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Developing a perfectly energy-efficient building is relatively easy to do — if you don’t give the building’s occupants any control over their environment. Since nobody wants that kind of building, Professor Christoph Reinhart has focused his career on finding ways to make buildings more energy-efficient while keeping user needs in mind. “At this point in designing buildings, […] More

On a black monitor in a dusty office in MIT’s Green Building, an iceberg the width of three football fields wallows in the shallow, briny waters of the Persian Gulf — also known as the Arabian Gulf — 6,000 miles from its home. Facing the screen is Maryam Rashed Alshehhi, a visiting assistant professor and recent […] More

When it comes to the health of the planet, agriculture and food production play an enormous role. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly 37 percent of land worldwide is used for agriculture and food production, and 11 percent of the Earth’s land surface is used specifically for crop production. […] More

MIT engineers have built a device that soaks up enough heat from the sun to boil water and produce “superheated” steam hotter than 100 degrees Celsius, without any expensive optics. On a sunny day, the structure can passively pump out steam hot enough to sterilize medical equipment, as well as to use in cooking and […] More

“By 2030, there will be a 40 percent gap between water supply and demand. That means that for every five people in this room, only three will have water,” said Mary Conley Egger, the opening keynote speaker at the annual MIT Water Summit. Eggert, vice president of Global Water Works, emphasized those figures to underscore the urgency behind […] More

Plants rely on the energy in sunlight to produce the nutrients they need. But sometimes they absorb more energy than they can use, and that excess can damage critical proteins. To protect themselves, they convert the excess energy into heat and send it back out. Under some conditions, they may reject as much as 70 […] More

Global climate change is a serious concern for the future of our entire planet. However, the regional impacts of climate change are often overlooked. Catherine Nikiel, a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is studying the impact of climate change on different aspects of the hydrological cycle as part of her […] More

When it comes to impacting global change, agriculture cuts both ways. Subject to the vicissitudes of global climate change, population, and economic growth, the cultivation of crops and livestock alters atmospheric concentrations of planet-warming greenhouse gases and ]contributes to pollution of freshwater and coastal areas. Assessing the risks to and from the agriculture sector — […] More