News & Stories

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

For one learner, online MIT courses are “like getting a Ferrari for the price of an electric scooter”

As a professional mechanical engineer, Badri Ratnam was inspired when MIT started offering massive open online courses (MOOCs) in engineering and science in 2012. He wondered if he was up to the challenge of solving problem sets and successfully completing exams from MIT. Ratnam first began his journey with the course 8.MReVx/8.MReV (Mechanics ReView), and he […]

More trees where they matter, please

One of the best forms of heat relief is pretty simple: trees. In cities, as studies have documented, more tree cover lowers surface temperatures and heat-related health risks. However, as a new study led by MIT researchers shows, the amount of tree cover varies widely within cities, and is generally connected to wealth levels. After […]

How MIT OpenCourseWare is fueling one learner’s passion for education

Training for a clerical military role in France, Gustavo Barboza felt a spark he couldn’t ignore. He remembered his love of learning, which once guided him through two college semesters of mechanical engineering courses in his native Colombia, coupled with supplemental resources from MIT Open Learning’s OpenCourseWare. Now, thousands of miles away, he realized it […]