RU group visits MIT
In October, a group of RU managers visited MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston. The purpose of the trip was to see some colleagues, learn from them, share knowledge, and start work on the RU strategy for 2030.
The cooperation between RU and MIT has been going on since 2005. RU is part of a membership-based program for large organizations interested in long-term, strategic relationships with MIT called ILP.
The group from RU met with various people connected to MIT in different ways, among others, Court Chilton, Bhaskar Pant, and Clara Piloto, who talked about lifelong learning, Amitava "Babi" Mitra, who introduced New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), Thomas Kochan who discussed work post-Covid, and Phil Budden who talked about innovation, but Phil visited RU last month and met representatives of Icelandic companies in the ILP partnership. Then there was a long and productive meeting with Janet Rankin, director of the Teaching and Learning Laboratory at MIT.
The different buildings of the university were visited, among other things, the Innovation Headquarters and MIT.Nano. Innovation Headquarters houses labs and other resources that benefit innovative companies, students, and MIT alumni.
At the MIT.Nano building, all kinds of research are done, but all use microtechnology. There were many remarkable things to see. Still, perhaps the most significant is that the building itself is designed so that more precision can be obtained from all the measuring instruments used in the building than can be achieved elsewhere. This way, an attempt is made to exclude the influence of external factors in the environment as much as possible. No employee has an office in the building – it's a vast shared laboratory where expensive infrastructure is shared by everyone who can benefit from it.
Another remarkable thing the group saw at MIT.Nano building was a large mural of the school's main building, formed from the names of all those who have left their mark on MIT from its inception to 2018, including all students, faculty, and staff. Among other names that can be found there is Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson, a professor of the Department of Computer Science who represented the department during the visit, but he is an MIT alumni.
The group from RU consisted of the President, the Dean of the School of Social Science, and the Chairs of the Departments or their representatives. The trip was, among other things, to give this group of pretty recent managers room to coordinate.
