Brian G. Anderson ’13 was found dead in his third floor Next House dormitory room by MIT Campus Police slightly before noon yesterday. He was 21.

We are all deeply saddened by the passing of Brian G. Anderson, a member of our community, and the third death of a student on campus during this academic year. Any one of these events stuns us; to have three in a year is incomprehensible.

This past month, Associate Professor of Neuroscience James DiCarlo was announced as the new head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). The BCS department is the home of the Course 9 major, and it is the academic home of most of the faculty members in the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the new Simons Center for the Social Brain, headed by outgoing BCS head Mriganka Sur.

Political campaigns, which have borrowed tricks from Madison Avenue for decades, are now fully engaged on the latest technological frontier in advertising: aiming specific ads at potential supporters based on where they live, the websites they visit and their voting record.