What does your license plate say about you?
In the United States, more than 9 million vehicles are equipped with personalized license plates, in which preferred words, numbers, or phrases replace a random assignment of letters and numbers to identify a vehicle. While each state and the District of Columbia maintains its own rules regarding appropriate selections, creativity reigns when choosing a unique personalized license plate. Plus, the stories behind these plates can be just as fascinating as the people who use them.
It’s no surprise to learn that many members of the MIT community have participated in such vehicular fantasies. Read on to meet some of them and learn about the geeky, artistic, tech-savvy, and MIT-related license plates that color their vehicles.
A little corner of technological paradise
One of the most famous cars on campus is Samuel Klein’s 1998 Honda Civic. More than just a personalized license plate, it’s an art car, a vehicle custom-designed to express an artistic idea or theme. Klein’s Civic is covered in hundreds of 5.5-inch floppy disks in different colors, and it sports disks, computer keys, and other tech accessories inside. With its custom two-way license plate, “DSKDRV” (“floppy disk drive”), the art car got its start on the West Coast.
Klein, a longtime member of the MIT Media Lab, MIT Press, and MIT Libraries, first heard about the car from Phoebe Ayers, another Wikipedian and current MIT librarian. An artist friend of Ayers, Lara Wiegand, had designed and decorated the car in Seattle but wanted to find a new owner. Klein was intrigued and decided to fly west to check out the Civic.
“I went out there and spent an entire afternoon seeing how she maintained the car and talking about engineering and mechanics and logistics, what was good and what was bad,” Klein says. “It had already been through many iterations.”
Klein quickly decided he was up to the task of becoming the new owner. As he drove the car home across the country, it “received a wide range of really interesting reactions from different parts of the United States.”
Back in Massachusetts, Klein made some adjustments: “We painted the hubcaps, we added racing stripes, we added a new generation of laser-etched glass racetracks, and, you know, I had my own collection of old-tech records that seemed to fit.”
The personalized license plate also had to be revamped. In Washington state, it was called “DISKDRV,” but, Klein explains, “we had to shorten it a little bit because there are fewer letters in Massachusetts.”
Today, the car has about 250,000 miles on the odometer and an Instagram account. “The biggest challenge is having to resurface the discs, like a lizard, every two or three years,” says Klein, whose partner, an MIT researcher, often parks it on campus. “There’s a little collection of love letters to the car. People leave notes on the car. It’s very cute.”
Marking your place in STEM history
Omar Abudayyeh ’12, PhD ’18, a recent McGovern Fellow at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research who is now an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, shares an equally fascinating story about his personalized license plate, “CRISPR,” that adorns his SUV.
The plaque refers to the genome editing technique that has revolutionized biological and medical research by enabling rapid changes to genetic material. As an MIT graduate student in the lab of Professor Feng Zhang, a pioneering contributor to CRISPR technologies, Abudayyeh was heavily involved in the early development of CRISPR for editing DNA and RNA. In fact, he and Jonathan Gootenberg ’13, another recent McGovern Fellow and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who works closely with Abudayyeh, have discovered many new CRISPR enzymes, such as Cas12 and Cas13, and have applied these technologies to both gene therapy and CRISPR diagnostics.
How did Abudayyeh get his personalized license plate? It was all thanks to his attendance at a genome editing conference in 2022, where another early-career CRISPR researcher, Samuel Sternberg, showed up in a car with New York “CRISPR” license plates. “It caused quite a stir at the conference, and during one of the breaks, Sam and his lab colleagues encouraged us to get the Massachusetts license plate,” Abudayyeh says. “I insisted on getting it, but I applied anyway, paying the $70 and then getting a message that I would receive a letter in eight to 12 weeks to find out whether or not the plate was available. I then drove back to Boston and forgot about the idea until, to my surprise, a few months later the plate arrived in the mail.”
As Abudayyeh continues his affiliation with the McGovern Institute, he and Gootenberg recently established a lab at Harvard Medical School as new faculty members. “We have continued to discover new enzymes, such as Cas7-11, that open new frontiers, such as programmable proteases for RNA sensing and novel therapeutics, and we have applied CRISPR technologies to new efforts in gene editing and aging research,” Abudayyeh notes.
As for his license plate, he says: “I’ve seen people talk about it on Twitter or ask questions on Slack. A couple of times, people have stopped me and said they’d read Walter Isaacson’s book on CRISPR, and asked me what my connection was to it. I’d explain my story — and describe how I was actually in the book, in the chapters about CRISPR diagnostics.”
Shows off his MIT roots and nerd pride
For some, an MIT connection is the only reason they need to register a personalized license plate—or three. Jeffrey Chambers SM ’06, PhD ’14, a graduate of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says he drives around with a Virginia license plate that says “PHD MIT.” Curtis Smith PhD ’02, a professor of practice in nuclear science and engineering, recently joined the MIT faculty after 33 years at the Idaho National Laboratory and keeps a “MITGRAD” plate on his convertible in Idaho Falls. Biology professor Anthony Sinskey ScD ’67 has several vehicles with personalized plates that pay homage to Course 20, which is now the Department of Biological Engineering but was formerly known as Food Technology, Nutrition and Food Science, and Applied Biological Sciences. Sinskey says he has “MIT 20” and “MIT XX” plates in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Christopher Knittel, the George P. Shultz Professor of Applied Economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, drives with a “TAXCO2” license plate in Massachusetts. (He notes that the license plate was supposed to say “TAX CO2” but that the space was inadvertently misplaced by the RMV.) “The license plate is supposed to represent a key policy tool to combat climate change: imposing a tax on carbon dioxide emissions,” he explains. Such a tax, he argues, “is the most effective way to combat the ‘negative externalities’ associated with climate change. … A lot of my research is focused on understanding the costs and consequences of different environmental policies, which is why the license plate is tied to my work.”
At least three MIT couples have gotten dual personalized license plates. Amy Finkelstein, PhD ’01, professors of economics, and Benjamin Olken lovingly drive around with dual plates that reflect both their work and their personal connection. “We got each other matching his-and-hers license plates, ‘OFFER’ and ‘DEMAND,’ as an anniversary gift,” Finkelstein says. “What better way to express the importance of a relationship? After all, supply is useless without demand and vice versa.”
Laura Kiessling, chemistry professor, ’83, says: “My license plate has the number SLEX. That’s short for a carbohydrate called sialyl Lewis X. It plays many roles, including fertilization (sperm-egg bonding). It tends to elicit many different reactions from people who ask me what it means. Unless they’re scientists, I tell them my husband (Ron Raines, ’80, biology professor) gave it to me as a joke. My husband’s license plate has the number PROTEIN.”
Marcia Bartusiak, MIT Distinguished Professor of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, and her husband, Stephen Lowe, PhD ’88, used to share two similar license plates. When the couple lived in Virginia, Lowe working as a mathematician on the structure of spiral galaxies and Bartusiak a young science writer specializing in astronomy, they had plates that said “SPIRAL” and “GALAXY.” Now retired in Massachusetts, although they no longer have vanity plates, they have named their current vehicles “Redshift” and “Blueshift.”
Other community members have plates that nod to their hobbies—like the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and AeroAstro Professor Sara Seager’s “ICANOE”—or playfully connect with other drivers. Julianna Mullen, director of communications at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, says of her “OMGWHY” plate, “It’s just an existential reminder of the importance of scientific research, especially in traffic when someone cuts you off so they can get exactly two car lengths ahead. Oh my God, why did they do that?”
This article has been updated with additional license plate stories from the community. Are you an MIT affiliate with a unique personalized license plate? We would love to see it!