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Research for Solutions

Cloudy colored swirls of a phytoplankton bloom off the
Portugal coast.

The ambitious research agenda presented above is motivated by and seeks to inform a wide array of pressing global environmental issues. Following the example of modern medicine, we advocate a revolution in environmental practice that is fueled by knowledge born of fundamental research, aimed at areas of critical need, and realized through engineering and social innovation. In other words, with environment as with human health, basic and applied research must merge to create the knowledge and capabilities that solve problems.

This “research for solutions” orientation is already well established at MIT across a broad range of scientific, engineering and social research relevant to the environment. Important new areas of integrated, impact-oriented research embraced by GEI include: