While lanthanides are commonly used in fertilizers, little is known about how exactly they benefit plants. New insights could help farmers optimize their use, increasing critical crops’ resilience to UV stress and enhancing seedling growth.
Researchers have developed a robotic probe that autonomously measures the properties of key semiconductor materials much faster than previous methods. The work could help speed the discovery of better materials for solar panels and other electronics.
Foundation Alloy creates high-performance metals using a novel process that doesn’t rely on melting raw materials. The MIT alumni behind the company say its alloys can be made twice as strong as traditional metals with 10 times faster product development.
Sabrina Corsetti builds photonic devices that manipulate light to enable the previously unimaginable, like pocket-sized 3D printers. The EECS PhD student says the ability to work on projects with real-world impact “is primarily what drew me to MIT.”
An electrode coated with DNA could yield disposable diagnostics adapted to detect cancer, influenza, or HIV. This approach could enable inexpensive tests to detect many diseases in the doctor’s office or even at home.
In a world without MIT, radar wouldn’t have been available to help win World War II. We might not have email, CT scans, time-release drugs, photolithography, or GPS. And we’d lose over 30,000 companies, employing millions of people. Can you imagine?
Since its founding, MIT has been key to helping American science and innovation lead the world. Discoveries that begin here generate jobs and power the economy — and what we create today builds a better tomorrow for all of us.