ENGINEERING IN ACTION
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Talking outside the tower
Walking into MIT can feel like entering a foreign country — one with a number for every building and an unwieldy acronym for every organization. Deeper conversations are even more opaque, as fields and sub-fields command their own complex scientific argot. But if the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that bridging the gap […] -
Sustainable solutions at home and abroad
Arnav Patel is a self-described sustainability enthusiast. Working on solutions related to climate change has been a central thread woven throughout his time at MIT. As a first-year student, he was initially drawn to mechanical engineering because he wanted to keep his options open. -
Healing with hydrogels
In November, mechanical engineering PhD candidate Hyunwoo Yuk earned the top prize at the Collegiate Inventors Competition hosted by the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. Yuk was named the graduate winner for his invention SanaHeal, a bioadhesive tape that can easily bind to tissues or organs. The tape could one day be used in place of […] -
A hands-on class responds to Covid
When Professor Stefanie Mueller needed to adapt her laboratory class to the Covid-19 pandemic, she was initially overwhelmed by the amount of work that would need to be done. That’s because Mueller’s hands-on building and fabrication class, 6.810 (Engineering Interactive Technologies), is entirely about the ways that humans interact with technology in the physical world. As […] -
Faster tracking of treatment responses
When MIT announced plans to welcome back some undergraduates, ramp up research operations, and increase the number of staff on campus this past fall, its administration was faced with the challenge of doing so in a way that minimized the risk of an outbreak on campus. In typical MIT fashion, several teams of engineers and […]
IN THE NEWS
Seeking the cellular mechanisms of disease, with help from machine learning
Caroline Uhler blends machine learning, statistics, and biology to understand how our bodies respond to illness. go
Navigating uncertainty through song
Senior Alberto Naveira has found himself and his community as a member of the a cappella group the Chorallaries. go- A method to assess Covid-19 transmission risks in indoor set...
- Professor Emeritus Ernest Cravalho, an expert in thermodynam...
- MIT juniors Yu Jing Chen and Max Williamson named 2021 Truma...
- Nine MIT students awarded 2021 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowsh...
- Seeking the cellular mechanisms of disease, with help from m...
- A safer way to deploy bacteria as environmental sensors
ASK AN ENGINEER
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How do I get into MIT?
It should be less about getting in and more about getting it right — cultivate the interests and work on the projects you love anyway…
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How can middle school students learn about civil engineering?
Read some cool books, ask questions, and get dirty…
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Why does our hair turn gray — as opposed to green or some other color — as we age?
Gray hair, sagging skin, wrinkles — all signs of aging can be traced to the same cause: dying cells…
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How do doctors detect cancer in the human body?
How they do it now and how they will do it in the future may end up being very different…
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Why can’t I use a dimmer switch with a compact fluorescent bulb?
Fluorescent lights use plasma — and plasma requires proper power…
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How do birds sit on high-voltage power lines without getting electrocuted?
You’ve probably never seen a bird straddle two wires at once, and there’s a good reason for that…