Engineering Research

The faculty, post-docs, graduate students, undergraduates, and other researchers that comprise the engineering community at MIT are singularly dedicated to the development of ideas, processes, materials, and devices that will improve the lives of people throughout the world. The School of Engineering’s many departments, divisions, labs, and research centers collectively generate nearly $250 million in sponsored research every year—and they define the future of science and technology.

Research News

  • Selling chip makers on optical computing

    Computer chips that transmit data with light instead of electricity consume much less power than conventional chips, but so far, they’ve remained laboratory curiosities. Professors Vladimir Stojanović and Rajeev Ram and their colleagues in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics and Microsystems Technology Laboratory hope to change that, by designing optical chips that can be built using ordinary chip-manufacturing processes.

  • Feeling the way

    For many people, it has become routine to go online to check out a map before traveling to a new place. But for blind people, Google maps and other visual mapping applications are of little use. Now, a unique device developed at MIT could give the visually impaired the same kind of benefit that sighted people get from online maps.

  • Liquid battery big enough for the electric grid?

    There’s one major drawback to most proposed renewable-energy sources: their variability. The sun doesn’t shine at night, the wind doesn’t always blow, and tides, waves and currents fluctuate. That’s why many researchers have been pursuing ways of storing the power generated by these sources so that it can be used when it’s needed. Professor Donald Sadoway’s research in energy storage could help speed the development of renewable energy.

  • Turning heat to electricity

    In everything from computer processor chips to car engines to electric powerplants, the need to get rid of excess heat creates a major source of inefficiency. MIT research points to a much more efficient way of harvesting electrical power from what would otherwise be wasted heat.

  • One word: bioplastics

    Every year, more than 250 billion pounds of plastic are produced worldwide. Much of it ends up in the world’s oceans, a fact that troubles MIT biology professor Anthony Sinskey. New Iowa plant, based on MIT-developed technology, will use bacteria to produce biodegradable plastics from corn.