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    MIT OpenCourseWare is “a living testament to the nobility of open, unbounded learning”

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    Mostafa Fawzy became interested in physics in high school. It was the “elegance and paradox” of quantum theory that got his attention and led to his studies at the undergraduate and graduate level. But even with a solid foundation of coursework and supportive mentors, Fawzy wanted more. MIT Open Learning’s OpenCourseWare was just the thing he was looking for.  Now a doctoral candidate in atomic physics at Alexandria University and an assistant lecturer of physics at Alamein International University in Egypt, Fawzy reflects on how MIT OpenCourseWare bolstered his learning early in his graduate studies in 2019.  Part of MIT Open Learning, OpenCourseWare offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Fawzy was looking for advanced resources to supplement his research in quantum mechanics and theoretical physics, and he was immediately struck by the quality, accessibility, and breadth of MIT’s resources. “OpenCourseWare was transformative in deepening my understanding of advanced physics,” Fawzy says. “I found the structured lectures and assignments in quantum physics particularly valuable. They enhanced both my theoretical insight and practical problem-solving skills — skills I later applied in research on atomic systems influenced by magnetic fields and plasma environments.”  He completed educational resources including Quantum Physics I and Quantum Physics II, calling them “dense and mathematically sophisticated.” He met the challenge by engaging with the content in different ways: first, by simply listening to lectures, then by taking detailed notes, and finally by working though problem sets. Although initially he struggled to keep up, this methodical approach paid off, he says. He is grateful to his undergraduate mentors, professors M. Sakr and T. Bahy of Alexandria University, as well as to MIT OpenCourseWare, calling it a “steadfast companion through countless solitary nights of study, a beacon in times when formal resources were scarce, and a living testament to the nobility of open, unbounded learning.”  Recognizing the power of mentorship and teaching, Fawzy serves as an academic mentor with the African Academy of Sciences, supporting early-career researchers across the continent in theoretical and atomic physics.  “Many of these mentees lack access to advanced academic resources,” he explains. “I regularly incorporate OpenCourseWare into our mentorship sessions, using it as a foundational teaching and reference tool. It’s an equalizer, providing the same high-caliber content to students regardless of geographical or institutional limitations.” As he looks toward the future, Fawzy has big plans, influenced by MIT. “I aspire to establish a regional center for excellence in atomic and plasma physics, blending cutting-edge research with open-access education in the Global South,” he says. As he continues his research and teaching, he also hopes to influence science policy and contribute to international partnerships that shine the spotlight on research and science in emerging nations.  Along the way, he says, “OpenCourseWare remains a cornerstone resource that I will return to again and again.”  Fawzy says he’s also interested in MIT Open Learning resources in computational physics and energy and sustainability. He’s following MIT’s Energy Initiative, calling it increasingly relevant to his current work and future plans.  Fawzy is a proponent of open learning and a testament to its power. “The intellectual seeds sown by Open Learning resources such as MIT OpenCourseWare have flourished within me, shaping my identity as a physicist and affirming my deep belief in the transformative power of knowledge shared freely, without barriers,” he says.  More

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      3 Questions: Addressing the world’s most pressing challenges

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      The Center for International Studies (CIS) empowers students, faculty, and scholars to bring MIT’s interdisciplinary style of research and scholarship to address complex global challenges. In this Q&A, Mihaela Papa, the center’s director of research and a principal research scientist at MIT, describes her role as well as research within the BRICS Lab at MIT — a reference to the BRICS intergovernmental organization, which comprises the nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. She also discusses the ongoing mission of CIS to tackle the world’s most complex challenges in new and creative ways.Q: What is your role at CIS, and some of your key accomplishments since joining the center just over a year ago?A: I serve as director of research and principal research scientist at CIS, a role that bridges management and scholarship. I oversee grant and fellowship programs, spearhead new research initiatives, build research communities across our center’s area programs and MIT schools, and mentor the next generation of scholars. My academic expertise is in international relations, and I publish on global governance and sustainable development, particularly through my new BRICS Lab. This past year, I focused on building collaborative platforms that highlight CIS’ role as an interdisciplinary hub and expand its research reach. With Evan Lieberman, the director of CIS, I launched the CIS Global Research and Policy Seminar series to address current challenges in global development and governance, foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, and connect theoretical insights to policy solutions. We also convened a Climate Adaptation Workshop, which examined promising strategies for financing adaptation and advancing policy innovation. We documented the outcomes in a workshop report that outlines a broader research agenda contributing to MIT’s larger climate mission.In parallel, I have been reviewing CIS’ grant-making programs to improve how we serve our community, while also supporting regional initiatives such as research planning related to Ukraine. Together with the center’s MIT-Brazil faculty director Brad Olsen, I secured a MITHIC [MIT Human Insight Collaboration] Connectivity grant to build an MIT Amazonia research community that connects MIT scholars with regional partners and strengthens collaboration across the Amazon. Finally, I launched the BRICS Lab to analyze transformations in global governance and have ongoing research on BRICS and food security and data centers in BRICS. Q: Tell us more about the BRICS Lab.A: The BRICS countries comprise the majority of the world’s population and an expanding share of the global economy. [Originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, and China, BRICS currently includes 11 nations.] As a group, they carry the collective weight to shape international rules, influence global markets, and redefine norms — yet the question remains: Will they use this power effectively? The BRICS Lab explores the implications of the bloc’s rise for international cooperation and its role in reshaping global politics. Our work focuses on three areas: the design and strategic use of informal groups like BRICS in world affairs; the coalition’s potential to address major challenges such as food security, climate change, and artificial intelligence; and the implications of U.S. policy toward BRICS for the future of multilateralism.Q: What are the center’s biggest research priorities right now?A: Our center was founded in response to rising geopolitical tensions and the urgent need for policy rooted in rigorous, evidence-based research. Since then, we have grown into a hub that combines interdisciplinary scholarship and actively engages with policymakers and the public. Today, as in our early years, the center brings together exceptional researchers with the ambition to address the world’s most pressing challenges in new and creative ways.Our core focus spans security, development, and human dignity. Security studies have been a priority for the center, and our new nuclear security programming advances this work while training the next generation of scholars in this critical field. On the development front, our work has explored how societies manage diverse populations, navigate international migration, as well as engage with human rights and the changing patterns of regime dynamics.We are pursuing new research in three areas. First, on climate change, we seek to understand how societies confront environmental risks and harms, from insurance to water and food security in the international context. Second, we examine shifting patterns of global governance as rising powers set new agendas and take on greater responsibilities in the international system. Finally, we are initiating research on the impact of AI — how it reshapes governance across international relations, what is the role of AI corporations, and how AI-related risks can be managed.As we approach our 75th anniversary in 2026, we are excited to bring researchers together to spark bold ideas that open new possibilities for the future. More

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      Q&A: David Whelihan on the challenges of operating in the Arctic

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      To most, the Arctic can feel like an abstract place, difficult to imagine beyond images of ice and polar bears. But researcher David Whelihan of MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group is no stranger to the Arctic. Through Operation Ice Camp, a U.S. Navy–sponsored biennial mission to assess operational readiness in the Arctic region, he has traveled to this vast and remote wilderness twice over the past few years to test low-cost sensor nodes developed by the group to monitor loss in Arctic sea ice extent and thickness. The research team envisions establishing a network of such sensors across the Arctic that will persistently detect ice-fracturing events and correlate these events with environmental conditions to provide insights into why the sea ice is breaking up. Whelihan shared his perspectives on why the Arctic matters and what operating there is like.Q: Why do we need to be able to operate in the Arctic?A: Spanning approximately 5.5 million square miles, the Arctic is huge, and one of its salient features is that the ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean is decreasing in volume with every passing year. Melting ice opens up previously impassable areas, resulting in increasing interest from potential adversaries and allies alike for activities such as military operations, commercial shipping, and natural resource extraction. Through Alaska, the United States has approximately 1,060 miles of Arctic coastline that is becoming much more accessible because of reduced ice cover. So, U.S. operation in the Arctic is a matter of national security.  Q: What are the technological limitations to Arctic operations?A: The Arctic is an incredibly harsh environment. The cold kills battery life, so collecting sensor data at high rates over long periods of time is very difficult. The ice is dynamic and can easily swallow or crush sensors. In addition, most deployments involve “boots-on-the-ice,” which is expensive and at times dangerous. One of the technological limitations is how to deploy sensors while keeping humans alive.

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      David Whelihan details the difficulties of engineering technologies that can survive in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.

      Q: How does the group’s sensor node R&D work seek to support Arctic operations?A: A lot of the work we put into our sensors pertains to deployability. Our ultimate goal is to free researchers from going onto the ice to deploy sensors. This goal will become increasingly necessary as the shrinking ice pack becomes more dynamic, unstable, and unpredictable. At the last Operation Ice Camp (OIC) in March 2024, we built and rapidly tested deployable and recoverable sensors, as well as novel concepts such as using UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles), or drones, as “data mules” that can fly out to and interrogate the sensors to see what they captured. We also built a prototype wearable system that cues automatic download of sensor data over Wi-Fi so that operators don’t have to take off their gloves.Q: The Arctic Circle is the northernmost region on Earth. How do you reach this remote place?A: We usually fly on commercial airlines from Boston to Seattle to Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. From there, the Navy flies us on small prop planes, like Single and Twin Otters, about 200 miles north and lands us on an ice runway built by the Navy’s Arctic Submarine Lab (ASL). The runway is part of a temporary camp that ASL establishes on floating sea ice for their operational readiness exercises conducted during OIC.Q: Think back to the first time you stepped foot in the Arctic. Can you paint a picture of what you experienced?A: My first experience was at Prudhoe Bay, coming out of the airport, which is a corrugated metal building with a single gate. Before you open the door to the outside, a sign warns you to be on the lookout for polar bears. Walking out into the sheer desolation and blinding whiteness of everything made me realize I was experiencing something very new.When I flew out onto the ice and stepped out of the plane, I was amazed that the area could somehow be even more desolate. Bright white snowy ice goes in every direction, broken up by pressure ridges that form when ice sheets collide. The sun is low, and seems to move horizontally only. It is very hard to tell the time. The air temperature is really variable. On our first trip in 2022, it really wasn’t (relatively) that cold — only around minus 5 or 10 degrees during the day. On our second trip in 2024, we were hit by minus 30 almost every day, and with winds of 20 to 25 miles per hour. The last night we were on the ice that year, it warmed up a bit to minus 10 to 20, but the winds kicked up and started blowing snow onto the heaters attached to our tents. Those heaters started failing one by one as the blowing snow covered them, blocking airflow. After our heater failed, I asked myself, while warm in my bed, whether I wanted to go outside to the command tent for help or try to make it until dawn in my thick sleeping bag. I picked the first option, but mostly because the heater control was beeping loudly right next to my bunk, so I couldn’t sleep anyway. Shout-out to the ASL staff who ran around fixing heaters all night!Q: How do you survive in a place generally inhospitable to humans?A: In partnership with the native population, ASL brings a lot of gear — from insulated, heated tents and communications equipment to large snowblowers to keep the runway clear. A few months before OIC, participants attend training on what conditions you will be exposed to and how to protect yourself through appropriate clothing, and how to use survival gear in case of an emergency.Q: Do you have plans to return to the Arctic?  A: We are hoping to go back this winter as part of OIC 2026! We plan to test a through-ice communication device. Communicating through 4 to 12 feet of ice is pretty tricky but could allow us to connect underwater drones and stationary sensors under the ice to the rest of the world. To support the through-ice communication system, we will repurpose our sensor-node boxes deployed during OIC 2024. If this setup works, those same boxes could be used as control centers for all sorts of undersea systems and relay information about the under-ice world back home via satellite.Q: What lessons learned will you bring to your upcoming trip, and any potential future trips?A: After the first trip, I had a visceral understanding of how hard operating there is. Prototyping of systems becomes a different game. Prototypes are often fragile, but fragility doesn’t go over too well on the ice. So, there is a robustification step, which can take some time.On this last trip, I realized that you have to really be careful with your energy expenditure and pace yourself. While the average adult may require about 2,000 calories a day, an Arctic explorer may burn several times more than that exerting themselves (we do a lot of walking around camp) and keeping warm. Usually, we live on the same freeze-dried food that you would take on camping trips. Each package only has so many calories, so you find yourself eating multiple of those and supplementing with lots of snacks such as Clif Bars or, my favorite, Babybel cheeses (which I bring myself). You also have to be really careful of dehydration. Your body’s reaction to extreme cold is to reduce blood flow to your skin, which generally results in less liquid in your body. We have to drink constantly — water, cocoa, and coffee — to avoid dehydration.We only have access to the ice every two years with the Navy, so we try to make the most of our time. In the several-day lead-up to our field expedition, my research partner Ben and I were really pushing ourselves to ready our sensor nodes for deployment and probably not eating and drinking as regularly as we should. When we ventured to our sensor deployment site about 5 kilometers outside of camp, I had to learn to slow down so I didn’t sweat under my gear, as sweating in the extremely cold conditions can quickly lead to hypothermia. I also learned to pay more attention to exposed places on my face, as I got a bit of frostnip around my goggles.Operating in the Arctic is a fine balance: you can’t spend too much time out there, but you also can’t rush. More

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      in Environment

      Study links rising temperatures and declining moods

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      Rising global temperatures affect human activity in many ways. Now, a new study illuminates an important dimension of the problem: Very hot days are associated with more negative moods, as shown by a large-scale look at social media postings.Overall, the study examines 1.2 billion social media posts from 157 countries over the span of a year. The research finds that when the temperature rises above 95 degrees Fahrenheit, or 35 degrees Celsius, expressed sentiments become about 25 percent more negative in lower-income countries and about 8 percent more negative in better-off countries. Extreme heat affects people emotionally, not just physically.“Our study reveals that rising temperatures don’t just threaten physical health or economic productivity — they also affect how people feel, every day, all over the world,” says Siqi Zheng, a professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and Center for Real Estate (CRE), and co-author of a new paper detailing the results. “This work opens up a new frontier in understanding how climate stress is shaping human well-being at a planetary scale.”The paper, “Unequal Impacts of Rising Temperatures on Global Human Sentiment,” is published today in the journal One Earth. The authors are Jianghao Wang, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Nicolas Guetta-Jeanrenaud SM ’22, a graduate of MIT’s Technology and Policy Program (TPP) and Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Juan Palacios, a visiting assistant professor at MIT’s Sustainable Urbanization Lab (SUL) and an assistant professor Maastricht University; Yichun Fan, of SUL and Duke University; Devika Kakkar, of Harvard University; Nick Obradovich, of SUL and the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa; and Zheng, who is the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability at CRE and DUSP. Zheng is also the faculty director of CRE and founded the Sustainable Urbanization Lab in 2019.Social media as a windowTo conduct the study, the researchers evaluated 1.2 billion posts from the social media platforms Twitter and Weibo, all of which appeared in 2019. They used a natural language processing technique called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), to analyze 65 languages across the 157 countries in the study.Each social media post was given a sentiment rating from 0.0 (for very negative posts) to 1.0 (for very positive posts). The posts were then aggregated geographically to 2,988 locations and evaluated in correlation with area weather. From this method, the researchers could then deduce the connection between extreme temperatures and expressed sentiment.“Social media data provides us with an unprecedented window into human emotions across cultures and continents,” Wang says. “This approach allows us to measure emotional impacts of climate change at a scale that traditional surveys simply cannot achieve, giving us real-time insights into how temperature affects human sentiment worldwide.”To assess the effects of temperatures on sentiment in higher-income and middle-to-lower-income settings, the scholars also used a World Bank cutoff level of gross national income per-capita annual income of $13,845, finding that in places with incomes below that, the effects of heat on mood were triple those found in economically more robust settings.“Thanks to the global coverage of our data, we find that people in low- and middle-income countries experience sentiment declines from extreme heat that are three times greater than those in high-income countries,” Fan says. “This underscores the importance of incorporating adaptation into future climate impact projections.”In the long runUsing long-term global climate models, and expecting some adaptation to heat, the researchers also produced a long-range estimate of the effects of extreme temperatures on sentiment by the year 2100. Extending the current findings to that time frame, they project a 2.3 percent worsening of people’s emotional well-being based on high temperatures alone by then — although that is a far-range projection.“It’s clear now, with our present study adding to findings from prior studies, that weather alters sentiment on a global scale,” Obradovich says. “And as weather and climates change, helping individuals become more resilient to shocks to their emotional states will be an important component of overall societal adaptation.”The researchers note that there are many nuances to the subject, and room for continued research in this area. For one thing, social media users are not likely to be a perfectly representative portion of the population, with young children and the elderly almost certainly using social media less than other people. However, as the researchers observe in the paper, the very young and elderly are probably particularly vulnerable to heat shocks, making the response to hot weather possible even larger than their study can capture.The research is part of the Global Sentiment project led by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, and the study’s dataset is publicly available. Zheng and other co-authors have previously investigated these dynamics using social media, although never before at this scale.“We hope this resource helps researchers, policymakers, and communities better prepare for a warming world,” Zheng says.The research was supported, in part, by Zheng’s chaired professorship research fund, and grants Wang received from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  More

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      in Environment

      A journey of resilience, fueled by learning

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      In 2021, Hilal Mohammadzai was set to begin his senior year at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), where he was working toward a bachelor’s degree in computer science. However, that August, the Taliban seized control of the Afghani government, and Mohammadzai’s education — along with that of thousands of other students — was put on hold. “It was an uncertain future for all of the students,” says Mohammadzai.Mohammadzai ultimately did receive his undergraduate degree from AUAF in May 2023 after months of disruption, and after transferring and studying for one semester at the American University of Bulgaria. As he was considering where to take his studies next, Mohammadzai heard about the MIT Emerging Talent Certificate in Computer and Data Science. His friend graduated from the program in early 2023 and had only positive things to say about the education, community, and network. Creating opportunities to learn data sciencePart of MIT Open Learning, Emerging Talent develops global education programs for talented individuals from challenging economic and social circumstances, equipping them with the knowledge and tools to advance their education and careers.The Certificate in Computer and Data Science is a year-long online learning program for talented learners including refugees, migrants, and first-generation low-income students from historically marginalized backgrounds and underserved communities worldwide. The curriculum incorporates computer science and data analysis coursework from MITx, professional skill building, capstone projects, mentorship and internship options, and opportunities for networking with MIT’s global community. Throughout his undergraduate coursework, Mohammadzai discovered an affinity for data visualization, and decided that he wanted to pursue a career in data science. The opportunity with the Emerging Talent program presented itself at the perfect time. Mohammadzai applied and was accepted into the 2023-24 cohort, earning a spot out of a pool of over 2,000 applicants. “I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn more data science to build up on my existing knowledge,” he says.Expanding and deepening his data science knowledgeMohammadzai’s acceptance to the Emerging Talent program came around the same time that he began an MBA program at the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan. For him, the two programs made for a perfect pairing. “When you have data science knowledge, you usually also require domain knowledge — whether it’s in business or economics — to help with interpreting data and making decisions,” he says. “Analyzing the data is one piece, but understanding how to interpret that data and make a decision usually requires domain knowledge.”Although Mohammadzai had some data science experience from his undergraduate coursework, he learned new skills and new approaches to familiar knowledge in the Emerging Talent program.“Data structures were covered at university, but I found it much more in-depth in the MIT courses,” said Mohammadzai. “I liked the way it was explained with real-life examples.” He worked with students from different backgrounds, and used Github for group projects. Mohammadzai also took advantage of personal agency and job-readiness workshops provided by the Emerging Talent team, such as how to pursue freelancing and build a mentorship network — skills that he has taken forward in life.“I found it an exceptional opportunity,” he says. “The courses, the level of education, and the quality of education that was provided by MIT was really inspiring to me.”Applying data skills to real-world situationsAfter graduating with his Certificate in Computer and Data Science, Mohammadzai began a paid internship with TomorrowNow, which was facilitated by introductions from the Emerging Talent team. Mohammadzai’s resume and experience stood out to the hiring team, and he was selected for the internship program.TomorrowNow is a climate-tech nonprofit that works with philanthropic partners, commercial markets, R&D organizations, and local climate adaptation efforts to localize and open source weather data for smallholder farmers in Africa. The organization builds public capacity and facilitates partnerships to deploy and sustain next-generation weather services for vulnerable communities facing climate change, while also enabling equitable access to these services so that African farmers can optimize scarce resources such as water and farm inputs. Leveraging philanthropy as seed capital, TomorrowNow aims to de-risk weather and climate technologies to make high-quality data and products available for the public good, ultimately incentivizing the private sector to develop products that reach last-mile communities often excluded from advancements in weather technology.For his internship, Mohammadzai worked with TomorrowNow climatologist John Corbett to understand the weather data, and ultimately learn how to analyze it to make recommendations on what information to share with customers. “We challenged Hilal to create a library of training materials leveraging his knowledge of Python and targeting utilization of meteorological data,” says Corbett. “For Hilal, the meteorological data was a new type of data and he jumped right in, working to create training materials for Python users that not only manipulated weather data, but also helped make clear patterns and challenges useful for agricultural interpretation of these data. The training tools he built helped to visualize — and quantify — agricultural meteorological thresholds and their risk and potential impact on crops.” Although he had previously worked with real-world data, working with TomorrowNow marked Mohammadzai’s first experience in the domain of climate data. This area presented a unique set of challenges and insights that broadened his perspective. It not only solidified his desire to continue on a data science path, but also sparked a new interest in working with mission-focused organizations. Both TomorrowNow and Mohammadzai would like to continue working together, but he first needs to secure a work visa.Without a visa, Mohammadzai cannot work for more than three to four hours a day, which makes securing a full-time job impossible. Back in 2021, the American University of Afghanistan filed a P-1 (priority one) asylum case for their students to seek resettlement in the United States because of the potential threat posed to them by the Taliban.Mohammadzai’s hearing was scheduled for Feb. 1, but it was postponed after the program was suspended early this year. As Mohammadzai looks to the end of his MBA program, his future feels uncertain. He has lived abroad since 2021 thanks to student visas and scholarships, but until he can secure a work visa he has limited options. He is considering pursuing a PhD program in order to keep his student visa status, while he waits on news about a more permanent option. “I just want to find a place where I can work and contribute to the community.” More

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      in Environment

      Mary Robinson urges MIT School of Architecture and Planning graduates to “find a way to lead”

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      “Class of 2025, are you ready?”This was the question Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, posed to the graduating class at the school’s Advanced Degree Ceremony at Kresge Auditorium on May 29. The response was enthusiastic applause and cheers from the 224 graduates from the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning, the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and the Center for Real Estate.Following his welcome to an audience filled with family and friends of the graduates, Sarkis introduced the day’s guest speaker, whom he cited as the “perfect fit for this class.” Recognizing the “international rainbow of graduates,” Sarkis welcomed Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation — Climate Justice to the podium. Robinson, a lawyer by training, has had a wide-ranging career that began with elected positions in Ireland followed by leadership roles in global causes for justice, human rights, and climate change.Robinson laced her remarks with personal anecdotes from her career, from with earning a master’s in law at nearby Harvard University in 1968 — a year of political unrest in the United States — to founding The Elders in 2007 with world leaders: former South African President Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.She described an “early lesson” in recounting her efforts to reform the laws of contraception in Ireland at the beginning of her career in the Irish legislature. Previously, women were not prescribed birth control unless they were married and had irregular menstrual cycles certified by their physicians. Robinson received thousands of letters of condemnation and threats that she would destroy the country of Ireland if she would allow contraception to be more broadly available. The legislation introduced was successful despite the “hate mail” she received, which was so abhorrent that her fiancé at the time, now her husband, burned it. That experience taught her to stand firm to her values.“If you really believe in something, you must be prepared to pay a price,” she told the graduates.In closing, Robinson urged the class to put their “skills and talent to work to address the climate crisis,” a problem she said she came late to in her career.“You have had the privilege of being here at the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT,” said Robinson. “When you leave here, find ways to lead.” More

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      in Energy

      MIT D-Lab students design global energy solutions through collaboration

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      This semester, MIT D-Lab students built prototype solutions to help farmers in Afghanistan, people living in informal settlements in Argentina, and rural poultry farmers in Cameroon. The projects span continents and collectively stand to improve thousands of lives — and they all trace back to two longstanding MIT D-Lab classes.For nearly two decades, 2.651 / EC.711 (Introduction to Energy in Global Development) and 2.652 / EC.712 (Applications of Energy in Global Development) have paired students with international organizations and communities to learn D-Lab’s participatory approach to design and study energy technologies in low-resource environments. Hundreds of students from across MIT have taken the courses, which feature visits from partners and trips to the communities after the semester. They often discover a passion for helping people in low-resource settings that lasts a lifetime.“Through the trips, students often gain an appreciation for what they have at home, and they can’t forget about what they see,” says D-Lab instructor Josh Maldonado ’23, who took both courses as a student. “For me, it changed my entire career. Students maintain relationships with the people they work with. They stay on the group chats with community members and meet up with them when they travel. They come back and want to mentor for the class. You can just see it has a lasting effect.”The introductory course takes place each spring and is followed by summer trips for students. The applications class, which is more focused on specific projects, is held in the fall and followed by student travel over winter break.“MIT has always advocated for going out and impacting the world,” Maldonado says. “The fact that we can use what we learn here in such a meaningful way while still a student is awesome. It gets back to MIT’s motto, ‘mens et manus’ (‘mind and hand’).”Curriculum for impactIntroduction to Energy in Global Development has been taught since around 2008, with past projects focusing on mitigating the effects of aquatic weeds for fisherman in Ghana, making charcoal for cookstoves in Uganda, and creating brick evaporative coolers to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables in Mali.The class follows MIT D-Lab’s participatory design philosophy in which students design solutions in close collaboration with local communities. Along the way, students learn about different energy technologies and how they might be implemented cheaply in rural communities that lack basic infrastructure.“In product design, the idea is to get out and meet your customer where they are,” Maldonado explains. “The problem is our partners are often in remote, low-resource regions of the world. We put a big emphasis on designing with the local communities and increasing their creative capacity building to show them they can build solutions themselves.”Students from across MIT, including graduates and undergraduates, along with students from Harvard University and Wellesley College, can enroll in both courses. MIT senior Kanokwan Tungkitkancharoen took the introductory class this spring.“There are students from chemistry, computer science, civil engineering, policy, and more,” says Tungkitkancharoen. “I think that convergence models how things get done in real life. The class also taught me how to communicate the same information in different ways to cater to different people. It helped me distill my approach to what is this person trying to learn and how can I convey that information.”Tungkitkancharoen’s team worked with a nonprofit called Weatherizers Without Borders to implement weatherization strategies that enhance housing conditions and environmental resilience for people in the southern Argentinian community of Bariloche.The team built model homes and used heat sensing cameras to show the impact of weatherization strategies to locals and policymakers in the region.“Our partners live in self-built homes, but the region is notorious for being very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer,” Tungkitkancharoen says. “We’re helping our partners retrofit homes so they can withstand the weather better. Before the semester, I was interested in working directly with people impacted by these technologies and the current climate situation. D-Lab helped me work with people on the ground, and I’ve been super grateful to our community partners.”The project to design micro-irrigation systems to support agricultural productivity and water conservation in Afghanistan is in partnership with the Ecology and Conservation Organization of Afghanistan and a team from a local university in Afghanistan.“I love the process of coming into class with a practical question you need to solve and working closely with community partners,” says MIT master’s student Khadija Ghanizada, who has served as a teacher’s assistant for both the introductory and applications courses. “All of these projects will have a huge impact, but being from Afghanistan, I know this will make a difference because it’s a land-locked country, it’s dealing with droughts, and 80 percent of our economy depends on agriculture. We also make sure students are thinking about scalability of their solutions, whether scaling worldwide or just nationally. Every project has its own impact story.”Meeting community partnersNow that the spring semester is over, many students from the introductory class will travel to the regions they studied with instructors and local guides over the summer.“The traveling and implementation are things students always look forward to,” Maldonado says. “Students do a lot of prep work, thinking about the tools they need, the local resources they need, and working with partners to acquire those resources.”Following travel, students write a report on how the trip went, which helps D-Lab refine the course for next semester.“Oftentimes instructors are also doing research in these regions while they teach the class,” Maldonado says. “To be taught by people who were just in the field two weeks before the class started, and to see pictures of what they’re doing, is really powerful.”Students who have taken the class have gone on to careers in international development, nonprofits, and to start companies that grow the impact of their class projects. But the most immediate impact can be seen in the communities that students work with.“These solutions should be able to be built locally, sourced locally, and potentially also lead to the creation of localized markets based around the technology,” Maldonado says. “Almost everything the D-Lab does is open-sourced, so when we go to these communities, we don’t just teach people how to use these solutions, we teach them how to make them. Technology, if implemented correctly by mindful engineers and scientists, can be highly adopted and can grow a community of makers and fabricators and local businesses.” More

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      MIT students turn vision to reality

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      Life is a little brighter in Kapiyo these days.For many in this rural Kenyan town, nightfall used to signal the end to schoolwork and other family activities. Now, however, the darkness is pierced by electric lights from newly solar-powered homes. Inside, children in this off-the-grid area can study while parents extend daily activities past dusk, thanks to a project conceived by an MIT mechanical engineering student and financed by the MIT African Students Association (ASA) Impact Fund.There are changes coming, too, in the farmlands of Kashusha in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where another ASA Impact Fund project is working with local growers to establish an energy-efficient mill for processing corn — adding value, creating jobs, and sparking new economic opportunities. Similarly, plans are underway to automate processing of locally-grown cashews in the Mtwara area of Tanzania — an Impact Fund project meant to increase the income of farmers who now send over 90 percent of their nuts abroad for processing.Inspired by a desire by MIT students to turn promising ideas into practical solutions for people in their home countries, the ASA Impact Fund is a student-run initiative that launched during the 2023-24 academic year. Backed by an alumni board, the fund empowers students to conceive, design, and lead projects with social and economic impact in communities across Africa.After financing three projects its first year, the ASA Impact Fund received eight project proposals earlier this year and plans to announce its second round of two to four grants sometime this spring, says Pamela Abede, last year’s fund president. Last year’s awards totaled approximately $15,000.The fund is an outgrowth of MIT’s African Learning Circle, a seminar open to the entire MIT community where biweekly discussions focus on ways to apply MIT’s educational resources, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation to improve lives on the African continent.“The Impact Fund was created,” says MIT African Students Association president Victory Yinka-Banjo, “to take this to the next level … to go from talking to execution.”Aimed at bridging a gap between projects Learning Circle participants envision and resources available to fund them, the ASA Impact Fund “exists as an avenue to assist our members in undertaking social impact projects on the African continent,” the initiative’s website states, “thereby combining theoretical learning with practical application in alignment with MIT’s motto.”The fund’s value extends to the Cambridge campus as well, says ASA Impact Fund board member and 2021 MIT graduate Bolu Akinola.“You can do cool projects anywhere,” says Akinola, who is originally from Nigeria and currently pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University. “Where this is particularly catalyzing is in incentivizing folks to go back home and impact life back on the continent of Africa.”MIT-Africa managing director Ari Jacobovits, who helped students get the fund off the ground last year, agrees.“I think it galvanized the community, bringing people together to bridge a programmatic gap that had long felt like a missed opportunity,” Jacobovits says. “I’m always impressed by the level of service-mindedness ASA members have towards their home communities. It’s something we should all be celebrating and thinking about incorporating into our home communities, wherever they may be.”Alumni Board president Selam Gano notes that a big part of the Impact Fund’s appeal is the close connections project applicants have with the communities they’re working with. MIT engineering major Shekina Pita, for example, is from Kapiyo, and recalls “what it was like growing up in a place with unreliable electricity,” which “would impact every aspect of my life and the lives of those that I lived around.” Pita’s personal experience and familiarity with the community informed her proposal to install solar panels on Kapiyo homes.So far, the ASA Impact Fund has financed installation of solar panels for five households where families had been relying on candles so their children could do homework after dark.“A candle is 15 Kenya shillings, and I don’t always have that amount to buy candles for my children to study. I am grateful for your help,” comments one beneficiary of the Kapiyo solar project.Pita anticipates expanding the project, 10 homes at a time, and involving some college-age residents of those homes in solar panel installation apprenticeships.“In general, we try to balance projects where we fund some things that are very concrete solutions to a particular community’s problems — like a water project or solar energy — and projects with a longer-term view that could become an organization or a business — like a novel cashew nut processing method,” says Gano, who conducted projects in his father’s homeland of Ethiopia while an MIT student. “I think striking that balance is something I am particularly proud of. We believe that people in the community know best what they need, and it’s great to empower students from those same communities.”  Vivian Chinoda, who received a grant from the ASA Impact Fund and was part of the African Students Association board that founded it, agrees.“We want to address problems that can seem trivial without the lived experience of them,” says Chinoda. “For my friend and I, getting funding to go to Tanzania and drive more than 10 hours to speak to remotely located small-scale cashew farmers … made a difference. We were able to conduct market research and cross-check our hypotheses on a project idea we brainstormed in our dorm room in ways we would not have otherwise been able to access remotely.”Similarly, Florida Mahano’s Impact Fund-financed project is benefiting from her experience growing up near farms in the DRC. Partnering with her brother, a mechanical engineer in her home community of Bukavu in eastern DRC, Mahano is on her way to developing a processing plant that will serve the needs of local farmers. Informed by market research involving about 500 farmers, consumers, and retailers that took place in January, the plant will likely be operational by summer 2026, says Mahano, who has also received funding from MIT’s Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center.“The ASA Impact Fund was the starting point for us,” paving the way for additional support, she says. “I feel like the ASA Impact Fund was really amazing because it allowed me to bring my idea to life.”Importantly, Chinoda notes that the Impact Fund has already had early success in fostering ties between undergraduate students and MIT alumni.“When we sent out the application to set up the alumni board, we had a volume of respondents coming in quite quickly, and it was really encouraging to see how the alums were so willing to be present and use their skill sets and connections to build this from the ground up,” she says.Abede, who is originally from Ghana, would like to see that enthusiasm continue — increasing alumni awareness about the fund “to get more alums involved … more alums on the board and mentoring the students.”Mentoring is already an important aspect of the ASA Impact Fund, says Akinola. Grantees, she says, get paired with alumni to help them through the process of getting projects underway. “This fund could be a really good opportunity to strengthen the ties between the alumni community and current students,” Akinola says. “I think there are a lot of opportunities for funds like this to tap into the MIT alumni community. I think where there is real value is in the advisory nature — mentoring and coaching current students, helping the transfer of skills and resources.”As more projects are proposed and funded each year, awareness of the ASA Impact Fund among MIT alumni will increase, Gano predicts.“We’ve had just one year of grantees so far, and all of the projects they’ve conducted have been great,” he says. “I think even if we just continue functioning at this scale, if we’re able to sustain the fund, we can have a real lasting impact as students and alumni and build more and more partnerships on the continent.” More

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      The MIT-Portugal Program enters Phase 4

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      Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.  “One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point. Over the years, we’ve learned each other’s systems, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been able to create a synergy that would not have existed if we worked together for a short period of time,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are eager to take the program’s existing research projects further, while adding new areas of focus identified by MIT and FCT. Known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the national public agency supporting research in science, technology and innovation under Portugal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.“Over the past two decades, the partnership with MIT has built a foundation of trust that has fostered collaboration among researchers and the development of projects with significant scientific impact and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for education, science, and innovation, says. “In this new phase of the partnership, running from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and impact — raising Portuguese science and its capacity to transform the economy and improve our society to even higher levels, while helping to address the challenges we face in areas such as climate change and the oceans, digitalization, and space.”“International collaborations like the MIT-Portugal Program are absolutely vital to MIT’s mission of research, education and service. I’m thrilled to see the program move into its next phase,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our faculty and students opportunities to work in unique research environments where they not only make new findings and learn new methods but also contribute to solving urgent local and global problems. MPP’s work in the realm of ocean science and climate is a prime example of how international partnerships like this can help solve important human problems.”Sharing MIT’s commitment to academic independence and excellence, Kornbluth adds, “the institutions and researchers we partner with through MPP enhance MIT’s ability to achieve its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting standards of intellectual and creative distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world leader in scientific discovery.”The epitome of an effective international collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to deliver results here in the U.S. and in Portugal for nearly two decades — prevailing amid myriad shifts in the political, social, and economic landscape. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual research conference and educational summits such as an Innovation Workshop at MIT each June and a Marine Robotics Summer School in the Azores in July, as well as student and faculty exchanges that facilitate collaborative research. During the third phase of the program alone, 59 MIT students and 53 faculty and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 students and 49 faculty and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.In each roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers focus on a handful of core research areas. For Phase 3, MPP advanced cutting-edge research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Within these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers worked together on numerous small-scale projects and several large “flagship” ones, including development of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite, a collaboration between MPP and several Portuguese universities and companies that marked the country’s second satellite launch and the first in 30 years.While work in the Phase 3 fields will continue during Phase 4, researchers will also turn their attention to four more areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (a previous focus in Phase 2), artificial intelligence, and space.“We are opening up the aperture for additional collaboration areas,” Hansman says.In addition to focusing on distinct subject areas, each phase has emphasized the various parts of MPP’s mission to differing degrees. While Phase 3 accentuated collaborative research more than educational exchanges and entrepreneurship, those two aspects will be given more weight under the Phase 4 agreement, Hart said.“We have approval in Phase 4 to bring a number of Portuguese students over, and our principal investigators will benefit from close collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.The longevity of MPP and the recent launch of Phase 4 are evidence of the program’s value. The program has played a role in the educational, technological and economic progress Portugal has achieved over the past two decades, as well.  “The Portugal of today is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and many of the places where they are stronger have been impacted by the program,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “green” energy, in particular. “We can’t take direct credit, but we’ve been part of Portugal’s journey forward.”Since MPP began, Hart adds, “Portugal has become much more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many more start-up companies are coming out of Portuguese universities than there used to be.”  A recent analysis of MPP and FCT’s other U.S. collaborations highlighted a number of positive outcomes. The report noted that collaborations with MIT and other US universities have enhanced Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in the national R&D ecosystem, while providing Portuguese universities and companies with opportunities to engage in complex projects that would have been difficult to undertake on their own.Regarding MIT in particular, the report found that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the establishment of sustained doctoral programs and pointed to a marked shift within Portugal’s educational ecosystem toward globally aligned standards. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the education of 198 Portuguese PhDs.Portugal’s universities, students and companies are not alone in benefitting from the research, networks, and economic activity MPP has spawned. MPP also delivers unique value to MIT, as well as to the broader US science and research community. Among the program’s consistent themes over the years, for example, is “joint interest in the Atlantic,” Hansman says.This summer, Faial Island in the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Master’s and first year PhD students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The course, which includes lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculty and other researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is always my favorite,” said Hart.“I get to work with some of the best researchers in the world there, and some of the top students coming out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, adding that some of his previous Marine Robotics Summer School students have come to study at MIT and then gone on to become professors in ocean science.“So, it’s been exciting to see the growth of students coming out of that program, certainly a positive impact,” Hart says.MPP provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for ocean research due to the unique marine facilities available in Portugal, including not only open ocean off the Azores but also Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility just south of Lisbon that is available for collaborative research by international scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are also strongly invested in climate change research — a field of study keenly related to ocean systems.“The international collaboration has allowed us to test and further develop our research prototypes in different aquaculture environments both in the US and in Portugal, while building on the unique expertise of our Portuguese faculty collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the University of Aveiro and our industry collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.Mueller points to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD student Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer School participant, whose research is aimed at developing an economical system to monitor the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the spread of harmful bacteria associated with ocean warming. In addition to participating in the summer school as a student, Xia returned to the Azores for two subsequent years as a teaching assistant.“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our research on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential disease outbreaks,” Mueller says.As MPP enters its next phase, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about the program’s continuing success on both sides of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impact going forward.“I think, at this point, the research is going really well, and we’ve got a lot of connections. I think one of our goals is to expand not the science of the program necessarily, but the groups involved,” Hart says, noting that MPP could have a bigger presence in technical fields such as AI and micro-nano manufacturing, as well as in social sciences and humanities.“We’d like to involve many more people and new people here at MIT, as well as in Portugal,” he says, “so that we can reach a larger slice of the population.”  More