News & Stories

Apekshya Prasai: Up in arms

Although women’s wartime roles and agency tend to be neglected in conventional discourses on conflict, there are times when women not only take up arms but also shape the practices and policies of insurgent groups they fight for. Apekshya Prasai, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Political Science, studies how rebel groups subvert entrenched […]

New clean air and water labs to bring together researchers, policymakers to find climate solutions

MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water. Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government […]

SMART researchers enable early-stage detection of microbial contamination in cell therapy

Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have identified a critical quality attribute (CQA) that potentially allows the development of a rapid and sensitive process analytical technology for sterility. Specifically, this technology enables the detection of early-stage microbial contamination in human cell therapy products (CTPs). Cell therapy […]

A bright light on New York’s Bengali past

When Alaudin Ullah was growing up in East Harlem in the 1970s and 1980s, he loved hip-hop, graffiti art, and the New York Yankees, like many kids did at the time. Still, there was one readily evident difference between Ullah and his peers. Ullah’s parents were from Bangladesh, making them the only South Asian family […]

Bringing “cultural diplomacy” to the classics

People often put national boundaries around the written word. If you read French poetry or Victorian novels, it is tempting to understand those texts strictly in relation to the history and culture of France or Britain. Yet it often helps to take a wider view about literary production. Consider that for many centuries, Chinese provided […]

A searching discussion about being Asian American at MIT

A broad-ranging panel discussion on May 18 examined the complexities of Asian American and Pacific Islander identity and acceptance at MIT, while underscoring the need for collaborative work among groups to combat prejudice and create equity. The online forum was held amid an ongoing string of violent assaults on Asian Americans in the U.S., which […]