tEp (Tau Epsilon Phi, Xi Chapter) is one of the 34 Independent Living Groups at MIT. We eat food, live in a house, and weigh a lot if you add the twenty-two of us together.
Our house has existed at MIT since 1919, and has a long tradition of housing some of the most creative engineers and scientists at MIT. In fact, more than 35% of our members plan to, or have already founded, at least one company. Additionally, more than 30% of our alumni continue on (or are already involved in) graduate studies in a wide variety of fields, with 4% continuing on to become professors. If you have an interest in living in an active creative and productive environment with lots of totally awesome people, check out our Rush! page, stop by anytime, or send us an email (rushchair@tep.org)
We encourage UPPERCLASSMEN to consider tEp for housing, more than half of our new members each year come from upperclassmen and graduate students! tEp isn't just for freshmen!
tEp is well known for it's incredibly creative and empowering environment. At tEp, we don't think about big things, we do them. Here are some examples of amazing things that have happened through the work of tEps, although it's a small sample of the hundreds of successful and awesome alumni from our house.
- Sloan Kulper ('03) designs the new biomedical research institute in Chengdu, China. The cell-shaped building is intended to look like a cell from the outside and has structures inspired by molecular biology inside.
- Alex Hornstein ('07) is one of Forbes Young Inventors. In his time at tEp, he's built cool projects like the GeekyBoard, Talking Credit Card, Laser Projector, MP3 Player Earring, 2 Dimensional Balancing Robot, Learning Bytes, Solar heated stills, Key Zing, Murobot, and the tEp clOck.
- Mark Tobenkin ('07), one of the founding members of the current incarnation of the MIT Electronic Research Society, created the XiLeit, a sound reacting light toy.
- Sam Glidden ('08) launched a travel website terranac.mit.edu to help people share stories.
- The first use of an electronic monitoring system for a laundry machine. Fred Fenning (SB, 1977, course 6) built an analog phone system that allowed you to "call" the washer to make sure it wasn't in use when he rebuilt the house's phone system in 1975.
- Ray Kurzweil invented the electronic keyboard, the CCD flat-bed scanner, the first reading machine for the blind, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech recognition. He's also founded nine businesses to date.
- Fred Fenning was also one of the first people in the world to build programmable laser light shows.
- Neil W. Woodward III (SB '84, course 8) is a bona fide United States Astronaut!
- SquidLabs, an independent research lab founded by Colin "Wankah" Bulthaup (SB/MNG 2001, course 6) and Eric "U-Boat" Wilhelm (SB 1999, SM 2001, PhD 2004, course 2).
- Instructables.com, a community service site launched by SquidLabs in 2005 to give a forum for open source projects.
- Discovery of the 10th planet from the sun (Xena) by Chad Trujillo (SB 1995)
- Discovery of Quaoar by Chad Trujillo.
Kovio, a company developing next-generation lithography techniques, founded by Colin Bulthaup (SB/MNG 2001).
Colin Bulthaup recognized as one of the top 100 inventors.
Ray Kurzweil inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame
Colin Bulthaup and Eric Wilhelm together win 2000 Collegiate Inventor's award for the development of the new lithography technique known as Liquid Embossing.
Ray Kurzweil wins the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, and the 1999 National Medal of Technology from President Clinton.
Ringtone Symphony, a symphony played entirely by controlling the audience's cell phones, was developed by Golan Levin (BS '94, MS '00)
Electronic Rope, developed by Squid Labs, causes the resistance across a rope to change as a function of tension -- useful for making sure that structures are safe, and also for art work.
- Zeroprestige.org, a website for the design iteration of kitesurfing and kitepowered sports launched by SquidLabs in 2004.
- The ColorTower, a controllable LED sculpture, is developed by Mike Short using Color Kinetics lights (to be featured in Make Magazine).
- The LightSuit, developed by Kevin McCormick and Carl Gruesz.
- The Tensor, developed by Kevin McCormick.
- The Obelisk, an implementation of persistence of vision displays, (and a regular sight at Steer Roast for many years), built by Kevin McCormick and Carl Gruesz.
- The Shadow Engine, a piece that was designed to be feedback controlled by the audience, built by Kevin McCormick and Carl Gruesz.
- There are tEp professors at many universities in the country, including
- California Institute of Technology, Chad Trujillo (SB '95)
- Colorado State University, Howard Siegel (SB '72)
- Loyala Marymount University, Philip Dorin (SB '70)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, John Carroll (SB '70), Michael Ernst (SB '89, SM '92), Jeffrey Shapiro (SB '67, SM '68, EE '69, PhD '70)
- Middlesex County College, Robert Roth (SB, '66)
- New York Medical College, Melvin Weiss (SB '62)
- Northwestern University, Charles Manski (SB '70, PhD '73)
- University of Alabama Birmingham, Joseph Horton (SB '69)
- University of Colorado-Boulder, Jeffrey Fox (SB '75)
- University of Colorado, Thomas Finger (SB '72, SM, '73 PhD '75)
- University of Illinois at Chicago, Robert Abrams (SB '61)
- University of Maryland School of Medicine, Kevin P O Connell (SB '85)
- Universite de Montreal, Martin Goldstein (SB '57)
- University of San Francisco, Steven Alter (SB '67, PhD '75)
- University of Wisconsin, Gerald Marwell (SB '57)
- SUNY-Brockport, Sanford Miller (SB '60)
- Syracuse University, James Kallmerten (SB '75)
- Wellesley College, Alan Shuchat (SB '63)
- And our alumni have founded, are partners in, or are president of many companies, including:
- Baja Sol Inc.
- Basic Adhesives
- Basis Technology
- Beigel Technology
- Bienenfeld Indl
- Big Blue Computer Consulting
- Blue State Digital
- FatKat
- Frank Freed Subit
- Hematology-Oncology Medical Group
- Hess Investments
- Image Engineering
- International Home Products
- KCP (Now Xerox TextBridge)
- King Communications
- Kovio
- Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (now Lernout & Hauspie)
- Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies
- Kurzweil Educational Systems
- Kurzweil Music Systems
- Kurzweil Technologies
- MDE Electric
- Northwest Gastroenterologists
- Populex
- Resource Insight
- Ropes & Gray
- ShotSpotter
- SnipeSwipe
- Squid Labs
- Sonar Radio
- Terrapin Electronics
- Thompson Consulting
And that's just the tip of the iceburg! Even now, current tEps are designing all manner of awesome new things - EEG controlled light sculptures, fuel injectors, next generation suspension systems, environmentally friendly systems for synthesizing quantum dots, protein mediated nanosystem formation, next generation lead-cooled nuclear reactors, carbon nanotube rings, new lithography techniques, and much more every day.
We hope you enjoy your visit to our home page.
Teply Things
Vital Stats
|
Address |
Tau Epsilon Phi
253 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02116-1609 |
| Phone |
(617) 262 5090 |
Other Teps
Tep is a national fraternity. See the home page of our national organization on the Web.
About the TEP WWW Page
Other versions of the TEP web page:
Whodunnit
Web Design and current Webmaster:<\p>
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Copyright © 2006 Tau Epsilon Phi, Xi Chapter
