Bartolotta wins Jostens Trophy
MIT senior guard Jimmy Bartolotta added more hardware to the most decorated basketball season in Institute history as he was selected as the 2009 recipient of the highly coveted Jostens Trophy. The annual award recognizes outstanding student-athletes in NCAA Division III basketball for excellence in the classroom, on the playing court and in the community.
The winners are chosen by a national selection committee that consists of college coaches, former athletes, college administrators and selected members of the media. The members of the national selection committee cast their votes based on three criteria: basketball ability, academic prowess and community service.
Bartolotta will be presented with the Jostens Trophy on March 19.
Hewitt, 45-year MIT employee, honored for work with Brockton youth
Kenneth "Sonny" Hewitt, the assistant director for human resources and facilities at the Lab for Nuclear Science and a 45-year employee of MIT, was honored on March 15 by the Brockton Youth Foundation for his ongoing leadership in supporting the city's youth.
Hewitt, who has served as a Brockton Community Basketball official for 24 years, began his career at MIT on April 16, 1964, and has had various titles at the Institute throughout the years, including coach of the junior varsity basketball team.
The Brockton Youth Foundation was recently established by parents and civic leaders to provide funding, leadership and programs for youths in the city, and the event honoring Hewitt and five other residents -- titled "Breakfast with Champions" -- was its first fundraiser.
Four RSI students take top science prizes
Four students from MIT's Research Science Institute (RSI) summer program won top prizes at the Intel Science Talent Search on March 10. Eric Larson won the top prize ($100,000), Noah Arbesfeld ranked sixth ($25,000), Nilesh Tripuraneni took ninth ($20,000), and Marianna Mao was named among the top 40 ($5,000). They were mentored, respectively, by mathematics professor Pavel Etingof, mathematics graduate student David Jordan, physics professor Krishna Rajagopal and astrophysics graduate students Phillip Zukin and Sarah Vigeland.
MIT E-Team participating in March Madness for the Mind
The MIT E-Team, "Affordable Solar Thermal Microgenerator Technology for Rural Cogeneration in Southern Africa," has been selected to participate in the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance's (NCIIA) annual "March Madness for the Mind" exhibition on March 20.
March Madness for the Mind is an opportunity for the nation's top Excellence and Entrepreneurship Teams (E-Teams) -- collaborating groups of college students, faculty and industry mentors who have received NCIIA grants -- to unveil their inventions to the public, many for the first time.
MIT's team is working on developing a novel solar thermal technology that lowers up-front and fuel costs while decreasing the risk of theft. The turbine uses parabolic concentrating solar collectors and a heat engine constructed from mass-manufactured HVAC and automotive parts. The technology can affordably supply both electricity and hot water/heating to rural institutions such as primary schools or health clinics.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 18, 2009 (download PDF).
