News & Stories

Astronaut Michael Fincke ’89 offers students out-of-this-world advice

Life was very different in 1989. A trip to the movie theater cost less than $4, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” was newly released, and the World Wide Web had just been invented. That year, Michael Fincke, a recent MIT grad who had just completed a BS in aeronautics and astronautics and Earth, atmospheric, and planetary […]

Susan Solomon, scholar of atmospheric chemistry and environmental policy, delivers Killian Lecture

Susan Solomon, an atmospheric chemist whose work explaining the Antarctic ozone hole informed international policy, has received the 2020-2021 James R. Killian, Jr. Faculty Achievement Award. The highest such honor at the Institute, the award was established in 1971 to honor Killian, who served as MIT’s 10th president from 1948 to 1959, and chair of […]

David Miliband SM ’90 receives the 2021 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) has announced that the Right Honorable David W. Miliband SM ’90, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), has been recognized with the 2021 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award. The biennial Muh Alumni Award recognizes the tremendous achievements of MIT degree holders who […]

Working toward a more secure world

Well before arriving on campus, Peninah (Nina) Levine knew what she wanted from her undergraduate education: “I came to MIT to be in an environment that would push me beyond my comfortable limits,” says Levine, a senior majoring in nuclear science and engineering (NSE). “I had to find where my passions lay and forge my […]

Podcast: Energy connectivity in Africa

Vera Songwe, under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, on economic development and energy connectivity in Africa.

A new goal for soccer: Improving attitudes toward refugees

Across the globe, 26 million people have been displaced from their home countries by civil war, drought, political persecution, and other crises. At the same, attitudes against refugees are hardening in many countries; a 2018 survey found that 40 percent of Kenyans have heard that refugees are a security threat, and 45 percent don’t think […]

Podcast: Energy access in Africa and beyond

Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and co-chair of UN-Energy, on energy access, electrification in Nigeria, and the power of data.

3 Questions: Richard Samuels on Japan’s 3.11 triple disaster and its impact 10 years later

Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by the most powerful earthquake in its recorded history. Of 9.1 magnitude by many accounts, the earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Tohoku and triggered a tsunami and meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Nearly 20,000 Japanese — and most of their […]

Foreign policy advice: Don’t look back

President Joe Biden’s administration represents a fresh start for the U.S. in foreign affairs. But as experts observed at an online MIT panel on Wednesday, the U.S. cannot just reset foreign policy to the last time Biden worked in the White House, as vice-president in the Obama administration. Too many things have changed, too dramatically, […]

3 Questions: Ernest Moniz on the future of climate and energy under the Biden-Harris administration

Climate and energy are two key areas on the Biden-Harris Administration’s agenda. Here, Robert C. Armstrong, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), asks Ernest J. Moniz — professor emeritus post-tenure, MITEI’s founding director, special advisor to MIT President Rafael Reif, and former U.S. Secretary of Energy — about key challenges and targets that the […]