Using excess heat to improve electrolyzers and fuel cells

Reducing the use of fossil fuels will have unintended consequences for the power-generation industry and beyond. For example, many industrial chemical processes use fossil-fuel byproducts as precursors to things like asphalt, glycerine, and other important chemicals. One solution to reduce the impact of the loss of fossil fuels on industrial chemical processes is to store […]

Zoë Marschner and Charlotte Wickert named 2022-23 Goldwater Scholars

MIT students Zoë Marschner and Charlotte Wickert have been selected to receive a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for the 2022-23 academic year. Over 5,000 college students from across the United States were nominated for the scholarships, from which only 417 recipients were selected based on academic merit.  The Goldwater scholarships have been conferred since 1989 by the […]

MIT announces five flagship projects in first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition

MIT today announced the five flagship projects selected in its first-ever Climate Grand Challenges competition. These multiyear projects will define a dynamic research agenda focused on unraveling some of the toughest unsolved climate problems and bringing high-impact, science-based solutions to the world on an accelerated basis. Representing the most promising concepts to emerge from the […]

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 […]

Finding the questions that guide MIT fusion research

“One of the things I learned was, doing good science isn’t so much about finding the answers as figuring out what the important questions are.” As Martin Greenwald retires from the responsibilities of senior scientist and deputy director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), he reflects on his almost 50 years of […]

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 […]

Toward batteries that pack twice as much energy per pound

In the endless quest to pack more energy into batteries without increasing their weight or volume, one especially promising technology is the solid-state battery. In these batteries, the usual liquid electrolyte that carries charges back and forth between the electrodes is replaced with a solid electrolyte layer. Such batteries could potentially not only deliver twice […]