Glossary - P

Click on letter to jump to the list of terms starting with that letter. Click on a term to jump to the full definition. The excerpts on this page show the first line of each definition.

• P3 Award — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's student design competition for sustainability focusing on People, Prosperity, and the Planet
• P.I. — Principal Investigator
• P&P — MIT Policies and Procedures
• PANTHER — Pathogenic Notification for Threatening Environmental Releases
• PARTNER — Partnership for Air Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction
• PBE — Phi Beta Epsilon
• PBK — Phi Beta Kappa
• PC&T — Performance Consulting & Training (team)
• PCAST — President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
• PCI-DSS — Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
• PCLM — Picower Center for Learning and Memory (formerly CLM)
• PCMCIA — Short for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
• PDSI — A major building and renovation project of the Physics Department completed Fall 2007 - bldg 6C
• PDT — Phi Delta Theta
• PECASE — Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
• PEER — Program for Environmental Education and Research
• PEP — Professional Education Programs
• PESO — Philippine Emerging Startups Open
• PGD — Phi Gamma Delta
• Ph.D. — Doctor of Philosophy (degree), also known as a doctorate
• Phishing — an illegitimate solicitation via email for personal information, disguised as coming from a legitimate source. They often ask for usernames and password. THESE MESSAGES SHOULD BE IGNORED AND NEVER RESPONDED TO.
• PIB — Program in International Business (now called the Center for International Studies)
• PII — Personally Identifiable Information or Personally Identifying Information e.g. Social Security Number
• PiKA — Pi Kappa Alpha
• PILOT — Payment in Lieu of Taxes (MIT makes such payments to the City of Cambridge.)
• PIRN — Personal Information Requiring Notification if lost or stolen, e.g. Social Security Number
• PIVoT — Physics Interactive Video Tutor
• Pivot Report — Data Warehouse term: A report that you can construct in BrioQuery to display data from the Results section of the query.
• PKS — Phi Kappa Sigma
• PKT — Phi Kappa Theta
• PLOS — Public Library of Science (Biology Journal)
• PLP — Pi Lambda Phi
• PMD — People Making a Difference (projects)
• PMG — Programming Methodology Group
• PNAS — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• PO — Purchase Order
• PO (old) — Planning Office (old)
• PoE — Power over Ethernet is a standard system of passing power over Ethernet wiring from the network switch to the connected device.
• PoET — Program on Emerging Technologies
• POP (Post Office Protocol) — POP (Post Office Protocol) is a basic store and forward mail handling system MIT used to use. When you connect to the mail server, your mail is downloaded to your machine (or home directory on Athena) and deleted from the server. It does not support reading mail from multiple locations or have the modern message handling features of the IMAP protocol or Exchange.
• POPI — Program on the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Postdoc — Postdoctoral fellow
• POWER — Program for Overcoming Worries: Energize and Relax, a health promotion program for students
• PowerFAIDS — Power Financial Aid Information Data System, a computer system used to administer financial aid at MIT
• PP — Physical Plant (now known as the Department of Facilities)
• PPST — Program in Polymer Science and Technology
• Primary Provider — Data Warehouse term: This is the MIT organization or computer system which supplies the data to the Warehouse.
• Problem — the unknown cause of one or more incidents.
• PROCEED — Program for Continuing Engineering Education
• Process — Data Warehouse term: A BrioQuery command.
• PROFIT — Productivity From Information Technology (initiative that was based at the Sloan School of Management)
• PRS — Public Relations Services
• PSB — Publishing Services Bureau
• PSC — Public Service Center
• PSD — Production System Design (Laboratory)
• PSFC — Plasma Science and Fusion Center
• PSGs — Problem-Solving Groups, sponsored by the Administrative Advisory Council II
• PSK — Phi Sigma Kappa
• PSSC — Physical Sciences Study Committee (old)
• PTS — Pi Tau Sigma (honorary mechanical engineering fraternity)
• Purge (email) — Purging email is when the messages you have marked for removal by the delete command are erased from the server or your local computer drive. Once email is purged it cannot be recovered. Be sure you have archived or do not need any messages marked for deletion before you issue the purge command.