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    MIT helps first-time entrepreneur build food hospitality company

    Christine Marcus MBA ’12 was an unlikely entrepreneur in 2011. That year, after spending her entire, 17-year career in government, most recently as the deputy chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Energy, she entered the MIT Sloan School of Management Fellows MBA Program. Moreover, Marcus didn’t think of herself as an entrepreneur. “That […] More

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    Making real a biotechnology dream: nitrogen-fixing cereal crops

    As food demand rises due to growing and changing populations around the world, increasing crop production has been a vital target for agriculture and food systems researchers who are working to ensure there is enough food to meet global need in the coming years. One MIT research group mobilizing around this challenge is the Voigt […] More

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    Julia Ortony: Concocting nanomaterials for energy and environmental applications

    A molecular engineer, Julia Ortony performs a contemporary version of alchemy. “I take powder made up of disorganized, tiny molecules, and after mixing it up with water, the material in the solution zips itself up into threads 5 nanometers thick — about 100 times smaller than the wavelength of visible light,” says Ortony, the Finmeccanica Career Development […] More

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    MIT Dining wins the New England Food Vision Prize

    MIT Dining, in collaboration with the MIT Office of Sustainability, has been selected as one of six recipients of the 2019 Henry P. Kendall Foundation New England Food Vision Prize. Launched by the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in 2018, the New England Food Vision Prize Program gives out as many as six awards of up […] More

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    Coated seeds may enable agriculture on marginal lands

    Providing seeds with a protective coating that also supplies essential nutrients to the germinating plant could make it possible to grow crops in otherwise unproductive soils, according to new research at MIT. A team of engineers has coated seeds with silk that has been treated with a kind of bacteria that naturally produce a nitrogen […] More

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    Microparticles could help fight malnutrition

    About 2 billion people around the world suffer from deficiencies of key micronutrients such as iron and vitamin A. Two million children die from these deficiencies every year, and people who don’t get enough of these nutrients can develop blindness, anemia, and cognitive impairments. MIT researchers have now developed a new way to fortify staple […] More

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    New process could make hydrogen peroxide available in remote places

    Hydrogen peroxide, a useful all-purpose disinfectant, is found in most medicine cabinets in the developed world. But in remote villages in developing countries, where it could play an important role in health and sanitation, it can be hard to come by. Now, a process developed at MIT could lead to a simple, inexpensive, portable device […] More

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    Scaling up a cleaner-burning alternative for cookstoves

    For millions of people globally, cooking in their own homes can be detrimental to their health, and sometimes deadly. The World Health Organization estimates that 3.8 million people a year die as a result of the soot and smoke generated in traditional wood-burning cookstoves. Women and children in particular are at risk of pneumonia, stroke, […] More