Fall 2022
At MIT, design work runs the gamut from guiding the interactions of proteins to developing new ways to construct housing. By combining creativity, innovation, and synthesis to reveal new pathways forward, design draws mind and hand together, providing a strong foundation for efforts across the Institute to confront society’s most complex challenges.
Past issues
Spring 2022
MIT for a Better World
“The Campaign for a Better World spotlighted the bold, pioneering spirit of our community. Overcoming obstacles and seizing opportunities, we have continued to take on new problems and seek fresh solutions to the world’s greatest challenges,” says L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s president. Together, our alumni and friends brought to life an array of ideas, innovations, and transformations and fueled MIT’s core strength—its people.
Fall 2021
Together
The spark of innovation often begins with a surprising combination, whether of materials, people, ideas, disciplines, or technology. At MIT, this alchemy is deliberately fostered, yielding a collaborative engine that continually breaks new ground in research ranging from health care to climate and from education to manufacturing. It’s a process powered by the people of MIT working together.
Spring 2021
EARTH
Climate change presents a challenge like no other, truly daunting in its complexity. At MIT, faculty, students, and staff are working to address the planet’s mounting issues in ways both large and small. While some work to mitigate damage and construct a sustainable future, others seek to understand and influence the human behaviors at the heart of the problem. Together, they hope to protect Earth.
Fall 2020
Global Health
As Covid-19 began its deadly spread across the globe in 2020, everyone wanted answers. At MIT, the rapid response that emerged relied on tools, techniques, and talents built up over generations. This solid base of cutting-edge work has supported major efforts to combat Covid-19 while also advancing research across the global health spectrum.
Spring 2020
As computing revolutionizes how people work, play, learn, and interact, the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is transforming the Institute. Bridging disciplinary boundaries, the college draws great minds together to consider the societal and ethical challenges that lie ahead and to seize the extraordinary global opportunities offered by advanced computing and artificial intelligence.
Fall 2019
Making has always been at the heart of an MIT education. The Institute’s motto, “mens et manus” (mind and hand), reflects this educational ideal, which harnesses creativity, intellect, and craftsmanship for practical application. Today, MIT is embracing the mission of making with more fervor than ever.
Winter 2019
Opening Doors
For undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members, the financial support that provides entrance to MIT, or to a new avenue in their work, can be life-changing. Scholarships, fellowships, and professorships unlock one door to reveal many more.
Fall 2018
Kendall/MIT
“Kendall Square is a vital source of opportunities, talent, and resources to help the people of MIT deliver their ideas to the world. Our future success depends on making sure that Kendall succeeds as a place—a place where people want to live, work, and play, and a place that makes our city stronger, too.” —MIT President L. Rafael Reif About the cover
Spring 2018
Repair
The first step in repairing something is to understand how it works. At MIT, the next step is imagining how it could work even better than before. Plus: a special section on human and machine intelligence.
Winter 2018
Pathways to Policy
Knowledge created at MIT has the power to change the world—but only when it reaches those who are best positioned to use it. That’s why our researchers find avenues for collaboration with governments, businesses, and other organizations that can translate their findings into widespread action.
Fall 2017
Questions
Every idea or invention born at MIT began the same way as MIT’s mission statement: with the imperative to advance knowledge.
Spring 2017
Home @ MIT
P-sets in the hallway, construction projects in the courtyard, conversations that start (but don’t end) in the classroom or lab. Moment by moment, students build campus life. About the cover
Winter 2017
Designing the Future
The innovative technologies and scientific breakthroughs central to MIT’s identity continue to push design in new directions—and that, in turn, makes new inventions and discoveries possible. About the cover
Fall 2016
Data and Health
New technologies and ballooning data sets allow us to model problems and test solutions in human health, in ways inconceivable just a decade ago. MIT researchers are rising to the challenge—collecting the data we need, making sense of the data we have, and extracting insights that could improve countless lives.
Spring 2016
How we learn
Whether in classrooms or labs, residences or maker spaces, in the shadow of a volcano or by the light of a laptop, MIT continues to push the limits of how learning happens, and what it can achieve.
Fall 2015
Up for the Challenge
There’s not much you can fathom that MIT won’t plunge in to figure out, fix, get right, or get to the bottom of. We’ve done it since our start: developing radar, helping to land a man on the moon, playing a key role in cracking the human genome. MIT experts view today’s huge, interconnected problems as exhilarating opportunities for action.
Summer 2015
Water + Food
MIT is playing a key role in helping to ensure the sustainability of human civilization into the future. Across the Institute, and across the world, faculty and students are pursuing transformative research to address the urgent challenges of water and food.
Spring 2015
The View from Here
MIT launches the Innovation Initiative, a natural extension of MIT’s culture of creative, collaborative problem solving that will speed solutions to tough global problems.
Fall 2014
Lift Off
Giant Steps. MIT pioneered the nation’s first aeronautical engineering course in 1914, and now faculty are preparing for a fantastic future of autonomous automobiles and aircraft, and visits to Mars and beyond to search for signs of life.
Spring 2014
Instant of Discovery
Basic research at MIT is the spark that creates new knowledge and solves big problems.
Winter 2014
The Future Is Cities
Cities are growing faster than you can say megalopolis, and thanks to social media and the Internet, global climate change and a bad economy, the American dream of ownership is changing, and we are finding ourselves living in inclusive cities, sharing our houses, cars, bikes, offices, and more.
Spring 2013
The Arts at MIT
Leading new technologies, criss-crossing disciplines, transcending bias, and leaving us resonating with ourselves, each other, and the cosmos.
Fall 2011
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology — which emerged as a field about 25 years ago — now has an impact that will one day rival that of electricity, transistors, antibiotics, and the Internet — thanks in part to MIT research.
Spring 2011
One Gorgeous Celebration
MIT celebrates the Campaign for Students, a remarkably successful effort that to date has raised nearly $555 million to support generations of MIT students — a striking achievement in the most difficult economy since the Great Depression.
Summer 2010
Water: An Urgent Challenge for the 21st Century
Water is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century, and now more than 50 faculty members from across the Institute are working to find new solutions to this growing crisis.
Spring 2010
Changing the World Through Service
Thousands of MIT students are participating in public service projects across the globe to gain leadership skills and to better serve the world.
Fall 2009
MIT Brainpower
Institute experts are now addressing one of the greatest intellectual and scientific challenges of the 21st century — understanding the human brain and mind.
Summer 2009
UROP at 40
MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) matches students with faculty in research partnerships. This year, the landmark program celebrates its 40th year.
Spring 2009
Here Comes the Sun
MIT’s faculty and students are working to make affordable easy-to-use solar power a reality, and have already made impressive contributions to this critical effort.
Fall 2008
Telescoping Genius
Graduate fellowships make it possible for MIT to draw the best students in the world and for these scholars to make progress in various fields of study.
Spring 2008
The Magic of Learning by Doing
Students say sitting in a classroom is a great way to learn, but when you add hands-on work, the experience is amplified. It’s like learning in stereo.
Winter 2008
Nurturing a Dream
A scholarship is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a chance to realize your dreams. MIT scholarship recipients tell what this gift means to them.
Summer 2007
A Genius for Leadership
MIT’s amazing students believe they can change the world. At this institution, the best students on the planet are solving problems, sparking innovative solutions, and leading the way into society.
Spring 2007
Beyond Borders
International engagement is becoming more important than ever before, and to respond to the new environment, MIT is educating a new generation of global leaders and citizens.
Winter 2007
Powering Up
The scope of today’s energy challenge demands both a new level of understanding and brand new solutions. Researchers in MIT’s five schools are busy providing both.
Summer 2006
Institute Professors
Institute Professor is the highest honor given by MIT’s faculty and administration. The 13 men and women who hold this title are key contributors not only to MIT but to the nation and the world.
Spring 2006
New Strategies for Saving Lives
Are we turning the corner against cancer? Thanks in significant part to some remarkable new discoveries and technologies emerging from MIT, the outlook is getting steadily brighter.
Fall 2004
The Chance to Soar
Students say a scholarship is the chance of a lifetime – a chance to learn, grow, and succeed.
Fall 2003
UROP
MIT’s UROP program — which matches students with faculty in research partnerships — has become the centerpiece of an MIT education.
Summer 2003
Energy Efficiency
MIT experts are contributing ideas, inventions, and leadership to create a secure energy future.
Winter 2003
The Build Up
MIT’s new buildings are as diverse, innovative, and bold as the work that will go on inside them.
Fall 2002
Sharing The Wealth Within
MIT students — who are involved in community service more than ever before — say the more you give, the more that flows right back.
Spring 2002
Scientists and Engineers Together
MIT researchers are working to spur the next revolution in medical care.
Fall 2001
Calling the World Home
Students in MIT’s MISTI program are learning to live, work, and succeed in a global society.
Spring 2001
The Greatest Work On Earth
Many MIT faculty — leaders in environmental studies — are now working on green building design, efficient energy production,and global climate change.
Winter 2001
The Art of Dialogue
Dialogue expert William Isaacs says that problems between people often stem from an inability to conduct a successful dialogue.
Fall 2000
Winners For Life
MIT students say it’s great to participate in athletics. Sports builds character, and in life that’s the winning edge.
Spring 2000
Brainwork
MIT experts are having an impressive impact on science’s understanding of the brain — subjects from vision to memory to the building blocks of thought.
Spring 1999
Drawing Us Together
Studying the humanities and social sciences enriches a technological education. It awakens the imagination, broadens the mind, and enables us to better understand not only ourselves, but each other.
Winter 1999
The Right Stuff
William LeMessurier, ’53, risked a lawsuit, bankruptcy, and professional disgrace, but he chose to do what he knew was right.