Author Archives: Meghan Harrington
Engineering next-generation fertilizers
Born in Palermo, Sicily, Giorgio Rizzo spent his childhood curious about the natural world. “I have always been fascinated by nature and how plants and animals can adapt…
The brain power behind sustainable AI
How can you use science to build a better gingerbread house?That was something Miranda Schwacke spent a lot of time thinking about. The MIT graduate student in the…
Maps shows US’ critical minerals as China battle heats up
Amid intensifying U.S.–China trade tensions, Elsa Olivetti speaks with Newsweek’s Jasmine Laws about America’s continued dependence on China for processing rare-earth elements. Despite sizable U.S. deposits, China controls about 90 percent…
Green bananas can’t throw 3.091 Fun Run off course
The night before the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)’s first-ever 3.091 Fun Run, organizer Bianca Sinausky opened a case of bananas she’d ordered and was met…
School of Engineering welcomes new faculty in 2024-25
The MIT School of Engineering welcomes new faculty members across six of its academic units. This new cohort of faculty members, who have recently started their roles at…
Discovery of the week: Magnetic transistors
For years, researchers have been trying to use magnets in transistors to enable faster, more energy-efficient semiconductors, writes Alex Knapp in The Prototype newsletter. Now, DMSE engineers have…
We’ve been using lithium-ion batteries for decades. Now we know more about how they work
MIT researchers—including Yang Shao-Horn—have developed a new model that illustrates the chemical mechanisms underlying lithium-ion batteries, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The findings could lead to “faster, more efficient batteries…
Why some quantum materials stall while others scale
People tend to think of quantum materials — whose properties arise from quantum mechanical effects — as exotic curiosities. But some quantum materials have become a ubiquitous part…
Scooped by a cupcake business: Why we called our green-cement company Sublime Systems
Leah Ellis, a former DMSE postdoc and co-founder of MIT startup Sublime Systems, speaks with Nature reporter Jacqui Thornton about the company’s beginnings. “I felt that the word ‘sublime’ encapsulated…
Uncovering new physics in metals manufacturing
For decades, it’s been known that subtle chemical patterns exist in metal alloys, but researchers thought they were too minor to matter — or that they got erased…