Author Archives: jason
Creating hands-on experiences for students in MIT’s forge
DesignPlus is a learning community open to MIT first-year undergraduates. It’s a space for hands-on experimentation and exploration, acquiring technical skills, finding mentors and mutual support, and…
Using art and science to depict the MIT family from 1861 to the present
In MIT.nano’s laboratories, researchers use silicon wafers as the platform to shape transformative technologies such as quantum circuitry, microfluidic devices, or energy-harvesting structures. But these substrates can also…
School of Engineering welcomes new faculty
The School of Engineering welcomes 15 new faculty members across six of its academic departments. This new cohort of faculty members, who have either recently started their roles…
Under extreme impacts, metals get stronger when heated
Metals get softer when they are heated, which is how blacksmiths can form iron into complex shapes by heating it red hot. And anyone who compares a copper…
Making steel with electricity
Steel is one of the most useful materials on the planet. A backbone of modern life, it’s used in skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, bridges, and more. Unfortunately, steelmaking is…
MIT scholars take commercial break with entrepreneurial scholarship
Two MIT scholars, each with a strong entrepreneurial drive, have received 2024 Kavanaugh Fellowship awards, advancing their quest to turn pioneering research into profitable commercial enterprises.The Kavanaugh…
EMERGE returns, enabling high schoolers to explore biological materials
The grad-student-run science discovery program EMERGE that trained middle-school kids on electron microscopes in November returned this spring, this time in the recently opened DMSE Breakerspace. Twenty-two high schoolers learned…
H2 underground
In 1987 in a village in Mali, workers were digging a water well when they felt a rush of air. One of the workers was smoking a cigarette,…
Researchers develop a detector for continuously monitoring toxic gases
Most systems used to detect toxic gases in industrial or domestic settings can be used only once, or at best a few times. Now, researchers at MIT have…
Scientists develop an affordable sensor for lead contamination
Engineers at MIT, Nanyang Technological University, and several companies have developed a compact and inexpensive technology for detecting and measuring lead concentrations in water, potentially enabling a significant…