Search Stories

The TechCon conference, hosted by MIT and USAID's Higher Education Solutions Network from Nov. 10 - 12, convened researchers and innovators to collaborate on solving global issues.

At TechCon, science-based solutions for world issues

Innovators and researchers tackle global issues through actionable research and collaboration.

November 15, 2016

Ali Jadbabaie is the JR East Professor of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the associate director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), and the director of one of its parts, the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center. “Our focus is on addressing large societal problems, whether they be power systems and energy systems, or social networks, or...

Tackling society’s big problems with systems theory

Ali Jadbabaie seeks to optimize large-scale systems, from social networks to teams of people or devices.

November 14, 2016

MIT chemists have determined the structure of a bacterial enzyme that can produce biodegradable plastics, an advance that could help chemical engineers tweak the enzyme to make it even more industrially useful.

A step toward biodegradable plastics

Chemists discover structure of bacterial enzyme that generates useful polymers.

November 11, 2016

Information extraction — or automatically classifying data items stored as plain text — is a major topic of artificial-intelligence research.

Artificial-intelligence system surfs web to improve its performance

“Information extraction” system helps turn plain text into data for statistical analysis.

November 10, 2016

Letter to the MIT community regarding the new administration in Washington

November 10, 2016

“I have considered working in social entrepreneurship or academia — ultimately I think I will seek out a combination of both. I think they both have advantages to addressing these kinds of problems, and their own drawbacks. I think ultimately I’m going to draw fulfillment from working on a problem that really matters to people,” senior Charlie Andrews-Jubelt says.

Life lessons from the climbing wall

MIT senior Charlie Andrews-Jubelt encourages students to look out for each other and lend support.

November 9, 2016

On Nov. 2, more than 800 MIT alumni and friends gathered in San Francisco for the second in a series of regional events in support of the MIT Campaign for a Better World.

Record-setting crowd celebrates the MIT Campaign for a Better World at San Francisco’s City Hall

Hong Kong will be the next stop on MIT's Better World global tour.

November 7, 2016

Zixiao Yin is a 2016-2017 Samuel Tak Lee Graduate Fellow and student in urban studies and planning.

Tackling Chinese urban development

Samuel Tak Lee Graduate Fellow Zixiao Yin plans to serve communities back home in Inner Mongolia.

November 4, 2016

Music, technology, and a hands-on approach are at the heart of The Founder's Journey, a seminar series for young entrepreneurs seeking to explore the life path of a startup founder.

Where music and technology unite

MIT and Berklee College of Music collaborate to bring young entrepreneurs together.

November 3, 2016

Glen Merfeld, product science leader at GE Global Research, points to almost 40,000 wind turbines installed globally during the 2016 Materials Day Symposium at MIT.

Battery challenges: cost and performance

Industry speakers and MIT faculty offer solutions to problems ranging from small portable devices to large fixed installations.

November 2, 2016

Three MIT mentors were among this year's student participants, mentors, and judges at the final International Young Physicists’ Tournament at the San Joaquin campus of Pontifical Catholic University.

MIT-Chile collaboration stresses hands-on projects and teamwork in STEM education

MIT alumni and the MIT-Chile Program are bringing unique learning opportunities to Chilean high school students in a partnership with two major Santiago universities.

November 1, 2016

“If we hope for serious solutions to the world’s great challenges, we need to make sure the innovators working on those problems see a realistic pathway to the marketplace,” MIT President L. Rafael Reif said at an Oct. 26 event celebrating the launch of The Engine.

Revving up The Engine for global change

“At MIT, it is our duty to bring transformative innovation to the world,” President Reif said at launch event for new enterprise.

October 28, 2016

This image shows free-air gravitational anomalies and a shaded topographic relief of the Moon’s 930-km-diameter Orientale impact basin. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue to mass deficits relative to a reference value. This gravitational field model, based on measurements acquired from the NASA GRAIL mission, shows the detailed structure of the central basin depression that is filled with...

Retracing the origins of a massive, multi-ring crater

Scientists reconstruct first hours after a giant impact created one of the largest craters on the moon.

October 27, 2016

Letter to the MIT community regarding the launch of The Engine

October 26, 2016

MIT Technology Review editor-in-chief and publisher Jason Pontin moderates a panel with semifinalists in the Solve: Learn crowdsourced ideas contest.

Improving educational opportunities for refugee youth around the world

Three proposals in MIT Solve's “Learn” pillar advance to finals.