Media Advisory — How the new kilogram measures up
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – It promises to be a weighty moment: On Monday, May 20 (World Metrology Day) the definition for the kilogram, the base unit of mass, will change. You might not notice it when weighing...
View ArticleNew science blooms after star researchers die, study finds
The famed quantum physicist Max Planck had an idiosyncratic view about what spurred scientific progress: death. That is, Planck thought, new concepts generally take hold after older scientists with...
View ArticleMeet Carolyn Stein: Researching the economics of science
Carolyn Stein says she’s not a morning person. And yet …“All of a sudden I’m going on bike rides with people that leave at 5:30 a.m.,” she says, shaking her head in surprise.Such is the appeal of MIT...
View ArticleHistorian of the hinterlands
History can help us face hard truths. The places Kate Brown studies are particularly full of them. Brown, a historian in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, has made a career out of...
View ArticlePhD student Marc Aidinoff explores how technology impacts public policy
“Computers have encapsulated so many collective hopes and fears for the future,” says Marc Aidinoff, a PhD candidate in History/Anthropology/Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), a doctoral program...
View ArticleMIT art installation aims to empower a more discerning public
Videos doctored by artificial intelligence, culturally known as “deepfakes,” are being created and shared by the public at an alarming rate. Using advanced computer graphics and audio processing to...
View ArticleThe case for economics — by the numbers
In recent years, criticism has been levelled at economics for being insular and unconcerned about real-world problems. But a new study led by MIT scholars finds the field increasingly overlaps with the...
View ArticleHow growth of the scientific enterprise influenced a century of quantum physics
Austrian quantum theorist Erwin Schrödinger first used the term “entanglement,” in 1935, to describe the mind-bending phenomenon in which the actions of two distant particles are bound up with each...
View ArticleLincoln Laboratory decommissions Lincoln Experimental Satellite–9
The longest continuously operating communications satellite in U.S. history, Lincoln Experimental Satellite–9 (LES-9), was decommissioned by MIT Lincoln Laboratory on May 20. The LES research team has...
View ArticleBiology community holds daylong program to address diversity and inclusion
On June 10, as part of the #ShutDownSTEM, #ShutDownAcademia, and #Strike4BlackLives national initiative, members of the Department of Biology took the day to engage in open conversations about racial...
View ArticleExploring the lives of MIT pioneers through drama
With the Covid-19 pandemic squelching a lot of typical summer research activities for MIT students in 2020, three undergraduates joined forces for a different kind project: researching and writing a...
View Article3 Questions: Phillip Sharp on the discoveries that enabled mRNA vaccines for...
Some of the most promising vaccines developed to combat Covid-19 rely on messenger RNA (mRNA) — a template cells use to carry genetic instructions for producing proteins. The mRNA vaccines take...
View ArticleTen “keys to reality” from Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek
In the spring of 1970, colleges across the country erupted with student protests in response to the Vietnam War and the National Guard’s shooting of student demonstrators at Kent State University. At...
View ArticleScientists as engaged citizens
The classroom in fall 2020 looked very different than it did when WGS.160/STS.021 (Science Activism: Gender, Race, and Power) ran for the first time in 2019. Zoom and virtual breakout rooms had...
View ArticleScene at MIT: A Black computing pioneer takes his place in technology history
The caption on a black-and-white photo reads, in part: “In 1951, high school graduate Joe Thompson, 18, was trained as one of the first two computer operators. The computer was the Whirlwind, the...
View ArticleFostering ethical thinking in computing
Traditional computer scientists and engineers are trained to develop solutions for specific needs, but aren’t always trained to consider their broader implications. Each new technology generation, and...
View ArticleIlluminating the history and global story of antibiotics
When Rijul Kochhar arrived at MIT to begin his PhD studies, he was already certain about what he wanted to study. Coming from Delhi, where he earned master's and undergraduate degrees and had taught at...
View ArticleThe promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence explored at TEDxMIT event
Scientists, students, and community members came together last month to discuss the promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
View ArticleNew book celebrates trailblazing MIT physicist Mildred Dresselhaus
As a girl in New York City in the 1940s, Mildred “Millie” Dresselhaus was taught that there were only three career options open to women: secretary, nurse, or teacher. But sneaking into museums,...
View Article3 Questions: Daniel Anderson on the progress of mRNA vaccines
Two mRNA vaccines, which received emergency authorization in late 2020, have proven critical in the fight against Covid-19. These vaccines, the first of their kind, were the culmination of decades of...
View Article3 Questions: Marking the 10th anniversary of the Higgs boson discovery
This July 4 marks 10 years since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the long-sought particle that imparts mass to all elementary particles. The elusive particle was the last missing piece in the...
View ArticleAncient African smelting technique sparks anew at MIT
The plumes of smoke that rose from East Campus one sunny May day could easily have been mistaken for a barbecue taking place in the courtyard. And indeed, burgers were on the grill. But the smoke was...
View ArticleDonald “Bruce” Montgomery, influential electromagnet engineer, dies at 89
Donald “Bruce” Montgomery SM ’57, a highly influential engineer and longtime MIT researcher whose career was focused on the development of large-scale electromagnets, died on July 1. He was...
View Article3 Questions: John Durant on the new MIT Museum at Kendall Square
To the outside world, much of what goes on at MIT can seem mysterious. But the MIT Museum, whose new location is in the heart of Kendall Square, wants to change that. With a specially designed space by...
View Article“Whoever you are, this is your place.” Reimagined MIT Museum encourages...
MIT’s research and innovation has been described as magic by many. But that magic can sometimes seem obscure and intimidating to outsiders.Now the MIT Museum, which opens to the public on Oct. 2, is...
View ArticleQ&A: Melissa Nobles on guest-editing Nature to examine racism in science
The venerable British journal Nature is publishing four special issues in 2022 that delve into matters of racism and science, including the way racist thinking has imbued the content of biological...
View ArticleQ&A: David Kaiser on Freeman Dyson, the relentless freethinker
In the early 2000s, David Kaiser first visited famed physicist Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. By the end of the conversation, Dyson was handing over keys to...
View ArticleHonoring Salvador Luria, longtime MIT professor and founding director of the...
On Oct. 26, the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT and the MIT Press Bookstore co-hosted a special event launching the new biography “Salvador Luria: An Immigrant Biologist in Cold...
View ArticleIan Hutchinson: A lifetime probing plasma, on Earth and in space
Ordinary folks gazing at the night sky can readily spot Earth’s close neighbors and the light of distant stars. But when Ian Hutchinson scans the cosmos, he takes in a great deal more. There is, for...
View ArticlePortraiture at the intersection of art, science, and society
“For me, this project is about making science visible in society,” says Herlinde Koelbl, a renowned German photo artist whose portrait series, “Fascination of Science,” is now on display at MIT. Koelbl...
View ArticleBrandon Ogbunu is a radical collaborator
Learning has always come naturally to Brandon Ogbunu. When he was a child growing up in Manhattan, his mother, a teacher, instilled in him an appreciation for school, the sciences, and curiosity. At...
View ArticleWorld Wide Web Consortium is now a public-interest nonprofit organization
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which leads development of the technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the web remains open, accessible, and interoperable, officially launched as a...
View ArticleComedy meets mathematics in a new opera at MIT
Over the course of her career, the composer Elena Ruehr has found inspiration in very different writers and very different worlds. She has, for example, set poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes...
View ArticleIlluminating the successes and struggles of MIT Black history
When Victor Ransom ’42 arrived at MIT from New York City in 1941, he discovered a campus electrified by the war effort. People scurried between what he described as MIT’s “massive, unsympathetic...
View ArticleReport: CHIPS Act just the first step in addressing threats to US leadership...
When Liu He, a Chinese economist, politician, and "chip czar," was tapped to lead the charge in a chipmaking arms race with the United States, his message lingered in the air, leaving behind a dewy...
View ArticleIt’s a weird, weird quantum world
In 1994, as Professor Peter Shor PhD ’85 tells it, internal seminars at AT&T Bell Labs were lively affairs. The audience of physicists was an active and inquisitive bunch, often pelting speakers...
View ArticleBob Metcalfe ’69 wins $1 million Turing Award
Robert “Bob” Metcalfe ’69, an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) research affiliate and MIT Corporation life member emeritus, has been awarded the 2022 Association for...
View ArticleThe measuring tape heard round the world
On a recent evening at MIT, over a hundred people gathered at Boynton Hall for a conversation with Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita Nancy Hopkins and journalist Kate Zernike. The topic of discussion...
View ArticleHow MIT’s fab labs scaled around the world
What do a student tinkerer in Bhutan, a design professional in Nairobi, and an artist in Brazil have in common? They’re part of a global community of makers benefiting from the fab lab network, which...
View ArticleJohn Durant to step down as MIT Museum director
John Durant, who led a transformation of the MIT Museum that culminated in the opening of the new museum in Kendall Square last fall, has announced he will be stepping down as director on Dec. 31. He...
View ArticleProfessor Emeritus Roman Jackiw, “giant of theoretical physics,” dies at 83
Eminent theoretical physicist and Dirac MedalistRoman Jackiw, MIT professor emeritus and holder of the Department of Physics’ Jerrold Zacharias chair, died June 14 at age 83. He was a member of the MIT...
View ArticleMoving days for MIT’s history
Gloria Martinez has a million-and-a-half items on her to-do list.Quite literally: Give or take a few hundred thousand, that's the number of unique objects in the MIT Museum's astonishingly diverse...
View ArticleQ&A: A high-tech take on Wagner’s “Parsifal” opera
The world-famous Bayreuth Festival in Germany, annually centered around the works of composer Richard Wagner, launched this summer on July 25 with a production that has been making headlines. Director...
View ArticleDreaming of waves
Ocean waves are easy on the eyes, but hard on the brain. How do they form? How far do they travel? How do they break? Those magnificent waves you see crashing into the shore are complex.“I’ve often...
View ArticleMichael John Gorman named MIT Museum director
MIT has appointed Michael John Gorman the Mark R. Epstein (Class of 1963) Director of the recently re-imagined MIT Museum.Gorman replaces longtime museum director John Durant, who stepped down in 2023....
View ArticleA chronicler of the biotech boom
For decades now, MIT’s Kendall Square neighborhood has been dotted by cranes, scaffolding, and construction sites — the unofficial symbols of the biotechnology boom that has made East Cambridge an...
View ArticleThree Lincoln Laboratory inventions named IEEE Milestones
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designated three historical MIT Lincoln Laboratory technologies as IEEE Milestones. The technologies are the Mode S air traffic control...
View ArticleNew exhibits showcase trailblazing MIT women
This spring, two new exhibits on campus are shining a light on the critical contributions of pathbreaking women at the Institute. They are part of MIT Libraries’ Women@MIT Archival Initiative in the...
View ArticleMost work is new work, long-term study of U.S. census data shows
This is part 1 of a two-part MIT News feature examining new job creation in the U.S. since 1940, based on new research from Ford Professor of Economics David Autor. Part 2 is available here.In 1900,...
View ArticleDoes technology help or hurt employment?
This is part 2 of a two-part MIT News feature examining new job creation in the U.S. since 1940, based on new research from Ford Professor of Economics David Autor. Part 1 is available here.Ever since...
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