Study: EV charging stations boost spending at nearby businesses
Charging stations for electric vehicles are essential for cleaning up the transportation sector. A new study by MIT researchers suggests they’re good for business, too.The study found that, in...
View ArticleMeet the 2024 tenured professors in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and...
In 2024, eight faculty were granted tenure in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. They include the following:Dwaipayan Banerjee is an associate professor in the Program in Science,...
View ArticleHow social structure influences the way people share money
People around the globe often depend on informal financial arrangements, borrowing and lending money through social networks. Understanding this sheds light on local economies and helps fight...
View ArticleAI simulation gives people a glimpse of their potential future self
Have you ever wanted to travel through time to see what your future self might be like? Now, thanks to the power of generative AI, you can.Researchers from MIT and elsewhere created a system that...
View ArticleQ&A: A new initiative to help strengthen democracy
In the United States and around the world, democracy is under threat. Anti-democratic attitudes have become more prevalent, partisan polarization is growing, misinformation is omnipresent, and...
View Article3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia
In 2021, Michael Short, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, approached professor of anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger with an unusual pitch: collaborating on a project to...
View ArticleThe changing geography of “energy poverty”
A growing portion of Americans who are struggling to pay for their household energy live in the South and Southwest, reflecting a climate-driven shift away from heating needs and toward air...
View ArticleMixing joy and resolve, event celebrates women in science and addresses...
For two days at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, participants in the Kuggie Vallee Distinguished Lectures and Workshops celebrated the success of women in science and shared...
View ArticleMIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson share Nobel Prize
MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson PhD ’89, whose work has illuminated the relationship between political systems and economic growth, have been named winners of the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank...
View ArticleMIT linguist Irene Heim shares Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy
Linguist Irene Heim, professor emerita in MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, has been named a co-recipient of the 2024 Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy.Heim shares the award with...
View ArticleHow is the world watching the 2024 US election?
No matter the outcome, the results of the 2024 United States presidential election are certain to have global impact. How are citizens and leaders in other parts of the world viewing this election?...
View ArticleHow cfDNA testing has changed prenatal care
The much-touted arrival of “precision medicine” promises tailored technologies that help individuals and may also reduce health care costs. New research shows how pregnancy screening can meet both of...
View ArticleMisinformation is all around. How can we combat it?
Political misinformation is a hard problem. False statements pervade contemporary politics, sowing division and distrust, and making it harder for society to operate on the basis of fact and law.Even...
View ArticleStudy: Hospice care provides major Medicare savings
Hospice care aims to provide a health care alternative for people nearing the end of life by sparing them unwanted medical procedures and focusing on the patient’s comfort. A new study co-authored by...
View ArticleHow examining conflict can be “intellectually serious” and “incredibly fun”
The banging on the tables begins almost immediately.It’s September, and the 53 first-year students in MIT’s Concourse program are debating the pros and cons of capitalism during one of their Friday...
View ArticleEmpowering systemic racism research at MIT and beyond
At the turn of the 20th century, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about the conditions and culture of Black people in Philadelphia, documenting also the racist attitudes and beliefs that pervaded the white society...
View ArticleDespite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent...
Large language models can do impressive things, like write poetry or generate viable computer programs, even though these models are trained to predict words that come next in a piece of text.Such...
View ArticleConnecting the US Coast Guard to MIT Sloan
Jim Ellis II SM ’80 first learned about a special opportunity for members of the U.S. Coast Guard while stationed in Alaska.“My commander had received a notice from headquarters about this opportunity....
View ArticleBridging military service and engineering
For graduate students Kelsey Pittman and Jacqueline Orr, service in the U.S. military led to their interest in engineering, and to the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering...
View ArticleFaces of MIT: Gene Keselman
Gene Keselman wears a lot of hats. He is a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the executive director of Mission Innovation Experimental (MIx), and managing director of MIT’s venture...
View ArticleStopping the bomb
“The question behind my doctoral research is simple,” says Kunal Singh, an MIT political science graduate student in his final year of studies. “When one country learns that another country is trying...
View ArticleJ-PAL North America announces new evaluation incubator collaborators from...
J-PAL North America recently selected government partners for the 2024-25 Leveraging Evaluation and Evidence for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) Evaluation Incubator cohort. Selected collaborators will...
View ArticleMaking a mark in the nation’s capital
Anoushka Bose ’20 spent the summer of 2018 as an MIT Washington program intern, applying her nuclear physics education to arms control research with a D.C. nuclear policy think tank.“It’s crazy how...
View ArticleYour child, the sophisticated language learner
As young children, how do we build our vocabulary? Even by age 1, many infants seem to think that if they hear a new word, it means something different from the words they already know. But why they...
View ArticleCatherine Wolfram: High-energy scholar
In the mid 2000s, Catherine Wolfram PhD ’96 reached what she calls “an inflection point” in her career. After about a decade of studying U.S. electricity markets, she had come to recognize that “you...
View ArticleProfessor Emeritus James Harris, a scholar of Spanish language, dies at 92
James Wesley “Jim” Harris PhD ’67, professor emeritus of Spanish and linguistics, passed away on Nov. 10. He was 92.Harris attended the University of Georgia, the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios...
View ArticleQ&A: Transforming research through global collaborations
The MIT Global Seed Funds (GSF) program fosters global research collaborations with MIT faculty and their peers abroad — creating partnerships that tackle complex global issues, from climate change to...
View ArticleHow mass migration remade postwar Europe
Migrants have become a flashpoint in global politics. But new research by an MIT political scientist, focused on West Germany and Poland after World War II, shows that in the long term, those countries...
View ArticleFrom refugee to MIT graduate student
Mlen-Too Wesley has faded memories of his early childhood in Liberia, but the sharpest one has shaped his life.Wesley was 4 years old when he and his family boarded a military airplane to flee the West...
View Article3 Questions: Community policing in the Global South
The concept of community policing gained wide acclaim in the U.S. when crime dropped drastically during the 1990s. In Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere, police departments established programs to build...
View ArticleWhat do we know about the economics of AI?
For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. There is massive investment in AI but little clarity about what it will produce.Examining AI...
View ArticlePhotos: 2024 Nobel winners with MIT ties honored in Stockholm
MIT-affiliated winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes were celebrated in Stockholm, Sweden, as part of Nobel Week, which culminated with a grand Nobel ceremony on Dec. 10.This year’s laureates with MIT ties...
View ArticleIn a unique research collaboration, students make the case for less e-waste
Brought together as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) initiative within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, a community of students known as SERC Scholars is...
View ArticleMIT affiliates named 2024 Schmidt Futures AI2050 Fellows
Five MIT faculty members and two additional alumni were recently named to the 2024 cohort of AI2050 Fellows. The honor is announced annually by Schmidt Futures, Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s philanthropic...
View ArticleMiracle, or marginal gain?
From 1960 to 1989, South Korea experienced a famous economic boom, with real GDP per capita growing by an annual average of 6.82 percent. Many observers have attributed this to industrial policy, the...
View ArticleMIT welcomes Frida Polli as its next visiting innovation scholar
Frida Polli, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, investor, and inventor known for her leading-edge contributions at the crossroads of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, is MIT’s new visiting...
View ArticleWhy open secrets are a big problem
Imagine that the head of a company office is misbehaving, and a disillusioned employee reports the problem to their manager. Instead of the complaint getting traction, however, the manager sidesteps...
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