Tag: Alumni/ae

Two from MIT named 2026 Knight-Hennessy Scholars

MIT master’s student Sunshine Jiang ’25 and Rupert Li ’24 are recipients of this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholarship. Now in its ninth year, the highly competitive scholarship provides up to three years of financial support for graduate studies at Stanford University.  Sunshine Jiang  ’25 Sunshine Jiang, from Hangzhou, China, graduated from MIT in 2025 with a […]

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Elazer Edelman receives the 2026-2027 Killian Award

Elazer R. Edelman ’78, SM ’79, PhD ’84, an engineer and cardiologist who helped develop cardiovascular stents that have been used by more than 100 million people, has been named the recipient of the 2026-2027 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The award committee recognized Edelman, the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering […]

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Solving hard problems in soft electronics

A crepe cake. That’s how Camille Cunin describes the polymer-metal “sandwiches” that became a highlight of her doctoral thesis at MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). Over close to five years, these composites were a key component of her research on bioelectronics — devices designed to interface with the human body. Cunin completed […]

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Mapping the ocean with autonomous sensors

In late October 2025, Tropical Storm Melissa moved through the Caribbean Sea with moderate winds that didn’t get much attention. But on Oct. 25, aided by a patch of warm ocean, the storm rapidly intensified. By the time it made landfall in Jamaica, it was one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record, uprooting trees, […]

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Celebrating dorm-to-market social entrepreneurship at MIT

Over 200 students, alumni, faculty, staff, funders, and community collaborators gathered at the MIT Media Lab on April 15 for the 25th annual IDEAS Social Innovation Incubator Showcase and Awards, hosted by the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Center for Social Impact.  Since its founding in 2001, the PKG Center’s IDEAS Incubator has launched hundreds of […]

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MIT BrainTrust supports neighbors living with brain injuries

Since 1998, members of MIT’s BrainTrust club have helped Boston-area residents with brain injuries or other neurological disorders through their buddy program. The organization’s members also visit patients in nursing homes suffering from neurological issues. BrainTrust is one of the founding chapters of Synapse National, an organization created by MIT alumna Alissa Totman ’13. Synapse’s […]

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Found Industries aims to strengthen America’s industrial supply chains

Found Industries has gone through several distinct phases in the four years since it was originally formed as Found Energy. There was the scrappy startup stage, in which the company was primarily housed in the basement of founder Peter Godart ’15, SM ’19, PhD ’21. Then there was the demonstration phase, in which the company […]

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MIT affiliates awarded 2026 Guggenheim Fellowships

MIT Research Scientist Afreen Siddiqi ’99, SM ’01, PhD ’06; MIT professors Kathleen Thelen and Vinod Vaikuntanathan SM ’05, PhD ’09; as well as Kate Manne PhD ’11 are among 223 scientists, artists, and scholars awarded 2026 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Working across 55 disciplines, the fellows were selected from almost 5,000 applicants […]

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Beacon Biosignals is mapping the brain during sleep

The human brain remains one of the most fascinating and perplexing mysteries in medicine. Scientists still struggle to match neurological activity with brain function and detect problems early, slowing efforts to treat neurological disorders and other diseases. Beacon Biosignals is working to make sense of the brain by monitoring its activity while people sleep. The […]

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Six from MIT awarded 2026 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

Six MIT affiliates — Denisse Córdova Carrizales SM ’26; Ria Das ’21, MNG ’22; Ronak Desai; Stacy Godfreey-Igwe ’22; Arya Rao; and Ananthan Sadagopan ’24 — have been named 2026 P.D. Soros Fellows. In addition, P.D. Soros Fellow Avinash Vadali will begin a PhD in condensed-matter physics at MIT this fall. The fellowship provides immigrants […]

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The power of “and” in energy and climate entrepreneurship

A supportive ecosystem is a cornerstone in entrepreneurship, according to Georgina Campbell Flatter, the CEO of Greentown Labs. “If we really want to be driving the most transformational technologies to scale at a speed in which we need them to happen for our planet, we need to be thinking about the ecosystem that we build […]

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MIT takes top team honors in 86th Putnam Math Competition

In an outstanding performance at the 86th William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, MIT’s team once again took the top spot for the sixth consecutive year. MIT secured four of the five Putnam Fellows, who are the five highest-ranking students, and the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Prize, which is given to a woman whose “performance in the […]

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MIT affiliates elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2026

Four MIT faculty members are among the roughly 250 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 22. Thirteen additional MIT alumni were also honored. One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center […]

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Two MIT alumnae named 2026 Gates Cambridge Scholars

Mitali Chowdhury ’24 and Christina Kim ’24 have been selected as 2026 Gates Cambridge Scholars. The highly competitive fellowship offers fully funded opportunities for postgraduate study in any field at Cambridge University in the U.K. Kim is a second-time Gates Cambridge Scholar. MIT students interested in the Gates Cambridge Scholar program should contact Kim Benard, […]

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How morality and ethics shaped India’s economic development

In a world leaning away from globalization, governments face a tough choice: Should they block dominant foreign companies to protect local businesses, or welcome them in hopes of fast-tracking economic growth and modernization?  In his recently published book, “Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India” (Harvard University Press, […]

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Tackling the housing shortage with robotic microfactories

A national housing shortage is straining finances and communities across the United States. In Massachusetts, at least 222,000 homes will have to be built in the next 10 years to meet the population’s needs. At the same time, there are numerous challenges in traditional construction. There’s a shortage of skilled construction workers. Most projects involve […]

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Professor Michael Laub and MIT alumni named 2025 AAAS Fellows

MIT Professor Michael T. Laub as well as 21 MIT alumni have been elected as fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The 2025 class of AAAS Fellows includes 449 scientists, engineers, and innovators, spanning all 24 of AAAS disciplinary sections, who are recognized for their scientific achievements. Laub, the Salvador […]

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Bringing AI-driven protein-design tools to biologists everywhere

Artificial intelligence is already proving it can accelerate drug development and improve our understanding of disease. But to turn AI into novel treatments we need to get the latest, most powerful models into the hands of scientists. The problem is that most scientists aren’t machine-learning experts. Now the company OpenProtein.AI is helping scientists stay on […]

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MIT faculty, alumni receive 2025-26 American Physical Society honors

The American Physical Society (APS) recently honored two MIT faculty members — professors Yoel Fink PhD ’00 and Mehran Kardar PhD ’83 — as well as six alumni with prizes and awards for their contributions to physics and academic leadership. In addition, several MIT faculty members — Professor Jorn Dunkel, Professor Yen-Jie Lee PhD ’11, […]

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Professor Emeritus Jack Dennis, pioneering developer of dataflow models of computation, dies at 94

Jack Dennis, an influential MIT professor emeritus of computer science and engineering, died on March 14 at age 94. The original leader of the Computation Structures Group within the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), he pioneered the development of dataflow models of computation, and, subsequently, many novel principles of computer architecture inspired […]

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Bridging space research and policy

While earning her dual master’s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and public policy, Carissma McGee SM ’25 learned to navigate between two seemingly distinct worlds, bridging rigorous technical analysis and policy decisions. As an undergraduate congressional intern and researcher, she saw a persistent gap in space policymaking. Policymakers often lacked technical expertise, while researchers were […]

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Toward cheaper, cleaner hydrogen production

Hydrogen sits at the center of some of the world’s most important industrial processes, but its production still comes with a heavy environmental cost. Today, most hydrogen is produced through high-emissions processes like steam methane reforming and coal gasification. But hydrogen can also be made by splitting water molecules using renewable electricity, eliminating fossil fuel emissions […]

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Active Surfaces aims to install peel-and-stick solar panels everywhere

Active Surfaces, a startup based on solar-energy technologies rooted in MIT research, is well on its way to developing what co-founder Richard Swartwout SM ’18, PhD ’21 calls “solar 2.0.” The company’s technology is in response to a need Swartwout recognized while observing energy challenges in India during an MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) fellowship. Within […]

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What’s the right path for AI?

Who benefits from artificial intelligence? This basic question, which has been especially salient during the AI surge of the last few years, was front and center at a conference at MIT on Wednesday, as speakers and audience members grappled with the many dimensions of AI’s impact. In one of the conferences’s keynote talks, journalist Karen […]

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Turning extreme heat into large-scale energy storage

Thermal batteries can efficiently store energy as heat. But building them requires a carefully designed system with materials that can withstand cycles of extremely high temperatures, without succumbing to problems like corrosion, thermal expansion, and structural fatigue. Many thermal battery systems move high-temperature gas or molten salt around through metal pipes. Fourth Power, founded by […]

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How Joseph Paradiso’s sensing innovations bridge the arts, medicine, and ecology

Joseph Paradiso thinks that the most engaging research questions usually span disciplines.  Paradiso was trained as a physicist and completed his PhD in experimental high-energy physics at MIT in 1981. His father was a photographer and filmmaker working at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation, so he grew up in a house where artists, […]

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MIT undergraduates help US high schoolers tackle calculus

This year in a rural school district in southeastern Montana, one high school student is taking calculus. For many people, calculus is daunting enough, even when teachers are used to offering it and peers are around to help. Studying it solo can be even harder. Yet this lone student has an unusual source of support: […]

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Studying the genetic basis of disease to explore fundamental biological questions

When Associate Professor Eliezer Calo PhD ’11 was applying for faculty positions, he was drawn to MIT not only because it’s his alma mater, but also because the Department of Biology places high value on exploring fundamental questions in biology. In his own lab, Calo studies how craniofacial malformations arise. One motivation is to seek […]

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A winning formula for student project teams at MIT

When Francis Wang ’21, MEng ’22 first joined the MIT Edgerton Center’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT), his approach to engineering projects was “to focus my energy and attention on a tidy problem with neat boundaries that I could completely control.” “But on Solar Car, I realized it takes a very different mindset to manage […]

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Turning curiosity about engineering into careers

It’s not every day that aspiring teenage engineers can see firsthand how planes are built. But a collaboration between nonprofit Engineering Tomorrow, aerospace firm Boeing, and alumni of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program working at Boeing is aiming to turn curiosity about aerospace engineering into possible careers for young students. Boeing is […]

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Designing a more resilient future for plants, from the cell up

In a narrow strip of land along the Andes mountain range in central Chile, an Indigenous community has long celebrated the bark of a rare tree for its medicinal properties. Modern science only recently caught up to the tradition, finding the so-called soapbark tree contains potent compounds for boosting the human immune system. The molecules […]

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