News & Stories

Startup helps farmers grow plant-based feed and fertilizer using wastewater

Farmers today face a number of challenges, from supply chain stability to nutrient and waste management. But hanging over everything is the need to maintain profitability amid changing markets and increased uncertainty.Fyto, founded by former MIT staff member Jason Prapas, is offering a highly automated cultivation system to address several of farmers’ biggest problems at […]

AI-enabled translations initiative empowers Ukrainian learners with new skills

With war continuing to disrupt education for millions of Ukrainian high school and college students, many are turning to online resources, including MIT OpenCourseWare, a part of MIT Open Learning offering educational materials from more than 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses. For Ukrainian high school senior Sofiia Lipkevych and other students, MIT OpenCourseWare has […]

Studying work, life, and economics

For policymakers investigating the effective transition of an economy from agriculture to manufacturing and services, there are complex economic, institutional, and practical considerations. “Are certain regions trapped in an under-industrialization state?” asks Tishara Garg, an economics doctoral student at MIT. “If so, can government policy help them escape this trap and transition to an economy […]

Five from MIT named 2025 Gates Cambridge Scholars

MIT senior Markey Freudenburg-Puricelli and alumnae Christina Kim ’24; Abigail (“Abbie”) Schipper ’24; Sera Tolgay MCP ’18, SM ’18; and Rachel Zhang ’21 have been selected as Gates Cambridge Scholars and will begin graduate studies this fall in the field of their choice at Cambridge University in the U.K. Now celebrating its 25th year, the […]

Teen uses pharmacology learned through MIT OpenCourseWare to extract and study medicinal properties of plants

Tomás Orellana, a 17-year-old high school student in Chile, had a vision: to create a kit of medicinal plants for Chilean school infirmaries. But first, he needed to understand the basic principles of pharmacology. That’s when Orellana turned to the internet and stumbled upon a gold mine of free educational resources and courses on the […]

First-of-its-kind device profiles newborns’ immune function

Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, along with colleagues from KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), have developed a first-of-its-kind device to profile the immune function of newborns. Using a single drop of blood, the BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants (BLIPI) system provides real-time insights into newborns’ immune responses, enabling […]

Universal nanosensor unlocks the secrets to plant growth

Researchers from the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group within the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology have developed the world’s first near-infrared fluorescent nanosensor capable of real-time, nondestructive, and species-agnostic detection of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) — the primary bioactive auxin hormone that controls the way plants develop, grow, and respond […]

MIT D-Lab students design global energy solutions through collaboration

This semester, MIT D-Lab students built prototype solutions to help farmers in Afghanistan, people living in informal settlements in Argentina, and rural poultry farmers in Cameroon. The projects span continents and collectively stand to improve thousands of lives — and they all trace back to two longstanding MIT D-Lab classes. For nearly two decades, 2.651 […]

“Biomedical Lab in a Box” empowers engineers in low- and middle-income countries

Globally, and especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a significant portion of the population lacks access to essential health-care services. Although there are many contributing factors that create barriers to access, in many LMICs failing or obsolete equipment plays a significant role. “Those of us who have investigated health-care systems in LMICs are familiar with […]

Bridging Earth and space, and art and science, with global voices

On board Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft, which made a moon landing on March 6, were cutting-edge MIT payloads: a depth-mapping camera and a mini-rover called “AstroAnt.” Also on that craft were the words and voices of people from around the world speaking in dozens of languages. These were etched on a 2-inch silicon wafer computationally designed […]