He’d had a revelation while wandering through the exhibit: Each key on a keyboard has its own stories. And these stories are not just about computing technology, but also about the people who designed, used, or otherwise interacted with the keyboards.  Take the backspace key, he explains: “I like that [the concept of] backspace was […]

Neoplants’s marquee product, announced late last year, is the Neo P1, the first houseplant genetically engineered to remediate indoor air pollution. At first blush, this high-tech pothos—a tropical vine native to the Solomon Islands, also known as “Devil’s Ivy”—is indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s photogenic, fast-growing, and hard to kill. But unlike typical nursery […]

But she also played a much more personal role for generations in the MIT community. Through her community activities and the embroidery classes she taught for years, Gray learned a great deal about students’ opinions and needs, helping her offer invaluable advice to her husband. And when he became president, she started a tradition of […]

For years, the Indonesian government sent 10-kilo bags of rice to villages, where local leaders were supposed to distribute them to poor residents every month. But starting about five years ago, recipients were instead sent debit cards to buy the food themselves. The result, according to a study led in part by MIT economists, was […]

The tiny sensor measures a magnetic field produced by an electromagnetic coil outside the body. Its progress can be calculated from the measurements because the field’s strength weakens with distance from the coil. The hope is that doctors could use this information to determine what part of the digestive tract is causing a slowdown and […]

Like most of the projects Mueller chooses to pursue, these bring the things you can do on a computer into the physical realm. But speaking more generally, she is always looking for a “wow” factor. “If you look at a project and are like, ‘Wow, I can really see how it changes the world,’ then […]

To mimic the heart’s pumping action, the team fabricated sleeves similar to blood pressure cuffs that wrap around a printed heart. The underside of each sleeve resembles precisely patterned bubble wrap. When the sleeve is connected to a pneumatic system, researchers can tune the airflow to rhythmically inflate the sleeve’s bubbles and contract the heart, […]

MIT took all five top spots in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition for the third year in a row and won the prize for the top woman for the fourth time in as many years. Seventy of the top 100 in the December event were MIT students, including 21 of the top 25. The […]