MIT graduate student Milain Fayulu is on a mission. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Fayulu is telling, and selling, the story of his nation in the hope of aiding its people and transforming its economy. For decades, the DRC has been hobbled by corruption and bloody civil conflicts. “I grew up with […]
Read More
Over the past 21 years, the MIT PKG Center’s IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge has awarded over $1.1 million in funding to over 200 student-led teams addressing social and environmental challenges globally. Through the work of these extraordinary teams, more than half of which are still active today, IDEAS has impacted over 2.5 million people. In […]
Read More
The world entered 2022 with growing weariness after two years of a global pandemic that has claimed 5.61 million lives, and continuing humanitarian and climate crises, with energy-related emissions set to rise by 87 million metric tonnes (about 96 million tons), and 274 million people in need of lifesaving humanitarian assistance. None of these issues […]
Read More
Matt Orosz’s mission for the last 20 years can be explained with a single picture: a satellite image of the world at night, with major cities blazing with light and large swaths of land shrouded in darkness. The image reminds Orosz SM ’03, SM ’06, PhD ’12 of what he’s trying to change. Orosz is […]
Read More
The winner of this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is commercializing a new water desalination technology. Nona Desalination says it has developed a device capable of producing enough drinking water for 10 people at half the cost and with 1/10th the power of other water desalination devices. The device is roughly the size and weight […]
Read More
Immigrants to the U.S. are more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans are, according to a study that takes a wide-ranging look at registered businesses across the country. Co-authored by an MIT economist, the study finds that, per capita, immigrants are about 80 percent more likely to found a firm, compared to U.S.-born citizens. […]
Read More
In 2014, Arun Cherian returned to his home country of India to help his sister with her wedding. By that time Cherian had earned his master’s in mechanical engineering at Columbia University, spent four years as a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, and was pursuing his PhD at Purdue University, where he […]
Read More
The winner of this year’s Water Innovation Prize is a company commercializing a material that could dramatically improve the efficiency of power plants. The company, Mesophase, is developing a more efficient power plant steam condenser that leverages a surface coating developed in the lab of Evelyn Wang, MIT’s Ford Professor of Engineering and the head […]
Read More
In two weeks, students will gather in Kresge Auditorium for the 26th annual MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The event has served as a springboard for a number of iconic companies over the years. But the full impact of the $100K competition has been far wider. For more than 20 years, the $100K format — which […]
Read More
MIT graduate student Fernanda De La Torre, alumna Trang Luu ’18, SM ’20, and senior Syamantak Payra are recipients of the 2022 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. De La Torre, Luu, and Payra are among 30 New Americans selected from a pool of over 1,800 applicants. The fellowship honors the contributions of immigrants […]
Read More
As robots evolve, society’s collective imagination forever ponders what else robots can do, with recent fascinations coming to life as self-driving cars or robots that can walk and interact with objects as humans do. These sophisticated systems are powered by advances in deep learning that triggered breakthroughs in robotic perception, so that robots today have […]
Read More
Looking back on nearly a half-century at MIT, Richard K. Lester, associate provost and Japan Steel Industry Professor, sees a “somewhat eccentric professional trajectory.” But while his path has been irregular, there has been a clearly defined through line, Lester says: the emergence of new science and new technologies, the potential of these developments to shake […]
Read More
Many young people in rural communities around the world feel the need move to big cities in order to find work. The migration has unfortunate ripple effects. In the cities, people with less formal education are often relegated to slums and can become the victims of exploitation. Meanwhile, the families, communities, and rich cultural traditions […]
Read More
This year’s MIT Energy Conference, the largest student-led event of its kind, included keynote talks and panels that tackled some of the thorniest remaining challenges in the global effort to cut back on climate-altering emissions. These include the production of construction materials such as steel and cement, and the role of transportation including aviation and […]
Read More
Thomas Tull, leading visionary entrepreneur and investor, has been appointed a School of Engineering visiting innovation scholar, effective April 1. Throughout his career, Tull has leveraged the power of technology, artificial intelligence, and data science to disrupt and revolutionize disparate industries. Today, as the founder, chair, and CEO of Tulco LLC, a privately held holding […]
Read More
Most of us know someone affected by hearing loss, but we may not fully appreciate the hardships that lack of hearing can bring. Hearing loss can lead to isolation, frustration, and a debilitating ringing in the ears known as tinnitus. It is also closely correlated with dementia. The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to […]
Read More
Industrial processes for chemical separations, including natural gas purification and the production of oxygen and nitrogen for medical or industrial uses, are collectively responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s energy use. They also contribute a corresponding amount to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, researchers at MIT and Stanford University have developed a […]
Read More
At the heart of nearly every purchase, sale, partnership, acceptance, and rejection is a contract. Businesses depend on people’s ability to build and understand contracts, especially in response to unique and fast-changing circumstances — like a global pandemic, for example. Even before the pandemic, many businesses were struggling to keep up with accelerating changes to […]
Read More
MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node welcomed 33 students to its flagship program, MIT Entrepreneurship and Maker Skills Integrator (MEMSI). Designed to develop entrepreneurial prowess through exposure to industry-driven challenges, MIT students joined forces with Hong Kong peers in this two-week hybrid bootcamp, developing unique proposals for the Airport Authority of Hong Kong. Many airports across […]
Read More
In a process that has taken place for more than 60 years at MIT, this week a group of students gathered to practice entrepreneurship at a whirlwind pace designed to mimic the steep learning curve required to start a company. MIT’s course 15.390 (New Enterprises) has been held every year since 1961 — a time […]
Read More
Devavrat Shah, the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named faculty director of the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovations. The new role took effect on Feb. 1. Shah replaces Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur […]
Read More
Artificial intelligence research is constantly developing new hypotheses that have the potential to benefit society and industry; however, sometimes these benefits are not fully realized due to a lack of engineering tools. To help bridge this gap, graduate students in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science’s 6-A Master of Engineering (MEng) Thesis […]
Read More
The global semiconductor shortage, a major driver of ballooning U.S. inflation, is as much a national security issue as an economic issue, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said during a recent visit to MIT. Speaking at MIT.nano, a shared 214,000-square-foot research center for nanoscale science and engineering located in the heart of campus, Raimondo […]
Read More
When computation and systems biology PhD student Elvira Kinzina was diagnosed with Lyme disease during her first year at MIT, she struggled to find a doctor specializing in the disease — even though Boston is renowned for its thriving health care community. She soon found out this was common for Lyme patients, with many specialists […]
Read More
In the summer of 2011, MIT PhD student Heather Beem travelled to a rural region of Ghana to try engaging students from low-resource schools in hands-on learning projects. She began by asking a group of high school students what they wanted to work on. “They said, ‘Anything, whatever you want,’” Beem recalls. Hoping to narrow […]
Read More
Born and raised amid the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic, Andrés Bisonó León feels a deep motivation to help solve a problem that has been threatening the Caribbean island nation’s tourism industry, its economy, and its people. As Bisonó León discussed with his long-time friend and mentor, the Walter M. May and A. Hazel […]
Read More
Most commercial fertilizer travels a long way before it reaches rural farmers in Kenya. Transportation costs force many farmers to rely on cheap, synthetic fertilizers, which can lead to the acidification and degradation of their soil over time. The situation amounts to a multigenerational crisis as elders have watched their crop yields dwindle over the […]
Read More
MIT Solve, an MIT initiative aimed at driving innovation to solve world challenges, has announced the launch of its 2022 Global Challenges and the Indigenous Communities Fellowship. Solve seeks tech-based solutions from social entrepreneurs around the world that address specific challenges. The program invites anyone, anywhere to submit a solution to this year’s challenges by […]
Read More
Are you a Pilates person or a cycling person? Maybe you’re a HIIT person who’s convinced themselves they’re only interested in dance. Maybe you like to mix it up throughout the week. Maybe you simply don’t know yet. It’s hard to predict what kind of workout or wellness class will work best for you on […]
Read More
The unfortunate reality of the software security industry is that it’s much easier to attack a system than it is to safeguard it. Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to have success, while software developers need to protect their code against all possible attacks. The asymmetry means that when a solo programmer unwittingly makes […]
Read More
The second-largest driver of global warming is methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Landfills are a major source of methane, which is created when organic material decomposes underground. Now a startup that began at MIT is aiming to significantly reduce methane emissions from landfills with a system that requires no […]
Read More