News & Stories

Exploring the rich traditions of Brazilian music

Student presentations tackled themes of identity, nation-building, racism, multiculturalism, and more, as reflected in the rich traditions of Brazilian music at “The Beat of Brazil” last month at the Lewis Music Library. The presentations were by students of Portuguese enrolled in class 21G.821 (The Beat of Brazil: Portuguese Language Through Brazilian Society), taught by Nilma […]

STARR FORUM Iran and the Struggle for ‘Normalcy’: Woman, Life, Freedom

Research, education, and connection in the face of war

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Tetiana Herasymova had several decisions to make: What should she do, where should she live, and should she take her MITx MicroMasters capstone exams? She had registered for the Statistics and Data Science Program’s final exams just days prior to moving out of her apartment and into […]

3 Questions: Sulafa Zidani on tech, culture, and a critical transnational perspective

Sulafa Zidani is an assistant professor in the Comparative Media Studies Program whose work focuses on digital culture: the social, political, and cultural dynamics in which technology operates and the role it plays in transnational power. She is working on her first book, which focuses on multilinguistic memes and centers the creators of these memes. […]

Preparing to be prepared

The Kobe earthquake of 1995 devastated one of Japan’s major cities, leaving over 6,000 people dead while destroying or making unusable hundreds of thousands of structures. It toppled elevated freeway segments, wrecked mass transit systems, and damaged the city’s port capacity. “It was a shock to a highly engineered, urban city to have undergone that […]

Enabling advanced studies in Turkey with MIT OpenCourseWare

About two years ago, a group of medical students at Ege University Faculty of Medicine in Turkey began meeting to study single variable calculus. None of the students had taken a course in this subject before. But with the guidance of lectures, slides, and other freely available resources on MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), they soon advanced […]

A targeted approach to reducing the health impacts of crop residue burning in India

To clear the way for planting wheat in November, a farmer in Punjab, India, sets aflame the leftover straw, or stubble, of a harvested rice paddy crop in October. The burning residue fills the air with carbon monoxide, ozone, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that will make it harder to breathe for days afterward and […]

New MIT internships expand research opportunities in Africa

With new support from the Office of the Associate Provost for International Activities, MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) and the MIT-Africa program are expanding internship opportunities for MIT students at universities and leading academic research centers in Africa. This past summer, MISTI supported 10 MIT student interns at African universities, significantly more than […]

White House names Daniel Hastings to space advisory group

United States Vice President Kamala Harris, the chair of the National Space Council (NSpC), has named MIT Professor Daniel Hastings to serve on the NSpC Users Advisory Group (UAG). Hastings, who is the associate dean of engineering for diversity, equity, and inclusion; head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and the Cecil and Ida […]

Valeria Robayo is putting her own twist on the pre-med experience

From a young age, Valeria Robayo has taken the lead in her own education. At age 3, her family moved from Bogotá, Colombia, to Houston, Texas, to seek better opportunities for Robayo, and later, her sister. She spent summer days at the local library while her parents worked to support the family. Her parents, who […]