News

Planet hunting and the origins of life

March 27, 2023

George Ricker built his first telescope when he was in third grade. Growing up in rural Florida, with its abundance of dark night skies, facilitated his natural propensity for stargazing. But it was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during his undergraduate days at the Institute that his fascination became a calling. “I was a physics major at […]

Tom Wolf PhD ’81: Government is a common endeavor from which all can benefit

March 27, 2023

Former Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf PhD ’81 made a forthright call for integrity and the expression of a common purpose in politics, while accepting the Institute’s 2023 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) on March 21. Government, Wolf suggested in his acceptance lecture, is a form […]

A design tool to democratize the art of color-changing mosaics

March 23, 2023

A colorful new design tool developed by MIT researchers allows individuals to create polarized light mosaics that can be printed on cellophane to make data visualizations, passive light displays, mechanical animations, fashion accessories, educational science and design tools, and more. Ticha Melody Sethapakdi, a PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science and affiliate of […]

Giving refugees design education — and newfound hope

March 23, 2023

They come by foot and by boat. Desperate, many bring nothing more than the clothes on their backs. They seek asylum and hope. Since 2015, more than a million refugees have flooded into Greece. Syrians, Afghanis, Iraqis, and Kurds, they’ve been uprooted from their home countries by violence and oppression. Political gridlock traps them in […]

Bob Metcalfe ’68 wins $1 million Turing Award

March 22, 2023

Robert “Bob” Metcalfe ’68, an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been awarded the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for his invention of Ethernet. Often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of computing,” the award comes with a $1 million prize […]

An education in climate change

March 22, 2023

Several years ago, Christopher Knittel’s father, then a math teacher, shared a mailing he had received at his high school. When he opened the packet, alarm bells went off for Knittel, who is the George P. Shultz Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the deputy director for policy at […]

QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 11 subjects for 2023

March 22, 2023

QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 11 subject areas for 2023, the organization announced today. The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; […]

Bob Metcalfe ’69 wins $1 million Turing Award

March 22, 2023

Robert “Bob” Metcalfe ’69, an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been awarded the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for his invention of Ethernet. Often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of computing,” the award comes with a $1 million […]

MIT-led teams win National Science Foundation grants to research sustainable materials

March 21, 2023

Three MIT-led teams are among 16 nationwide to receive funding awards to address sustainable materials for global challenges through the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator program. Launched in 2019, the program targets solutions to especially compelling societal or scientific challenges at an accelerated pace, by incorporating a multidisciplinary research approach. “Solutions for today’s national-scale societal […]

MIT’s Barry Duncan demonstrates the power of writing in reverse

March 20, 2023

Words have always played a central role in Barry Duncan’s life. He’s worked in bookstores for more than 40 years, reads often, and has tried his hand at writing novels, children’s books, song lyrics, and plays. But it wasn’t until he stumbled onto the book “An Almanac of Words at Play” that Duncan realized words […]