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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 Development […]

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 […]

Q&A: Expanding MIT’s global reach through Universal Learning

MIT’s Universal Learning is a new initiative from MIT Open Learning designed to prepare learners everywhere to tackle complex global challenges through boundary-crossing thinking.  Universal Learning offerings combine subject matter expertise from MIT faculty and experts and Open Learning’s more than 25 years of innovation in online education to deliver a learning experience centered on […]

Celebrating dorm-to-market social entrepreneurship at MIT

Over 200 students, alumni, faculty, staff, funders, and community collaborators gathered at the MIT Media Lab on April 15 for the 25th annual IDEAS Social Innovation Incubator Showcase and Awards, hosted by the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Center for Social Impact. Since its founding in 2001, the PKG Center’s IDEAS Incubator has launched hundreds of […]

Study: Immigrants help address the US eldercare shortage

Good caregivers are often in short supply, but after the Covid-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020, staff levels at nursing homes dropped by 10 percent. What was a simple personnel shortage has moved closer to being a nursing-care crisis. “We have an aging population, care for them is labor-intensive, and there are shortages […]

Six from MIT awarded 2026 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

Six MIT affiliates — Denisse Córdova Carrizales SM ’26; Ria Das ’21, MNG ’22; Ronak Desai; Stacy Godfreey-Igwe ’22; Arya Rao; and Ananthan Sadagopan ’24 — have been named 2026 P.D. Soros Fellows. In addition, P.D. Soros Fellow Avinash Vadali will begin a PhD in condensed-matter physics at MIT this fall. The fellowship provides immigrants […]

How to expand the US economy

It’s an essential insight about our world: Innovation drives economic growth. For the U.S. to thrive, it must keep innovating. But how, and in what areas? A new book co-authored by MIT faculty members focuses on six key areas where technology advances can drive the economy and support national security. Those sectors — semiconductors, biotechnology, […]

Next-generation geothermal energy: Promise, progress, and challenges

Geothermal energy, a clean, continuous energy source accessible in many locations, has been slow to catch on. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Romans made extensive use of geothermal energy — heat from the Earth — including at the spa complex at present-day Bath, England. Electricity was first produced from geothermal sources in the early 1900s […]

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