• Feb. 9, 2017
    Eight MIT faculty are among the 84 new members and 22 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Newly elected members for this year also include an impressive 18 MIT-...
  • Jan. 31, 2017
    Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball...
  • Jan. 24, 2017
    India has millions of small farms, many an acre or less in size, cultivating rice, wheat, sugarcane, and other staple crops. And twice a year, when the harvest is done, these farms go up in flames....
  • Jan. 19, 2017
    Leonardo DiCaprio began 2016 by capturing his long-awaited Academy Award for Best Actor, but his year ended in defeat, thanks to MIT graduate student Maher Damak. Damak, a PhD candidate in the...
  • Jan. 18, 2017
    Ketchup’s sluggish pace as it oozes out of its bottle is a longstanding nuisance — but one that is about to be upended by a new product coming to market. The brainchild of MIT mechanical engineer...
  • Jan. 8, 2017
    Food and water are two necessities for survival, but what happens when a changing climate in key agricultural regions threatens crop production? Or when the quality of milk cannot be ensured as it is...
  • Nov. 30, 2016
    Making an academic makerspace isn’t easy. There’s no easy formula for setting up and operating safe, effective, readily available university environments where students can come together, make plans...
  • Nov. 30, 2016
    Since 2013, the Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant has been supporting MIT faculty with big, bold, and unconventional research visions. In the latest round of grants, four proposals from six MIT...
  • Nov. 22, 2016
    Artificial muscles — materials that contract and expand somewhat like muscle fibers do — can have many applications, from robotics to components in the automobile and aviation industries. Now, MIT...
  • Nov. 15, 2016
    Diabetes is a growing epidemic in the United States. Now the seventh leading cause of death, the condition plagues more than an estimated 29 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease...
  • Nov. 9, 2016
    If you’ve ever splattered paint on a canvas or sprayed a cookie sheet with oil, you likely created — aside from a minor mess — a shower of droplets, ranging from dime-sized splotches to pencil-point...
  • Nov. 8, 2016
    A team of MIT engineers has described a novel way of controlling the flow of water in flexible tubes, a finding with implications for agricultural systems worldwide. Their research, published in the...
  • Oct. 25, 2016
    MIT researchers have been awarded a grant of nearly $1.3 million through the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to study the reasons for solar energy’s rapid and sustained cost decline...
  • Oct. 24, 2016
    Almost all solid materials, from rubber and glass to granite and steel, inevitably expand when heated. Only in very rare instances do certain materials buck this thermodynamic trend and shrink with...
  • Oct. 16, 2016
    Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have developed a biocompatible and highly stretchable optical fiber made from hydrogel — an elastic, rubbery material composed mostly of water. The...
  • Oct. 13, 2016
    Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new way of driving fluid droplets across surfaces in a precisely controlled way. The method could open up new possibilities for highly adaptable...
  • Oct. 11, 2016
    In the coming years, as more transistors are packed into ever smaller areas within computer chips, MIT engineers say cellphones, laptops, and other electronic devices may face a higher risk of...
  • Oct. 9, 2016
    Energy storage devices called supercapacitors have become a hot area of research, in part because they can be charged rapidly and deliver intense bursts of power. However, all supercapacitors...
  • Oct. 2, 2016
    When one type of an oxide structure called perovskite is exposed to both water vapor and streams of electrons, it exhibits behavior that researchers had never anticipated: The material gives off...
  • Sep. 22, 2016
    On a Friday afternoon in September, a small clutch of people are gathered around Anthony McDougal to hear him describe his research on the biological and mechanical processes behind the brilliant...

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