News & Stories

A unique partnership continues to thrive

Last year’s 24th annual European Career Fair (ECF) at MIT, held in early 2020 before the pandemic shuttered campus, was a resounding success, with over 2,000 in-person attendees meeting with over 100 employers from 10 different countries. First-year students chatted with the consul general of the German Consulate Boston while postdocs and PhD candidates met […]

Homing in on longer-lasting perovskite solar cells

Materials called perovskites are widely heralded as a likely replacement for silicon as the material of choice for solar cells, but their greatest drawback is their tendency to degrade relatively rapidly. Over recent years, the usable lifetime of perovskite-based cells has gradually improved from minutes to months, but it still lags far behind the decades […]

Sustainable solutions at home and abroad

Arnav Patel is a self-described sustainability enthusiast. Working on solutions related to climate change has been a central thread woven throughout his time at MIT. As a first-year student, he was initially drawn to mechanical engineering because he wanted to keep his options open. “I felt like mechanical engineering is that perfect niche where there’s […]

MIT and Danish university students unite to envision a more sustainable future

Climate action is among the top priorities for the Institute and one that demands global solutions. With Denmark’s reputation as a leader in sustainable thinking, finding a way to bring the two together presented a natural synergy for the MIT-Denmark program. Part of MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), MIT-Denmark connects students and faculty […]

Keeping an eye on the fusion future

“That was your warmup. Now we’re really in the thick of it.” Daniel Korsun ’20 is reflecting on his four years of undergraduate preparation and research at MIT as he enters “the thick” of graduate study at the Institute’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). The nuclear science and engineering student’s “warmup” included enough fusion […]

Visiting undergraduates collaborate with MIT PhD students on research through MIT GOV/LAB mentorship pilot

How can the structure of academia be changed to make it more equitable? This question was posed by an audience member at a December 2020 panel discussion on systemic racism in higher education hosted by the MIT Communications Forum and co-sponsored by Radius at MIT and the MIT Governance Lab (MIT GOV/LAB). Harvard University computer […]

MIT convenes influential industry leaders in the fight against climate change

Launched today, the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) convenes an alliance of leaders from a broad range of industries and aims to vastly accelerate large-scale, real-world implementation of solutions to address the threat of climate change. The MCSC unites similarly motivated, highly creative and influential companies to work with MIT to build a process, […]

Portable device can quickly detect plant stress

Researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) have designed a portable optical sensor that can monitor whether a plant is under stress. The device offers farmers and plant scientists a new tool for early diagnosis and real-time monitoring of plant health in field conditions. Precision agriculture […]

Shaping universities to be engines of economic development

Universities perform best as engines of economic development when they systematically exchange knowledge with their partners in industry and government, according to a new book co-authored by an MIT professor and former university president. At the moment, this “exchange” too often operates like a one-way street, the authors write, with universities sending graduates and research […]

Pushing the envelope with fusion magnets

“At the age of between 12 and 15 I was drawing; I was making plans of fusion devices.” David Fischer remembers growing up in Vienna, Austria, imagining how best to cool the furnace used to contain the hot soup of ions known as plasma in a fusion device called a tokamak. With plasma hotter than […]