News & Stories

Donald Blackmer, professor emeritus of political science and longtime leader at MIT, dies at 91

Donald L. M. Blackmer, professor emeritus of political science at MIT, died on Aug. 14. He was 91. A highly regarded scholar in international studies, he was also a longtime leader at MIT, serving variously as executive director of the Center for International Studies, head of the Department of Political Science, associate dean of the School of Humanities […]

$25 million gift launches ambitious new effort tackling poverty and climate change

With a founding $25 million gift from King Philanthropies, MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching a new initiative to solve problems at the nexus of climate change and global poverty. The new program, the King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), was announced today by King Philanthropies and J-PAL, and will start immediately. […]

MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab to launch research center at American University in Cairo

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT is launching a new regional research center in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to focus on innovative research and policy engagement to reduce poverty. Policy challenges in the MENA region are complex and interconnected: Children in the region have among the lowest learning […]

Tunney Lee, professor emeritus of urban planning, dies at 88

Tunney Lee, professor emeritus of urban planning and former head of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), passed away of complications from cancer treatment on July 2 in Boston. He was 88 years old. An architect by training, Lee was also an accomplished planner, historian, and community activist. At MIT, his research […]

Robert Art retires as director of the Seminar XXI Program

Robert Art will step down from his role as the director of the Seminar XXI Program effective June 30. Art is a senior fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP) and the Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations, Emeritus at Brandeis University. He has directed the Seminar XXI program at the Center for International […]

Eleven from MIT awarded 2020 Fulbright Fellowships

This story was updated on 12/17/2020 to reflect Christian Cardozo’s decision to accept a Fulbright fellowship. Eleven MIT students and recent alumni are recipients of awards from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. They will use their grants to conduct research, earn a graduate degree, or teach English abroad. This year’s Fulbright award winners are headed […]

Sara Plana receives inaugural Jeanne Guillemin Prize

If we can better understand the causes and consequences of war, then we can contribute to its prevention. That is the guiding philosophy of faculty and students at the Security Studies Program (SSP), explains Sara Plana, a fifth-year PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science. Plana was recently named the inaugural recipient of the Jeanne Guillemin […]

Susan Solomon earns Killian Award, MIT’s highest faculty honor

Atmospheric chemist Susan Solomon, whose pioneering scientific and environmental policy work has helped to shape international agreements for healing the ozone layer and mitigating climate change, has been named the recipient of the 2020-2021 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The Killian Award is the highest honor the MIT faculty can give to one […]

Yukio Okamoto, Japanese diplomat and MIT research fellow, dies at 74

Yukio Okamoto, a Japanese diplomat and fellow at MIT, died from Covid-19 on April 24 at the age of 74. The former special advisor to two prime ministers of Japan joined the Center for International Studies (CIS) in 2012 as a Robert E. Wilhelm fellow and served as a distinguished research fellow at CIS until his death. […]

MIT monitoring 2019 novel coronavirus

On Dec. 31, 2019, the World Health Organization learned about a number of cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan City, in the Hubei Province of China. On Jan. 7, Chinese authorities identified the cause as a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) — a member of the coronavirus family that had never been encountered before. Common […]