Fellowships

Get Information

MIT students can develop fellowship projects in a variety of ways. You can work on a project by yourself, with friends, or apply to join a team selected by the Public Service Fellowships staff. You can create your own project or select an advertised project to work on from this website.

Most Fellows work over the summer break or IAP, but we also have opportunities for semester-time fellowships.

All projects must build capacity for an underserved community or organization.

You can find out more about all these opportunities by going to the Get Involved pages of this site.

Project Priorities

Although Fellows can apply to work on capacity building projects in any field, we do have some fellowship priorities that we encourage Fellows, community partners, and sponsors to consider.

What we have special funds for:

These are themes for which we currently have special funds. Students who apply for fellowships within these themes therefore have a competitive advantage. (These themes change periodically, so check for updates). Here are some past projects that might inspire/challenge you to work on Fellowships in these areas.

Local projects

  • Alexa Mills G, DUSP, created a program for victims of domestic violence in the Boston metro area that enabled them to gain security and confidence by working with their physical environment (Summer 2007).
  • Eric Brewer-Garcia, G, DUSP, compiled and analyzed data on formal and informal community networks for Lawrence Community Works, focusing mainly on the Dominican community (Summer 2007).
  • Diana Jue ’09, Urban Studies and Planning, helped plan Boston’s Parcel 24, a concept for a mixed-use, mixed-income development that may stimulate economic development in Boston’s Chinatown.

Indoor Air Pollution

  • Sarah Bird G worked with a Pakistan NGO, InterActive Research, to enable them to effectively disseminate techniques for manufacturing smokeless charcoal made from agricultural waste (IAP 2007).
  • For a broader challenges on indoor air pollution, please take a look at the Yunus Challenge at http://web.mit.edu/ideas.

Environment

  • Martin Lorilla ’09, Emmanuel Lorenzo de los Santos’09, and Gerardo Jose la O’ G worked with communities in the coastal city of Sagay, Philippines, to implement an IDEAS Competition winning project, FirstStep Coral, which uses natural energy systems and an artificial reef foundation to enhance reef regeneration (IAP 2007).
  • Christopher Cleaver ‘08, a Cambridge-MIT Exchange student, traveled to Mauritius to establish an IDEAS Competition for secondary school children focused on environmental sustainability (Summer 2007). 
  • Froylan Sifuentes ‘08, Chemical Engineering, traveled to Tecpaco, Mexico, to implement a reforestation and tree nursery plan that he hoped would eventually lead to improved environmental sustainability and water access (Summer 2007).

National Science Education Projects

  • Sasha Brophy ’08 developed a Career Exploration Day event for the new annual Cambridge Science Festival that will launch in April 2007 (IAP 2007).
  • Laura Braitman, HASTS, worked with, an award-winning bilingual teacher to enrich the existing fourth grade science curriculum in Houston, Texas by developing hands-on activities for students to supplement classroom learning (IAP 2006).
  • Jennifer Caplin ‘07 focused on “Science and Literacy” in the Cambridge public elementary schools, grades K-6 and helped revise the list of required and recommended reading books for the elementary schools (IAP, 2006).

Women Working on Women’s Issues in the U.S.

  • Victoria Lo, ’10 developed the Making Connections Program in Seattle to create opportunities for young women in science, technology, engineering, and math (Summer 2007).
  • Alice Chan, G, helped create the Cambridge Status Report on Women and Girls which required her to meeet with various local government agencies; and collected and analyzed gender-specific data from the US Census and Massachusetts Community Health Information Profile (MassCHIP).
  • Ms. Mills worked with the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence (ATASK) to renovate and redesign a shared shelter room, which had a powerful impact on regaining life control for survivors of domestic violence.

Tuberculosis

  • Cabanga team members Manish Bhardwaj, Sara Cinnamon, Katie Dunn, Alex Krull, Jessica Leon, Nikhil Nadkarni, Rotimi Okunade, Goutam Reddy, Jayodita Sanghvi, Bill Thies and Oliver Venn came up with with the uBox, a cheap, rugged pillbox that is left with the patient. The uBox electronically records times of dosages and DOT (Directly Observed Therapy) worker visits. The data enables timely and targeted intervention leading to improved adherence and better patient care, requires no training and does not rely on infrastructure or user literacy. A prototype uBox is being assembled and tested and will cost about $2 per patient per trial (IDEAS 2007).
  • CellCentives team members Rany Woo, Viji Draviam, and Nishanth Sastry developed a plan to incentivize youth aged 15-34 who account for over half the TB cases worldwide. Their solution uses a package of reminders, incentives, lotteries, and community support to help TB patients adhere to their medication. For example, when a patient removes the foil to access his daily pill, he is provided with a code that offers free cell phone minutes on the cell phone he is provided with. Along with the cell phone incentives, and higher value “lottery” rewards, CellCentives also incorporates a database allowing public health administrators to adjust incentive levels for further drug (IDEAS 2007).
  • New DOTS was awarded the $5,000 award sponsored by The Lemelson-MIT Program. Team members Angela Kilby, Jeff Blander, Elizabeth Gillenwater, Jose Gomez-Marquez, Minyoung Jang, and Aron Walker have developed a tuberculosis monitoring plan, which involves urinalysis test strips, patient health care worker cell phone reporting, and microfinance incentives.
  • Team Treatment Buddies was awarded the $2,500 award sponsored by the Coop. Team members Kathleen Cui and Shelly Manber have developed a TB treatment incentive program which assigns a same-sex local paid peer worker, recruited from those who have successfully completed the treatment, to act as a liaison between the health center and the patients.
  • For more ideas on TB projects, please check out last year’s Yunus Challenge at http://web.mit.edu/ideas/www/challenge.htm.

MIT at Lawrence

  • Aaron Stelson  DUSP G worked with Lawrence Community Works to implement a neighborhood planning charette for the North Common neighborhood – a poor area of Lawrence with many vacant and abandoned properties ?? (Summer 2006).
  • Carlos Espinoza-Toro, G, DUSP, worked with MIT-Lawrence and the Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity (MVHfH) to help increase the number of successful homeowners and contribute to community stabilization in the Lawrence community (Summer 2007).
  • Eric Brewer-Garcia, G, DUSP, compiled and analyzed data on formal and informal community networks for Lawrence Community Works, focusing mainly on the Dominican community (Summer 2007).

What MIT students tell us they want:

  • Global health
  • International development
  • Information technology and the digital divide
  • Projects in India and Africa