The MIT Press and Harvard Law School Library launch new series offering high-quality, affordable law textbooks

Together, the MIT Press and Harvard Law School Library announce the launch of the “Open Casebook” series. Leveraging free and open texts created and updated by distinguished legal scholars, the series offers high-quality yet affordable printed textbooks for use in law teaching across the country, tied to online access to the works and legal opinions […]

Strengthening students’ knowledge and experience in climate and sustainability

Tackling the climate crisis is central to MIT. Critical to this mission is harnessing the innovation, passion, and expertise of MIT’s talented students, from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. To help raise this student involvement to the next level, the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) recently launched a program that will engage MIT […]

Providing hands-on photonics education across Massachusetts

Photonics — the science of guiding and manipulating light — enables applications ranging from telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing to medical imaging, lidar, and augmented reality displays. But despite the importance of this growing field, the nation faces a shortage of photonics and electronics technicians and engineers. The Lab for Education and Application Prototypes […]

Learning to think critically about machine learning

Students in the MIT course 6.036 (Introduction to Machine Learning) study the principles behind powerful models that help physicians diagnose disease or aid recruiters in screening job candidates. Now, thanks to the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) framework, these students will also stop to ponder the implications of these artificial intelligence tools, which […]

Professor Emeritus Leo Marx, influential scholar of American history, dies at 102

Leo Marx, internationally famed scholar of American history and founding member of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), died on March 8 at his home in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. He was 102. Respected and beloved as a scholar, teacher, colleague, and friend, Marx provided decisive leadership in giving the humanities […]

MIT OpenCourseWare launches NextGen platform

After serving millions of learners around the world for the last 20 years, MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) has launched its next-generation platform to allow for flexible growth, experimentation, and evolution in open learning. MIT’s “NextGen OCW” offers a new and improved experience for learners, more support for educators, additional opportunities for open education collaboration, and a […]

MIT’s FutureMakers programs help kids get their minds around — and hands on — AI

As she was looking for a camp last summer, Yabesra Ewnetu, who’d just finished eighth grade, found a reference to MIT’s FutureMakers Create-a-thon. Ewnetu had heard that it’s hard to detect bias in artificial intelligence because AI algorithms are so complex, but this didn’t make sense to her. “I was like, well, we’re the ones […]

Manipulating the future

As robots evolve, society’s collective imagination forever ponders what else robots can do, with recent fascinations coming to life as self-driving cars or robots that can walk and interact with objects as humans do. These sophisticated systems are powered by advances in deep learning that triggered breakthroughs in robotic perception, so that robots today have […]

Leveraging science and technology against the world’s top problems

Looking back on nearly a half-century at MIT, Richard K. Lester, associate provost and Japan Steel Industry Professor, sees a “somewhat eccentric professional trajectory.” But while his path has been irregular, there has been a clearly defined through line, Lester says: the emergence of new science and new technologies, the potential of these developments to shake […]

Dan Huttenlocher ponders our human future in an age of artificial intelligence

What does it mean to be human in an age where artificial intelligence agents make decisions that shape human actions? That’s a deep question with no easy answers, and it’s been on the mind of Dan Huttenlocher SM ’84, PhD ’88, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, for the past few years. “Advances […]

Featured video: L. Rafael Reif on the power of education

MIT President L. Rafael Reif recently joined Raúl Rodríguez, associate vice president of internationalization at Tecnológico de Monterrey, for a wide-ranging fireside chat about the power of education and its impact in addressing global issues, even more so in a post pandemic world.  “When I was younger, my parents used to always tell me and my […]

MIT graduate engineering, business, science programs ranked highly by U.S. News for 2023

MIT’s graduate program in engineering has again topped the list of U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings, released today. The program has held the No. 1 spot since 1990, when the magazine first published these rankings. The MIT Sloan School of Management also placed highly, landing in the No. 5 spot for the best […]

Q&A: Stuart Schmill on MIT’s decision to reinstate the SAT/ACT requirement

MIT Admissions announced today that it will reinstate its requirement that applicants submit scores from an SAT or ACT exam. The Institute suspended its longstanding requirement in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic that prevented most high schoolers from safely taking the exams. However, with the advent of safe, effective pediatric vaccination, the […]

3 Questions: Jackson Lu on the “bamboo ceiling” in some graduate schools

In the U.S., ethnic East Asians are often depicted as a “model minority” and assumed to be thriving in educational and professional terms. But reality is more complex. A new study co-authored by Jackson Lu, the Mitsui Career Development Professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management, finds that students of East Asian descent often […]

Historic entrepreneurship course shows no signs of slowing down

In a process that has taken place for more than 60 years at MIT, this week a group of students gathered to practice entrepreneurship at a whirlwind pace designed to mimic the steep learning curve required to start a company. MIT’s course 15.390 (New Enterprises) has been held every year since 1961 — a time […]

Training STEM teachers to uncover students’ full potential

In the summer of 2011, MIT PhD student Heather Beem travelled to a rural region of Ghana to try engaging students from low-resource schools in hands-on learning projects. She began by asking a group of high school students what they wanted to work on. “They said, ‘Anything, whatever you want,’” Beem recalls. Hoping to narrow […]