Above the Fold
Cron jobs on steroids - agentic tools are here:
The Year of the Horse looks like it will also be the year that agentic AI becomes a default way of engaging with research computing resources. Two slightly breathless articles [1] [2] at The New Stack have interesting perspectives on how coding and agent tools have reached an eye-opening level of maturity in the last few months.
Quilee Simeon, a student working with the ORCD team, has a draft documentation PR that describes adding an OpenClaw session to their account. As people explore these tools, do remember:
- You should not really trust anything on the internet (seriously)
- In the end any tool output generated by you is something you are accountable for - use agents and AI responsibly!
- If you are unclear on how to think about cybersecurity around emerging agentic tools, please reach out to orcd-help@mit.edu. These are super powerful tools for productivity, but you can shoot yourself in the foot (or in your home directory) too!
Fall 2026 ORCD Seed Fund Grants
The MIT Office of Research Computing and Data (ORCD) is continuing our strategic Seed Fund initiative. The Seed Fund is one part of a strategic effort supporting infrastructure for applied AI/ML research, creating a powerful AI/ML platform for all of MIT.
The deadline for this round of seed fund proposals is March 4, 2026. In this funding round, ORCD is planning to support around 6 project opportunities for one semester of graduate student funding (Fall 2026) and 3-6 months of enhanced compute resources.
See our Seed Fund page on our website for more details and application instructions.
If you have questions, please send an email to orcd-help@mit.edu.
What We’re Reading
- Dunning Kruger still alive and well?
- AI learning too well about PR reviews–let’s all be civil AIs.
- Almost 20 minutes of stable plasma in a tokamak from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
- Year of the Horse and choreographed humanoid robots.
- Slightly “alarmist” tone article about roles that will change with AI, so far it reads to us more like supercharging humans than eliminating jobs–despite the article's dramatic tone.
- Artemis course corrections, lunar orbit April windows still possible.
Computational Research Skills Survey
The Office of Research Computing and Data is helping facilitate a course called Practical Computational Thinking annually during IAP. We would like to hear from members of the MIT community about their computational research skill set and needs in order to make this course as useful as possible.
Input from current MIT students will be especially helpful.
Take the survey here.
Intro to Engaging Workshops
The MIT Office of Research Computing's Engaging Cluster is available to the MIT community for running computational workloads that don't run well on your own computer. This hands-on tutorial walks you through the basics of using Engaging for your research.
This course is being run regularly this Spring; the same material will be covered in each instance of the class.
- Tuesday, March 10: 1-3PM
- Tuesday, March 24: 1-3PM
- Wednesday, April 15: 2-4PM (sign ups open 30 days before)
- Tuesday, April 28: 2-4PM (sign ups open 30 days before)
See the classes page on the ORCD website for more details and signup information.
INTERSECT Bootcamp ‘26
The INTERSECT Research Software Engineering Bootcamp will be a 4.5 day intensive hands-on workshop focusing on practices that will help research software developers improve the quality, reproducibility, and sustainability of their software.
Applications close on March 13, 2026. The bootcamp runs July 13-17, 2026 at Princeton University. See this link for more details.