Inventive solutions to some of the world’s most critical problems are being discovered in labs, classrooms, and centers across MIT every day. Many of these solutions move from the lab to the commercial world with the help of over 85 Institute resources that comprise MIT’s robust innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) ecosystem. The Abdul Latif Jameel […]
Read More
In 2021, Michael Short, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, approached professor of anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger with an unusual pitch: collaborating on a project to prototype a molten salt heat bank in Mongolia, Buyandelger’s country of origin and place of her scholarship. It was also an invitation to forge a novel partnership between two […]
Read More
In the United States and around the world, democracy is under threat. Anti-democratic attitudes have become more prevalent, partisan polarization is growing, misinformation is omnipresent, and politicians and citizens sometimes question the integrity of elections. With this backdrop, the MIT Department of Political Science is launching an effort to establish a Strengthening Democracy Initiative. In […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
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; […]
Read More
People around the globe often depend on informal financial arrangements, borrowing and lending money through social networks. Understanding this sheds light on local economies and helps fight poverty. Now, a study co-authored by an MIT economist illuminates a striking case of informal finance: In East Africa, money moves in very different patterns depending on whether […]
Read More
The leaders of The Climate Project at MIT met with community members at a campus forum on Monday, helping to kick off the Institute’s major new effort to accelerate and scale up climate change solutions. “The Climate Project is a whole-of-MIT mobilization,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in her opening remarks. “It’s designed to focus […]
Read More
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, […]
Read More
Every year since 1991, MIT has welcomed outstanding visiting scholars to campus through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. The Institute aspires to attract candidates who are, in King’s words, “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.” MLK Scholars enhance the intellectual and cultural life of the Institute through teaching […]
Read More
In 2024, eight faculty were granted tenure in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. They include the following: Dwaipayan Banerjee is an associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society. His work foregrounds the intellectual labor of South Asian scientists, engineers and medical practitioners, challenging conventional understandings of science, technology, […]
Read MoreMIT’s Security Studies Program has received a $45 million gift from The Stanton Foundation to expand its leading work on the vital issue of global nuclear security. The support will allow the program to create a new center on the topic while extending and enhancing research, teaching, and policy outreach in an area where the […]
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, […]
Read More
As a mechanical engineering and theater double major, senior Alayo Oloko often finds herself at the western end of MIT’s campus in Building W97, where the academic program in theater at MIT is based. During her time as an actor, designer, and technical crew member in student-driven theater at MIT, Oloko has overseen the chaos […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
This summer, 350 participants came to MIT to dive into a question that is, so far, outpacing answers: How can education still create opportunities for all when digital literacy is no longer enough — a world in which students now need to have AI fluency? The AI + Education Summit was hosted by the MIT RAISE Initiative […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, a noted scholar of American literature, passed away on July 25. She was 87. Wolff joined the humanities faculty at MIT in 1980 and was named the Class of 1922 Professor of Humanities in 1985. She taught in the Literature Section, and later moved to the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. […]
Read More
Some people think the world is wildly unpredictable, and are glad insurance can handle the risk and uncertainty they face. Other people believe their destiny is written in the stars, and consult a daily horoscope to reveal what is in store for them. Either way, Caley Horan has the history of these things covered. Horan, […]
Read More
Being able to say, “I fly helicopters” — specifically the Seahawk series that boast a maximum cruise elevation of 10,000 feet and 210 miles per hour — must be a great conversation starter. So must saying that you are helping to train a future generation of naval cadets at MIT, Harvard and Tufts universities, and […]
Read More
Dean Agustín Rayo and the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences recently welcomed nine new professors to the MIT community. They arrive with diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in their areas of research. Sonya Atalay joins the Anthropology Section as a professor. She is a public anthropologist and archaeologist who studies Indigenous science protocols, […]
Read More
For their last meeting of the fall 2023 semester, the students in MIT’s course 21W.756 (Nature Poetry) piled into a bus and headed to a local performance space for a reading: their own. Sure, students in the course, taught by Professor Joshua Bennett, spend much of the semester reading and discussing poems. But they create […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
J-PAL North America, a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), will significantly expand its work to conduct rigorous research and strengthen evidence-based policymaking due to a new grant from long-time supporter and collaborator Arnold Ventures. With Arnold Ventures’ new eight-figure grant over seven years, J-PAL North America aims to: substantially expand […]
Read More
This summer, a group of MIT students traveled to Sicily’s southeastern coast to learn about threats to local communities related to sea level rise. They visited ancient archeological sites that are in danger of being wiped out, and worked with local college students on preservation and adaptation techniques. This past January, another group of MIT […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
Tristan Brown is the S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor at MIT. He specializes in law, science, environment and religion of late imperial China, a period running from the 16th through early 20th centuries. In this Q&A, Brown discusses how his areas of historical research can be useful for examining today’s pressing […]
Read More
The Climate Project at MIT has appointed leaders for each of its six focal areas, or Climate Missions, President Sally Kornbluth announced in a letter to the MIT community today. Introduced in February, the Climate Project at MIT is a major new effort to change the trajectory of global climate outcomes for the better over […]
Read More
The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT (KSJ) will welcome 12 fellows in August. In addition to 10 Academic-Year Fellows, KSJ welcomes the inaugural Fellow for Advancing Science Journalism in Africa and the Middle East, and co-hosts a Sharon Begley Fellow with Boston-based publication STAT. The Knight Science Journalism Program, established at MIT in 1983, […]
Read More
MIT’s Laboratory for Economic Analysis and Design (LEAD) has been awarded a 400,000-euro grant from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, a German service provider focused on international cooperation for sustainable development and international education. The grant aims to create knowledge sharing opportunities for central bank leaders and help low- and middle-income countries […]
Read More
One thing that makes large language models (LLMs) so powerful is the diversity of tasks to which they can be applied. The same machine-learning model that can help a graduate student draft an email could also aid a clinician in diagnosing cancer. However, the wide applicability of these models also makes them challenging to evaluate […]
Read More