News

Inclusive research for social change

January 4, 2024

Pair a decades-old program dedicated to creating research opportunities for underrepresented minorities and populations with a growing initiative committed to tackling the very issues at the heart of such disparities, and you’ll get a transformative partnership that only MIT can deliver.  Since 1986, the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) has led an institutional effort to […]

MIT community members elected to the National Academy of Inventors for 2023

January 3, 2024

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) recently announced the election of more than 160 individuals to their 2023 class of fellows. Among them are two members of the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Professor Daniel G. Anderson and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec. In addition, 11 MIT alumni were also recognized. The highest professional […]

Culturally informed design: Unearthing ingenuity where it always was

January 2, 2024

Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, an MIT PhD student in both media arts and sciences and art, culture, and technology (ACT), explores how technology and culture intersect in spaces often overlooked by mainstream society, stretching beyond the usual scope of design research. A former lecturer and researcher at MIT D-Lab with experience in robotics, Reynolds-Cuéllar is an ACT […]

The creative future of generative AI

January 2, 2024

Few technologies have shown as much potential to shape our future as artificial intelligence. Specialists in fields ranging from medicine to microfinance to the military are evaluating AI tools, exploring how these might transform their work and worlds. For creative professionals, AI poses a unique set of challenges and opportunities — particularly generative AI, the […]

Leveraging language to understand machines

December 22, 2023

Natural language conveys ideas, actions, information, and intent through context and syntax; further, there are volumes of it contained in databases. This makes it an excellent source of data to train machine-learning systems on. Two master’s of engineering students in the 6A MEng Thesis Program at MIT, Irene Terpstra ’23 and Rujul Gandhi ’22, are […]

Minicourse open to the MIT community gives context to the Middle East crisis

December 21, 2023

MIT community members can learn more about the Israel-Hamas conflict through a recently developed online course organized by Middle East and North Africa (MENA)/MIT at MIT’s Center for International Studies. The three-session course, titled “Israel, Palestine, Gaza before and after October 7: Understanding historical context and contrasting narratives,” was first held between Nov. 29 and […]

MIT community in 2023: A year in review

December 21, 2023

The year 2023 saw the turning of a new page for MIT, as the Institute welcomed its 18th president. MIT also saw the opening of new and renovated spaces, launched a new “Dialogues Across Difference” speaker series, and celebrated a Nobel Prize, Turing Award, National Medals of Technology and Science, and many more honors for […]

A flexible solution to help artists improve animation

December 20, 2023

Artists who bring to life heroes and villains in animated movies and video games could have more control over their animations, thanks to a new technique introduced by MIT researchers. Their method generates mathematical functions known as barycentric coordinates, which define how 2D and 3D shapes can bend, stretch, and move through space. For example, […]

Navy officer deepens her engineering and leadership skills at MIT

December 19, 2023

Trained to be a leader even as a child, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Asia Allison is acquiring a new level of expertise as a graduate student at MIT — and a new approach to technical leadership in the Daniel J. Riccio Graduate Engineering Leadership (GradEL) program. “The Navy has a need for engineering leaders,” Allison says. […]

“MIT can give you ‘superpowers’”

December 15, 2023

Speaking at the virtual MITx MicroMasters Program Joint Completion Celebration last summer, Diogo da Silva Branco Magalhães described watching a Spider-Man movie with his 8-year-old son and realizing that his son thought MIT was a fictional entity that existed only in the Marvel universe. “I had to tell him that MIT also exists in the […]