School of Engineering

“The problem with planning contingencies is that there are so many things that can go wrong, if you generated plans for all possible contingencies, you’d go nuts,” Brian Williams says.

Automatic contingency planning

Algorithm lets planning systems generate backup plans efficiently.

February 15, 2016

Nancy Leveson receives space safety award

Professor of aeronautics and astronautics honored for contributions toward the safety of space systems.

February 12, 2016

Professor Jonathan How has been selected a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He’s pictured here with vehicles that the Aerospace Controls Laboratory is using to investigate algorithms for predicting pedestrian motion patterns — a critical function for future mobility on demand systems and self-driving cars.

Jonathan How named AIAA Fellow

MIT professor and engineer honored for significant contributions to the field of aeronautics.

February 11, 2016

Amelia Trainer is a sophomore majoring in physics and nuclear science and engineering.

Amelia Trainer: Structuring improved simulations for reactor physics

MIT sophomore is passionate about coding projects that model neutron behavior inside nuclear reactors.

February 11, 2016

“It’s important to understand how the process of fluid breakup happens,” says Lydia Bourouiba. “What is the physics telling us in terms of droplet size distribution, that we can use downstream to predict range of contamination?”

Sneezing produces complex fluid cascade, not a simple spray

High-speed imaging shows how fluid breaks apart in air, may help identify super-spreaders.

February 10, 2016

Three from MIT elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Contributions of new members include the design of parallel computing systems, the development of 3-D printing, and the discovery of near-Earth asteroids.

February 9, 2016

Clockwise from top left: Tomás Palacios, Devavrat Shah, Dirk Englund, and Russ Tedrake

EECS announces four faculty promotions

Palacios, Shah, Tedrake promoted to full professor; Englund promoted to associate professor without tenure.

February 8, 2016

$This image of a simulated concrete sample shows the "packing fraction" which describes the fraction of the volume that is filled with solid material. In this case, the average packing fraction is 0.52. Colors indicate the variations within the sample, ranging from less than 0.4 to more than 0.64. The size of the cube is 0.6 microns (millionths of a meter).$

Riddle of cement’s structure is finally solved

Findings may guide development of formulas to make the material more durable, less CO2-intensive.

February 8, 2016

Five of the 16 individuals in the 2016 class of National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees hail from MIT. They include Associate Professor Joseph Jacobson (top left), Jonathan (JD) Albert '97 (top right), Radia Perlman '73, SM '76, PhD '88 (center), Barrett Comiskey '97 (bottom left), and Ivan Sutherland PhD '63 (bottom right).

Five with MIT ties tapped for Inventors Hall of Fame

MIT professor and four alumni honored for inventing electronic ink, the spanning tree protocol, and Sketchpad, a human-machine graphical communication system.

February 5, 2016