News

Minimizing the carbon footprint of bridges and other structures

January 10, 2025

Awed as a young child by the majesty of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, civil engineer and MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) Fellow Zane Schemmer has retained his fascination with bridges: what they look like, why they work, and how they’re designed and built.He weighed the choice between architecture and engineering when […]

Professor William Thilly, whose research illuminated the effects of mutagens on human cells, dies at 79

January 9, 2025

William Thilly ’67, ScD ’71, a professor in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, died Dec. 24 at his home in Winchester, Massachusetts. He was 79. Thilly, a pioneer in the study of human genetic mutations, had been a member of the MIT faculty since 1972. Throughout his career, he developed novel ways to measure how […]

Insights into political outsiders

January 8, 2025

As the old saw has it, 90 percent of politics is just showing up. Which is fine for people who are already engaged in the political system and expect to influence it. What about everyone else? The U.S. has millions and millions of people who typically do not vote or participate in politics. Is there […]

Yari Golden-Castaño is over the moon about outreach

January 8, 2025

Yari Golden-Castaño first learned about the moon, planets, and space while her grandmother in Mexico, Barbarita, taught her how to read from an encyclopedia. Golden-Castaño had already earned the nickname “little astronaut” among her family because of an astronaut onesie that her mother dressed her in. By third grade, she had read a book stating […]

Monitoring space traffic

January 8, 2025

If there’s a through line in Sydney Dolan’s pursuits, it’s a fervent belief in being a good steward — both in space and on Earth. As a doctoral student in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), Dolan is developing a model that aims to mitigate satellite collisions. They see space as a public […]

Images that transform through heat

January 8, 2025

Researchers in MIT Professor Stefanie Mueller’s group have spent much of the last decade developing a variety of computing techniques aimed at reimagining how products and systems are designed. Much in the way that platforms like Instagram allow users to modify 2-D photographs with filters, Mueller imagines a world where we can do the same […]

Loren Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science, dies at 91

January 6, 2025

Loren R. Graham, professor emeritus of the history of science who served on the MIT faculty for nearly three decades, died on Dec. 15, 2024, at the age of 91. Graham received a BS in chemical engineering from Purdue University in 1955, the same year his classmate, acquaintance, and future NASA astronaut and moon walker […]

Richard Locke PhD ’89 named dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management

January 6, 2025

Richard Locke PhD ’89, a prominent scholar and academic administrator with a wide range of leadership experience, has been named the new dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management. The appointment is effective July 1. In becoming the school’s 10th dean, Locke is rejoining the Institute, where he previously served in multiple roles from […]

Celebrating the opening of the new Graduate Junction residence

December 23, 2024

Over two choreographed move-in days in August, more than 600 residents unloaded their boxes and belongings into their new homes in Graduate Junction, located at 269 and 299 Vassar Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With smiling ambassadors standing by to assist, residents were welcomed into a new MIT-affiliated housing option that offers the convenience of on-campus licensing terms, pricing, […]

Helping students bring about decarbonization, from benchtop to global energy marketplace

December 23, 2024

MIT students are adept at producing research and innovations at the cutting edge of their fields. But addressing a problem as large as climate change requires understanding the world’s energy landscape, as well as the ways energy technologies evolve over time. Since 2010, the course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation) has equipped students […]