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MIT PhD students honored for their work to solve critical issues in water and food
In 2017, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) initiated the J-WAFS Fellowship Program for outstanding MIT PhD students working to solve humankind’s water-related challenges. Since then, J-WAFS has awarded 18 fellowships to students who have gone on to create innovations like a pump that can maximize energy efficiency even with changing […]
Mining social media data for social good
For Erin Walk, who has loved school since she was a little girl, pursuing a graduate degree always seemed like a given. As a mechanical engineering major at Harvard University with a minor in government, she figured that going to graduate school in engineering would be the next logical step. However, during her senior year, […]
Government’s invisible hand in developing countries
In the countryside of northern Ghana, there is not much evidence of government in action. There are few paved roads, state buildings, or law enforcement officials. It is easy to think the state lacks the resources to control much of anything in such places. “In the rural periphery of the developing world, we tend to […]
US and UAE governments highlight early warning system for climate resilience
The following is a joint announcement from MIT and Community Jameel. An international project to build community resilience to the effects of climate change, launched by Community Jameel and a research team at MIT, has been recognized as an innovation sprint at the 2023 summit of the United States’ and United Arab Emirates’ Agriculture Innovation […]
Scientists discover anatomical changes in the brains of the newly sighted
For many decades, neuroscientists believed there was a “critical period” in which the brain could learn to make sense of visual input, and that this window closed around the age of 6 or 7. Recent work from MIT Professor Pawan Sinha has shown that the picture is more nuanced than that. In many studies of […]
Exploring the nanoworld of biogenic gems
A new research collaboration with The Bahrain Institute for Pearls and Gemstones (DANAT) will seek to develop advanced characterization tools for the analysis of the properties of pearls and to explore technologies to assign unique identifiers to individual pearls. The three-year project will be led by Admir Mašić, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, […]
Study offers a new view of when and how governments distribute land
Allocating land for people to use is one of the most powerful tools a government can have. A newly published study by an MIT scholar now identifies the extent to which state land distribution can be a politically charged act. The research, focused on Kenya in recent decades, challenges some conventional wisdom while bringing new […]
Encouraging a scientific habit of the mind
As a child growing up in northern Nigeria, Abdullahi Tsanni always knew he had a passion for writing. Some of his earliest memories are trying to read his mother’s writings in Arabic and Hausa. It was in secondary school when Tsanni also developed an interest in science. When Tsanni was studying biochemistry at Ahmadu Bello […]
How debit cards helped Indonesia’s poor get more food
For many years, the Indonesian government’s food aid program sent bags of rice to villages, where local leaders were supposed to distribute them to poor residents every month. But starting about five years ago, Indonesia changed that. Instead of rice bags, the poor were sent debit cards to buy the equivalent amount of food at […]