Online courses directory (2511)

Innovation in global health practice requires leaders who are trained to think and act like entrepreneurs. Whether at a hospital bedside or in a remote village, global healthcare leaders must understand both the business of running a social venture as well as how to plan for and provide access to life saving medicines and essential health services.

Each week, the course features a lecture and skills-based tutorial session led by industry, non-profit foundation, technology, and academic leaders to think outside the box in tackling and solving problems in innovation for global health practice through the rationale design of technology and service solutions. The lectures provide the foundation for faculty-mentored pilot project from MOH, students, or non-profit sponsors that may involve creation of a market or business plan, product development, or a research study design.

Teaches creative design based on the scientific method through the design, engineering, and manufacture of a detailed inlaid tile. This is an introductory lecture/studio course designed to teach students the basic principles of design and expose them to the design process. Throughout the course, students will be introduced to the terminology and concepts that underlie all forms of visual art; which--in many ways--forms the basis for the design of all physical objects. Along with learning mechanical skills, thinking both critically and visually, and working with different media, the students will consider how the arts grow out of and respond to particular cultural contexts and ideas; and how these thinking patterns can be applied to virtually all types of design.

Presentations, lectures, demonstrations, discussions and various artistic works will be used to show students how other artists and designers have dealt with the same issues they will be facing in lab.  Each class will begin with a critique of the students' homework, followed by a discussion (and presentation when appropriate) of the pertinent issues of that week. All aspects of the course will aid the teams of students in designing and building a major inlaid tile whose elements are designed as digital solid models and manufactured on an abrasive waterjet machining center. The course will conclude with an exhibit of the completed tiles open to the MIT and the Greater-Boston public. Enrollment is limited to 16 students who will be divided into groups of 4 students each. Preference will be given to students who attend the first day of class in a pre-selected team of 4.

This course provides an exciting, eye-opening, and thoroughly useful inquiry into what it takes to live an extraordinary life, on your own terms. The instructors address what it takes to succeed, to be proud of your life, and to be happy in it. Participants tackle career satisfaction, money, body, vices, and relationship to themselves. They learn how to confront issues in their lives, how to live life, and how to learn from it.

A short version of this course meets during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month. Then this semester-long extension of the IAP course is taught to interested members of the MIT community. This not-for-credit course is sponsored by the Department of Science, Technology, and Society. A similar, semester-long version of this course is taught in the Sloan Fellows Program.

Acknowledgment

The instructors would like to thank Prof. David Mindell for his sponsorship of this course, his hopes for its continued expansion, and his commitment to the well-being of MIT students.

The goal of this class is practical: to interrogate, make explicit, and thus to develop the powerful musical intuitions that are at work as you make sense of the music all around you. Reflecting, we will ask how this knowledge develops in ordinary and extraordinary ways.

This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.

At MIT, this course was team taught by Prof. Robert Townsend, who taught for the first half of the semester, and Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, who taught during the second half. On OCW we are only including materials associated with sessions one through 13, which comprise the first half of the class.

Topics include productivity effects of health, private and social returns to education, education quality, education policy and market equilibrium, gender discrimination, public finance, decision making within families, firms and contracts, technology, labor and migration, land, and the markets for credit and savings.

This course examines the role of the engineer as patent expert and as technical witness in court and patent interference and related proceedings. It discusses the rights and obligations of engineers in connection with educational institutions, government, and large and small businesses. It compares various manners of transplanting inventions into business operations, including development of New England and other U.S. electronics and biotechnology industries and their different types of institutions. The course also considers American systems of incentive to creativity apart from the patent laws in the atomic energy and space fields.

Acknowledgment

The instructors would like to thank Joanne Rines and Elijah Ercolino for their efforts in preparing this course.

This is an advanced seminar that will analyze the effectiveness of development and planning theories from the perspective of practitioners who implement projects and policies based on such theories. The ultimate goal is to create new planning sensibilities, which theorize from practice, not the other way around.

This graduate and advanced undergraduate level lecture and literature discussion course covers the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate animal development. Evolutionary mechanisms are emphasized as well as the discussion of relevant diseases. Vertebrate (mouse, chick, frog, fish) and invertebrate (fly, worm) models are covered. Specific topics include formation of early body plan, cell type determination, organogenesis, morphogenesis, stem cells, cloning, and issues in human development.

This graduate and advanced undergraduate level lecture and literature discussion course covers the current understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate animal development. Evolutionary mechanisms are emphasized as well as the discussion of relevant diseases. Vertebrate (mouse, chick, frog, fish) and invertebrate (fly, worm) models are covered. Specific topics include formation of early body plan, cell type determination, organogenesis, morphogenesis, stem cells, cloning, and issues in human development.

This course uses neuroscience methods to study the cognitive development of human infants and children. Case studies draw from research on face recognition, language, executive function, representations of objects, number and theory of mind.

This class surveys developmental entrepreneurship via case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapples with deploying and diffusing products and services through entrepreneurial action. By drawing on live and historical cases, especially from South Asia, Africa, Latin America as well as Eastern Europe, China, and other developing regions, we seek to cover the broad spectrum of challenges and opportunities facing developmental entrepreneurs. Finally, we explore a range of established and emerging business models as well as new business opportunities enabled by developmental technologies developed in MIT labs and beyond.

This course considers molecular control of neural specification, formation of neuronal connections, construction of neural systems, and the contributions of experience to shaping brain structure and function. Topics include: neural induction and pattern formation, cell lineage and fate determination, neuronal migration, axon guidance, synapse formation and stabilization, activity-dependent development and critical periods, development of behavior.

This course considers molecular control of neural specification, formation of neuronal connections, construction of neural systems, and the contributions of experience to shaping brain structure and function. Topics include: neural induction and pattern formation, cell lineage and fate determination, neuronal migration, axon guidance, synapse formation and stabilization, activity-dependent development and critical periods, development of behavior.

This course considers molecular control of neural specification, formation of neuronal connections, construction of neural systems, and the contributions of experience to shaping brain structure and function. Topics include: neural induction and pattern formation, cell lineage and fate determination, neuronal migration, axon guidance, synapse formation and stabilization, activity-dependent development and critical periods, development of behavior.

This is the first semester of a two-semester sequence on Differential Analysis. Topics include fundamental solutions for elliptic; hyperbolic and parabolic differential operators; method of characteristics; review of Lebesgue integration; distributions; fourier transform; homogeneous distributions; asymptotic methods.

In this course, we study elliptic Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) with variable coefficients building up to the minimal surface equation. Then we study Fourier and harmonic analysis, emphasizing applications of Fourier analysis. We will see some applications in combinatorics / number theory, like the Gauss circle problem, but mostly focus on applications in PDE, like the Calderon-Zygmund inequality for the Laplacian, and the Strichartz inequality for the Schrodinger equation. In the last part of the course, we study solutions to the linear and the non-linear Schrodinger equation. All through the course, we work on the craft of proving estimates.

The laws of nature are expressed as differential equations. Scientists and engineers must know how to model the world in terms of differential equations, and how to solve those equations and interpret the solutions. This course focuses on the equations and techniques most useful in science and engineering.

Course Format

This course has been designed for independent study. It provides everything you will need to understand the concepts covered in the course. The materials include:

• Lecture Videos by Professor Arthur Mattuck.
• Course Notes on every topic.
• Practice Problems with Solutions.
• Problem Solving Videos taught by experienced MIT Recitation Instructors.
• Problem Sets to do on your own with Solutions to check your answers against when you're done.
• A selection of Interactive Java® Demonstrations called Mathlets to illustrate key concepts.
• A full set of Exams with Solutions, including practice exams to help you prepare.

Content Development

Differential Equations are the language in which the laws of nature are expressed. Understanding properties of solutions of differential equations is fundamental to much of contemporary science and engineering. Ordinary differential equations (ODE's) deal with functions of one variable, which can often be thought of as time.

This course is an introduction to differential geometry. The course itself is mathematically rigorous, but still emphasizes concrete aspects of geometry, centered on the notion of curvature.