News & Stories

MIT scientists build the world’s largest collection of Olympiad-level math problems, and open it to everyone

Every year, the countries competing in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) arrive with a booklet of their best, most original problems. Those booklets get shared among delegations, then quietly disappear. No one had ever collected them systematically, cleaned them, and made them available, not for AI researchers testing the limits of mathematical reasoning, and not […]

The tech revolution that wasn’t

In 1960, engineers at India’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) built what they called an “Automatic Calculator,” the country’s first working computer. It had the same type of ferrite-core memory as IBM’s world-leading machines, and at a glance, appeared to herald a new age of tech advances in India. Constructed with a fraction 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 […]

Improving understanding with language

When she was a child, MIT senior Olivia Honeycutt would spend summers on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama outside Birmingham. The practical and cultural differences between farm and city life became more pronounced by comparison. “Life and the way we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a nice change […]

A month in Panama: Rethinking what real estate development can be

Cherry Tang, a master of science in real estate development student at the MIT Center for Real Estate, recently participated in an experiential learning opportunity in Panama working with Conservatorio, a development firm based in Casco Viejo. What began as a modeling exercise quickly became a deeper exploration of how development, community, and environment intersect, […]

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, […]

How morality and ethics shaped India’s economic development

In a world leaning away from globalization, governments face a tough choice: Should they block dominant foreign companies to protect local businesses, or welcome them in hopes of fast-tracking economic growth and modernization? In his recently published book, “Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry: How Capitalist Legitimacy Shaped Foreign Investment Policy in India” (Harvard University Press, […]

A regulatory loophole could delay ozone recovery by years

Often hailed as the most successful international environmental agreement of all time, the 1987 Montreal Protocol continues to successfully phase out the global production of chemicals that were creating a growing hole in the ozone layer, causing skin cancer and other adverse health effects. MIT-led studies have since shown the subsequent reduction in ozone-depleting substances […]

How bacteria suppress immune defenses in stubborn wound infections

Chronic wound infections are notoriously difficult to manage because some bacteria can actively interfere with the body’s immune defenses. In wounds, Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) is particularly resilient — it can survive inside tissues, alter the wound environment, and weaken immune signals at the injury site. This disruption creates conditions where other microbes can easily […]

MIT hackathon tackles real-world challenges in Ukraine

During this year’s Independent Activities Period (IAP), students, researchers, and collaborators across seven time zones came together to tackle urgent technical challenges facing Ukraine as the full-scale war enters its fourth year. A four-week hackathon, Build for Ukraine 2.0, brought MIT students and Ukrainian collaborators into a shared innovation environment where power outages, air-raid alerts, […]