News

MIT SHASS Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship Program welcomes 2023-24 class

October 5, 2023

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship program recently welcomed its 2023-24 class. The purpose of the program is to enhance diversity in SHASS and to provide fellows with additional professional support and mentoring as they enter the field. The fellowships are intended to support scholars from a wide range of backgrounds, […]

Photos: Moungi Bawendi’s first day as a Nobel laureate

October 4, 2023

Today, MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi won a share of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for his role in developing quantum dots — nanoscale particles that can emit exceedingly bright light. Bawendi, a professor of chemistry who has been on the MIT faculty since 1990, told MIT News this morning that he felt “surprise and […]

Celebrating Indigenous voices at MIT

October 4, 2023

In honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, we want to highlight recent scholarship at MIT celebrating Indigenous knowledge and identities. Please read about the exceptional work of graduate students, visiting scholars and MIT programs celebrating Indigenous culture.  Steven Gonzalez, PhD candidate in HASTS, has published his first book, “Sordidez,” a science fiction novella on rebuilding, healing, […]

MIT Professor Moungi Bawendi shares Nobel Prize in Chemistry

October 4, 2023

Moungi Bawendi, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Chemistry at MIT and a leader in the development of tiny particles known as quantum dots, has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2023. He will share the prize with Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology, Inc. The researchers were honored for […]

“A whole world of potential learners and potential knowledge to gain”

October 2, 2023

When Aya Khalifa came to MIT from Egypt for her master’s degree in chemical engineering, she adapted well to a new educational system thanks to class 10.MBC (Math Boot Camp for Engineers). This online resource was developed by the MIT Digital Learning Lab (DLL) and the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering for first-year graduate students […]

Improving accessibility of online graphics for blind users

October 2, 2023

The beauty of a nice infographic published alongside a news or magazine story is that it makes numeric data more accessible to the average reader. But for blind and visually impaired users, such graphics often have the opposite effect. For visually impaired users — who frequently rely on screen-reading software that speaks words or numbers […]

Finding solidarity in the teachers’ lounge

October 2, 2023

In the United States, social institutions from church organizations to sports leagues occupy key roles in shaping political life, with unions perhaps the most familiar player, affecting change in realms from protest movements to elections.    But while these civil society institutions draw little notice in a democracy, they turn heads in settings where political […]

One scientist’s journey from the Middle East to MIT

October 1, 2023

“I recently exhaled a breath I’ve been holding in for nearly half my life. After applying over a decade ago, I’m finally an American. This means so many things to me. Foremost, it means I can go back to the the Middle East, and see my mama and the family, for the first time in […]

MIT announces 2023 Bose Grants for daring new research

September 29, 2023

MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart has announced three Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grants to support bold research projects across diverse areas of study including engineering, animal behavior, and human movement. This year’s recipients are Kaitlyn Becker, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the d’Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering; Canan Dagdeviren, associate professor and […]

Giving students the computational chops to tackle 21st-century challenges

September 28, 2023

Graduate student Nikasha Patel ’22 is using artificial intelligence to build a computational model of how infants learn to walk, which could help robots acquire motor skills in a similar fashion. Her research, which sits at the intersection of reinforcement learning and motor learning, uses tools and techniques from computer science to study the brain […]