Tag: Classes and programs

Serious play at the MIT Game Lab

Students fill the glass-walled room and spill out into the common area. They gather around tables and desks cluttered with board games and game pieces. Along the far wall, large screens show students exploring the latest virtual reality experience alongside classmates reliving their favorite retro videogames. Welcome to an open house of the MIT Game […]

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MIT students build connections with Black and Indigenous Brazilians to investigate culture and the environment

In January 2024, at the height of Brazil’s summer, a group of 20 MIT undergraduates will arrive in São Paulo, Brazil, for the Independent Activities Period (IAP) course WGS.247/21L.592 (Race, Place, and Modernity in the Americas) jointly offered by the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences’ programs in Women’s and Gender Studies, Literature, and Writing.  Continuing a program developed […]

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Peer coaching helps graduate students thrive

Eventually she became aware that her PhD was taking longer than average, which fueled her doubts. When the pandemic delayed her research, she worried about falling even further behind. Then, in the spring of 2020, she got an email about the launch of the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Coaching Program for students. Her first reaction was, […]

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Robert van der Hilst to step down as head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences

Robert van der Hilst, the Schlumberger Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, has announced his decision to step down as the head of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the end of this academic year.  A search committee will convene later this spring to recommend candidates for Van der Hilst’s successor. “Rob […]

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Reflecting on a decade of SuperUROP at MIT

The Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, or SuperUROP, is celebrating a significant milestone: 10 years of setting careers in motion.   Originally mapped out by Dean Anantha Chandrakasan (then the head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, SuperUROP is designed to act as a launching pad for careers in research and industry, allowing […]

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A new record for Math Prize for Girls wins

Florida Virtual School senior Jessica Wan was the winner of the 15th Math Prize for Girls (MP4G) annual contest for female-identifying contestants, held Oct. 6-8 at MIT.  She scored 17 out of 20 questions, which added up to make Wan the MP4G’s most successful contestant in its history; she also won the contest last year […]

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Eight high school teams named Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams for 2023-24

The Lemelson-MIT Program has announced the 2023-24 InvenTeams, eight teams of high school students, teachers, and mentors from across the country who each will receive $7,500 in grant funding and other support to build a technological invention to solve a problem of their own choosing. The students’ inventions are inspired by real-world problems they identified […]

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MakerLodge: A launchpad for hands-on learning

MakerLodge is an extracurricular training program open to all MIT first-year undergraduate students that teaches making skills. It’s a great way to discover MIT shops and makerspaces, use manual and digital tools, socialize, and appreciate the power of making for experiential learning. By making a couple of small objects using a range of equipment such […]

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The art of science and the science of art

Hannah Munguia Flores is a third-year student at MIT working on a double master’s degree in aerospace engineering and technology and policy. On most days she studies the carbon cycle, and searches for sustainable crops that could be transformed into biofuels for jet engines. But on this late summer day, Munguia Flores was decorating paper […]

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Fellowship program empowers Nigerian academics to transform engineering education in their local universities

Empowering the Teachers (ETT), a program launched at MIT in 2011, is helping to change the face of engineering education in Nigerian universities. The program brings talented Nigerian academics at the postdoctoral level to MIT for a semester-long immersive experience, then sends them back out into the field to teach, research, and grow into influential […]

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“A whole world of potential learners and potential knowledge to gain”

When Aya Khalifa came to MIT from Egypt for her master’s degree in chemical engineering, she adapted well to a new educational system thanks to class 10.MBC (Math Boot Camp for Engineers). This online resource was developed by the MIT Digital Learning Lab (DLL) and the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering for first-year graduate students […]

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Giving students the computational chops to tackle 21st-century challenges

Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain […]

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3 Questions: A new PhD program from the Center for Computational Science and Engineering

This fall, the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE), an academic unit in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, is introducing a new standalone PhD degree program that will enable students to pursue research in cross-cutting methodological aspects of computational science and engineering. The launch follows approval of the center’s degree program proposal at […]

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Mechanical engineering with a twist: Pursuing a passion for robotics with customized major

A photo of students in colorful hardhats running across Killian Court is what first drew Sharmi Shah ’23 to the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), but a desire to make the world a better place is what inspired her to pursue studies in the field and to focus on robotics. “Coming in, I thought I […]

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MIT’s dynaMIT club sparks interest in STEM for middle schoolers

For the past 10 years, MIT students who are members of dynaMIT have taught middle schoolers from under-resourced Boston-area schools vital STEM principles through a variety of games, experiments, and activities. Months of planning by the 24 club members culminate in a two-week learning adventure that involves teaching 40 sixth- and seventh-graders one week, then […]

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A. Michael West: Advancing human-robot interactions in health care

An accomplished MIT student researcher in health care robotics, with many scholarship and fellowship awards to his name, A. Michael West is nonchalant about how he chose his path. “I kind of fell into it,” the mechanical engineering PhD candidate says, adding that growing up in suburban California, he was social, athletic — and good […]

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Expanding higher education for incarcerated students

Since its inception in 2018, The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) has been a trailblazer in implementing innovative and transformative educational experiences for incarcerated students as well as students at universities, including MIT. Now, TEJI has played a formative role in efforts to expand access to higher education in New England prisons through a partnership with […]

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In new French class, MIT students serve as jury members of US Goncourt Prize

MIT’s French+ Initiative was recently designated as a “Center of Excellence in French Studies” by the Embassy of France, during a 2022 campus visit by Philippe Etienne, then-ambassador of France to the United States. The French+ Initiative gathers scholars working across the humanities and social sciences at MIT whose research and teaching center on the […]

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Unlocking global research potential

In today’s interconnected world, fostering global collaboration is essential in addressing complex challenges and advancing scientific progress. The Global Seed Funds (GSF) program at the MIT Center for International Studies continues to be a vital catalyst, enabling MIT faculty to engage in cross-border collaborations, fueling groundbreaking research projects, and resulting in innovative solutions. Since its […]

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Putting public service into practice

Salomé Otero ’23 doesn’t mince words about the social impact internship she had in 2022. “It was transformational for me,” she says. Otero, who majored in management with a concentration in education, always felt that education would play some role in her career path after MIT, but she wasn’t sure how. That all changed her […]

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Teachers embrace hands-on learning in Materials Genome Camp

Amid the brick furnaces of MIT’s forge and foundry, Mike Tarkanian poured liquid metal into a mold until it filled, then he emptied the rest into a trough. To demonstrate how quickly it solidified in the ambient temperature of the room, the senior lecturer in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) kicked […]

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Incoming MIT students surprise President Kornbluth with “Barbis” installation

On the first day of fall class registration, MIT President Sally Kornbluth entered her office to find a life-sized Barbie-themed phone booth sitting in the reception area. Intrigued, she opened the pink phone booth door and stepped inside, where she discovered a complex web of mirrors and lights that give the illusion of infinite space […]

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