TIMtalks

In light of critical student-life issues that have surfaced in the MIT undergraduate community recently, it is time to inspire positive change and overcome the far-too-common feelings of the "imposter syndrome." In this talk, Anjali Thakkar, Founder and Director of TIMtalks, discusses the creation of TIMtalks as a forum to catalyze reflection in the MIT community. Through stories of success and failure, Anjali addresses the need for us as a community to view failure as the first step towards success and the vision of TIMtalks in fostering a community of change agents.

There is a new revolution in education - a "Do Now" approach to learning. It comes in two forms: a literal one, and a more figurative one. The literal Do Now is a small piece of paper handed out at the beginning of class, sort of like a standardized test. The figurative Do Now is a medium to instantly engage students, allow them autonomy to apply their knowledge and skills, and provide them with a metric to improve performance in the future. Today I'm going to talk about a personal struggle which inspired my passion for and experience with the world of education, and how I have taken a Do Now approach at MIT.

Someone once asked me what makes the people of MIT so great. I have countless stories that I could tell from my fours years at this school, but they are not your typical stories about scientists doing the impossible. These are the stories of athletes, journalists, theater geeks, sorority girls, and other students who are breaking the MIT stereotype. These are the stories of individuals who were committed to their passions and turned certain failure into brilliant success.

There is a crisis in the pharmaceutical industry. The number of drugs approved each year is declining rapidly and many fear we have reached an end to drug discovery for major diseases. In this talk, I will discuss how the undruggable protein problem has motivated me and how along my journey I have experienced the remarkable culture at MIT of students striving to take paths untraveled by others.

In electrical engineering and computer science, women are few and far between, and the percentage of undergraduate computer science degrees awarded to women has decreased 25% since 1985. What is it about the nature of computing that deters women, and why is the problem worsening? And most importantly: What can we do about it?