MISTI Radio

In this episode we have two special exceptionally global segments from our staff.

First we’ll go to Germany. Falling Walls is a conference and platform for emerging leaders in science, business, politics, arts, and society. It is based in Germany and indeed, coincides with the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Dr. Shawana Tabassum is a scientist and named an Emerging Talent by Falling Walls. Why? Because she is making waves in “Neonatal Health disparities.” Her work made her a finalist at the World Science Summit in 2020.

MIT-Germany Managing Director Justin Lahey spoke with Dr. Tabassum about her award-winning work and participation in the Falling Walls competition. Take a listen.

Then, Ari takes a deep dive and talks about the effects of climate change on the city of Venice, Italy along with the scientists leading the efforts to curb its impact. Can Venice survive another 1000  years?

Climate Change is obviously a global issue. And there are organizations, companies, and cities trying to mitigate it through decarbonization, the process of reducing the reliance on fossil fuels and achieving a carbon neutral society.

The German American Business Council hosted a panel discussion on

Alternative Energy Models for a Low Carbon Transition. The panel included Jens Müller-Belau, Energy Transition Manager at Shell Germany (MISTI sends students to Shell for internships); and Philipp-Nikolas Otto, Market Research Manager at EnBW North America, a Germany-based energy company. The discussion was moderated by Annette Wiedenbach, a past Fellow of the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

The panelists were asked questions like: What does it take to achieve a clean energy transition and how can energy companies help cities to become carbon neutral by 2030?

So, what did the panelists have to say about the future of energy technologies?

Riding off the major developments of the past few years, including Brexit and the pandemic, Scotland had a major parliament election back in May, which resulted in pro-independence party victories. Now the country may have another independence referendum in the near future.

The MIT Center for International Studies had none other than Scottish politician Ken Macintosh MSP talk about what’s happening in the country. Macintosh serves as presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament and has been a member for the West Scotland region since 2016.

In this upcoming recording from a previous CIS Starr Forum, he talks about the last 5 years of Scottish politics, as well as the formation of a new nationalist party in Scotland. Take a listen.

MISTI Radio is a production of MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives. You can listen to us on WMBR Cambridge, 88.1 FM, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On today’s show we have some audio from an event co-sponsored by our MIT-Russia program and the MIT AeroAstro department, featuring a NASA astronaut. You may have remembered a past episode of ours that featured astronaut-turned-investor Bernard Harris. But now we have an astronaut who will share the benefits of learning Russian as a space explorer.

Edward Michael Fincke graduated from MIT in 1989, he then joined NASA as an astronaut in 1996. He’s spent a total of 381 days in orbit.

He’s currently training for the first crew flight on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. The vehicle will provide roundtrip crew transportation services to the International Space Station and, along with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, restart U.S. space launches.

Fincke is also fluent in Russian and Japanese. And his Russian skills have been pretty useful in being an astronaut. In this episode we will share why.

Fincke was interviewed by Piper Sigrest, a 2018 AeroAstro graduate, a third-year aerospace engineering PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, and an aspiring astronaut who’s been studying Russian since their time at MIT.

MIT-India and MIT-Africa were thrilled to team up to host a conversation with MIT alumni, students, and faculty on difficult but necessary topics around diaspora, race, inclusion, and identity. Today we are going to share parts of that conversation.

The event featured MG Vassanji, Class of 1974, a Kenyan-born, Tanzanian-raised South Asian who currently lives in Canada. Dr. Vassanji is a prize-winning novelist and while at MIT, he co-founded the MIT African Students Association.

The panel also included MIT history Professor Kenda Mutongi, author of Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi; Also students Boluwatife Akinola, President of the MIT African Students Association; and Deekshita Kacham, President of the MIT South Asian Association of Students.

The panel discussion was moderated by MIT History Professor Sana Aiyar, author of Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora.

Prof. Mutongi and Dr. Vassanji illustrated the unique experiences of a generation of Africans who came of age in a period of decolonization, Africanization, and nation-building.

The student panelists offered their experiences as members and leaders of their identity-based affiliation groups on campus.

To listen to the entire recording, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cboGjdBptzc

The shootings of six Asian women in Atlanta in March of this year may have felt like the apotheosis of Anti-Asian violence in the time of Covid. Hate crimes against Asians shot up about 150% in 2020 in the largest American cities. This was connected to the increase of anti-Asian sentiment that emerged from the spread of Covid-19 in the US.

Because of the origin of the virus, some Americans would call it the “China virus” or the “Wuhan virus.” Covid-19 was racialized, and the Asian community suffered because of it.

The shootings provoked responses and action on a national and local level. We wanted to share clips from a Starr Forum organized by the Center for International Studies and Chris Pilcavage, our Managing Director for the MIT Japan program. In these clips the panelists discussed the causes and those responses to anti-Asian violence.

First was Paul Watanabe, who is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Asian American Studies at UMass Boston. He served on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and as the first Chair of the US Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations.

He gets into the history of the racialization and consequential treatment of Asians in America.

Next we wanted to share clips from Kathy Moon during the forum. She is a Professor of Political Science and the Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies at Wellesley College. She was a senior fellow and the Korea Chair at The Brookings Institution. Her research covers US-East Asia relations, the politics of North and South Korea, women and gender in international relations, social movements, and international migration. She talks about this unique form of intolerance and othering Asians experience, with a focus on the treatment of Asian women.

Ari recently had a chance to catch up with Kathleen Schwind, a 2019 MIT graduate from the Urban Studies and Planning program. Kathleen traveled extensively through MISTI while she was a student at MIT, making it to 22 countries by the age of 22. They caught up about her attraction to the world's most intractable problems and the role of water in middle east peace building.

After, we wanted to feature a country we haven’t before on the show, and that is Mexico. We have an interview from Griselda Gomez, the Managing Director of the MIT Mexico program, and Diana Rentería, a participant of Mexico Global Teaching Labs.

On today’s show, we have some clips from the Boston Japan Film Festival. If you don’t know, the Boston Japan Film Festival is a single-day event that connects New England to Japanese culture through cinema. The festival was held online this year, with virtual film showings and discussions. There was a particular short documentary that we wanted to highlight called “Nourishing Japan” about Japan’s 2005 Food Education Law as it pertains to feeding young students. It was followed by a discussion with the director, Alexis Agaliano Sanborn, and cookbook writer Debra Samuels.

After we have Ari interviewing research scientist and MIT professor Mercedes Balcells, where they talk about the research landscape in Spain.

The rabeca probably not an instrument many people would be familiar with. If you’ve never seen one before, you could look at it and compare it to a violin, but the comparison kind of stops at the visual similarities. So when the opportunity came to learn more about it, I jumped at the chance of talking about it in an episode. And that’s what we’ll get to do today.

Adam Bahrami, a friend of the MIT-Brazil program, is here to tell the story of the rabeca.

The discussion of Universal Basic Income, a program where the government issues cash to its citizens on a consistent basis, is quite contentious in America, coming in and out of the mainstream political discourse through the years. It most recently became a hot issue during Andrew Yang’s presidential run. But it’s not a policy limited to the United States.

UBI was implemented in Kenya and through new research, has been considered a successful program in lifting up Kenyans, especially those living in poverty.

MIT Africa hosted a keynote about UBI in Kenya, featuring Associate Professor of Applied Economics here at MIT, Dr. Tavneet Suri.