News & Stories

Designing off-grid refrigeration technologies for crop storage in Kenya

For smallholder farmers living in hot and arid regions, getting fresh crops to market and selling them at the best price is a balancing act. If crops aren’t sold early enough, they wilt or ripen too quickly in the heat, and farmers have to sell them at reduced prices. Selling produce in the morning is […]

Beyond Bitcoin: A new case for novel payment systems

Finding patterns in the noise

When social scientists administer surveys and questionnaires, they cannot always count on the scrupulous cooperation of their respondents: It’s human nature to get distracted when faced with a form. So how can researchers sort through what may be unreliable data to identify statistically significant answers to their questions? That’s where Shiyao “Sean” Liu comes in. […]

Superconductor technology for smaller, sooner fusion

Scientists have long sought to harness fusion as an inexhaustible and carbon-free energy source. Within the past few years, groundbreaking high-temperature superconductor technology (HTS) sparked a new vision for achieving practical fusion energy. This approach, known as the high-field pathway to fusion, aims to generate fusion in compact devices on a shorter timescale and lower […]

3 Questions: Anat Biletzki on the Human Rights and Technology Fellowship Program

MIT Center for International Studies (CIS) research affiliate Anat Biletzki is the Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy at Quinnipiac University. From 2001 to 2006, she served as chair of B’Tselem ― the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and in 2015 was honored as a nominee of the 1,000 Women for the Nobel […]

3 Questions: Ram Sasisekharan on hastening vaccines and treatments

Covid-19 has brought much of the world to a halt this year. However, it is just one of the many infectious diseases without a vaccine that affect millions of people around the world. The development of therapeutics for these infectious diseases has mostly been overlooked by pharmaceutical companies in favor of higher-margin therapies for the […]

MIT deepens connections to the Middle East

Since MIT’s first major collaboration in the Middle East in the 1970s, the Institute has deepened its connection and commitment to the region, expanding to create the MIT-Arab World Program through the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI). This year, partnering with the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation (AHSF) in Jordan, the program is launching […]

J-PAL North America launches MIT Roybal Center for Translational Research to Improve Health Care for the Aging

With support from the National Institute on Aging, J-PAL North America, a research center in the MIT Department of Economics, recently launched the MIT Roybal Center for Translational Research to Improve Health Care for the Aging. The center will support randomized evaluations of low-cost, high-impact behavioral interventions to improve health-care delivery and health outcomes for […]

J-PAL North America launches research initiative to focus on Covid-19 recovery

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in incalculable losses for millions of Americans, particularly among low-income communities and communities of color. As decision-makers work to address this unparalleled public health crisis, urgent questions remain on how the Covid-19 pandemic will impact the social and economic well-being of people in the United States once the immediate crisis […]

Diverse international cohort first to earn MIT master’s degrees in data, economics, and development policy

This past January, 22 students from across the world joined the MIT campus as the first cohort in the new MIT master’s program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy (DEDP). Developed by MIT’s Department of Economics and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the program represents a new approach to higher education by […]