News & Stories

Tackling social issues through engineering and theater

Susan Su thought she was discovering a new café. She was in Beijing for the second half of her gap year, working with a biomedical engineering group at Tsinghua University. But the lab was relatively new, and she was filling her time by exploring the city. She soon realized she had instead stumbled into the […]

Forging political alliances through supply chains

The bustling coastal city of Wenzhou made its mark early on Hao Zhang. “It is considered the birthplace of Chinese capitalism, and living there, with many relatives involved in startups, I was exposed to all kinds of business,” says Zhang, a rising fifth-year graduate student in political science. He also gained a close-up view of […]

Tipping the balance between global rivals

John David Minnich was under the spell of political philosophy until he took a trip across a bridge in China. The doctoral student in political science vividly recalls this life-changing 2009 journey, undertaken as part of a summer research fellowship program. “Driving in from the airport, I was overwhelmed by my first glimpse of the […]

Congressional seminar introduces MIT faculty to 30 Washington staffers

More than 30 congressional and executive branch staffers were hosted by MIT’s Security Studies Program (SSP) for a series of panels and a keynote address focused on contemporary national security issues. Organized by the Security Studies Program, the Executive Branch and Congressional Staff Seminar was held from Wednesday, April 20m to Friday, April 22, in […]

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 […]

Pandemic mood: Much worse than a bad Monday

The Covid-19 pandemic has been depressing, demoralizing, and stressful for people around the world. But is there any way to measure exactly how bad it has made everyone feel? A new study led by MIT researchers attempts just that, through a massive examination of hundreds of millions social media posts in about 100 countries. The […]

MIT Center for Real Estate launches the Asia Real Estate Initiative

To appreciate the explosive urbanization taking place in Asia, consider this analogy: Every 40 days, a city the equivalent size of Boston is built in Asia. Of the $24.7 trillion real estate investment opportunities predicted by 2030 in emerging cities, $17.8 trillion (72 percent) will be in Asia. While this growth is exciting to the […]

From modeling quantum devices to political systems

When most students are 17, they’re preparing college applications and planning for prom. When Sihao Huang was 17, he was meeting with officials from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration. For two years before arriving at MIT, Huang started and ran a company, designing small, customizable satellite modules. Huang, now a […]

A nudge to resume economic activity

In these pandemic-affected times, concern about Covid-19 can make it hard to know when to take part in “normal,” prepandemic activities. That may be especially true this winter, with the Omicron virus variant spreading and its severity still being studied. But even at times during the pandemic when cases have been falling, there is often […]

Q&A: David Autor on the long afterlife of the “China shock”

In 2001, the U.S. normalized long-term trade relations with China, and China joined the World Trade Organization — moves many expected to help both economies. Instead, over the next several years, inexpensive imports from China significantly undercut U.S. manufacturing, especially in industries such as textiles and furniture-making. By 2011, this “China shock” from trade was […]