-
Whether you are a new employee, a gymnast, or a bendy straw manufacturer, one trait is ideal across the board: flexibility.The same can now be said about prototyping electronic devices. While...
-
Inspired by sutures developed thousands of years ago, MIT engineers have designed “smart” sutures that can not only hold tissue in place, but also detect inflammation and release drugs.
The new...
-
Thirteen MIT undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni have been awarded Fulbright fellowships and will embark on projects overseas in the 2023-24 grant year. Four other MIT affiliates were...
-
Big ideas took the stage on Monday morning, ahead of the inauguration of MIT’s 18th president, Sally Kornbluth. As final preparations were underway on Killian Court for the afternoon’s ceremonies,...
-
The vast majority of absorbent materials will lose their ability to retain water as temperatures rise. This is why our skin starts to sweat and why plants dry out in the heat. Even materials that are...
-
High in the treetops of a Chinese rainforest, Ming Guo began to explore the influence of a single cell.
A student in China’s Tsinghua University, Guo was studying the mechanical properties of plant...
-
Underwater structures that can change their shapes dynamically, the way fish do, push through water much more efficiently than conventional rigid hulls. But constructing deformable devices that can...
-
No two hearts beat alike. The size and shape of the the heart can vary from one person to the next. These differences can be particularly pronounced for people living with heart disease, as their...
-
Snowshoeing and microelectronics are not often mentioned together in the same sentence, but at the Microsystems Annual Research Conference (MARC), winter activities, technical talks, and poster...
-
For more than a century, much of the world has run on the combustion of fossil fuels. Now, to avert the threat of climate change, the energy system is changing. Notably, solar and wind systems are...
-
Before James Hermus started elementary school, he was a happy, curious kid who loved to learn. By the end of first grade, however, all that started to change, he says. As his schoolbooks became more...
-
Take apart your laptop screen, and at its heart you’ll find a plate patterned with pixels of red, green, and blue LEDs, arranged end to end like a meticulous Lite Brite display. When electrically...
-
Gel-like materials that can be injected into the body hold great potential to heal injured tissues or manufacture entirely new tissues. Many researchers are working to develop these hydrogels for...
-
True to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a microchip has doubled every year since the 1960s. But this trajectory is predicted to soon plateau because silicon — the backbone of modern...
-
Orchard-sprayer.jpg
A farmer driving a tractor spraying pesticide and insecticide on a lemon plantation in Spain. Credit: Agzen
Kripa Varanasi had just started his...
-
When Peter Williams was taking 2.002 (Mechanics and Materials II) this past semester, he won a trophy whose height is approximately equal to the width of three human hairs. Rather than feeling short-...
-
On Monday evening, inside a rainbow-lit Kresge Auditorium, a capacity crowd whooped and hollered and shook their pom-poms along to one of the most anticipated shows of the year: the final student...
-
Genetic engineering and personalized cell therapies could transform healthcare. In recent years, stem cells and gene-editing tools like CRISPR have been making headlines for the possibilities they...
-
For many of us, the act of breathing comes naturally. Behind the scenes, our diaphragm — the dome-shaped muscle that lies just beneath the ribcage — works like a slow and steady trampoline, pushing...
-
Since 1901, MIT has offered a graduate program unlike any other at the Institute. The Naval Construction and Engineering program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering educates active duty...