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An MIT student team took second place for its design of a multilevel greenhouse to be used on Mars in NASA’s 2019 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge last month. Each year, NASA holds the BIG Idea competition in its search for innovative and futuristic ideas. This year’s challenge invited universities across the United […] More
Representatives of the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), MIT-India, and the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar (IIT Ropar) gathered recently for a signing ceremony to formally launch a new faculty seed fund. The seed fund will help initiate new water- and food systems-related research collaborations between faculty and research scientists from […] More
A team that helps small-scale farmers in India increase their profits and another looking to create an international trading marketplace for shrimp took home prizes at Wednesday’s Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize. Gramhal, whose mobile tools help smallholder farmers sell their crops, won the first-place prize of $20,000. Velaron was awarded the $10,000 second-place […] More
A startup with a cheap technology for purifying textile wastewater and another with a system to help reduce methane emissions from cattle were named co-winners of the MIT Water Innovation Prize on Thursday. After eight student finalist teams pitched their companies’ water-related solutions, the judges couldn’t agree on the winners and ultimately split the grand […] More
In Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, the demand for water is expected to double by 2035 to an estimated 300,000 cubic meters per day. In Mombasa’s current warm and humid climate, that water comes from a substantial volume of precipitation that may also change significantly as the region warms in the coming decades in line […] More
“This is a $10 billion market and everyone knows it.” Those are the words of Chris Hartshorn, CEO of a new MIT spinout — Xibus Systems — that is aiming to make a splash in the food industry with their new food safety sensor. Hartshorn has considerable experience supporting innovation in agriculture and food technology. Prior to joining […] More
People in the restaurant industry know a thing or two about execution. High operating costs, low profit margins, and the perishable nature of every establishment’s most important resource — food — make it essential to get things done with speed and efficiency. It’s no surprise, then, that the startup Toast has found success developing technology […] More
Engineers at MIT and Penn State University have found that under the right conditions, ordinary clear water droplets on a transparent surface can produce brilliant colors, without the addition of inks or dyes. In a paper published today in Nature, the team reports that a surface covered in a fine mist of transparent droplets and […] More
