ESP Biography

BLAKE ELIAS, MIT junior

Major: 6: Computer Science & Electr Eng

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: G

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Blake is a junior at MIT studying computer science, with some computational biology in the mix too. He has taken classes and done work relating to machine learning, augmented reality and synthetic biology. He loves getting others excited about these areas and (trying to) inspire creative thought that will help others to invent the future.

In his free time (read: every day), Blake learns, practices, and sometimes teaches yoga and meditation, as he believes these are essential ingredients in a happy and productive life. Come learn how meditating can help you take over the world!

Past Classes

(Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

X11744: Hacking the Mind with Meditation in Splash 2017 (Nov. 18 - 19, 2017)

X10746: Hacking the Mind with Meditation in Splash 2016 (Nov. 19 - 20, 2016)

Learn some simple breathing techniques, explore the mind-breath connection, and meditate! Learn how the breath can affect the state of our mind, lead to different states of consciousness, automatically reduce stress, increase focus, and make us more productive and effective at working with others. Enjoy some guided meditation! This may be the best preparation you can do to make sure you are at peak mental capacity. So that you can learn as effectively as possible from the rest of MIT Splash! (Or do well in school, apply to colleges, or succeed at anything!!!) Students may also take an interest in S10607: The Neuroscience of Meditation. Compared with that class, you may expect this one to be more practical application and less theory. We won't delve into all the science (though we will talk about some). We will devote more time towards getting ourselves into an actual meditative state, reflecting on the experience as a group, and presenting/discussing ideas that can help us bring a meditative state of mind into everyday life.

X9916: Hacking the Mind with Meditation in Splash 2015 (Nov. 21 - 22, 2015)

Learn some simple breathing techniques, explore the mind-breath connection, and meditate! Learn how the breath can affect the state of our mind, automatically reduce stress, increase focus, and make us more productive and effective at working with others. Enjoy some guided meditation!

X9437: Hacking the Mind with Meditation in Spark 2015 (Mar. 14 - 15, 2015)

X9438: Yoga and Meditation in Spark 2015 (Mar. 14 - 15, 2015)

Dance warm-up, sun salutations, yoga postures and guided meditation. Bring yoga mat (if you have one; not strictly needed!) & sweater/blanket.

C6252: "Big Data": Programming Collective Intelligence in Splash! 2012 (Nov. 17 - 18, 2012)

How does Google decide which web links are relevant to your search? How do sites like Netflix or Amazon recommend which movies you should watch or which products you should buy? How does Gmail decide which emails are spam, and (more recently) which emails are more important than the rest? People solve problems like this with so-called "collective intelligence" algorithms. These algorithms are combinations of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and statistics. We'll look at some pretty simple ones that do cool things but aren't hard to code! The goal is to uncover some of the magic that seems to make these things work.