Choosing a major was a long process for Mercy Oladipo. Coming into MIT, she was interested in both computer science and medicine, but a plan for how those passions would intersect took some time to coalesce. Oladipo finally settled on a joint major in computer science and molecular biology, which allowed her to dive into […]
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Haruko Wainwright, the Norman C. Rasmussen Career Development Professor in Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering at MIT, grew up in rural Japan, where many nuclear facilities are located. She remembers worrying about the facilities as a child. Wainwright was only 6 at the time of the Chernobyl […]
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“MIT is a place where dreams come true,” says César Terrer, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Here at MIT, Terrer says he’s given the resources needed to explore ideas he finds most exciting, and at the top of his list is climate science. In particular, he is interested in […]
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Even though Flavio Emilio Vila Skrzypek left his native country of Peru to study at MIT, you can tell immediately that his homeland is close to his heart. Vila, who is pursuing a master’s in city planning, has made it his mission to improve land-use policy back home. “Property policies in Peru should learn from […]
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Almost every large corporation is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050 but lacks a roadmap to get there, says John Sterman, professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, co-director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and leader of its Climate Pathways Project. Sterman and colleagues offer a suite of well-honed […]
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Matthew Kearney was drawn to MIT by the culture of its cross-country team. Growing up in Austin, Texas, he loved spending time outdoors and playing soccer, but by high school running had become his primary sport. While looking at colleges, he wanted to find a place with both strong academics and a strong team community. […]
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At first glance, aerospace engineering and brain and cognitive sciences may seem like an unlikely match for a double-major. But for Elissa Gibson ’22, the common thread connecting the two inherently different disciplines is clear: the human factor, by way of aviation. A lifelong love of airplanes helped Gibson discover the MIT Introduction to Technology, […]
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Assil Halimi has loved science since he was a child, but it was a singular experience at a college internship that stoked his interest in nuclear engineering. As part of work on a conceptual design for an aircraft electric propulsion system, Halimi had to read a chart that compared the energy density of various fuel […]
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During photosynthesis, chlorophyll in plants absorbs packets of energy called photons from the sun’s rays. This energy is then transferred to a series of other chlorophyll molecules organized by protein scaffolds, funneling the energy into the next stage of photosynthesis. Those early light-harvesting stages of photosynthesis involve repeated excitation of pigments, as photons are passed […]
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Stroll past MIT.nano, the Institute’s center for nanoscience and engineering, and you can peer through large panes of glass at hundreds of tool sets ready to assist researchers in their scientific journey. Anyone who wants to take a closer look at what is happening at the nanoscale and beyond — even seeing individual atoms — […]
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In 2010, Phiala Shanahan was an undergraduate at the University of Adelaide, wrapping up a degree in computational physics, when she heard of an unexpected discovery in particle physics. The news had nothing to do with any of the rare, exotic particles that physicists were searching for at the time. Rather, the revelation revolved around […]
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As a first-year U.S. Air Force cadet in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), Jupneet Singh never imagined she would rise to the rank of wing commander by the end of her MIT career. She approached her first year as a trial period without many expectations, but the close-knit community and inspiring leadership compelled her […]
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Some researchers are driven by the quest to improve a specific product, like a battery or a semiconductor. Others are motivated by tackling questions faced by a given industry. Rob Macfarlane, MIT’s Paul M. Cook Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, is driven by a more fundamental desire. “I like to make things,” Macfarlane […]
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MIT senior Sylas Horowitz kneeled at the edge of a marsh, tinkering with a blue-and-black robot about the size and shape of a shoe box and studded with lights and mini propellers. The robot was a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) — an underwater drone slated to collect water samples from beneath a sheet of Arctic […]
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Before James Hermus started elementary school, he was a happy, curious kid who loved to learn. By the end of first grade, however, all that started to change, he says. As his schoolbooks became more advanced, Hermus could no longer memorize the words on each page, and pretend to be reading. He clearly knew the […]
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Seeking an opportunity to do something impactful in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, Julian Zulueta applied for an internship with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, through MIT’s PKG Public Service Center. During the summer of 2020, he analyzed requisition data to better understand how different regions across the United States were affected […]
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Steven Spear SM ’93 analyzes the framework of relationships and interactions by which an organization runs, to better harness the intellectual horsepower distributed throughout the enterprise. In almost any industry, some few companies dramatically outperform their peers and near-peers, generating and delivering far more value to society by getting far more yield out of the […]
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As plastic pollution continues to mount, with growing risks to ecosystems and wildlife, manufacturers are beginning to make ambitious commitments to keep new plastics out of the environment. A growing number have signed onto the U.S. Plastics Pact, which pledges to make 100 percent of plastic packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable, and to see 50 […]
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Although her research focuses on daunting issues such as global poverty, MIT Professor Esther Duflo never neglects to dedicate time to something else she finds just as important: mentoring her graduate students. To mark her unwavering support, Duflo was recently honored as “Committed to Caring” for consistently propping up graduate students, and for helping them […]
Read MoreSince arriving at MIT in fall 2019, senior Sherry Nyeo has conducted groundbreaking work in multiple labs on campus, acted as a mentor to countless other students, and made a lasting mark on the Institute community. But despite her well-earned bragging rights, Nyeo isn’t one to boast. Instead, she takes every opportunity to express just […]
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Imagine that you are teaching a technical subject to children in a small village. They are eager to learn, but you face a problem: There are few resources to educate them in their mother tongue. This is a common experience in India, where the quality of textbooks written in many local languages pales in comparison […]
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Growing up in Idaho, Catherine Ji found herself with a lot of time to write. “Idaho is a great environment for writing because it’s isolated and there’s a bunch of nature,” says Ji. “I wrote so much poetry — a lot of really messy poetry. I just loved it so much. It really defined my […]
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The Kobe earthquake of 1995 devastated one of Japan’s major cities, leaving over 6,000 people dead while destroying or making unusable hundreds of thousands of structures. It toppled elevated freeway segments, wrecked mass transit systems, and damaged the city’s port capacity. “It was a shock to a highly engineered, urban city to have undergone that […]
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How does an ensemble play music together while apart? This was the question facing Frederick Ajisafe and the rest of the MIT Wind Ensemble (MITWE) at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. One method was to individually record tracks that were later mixed together to sound like a full ensemble. “It was a strange experience,” […]
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