack of closure,” says Ryan Hill, a graduating MIT PhD in economics, who studies the dynamics of scientific research. “It’s been a long road.” In that vein, Hill adds, “I was really looking forward to commencement, and the doctoral hooding ceremony.” Those events will take place on May 29, online, with an in-person ceremony to be held at a later date.

To be sure, Hill is keeping matters in perspective. “In the grand scheme, it’s not bad,” says Hill, who will spend a year as a Northwestern University postdoc, and has accepted a tenure-track job at Brigham Young University.

For any new PhD, crossing that academic finish line is a huge achievement — and relief. Zhao, for instance, had to scramble to complete her lab research before MIT shuttered, and then finish writing the thesis, before the dissertation defense could occur.

“It’s been a pretty crazy two months,” Zhao reflects. “I’m just happy to be done with it.”

Share this news article on:

Related links.

• Article: “Zooming past a milestone”
• Office of Graduate Education

Related Topics

• Graduate, postdoctoral
• Commencement
• Center for Transportation and Logistics
• Urban studies and planning
• School of Architecture and Planning
• MIT Sloan School of Management
• School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

Related Articles

MIT student applies her doctoral research to the Covid-19 emergency

Life and learning find a way during a pandemic

Hacking life inside and outside the laboratory

Risk, failure, and living your life: The economics of being an early-career scientist

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

New AI method captures uncertainty in medical images

Read full story →

Improving drug development with a vast map of the immune system

MIT-Mexico Program fosters cross-border collaboration

With inspiration from “Tetris,” MIT researchers develop a better radiation detector

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 11 subjects for 2024

Tackling cancer at the nanoscale

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

MIT Libraries home DSpace@MIT

• DSpace@MIT Home
• MIT Libraries
• Doctoral Theses

Show simple item record

Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Current Students

Doctor of philosophy in urban studies and planning, funding and responsibilities for dusp doctoral students, degree requirements, sample schedule by milestones, important early dates (guide by semester), past dissertations, additional resources.

Building 7, MIT

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning offers a degree in a Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies and Planning which is an advanced research degree in planning or urban studies and is focused on training individuals for research and teaching in the areas of applied social research and planning.

Daniel Engelberg

Enjoli Hall

Carmelo ignaccolo.

Aarthi Janakiraman

Justin Kollar

Kevin Lujan Lee

Arianna Salazar Miranda

Chenab Navalkha

Soyoung Park

Lidia Cano Pecharroman

Benjamin Preis

Gokul Sampath

Wonyoung So

Andrew Stokols

Anna Waldman-Brown

Darien Alexander Williams

Lizzie Yarina

The Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Studies and Planning program emphasizes the development of fundamental research competence, flexibility in the design of special area of study, and encouragement of joint student/faculty research and teaching. The program is tailored to the needs of individual students, each of whom works closely with a custom ecosystem of scholars in their field and a mentor in the Department.

DUSP graduates are well prepared for (and go on to work in) a wide range of careers in academia, government, and industry.

Admissions for the doctoral program emphasizes academic preparation, professional experience, and the fit between the student's research interests and the department's research activities. Nearly all successful applicants have previously completed a master's degree. Admission to the doctoral program is highly competitive. 

Core criteria and guidelines for doctoral admission decisions:

• Application strength: cohesiveness of statement, compelling research topics, preparedness for doctoral level work.
• Alignment with Departmental research priorities: achieving racial justice, tackling the climate change, enhancing democratic governance, and closing the wealth gap
• Could an applicant work with more than one DUSP faculty on their committee?
• Does applicant have a strong match with at least one lead faculty?

11.001J    Introduction to Urban Design & Development

11.002    Making Public Policy

11.005    Introduction to International Development

11.200    Gateway I

11.201    Gateway II

11.202/203    Microeconomics

11.205/11.188    Introduction to Spatial Analysis

11. 220   Quantitative Reasoning  

11.222    Introduction to Critical Qualitative Methods 

• Cross-cutting substantive areas – research of interest to multiple DUSP program groups and strategic priorities
• If you reach out to a faculty member directly and they have not responded before you complete your application, please note that no response does not reflect a judgement. Faculty have many time commitments and may be unable to answer your request quickly.
• Please do note DUSP students offer Peer Application Support Services (PASS) , supporting students who may face structural barriers in applying, including (but not limited to) international applicants, first generation college students, and applicants who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, queer, disabled, and/or a person of color. 
• Faculty members do on occasion recruit students for their externally funded research, but those student's admission is still decided by committee.  

Learn more via the Admissions page, here.

Each doctoral student has an assigned faculty academic advisor with whom they should develop a plan of study. All faculty are concerned with promoting good personal and academic relationships between students and advisors. Faculty advisors are responsible for: approving the registration for the doctoral student at the beginning of each semester, reviewing the student's progress, meeting with their advisee on a regular basis, and alerting the student and Department Headquarters if any issues arise concerning satisfactory progress towards completing the student's degree requirements.

If the student is nonresident, the student and faculty should communicate on a regular basis with each other concerning the progress being made, the timing to be determined jointly by the student and faculty member.

Advisees may request switching advisors. Initiating a change in advisors is the responsibility of the student. The student should:

• Talk to the other faculty member about her/his willingness to serve as a doctoral advisor;
• Inform the current advisor about the desired change in advisors (ideally the decision would be made in discussions with the current and future advisor);
• If the issue becomes complicated, discuss the move with the Head of the PhD Committee;
• Inform the Doctoral Program Academic Advisor .

Addition resources for roles, relationships, and advising best practices may be found here . Student support resources may be found here . Additional information on doctoral student advisee/advisor relationship may be accessed via the DUSP Handbook.

The Department admits five to seven students a year to the doctoral program. All admitted students receive funding for five academic years, including the option of summer work. In addition, some students are admitted with five academic years of funding as part of a research project sponsored by a faculty member and/or external funding.

Departmentally-funded students commit to completing five teaching assistantships and three research assistantships during their time as students at DUSP. The department also issues a call for optional funded summer work during the spring term. 

For more detailed information regarding the cost of attendance, including specific costs for tuition and fees, books and supplies, housing and food as well as transportation, please visit the SFS website .

Required Coursework

In their first (fall) semester, students are required to take 11.233. There are no exceptions nor substitutions to this requirement. The output of this class is a research proposal that can form the basis for the required first-year research paper.

The Doctoral Research Seminar focuses on writing a research paper - the first year paper (FYP) - on a subject of the student's choice. The paper's purpose is to assess the student's ability to independently make a reasoned argument based on evidence that they have collected and to allow the student to work closely with a faculty advisor.

Students are expected to finish the paper in the spring of their first year, and students CANNOT register for their third semester of courses until this paper has been completed.

Methods Courses

All PhD students must complete one graduate-level class in quantitative methods and one graduate-level class in qualitative methods from a list of approved subjects by the end of their fourth semester. Enrolled doctoral students may consult the PhD Wiki pages for community collected information on methods courses of interest to DUSP PhD students:

• Quantitative Methods Courses
• Qualitative Methods Courses

In addition, students are strongly encouraged to enroll in DUSP's Advanced Seminar on Planning Theory (11.930).

Field Exams (General Exams)

General Exams will ordinarily be taken either in late spring of the second year or in early fall of the third year. These examinations contain a written and an oral component. All PhD students are expected to prepare for an examination in two fields. The first field is theory oriented and must be a discipline or equivalent systematic approach to social inquiry. The second field is typically customized to student specializations.

• City Design & Development
• International Development
• Urban Information Systems
• Public Policy and Politics
• Health and Global Communities
• Urban History
• Urban and Regional Economics
• Urban Sociology
• Environmental Planning and Natural Resource Management
• Housing and Real Estate Development
• Labor and Employment Policy
• Neighborhood and Community Development
• Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
• Planning in Developing Countries
• Regional Development
• Transportation and Land Use

Dissertation  

Summary and Full Dissertation Proposal

Within three months after successful completion of the general examinations, each PhD candidate is expected to submit to the PhD Committee a five-to six-page preliminary dissertation research proposal summary.

• The proposal should include the dissertation topic, the importance of the topic, the research method, the types of information to be used, the means of obtaining the required information (surveys, statistical testing, literature, etc.), and a selected bibliography.
• The preliminary dissertation proposal must be approved and signed by the dissertation advisor on the student's committee. The dissertation committee must be chaired by a member of DUSP and include at least one other member of the MIT faculty.
• Membership of the general examination and dissertation committees need not overlap.

Within one year after passing the general examinations, the student must submit a full proposal to their dissertation committee and for approval by the PhD Committee. Full proposals should expand upon the topics covered in the preliminary proposals and must be signed by all members of the student's dissertation committee. An external reviewer will be invited to provide feedback as well.

• In this proposal (usually 25-30 pages in length), the student should provide details on the research design and preliminary ideas (e.g., hypotheses) that will guide the research effort. They should also discuss the relevant literature and potential data sources.
• All students are expected to organize a colloquium in which they discuss their dissertation proposal before their full committee, the external reviewer, and other interested members of DUSP and MIT more generally. The student is expected to notify all DUSP members of the time and place of the colloquium and the dissertation proposal cannot be approved until the colloquium has been held. No colloquia will be held during the last two weeks of the semester, or final exam week, or during the summer. 

Oral Dissertation Defense

After the dissertation committee and the student indicate that the dissertation is completed, the committee chair will ask for the student to appear for an oral examination. The oral examination will customarily last for two hours and will be attended by all members of the dissertation committee. Other faculty and/or students may be allowed to attend the oral examination at the discretion of the dissertation committee. If revisions, normally slight, to the dissertation are suggested by the committee, the committee chair may be solely in charge of approving the revised document. If major revisions are needed, all members of the committee need to review the revised document, and, in some cases, another oral examination may be required. 

Guidelines for preparation of the dissertation document are available from DUSP's PhD Academic Administrator. The student must follow these guidelines carefully. All final dissertation document are submitted electronically. Students will be removed from the degree list for graduation if the appropriate dissertation documents are not met by the deadline set each semester by DUSP. All PhD dissertations are graded on a satisfactory basis. 

Written Dissertation Options 

In addition to the traditional monograph (i.e. a book-length manuscript), students may opt for a three-paper dissertation. 

The three-paper option is based on three related publishable papers and is designed to be used in situations where the thesis material is better suited to three papers on the same general topic rather than turning the dissertation into a book. A dissertation cannot be comprised of essays on three totally separate topics.

• Both the summary and full dissertation proposal are still required, with a dissertation committee consisting of a chair and two readers. The three-papers option should represent different aspects of the same topic.
• A student wishing to submit a three-paper dissertation should propose this plan at the time they submit the initial dissertation summary proposal or, if a decision to do so is made only subsequently, the student should indicate this plan as part of the full dissertation proposal that is submitted to the PhD Committee in advance of the Dissertation Proposal Colloquium.
• One paper in a three-paper dissertation may be co-authored. In such cases, as part of the full Dissertation Proposal, the student should explain the rationale for the proposed co-authorship. The PhD committee representative charged with evaluating the dissertation proposal will be asked to review this to determine the significance of the student's role in the collaborative paper. If there is a change in the plan for co-authorship after the Dissertation Proposal Colloquium has taken place, this must be cleared with the PhD Committee.
• In meeting the criterion of “publishable papers,” the dissertation may include a paper that has been previously published, as long as this paper has been completed as part of the student's doctoral program at MIT.
• A student's First Year Paper may not be used for one of the three papers submitted for the dissertation, unless it has been significantly revised and updated.
• Finally, the three-paper dissertation itself must contain a section that explains how the three papers are related.

A note on completing your dissertation during the summer:

Please be aware that most DUSP faculty are on nine-month contracts, and are not paid to teach or work with students during June, July, and August. Accordingly, any student seeking to complete PhD thesis work over the summer in order to be placed on the September degree list must be certain about the willingness of the advisor and readers to take on this responsibility. Any student seeking this arrangement must submit a form signed by all members of the advising team, attesting to their willingness and summer availability. This form should be submitted to the PhD Academic Administrator no later than the Spring thesis due date. Failure to do so may result in removal from eligibility for the September degree list. If this happens, a student would need to submit their thesis and hold the defense during the fall term, and would need to pay the pro-rated fall semester's tuition if beyond the funded five academic years.

• Advisor sign-off required
• Advisor sign-off required 
• With members of PhD Committee required 
• Determine first and second field exams interests
• Assemble general exams committee
• General exam committee sign-off required
• Complete course work p reparation for general exams
• Complete second-year review statement and meeting
• Dissertation committee and external reviewer sign-off required

Year Three+

• Complete further coursework - if helpful to dissertation 
• Research and write dissertation
• Dissertation chair and committee members
• Revise dissertation as necessary  
• Dissertation chair and/or committee sign-off required
• Revise dissertation as necessary 
• Submit completed dissertation to department

First Semester

• Meet with your assigned faculty advisor
• Determine who will be your faculty advisor for your First-Year Paper (FYP)
• Complete FYP research proposal 

Second Semester

• Work on FYP, including fieldwork during IAP if necessary 
• Submit your First-Year Paper
• Schedule your First-year Review
• At least two weeks before First-year Review at the end of second semester.
• Take any recommended actions after First-year Review meeting   

Third Semester

• OPTIONAL schedule a presentation of your First-Year paper in the PhD Colloquium series
• Determine your first and second field exams interests
• Your chair must be a member of DUSP faculty
• at least another two faculty members, at least one of whom must be a member of the MIT faculty

Fourth Semester

• Schedule your first and second field examinations 
• sent to the members of your exam committee
• sent to DUSP's PhD Academic Administrator at least one month before taking your general exams
• with PhD Committee member and your advisor 
• take any necessary actions following meeting
• Take   your first and second field examinations
• within three months of finishing general exams
• Explore and decide who will chair your Dissertation Committee
• Think about and discuss with your Dissertation Chair who else will sit on your Dissertation Committee

Fifth Semester

• If exams are not completed in your second year, please note you must complete your general exams by the end of your fifth semester. Please refer to semester four for more details.
• Meet with your Dissertation Committee chair to discuss your dissertation proposal
• Write a draft dissertation proposal for feedback from your Dissertation Committee
• ​​​​​​​Circulate your dissertation proposal to your Dissertation Committee
• Schedule a colloquium on your dissertation proposal

This embedded table shows recent dissertation research by the doctoral community. A more complete listing of DUSP dissertation work can be found here.

Additional resources for DUSP doctoral students may be found in DUSP's Resources, Policies, and Procedures page under general ,  funding sources , professional development , students , and doctoral students .  

We welcome any questions you have about the DUSP doctoral program. 

• Questions, concerns, and/or complaints regarding registration, enrollment, leaves, exams and/or other student requirements should be addressed to Sandra Elliot  .
• Questions, concerns, and/or complaints regarding regarding the doctoral student process should be addressed to the PhD Committee co-Chairs ( see DUSP Governance )

Thesis Defenses

Julius baldauf.

Date: Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 2:10pm | Room: 2-449 | Zoom Link

Committee: Bill Minicozzi (Thesis Advisor and Examination Committee Chair), Tristan Collins, Tristan Ozuch

The Ricci Flow on Spin Manifolds

This thesis studies the Ricci flow on manifolds admitting harmonic spinors. It is shown that Perelman's Ricci flow entropy can be expressed in terms of the energy of harmonic spinors in all dimensions, and in four dimensions, in terms of the energy of Seiberg-Witten monopoles. Consequently, Ricci flow is the gradient flow of these energies. The proof relies on a weighted version of the monopole equations, introduced here. Further, a sharp parabolic Hitchin-Thorpe inequality for simply-connected, spin 4-manifolds is proven. From this, it follows that the normalized Ricci flow on any exotic K3 surface must become singular.

Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2024 | 3:00pm | Room: 4-149 | Zoom Link

Committee: Alexander Rakhlin (advisor), Yury Polyanskiy, Martin Wainwright, Ankur Moitra (chair)

Smoothed Online Learning: Theory and Applications

Many of the algorithms and theoretical results surrounding modern machine learning are predicated on the assumption that data are independent and identically distributed. Motivated by the numerous applications that do not satisfy this assumption, many researchers have been interested in relaxations of this condition, with online learning being the weakest such assumption. In this setting, the learner observes data points one at a time and makes predictions, before incorporating the data into a training set with the goal of predicting new data points as well as possible. Due to the lack of assumptions on the data, this setting is both computationally and statistically challenging. In this thesis, we investigate the statistical rates and efficient algorithms achievable when the data are constrained in a natural way motivated by the smoothed analysis of algorithms. The first part covers the statistical rates achievable by an arbitrary algorithm without regard to efficiency, covering both the fully adversarial setting and the constrained setting in which improved rates are possible. The second part of the thesis focuses on efficient algorithms for this constrained setting, as well as special cases where bounds can be improved under additional structure. Finally, in the third part we investigate applications of these techniques to sequential decicions making, robotics, and differential privacy. We introduce a number of novel techniques, including a Gaussian anti-concentration inequality and a new norm comparison for dependent data.

Murilo Corato Zanarella

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 11:00am | Room: 4-370

Committee: Wei Zhang, Zhiwei Yun and Spencer Leslie (Boston College)

First explicit reciprocity law for unitary Friedberg—Jacquet periods

In the early 2000's, Bertolini and Darmon introduced a new technique to bound Selmer groups of elliptic curves via level raising congruences. This was the first example of what is now termed a "bipartite Euler system", and over the last decade we have seen many breakthroughs on constructing such systems for other Galois representations, including settings such as twisted and cubic triple product, symmetric cube, and Rankin—Selberg, with applications to the Bloch—Kato conjecture and to Iwasawa theory.

This thesis studies the case of Galois representations attached to automorphic representations on a totally definite unitary group U(2r) over a CM field which are distinguished by the subgroup U(r) x U(r). We prove a new "first explicit reciprocity law" in this setting, which has applications to the rank 0 case of the corresponding Bloch—Kato conjecture.

Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2024 | 3:00pm | Room: 2-142

Committee: Wei Zhang, Julee Kim, Zhiwei Yun

Local newforms and spherical characters for unitary groups

We first prove a smooth transfer statement analogous to Jacquet–Rallis’s fundamental lemma and use it to compute the special value of a local spherical character that appears in the Ichino–Ikeda conjecture at a test vector. Then we provide a uniform definition of newforms for representations of both even and odd dimensional unitary groups over p-adic fields. This definition is compatible with the one given by Atobe, Oi, and Yasuda in the odd dimensional case. Using the nonvanishing of the local spherical character at the test vector, we prove the existence of the representation containing newforms in every tempered Vogan L-packet. We also show the uniqueness of such representations in Vogan L-packets and give an explicit description of them using local Langlands correspondence.

Patrik Gerber

Date: Friday, April 26, 2024 | 9:30am | Room: 2-361

Committee: Philippe Rigollet (advisor), Yury Polyanskiy, Martin Wainwright

Likelihood-Free Hypothesis Testing and Applications of the Energy Distance

The first part of this thesis studies the problem of likelihood-free hypothesis testing: given three samples X,Y and Z with sample sizes n,n and m respectively, one must decide whether the distribution of Z is closer to that of X or that of Y. We fully characterize the problem's sample complexity for multiple distribution classes and with high probability. We uncover connections to two-sample, goodness of fit and robust testing, and show the existence of a trade-off of the form mn ~ k/ε^4, where k is an appropriate notion of complexity and ε is the total variation separation between the distributions of X and Y. We demonstrate that the family of "classifier accuracy" tests are not only popular in practice but also provably near-optimal, recovering and simplifying a multitude of classical and recent results. We generalize our problem to allow Z to come from a mixture of the distributions of X and Y, and propose a kernel-based test for its solution. Finally, we verify the existence of a trade-off between m and n on experimental data from particle physics.

In the second part we study applications of the energy distance to minimax statistics. We propose a density estimation routine based on minimizing the generalized energy distance, targeting smooth densities and Gaussian mixtures. We interpret our results in terms of half-plane separability over these classes, and derive analogous results for discrete distributions. As a consequence we deduce that any two discrete distributions are well-separated by a half-plane, provided their support is embedded as a packing of a high-dimensional unit ball. We also scrutinize two recent applications of the energy distance in the two-sample testing literature.

Alasdair Hastewell

Date: Thursday, April 18, 2024 | 12:30pm | Room: 4-153 | Zoom Link

Committee: Jörn Dunkel (chair), John Bush, Alexander Mietke

Robust spectral representations and model inference for biological dynamics

Current developments in automated experimental imaging allow for high-resolution tracking across various scales, from whole animal behavior to tissue scale single-cell trajectories during embryogenesis to spatiotemporal gene expression dynamics or neural dynamics. Transforming these high-dimensional data into effective low-dimensional models is an essential theoretical challenge that enables the characterization, comparison, and prediction of the dynamics within and across biological systems. Spectral mode representations have been used successfully across physics, from quantum mechanics to fluid dynamics, to compress and model dynamical data. However, their use in analyzing biological systems has yet to become prevalent. Here, we present a set of noise-robust, geometry-aware mathematical tools that enable spectral representations to extract quantitative measurements directly from experimental data. We demonstrate the practical utility of these methods by applying them to the extraction defect statistics in signaling fields on membranes of starfish, the inference of partial differential equations directly from videos of active particle dynamics, and the categorization of emergent patterns in spatiotemporal gene expression during bacterial swarming.

An additional challenge occurs for complex biophysical processes where the underlying dynamics are yet to be entirely determined. Therefore, we would like to use the experimental data to infer effective dynamical models directly that can elucidate the system's underlying biological and physical mechanisms. Building on spectral mode representations, we construct a generic computational framework that can incorporate prior knowledge about biological and physical constraints for inferring the dynamics of living systems through the evolution of their mode representations. We apply this framework first to single-cell imaging data during zebrafish embryogenesis, demonstrating how our framework compactly characterizes developmental symmetry breaking and reveals similarities between pan-embryo cell migration and Brownian particles on curved surfaces. Next, we apply the framework to the undulatory locomotion of worms, centipedes, robots, and snakes to distinguish between locomotion behaviors. Finally, we present an extension of the framework to the case of nonlinear dynamics when all relevant degrees of freedom are only partially observed, with applications to neuronal and chemical dynamics.

Arun Kannan

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 1:00pm | Room: 1-273 | Zoom Link

Committee: Pavel Etingof (advisor), Roman Bezrukavnikov, Victor Kac

On Lie Theory in the Verlinde Category

A symmetric tensor category (STC) can be thought of as a “home” to do commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, and Lie theory. They are defined by axiomatizing the basic properties of a representation category of a group (or affine supergroup scheme). Are these the only examples of STCs? In characteristic zero, a famous theorem of Deligne states that, assuming a natural growth condition, representation categories of affine supergroup schemes are the only examples. However, the situation is totally different in positive characteristic, and the Verlinde category Verp is the most fundamental counterexample and appears to play a key role in generalizing the theorem of Deligne to positive characteristic. Moreover, Verp contains the category of supervector spaces. The upshot is that the study of Verp provides new algebraic structures and phenomena beyond that afforded by superalgebra and supergeometry but must also generalize what is already known.

In this thesis defense, we will first survey the theory of symmetric tensor categories. Then, we will discuss new algebraic structures that arise from the Verlinde category, including new constructions of exceptional Lie superalgebras and a generalization of Jordan algebras unique to characteristic 5. Finally, we will turn to progress made on generalizing useful algebraic techniques and machinery from the super setting to the Verp setting, like the Steinberg tensor product theorem and notions of polynomial functors.

Daniil Kliuev

Date: Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | 2:30pm | Room: 2-131

Committee: Pavel Etingof, Roman Bezrukavnikov and Ivan Loseu (Yale)

Positive traces and analytic Langlands correspondence

I will describe my results with co-authors in two directions.

The first direction is the problem of classification of positive traces on quantized Coulomb branches. In the most general setting, this problem generalizes the classical problem of describing irreducible unitary representations of real reductive Lie groups. We consider the case of Kleinian singularities of type $A$ and provide a complete classification of positive traces.

The second direction is analytic Langlands correspondence, which is the following. Let $X$ be a smooth irreducible projective curve over $\mathbb{C}$, $G$ be a complex reductive group. On one side of this conjectural correspondence there are $G^{\vee}$-opers on $X$ satisfying a certain topological condition ({\it real} opers), where $G^{\vee}$ is Langlands dual group. On the other side there is joint spectrum of certain operators on $L^2(Bun_G)$, called Hecke operators, where $Bun_G$ is the variety of stable parabolic $G$-bundles on $X$ and $L^2(Bun_G)$ is a Hilbert space of square-integrable half-densities. We prove most of the main conjectures of analytic Langlands correspondence in the case when $G=\operatorname{PGL}_2(\mathbb{C})$ and $X$ either a genus one curve with points or $X$ is $\mathbb{P}^1$ with higher structures at points.

Vasily Krylov

Date: Monday, April 29, 2024 | 9:30am | Room: 2-143

Committee: Roman Bezrukaunikov (advisor), Zhiwei Yun, and Ivan Loseu (Yale)

Geometry and representation theory of symplectic singularities in the context of symplectic duality

This thesis studies the geometry and representation theory of various symplectic resolutions of singularities from different perspectives. Specifically, we establish a general approach to attack the Hikita-Nakajima conjecture and illustrate this approach in the examples of ADHM spaces and parabolic Slodowy varieties. We also study minimally supported representations of the quantizations of ADHM spaces and provide explicit formulas for their characters. Lastly, we describe the monodromy of eigenvalues of quantum multiplication operators for type A Nakajima quiver varieties by examining Bethe subalgebras in Yangians and linking their spectrum with Kirillov-Reshetikhin crystals.

Jae Hee Lee

Date: Monday, April 1, 2024 | 3:00pm | Room: 2-361 | Zoom Link

Committee: Prof. Paul Seidel (thesis advisor), Prof. Pavel Etingof, Prof. Denis Auroux (External, Harvard)

Equivariant quantum connections in positive characteristic

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 1:30pm | Room: 13-1143

Committee: Davesh Maulik, Michael Hopkins, Haynes Miller, and Jeremy Hahn

The algebraic K-theory of the chromatic filtration and the telescope conjecture

Chromatic homotopy theory gives a conceptual framework with which to understand the stable homotopy theory, by decomposing the stable homotopy category into monochromatic pieces. There are two variants of these monochromatic pieces, the K(n) and T(n)-local categories, the former of which is often quite understandable in terms of formal groups of height n, and the latter of which detects the so-called v_n-periodic part of the stable homotopy groups of spheres. I will explain how algebraic K-theory has refined our understanding of these monochromatic pieces. On one hand, algebraic K-theory is an important structural invariant of these categories that 'stably' classifies objects and their automorphisms, and I will explain some tools we have to computationally access the K-theory of these categories. On the other hand, the algebraic K-theory of such categories are interesting as spectra: they detect a lot of information about the stable homotopy groups of spheres and have helped us understand the difference between the T(n) and K(n)-local categories.

Calder Morton-Ferguson

Date: Friday, April 26, 2024 | 1:30pm | Room: 2-449 | Zoom Link

Committee: Roman Bezrukavnikov (advisor), Zhiwei Yun, Ivan Loseu

Kazhdan-Laumon categories and representations

In 1988, D. Kazhdan and G. Laumon constructed the \emph{Kazhdan-Laumon category}, an abelian category $\mathcal{A}$ associated to a reductive group $G$ over a finite field, with the aim of using it to construct discrete series representations of the finite Chevalley group $G(\mathbb{F}_q)$. The well-definedness of their construction depended on their conjecture that this category has finite cohomological dimension. This was disproven by R. Bezrukavnikov and A. Polishchuk in 2001, who found a counterexample for $G = SL_3$.

Since the early 2000s, there has been little activity in the study of Kazhdan-Laumon categories, despite them being beautiful objects with many interesting properties related to the representation theory of $G$ and the geometry of the basic affine space $G/U$. In the first part of this thesis, we conduct an in-depth study of Kazhdan-Laumon categories from a modern perspective. We first define and study an analogue of the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand Category $\mathcal{O}$ for Kazhdan-Laumon categories and study its combinatorics, establishing connections to Braverman-Kazhdan's Schwartz space on the basic affine space and the semi-infinite flag variety. We then study the braid group action on $D^b(G/U)$ (the main ingredient in Kazhdan and Laumon's construction) and show that it categorifies the \emph{algebra of braids and ties}, an algebra previously studied in knot theory; we then use this to provide conceptual and geometric proofs of new results concerning this algebra.

After Bezrukavnikov and Polishchuk's counterexample to Kazhdan and Laumon's original conjecture, Polishchuk made an alternative conjecture: though this counterexample shows that the Grothendieck group $K_0(\mathcal{A})$ is not spanned by objects of finite projective dimension, he noted that a graded version of $K_0(\mathcal{A})$ can be thought of as a module over Laurent polynomials and conjectured that a certain localization of this module is generated by objects of finite projective dimension. He suggested that this conjecture could lead toward a proof that Kazhdan and Laumon's construction is well-defined, and he proved this conjecture in Types $A_1, A_2, A_3$, and $B_2$. In the final chapter of this thesis, we prove Polishchuk's conjecture for all types, and prove that Kazhdan and Laumon's construction is indeed well-defined, giving a new geometric construction of discrete series representations of $G(\mathbb{F}_q)$.

Matthew Nicoletti

Date: Monday, April 29, 2024 | 2:30pm | Room: 2-361 | Zoom Link

Committee: Alexei Borodin (Advisor, chair), Scott Sheffield, Lauren Williams (Harvard)

Title: Stochastic Dynamics on Integrable Lattice Models

The purpose of this thesis is to present some new results related to the six-vertex and dimer model. One theme is the construction and analysis of Markov processes which are naturally associated to these lattice models. Certain integrability properties of the six-vertex and dimer model, often related to the Yang--Baxter equation, allow for the construction of associated Markov chains. In some cases, these are measure preserving Markov chains on configurations of the lattice model. In other cases, they arise via transfer matrices, after choosing a distinguished time coordinate, as a continuous time degeneration of the "time evolution" of the lattice model itself. It is often the case that the integrability of the underlying lattice model provides powerful tools to study the associated Markov chains or their marginals, which are sometimes Markov chains themselves.

In particular together with coauthors, we construct and analyze Markov chains on six-vertex configurations and on dimer model configurations, both of which are models for surface growth in the (2+1)-dimensional "Anisotropic KPZ" (or "AKPZ") universality class; we construct a Markov chain generalizing "domino shuffling" which samples exactly from a recently introduced probability measure on tuples of interacting dimer configurations; using a version of the usual domino shuffling algorithm, we construct and analyze deterministic "t-embeddings" of certain dimer graphs, which discretize minimal surfaces carrying the conformal structure of the limiting Gaussian free field; we construct stationary measures for several colored interacting particle systems using the Yang—Baxter equation.

Alexander Ortiz

Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2024 | 1:15pm | Room: 2-449 | Zoom Link

Committee: Larry Guth (advisor), David Jerison, Gigliola Staffilani

Sparse Fourier restriction for the cone

If the Fourier transform of F(x) is supported near a segment of the light-cone in R^3, what is the shape of the level sets U(N) = {x in R^3 : |F(x)| > N} for large values of N? In 2000, Thomas Wolff had a creative idea to study a related question based on the method of point-circle duality, and used it in a pivotal way to prove the first sharp L^p-decoupling estimates for the cone in R^3 for large values of p.

I will discuss new weighted L^2 estimates of F(x) which give us insight into the shape of level sets. I will explain how we use some of the same key ideas introduced by Wolff, together with a few new ones in the same spirit. By Wolff's method, our main theorem will partly be an application of a recent circular maximal function estimate due to Pramanik—Yang—Zahl in 2022 from their study of Kaufman-type restricted projection problems.

Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2024 | 3:30pm | Room: 2-449

Committee: Prof. Yufei Zhao (advisor and chair), Prof. Dor Minzer, and Prof. Philippe Rigollet

Random and exact structures in combinatorics

We aim to show various developments related to notions of randomness and structure in combinatorics and probability. One central notion, that of the pseudorandomness-structure dichotomy, has played a key role in additive combinatorics and extremal graph theory. In a broader view, randomness (and the pseudorandomness notions which resemble it along various axes) can be viewed as a type of structure in and of itself which has certain typical and global properties that may be exploited to exhibit or constrain combinatorial and probabilistic behavior.

These broader ideas often come in concert to allow the construction or extraction of exact behavior. We look at three particular directions: the singularity of discrete random matrices, thresholds for Steiner triple systems, and improved bounds for Szemerédi's theorem. These concern central questions of the areas of random matrices, combinatorial designs, and additive combinatorics.

Mehtaab Sawhney

Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 | 2:00pm | Room: 2-449

Committee: Yufei Zhao, Dor Minzer, and Philippe Rigollet

Probabilistic and Analytic Methods in Combinatorics

The defense will center on fast algorithms for discrepancy theory. Discrepancy theory is broadly concerned with the following problem; given a set of objects, we aim to partition them into pieces which are “roughly equal”. We will focus specifically on vector balancing: given a set of vectors, one seeks to divide them into two parts with approximately equal sum.

Important results in this area, including Spencer’s six standard deviations suffice and Banaszczyk's results towards the Komlós conjecture, were originally purely existential. However, since work of Bansal from 2010, it has become clear that such existential results can often be made algorithmic. We will explain a pair of such results. The first concerns bounds for online vector balancing obtained via a certain Gaussian fixed point random walk. The second gives an algorithmic form of Spencer's theorem that runs in near input sparsity time.

George Stepaniants

Date: Thursday, April 25, 2024 | 2:30pm | Room: 4-149 | Zoom Link

Committee: Philippe Rigollet, Jörn Dunkel, Sasha Rakhlin

Inference from Limited Observations in Statistical, Dynamical, and Functional Problems

Observational data in physics and the life sciences comes in many varieties. Broadly, we can divide datasets into cross-sectional data which record a set of observations at a given time, dynamical data which follow how observations change in time, and functional data which observe data points over a space (and possibly time) domain. In each setting, prior knowledge of statistical, dynamical systems, and physical theory allow us to constrain the inferences and predictions we make from observational data. This domain knowledge becomes of paramount importance when the data we observe is limited: due to missing labels, small sample sizes, unobserved variables, and noise corruption.

This thesis explores several problems in physics and the life sciences, where the interplay of domain knowledge with statistical theory and machine learning allows us to make inferences from such limited data. We begin in Part I by studying the problem of feature matching or dataset alignment which arises frequently when combining untargeted (unlabeled) biological datasets with low sample sizes. Leveraging the fast numerical methods of optimal transport, we develop an algorithm that gives a state-of-the-art solution to this alignment problem with optimal statistical guarantees. In Part II we study the problem of interpolating the dynamics of points clouds (e.g., cells, particles) given only a few sparse snapshot recordings. We show how tools from spline interpolation coupled with optimal transport give efficient algorithms returning smooth dynamically plausible interpolations. Part III of our thesis studies how dynamical equations of motion can be learned from time series recordings of dynamical systems when only partial observations of these systems are captured in time. Here we develop fast routines for gradient optimization and novel tools for model comparison to learn such physically interpretable models from incomplete time series data. Finally, in Part IV we address the problem of surrogate modeling, translating expensive solvers of partial differential equations for physics simulations into fast and easily-trainable machine learning algorithms. For linear PDEs, our prior knowledge of PDE theory and the statistical theory of kernel methods allows us to learn the Green's functions of various linear PDEs, offering more efficient ways to simulate physical systems.

Date: Wednesday, April 3, 2024 | 2:00pm | Room: 2-255

Committee: Scott Sheffield (advisor), Alexei Borodin, Nike Sun

Conformal welding of random surfaces from Liouville theory

Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) is a natural model describing random surfaces, which arises as the scaling limit for random planar maps. Liouville conformal field theory (LCFT) is the underlying 2D CFT that governs LQG. Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) is a random planar curve, which describes the scaling limits of interfaces in many statistical physics models. As discovered by Sheffield (2010), one of the deepest results in random geometry is that SLE curves arises as the interfaces under conformal welding of LQG surfaces.

In this thesis, we present some new results on conformal welding of LQG surfaces as well as their applications towards the theory of SLE. We first define a three-parameter family of random surfaces in LQG which can be viewed as the quantum version of triangles. Then we prove the conformal welding result of a quantum triangle and a two-pointed quantum disk, and deduce integrability results for chordal SLE with three force points.

The second main result is regarding the conformal welding of a multiple number of LQG surfaces, where under several scenarios, we prove that the output surfaces can be described in terms of LCFT, and the random moduli of the surface is encoded in terms of the partition functions for the SLE curves.

The third part is about the conformal welding of the quantum disks with forested boundary, where we prove that this conformal welding gives a two-pointed quantum disk with an independent SLE$_\kappa$ for $\kappa\in(4,8)$. We further extend to the conformal welding of a multiple number of forested quantum disks, where as an application, for $\kappa\in(4,8)$, we prove the existence of the multiple SLE partition functions, which are smooth functions satisfying a system of PDEs and conformal covariance. This was open for $\kappa \in (6,8)$ and $N\ge 3$ prior to our work.

The conformal loop ensemble (CLE) is a random collection of planar loops which locally look like SLE. For $\kappa \in (4,8)$, the loops are non-simple and may touch each other and the boundary. As a second application, we derive the probability that the loop surrounding a given point in the non-simple conformal loop ensemble touches the domain boundary.

Danielle Wang

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2024 | 1:00pm | Room: 4-265

Committee: Wei Zhang (advisor/chair), Julee Kim, Spencer Leslie (Boston College)

Twisted Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture for unramified quadratic extensions

The global twisted GGP conjecture is a variant of the Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture for unitary groups, which considers the restriction of an automorphic representation of GL(V) to its subgroup U(V), for a skew-Hermitian space V. It relates the nonvanishing of a certain period integral to the central value of an L-function attached to the representation.

Catherine Wolfram

Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2024 | 4:00pm | Room: 2-449 | Zoom Link

Committee: Scott Sheffield (thesis advisor), Alexei Borodin, Curtis McMullen

Random geometry in two and three dimensions

A central theme in random geometry is the interplay between discrete models and continuum ones that appear in scaling limits. Surprising structure and symmetry often arises in these scaling limits, leading to an interplay between combinatorics, probability, complex analysis, and geometry.

The dimer model is one of the classical lattice models of statistical mechanics and can be defined in any dimension. In the first half of this thesis, we prove a large deviation principle for dimer tilings in three dimensions. This generalizes a two-dimensional result of Cohn, Kenyon, and Propp, and is one of the first results for dimers in any dimension $d>2$. Many ideas and constructions used to study dimers are specific to two dimensions, so our arguments start from a smaller set of tools including Hall's matching theorem, the qualitative description of the Gibbs property, and a double dimer swapping operation.

In the second half of this thesis, we study discrete, geometrically-motivated coordinates called shears on the space of circle homeomorphisms up to M\"obius transformations. The Weil-Petersson Teichm\"uller space is a subspace of this which has been of long-term interest in geometry and string theory and has recent connections to SLE curves in probability. We introduce and study natural $\ell^2$ spaces in terms of shears, and obtain sharp results comparing them to H\"older classes of circle homeomorphisms and the Weil-Petersson class. We also give some preliminary results about i.i.d. Gaussian random shears.

• Who’s Teaching What
• Subject Updates
• MEng program
• Opportunities
• Minor in Computer Science
• Resources for Current Students
• Program objectives and accreditation
• Graduate program requirements
• Admission process
• Degree programs
• Graduate research
• EECS Graduate Funding
• Resources for current students
• Student profiles
• Instructors
• DEI data and documents
• Recruitment and outreach
• Community and resources
• Get involved / self-education
• Rising Stars in EECS
• Graduate Application Assistance Program (GAAP)
• MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP)
• Sloan-MIT University Center for Exemplary Mentoring (UCEM)
• Electrical Engineering
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence + Decision-making
• AI and Society
• AI for Healthcare and Life Sciences
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
• Biological and Medical Devices and Systems
• Communications Systems
• Computational Biology
• Computational Fabrication and Manufacturing
• Computer Architecture
• Educational Technology
• Electronic, Magnetic, Optical and Quantum Materials and Devices
• Graphics and Vision
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Science and Systems
• Integrated Circuits and Systems
• Nanoscale Materials, Devices, and Systems
• Natural Language and Speech Processing
• Optics + Photonics
• Optimization and Game Theory
• Programming Languages and Software Engineering
• Quantum Computing, Communication, and Sensing
• Security and Cryptography
• Signal Processing
• Systems and Networking
• Systems Theory, Control, and Autonomy
• Theory of Computation
• Departmental History
• Departmental Organization
• Visiting Committee
• News & Events
• News & Events
• EECS Celebrates Awards

Thesis Defense: Towards Learning-guided Search for Coordination of Multi-agent Transportation at Scale

By: Zhongxia “Zee” Yan

Supervisor: Cathy Wu

• Date: Thursday, April 11
• Time: 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
• Category: Thesis Defense
• Location: 45-500A

Additional Location Details:

Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/99761032760

Abstract: A key challenge for coordination of multi-agent systems is the combinatorial nature of the joint decision space. Despite the success and popularity of model-free learning methods in various areas of autonomy, they cannot adequately tackle large multi-agent coordination problems. My research aims to ground policy learning in well-suited search-based methods to improve solution quality and reduce planning time overhead in multi-agent transportation problems, often involving task allocation, routing, path finding, and motion planning. The implications of this work has numerous applications across fields such as robotics, logistics, and transportation, paving the way for broader deployment of learning-based methods in large-scale autonomous systems and for combinatorial decision problems in general.

Bio: Zee is a final-year Ph.D. student at MIT advised by Cathy Wu. Previously, he obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in EECS at UC Berkeley. During his PhD, he has done internships at Amazon Robotics (Movement Optimization) as well as DeepMind (AlphaZero/AlphaDev).

Committee: Cathy Wu (thesis advisor), Leslie Kaelbling, Pulkit Agrawal

MEMP PhD Thesis Defense (10:00am): Sydney E. Sherman

Back to Events List

Koch Institute, Luria Auditorium 500 Main Street, Cambridge MA, Room 76-156 and Zoom (See below for full information)

Single-sided magnetic resonance sensors for clinical detection of volume status

Several pathological processes affect the body's ability to regulate volume status. In each of these disease states, the body loses some ability to regulate fluid balance and maintain an euvolemic state. Deviations from euvolemia have been shown to increase morbidity and mortality. The ability to detect pre-symptomatic changes in volume status would allow for more responsive management of these conditions and prevention of higher-mortality complications. Direct evaluation and quantification of early-stage changes in volemic state is not currently a clinical measure. T 2  relaxometry, a magnetic resonance imaging technique, may offer a feasible method to quantify volume status. In this work we explore the design of single-sided magnetic resonance sensors for the quantification of volume status, evaluate the clinical performance of the sensor, and elucidate further physiological considerations for fluid diagnostics.

The primary research question that motivated this thesis is: can a point-of-care relaxometer sensitively distinguish muscle interstitial fluid shifts in a single measurement? Several approaches are used to answer this question including instrumentation development, signal acquisition studies, and human subject studies. We describe the design of a point-of-care, single-sided magnetic resonance relaxometer. The constructed sensor can acquire slice-selective signal from 8mm above the instrument’s surface with a high signal-to-noise ratio. We review instrument performance on phantoms, ex-vivo tissue, and human subjects. Preliminary observational clinical studies of two cohorts, healthy athletes and in-patient hemodialysis patients, were conducted and validate the instrument is able to detect signal selectively from the muscle interstitial compartment and distinguish healthy adults and those with end stage renal disease with a single measurement. We discuss the implementation of multi-exponential fitting of acquired data. This enables analysis of individual muscle tissue compartments. We demonstrate strategies to double signal acquisition and improve T2 fitting accuracy through the simulation and implementation of linear frequency swept adiabatic radio frequency pulses.  These decrease the sensitivity of applied RF pulses to B 1  and B 0  inhomogeneity and reduce the effects of stimulated echoes. Finally, we explore physiological considerations for the instrument’s clinical implementation with an MRI study of chronic kidney disease and healthy control subjects. This allows for the evaluation of physiological factors which may affect the device’s accuracy and offer further future areas for study.

The single-sided magnetic resonance sensor and signal acquisition and processing techniques described demonstrate high potential for quantitative clinical assessment of volume status. This work focuses exclusively on healthy subjects or adults with chronic kidney disease, but the principles demonstrated are agnostic to many underlying disease pathologies.

Thesis Supervisor: Michael J. Cima, PhD  David H. Koch Professor of Engineering; Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thesis Committee Chair: Elfar Adalsteinsson, PhD Eaton-Peabody Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Institute for Medical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thesis Readers: Matthew Rosen, PhD Associate Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School; Associate Investigator, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Mass General Research Institute; Kiyomi and Ed Baird MGH Research Scholar, Mass General Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital  Sagar Nigwekar, MD Physician Investigator, Nephrology, Mass General Research Institute; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Physician, Nephrology, Massachusetts General Hospital ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zoom invitation – 

Sydney Sherman is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Sydney Sherman MEMP PhD Thesis Defense Time: April 18, 2024, 1:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Your participation is important to us: please notify  hst [at] mit.edu (hst[at]mit[dot]edu) , at least 3 business days in advance, if you require accommodations in order to access this event.

Join Zoom Meeting https://mit.zoom.us/j/95723950556

Password: 041824

One tap mobile +16465588656,, 95723950556# US (New York) +16699006833,, 95723950556# US (San Jose) +496971049922,,95723950556# Germany

Meeting ID: 957 2395 0556

US: +1 646 558 8656 or +1 669 900 6833

International Numbers: https://mit.zoom.us/u/aeoaRsnStG

Join by SIP 95723950556 [at] zoomcrc.com (95723950556[at]zoomcrc[dot]com)

Join by Skype for Business https://mit.zoom.us/skype/95723950556

• Room Booking Home
• Event Creation Home
• Event Calendar
• Thesis Defense: Neural MMO:...
• Seminar Series List

• Cancel Event
• Preview Reminder
• Send Reminder
• Other events happening in April 2024

Thesis Defense: Neural MMO: Massively Multiagent Simulation and Learning

Speaker: Joseph Suarez , MIT CSAIL

Date: Thursday, April 11, 2024

Time: 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Note: all times are in the Eastern Time Zone

Public: Yes

Location: 45-500A

Event Type: Thesis Defense

Room Description:

Host: Phillip Isola, MIT CSAIL

Contact: Joseph Suarez, [email protected]

Relevant URL:

Speaker URL: https://people.csail.mit.edu/jsuarez/

Speaker Photo: None

Reminders to: [email protected], [email protected]

Reminder Subject: TALK: Thursday 04-11-2024 Thesis Defense: "Neural MMO: Massively Multiagent Simulation and Learning"

Abstract: Neural MMO is a massively multi-agent environment for reinforcement learning research. It is designed to push the boundaries of environment complexity while maintaining compu- tationally efficiency for academic research. Agents in Neural MMO can forage for a variety of resources, engage in strategic combat with each other, defeat scripted enemies for loot, level-up various interdependent professions, acquire tools, weapons, equipment, etc., and exchange items on a global market. Neural MMO was among the first many-agent simulators for reinforcement learning research, and it is still unique among environments today. To my knowledge, no other project provides large agent populations, high per-agent complexity, and efficient simulation at once. These properties make Neural MMO a suitable environment for a variety of research topics in multi-agent learning that would be difficult to explore without such a simulator. The environment can process 128 agents at up to 25x real-time on a single CPU core, totaling 3,000 agent-steps per second. This speed is owed to simulation techniques borrowed from the games industry. In the course of developing Neural MMO, I made several adaptations for the specifics of reinforcement learning, such as the two-layer structure of Neural MMO’s observations and actions and the efficient internal data representation. The contributions of this work include these adapted methods as general-purpose tools for designing RL environments. Through my own experiments and from the results of a series of competitions that I hosted on Neural MMO, we have seen agents capable of long-term coherent strategies, multi-tasking across various objectives, and conditioning for specific goals. The largest discovery of this project has been the extent to which standard reinforcement learning methods with limited compute are able to solve complex tasks. Neural MMO is free and open-source software under the MIT license with comprehensive documentation at neuralmmo.github.io and a 1000+ member community Discord.

Thesis committee: Phillip Isola, Pulkit Agrawal, Eugene Vinitsky

Zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/my/josephsuarez

Research Areas: AI & Machine Learning

Impact Areas:

Opera of the Future @ BSO's Music for the Senses Festival

Courtesy of Boston Symphony Orchestra

• Tod Machover Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media; Academic Head, Program in Media Arts and Sciences
• Alexandra Rieger Research Assistant
• Media Lab Research Theme: Connected Mind + Body
• Media Lab Research Theme: Cultivating Creativity

Share this event

Professor Tod Machover and  Alexandra Rieger , a PhD student in the Opera of the Future research group, are participating in the following events as part of the Boston Symphony Orchestra's (BSO) Music for the Senses Festival :

• April 6 at 6:15pm ET (Symphony Hall) : Alexandra Rieger will participate in a panel discussion on “ How We Hear – The evolution of music perception ." Admission to this panel is included with an 8pm ET concert ticket on April 6.
• April 10 at 7pm ET + 8pm ET (Symphony Hall) : Tod Machover will moderate a panel discussion on “ Composing the Future of Health ." This discussion is followed by a concert (starting at 8pm ET) featuring Machover's work  Gammified  for string quartet and electronics, and based on MIT research into the healing properties of 40Hz Gamma frequencies.  Both the panel and concert are free-of-charge. 

Relatedly, a new book titled  Music and Mind , edited by celebrated soprano Renée Fleming, will be released on April 9 by Penguin Random House. Rébecca Kleinberger (Opera of the Future alum), Alexandra Rieger, and Tod Machover wrote an extensive chapter in this book called “Composing the Future of Health."

Tapis Magique and Knitted Keyboard @ KSU Museum

The Kent State University (KSU) Museum is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition, Knitting Beyond the Body. When you thin…

Living Knitwork @ Ben Shahn Center for the Visual Arts

This eclectic exhibition is here to explore as much as it is here to show. It is here to suggest a path of mindfulness toward what we wear.

Kyung Yun Choi Dissertation Defense

Tangible Telepresence: Distributed and Synchronous Tangible Interfaces for Enhancing Self and Interpersonal Connectedness over Time and Spac

Horizons: Spring Meeting 2024

Horizons 2024 is set to be a testament to the power of interdisciplinary cross-industry collaboration in driving meaningful change.