News & Stories

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 […]

A global collaboration to move artificial intelligence principles to practice

Today, artificial intelligence — and the computing systems that underlie it — are more than just matters of technology; they are matters of state and society, of governance and the public interest. The choices that technologists, policymakers, and communities make in the next few years will shape the relationship between machines and humans for decades to […]

MIT-Wits Program continues to thrive

Now in its seventh year, the MIT-Wits Program is one of MIT’s most active in Africa. Whether through MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI)-organized student opportunities and faculty seed funds, visiting professors, or its array of edX courses, the relationship is as strong as ever. Known fondly known as Wits (and pronounced “Vits”), the […]

MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society builds educational partnership in Uruguay

In addition to making online education crucial to continued learning, the coronavirus pandemic poses the kind of global, societal challenges that must be addressed with rigorous data analysis. As the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and other organizations worldwide use statistics and machine learning to model infection rates, predict policy outcomes, and […]

MIT Arab SciTech Virtual IDEAthon rethinks learning during Covid-19

This spring, the MIT Arab Student Organization hosted a virtual IDEAthon with the theme “Learn from Home: Rethinking Learning during the Covid-19 Crisis.” The IDEAthon was the first step to tackle the challenges facing more than 200 million students in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region who had their education disrupted due the […]

Informing Covid-19 preparedness in Sierra Leone

As Covid-19 continues to spread, governments in West Africa have been working to meet the virus head-on. In Sierra Leone, the government took measures back in January to quarantine all travelers from countries reporting Covid-19 cases and travelers with high temperatures. With limited public health infrastructure, slowing the spread has been critical to protecting their […]

Empowering faculty partnerships across the globe

MIT faculty share their creative and technical talent on campus as well as across the globe, compounding the Institute’s impact through strong international partnerships. Thanks to the MIT Global Seed Funds (GSF) program, managed by the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), more of these faculty members will be able to build on these […]

Dreaming big in a small country

When Miguel Brechner started planning a new ambitious plan to foster a new generation of data scientists in Uruguay and Latin America, he immediately thought of MIT. “There is no question that MIT is a world leader in science and technology. In Uruguay we are a small country, but we dream big.” Brechner is president […]