From MIT to low Earth orbit

Not everyone can point to the specific moment that set them on their life’s course. But for me, there’s no question: It happened in 1982, when I was a junior at MIT, in the Infinite Corridor. In those pre-internet days, it was where we got the scoop about everything that was happening on campus. One day, as I was racing to the chemistry labs, a poster caught my eye.

As I remember it, the poster showed a smiling woman in a flight suit, holding a helmet by her side. I recognized her immediately: Sally Ride, one of America’s first group of female astronauts. It had just been announced that she would be part of the crew for one of the upcoming space shuttle flights, making her the first American woman in space. And while she was visiting Lincoln Lab for training, she would be giving a speech and attending a reception hosted by the Association of MIT Alumnae. A woman speaker was still a novelty at MIT in those days. But a woman astronaut? I knew this was one event I had to attend. 

NASA

On the day of Sally Ride’s talk, I hurried into 10-250, the large lecture hall beneath the Great Dome that is the emblem of MIT. Sandy Yulke, the chair of the Association of MIT Alumnae, was already introducing Sally. Sally. Just a first name. As if she were one of us. I slid into an empty seat just a few rows back as Sandy talked about how proud she was to welcome the soon-to-be first American woman in space. And Sally was standing there, right where our professors stood every day. A woman. And an astronaut. 

When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the image I’d had of astronauts—or any kind of explorer, for that matter—could not have been further from the figure before me that day. And I’m not just talking about images I saw in the media—I had one much closer to home. My dad—James Joseph Coleman, known as JJ—was a career naval officer who ultimately led the Experimental Diving Unit. A legend among Navy divers, he had also been a project officer for the Sealab program that built the first underwater habitats, allowing men—and it was all men at the time—to live and work in the deep seas for extended periods. The spirit of exploration, the desire to understand fascinating and challenging environments, seemed normal to me. But because none of the explorers I saw looked like me, it didn’t occur to me that I could be one. My dad worked in a male-dominated world where I’m sure very few of his colleagues imagined that people like me might belong too.

By the time I got to MIT, in 1979, only six women had been selected as NASA astronauts. But seeing Sally Ride on the stage that day turned a possibility into a reality—a reality that could include me. Instead of being larger than life, she was surprisingly real and relatable: a young, bright-eyed woman, with wavy brown hair kind of like mine, wearing a blue flight suit and black boots. She seemed a little shy, looking down at her hands as she was introduced and applauded. 

Sally was obviously passionate about her scientific work—she was an accomplished astrophysicist—but she also had this amazing job where she flew jets, practiced spacewalking, and was part of a crew with a mission. Both scientist and adventurer, she was accomplishing something that no American woman ever had—and, in the process, opening the door for the rest of us. As I listened to her speak that day, an utterly unexpected idea popped into my head: Maybe I—Cady Coleman—could have that job. 

If you can see it, you can be it. Representation doesn’t fix everything, but it changes, on a visceral level, the menu of options that you feel you can reach for. No matter how many people tell us we can be whatever we want to be—and my mother told me that from the moment I was old enough to understand—some of us need more than words. Representation matters. A lot. We are enormously influenced by the signals that we get from our surroundings. What do people expect of us? What models do we have? What limitations do we internalize without knowing it? In her quiet, matter-of-fact way, Sally Ride shattered assumptions I didn’t know I’d taken on. Like so many people at MIT, I was an explorer at heart. What if I could explore in space as well as in the lab? 

Becoming an astronaut

No one just becomes an astronaut. Every astronaut is something else first. At MIT, I had fallen in love with organic chemistry and was determined to become a research chemist, hoping to use science to improve people’s lives. Because I attended MIT on an ROTC scholarship, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force upon graduation, but I was given permission to get my doctorate in polymer science and engineering from UMass Amherst before serving. I was then stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where I worked on new materials for airplanes and consulted on NASA’s Long Duration Exposure Facility experiment. I also set endurance and tolerance records as a volunteer test subject in the centrifuge at the aeromedical laboratory, testing new equipment.

But the ideas that Sally Ride had sparked were never far from my mind, and when NASA put out a call for new astronauts in 1991, I applied—along with 2,053 others. I was among the 500 who got our references checked, and then one of about 90 invited to Houston for an intense weeklong interview and physical. In 1992, after months of suspense, I got the fateful phone call asking, “Would you still like to come and work with us at NASA?” Thrilled beyond words, I felt a kind of validation I’d never experienced before and have never forgotten.

Four months later, I reported for duty at the Johnson Space Center. Knowing that years of rigorous training lay ahead before I might launch into space on a mission, I couldn’t wait to dive in.

That training turned out to be a wild ride. Within days of our arrival in Houston, we ASCANs (NASA-speak for astronaut candidates) headed to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington state for land survival training. We practiced navigation skills and shelter building. Knots were tied. Food was scavenged. Worms were eaten. Tired, grubby people made hard decisions together. Rules were broken. Fun was had. And, importantly, we got to know one another. Water survival skills were next—we learned to disconnect from our parachutes, climb into a raft, and make the most of the supplies we had in case we had to eject from a jet or the space shuttle. 

NASA

Back in Houston, we learned about each of the shuttle systems, studying the function of every switch and circuit breaker. (For perspective, the condensed manual for the space shuttle is five inches thick.) The rule of thumb was that if something was important, then we probably had three, so we’d still be okay if two of them broke. We worked together in simulators (sims) to practice the normal procedures and learn how to react when the systems malfunctioned. For launch sims, even those normal procedures were an adventure, because the sim would shake, pitch, and roll just as the real shuttle could be expected to on launch day. We learned the basics of robotics, spacewalking, and rendezvous (how to dock with another spacecraft without colliding), and we spent time at the gym, often after hours, so we’d be in shape to work in heavy space suits. 

Our training spanned everything from classes in how to use—and fix—the toilet in space to collecting meteorites in Antarctica, living in an underwater habitat, and learning to fly the T-38, an amazing high-performance acrobatic jet used to train Air Force pilots. (On our first training flight, we got to fly faster than the speed of sound.) All of this helped us develop an operational mindset—one geared to making decisions and solving problems in high-speed, high-pressure, real-risk ­situations that can’t be simulated, like the ones we might encounter in space. 

Mission: It’s not about you, but it depends on you

Each time a crew of astronauts goes to space, we call it a mission. It’s an honor to be selected for a mission, and an acknowledgment that you bring skills thatwillmake it successful. Being part of a mission means you are part of something that’s bigger than yourself, but at the same time, the role you play is essential. It’s a strange paradox: It’s not about you, but it depends on you. On each of my missions, that sense of purpose brought us together, bridging our personal differences and disagreements and allowing us to achieve things we might never have thought possible. A crew typically spends at least a year, if not a few years, training together before the actual launch, and that shared mission connects us throughout.

In 1993, I got word that I’d been assigned to my first mission aboard the space shuttle. As a mission specialist on STS-73, I would put my background as a research scientist to use byperforming 30 experiments in microgravity. These experiments, which included growing potatoes inside a locker (just like Matt Damon in The Martian), using sound to manipulate large liquid droplets, and growing protein crystals, would advance our understanding of science, medicine, and engineering and help pave the way for the International Space Station laboratory.

While training for STS-73, I got a call from an astronaut I greatly admired: Colonel Eileen Collins. One of the first female test pilots, she would become the first woman to pilot the space shuttle in 1995, when the STS-63 mission launched. Collins had invited some of her heroes—the seven surviving members of the Mercury 13—to attend the launch, and she was calling to ask me to help host them. The Mercury 13 were a group of 13 women who in the early 1960s had received personal letters from the head of life sciences at NASA asking them to be part of a privately funded program to include women as astronauts. They had accepted the challenge and undergone the same grueling physical tests required of NASA’s first astronauts. Although the women performed as well as or better than the Mercury 7 astronauts on the selection tests, which many of them had made sacrifices even to pursue, the program was abruptly shut down just days before they were scheduled to start the next phase of testing. It would be almost two decades before NASA selected its first female astronauts. 

Never had I felt more acutely aware of being part of that lineage of brave and boundary-breaking women than I did that day, standing among those pioneers, watching Eileen make history. I can’t know what the Mercury 13 were thinking as they watched Eileen’s launch, but I sensed that they knew how much it meant to Eileen to be carrying their legacy with her in the pilot seat of that space shuttle.

Missions and malfunctions

Acouple of years after I had added my name to the still-too-short list of women who had flown in space, Eileen called again. This time she told me that I would be joining her on her next mission, ­STS-93, scheduled to launch in July 1999. Our Mercury 13 heroes would attend that launch too, and Eileen would be making history once again, this time as NASA’s first female space shuttle commander. I would be the lead mission specialist for delivering the shuttle’s precious payload, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, to orbit. I’d also be one of the EVA (extravehicular activity) crew members, if any spacewalking repairs were needed.  

Our mission to launch the world’s most powerful x-ray telescope would change the world of astrophysics. With eight times the resolution of its predecessors and the ability to observe sources that were fainter by a factor of more than 20, Chandra was designed to detect x-rays from exploding stars, black holes, clusters of galaxies, and other high-energy sources throughout the universe. Because cosmic x-rays are absorbed by our atmosphere, we can’t study them from Earth, so an x-ray telescope must operate from well above our atmosphere. Chandra wouldlaunch into low Earth orbit on the shuttle and then require additional propulsion to achieve its final orbit, a third of the way to the moon.

I was thrilled by the idea that my team and I would be launching a telescope whose work would continue long after we were back on Earth. Preparation for launch was intense. As Chandra’s shepherd, I needed to be able to perform what we called the deploy sequence in my sleep. And I had to have a close relationship with the folks at the Chandra Mission Control, which was separate from NASA Mission Control, and make sure the two groups were working together. In a very real sense, Chandra represented the future of astrophysics—a window that promised a deeper understanding of the universe. When the moment came for the telescope to be deployed, all of this would be, quite literally, in my hands.

But first it was in the hands of the launch team at the Kennedy Space Center, whose job it was to get us off the ground and into orbit. And we almost didn’t make it.

Our first launch attempt was aborted eight seconds before liftoff. There we were, waiting for the solid rocket boosters to ignite and the bolts holding us to the launchpad to explode. Instead, we heard “Abort for a hydrogen leak” from Launch Control. Later it was revealed that a faulty sensor had been the issue.  

For our second attempt, we were confidently told we were “one hundred percent GO for weather.” In other words, there was not even a hint of bad weather to delay us. And then there were lightning strikes at the launchpad. Really.

For our third launch attempt, under a bright moon on a cool, clear night, we strapped in and the countdown began. This time I was determined I wouldn’t take anything for granted—even in those final 30 seconds after control switched over to the shuttle’s internal computers. Even when the engines kicked in and I felt the twang of the nose tipping forward and then back. Only when the solid rockets ignited did I let myself believe that we were actually heading back to space. As a seasoned second-time flyer, I kept my excitement contained, but inside I was whooping and hollering. And then, as Columbia rolled to the heads-down position just seconds after liftoff, my joyful inner celebration was drowned out by an angry alert tone and Eileen’s voice on the radio:

My first thought: We know how to deal with this. We did it last week in the simulator. But we weren’t in the simulator anymore. This was a real, no-shit emergency. After we returned to Earth we realized just how close we’d come to several actual life-or-death situations. No matter how much you train for just such a moment, you can’t really anticipate what it will mean to find yourself in one. I was relieved that it wasn’t long before I heard the steady voice of Jeff Ashby, our pilot, confirming that he had successfully flipped the bus sensor switches, reducing our exposure to the potential catastrophe of additional engine shutdowns.

NASA

We were still headed to space, but with the loss of some of our backup capabilities, we were vulnerable. We carefully monitored the milestones that would tell us which options we still had. I tried not to hold my breath as the shuttle continued to climb and we listened for updates from Houston:

An electrical short is a serious problem. After our mission landed, the shuttle fleet would be grounded for months after inspections revealed multiple cases of wire chafing on the other shuttles. Some would call us lucky, but listening to the audio from our cockpit and from Mission Control, I credit the well-trained teams that worked their way patiently through multiple failures catalyzed by the short and by a separate, equally dangerous issue: a slow leak in one of our three engines used during launch. 

Our STS-93 launch would go down in the history books as the most dangerous ascent of the shuttle program that didn’t result in an accident. Even in the midst of it, my sense of mission helped anchor me.

NASA

The plan in 1999 had been that Chandra would last five years. But as of this writing, Chandra is 25 and still sending valuable data back from space. Each year, on its “birthday,” the crew from STS-93 and the teams who worked on the ground connect via email, or in person for the big ones. We’ll always share a bond from that mission and its continuing legacy. And what a legacy it is. Young astronomers who were still toddlers when I pulled that deploy switch are now making discoveries based on the data it’s produced. Chandra is responsible for almost everything that we now know about black holes, and it’s still advancing our understanding of the universe by giant leaps. But these are difficult times. Sadly, budget cuts proposed in 2025 would eliminate Chandra, with no replacements planned. 

Suiting up and making change 

People often wonder what would possess any sane person to strap themself on top of a rocket. And by now you’re probably wondering why, after the harrowing malfunctions during the STS-93 launch, I was eager not only to return to space again but to spend six months living and working aboard the International Space Station. It comes back to mission. I don’t consider myself to be braver than most people, though I may be more optimistic than many. I take the risks associated with my job because I believe in what we’re doing together, and I trust my crew and our team to do all that’s humanly possible to keep us safe.

But the odds were stacked against me in my quest to serve on the space station. 

The world of space exploration, like so many others, is slow to change. Long-standing inequities were still evident when I joined NASA in 1992, and many endured during my time there. But it can be difficult to know when to fight for change at the outset and when to adapt to unfair circumstances to get your foot in the door.

The first trained astronauts tended to be tall, athletic, and male—and the biases and assumptions that led to that preference were built into our equipment, especially our space suits. Our one-piece orange “pumpkin suits” worn for launching and landing weren’t designed for people with boobs or hips, so many of us wound up in baggy suits that made fitting a parachute harness tricky and uncomfortable. But fit issues with our 300-pound white spacewalking suits proved to be a much bigger problem, especially for the smaller-framed astronauts—including some men. 

The bulky EVA suits, which allow astronauts who venture outside a spacecraft to breathe and communicate while regulating our temperature and protecting us from radiation, are essentially human-shaped spaceships. But while they came in small, medium, large, and extra-large, those suits were designed for (male) astronauts of the Apollo era with no thought to how they might work for different body types. Given that ill-fitting equipment would affect performance, astronauts like me—who weren’t shaped like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and their compatriots—were often negatively prejudged before we even started training. As a result, NASA failed for years to leverage the skills of many members of the astronaut corps who physically didn’t fit an institutional template that hadn’t been redesigned for half a century.

Spacewalk training was the most physically difficult thing I did as an astronaut. Training in that way-too-large space suit made it even harder, forcing me to find ways to optimize my ability to function.  

NASA

We practice spacewalking underwater in an enormous swimming pool. If the suit is too big for you—as even the small was for me—the extra volume of air inside drags you up to the surface when you’re trying to work underwater. It’s a profound physical disadvantage. 

Though the fit of the small spacewalking suit wasn’t great, I persevered and adapted, training for many years in that suit with above-average spacewalking grades. And I was chosen to serve as a spacewalker for both of my shuttle missions, should the need arise. Not long before my first mission, Tom Akers, one of the experienced spacewalkers, came up to me and said, “Cady, I can see that you have a real aptitude for spacewalking and also a head that thinks like a spacewalker.” But then he told me that to cut costs, NASA had decided not to use the small suits on the space station. “People are going to look at you and think you’re too small, but I think someone like you could learn to function inside a medium suit,” he said. “So my advice is this: If you are interested in flying on the space station, then when someone asks you what size suit you wear, you tell them a medium will be no problem.” 

Sure enough, after my second shuttle flight, NASA announced that the small suit would be eliminated. I’ve never forgotten the wording of the rationale: “We’ve looked ahead at the manifest, and we have all of the spacewalkers that we need.” Implied was that they wouldn’t miss the smaller astronauts—not a bit. 

I think people might not have understood at the time what it meant to get rid of those small space suits. You could not live and work on the space station unless you were space-suit qualified. And because NASA was about to shut down the shuttle program, soon missions to the space station would be the only ones there were. NASA’s decision to eliminate the small suit effectively grounded more than a third of female astronauts. It also meant that few women would have the experience needed to serve in positions where they could have a say in important decisions about everything from prioritizing missions and choosing crews to making changes in NASA’s culture.    

To me, eliminating the small space suit indicated that the organization didn’t understand the value of having teams whose members contribute a wide range of experiences and viewpoints. When team members are too much alike—in background, ways of thinking and seeing the world, and, yes, gender—the teams are often less effective at finding innovative solutions to complex problems. 

Determined to contribute to the important scientific work being done on the space station, I had no choice but to qualify in the medium suit. But it would be a tall order because for the instructors, the gear is seldom at fault. You just need to get used to it, understand it better, or practice more. I did all three—but it wasn’t enough. So I also adapted everywhere I could, and I recruited a lot of great help. Kathy Thornton, one of the first female spacewalkers, recommended that I buy a waterskiing vest at Walmart to wear inside the suit. The space-suit team was horrified at the thought of using nonregulation materials, but it got them thinking. Together, we settled on having me wear a large girdle—left over from the Apollo guys—and stuffing it with NASA-approved foam to center me in the suit. This kept the air pockets more evenly distributed and allowed me to practice the required tasks, showing that I could work effectively in a medium.

By adapting, which sometimes means staying silent, you may perpetuate a discriminatory system. But if I’d tried to speak the truth from day one, I’d never have made it to the day when I was taken seriously enough to start conversations about the importance of providing all astronauts with equipment that fits. I needed to launch those discussions from a place of strength, where I could be heard and make a difference.

How best to catalyze change is always a personal decision. Sometimes drawing a line in the sand is the most effective strategy. Other times, you have to master the ill-fitting equipment before you get a chance to redesign it. Qualifying in the too-large suit was my only option if I wanted to fly on the International Space Station, since every flight to the ISS needed two spacewalkers and a backup spacewalker—and there were only three seats in the space capsule. The alternative would have been waiting at least 11 years for the newer spacecraft, which would have a fourth seat. I had to play by the unfair rules in order to get to a point where I could change those rules.

With grit and a lot of support from others, I did end up qualifying in the medium suit. And in 2010, I set off for the International Space Station, serving as the lead robotics and science officer for Expedition 26/27 as I traveled 63,345,600 miles in 2,544 orbits over 159 days in space.

NASA/PAOLO NESPOLI

Today, efforts are underway to redesign NASA’s space suits to fit the full range of sizes represented in the astronaut corps. Because of the work I put in to make it possible for a wider range of people to excel as spacewalkers, NASA hung a portrait of me in the row of space-suit photos outside the women’s locker room. And I’m proud to know that my colleagues—women and men—are continuing the work of making change at NASA. Every change has been hard won. The numbers matter. The astronaut corps is now 40% women. Given that, it is harder to make decisions with the potential to leave women out. When a female NASA astronaut walks on the moon for the first time, she will do so in a redesigned space suit. I hope it fits her like a glove.

The crew of spaceship Earth

Contributing to an important mission is a privilege. But who gets to contribute is as important to mission success as it is to the individuals who want to play a part. I can’t emphasize enough how much our incredibly complex NASA missions have benefited from the broad range of people involved. Bringing together people of different backgrounds and skills, with different ways of seeing the world and unique perspectives on opportunities and problems, is what makes space exploration possible.

NASA/JOEL KOWSKY

Sharing space, to me, means including more people—both in the privilege of going to space and in so many of our endeavors here on Earth. When I applied to be an astronaut, very few women had orbited our planet. Today, that number has grown to 82 of 633 human beings in total, and newer NASA astronaut classes have averaged 50% women. Spaceflight is making progress in terms of including people with a wider range of backgrounds, fields of expertise, and physical abilities. But we have a long way to go. And the same is true in countless fields—the barriers that we struggle with in space exploration seem to be ubiquitous in the working world.

As a planet, we’re facing enormous challenges, in areas from climate change to public health to how to sustainably power our endeavors. If there’s one thing I learned above all else from my time in space, it’s that we’re all sharing Earth. No one else is coming to solve our complex problems. And we won’t find solutions with teams of people who share too much in common. We need everyone to contribute where they can, and so we need to create systems, environments, and equipment that make that possible. And we need to be sure that those making contributions are visible, so they can serve as models for future generations. Our job now is to make sure everyone gets enough support to acquire the skills that we—all of us—need to build collaborative teams and solve problems both on Earth and in space. 

It’s worth repeating: We’re all sharing Earth. Looking down from space, you see very few borders separating humans from one another. You understand—not as an abstract ideal but as a visceral, obvious reality—that we are one family sharing a precious, life-supporting home. It’s so clear from up there that we are all the crew of “Spaceship Earth.” I believe that sharing that perspective, bringing it to life, will help more people see that our differences matter less than what binds us together, and motivate us to combine our efforts to tackle the challenges affecting all of us.

In her 24 years at NASA, Cady Coleman ’83, a scientist, musician, and mother of two, flew on two space shuttle missions and began her 159-day mission aboard the International Space Station the day after turning 50. Today, as a public speaker and consultant, she shares her insights on leadership and teamwork gleaned from the high-stakes world of space exploration.

This excerpt is adapted from her book, Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House. © 2024 by Catherine Coleman.  

Travels with Rambax

KAOLACK, Senegal – The MIT students have just finished dinner and are crumpling soda cans into trash bins when they get the summons: “Grab your drums, grab your drums, grab your drums …” 

It is time for the tanibeer, a nighttime drum and dance party, in Kaolack, a town amid salt plains and peanut farms located 220 kilometers southeast of Dakar, Senegal’s capital. For the members of Rambax MIT, the Institute’s Senegalese drumming ensemble, the excitement is palpable as they fetch their drums and make their way up the road. Their destination is a small field on the family land of their director, Lamine Touré, who comes from a long line of griots, the musicians and oral historians of the Wolof people.

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

Touré, a Senegalese master drummer and an MIT lecturer in world music, cofounded Rambax in 2001 with Patricia Tang, an associate professor and ethnomusicologist who specializes in West African music. It began as an extracurricular group to teach students and other members of the MIT community the art of sabar, a vibrant West African drumming and dance tradition. Today, Rambax is a credit-bearing class (21M.460) enrolling as many as 50 students a semester, and its ensemble’s performances draw audiences from MIT and the wider Boston community.  

During Independent Activities Period (IAP), 16 members of the ensemble joined Touré and Tang on a two-week study tour in Senegal, the birthplace of the music that inspires Rambax. In addition to performing, the students attended drumming classes and dance workshops taught by expert Senegalese drummers, and they experienced sabar drumming within its traditional and cultural context in Dakar and Kaolack.

A sabar celebration, known as a tanibeer when held at night, is a lavish display of dance music, a great neighborhood carnival.

“Rambax is unique,” says Touré, whose family of prominent griot percussionists had him drumming from the age of four. Traveling to Senegal allowed the students to experience the cultural significance of the music—and Touré says their Senegalese audiences were really impressed with their playing.

COURTESY OF RAMBAX

A sabar celebration, also known as a tanibeer when held at night, is a lavish display of dance music: a great neighborhood carnival, jammed with lights, blaring speakers, griots, costumed dancers, drums and drums and ever more drums, and—of course—dancing.

On the night of the Rambax tanibeer in January, the sky is clear and chilly breezes waft across the field, where throngs of people, some dressed in colorful Senegalese traditional garb, gather under fluorescent lights perched on lampposts, chatting and gesticulating while waiting to watch the performance.

As the MIT students walk in, wearing their bright yellow, green, and red knee-length dashikis, the crowd erupts into applause. 

Standing in front of his hometown audience, long dark dreadlocks spilling to his shoulders, Touré takes a microphone and introduces the ensemble in his native Wolof. He explains that his students are lovers of African music and, under his tutelage at MIT, have been learning the art of sabar. He pauses for a moment and leans in close to start conducting. 

Then Rambax begins to play.

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

The audience cheers and dances, forming a large circle in front of the musicians. Before long, women take turns at the center of the circle, matching the energetic rhythms of the drumming in the exuberant hip twists, arm swings, jumps, and impossibly high knee kicks of sabar dancing. The high-spirited drumming and dancing continue until the early hours of the morning.   

The tanibeer is a chance for Touré “to show what he’s been teaching his American students and that they can really play sabar quite well,” says Tang, who serves as a faculty advisor to Rambax. “And that’s often a surprise to the Senegalese audience.” 

PATRICIA TANG

COURTESY OF RAMBAX

Among the 16 Rambax members on the Senegal trip is Autumn Geil ’21, a researcher and PhD student in the department of mechanical engineering. Initially drawn to music through choir and opera singing in high school, she had never heard of sabar drumming before discovering Rambax through a friend as an undergrad. She joined and has been a member of the ensemble, which she calls “just so incredible,” ever since. 

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

For Geil, practicing sabar with custodians of the tradition in Senegal is an opportunity to “observe and learn from the drummers to improve my skills for future performances.” 

Baran Mensah ’24, a Ghanian master’s student in mechanical engineering who minored in music as an undergrad, also joined Rambax after a friend recommended it. He sees it as a way to tap into his African roots while at MIT but says it’s also “a gateway to learn about Senegalese art, music, and culture.” Until the tour, he notes, “I really didn’t know much about my country’s West African neighbor.”   

“Coming on this trip allows us to take a step back, to learn about people and cultures, making us more effective communicators.”

Autumn Geil ’21

Eri-ife Olayinka ’25, a computation and cognition major who took Rambax classes for two semesters, says she finds the learning environment supportive and the cultural insights provided by Touré and Tang rewarding. “You see yourself getting better, becoming comfortable with playing in the class,” she says. After completing the classes to satisfy her art requirements, Olayinka stayed on in the drumming ensemble. “I genuinely enjoy being in Rambax—it’s such a cool thing we get to do as a group,” she says.

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

Visiting Kaolack is more than an opportunity for Rambax members to glimpse the culture that gave rise to sabar. With horse-drawn wagons clip-clopping through its rugged terrain but also massive solar farms, Kaolack is a city where old meets new. Witnessing those contrasts—and getting to perform and to immerse themselves in the performances of local musicians—helps the students enhance what Geil calls the “human connection skills” that all scientists and technologists need. 

“It’s really important for people in STEM to make space for art and music,” she says. “Coming on this trip allows us to take a step back, to learn about people and cultures, making us more effective communicators of our technology.” 

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

NIKO ODHIAMBO ’25

PATRICIA TANG

COURTESY OF RAMBAX

Back inside Touré’s family compound, Tang invites the students to gather around so she can introduce them to Touré’s mother, Marie Sow, and his sisters and aunts. Sow showers them with good wishes and they bask in the glow.

It’s important for Rambax members to know the history and culture of the people behind the music they practice, says Tang. “We really want the students to have this sort of cultural immersion—live in a Senegalese house like the Senegalese people do, hang out with Senegalese drummers, and really get a sense of what it’s like in Senegal.”

Abdullahi Tsanni, SM ’23, a former MIT Technology Review fellow, is a science writer based in Dakar, Senegal, who specializes in narrative features. 

What if computer history were a romantic comedy?

The computer first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1955 in a romantic comedy—William Marchant’s The Desk Set. The play centers on four women who conduct research on behalf of the fictional International Broadcasting Company. Early in the first act, a young engineer named Richard Sumner arrives in the offices of the research department without explaining who he is or why he is studying the behavior of the workers. Bunny Watson, the head of the department, discovers that the engineer plans to install an “electronic brain” called Emmarac, which Sumner affectionately refers to as “Emmy” and describes as “the machine that takes the pause quotient out of the work–man-hour relationship.”

What Sumner calls the “pause quotient” is jargon for the everyday activities and mundane interactions that make human beings less efficient than machines. Emmarac would eliminate inefficiencies, such as walking to a bookshelf or talking with a coworker about weekend plans. Bunny Watson comes to believe that the computing machine will eliminate not only inefficiencies in the workplace but also the need for human workers in her department. Sumner, the engineer, presents the computer as a technology of efficiency, but Watson, the department head, views it as a technology of displacement.

Bunny Watson’s view was not uncommon during the first decade of computing technology. Thomas Watson Sr., president of IBM, insisted that one of his firm’s first machines be called a “calculator” instead of a “computer” because “he was concerned that the latter term, which had always referred to a human being, would raise the specter of technological unemployment,” according to historians Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. In keeping with the worry of both Watsons, the computer takes the stage on Broadway as a threat to white-collar work. The women in Marchant’s play fight against the threat of unemployment as soon as they learn why Sumner has arrived. The play thus attests to the fact that the very benefits of speed, accuracy, and information processing that made the computer useful for business also caused it to be perceived as a threat to the professional-managerial class.

Comedy provides a template for managing the incongruity of an “electronic brain” arriving in a space oriented around human expertise and professional judgment.

This threat was somewhat offset by the fact that for most of the 1950s, the computing industry was not profitable in the United States. Manufacturers produced and sold or leased the machines at steep losses, primarily to preserve a speculative market position and to bolster their image as technologically innovative. For many such firms, neglecting to compete in the emerging market for computers would have risked the perception that they were falling behind. They hoped computing would eventually become profitable as the technology improved, but even by the middle of the decade, it was not obvious to industry insiders when this would be the case. Even if the computer seemed to promise a new world of “lightning speed” efficiency and information management, committing resources to this promise was almost prohibitively costly.

While firms weighed the financial costs of computing, the growing interest in this new technology was initially perceived by white-collar workers as a threat to the nature of managerial expertise. Large corporations dominated American enterprise after the Second World War, and what historian Alfred Chandler called the “visible hand” of managerial professionals exerted considerable influence over the economy. Many observers wondered if computing machines would lead to a “revolution” in professional-managerial tasks. Some even speculated that “electronic brains” would soon coordinate the economy, thus replacing the bureaucratic oversight of most forms of labor. 

Howard Gammon, an official with the US Bureau of the Budget, explained in a 1954 essay that “electronic information processing machines” could “make substantial savings and render better service” if managers were to accept the technology. Gammon advocated for the automation of office work in areas like “stock control, handling orders, processing mailing lists, or a hundred and one other activities requiring the accumulating and sorting of information.” He even anticipated the development of tools for “erect[ing] a consistent system of decisions in areas where ‘judgment’ can be reduced to sets of clear-cut rules such as (1) ‘purchase at the lowest price,’ or (2) ‘never let the supply of bolts fall below the estimated one-week requirement for any size or type.’”

Gammon’s essay illustrates how many administrative thinkers hoped that computers would allow upper-level managers to oversee industrial production through a series of unambiguous rules that would no longer require midlevel workers for their enactment. 

This fantasy was impossible in the 1950s for so many reasons, the most obvious being that only a limited number of executable processes in postwar managerial capitalism could be automated through extant technology, and even fewer areas of “judgment,” as Gammon called them, can be reduced to sets of clear-cut rules. Still, this fantasy was part of the cultural milieu when Marchant’s play premiered on Broadway, one year after Gammon’s report and just a few months after IBM had announced the advance in memory storage technology behind its new 705 Model II, the first successful commercial data-processing machine. IBM received 100 orders for the 705, a commercial viability that seemed to signal the beginning of a new age in American corporate life.

It soon became clear, however, that this new age was not the one that Gammon imagined. Rather than causing widespread unemployment or the total automation of the visible hand, the computer would transform the character of work itself. Marchant’s play certainly invokes the possibility of unemployment, but its posture toward the computer shifts toward a more accommodative view of what later scholars would call the “computerization of work.” For example, early in the play, Richard Sumner conjures the specter of the machine as a threat when he asks Bunny Watson if the new electronic brains “give you the feeling that maybe—just maybe—that people are a little bit outmoded.” Similarly, at the beginning of the second act, a researcher named Peg remarks, “I understand thousands of people are being thrown out of work because of these electronic brains.” The play seems to affirm Sumner’s sentiment and Peg’s implicit worry about her own unemployment once the computer, Emmarac, has been installed in the third act. After the installation, Sumner and Watson give the machine a research problem that previously took Peg several days to complete. Watson expects the task to stump Emmarac, but the machine takes only a few seconds to produce the same answer.

While such moments conjure the specter of “technological unemployment,” the play juxtaposes Emmarac’s feats with Watson’s wit and spontaneity. For instance, after Sumner suggests people may be “outmoded,” Watson responds, “Yes, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they stopped making them.” Sumner gets the joke but doesn’t find it funny: “Miss Watson, Emmarac is not a subject for levity.” The staging of the play contradicts Sumner’s assertion. Emmarac occasions all manner of levity in The Desk Set, ranging from Watson’s joke to Emmarac’s absurd firing of every member of the International Broadcasting Company, including its president, later in the play. 

This shifting portrayal of Emmarac follows a much older pattern in dramatic comedy. As literary critic Northrop Frye explains, many forms of comedy follow an “argument” in which a “new world” appears on the stage and transforms the society entrenched at the beginning of the play. The movement away from established society hinges on a “principle of conversion” that “include[s] as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking characters are more often reconciled or converted than simply repudiated.”

We see a similar dynamic in how Marchant’s play portrays the efficiency expert as brusque, rational, and incapable of empathy or romantic interests. After his arrival in the office, a researcher named Sadel says, “You notice he never takes his coat off? Do you think maybe he’s a robot?” Another researcher, Ruthie Saylor, later kisses Sumner on the cheek and invites him to a party. He says, “Sorry, I’ve got work to do,” to which Ruthie responds, “Sadel’s right—you are a robot!” 

Even as Sumner’s robotic behavior portrays him as antisocial, Emmarac further isolates him from the office by posing a threat to the workers. The play accentuates this blocking function by assigning Emmarac a personality and gender: Sumner calls the machine “Emmy,” and its operator, a woman named Miss Warriner, describes the machine as a “good girl.” By taking its place in the office, Emmarac effectively moves into the same space of labor and economic power as Bunny Watson, who had previously overseen the researchers and their activities. After being installed in the office, the large mainframe computer begins to coordinate this knowledge work. The gendering of the computer thus presents Emmarac as a newer model of the so-called New Woman, as if the computer imperils the feminist ideal that Bunny Watson clearly embodies. By directly challenging Watson’s socioeconomic independence and professional identity, the computer’s arrival in the workplace threatens to make the New Woman obsolete. 

Yet much like Frye’s claims about the “argument” of comedy, the conflict between Emmarac and Watson resolves as the machine transforms from a direct competitor into a collaborator. We see this shift during a final competition between Emmarac and the research department. The women have been notified that their positions have been terminated, and they begin packing up their belongings. Two requests for information suddenly arrive, but Watson and her fellow researchers refuse to process them because of their dismissal, so Warriner and Sumner attempt to field the requests. The research tasks are complicated, and Warriner mistakenly directs Emmarac to print a long, irrelevant answer. The machine inflexibly continues although the other inquiry needs to be addressed. Sumner and Warriner try to stop the machine, but this countermanding order causes the machine’s “magnetic circuit” to emit smoke and a loud noise. Sumner yells at Warriner, who runs offstage, and the efficiency expert is now the only one to field the requests and salvage the machine. However, he doesn’t know how to stop Emmarac from malfunctioning. Marchant’s stage directions here say that Watson, who has studied the machine’s maintenance and operation, “takes a hairpin from her hair and manipulates a knob on Emmarac—the NOISE obligingly stops.” Watson then explains, “You forget, I know something about one of these. All that research, remember?”

The madcap quality of this scene continues after Sumner discovers that Emmarac’s “little sister” in the payroll office has sent pink slips to every employee at the broadcasting firm. Sumner then receives a letter containing his own pink slip, which prompts Watson to quote Horatio’s lament as Hamlet dies: “Good night, sweet prince.” The turn of events poses as tragedy, but of course it leads to the play’s comic resolution. Once Sumner discovers that the payroll computer has erred—or, at least, that someone improperly programmed it—he explains that the women in the research department haven’t been fired. Emmarac, he says, “was not meant to replace you. It was never intended to take over. It was installed to free your time for research—to do the daily mechanical routine.”

Even as Watson “fixes” the machine, the play fixes the robotic man through his professional failures. After this moment of discovery, Sumner apologizes to Watson and reconciles with the other women in the research department. He then promises to take them out to lunch and buy them “three martinis each.” Sumner exits with the women “laughing and talking,” thus reversing the antisocial role that he has occupied for most of the play.

Emmarac’s failure, too, becomes an opportunity for its conversion. It may be that a programming error led to the company-wide pink slips, but the computer’s near-breakdown results from its rigidity. In both cases, the computer fails to navigate the world of knowledge work, thus becoming less threatening and more absurd through its flashing lights, urgent noises, and smoking console. This shift in the machine’s stage presence—the fact that it becomes comic—does not lead to its banishment or dismantling. Rather, after Watson “fixes” Emmarac, she uses it to compute a final inquiry submitted to her office: “What is the total weight of the Earth?” Given a problem that a human researcher “can spend months finding out,” she chooses to collaborate. Watson types out the question and Emmarac emits “its boop-boop-a-doop noise” in response, prompting her to answer, “Boop-boop-a-doop to you.” Emmarac is no longer Watson’s automated replacement but her partner in knowledge work.

In Marchant’s play, comedy provides a template for managing the incongruity of an “electronic brain” arriving in a space oriented around human expertise and professional judgment. This template converts the automation of professional-­managerial tasks from a threat into an opportunity, implying that a partnership with knowledge workers can convert the electronic brain into a machine compatible with their happiness. The computerization of work thus becomes its own kind of comic plot. 

Benjamin Mangrum is an associate professor of literature at MIT. This excerpt is from his new book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence, published by Stanford University Press, ©2025 by Benjamin Mangrum. All rights reserved. 

An intelligent, practical path to reindustrialization

This past spring, we launched a brand-new manufacturing initiative—building on ideas that are as old as MIT. Since William Barton Rogers created a school to help accelerate America’s industrialization, manufacturing has been an essential part of our mission—a particularly MIT brand of manufacturing, informed and improved by scientific principles and advanced by the kind of hands-on leaders Rogers designed MIT to train.

In the 1980s, the Institute’s “Made in America” study opened with the enduring observation “To live well, a nation must produce well.” Along with The Machine That Changed the World, the 1990 book that told the story of “lean production,” this landmark report helped US manufacturers understand and successfully compete with Japan’s quality model. 

Then, a little over a decade ago, MIT’s “Production in the Innovation Economy” initiative highlighted the opportunities we miss if design and manufacturing teams are miles or even oceans apart—and played a significant role in shaping the nation’s Advanced Manufacturing Initiative.

Building on this legacy, and in response to an urgent national interest in restoring America’s manufacturing strength, an inspired group of MIT faculty came together in 2022 to found the Manufacturing@MIT Working Group. They explored new ways to marshal MIT’s expertise in technology, the social sciences, and management to forge an intelligent, practical path to reindustrialization.

As a result of this group’s foundational work, we’ve now created the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM),which will join the ranks of our other Presidential Initiatives—all designed to help the people of MIT come together in new ways to accelerate our progress and increase our impact. 

To help make manufacturing more productive, resilient, and sustainable, we aim to do the following:

 –Work with firms big and small to help them adopt new approaches for increased productivity.

  –Design high-quality, human-centered jobs that bring new life to communities across the country. 

  –Re-elevate manufacturing in MIT’s own curriculum—and provide pathways for people outside MIT to gain the skills to transform their own prospects and fuel a “new manufacturing” economy.

  –Reimagine manufacturing technologies and systems to advance fields like energy production, health care, computing, transportation, consumer products, and more. 

  –Tackle such challenges as making supply chains more resilient and informing public policy to foster a broad, healthy manufacturing ecosystem that can drive decades of innovation and growth.

If all this sounds ambitious—it is. And these are just the highlights! But I’m convinced that there is no more important work we can do right now to meet the moment and serve the nation. 

Art rhymes

As an MIT visiting scholar, rap legend Lupe Fiasco decided to go fishing for ideas on campus. In an approach he calls “ghotiing” (pronounced “fishing”), he composed nine raps inspired by works in MIT’s public art collection, writing and recording them on site. On May 2, he and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble debuted six of them, performing in front of a packed audience in Kresge for the final performance of the MIT Artfinity festival. The concert featured arrangements of Fiasco’s music done by Kevin Costello ’21, grad student Matthew Michalek, students in Fiasco’s Rap Theory and Practice class, and professor Evan Ziporyn. Produced in collaboration with the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Fiasco’s “Ghotiing MIT: Public Art” project also lets campus visitors scan a QR code and listen to his site-specific raps on their phones as they view the artworks in person.  

Click here to go on a virtual tour of seven pieces from MIT’s public art collection as you listen to Lupe Fiasco’s raps inspired by each piece.

WBUR’s coverage of the project is available here and you can also read more about it in the Boston Globe and The Guardian.

CAROLINE ALDEN

CAROLINE ALDEN

CAROLINE ALDEN

More news from the labs of MIT

Hundred-year storm tides could strike every decade in Bangladesh

Tropical cyclones can generate devastating storm tides—seawater heightened by the tides that causes catastrophic floods in coastal regions. An MIT study finds that as the planet warms, the recurrence of destructive storm tides will increase tenfold for one of the world’s hardest-hit regions.

New electronic “skin” could lead to lightweight night-vision glasses 

MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material that could be used in wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and sensitive compact imaging devices.

Technology makes pesticides stick to plant leaves

A new pesticide application system developed by MIT researchers and their spinoff company could significantly cut use of pesticides and fertilizers, saving farmers money and reducing polluting runoff.

New printable metamaterials that are both strong and stretchy could allow fabrication of bendable ceramics, glass, and metals.

These tough yet bendy materials could be made into tear-resistant textiles, flexible semiconductors, electronic chip packaging, and durable yet compliant scaffolds on which to grow cells for tissue repair.

An epic year for women’s sports

It was a banner year for the Engineers in 2024–’25, with four MIT women’s teams all clinching NCAA Division III national titles for the first time.

After winning their fourth straight NCAA East Regional Championship, the cross country team claimed their first national title in November with All-American performances from Christina Crow ’25 (pictured), Rujuta Sane ’26, and Kate Sanderson ’26. In March, the indoor track and field team scored 49 points—the most ever by an MIT women’s team at a national indoor meet—to win their first national title. A week later, the swimming and diving team won three individual and four relay titles and captured their first national title. Kate Augustyn ’25 ended her MIT career with four individual and four relay national championships and 27 All-America honors. Then in May, the outdoor track and field team claimed their first national championship, making MIT the first to sweep the Division III national titles in women’s cross country and indoor and outdoor track and field in the same year. 

NATALIE GREEN

D3 PHOTOGRAPHY

DAVID BEACH

Immune molecules may affect mood

Two new studies from MIT and Harvard Medical School add to a growing body of evidence that infection-fighting molecules called cytokines also influence the brain, leading to behavioral changes during illness. 

By mapping the locations in the brain of receptors for different forms of IL-17, the researchers found that the cytokine acts on the somatosensory cortex to promote sociable behavior and on the amygdala to elicit anxiety. These findings suggest that the immune and nervous systems are tightly interconnected, says Gloria Choi, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences and one of both studies’ senior authors.

“If you’re sick, there’s so many more things that are happening to your internal states, your mood, and your behavioral states, and that’s not simply you being fatigued physically. It has something to do with the brain,” she says.

In the cortex, the researchers found certain receptors in a population of neurons that, when overactivated, can lead to autism-like symptoms such as reduced sociability in mice. But the researchers determined that the neurons become less excitable when a specific form of IL-17 binds to the receptors, shedding possible light on why autism symptoms in children often abate when they have fevers. Choi hypothesizes that IL-17 may have evolved as a neuromodulator and was “hijacked” by the immune system only later. 

Meanwhile, the researchers also found two types of IL-17 receptors in a certain population of neurons in the amygdala, which plays an important role in processing emotions. When these receptors bind to two forms of IL-17, the neurons become more excitable, leading to an increase in anxiety.

Eventually, findings like these may help researchers develop new treatments for conditions such as autism and depression. 

Cancer-targeting nanoparticles are moving closer to human trials

Over the past decade, Institute Professor Paula Hammond ’84, PhD ’93, and her students have used a technique known as layer-by-layer assembly to create a variety of polymer-coated nanoparticles that can be loaded with cancer-fighting drugs. The particles, which could prevent many side effects of chemotherapy by targeting tumors directly, have proved effective in mouse studies. Now the researchers have come up with a technique that allows them to manufacture many more particles in much less time, moving them closer to human use.

“There’s a lot of promise with the nanoparticle systems we’ve been developing, and we’ve been really excited more recently with the successes that we’ve been seeing in animal models for our treatments for ovarian cancer in particular,” says Hammond, the senior author of a paper on the new technique along with Darrell Irvine, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute.

In the original production technique, layers with different properties can be laid down by alternately exposing a particle to positively and negatively charged polymers, with extensive purification to remove excess polymer after each application. Each layer can carry therapeutics as well as molecules that help the particles find and enter cancer cells. But the process is time-consuming and would be difficult to scale up. 

In the new work, the researchers used a microfluidic mixing device that allows them to sequentially add layers as the particles flow through a microchannel. For each layer, they can calculate exactly how much polymer is needed, which eliminates the slow and costly purification step and saves significantly on material costs.

GRETCHEN ERTL

This strategy also facilitates compliance with the FDA’s GMP (good manufacturing practice) requirements, which ensure that products meet safety standards and can be manufactured consistently. “There’s much less chance of any sort of operator mistake or mishaps,” says Ivan Pires, PhD ’24, a postdoc at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a visiting scientist at the Koch Institute, who is the paper’s lead author along with Ezra Gordon ’24. “We can create an innovation within the layer-by-layer nanoparticles and quickly produce it in a manner that we could go into clinical trials with.”

In minutes, the researchers can generate 15 milligrams of nanoparticles (enough for about 50 doses for certain cargos), which would have taken close to an hour with the original process. They say this means it would be realistic to produce more than enough for clinical trials and patient use.

To demonstrate the technique, the researchers created layered nanoparticles loaded with the immune molecule ­interleukin-­12; they have previously shown that such particles can slow growth of ovarian tumors in mice. Those manufactured using the new technique performed similarly to the originals and managed to bind to cancer tissue without entering the cancer cells. This lets them serve as markers that activate the immune system in the tumor, which can delay tumor growth and even lead to cures in mouse models of ovarian cancer. 

The researchers have filed for a patent and are working with MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation in hopes of forming a company to commercialize the technology, which they say could also be applied to glioblastoma and other types of cancer.