News & Stories

Innovation for aviation

The new normal has set in motion a sustained urgency to re-imagine how we learn, how we engage in teamwork, and how to solve real-world problems collaboratively. For the Entrepreneurship and Maker Skills Integrator (MEMSI), the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node’s flagship hardware systems entrepreneurship program, what was originally designed as a two-week residential experience held […]

MIT Solve announces 2021 global challenges

On March 1, MIT Solve launched its 2021 Global Challenges, with over $1.5 million in prize funding available to innovators worldwide. Solve seeks tech-based solutions from social entrepreneurs around the world that address five challenges. Anyone, anywhere can apply to address the challenges by the June 16 deadline. Solve also announced Eric s. Yuan, founder and […]

Startup empowers women to improve access to safe drinking water

In Ghana’s Northern Region, thousands of villages rely on water from artificial ponds during the region’s long dry season. The water is unsafe to drink and results in thousands of water-borne illnesses each year. Worse yet, the situation is totally preventable. Cheap, locally available water treatment solutions exist to make the region’s abundant surface water […]

Virtual bootcamps recruit from a wider world

Any past participant of MIT Bootcamps can tell you that the program lives up to the intensity implied by its name. But they’d also be quick to say that the military analogy extends even further — to an enduring camaraderie that tends to bind its members together for years after their experience has ended, across […]

MIT and Danish university students unite to envision a more sustainable future

Climate action is among the top priorities for the Institute and one that demands global solutions. With Denmark’s reputation as a leader in sustainable thinking, finding a way to bring the two together presented a natural synergy for the MIT-Denmark program. Part of MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), MIT-Denmark connects students and faculty […]

Improving sanitation for the world’s most vulnerable people

Last year, women visiting a neonatal clinic at a hospital in Kiboga, Uganda, began using two waterless, standalone bathrooms that offered a cleaner and more private alternative to the pit latrines that are standard in the region. The deployment was the culmination of years of work by the startup change:WATER Labs, co-founded by two MIT […]

Connecting machines in remote regions

On Nov. 26, seven fishermen aboard a small fishing boat off the coast of Maharashtra in western India were struck with panic when their vessel was damaged and began to sink. The panic was warranted: The boat was too far from shore to radio for help. Tens of thousands of fishermen find themselves in a […]

2020 MIT Water Summit brings international audiences together to discuss resilience

Earlier this semester, the MIT student group The Water Club gathered to discuss topics for their eighth annual MIT Water Summit. Given the dramatic challenges of 2020, the group knew this year’s decision was particularly weighty. Commenting on the process, Laura Chen, a junior in chemical engineering and director of the 2020 Water Summit, recalled, […]

MISTI shifts to fully remote global internships and cultural experiences amid pandemic

The 10.5-hour time difference between the eastern United States and India may seem like it would pose a challenge to collaborative teamwork. However, MIT junior Robert Koirala and sophomore Grace Smith quickly got used to scheduling team meetings as late as 11 p.m. as remote interns for India-based Ek Kadam Aur Foundation for Education and […]

Twenty years of cultivating tech entrepreneurs

In 2010, Clarisse Iribagiza was studying computer engineering at the University of Rwanda’s College of Science and Technology. She was intrigued to hear about a program on the fundamentals of technological entrepreneurship offered by the MIT Global Startup Labs (GSL) at her college. “I had never heard of startups, but I wanted to understand what […]