MIT professors Laura Lewis and Jing Kong have been recognized with the MIT Postdoctoral Association’s Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring. The award is given annually to faculty or other principal investigators (PIs) whose current and former postdoctoral scholars say they stand out in their efforts to create a supportive work environment for postdocs and […]
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Liam Hines ’22 didn’t move to Sarasota, Florida, until high school, but he’s a Floridian through and through. He jokes that he’s even got a floral shirt, what he calls a “Florida formal,” for every occasion. Which is why it broke his heart when toxic red algae used to devastate the Sunshine State’s coastline, including […]
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A new, multidisciplinary MIT graduate program in music technology and computation will feature faculty, labs, and curricula from across the Institute. The program is a collaboration between the Music and Theater Arts Section in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS); Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in the School of Engineering; […]
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When Jared Bryan talks about his seismology research, it’s with a natural finesse. He’s a fifth-year PhD student working with MIT Assistant Professor William Frank on seismology research, drawn in by the lab’s combination of GPS observations, satellites, and seismic station data to understand the underlying physics of earthquakes. He has no trouble talking about […]
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After the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, a single Tweet or Facebook post was able to mobilize thousands in a matter of hours. In 2012, protests came to the streets of Mexico as young people demonstrated against the results of the general election. A recent college graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, […]
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With this year’s delta v Demo Day, the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship proved two things: first, that students can make remarkable progress toward creating impactful new businesses over the course of a single summer; and second, that the Trust Center remains one of the best party-throwers on campus. The Sept. 6 event, which […]
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Designing a ship or submarine for the U.S. Navy requires an understanding of naval architecture, hydrodynamics, electrical and structural engineering, materials science, and more. That’s why the Navy works so closely with MIT, where some of the world’s foremost experts in each of those disciplines converge. The largest among the graduate-level naval programs at MIT […]
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Asked to describe his work for a lay audience, Allan Shtofenmakher responds with an unexpected question: “Have you ever seen the movie ‘Wall-E?’” Recalling that the 2008 Disney-Pixar movie’s view of Earth from space was “brown and dusty and just surrounded by tons and tons of space junk,” he cautions, “If we’re not good stewards […]
Read MoreLike many children of first-generation immigrants, Oscar Molina grew up feeling like he had two career choices: doctor or lawyer. He seemed destined for the former as he excelled in high school and planned to major in biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, but as an undergraduate, he fell in love with […]
Read MoreThe start and finish of a degree program are pivotal moments in the lives of MIT’s graduate students. In her first three years in MIT’s Department of Political Science, professor Mariya Grinberg’s mentorship has helped numerous students start their graduate journeys with confidence and direction. Nuh Gedik, who joined the Department of Physics in 2008, […]
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Early in his undergraduate studies in bioengineering, Sayo Eweje was thinking of a career in medicine. He was inspired by the idea of harnessing medical knowledge to improve patients’ lives, having grown up seeing his father do so as a gastroenterologist. However, his research experiences in college made him appreciate how scientific advancement can lead […]
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How do you measure the value of an economic policy? Of an aid organization’s programming? For Saeed Miganeh, who completed an MITx MicroMasters in Data, Economics, and Development Policy and is now enrolled in MIT’s master’s program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), these are key questions he is determined to answer. “Enrolling at MIT fed […]
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Before completing her undergraduate studies, Sophie Hartley, a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, had an epiphany that was years in the making. “The classes I took in my last undergraduate semester changed my career goals, but it started with my grandfather,” she says when asked about what led her to science writing. She’d […]
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Watching crowds of people hustle along Massachusetts Avenue from her window seat in MIT’s student center, Dominika Ďurovčíková has just one wish. “What I would really like to do is convince a city to shut down their lights completely, apart from hospitals or whatever else needs them, just for an hour,” she says. “Let people […]
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In June 2023, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities could no longer use race as a factor in their admission decisions, many higher education institutions across the United States faced the same challenge: how to maintain diversity in their student bodies. So Noelle Wakefield, director of MIT’s Summer Research Program (MSRP) and assistant dean […]
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As the mountains and trees of California’s Napa Valley drift past the car window, 6-year-old David Kastner is deep in conversation with his father. The conversation is a familiar one, shifting naturally from gravity to electromagnetism. For as long as he can remember, scientific curiosity has been a key part of his conversations on these […]
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Nathanael Jenkins had always wanted to study aerospace engineering, he just hadn’t quite found the right place for it. He had explored options close to his home in Hampshire, U.K., but had never considered studying in the United States. That changed when a family vacation brought him to the MIT campus in 2018. “MIT felt […]
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It’s one of the paradoxes of economic development: Many countries currently offer large subsidies to their industrial fishing fleets, even though the harms of overfishing are well-known. Governments might be willing to end this practice, if they saw that its costs outweighed its benefits. But each country, acting individually, faces an incentive to keep subsidies […]
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MIT philosophy doctoral student Abe Mathew believes individual rights play an important role in protecting the autonomy we value. But he also thinks we risk serious dysfunction if we ignore the importance of supporting and helping others. “We should also acknowledge another feature of our moral lives,” he says, “namely, our need for affinity or […]
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Bernardo Picão has been interested in online learning since the early days of YouTube, when his father showed him a TED Talk. But it was with MIT Open Learning that he realized just how transformational digital resources can be. “YouTube was my first introduction to the idea that you can actually learn stuff via the […]
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Thomas Varnish loves his hobbies — knitting, baking, pottery — it’s a long list. His latest interest is analog film photography. A picture with his mother and another with his boyfriend are just a few of Varnish’s favorites. “These moments of human connection are the ones I like,” he says. Varnish’s love of capturing a […]
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At the core of Raymond Wang’s work lies a seemingly simple question: Can’t we just get along? Wang, a fifth-year political science graduate student, is a native of Hong Kong who witnessed firsthand the shakeup and conflict engendered by China’s takeover of the former British colony. “That type of experience makes you wonder why things […]
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The MIT student of popular imagination is a Tony Stark or a Riri Williams working in a lab and building the technology of the future. Not necessarily someone studying real estate. Peggy Ghasemlou is doing just that, however, and she’s traveled over thousands of miles and jumped through about as many hoops to do it. A licensed architect in her hometown of Tehran, Iran’s capital, Ghasemlou enrolled at MIT to […]
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When the Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and the MIT School of Engineering launched their collaboration focused on artificial intelligence in health care and drug development in February 2020, society was on the cusp of a globe-altering pandemic and AI was far from the buzzword it is today. As the program concludes, the world looks very different. AI has […]
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Play video “My identity as a scientist and my identity as a gay man are not contradictory, but complimentary,” says Jack Forman, PhD candidate in media arts and sciences and co-lead of LGBTQ+ Grad, a student group run by and for LGBTQ+ grad students and postdocs at MIT. He and co-leads Miranda Dawson and Tunahan […]
Read MoreMIT professors Erik Lin-Greenberg and Tracy Slatyer truly understand the positive impact that advisors have in the life of a graduate student. Two of the most recent faculty members to be named “Committed to Caring,” they attribute their excellence in advising to the challenging experiences and life-changing mentorship they received during their own graduate school […]
Read MoreThis spring, 26 MIT students and postdocs traveled to Washington to meet with congressional staffers to advocate for increased science funding for fiscal year 2025. These conversations were impactful given the recent announcement of budget cuts for several federal science agencies for FY24. The participants met with 85 congressional offices representing 30 states over two […]
Read MoreIt’s no news that companies use money to influence politics. But it may come as a surprise to learn that many family-owned firms — the most common form of business in the world — do not play by the same rules. New research by political science PhD candidate Sukrit Puri reveals that “family businesses depart […]
Read MoreThe Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced that it has awarded fellowships to 10 PhD students with ties to MIT. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000), which allows them the flexibility and autonomy to pursue their own innovative ideas. Fellows also receive lifelong […]
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It’s a question that occupies significant bandwidth in the world of nuclear arms security: Could hypersonic missiles, which fly at speeds of least five times the speed of sound, increase the likelihood of nuclear war? Eli Sanchez, who recently completed his doctoral studies at MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), explored these harrowing […]
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In MIT.nano’s laboratories, researchers use silicon wafers as the platform to shape transformative technologies such as quantum circuitry, microfluidic devices, or energy-harvesting structures. But these substrates can also serve as a canvas for an artist, as MIT Professor W. Craig Carter demonstrates in the latest One.MIT mosaic. The One.MIT project celebrates the people of MIT […]
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