By Berit Johannes and Andreas Schulz

From left to right: Berit, Felix and Andreas.

Dear new and returning members of the Sidney-Pacific community:

It’s our great pleasure to welcome you (back) to the Sidney-Pacific Graduate Residence.  However, we just returned from a year-long sabbatical abroad and assumed our new role of SP housemasters only a few weeks ago.  We would therefore like to take the opportunity to also thank you all and especially the house government for the warm reception and for helping us with the transition.  We are honored and proud to be part of the SP community and to succeed Dottie and Roger Mark, who have been SP’s first housemasters.  We are every bit as excited as the new residents among you to learn more about SP’s culture, to help organize and participate in community activities, and to get to know all of you better.  Our resident community is amazingly diverse, and provides a wonderful opportunity to complement academic training with an enriching social and cultural experience.  We encourage you to make the best use of it.  Before we tell you a little bit more about ourselves, we thought that some of you might wonder how MIT defines the responsibilities of graduate community housemasters.  First and foremost, we are here to support you in all aspects of your development, prepared to act as advisor, advocate or mentor.  We also provide academic and social support through community events, cultural and educational programs, and we advise SP’s executive council.  Perhaps most importantly, we are your neighbors, and we hope you will stop by our apartment, be it to just say `hello,’ to engage in some good discussions on a random topic, to have someone listen to your concerns, or to play with and learn from our three-and-a-half-year old son.
Here is some additional information about us.

Andreas is Professor of Mathematics of Operations Research and Holder of the Patrick J. McGovern Chair at the Sloan School of Management, which he joined as a member of the faculty in 1998.  He is also a faculty member of MIT’s Operations Research Center, former head of the Operations Research and Statistics Group at Sloan, and a former member of the Singapore-MIT Alliance.  He has held visiting research professorships in the Institute of Theoretical Computer Science at ETH Zurich and in the Department of Quantitative Economics at Maastricht University.  Other visiting positions led him to the University of British Columbia, to Eindhoven University of Technology, and to Technische Universität München.  He got his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Technische Universität Berlin in 1996.  His research interests include algorithmic game theory, approximation algorithms, combinatorial optimization, computational complexity, integer programming, network flows, polyhedral combinatorics, and scheduling theory.  In his spare time, he likes to play badminton, beach volleyball, soccer, squash, table tennis, tennis and ultimate frisbee, and he is an avid hiker and skier.

Berit also holds a PhD degree in Applied Mathematics from Technische Universität Berlin.  She was a visiting PhD student as well as a postdoc at MIT.  Her research revolves around computational complexity and robust optimization.  She also is a freelance consultant, and she has industrial experience as an Operations Research Analyst.  Berit has been deeply involved in the MIT community since coming here with Andreas.  Among other things, she has taken an active part in the ceramics studio of the Student Art Association, and she has practiced American Jiu-Jitsu Self-Defense at MIT since 2002, where she now is an instructor.  She regularly plays volleyball in the Z-Center.

By Jenny Wang.

Courtesy of culinaryschools.com.

Now that orientation is over, the supply of free food has dwindled, and you might have to fend for yourself when it comes to eating.  You might have to fend for yourself when it comes to eating.  In addition to generally being cheaper than restaurant fare, home-made foods are often far healthier.  Even if you don’t make everything from scratch, you’ll at least know what you’re eating from the ingredients and nutrition labels.  In this article, I will share some tricks I use to make things a bit easier in the kitchen so you can enjoy nutritious meals without spending too much time cooking.

The key to easy cooking is thinking ahead and planning. Stock up on long-lasting pantry staples like pasta and canned goods when they go on sale.  Then, before each trip to the grocery store, consider how many meals you’ll have to cook in the next week so you know how much to buy.  I like to make sure I always have a selection of longer-lasting fruits like pears and apples on hand for easy snacks and canned soups and noodles for easy meals.  (Tip: Use a creamy soup as a sauce over noodles or rice for a heartier meal.  If you have a rice cooker without a timer, convert it to an automatic cooker with a cheap timer outlet.  Set the timer to also turn off after a certain period so the rice does not dry out from being warmed too long.)

Planning ahead so you can pre-prep commonly used ingredients can save you a lot of time when cooking on busy evenings.  When you have some time (for example as a study break or while waiting for pasta to cook), be your own sous chef and prep herbs, vegetables, and fruits ahead of time.  Even if I’m not using them that day, I like to wash produce when I’m waiting for something to cook in the kitchen.  This way, I’m not wasting time standing around and the produce will be ready for whenever I use them.  However, not all vegetables and fruits keep well after being washed, so you may have to experiment a bit.  I like to reuse plastic salad mix boxes to store washed vegetables.  Line the container with a cloth napkin (or clean kitchen towel or paper towel) to keep washed produce fresh longer.  The napkin soaks up excess water so the produce does not sit in a puddle.  (Tip: Keep washed fruits in the fridge as grab and go snacks.  You can put them in a bowl in the produce bin to keep them from drying out.)

While cooking, do everything you can to expedite clean up.  Be neat when transferring ingredients from the cutting board to the pot (Tip: A flexible cutting board can help prevent spills when dumping ingredients into the pot.)  For recipes that require precise amounts, consider using a food scale instead of measuring cups and spoons.  Cover the scale with plastic wrap to keep it clean.  If the food is too hot to eat right away, put it aside and clean up while waiting for it to cool.

Of course, having a good stock of fast, easy recipes is probably the most important part of saving time in the kitchen, so check out next month’s SPeaker for some of my favorite easy recipes.

Warning: Do not leave food that is cooking unattended.   Also, do not let smoke out into the hallway outside your room unless there is an actual fire.