Category: Uncategorized

Schwerpunkt

Anne Trafton |

There’s a new focal point at the McGovern Institute and it’s called Schwerpunkt. From the German word meaning “main focus” or “focal point,” Schwerpunkt is a suspended anamorphic neuron sculpture by Ralph Helmick.

Anamorphosisis a distorted image that becomes recognizable only when viewed from a particular point. The word anamorphosis originates from the Greek words anamorphoun (to transform) and morphe (form, shape). Examples of anamorphic art date back to the early Renaissance, with Leonardo’s Eye (Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485) being the first example of perspective anamorphosis in modern times.

In Schwerpunkt, one hundred gold neurons seemingly float at random above the McGovern Institute lobby and make a beautiful transformation at the focal point on the third floor atrium level. This sculpture is made possible by a gift from Hugo Shong in memory of Patrick J. McGovern.

Photos from the June 28 opening of Schwerpunkt may be viewed below.

Feng Zhang named 2016 Tang Prize Laureate

Anne Trafton |

Feng Zhang, a core institute member of the Broad Institute, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and W. M. Keck Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences with a joint appointment in Biological Engineering, has been named a 2016 Tang Prize Laureate in Biopharmaceutical Science for his role in developing the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system and demonstrating pioneering uses in eukaryotic cells.

The Tang Prize is a biennial international award granted by judges convened by Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top academic research institution.

In January 2013 Zhang and his team were first to report CRISPR-based genome editing in mammalian cells, in what has become the most-cited paper in the CRISPR field. Zhang shares the award with Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Max Planck Institute and Jennifer A. Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley.

“To be recognized with the Tang Prize is an incredible honor for our team and it demonstrates the impact of the entire CRISPR field, which began with microbiologists and will continue for years to come as we advance techniques for genome editing,” Zhang said. “Thanks to the scientific community’s commitment to collaboration and an emphasis on sharing across institutions and borders, the last few years have seen a revolution in our ability to understand cancer, autoimmune disease, mental health and infectious disease. We are entering a remarkable period in our understanding of human health.”

Although Zhang is well-known for his work with CRISPR, the 34-year-old scientist has a long track record of innovation. As a graduate student at Stanford University, Zhang worked with Karl Deisseroth and Edward Boyden, who is now also a professor at MIT, to develop optogenetics, in which neuronal activity can be controlled with light. The three shared the Perl-UNC Prize in Neuroscience in 2012 as recognition of these efforts. Zhang has also received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award (2014), the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine (2014, shared with Charpentier and Doudna), the Tsuneko & Reiji Okazaki Award (2015), the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) Chen New Investigator Award (2016), and the Canada Gairdner International Award (2016, shared with Charpentier and Doudna, as well as Rodolphe Barrangou from North Carolina State University and Philippe Horvath from DuPont Nutrition & Health).

One of Zhang’s long-term goals is to use genome-editing technologies to better understand the nervous system and develop new approaches to the treatment of neurological and psychiatric diseases. The Zhang lab has shared CRISPR-Cas9 components in response to more than 30,000 requests from academic laboratories around the world and has trained thousands of researchers in the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology through in-person events and online opportunities. In his current research, he and his students and postdoctoral fellows continue to improve and expand the gene-editing toolbox.

“Professor Zhang’s lab has become a global hub for CRISPR research,” said MIT Provost Martin Schmidt. “His group has shared CRISPR-Cas9 components with tens of thousands of scientists, and has trained many more in the use of CRISPR-Cas9 technology. The Tang Prize is a fitting recognition of all that Professor Zhang has done, and continues to do, to advance this field.”

“CRISPR is a powerful new tool that is transforming biological science while promising revolutionary advances in health care,” said Michael Sipser, dean of the School of Science and Donner Professor of Mathematics at MIT. “We are delighted that Feng Zhang, together with Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, have been recognized with the Tang Prize.”

“It is wonderful that the Academia Sinica has chosen to recognize the CRISPR field with this year’s Tang Prize,” said Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute. “On behalf of my colleagues at the Broad and MIT, I wish to congratulate Feng, as well as Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, along with the many teams of scientists and all others who have contributed to these transformational discoveries.”

Founded in 2012 by Samuel Yin, the Tang Prize is a non-governmental, non-profit educational foundation that awards outstanding contributions in four fields: sustainable development, biopharmaceutical science, sinology, and rule of law. Nomination and selection of laureates is conducted by the Academia Sinica. Each award cycle, the academy convenes four autonomous selection committees, each consisting of an assembly of international experts, until a consensus on the recipients is reached. Recipients are chosen on the basis of the originality of their work along with their contributions to society, irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, gender, and political affiliation.

This year marks the second awarding of the prize. This year’s awardees will receive the medal, diploma, and cash prize at an award ceremony on September 25 in Taipei. Recipients in each Tang Prize category receive a total of approximately $1.24 million (USD) and a grant of approximately $311,000 (USD). The cash prize and grants are divided equally among joint recipients in each category.

 

Baby Brains: Unlocking Our Humanity

Anne Trafton |

At MIT, Rebecca Saxe studies human brain development, in order to understand how the human mind is built. The challenges and rewards of this research connect her experiences, as a scientist and as a mother.

Project: BIG BRAIN

Anne Trafton |

To celebrate a century in Cambridge, MIT invited members of its community to participate in a unique competition on May 7, 2016 called “Moving Day.” Points would be awarded to teams who crossed the Charles River with the most creativity, spirit and ingenuity. This 3-minute video tells the story of our winning entry: an 8-foot, 200-pound brain based on actual MRI data, constructed and rolled across the Mass Ave bridge by a team of people from MIT’s brain and cognitive sciences community.

New CRISPR system for targeting RNA

Anne Trafton |

Researchers from MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, as well as the National Institutes of Health, Rutgers University at New Brunswick, and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, have characterized a new CRISPR system that targets RNA, rather than DNA.

The new approach has the potential to open a powerful avenue in cellular manipulation. Whereas DNA editing makes permanent changes to the genome of a cell, the CRISPR-based RNA-targeting approach may allow researchers to make temporary changes that can be adjusted up or down, and with greater specificity and functionality than existing methods for RNA interference.

In a study published today in Science, Feng Zhang and colleagues at the Broad Institute and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, along with co-authors Eugene Koonin and his colleagues at the NIH, and Konstantin Severinov of Rutgers University at New Brunswick and Skoltech, report the identification and functional characterization of C2c2, an RNA-guided enzyme capable of targeting and degrading RNA.

The findings reveal that C2c2 — which is the first naturally occurring CRISPR system known to target only RNA, and was discovered by this collaborative group in October 2015 — helps protect bacteria against viral infection. The researchers demonstrate that C2c2 can be programmed to cleave particular RNA sequences in bacterial cells, which would make it an important addition to the molecular biology toolbox.

The RNA-focused action of C2c2 complements the CRISPR-Cas9 system, which targets DNA, the genomic blueprint for cellular identity and function. The ability to target only RNA, which helps carry out the genomic instructions, offers the ability to specifically manipulate RNA in a high-throughput manner — and to manipulate gene function more broadly. This has the potential to accelerate progress to understand, treat, and prevent disease.

“C2c2 opens the door to an entirely new frontier of powerful CRISPR tools,” said senior author Feng Zhang, who is a core institute member of the Broad Institute, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, and the W. M. Keck Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
“There are an immense number of possibilities for C2c2, and we are excited to develop it into a platform for life science research and medicine.”

“The study of C2c2 uncovers a fundamentally novel biological mechanism that bacteria seem to use in their defense against viruses,” said Eugene Koonin, senior author and leader of the Evolutionary Genomics Group at the NIH. “Applications of this strategy could be quite striking.”

Currently, the most common technique for performing gene knockdown is small interfering RNA (siRNA). According to the researchers, C2c2 RNA-editing methods suggest greater specificity and hold the potential for a wider range of applications, such as:

  • Adding modules to specific RNA sequences to alter their function — how they are translated into proteins — which would make them valuable tools for large-scale screens and constructing synthetic regulatory networks; and
  • Harnessing C2c2 to fluorescently tag RNAs as a means to study their trafficking and subcellular localization.

In this work, the team was able to precisely target and remove specific RNA sequences using C2c2, lowering the expression level of the corresponding protein. This suggests C2c2 could represent an alternate approach to siRNA, complementing the specificity and simplicity of CRISPR-based DNA editing and offering researchers adjustable gene “knockdown” capability using RNA.

C2c2 has advantages that make it suitable for tool development:

  • C2c2 is a two-component system, requiring only a single guide RNA to function; and
  • C2c2 is genetically encodable — meaning the necessary components can be synthesized as DNA for delivery into tissue and cells.

“C2c2’s greatest impact may be made on our understanding of the role of RNA in disease and cellular function,” said co-first author Omar Abudayyeh, a graduate student in the Zhang Lab.

From cancer to brain research: learning from worms

by Elizabeth Dougherty |

In Bob Horvitz’s lab, students watch tiny worms as they wriggle under the microscope. Their tracks twist and turn in every direction, and to a casual observer the movements appear random. There is a pattern, however, and the animals’ movements change depending on their environment and recent experiences.

“A hungry worm is different from a well-fed worm,” says Horvitz, David H. Koch Professor of Biology and a McGovern Investigator. “If you consider worm psychology, it seems that the thing in life worms care most about is food.”

Horvitz’s work with the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans extends back to the mid-1970s. He was among the first to recognize the value of this microscopic organism as a model species for asking fundamental questions about biology and human disease.

The leap from worm to human might seem great and perilous, but in fact they share many fundamental biological mechanisms, one of which is programmed cell death, also known as apoptosis. Horvitz shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002 for his studies of cell death, which is central to a wide variety of human diseases, including cancer and neurodegenerative disorders. He has continued to study the worm ever since, contributing to many areas of biology but with a particular emphasis on the nervous system and the control of behavior.

In a recently published study, the Horvitz lab has found another fundamental mechanism that likely is shared with mice and humans. The discovery began with an observation by former graduate student Beth Sawin as she watched worms searching for food. When a hungry worm detects a food source, it slows almost to a standstill, allowing it to remain close to the food.
Postdoctoral scientist Nick Paquin analyzed how a mutation in a gene called vps-50, causes worms to slow similarly even when they are well fed. It seemed that these mutant worms were failing to transition normally between the hungry and the well-fed state.

Paquin decided to study the gene further, in worms and also in mouse neurons, the latter in collaboration with Yasunobu Murata, a former research scientist in Martha Constantine-Paton’s lab at the McGovern Institute. The team, later joined by postdoctoral fellow Fernando Bustos in the Constantine-Paton lab, found that the VPS-50 protein controls the activity of synapses, the junctions between nerve cells. VPS-50 is involved in a process that acidifies synaptic vesicles, microscopic bubbles filled with neurotransmitters that are released from nerve terminals, sending signals to other nearby neurons.

If VPS-50 is missing, the vesicles do not mature properly and the signaling from neurons is abnormal. VPS-50 has remained relatively unchanged during evolution, and the mouse version can
substitute for the missing worm gene, indicating the worm and mouse proteins are similar not only in sequence but also in function. This might seem surprising given the wide gap between the tiny nervous system of the worm and the complex brains of mammals. But it is not surprising to Horvitz, who has committed about half of his lab resources to studying the worm’s nervous system and behavior.

“Our finding underscores something that I think is crucially important,” he says. “A lot of biology is conserved among organisms that appear superficially very different, which means that the
understanding and treatment of human diseases can be advanced by studies of simple organisms like worms.”

Human connections

In addition to its significance for normal synaptic function, the vps-50 gene might be important in autism spectrum disorder. Several autism patients have been described with deletions that include vps-50, and other lines of evidence also suggest a link to autism. “We think this is going to be a very important molecule in mammals,” says Constantine-Paton. “We’re now in a position to look into the function of vps-50 more deeply.”

Horvitz and Constantine-Paton are married, and they had chatted about vps-50 long before her lab began to study it. When it became clear that the mutation was affecting worm neurons in a novel way, it was a natural decision to collaborate and study the gene in mice. They are currently working to understand the role of VPS-50 in mammalian brain function, and to explore further the possible link to autism.

The day the worm turned

A latecomer to biology, Horvitz studied mathematics and economics as an undergraduate at MIT in the mid-1960s. During his last year, he took a few biology classes and then went on to earn
a doctoral degree in the field at Harvard University, working in the lab of James Watson (of double helix fame) and Walter Gilbert. In 1974, Horvitz moved to Cambridge, England, where he worked with Sydney Brenner and began his studies of the worm.

“Remarkably, all of my advisors, even my undergraduate advisor in economics here at MIT, Bob Solow, now have Nobel Prizes,” he notes.

The comment is matter-of-fact, and Horvitz is anything but pretentious. He thinks about both big questions and small experimental details and is always on the lookout for links between the
worm and human health.

“When someone in the lab finds something new, Bob is quick to ask if it relates to human disease,” says former graduate student Nikhil Bhatla. “We’re not thinking about that. We’re deep in
the nitty-gritty, but he’s directing us to potential collaborators who might help us make that link.”

This kind of mentoring, says Horvitz, has been his primary role since he joined the MIT faculty in 1978. He has trained many of the current leaders in the worm field, including Gary Ruvkun
and Victor Ambros, who shared the 2008 Lasker Award, Michael Hengartner, now President of the University of Zurich, and Cori Bargmann, who recently won the McGovern’s 2016 Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience.

“If the science we’ve done has been successful, it’s because I’ve been lucky to have outstanding young researchers as colleagues,” Horvitz says.

Before becoming a mentor, Horvitz had to become a scientist himself. At Harvard, he studied bacterial viruses and learned that even the simplest organisms could provide valuable insights about fundamental biological processes.

The move to Brenner’s lab in Cambridge was a natural step. A pioneer in the field of molecular biology, Brenner was also the driving force behind the adoption of C. elegans as a genetic model organism, which he advocated for its simplicity (adults have fewer than 1000 cells, and only 302 neurons) and short generation time (only three days). Working in Brenner’s lab, Horvitz
and his collaborator John Sulston traced the lineage of every body cell from fertilization to adulthood, showing that the sequence of cell divisions was the same in each individual animal. Their landmark study provided a foundation for the entire field. “They know all the cells in the worm. Every single one,” says Constantine-Paton. “So when they make a mutation and something is weird, they can determine precisely which cell or set of cells are affected. We can only dream of having such an understanding of a mammal.”

It is now known that the worm has about 20,000 genes, many of which are conserved in mammals including humans. In fact, in many cases, a cloned human gene can stand in for a missing
worm gene, as is the case for vps-50. As a result, the worm has been a powerful discovery machine for human biology. In the early years, though, many doubted whether worms would be relevant. Horvitz persisted undeterred, and in 1992 his conviction paid off, with the discovery of ced-9, a worm gene that regulates programmed cell death. A graduate student in Horvitz’ lab cloned ced-9 and saw that it resembled a human cancer gene called Bcl-2. They also showed that human Bcl-2 could substitute for a mutant ced-9 gene in the worm and concluded that the two genes have similar functions: ced-9 in worms protects healthy cells from death, and Bcl-2 in cancer patients protects cancerous cells from death, allowing them to multiply. “This was the moment we knew that the studies we’d been doing with C. elegans were going to be relevant to understanding human biology and disease,” says Horvitz.

Ten years later, in 2002, he was in the French Alps with Constantine-Paton and their daughter Alex attending a wedding, when they heard the news on the radio: He’d won a Nobel Prize, along with Brenner and Sulston. On the return trip, Alex, then 9 years old but never shy, asked for first-class upgrades at the airport; the agent compromised and gave them all upgrades to business class instead.

Discovery machine at work

Since the Nobel Prize, Horvitz has studied the nervous system using the same strategy that had been so successful in deciphering the mechanism of programmed cell death. His approach, he says, begins with traditional genetics. Researchers expose worms to mutagens and observe their behavior. When they see an interesting change, they identify the mutation and try to link the gene to the nervous system to understand how it affects behavior.

“We make no assumptions,” he says. “We let the animal tell us the answer.”

While Horvitz continues to demonstrate that basic research using simple organisms produces invaluable insights about human biology and health, there are other forces at work in his lab. Horvitz maintains a sense of wonder about life and is undaunted by big questions.

For instance, when Bhatla came to him wanting to look for evidence of consciousness in worms, Horvitz blinked but didn’t say no. The science Bhatla proposed was novel, and the question
was intriguing. Bhatla pursued it. But, he says, “It didn’t work.”

So Bhatla went back to the drawing board. During his earlier experiments, he had observed that worms would avoid light, a previously known behavior. But he also noticed that they immediately stopped feeding. The animals had provided a clue. Bhatla went on to discover that worms respond to light by producing hydrogen peroxide, which activates a taste receptor.

In a sense, worms taste light, a wonder of biology no one could have predicted.

Some years ago, the Horvitz lab made t-shirts displaying a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “You have made your way from worm to man, and much within you is still worm.”
The words have become an informal lab motto, “truer than Nietzsche could everhave imagined,” says Horvitz. “There’s still so much mystery, particularly about the brain, and we are still learning from the worm.”

Schwerpunkt

Anne Trafton |

Anamorphosis is a disorted image that becomes recognizable only when viewed from a particular point. The word anamorphosis originates from the Greek words anamorphoun (to transform) and morphē (form, shape). Examples of anamorphic art date back to the early Renaissance with Leonardo’s Eye (Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1485) being the first example of perspective anamorphosis in modern times.

We invite you to experience Schwerpunkt, an anamorphic neuron sculpture by Ralph Helmick at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Schwerpunkt is a German word meaning “main focus” or “focal point.” One hundred gold neurons seemingly float at random above the McGovern Institute lobby and make a beautiful transformation at the focal point on the third floor atrium level.

Read this STAT article to learn more about this sculpture and the artist behind it.

June 28, 2016
5:30pm – 7:00pm
MIT Bldg 46, Third Floor
550 Main Street, Cambridge MA

RSVP schwerpunkt@mit.edu | 617.715.5396

Schwerpunkt is made possible by a gift from Hugo Shong in memory of Patrick J. McGovern.

 

McGovern Institute for Brain Research hosts Chinese delegation

Anne Trafton |

On Thursday May 12, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT hosted a visiting delegation from China, headed by the Party Secretary of Guangdong Province, Hu Chunhua (Chinese: 胡春华 ) and also including the Mayor of Shenzhen, Xu Qin (Chinese: 许勤 ), the Chinese Ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai (Chinese: 崔天凯 ) and the Consul-General to New York, Zhang Qiyue (Chinese: 章启月 ). The visitors met with McGovern Director Robert Desimone and faculty members H. Robert Horvitz and Guoping Feng, and listened to presentations on the McGovern Institute’s collaboration with neuroscience researchers at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT). The director of SIAT, Fan Jianping (Chinese: 樊建平 ) also attended the meeting, and they discussed the potential for future collaborations and the commercial development of new therapeutics for brain disease in Guangdong.

Robert Desimone, the McGovern Director, said “It was an honor to have Party Secretary Hu Chunhua and his delegation visit the McGovern Institute. He expressed his sincere concern for the many people suffering from brain disease, ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease. We believe our collaborative projects in Guangdong Province offer real hope.” The delegation later toured the MIT Media Lab and met with MIT Provost Martin Schmidt.

MIT marks 100 years in Cambridge with “Crossing the Charles” competition

Anne Trafton |

They arrived via water and over land, by raft and hydrofoil, on foot and in experimental vehicles. Some paddled. Some danced. Some walked alongside robots. In all, hundreds of members of the MIT community on Saturday celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Institute’s move from Boston into Cambridge, Massachusetts with a unique procession across the Charles River, fueled by humor and creativity.

The “Crossing the Charles” parade and competition, the centerpiece of MIT’s May 7 Moving Day celebrations, took place simultaneously in the water and on the bridge that carries Massachusetts Avenue over the river.

In the river, a festive flotilla of watercraft journeyed across, including an electric hydrofoil craft, a motorized swarm of kayaks, a bamboo raft, and a pedal-powered floating platform in the shape of the dome from MIT’s main building.

Simultaneously, a colorful parade of students, faculty, staff, and alumni — plus a robotic cheetah — marched across the bridge, some with large floats in tow. Neuroscientists transported an 8-foot-high brain model, made out of plywood and set on wheels; MIT Libraries staff carried a fabric “river on sticks,” adorned with books and a laptop; undergraduates guided a “StrandBeaver,” a massive kinetic sculpture; and MIT’s Casino Rueda salsa dancers, a student club, stopped to perform. Hundreds of alumni marched across at the end of the parade.

“The diversity of the MIT community was on full display,” said John Ochsendorf, professor of civil and environmental engineering and architecture, and a faculty co-chair of the event. “You saw it all, from the brain to the bamboo.”

At an award ceremony following the crossing, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said he wanted to “thank the city of Cambridge for their generosity for 100 years” and joked that the city resembled a tolerant host enduring the visit of a long-running house guest.

“We are glad you stayed,” responded Cambridge Mayor Denise Simmons, in remarks following Reif’s comments.

Simmons also called MIT “a blessing and not a burden” and, in the spirit of the day, noted how useful it was to “keep a sense of humor” intact. Nearby, a 30-foot-high replica of a stone megalith bobbed in the river while a mechanical goose sauntered across Memorial Drive.

A noodle raft, a cheetah, and Oliver Smoot, of course

Moving Day, and the parade across the Charles River, was created in homage to MIT’s ceremonial 1916 crossing of the river, when the Institute’s charter was transported across on a barge, the Bucentaur. The 2016 celebration continued into the evening, with a multimedia extravaganza in Killian Court, followed by dance parties around campus whose themes traced 100 years of music and culture.

Moving Day is part of the series of “MIT 2016” celebrations that have been ongoing this year, commemorating MIT’s first century in Cambridge and launching the Institute’s next century of engagement with the world. MIT was founded in 1861, in Boston, before relocating to the Kendall Square area of Cambridge.

The idea behind the river-crossing event was to “let people do whatever they want and express their technical creativity,” said Annette Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering, and the other faculty co-chair of the event. “And people responded — really the whole community.”

Indeed, the parade and competition consisted of 26 entries on the water and 28 groups crossing the bridge. The more conventional water entries included boats from the MIT varsity sailing team and star rower Veronica Toro ’16, an Olympic hopeful. There were also folding kayaks, a “noodle raft” lashed together from pool noodles and kickboards, and a jet-powered boat from MIT’s International Design Center.

“All the watercraft stayed afloat,” Ochsendorf noted approvingly.

(For the record: Participants wore lifejackets and safety personnel were on hand.)

Up on the bridge, members of MIT’s Emergency Medical Services drove an ambulance that is dedicated to the memory of MIT police officer Sean Collier, while experimental vehicles of all kinds dotted the parade. MIT students and alumni demonstrated an aluminum-powered car, cutting-edge wheelchair designs, and a bamboo bicycle, among other entries.

Meanwhile MIT’s robotic cheetah, which can run at over 13 miles per hour, strolled across at a leisurely pace.

The parade’s grand marshal was Oliver Smoot ’62, a familiar name in local lore. As multitudes of area runners and walkers have noticed, the sidewalk over the bridge is marked in increments of “Smoots” — after a 1958 MIT prank in which Smoot’s friends got him to lie down, repeatedly, until they had crossed the entire bridge. For the record, Smoot is 5 feet 7 inches tall, and the bridge is 364.4 Smoots long.

Before the parade, Smoot reenacted lying down on the bridge’s sidewalk but noted that it had been easier for him to do so as an undergraduate. “We were faster and lighter then,” he joked.

Awards gala

A panel of six members of the MIT administration serving as judges gave out four awards to the participants, after what MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt termed “careful deliberation.”

Brain researchers from three different MIT institutes and departments won the soon-to-be-prestigious Da Vinci Award, given for “creativity and wonder,” for their supersized brain model. Students from Course 4.032 (Design Studio: Information and Visualization) took home the Bosworth Award for “beauty and elegant design,” for their large zooplankton-motif structure, “Time Spirit and the Masquerade of Power,” which also featured printed images from MIT’s campus and history.

Researchers from MIT’s Pappalardo Lab won the Tech Pioneer Award for the “most innovative” craft in the flotilla; they transformed an obstacle course for robots from Course 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing) into a floating vessel. And the MIT Libraries team won the Beaver Spirit Award for the entry best exemplifying school spirit.

The brain researchers’ team, led by Julie Pryor of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, built their float over two months, with 50 people participating. The plywood vehicle, called “A Beautiful Mind,” consists of 22 coronal “slices” of the brain, based on the personal data of team member Rosa Lafer-Sousa, a researcher in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS).

Ben Bartelle, also of BCS, personally cut the plywood slices at MIT’s hobby shop.

“We’re MRI people,” Bartelle told MIT News. “We see slices like that all the time.”

So what is it like to see a giant plywood replica of one’s brain, on wheels, crossing the bridge over the Charles River?

“It’s pretty special,” Lafer-Sousa acknowledged. “I couldn’t sleep last night. It felt a little like Christmas.”

Mens, manus, cor: A spectacle on Killian Court

As dusk later fell over the Institute, several thousand students, faculty, staff, and friends filed into MIT’s Killian Court to witness a spectacular pageant of singing, dancing, computer art, and the embodiment of the MIT spirit.

With an illuminated MIT dome serving as a beacon for anyone within eyeshot, the event began with a procession of students bearing oars, a symbol of the 1916 river-crossing, and a parade of drummers welcoming onlookers to the fête.

Over the next hour, characters representing the living spirits of MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”) — and the two individuals on the MIT seal — guided the audience through the story of MIT from its humble beginnings in Boston through the Institute’s move to Cambridge a century ago and into the present. “Mens,” representing the theoretical, scientific, humanistic elements of MIT life, and “Manus,” representing the practical applications of these disciplines, spatted over what they thought was the most important aspect of life at MIT: theory or practice.

The two took turns making their case, bringing out, for example, human-sized bobbleheads featuring some of the most noted MIT faculty and alumni from each “side” of the mind-or-hand debate and recounting successes over the previous century — from the 19th-century application of chemical engineering to the new science of home economics by Ellen Swallow Richards to the 2015 detection of gravitational waves led by MIT Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss. Guided by a robot voiced by MIT alumnus and “Car Talk” host Ray Magliozzi, the duo eventually realized that only with both mind and hand working in unison — and with the addition of “cor,” or “heart” — could MIT have developed into the thriving institution it is today.

Appropriately for the day’s weather — which had a distinctly wintry feel, with chilly temperatures, a brisk wind, and some rain — the event’s finale featured an undulating umbrella dance, which led, finally, into an impressive fireworks display over the Charles River. When it was all over, a roar of applause and hooting filled Killian Court, as attendees grabbed their own umbrellas and made their way to various dance parties hosted across the Institute to cap the day’s festivities.

Oliver Smoot, who has retired to Southern California, noted that he, for one, wasn’t bothered by the elements. “It’s all been great,” he said. And his friend Peter Miller ’62, who rode with Smoot in the grand marshal’s car during the afternoon parade, explained how he had ignored the cold: “From the warmth of all the people waving, and watching, and jumping up and down.”

Maia Weinstock contributed to this story.