Public health

"The efficacy and success of medical advances must always be evaluated within a larger social context,” says Ankita Reddy ’19, who aims to be a physician-anthropologist. “In order to do the most good for individual patients and to slow the spread of disease, our interventions need to take into consideration the public health capacity of communities as well as local ideas of health and sickne...

Ankita Reddy ’19 blends anthropology and biology to improve public health

Recent graduate says culturally-aware approaches lead to more-effective medical interventions.

July 3, 2019

Judges and sponsors of the Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize pose with members of the winning team, Gramhal. Team members pictured include advisor Russell DeLucia (third from left); head of operations Simeen Kaleem (fourth from left); CEO and founder Vikas Birhma (fourth from right). Not pictured is Gramhal chief program officer Pankaj Mahalle.

Mobile solution for farmers and plan for global shrimp marketplace win agribusiness prize

Seven finalist teams pitched their business ideas at the Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize competition.

May 3, 2019

Kate Trimble (left), associate dean and senior director of the PKG Center, poses with the founders of Myco Diagnostics, (from left to right) Nhat Nguyen, Aditi Trehan, and Eric Miller.

IDEAS challenge showcases social ventures at MIT

Ten student teams receive $100,000 in combined awards to pursue their impact-driven projects.

April 30, 2019

PlateJoy's platform sends recipes straight to users' phones and also features educational videos on topics such as sleep, nutrition, and fitness.

Healthy eating made easy

Startup PlateJoy sends users personalized meal plans to help them achieve health goals.

November 21, 2018

This wearable water quality test kit (early prototype pictured at left) provides a simple, accessible way to test the presence of E. coli in drinking water. A J-WAFS Solutions grant will enable an MIT research team to develop a regionally-appropriate commercialization strategy to ensure that these test kits can be accessible to rural and urban communities in Nepal as well as the other areas in Sou...

J-WAFS awards grants for commercialization of food and water technologies

Solutions grants will aid commercialization of novel MIT technologies to test water safety and improve agricultural productivity.

September 11, 2018

Left to right: Center for Environmental Health Sciences poster winners in the postdoc category included Helene Angot (1st place), Ben Crawford (2nd place), and Mary Andorfer (3rd place).

Center for Environmental Health Sciences selects 2018 poster winners

Annual poster session showcases recent work on biological effects of exposure to environmental agents.

April 20, 2018

“The thing that drew me to [biological engineering] in the first place was being able to help people,” Joseph says, “and [MIT] was the only school where I felt that goal was actually true of the curriculum.”

Jasmin Joseph: “I love the idea of making an impact on global health”

MIT senior and varsity softball co-captain brings positivity and determination to life-saving biology research.

April 9, 2018

Senior Anjali Misra, who is majoring in brain and cognitive sciences and minoring in music, is originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Making preventive medicine more accessible

MIT senior Anjali Misra is drawn to health care problems that don’t have easy answers.

January 17, 2018

Project leader Gigi Hirsch, executive director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation and NEWDIGS Initiative, announced LEAPS at the Next Wave Forum on Dec. 12. Also pictured, left to right: Krystyn, J. Van Vliet, associate provost at MIT; Kourtney Davis, global head of real world data and analytics at GlaxoSmithKline; Felipe Dolz, vice president of global regulatory science and policy at San...

Pioneering a health care innovation ecosystem to better serve patients

NEWDIGS Initiative at MIT leads multi-stakeholder collaboration to design and pilot a sustainable, patient-centered innovation ecosystem for a target disease.

December 15, 2017

Anjali Misra awarded Mitchell Scholarship

MIT senior is headed to Ireland to pursue graduate studies in public health.

November 27, 2017

MIT alumna Sophia Yen is making birth control easily available online with her startup Pandia Health.

Physician founds online birth control service

Sophia Yen '93 is on a mission: to make preventing unplanned pregnancies as easy as possible by making prescription contraceptives available online.

November 9, 2017

PhD student Britt Huhmann measures arsenic in rice paddy soil using a field kit in Faridpur, Bangladesh.

There's something in the water

MIT field study shows that arsenic in groundwater reduces rice yields in Bangladesh.

October 20, 2017

MIT-France student intern Annie Dai (seated) spent a summer at Plume Labs.

Clearing the air

At Plume Labs in Paris, MIT-France interns take on an invisible threat by helping to develop a wearable device that tracks indoor and outdoor air quality.

September 29, 2017

Hadley Sikes, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is one of an increasing number of MIT faculty members who do what might best be called public engineering — emphasizing the interaction between society and technology.

The creation of a public engineer

Hadley Sikes is bridging the gap between engineering and public policy to solve big social problems at home and abroad.

April 27, 2017

CEHS postdoc winners, from left to right: Yehuda Brody (2nd place), Supawadee Chawanthayatham (1st place), and Victor Hernandez-Gordillo and Annelien Zweemer (3rd-place tie).

Center for Environmental Health Sciences selects 2017 poster winners