Hello SPS!

We are excited to announce our faculty-student dinners for this semester:

• Professor Richard Fletcher: 11/30 (Wednesday)@6 pm (Mu Lan, Taiwanese Restaurant)
• Professor Erin Kara: 12/5 (Monday)@6 pm (Mu Lan, Taiwanese Restaurant)
• Professor Lina Necib: 12/6 (Tuesday)@6 pm (Monkfish)

This semester, to make sure everyone has the highest probability of going to the one they want most, we will have one central sign up form for the lottery process of all faculty dinners. Please sign up with this form: https://forms.gle/QNxTup8jp1dM1hDn9

The form will ask for your availability and relative interest for all, so please sign up if you’re interested in ANY of them! Similar to last semester, we will run a lottery process if there’s more students signed up than we can take (10 people), but this time, we will adjust the weight in the lottery according to your relative interest. 

Here’s a bit more info about the professors:

• Professor Richard Fletcher studies the collective quantum behaviour of many-particle systems using dilute atomic vapours cooled down to nanokelvin temperatures, and manipulated by intricately sculpted laser beams and magnetic fields. The philosophy is to engineer custom-made quantum worlds, with exquisite control over trapping geometry, interparticle interactions, quantum statistics, and gauge fields, and explore the emergence of collective physics from the interplay of these few ingredients. https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/richard-fletcher/
• Professor Erin Kara is the Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics. She is an observational astrophysicist, working to understand the physics behind how black holes grow and affect their environments. She also works to develop new and future space missions. https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/erin-kara/
• Professor Lina Necib is an astroparticle physicist, interested in understanding the origin of Dark Matter. She uses a combination of simulations and observational data to correlate the dynamics of Dark Matter with that of the stars in the Milky Way, and infer properties of Dark Matter. She has investigated the local dynamic structures in the Solar neighborhood using the Gaia, and contributed to building a catalog of local accreted stars using machine learning techniques. https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/lina-necib/

We will email you if you won the lottery for any event. Dinner attendees should meet in the PCR (8-329) 10 minutes beforehand to walk to the restaurant together. 

Please note that signing up for these faculty dinners is a commitment to attend if chosen by the lottery. If you do not notify us of a conflict 24 hours prior to the dinner, you will not be chosen for any subsequent dinners this term. 

Hope to see everyone at the faculty dinners!