Say WOW

Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Summer 2024 recommended reading from MIT
MIT faculty and staff authors have published a plethora of books, chapters, and other literary contributions in the past year. The following titles represent some of their works published in the past 12 months.  Looking for more literary works from the MIT community? Enjoy our book lists from 2023, 2022, and 2021. Happy reading! Novel, memoir, and poetry “Seizing Control: Managing Epilepsy and Others’ Reactions to It — A Memoir” (Haley’s, 2023)By Laura Beretsky, grant writer in the MIT...

Read More

Pioneering the future of materials extraction
The next time you cook pasta, imagine that you are cooking spaghetti, rigatoni, and seven other varieties all together, and they need to be separated onto 10 different plates before serving. A colander can remove the water — but you still have a mound of unsorted noodles. Now imagine that this had to be done for thousands of tons of pasta a day. That gives you an idea of the scale of the problem facing Brendan Smith PhD ’18, co-founder...

Read More

The rules of the game
At the core of Raymond Wang’s work lies a seemingly simple question: Can’t we just get along? Wang, a fifth-year political science graduate student, is a native of Hong Kong who witnessed firsthand the shakeup and conflict engendered by China’s takeover of the former British colony. “That type of experience makes you wonder why things are so complicated,” he says. “Why is it so hard to live with your neighbors?” Today, Wang is focused on ways of managing a...

Read More

 
Implantable microphone could lead to fully internal...
Cochlear implants, tiny electronic devices that can provide a sense of sound to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, have helped improve hearing for more than a million people worldwide, according to the National Institutes of Health. However, cochlear implants today are only partially implanted, and they rely on external hardware that typically sits on the side of the head. These components restrict users, who can’t, for instance, swim, exercise, or sleep while wearing the external unit,...

Read More

The tenured engineers of 2024
In 2024, MIT granted tenure to 11 faculty members across the School of Engineering. This year’s tenured engineers hold appointments in the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS, which reports jointly to the School of Engineering and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing), Mechanical Engineering, and Nuclear Science and Engineering. “My heartfelt congratulations to the 11 engineering faculty members on receiving tenure. These faculty have already made a lasting...

Read More

Scientists observe record-setting electron mobility in a...
A material with a high electron mobility is like a highway without traffic. Any electrons that flow into the material experience a commuter’s dream, breezing through without any obstacles or congestion to slow or scatter them off their path. The higher a material’s electron mobility, the more efficient its electrical conductivity, and the less energy is lost or wasted as electrons zip through. Advanced materials that exhibit high electron mobility will be essential for more efficient and sustainable electronic...

Read More

 
Faces of MIT: Anthony Hallee-Farrell '13
Experiencing MIT as both a student and as a staff member is unique. When Anthony Hallee-Farrell ’13, senior program and technical associate for the MIT Community Services Office (CSO), graduated from MIT, he immediately began his time as a staff member at the Institute, transitioning from a student worker to a full-time employee. As of today, he has been a member of MIT community for 15 years: four as a student and 11 as a staff member. The CSO...

Read More

Creating the crossroads
A few years ago, Gevorg Grigoryan PhD ’07, then a professor at Dartmouth College, had been pondering an idea for data-driven protein design for therapeutic applications. Unsure how to move forward with launching that concept into a company, he dug up an old syllabus from an entrepreneurship course he took during his PhD at MIT and decided to email the instructor for the class. He labored over the email for hours. It went from a few sentences to three...

Read More

Two MIT films nominated for New England...
Two films produced by MIT were honored with Emmy nominations by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Boston/New England Chapter. Both “We Are the Forest” and “No Drop to Spare” illustrate international conversations the MIT community is having about the environment and climate change. “We Are the Forest,” produced by MIT Video Productions (MVP) at MIT Open Learning, was one of six nominees in the Education/Schools category. The documentary highlights the cultural and scientific exchange of the MIT Festival...

Read More

 
Fotini Christia named director of the Institute...
Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science, has been named the new director of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), effective July 1. “Fotini is well-positioned to guide IDSS into the next chapter. With her tenure as the director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and as an associate director of IDSS since 2020, she has actively forged connections between the social sciences, data science, and computation,” says Daniel...

Read More

CHARMed collaboration creates a potent therapy candidate...
Drug development is typically slow: The pipeline from basic research discoveries that provide the basis for a new drug to clinical trials and then production of a widely available medicine can take decades. But decades can feel impossibly far off to someone who currently has a fatal disease. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Senior Group Leader Sonia Vallabh is acutely aware of that race against time, because the topic of her research is a neurodegenerative and ultimately fatal...

Read More

A home away from a homeland
When the Haitian Multi-Service Center opened in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston in 1978, it quickly became a valued resource. Haitian immigrants likened it to Ellis Island, Plymouth Rock, and Haiti’s own Citadel, a prominent fort. The center, originally located in an old Victorian convent house in St. Leo Parish, provided health care, adult education, counseling, immigration and employment services, and more. Such services require substantial funding. Before long, Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Francis Law merged the Haitian Multi-Service Center into the...

Read More

 
“UnrulyArt” creates joy and engagement, regardless of...
An unmistakable takeaway from sessions of “UnrulyArt” is that all those “-n’ts” — can’t, needn’t, shouldn’t, won’t — which can lead people to exclude children with disabilities or cognitive, social, and behavioral impairments from creative activities, aren’t really rules. They are merely assumptions and stigmas. When a session ends and the paint that was once flying is now just drying, the rewards that emerge are more than the individual works the children and their volunteer helpers created. There is...

Read More

Owen Coté, military technology expert and longtime...
Owen Coté PhD ’96, a principal research scientist with the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP), passed away on June 8 after battling cancer. He joined SSP in 1997 as associate director, a role he held for the rest of his life. He guided the program through the course of three directors — each profiting from his wise counsel, leadership skills, and sense of responsibility. “Owen was an indomitable scholar and leader of the field of security studies,” says M....

Read More

What happens during the first moments of...
A butterfly’s wing is covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny scales like miniature shingles on a paper-thin roof. A single scale is as small as a speck of dust yet surprisingly complex, with a corrugated surface of ridges that help to wick away water, manage heat, and reflect light to give a butterfly its signature shimmer. MIT researchers have now captured the initial moments during a butterfly’s metamorphosis, as an individual scale begins to develop this ridged pattern....

Read More