Chill of Boston's MIT?

Hello everybody.

Fortunately, I’d already gotten into a master’s program at Stanford University in a department that was then called Engineering-Economic Systems. The faculty was mostly
comprised of electrical engineers who had escaped the chill of Boston’s MIT and headed west to another type of chill altogether in the Bay Area of California. They applied systems engineering techniques to nontraditional problems. In practice, this meant more equations
and computer models, and no circuits.

Would you please tell me what the two chill mean?

Does the first mean disappoinment and depression? What about the second chill, does it refer to cold weather in West? I don't know about the weather in America.

Thanks ??