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At the second annual Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize competition, seven finalist startups and teams from MIT and other universities pitched their business ideas to a panel of judges, for a chance to win prizes totaling $25,000. The pitches addressed some of today’s most pressing issues in the food and agriculture industries.

Funding solutions for pressing food and agriculture issues

Teams tackling crop spoilage, pesticide pollution, and farming efficiency win annual competition.

May 3, 2017

Nicholas Fang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, won an MITEI Seed Fund grant to continue his research into developing efficient ceramic support structures for catalytic converters used in power plants and in the automotive industry. This photo shows a piece of 3-D-printed cellular ceramic substrate with 100-nm-thin walls that has exhibited excellent thermal conductance and mechani...

MIT Energy Initiative awards 10 seed fund grants for early-stage energy research

May 2, 2017

All winning teams of the annual IDEAS Global Challenge, held Saturday, April 29, in the MIT Media Lab.

“IDEAS” to change the world

MIT teams innovating in medical, education, environmental, and other fields split prizes totaling $95,000.

May 2, 2017

On the left, an atomic-force microscopy image shows a nanoporous graphene membrane after a burst test at 100 bars. The image shows that failed micromembranes (the dark black areas) are aligned with wrinkles in the graphene. On the right, two zoomed-in scanning electron microscopy images of graphene membranes show the before (top) and after of a burst test at pressure difference of 30 bars. The i...

Graphene holds up under high pressure

Used in filtration membranes, ultrathin material could help make desalination more productive.

April 24, 2017

MISTI funds over 80 MIT faculty projects

MISTI’s Global Seed Funds program announces its latest winners.

April 21, 2017

Amos Winter, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, speaks to individuals in India, where he has introduced assistive technologies such as a wheelchair for rugged terrain.

Amos Winter wins the Harold E. Edgerton Award

Global leader in mechanical engineering named the recipient of MIT’s esteemed junior faculty award.

April 19, 2017

Katy Olesnavage of MIT is a $15,000 Lemelson-MIT “Cure it!” Graduate Winner for her method to design a better prosthetic foot.

Collegiate inventors awarded 2017 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize

Students recognized for inventive solutions to challenges in health care, transportation, food and agriculture, and consumer devices.

April 19, 2017

A joint team of American, Israeli, and Jordanian students worked together to study possible integrated pumped hydro reverse osmosis (IPHRO) system site locations around the world.

Combined energy and water system could provide for millions

Analysis shows system could economically bring fresh water and renewable energy storage to drought-stricken coastal regions worldwide.

April 18, 2017

“If you really understand the phenomena, you can reduce it to a few nondimensional parameters,” MIT mechanical engineer Kripa Varanasi says. That collapses the complexity into manageable formulas and phase diagrams, “and then we can design new processes, new products, and zero-tradeoff solutions.” That approach, he says, has been “at the heart of the companies we’ve started.”

Kripa Varanasi: Innovating at interfaces

MIT engineer’s research on surfaces is improving everything from power plants to ketchup bottles.

January 19, 2017

Sourcewater provides users with a list and interactive map of all available fresh and wastewater, treatment facilities, shippers, and other water-based services. Users can search based on price, location, water quality, and other parameters to reduce the distance, cost, and environmental impact of hauling water.

Startup offers “online booking” for industrial water

MIT alum’s website helps companies find, ship, and recycle water, reducing environmental impact.

January 4, 2017

PhD candidate Emily Tow (left) and postdoc David Warsinger co-led a study proposing new designs for reverse osmosis desalination that significantly exceed the energy efficiency of state-of-the-art techniques. An experimental prototype is behind them.

Batch desalination configuration bests standard reverse osmosis approach

Researchers develop a new way to create more clean water with less energy, thanks to clever timing.

November 18, 2016

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

This desalination plant in Israel, called Sorek, is currently the world's largest, producing 625,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day. Boris Liberman, chief technology officer of IDE Technologies, the company that built this and several other huge desalination plants in Israel and California, was among the speakers at MIT's Low Carbon Desalination Workshop, which explored the potential for redu...

How to achieve “green” desalination

Workshop explores ways to reduce or eliminate the carbon footprint of seawater desalination plants.

October 19, 2016

“It’s not enough to have an original idea. You have to make that idea work for the world,” says Karen Gleason, MIT associate provost and professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Karen Gleason: Inventing at the nanoscale and growing an innovation ecosystem

MIT professor and associate provost modifies surfaces at the nanoscale while enhancing innovation around the Institute.

October 17, 2016

MIT graduate student George Ni holds a bubble-wrapped, sponge-like device that soaks up natural sunlight and heats water to boiling temperatures, generating steam through its pores.

Sponge creates steam using ambient sunlight

Bubble-wrapped structure requires no mirrors or lenses to focus the sun’s heat.

August 22, 2016

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