Awards

Mariama N’Diaye’s design-led approach to governance
Mariama N’Diaye, a design fellow at the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), works to transform the public sector through design thinking and innovation. With a diverse background in urban…
Meet the 2023-24 Accenture Fellows
The MIT and Accenture Convergence Initiative for Industry and Technology has selected five new research fellows for 2023-24. Now in its third year, the initiative underscores the ways in which…
MIT scholars awarded seed grants to probe the social implications of generative AI
In July, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and Provost Cynthia Barnhart issued a call for papers to “articulate effective roadmaps, policy recommendations, and calls for action across the broad domain of…
Mechanical engineering with a twist: Pursuing a passion for robotics with customized major
A photo of students in colorful hardhats running across Killian Court is what first drew Sharmi Shah ’23 to the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), but a desire to make…
Mikhail Ivanov wins 2024 New Horizons in Physics Breakthrough Prize
Assistant professor of physics Mikhail Ivanov will receive the 2024 New Horizons in Physics Prize, which he will share with Marko Simonović from the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN)…
MIT.nano Family Day invites those at home to come to work
Every day, researchers come to MIT.nano to investigate at the nanoscale, but what’s it like to work there? On Aug. 21, MIT.nano staff invited their family members to come see…
MIT named No. 2 university by U.S. News for 2023-24
MIT has placed second in U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings of the nation’s best colleges and universities, announced today. As in past years, MIT’s engineering program continues to…
AI-driven tool makes it easy to personalize 3D-printable models
As 3D printers have become cheaper and more widely accessible, a rapidly growing community of novice makers are fabricating their own objects. To do this, many of these amateur artisans…
MIT Sloan Dean Emeritus Bill Pounds, an expert in corporate governance and operations management, dies at 95
William Pounds, a former dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management who was known for his ubiquitous presence around campus and mentorship of junior faculty members, and for advising…
Desirée Plata appointed co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium
Desirée Plata, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, has been named co-director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), effective Sept. 1. Plata will serve on…
A. Michael West: Advancing human-robot interactions in health care
An accomplished MIT student researcher in health care robotics, with many scholarship and fellowship awards to his name, A. Michael West is nonchalant about how he chose his path. “I…
Startups generate inspiration and applause at Demo Day 2024
Anyone trying to get a feel for MIT’s culture of entrepreneurship would do well to start their journey at the delta v summer accelerator’s Demo Day. For two whirlwind hours…
Expanding higher education for incarcerated students
Since its inception in 2018, The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) has been a trailblazer in implementing innovative and transformative educational experiences for incarcerated students as well as students at universities,…
Making life friendlier with personal robots
“As a child, I wished for a robot that would explain others’ emotions to me” says Sharifa Alghowinem, a research scientist in the Media Lab’s Personal Robots Group (PRG). Growing…
Jackson Jewett wants to design buildings that use less concrete
After three years leading biking tours through U.S. National Parks, Jackson Jewett decided it was time for a change. “It was a lot of fun, but I realized I missed…
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences welcomes 10 new faculty
Dean Agustín Rayo and the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences recently welcomed 10 new professors to the MIT community. They arrive with diverse backgrounds and vast knowledge in…
Elsa Olivetti appointed associate dean of engineering
Elsa Olivetti, the Jerry McAfee (1940) Professor in Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been appointed as associate dean of engineering, effective Sept. 1. As associate…
Kimberly Rose Bennett awarded HHMI Gilliam Fellowship
Kimberly Rose Bennett, a PhD candidate in the Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) program within the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), has been selected by the Howard…
Apekshya Prasai: Up in arms
Although women’s wartime roles and agency tend to be neglected in conventional discourses on conflict, there are times when women not only take up arms but also shape the practices…
Ms. Nuclear Energy is winning over nuclear skeptics
First-year MIT nuclear science and engineering (NSE) doctoral student Kaylee Cunningham is not the first person to notice that nuclear energy has a public relations problem. But her commitment to…
Denzil Streete named senior associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education
After a national search, the MIT Office of the Vice Chancellor has named Denzil A. Streete senior associate dean and director of the Office of Graduate Education (OGE). Streete succeeds…
Q&A: Three Tata Fellows on the program’s impact on themselves and the world
The Tata Fellowship at MIT gives graduate students the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research and work with real-world applications in developing countries. Part of the MIT Tata Center for Technology…
Dyanna Jaye: Bringing the urgency of organizing to climate policy
Growing up in the Tidewater region of Virginia, Dyanna Jaye had a front row seat to the climate crisis. She recalls beach stabilization efforts that pumped sand from the bottom…
Making aviation fuel from biomass
In 2021, nearly a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions came from the transportation sector, with aviation being a significant contributor. While the growing use of electric vehicles is…
MIT engineers use kirigami to make ultrastrong, lightweight structures
Cellular solids are materials composed of many cells that have been packed together, such as a honeycomb. The shape of those cells largely determines the material’s mechanical properties, including its…
Q&A: Steven Gonzalez on Indigenous futurist science fiction
Steven Gonzalez is a PhD candidate in the MIT Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), where he researches the environmental impacts of cloud computing and data centers…
M’Care and MIT students join forces to improve child health in Nigeria
Through a collaboration between M’Care, a 2021 Health Security and Pandemics Solver team, and students from MIT, the landscape of child health care in Nigeria could undergo a transformative change,…
MIT at the 2023 Venice Biennale
The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest and most visited exhibition focusing on architecture, is once again featuring work by many MIT faculty, students, and alumni. On view through Nov.…
Fourteen MIT School of Science professors receive tenure for 2022 and 2023
In 2022, nine MIT faculty were granted tenure in the School of Science: Gloria Choi examines the interaction of the immune system with the brain and the effects of that…
Freeman Hrabowski encourages students to “hold fast to dreams” and take time for laughter
A group of more than 50 individuals recently had the pleasure of sitting down for an informal chat at MIT with distinguished educator, author, and mathematician Freeman Hrabowski. The group…
Communicating across time
Since the invention of the telegraph, humans have been able to communicate across great distances in real-time. Today, we can choose among myriad technologies — radio, telephone, video conference platforms…
Invisible tagging system enhances 3D object tracking
Stop me if you’ve seen this before: a black and white pixelated square in lieu of a physical menu at a restaurant. QR codes are seemingly ubiquitous in everyday life.…
3 Questions: Noah Nathan and Ariel White on Global Diversity Lab summer internships
In June and July, the Global Diversity Lab (GDL) in the Department of Political Science hosted its first GDL Summer Research Program. Pathways@GDL is aimed at broadening the pipeline into U.S. political science PhD programs. Four…
Summer research offers a springboard to advanced studies
Doctoral studies at MIT aren’t a calling for everyone, but they can be for anyone who has had opportunities to discover that science and technology research is their passion and…
How the body’s cells work together in response to infection
Constantine Tzouanas aims to deconstruct, understand, and engineer complex biological systems by studying their smallest units — individual cells. “The analogy I like to use is whenever you see a…
Studying how children learn words with no meaning
Researchers at the MIT Language Acquisition Lab are using funds from the 2022 Levitan Prize in the Humanities to carry out a set of studies investigating children’s acquisition of “expletives” or “dummy words” —…