I Grew Up in Damascus
MIT is a home to individuals from all parts of the globe. These community members learn, do research, and advance the Institute’s mission of making the world a better place.
Paint by Numbers
“When I was new to MIT, I interviewed a lecturer who had also been a student here. He mentioned the nostalgic feeling of walking through the campus and seeing the hand-painted lettering on the doors. The doors, he said, had remained a constant on the landscape while so much else has changed. I hadn’t even noticed the signs were hand-painted, or that they were so much part of the MIT culture. As time went by, I became further intrigued when I heard people excitedly mention that they spotted the 'painter' in a hallway somewhere! They would find him, just like I did, expertly crafting the name of a new-comer, while his own name and identity remained a mystery.
Solid-State Learning
When Jeffrey Grossman teaches solid-state chemistry, he keeps it moving. His shoes click across the front of the lecture hall floor with the cadence and energy of a tap dance. He spins toward the chalkboard and rapidly jots down equations. He pauses to hold up a large 3-D model of the atoms in a crystal structure, passes it into the sea of 400 students in the room, then resumes his lecture — without once breaking his rhythm.
Project Sandcastle
On a foggy night in San Francisco, a Bat-Signal appears in the sky. It flickers above a house on the highest hilltop in the city, where five MIT students live in what other people call a “hacker house.” It’s a label the students avoid.
Fighting ALS with Mind, Hand, and Heart
When Bobby Forster proposed to his girlfriend, they were both covered in beads and face paint, among the hordes at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He dropped to one knee; she said yes. In an instant, he was on his feet, wrapping his arms around her. They kissed for so long the revelers, hooting for them, ran out of breath.
Touring MIT’s Nuclear Facilities
MIT has converted a row of former warehouses and cracker-storage facilities into one of the densest concentrations of nuclear science instrumentation and brain power on the planet.
Data, Systems, and Society
Data is good. More data is better. And understanding how to use and make sense of large amounts of data is paramount. Munther Dahleh, the William A. Coolidge Professor and Director of the Institute for Data, Systems and Society, knows that data collection and analysis has many, practical implications that can benefit the world.
The Real World
Located in Lexington, MA, The MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center gives students the opportunity to creatively explore solutions to world problems. Robert Shin, the Director of Beaver Works, says students from campus are collaborating with the lab on “incredibly meaningful” and innovative projects and research.
Making Makers at MIT
"MIT has more than 130,000 square feet of hands-on workshops and makerspaces across the campus (with even more to come). We design, prototype, and invent the future of technology one project at a time. Only at MIT do we need a “czar" to oversee all of this activity.
Run, Jump, Fly: Student Aviators to Compete in National Flugtag Competition
When several Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) students read of an event that dares “the brave and brainy to design, build and pilot home-made flying machines off a 28-foot high flight deck in hopes of soaring into the wild blue yonder,” there was no way they could not take up the challenge.