MIT Professor Emeritus (post-tenure) Sanjoy Mitter, a member of the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, died June 26 at age 89. An expert in the theoretical foundations of systems, communication and control, Mitter contributed to significant engineering applications, most notably in the control of interconnected power systems and pattern recognition. Sanjoy Mitter was born in 1933 in Calcutta, India, to a prominent family with a distinguished line of jurists. His paternal grandfather, Sir Binod Mitter, was a member of the Judicial Committee of Britain's Privy Council. His paternal great-grandfather was Sir Ramesh Mitter, the first Indian chief justice of the Calcutta High Court in the 19th century. His maternal grandfather, Sir C. C. Ghose, was a justice of the Calcutta High Court and was several times acting chief justice. He was born to father Subodh Mitter and mother Protiva Mitter, nee Ghose. Subodh Mitter broke with the judicial lineage of his family and went on to become an electrical engineer and industrialist. Sanjoy followed suit, receiving his BS in mathematics in Calcutta in 1954, his BS in electrical engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London in 1957, and his PhD from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1965....

Eminent theoretical physicist and Dirac Medalist Roman Jackiw, MIT professor emeritus and holder of the Department of Physics' Jerrold Zacharias chair, died June 14 at age 83. He was a member of the MIT physics community for 54 years. A leader in the sophisticated use of quantum field theory to illuminate physical problems, his influential work on topology and anomalies in quantum field theory (QFT) underlies many aspects of theoretical physics today. Iain Stewart, the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP) director and Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professor of Science, says that Jackiw 'served as an inspiration for what one can achieve as a theoretical physicist. He made profound contributions to physical problems in a wide range of areas, including particle physics, condensed matter physics, and gravitational physics.' 'Professor Jackiw was a pioneer in the field of mathematical physics,' says Nergis Mavalvala, the Curtis and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics and dean of the MIT School of Science. 'His imaginative use of quantum field theory shed light on physical problems, including his work on topological solitons, field theory at high temperatures, the existence of anomalies, and the role of these anomalies in particle physics."...

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has awarded the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience to Ila Fiete, professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and director of the K. Lisa Yang Integrative Computational Neuroscience Center. The SfN, the world's largest neuroscience organization, announced that Fiete received the prize for her breakthrough research modeling hippocampal grid cells, a component of the navigational system of the mammalian brain. 'Fiete is considered one of the strongest theorists of her generation who has conducted highly influential work demonstrating that grid cell networks have attractor-like dynamics,' says Hollis Cline, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute of California and head of the Swartz Prize selection committee. Grid cells are found in the cortex of all mammals. Their unique firing properties, creating a neural representation of our surroundings, allow us to navigate the world. Fiete and collaborators developed computational models showing how interactions between neurons can lead to the formation of periodic lattice-like firing patterns of grid cells and stabilize these patterns to create spatial memory. They showed that as we move around in space, these neural patterns can integrate velocity signals to provide a constantly updated estimate of our position, as well as detect and correct errors in the estimated position....

MIT condensed matter theory professors of physics Liang Fu and Patrick A. Lee received the inaugural Larkin Awards in Theoretical Physics, awarded by the William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Minnesota. Fu received the 2022 Anatoly Larkin Award for a junior researcher for his work on 3D topological insulators and odd-parity topological superconductors, crystalline topological insulators, and Majorana zero modes, 'and for being an intellectual leader of his generation.' Fu is interested in novel topological phases of matter in solid state physics to predict new phases of matter and topological materials. He works on the theory of topological insulators and topological superconductors, and the potential applications of topological materials, ranging from tunable electronics and spintronics to quantum computation. He received his BS in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004 and his PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. He was a junior fellow at Harvard University before joining the MIT Department of Physics as an assistant professor in 2012....