News

Detailed images from space offer clearer picture of drought effects on plants

March 20, 2023

“MIT is a place where dreams come true,” says César Terrer, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Here at MIT, Terrer says he’s given the resources needed to explore ideas he finds most exciting, and at the top of his list is climate science. In particular, he is interested in […]

Designing for better lives

March 17, 2023

Even though Flavio Emilio Vila Skrzypek left his native country of Peru to study at MIT, you can tell immediately that his homeland is close to his heart. Vila, who is pursuing a master’s in city planning, has made it his mission to improve land-use policy back home. “Property policies in Peru should learn from […]

MIT affiliates honored with 2023 Optica awards and medals

March 17, 2023

MIT Professor Marin Soljačić and four additional MIT alumni — Vanderlei Salvador Bagnato PhD ’87, Turan Erdogan ’87, Harold Metcalf ’62, and Andrew Weiner ’79, SM ’81, ScD ’84 — are among 17 recipients of the 2023 Optica Awards. Optica, formerly known as OSA, announced the awards, which celebrate those in the optics and photonics field […]

3 Questions: John Dozier on Dialogues Across Difference

March 15, 2023

MIT’s new series “Dialogues Across Difference” will bring speakers to campus and create opportunities for community members to demonstrate practical ways to take on difficult subjects across differences of opinion, background, viewpoint, and life experience.  A collaboration among the offices of the MIT president, provost, and chancellor, the program kicks off March 22 with John […]

Peter Baddoo, Department of Mathematics instructor, dies at 29

March 15, 2023

Peter Baddoo, an instructor in the Department of Mathematics, passed away suddenly on Feb. 15 while playing basketball on campus. Baddoo joined the MIT Department of Mathematics in January 2021. Prior to this, he was an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at Imperial College London. He studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford […]

Tom Wolf PhD ’81 receives the 2023 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award

March 14, 2023

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has announced that former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf PhD ’81 has been recognized with the 2023 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award. The biennial Muh Alumni Award recognizes the tremendous achievements of MIT degree holders who are leaders in one of the Institute’s humanities, arts, or […]

Mix-and-match kit could enable astronauts to build a menagerie of lunar exploration bots

March 14, 2023

When astronauts begin to build a permanent base on the moon, as NASA plans to do in the coming years, they’ll need help. Robots could potentially do the heavy lifting by laying cables, deploying solar panels, erecting communications towers, and building habitats. But if each robot is designed for a specific action or task, a […]

It’s a weird, weird quantum world

March 10, 2023

In 1994, as Professor Peter Shor PhD ’85 tells it, internal seminars at AT&T Bell Labs were lively affairs. The audience of physicists was an active and inquisitive bunch, often pelting speakers with questions throughout their talks. Shor, who worked at Bell Labs at the time, remembers several occasions when a speaker couldn’t get past […]

MIT professor to Congress: “We are at an inflection point” with AI

March 10, 2023

Government should not “abdicate” its responsibilities and leave the future path of artificial intelligence solely to Big Tech, Aleksander Mądry, the Cadence Design Systems Professor of Computing at MIT and director of the MIT Center for Deployable Machine Learning, told a congressional panel on Wednesday. Rather, Mądry said, government should be asking questions about the […]

2023 MacVicar Faculty Fellows named

March 10, 2023

The Office of the Vice Chancellor and the Registrar’s Office have announced this year’s Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellows: professor of brain and cognitive sciences John Gabrieli, associate professor of literature Marah Gubar, professor of biology Adam C. Martin, and associate professor of architecture Lawrence “Larry” Sass. For more than 30 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows […]