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Chris Zegras appointed director and CEO of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology
The professor of mobility and urban planning will lead MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore.
MIT in the world
3 Questions: Developing sustainable guidelines for rebuilding in Gaza
Shireen Bader Alqadi, MIT’s first Global MIT At-Risk Fellows (GMAF) Palestine Fellow, reflects on spending the Fall 2025 semester in the MIT’s Sustainable Design Lab with Architecture Professor Christoph Reinhart and team.
After 20 years, students still benefit from Shanghai-based education program
Dual-discipline programs combine management and engineering coursework and experiences to prepare operations professionals to excel in the global marketplace.
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MIT SPURS looks to the future of urban technology and policy
The MIT SPURS/Humphrey Program – a small gem nestled in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) with scores of former fellows in leadership positions in countries around the world – will quietly turn 60 next year. And like most 59-year-olds, the program, or its directors, have stepped back to take a long look […]
Chris Zegras appointed director and CEO of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology
Chris Zegras, professor of mobility and urban planning and the current head of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), has been appointed chief executive officer and director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), effective Sept. 1. Zegras succeeds Bruce Tidor, professor of biological engineering and computer science, who has […]
Innovative projects explore ways to deal with extreme heat
When MIT mechanical engineering Professor Kripa Varanasi landed in New Delhi in the middle of the night in June 2024 to attend a conference, he found himself in 104-degree Fahrenheit heat. “This was June, and it was crazy. It was so hot for the whole meeting that I never left the hotel,” with daytime temperatures […]
Research from the ground up
When Sonya Atalay conducted her doctoral research, she studied pottery in Çatalhöyük, a remarkable ancient site in Turkey. It’s one of the world’s earliest known urban settlements, flourishing by at least 7000 B.C.E. Yet even as Atalay was conducting field research and writing her doctoral thesis, she was scrutinizing standard archaeological practices, believing the discipline to […]
Place-based pathways to a viable future
Aiming to transition away from fossil fuels and avert the worst consequences of climate change, world leaders aspire to achieve net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But actions to meet such targets and minimize adverse impacts on lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure are not one-size-fits-all; they […]
Ten from MIT accept 2026 Fulbright awards
Ten MIT affiliates — including undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni — have accepted Fulbright grants to conduct research in countries across the world. Five other students declined their awards to pursue other opportunities, and another student is still deciding. In total, 16 of MIT’s 30 Fulbright applicants won awards this year. Funded by the U.S. […]
Learning to teach, learning to discover
Nik Sandu points to a graph on the whiteboard in a seventh-grade science class. “According to the graph, what is the energy of the ball?” she asks, gently waving a hand to settle the room’s twitchy energy. “Voices are off.” A student raises his hand, noticing an askew Y-axis. “This one doesn’t go through zero. A […]
Some democracies are struggling to ensure safe drinking water
About 2 billion people — just under a quarter of the world’s population — lack regular access to clean drinking water. And roughly 800,000 people annually die from illnesses associated with unsanitary water. Drinking water access is a fundamental problem for human and economic development. The U.N., for instance, highlighted the issue in its Sustainable […]
MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative expands its footprint in booming Asian cities
Urbanization in the Asia-Pacific region of the world is occurring at an alarmingly rapid pace, with more than 2.2 billion people now living in cities in the region, and an additional 1.2 billion projected to migrate to cities by 2050, according to a February 2026 report from the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and […]
A bet that has paid off 500 million times over
In 2001, at the dawn of the digital age, MIT made a bold decision: to open its curriculum to the world. Through MIT OpenCourseWare — now part of MIT Open Learning — the Institute began sharing materials from nearly all of its courses online for free. A quarter of a century later, that decision has […]