Thanh Nguyen is in the habit of breaking down barriers. Take languages, for instance: Nguyen, a third-year doctoral candidate in nuclear science and engineering (NSE), wanted “to connect with other people and cultures” for his work and social life, he says, so he learned Vietnamese, French, German, and Russian, and is now taking an MIT […]

1970 was a milestone year for efforts to combat air pollution. On April 22, the first Earth Day was celebrated. The 1970 Clean Air Act was the first policy to establish federal regulations on car and industry emissions. In July, President Nixon announced his plan to establish the United States Environmental Protection Agency by the […]

Lillian ‘Lilly’ Papalia, a rising junior in mechanical engineering, is enrolled in the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET)’s Autonomous Machines thread. Her team won the GM/MIT Blacktop Build during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) and in doing so carried forward a NEET tradition — NEET Autonomous Machines student Sebastian Uribe was among four winners of […]

“I think ocean engineering as a field is really interesting because it marries the holistic side of living on planet Earth with solving all the technical challenges mechanical engineers face,” explains Michelle Kornberg, now a senior. This balance of using fundamental theories in areas like fluid dynamics, controls, and acoustics to solve problems in underwater environments has been a driving force throughout her academic career. “I am interested in how we can apply specific ocean engineering solutions to larger global problems, particularly climate change,” Kornberg adds.