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MIT in the World
“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 so-called […]
Making higher education more accessible to students in Pakistan
Taking out a loan to attend college is an investment in your future. But unlike in the United States, students in Pakistan don’t have easy access to college loans. Instead, most families must stomach higher interest rates for personal loans that can require collateral like land or homes. As a result, college is inaccessible for […]
A collaboration across continents to solve a plastics problem
More than 60,000 tons of plastic makes the journey down the Amazon River to the Atlantic Ocean every year. And that doesn’t include what finds its way to the river’s banks, or the microplastics ingested by the region’s abundant and diverse wildlife. It’s easy to demonize plastic, but it has been crucial in developing the society […]
Turning adversity into opportunity
Sujood Eldouma always knew she loved math; she just didn’t know how to use it for good in the world. But after a personal and educational journey that took her from Sudan to Cairo to London, all while leveraging MIT Open Learning’s online educational resources, she finally knows the answer: data science. An early love […]
MIT K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics celebrates Sierra Leone’s inaugural class of orthotic and prosthetic clinicians
The MIT K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health (MOH) have launched the first fully accredited educational program for prosthetists and orthotists in Sierra Leone. Tens of thousands of people in Sierra Leone need orthotic braces and artificial limbs, but access to such specialized medical care in this African nation […]
From refugee to MIT graduate student
Mlen-Too Wesley has faded memories of his early childhood in Liberia, but the sharpest one has shaped his life. Wesley was 4 years old when he and his family boarded a military airplane to flee the West African nation. At the time, the country was embroiled in a 14-year civil war that killed approximately 200,000 people, displaced about […]
Dancing with currents and waves in the Maldives
Any child who’s spent a morning building sandcastles only to watch the afternoon tide ruin them in minutes knows the ocean always wins. Yet, coastal protection strategies have historically focused on battling the sea — attempting to hold back tides and fighting waves and currents by armoring coastlines with jetties and seawalls and taking sand […]
“Mens et manus” in Guatemala
In a new, well-equipped lab at the University del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) in June 2024, members of two Mayan farmers’ cooperatives watched closely as Rodrigo Aragón, professor of mechanical engineering at UVG, demonstrated the operation of an industrial ultrasound machine. Then he invited each of them to test the device. “For us, it is […]
