Manufacturing
“The challenge of advanced manufacturing aligns perfectly with MIT’s traditional strengths – our interdisciplinary, problem-based research; our technology- and science-centered education; our contributions to industrial innovation; our commitment to entrepreneurship; and our central mission of national service.” - Susan Hockfield
While automated manufacturing is ubiquitous today, it was once a nascent field birthed by inventors such as Oliver Evans, who is credited with creating the first fully automated industrial process...
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf PhD ’81 made a robust call for reviving American manufacturing while speaking at MIT on Thursday, contending that if U.S. states pursue broad, long-term measures to...
MIT is famous as a factory of ideas. You could also call MIT a factory for learning. But for one group of students over the past year MIT has been, in fact, a factory.
The team of graduate...
The United States might be one step closer to its goal of having half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 be zero-emissions electric vehicles. That’s thanks to a pair of MIT undergraduates and their...
The bustling coastal city of Wenzhou made its mark early on Hao Zhang. “It is considered the birthplace of Chinese capitalism, and living there, with many relatives involved in startups, I was...
Scientists and engineers are constantly developing new materials with unique properties that can be used for 3D printing, but figuring out how to print with these materials can be a...
Microplastics, tiny particles of plastic that are now found worldwide in the air, water, and soil, are increasingly recognized as a serious pollution threat, and have been found in the...
In February 2020, MIT professor David Simchi-Levi predicted the future. In an...
Soft, pneumatic actuators might not be a phrase that comes up in daily conversations, but more likely than not you might have benefited from their utility. The devices use compressed air to power...
Photonics — the science of guiding and manipulating light — enables applications ranging from telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing to medical imaging, lidar, and...
Technologies that depend on lightweight, high-precision optical systems, like space telescopes, X-ray mirrors, and display panels, have developed significantly over the past several decades, but...
The MIT AI Hardware Program is a new academia and industry collaboration aimed at defining and developing translational technologies in hardware and...
It’s been roughly 23 years since one of the first robotic animals trotted on the scene, defying classical notions of our cuddly four-legged...
Which companies deploy machine intelligence (MI) and data analytics successfully for manufacturing and operations? Why are those leading adopters so far ahead — and what can others learn from them...
If faced with the choice of sending a swarm of full-sized, distinct robots to space, or a large crew of smaller robotic modules, you might want to enlist the latter. Modular robots, like those...
Automation has been around since ancient Greece. Its form changes, but the intent of having technology take over repetitive tasks has remained consistent, and a fundamental element for success has...
If you download music online, you can get accompanying information embedded into the digital file that might tell you the name of the song, its genre, the featured artists on a given track, the...
Lithium-ion batteries, those marvels of lightweight power that have made possible today’s age of handheld electronics and electric vehicles, have plunged in cost since their introduction three...
Caitlin Braun MBA ’21, SM ’21 covers ground as an Ironman triathlete — and scales new heights at J&E Precision Tool, which provides parts to the aerospace and defense industries.
As J...
Previous definitions of “well-being,” limited to taking a brisk walk and eating a few more vegetables, feel in many ways like a distant past. Shiny watches and sleek rings now measure how we eat,...
For years, companies have managed their extended supply chains with intermittent audits and certifications while attempting to persuade their suppliers to adhere to certain standards and codes of...
On July 29, MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt and Associate Provost Krystyn Van Vliet attended a groundbreaking ceremony to celebrate the construction of Landmark Bio, a new 40,000-square foot...
With the addition of computers, laser cutters have rapidly become a relatively simple and powerful tool, with software controlling shiny machinery that can chop metals, woods, papers, and plastics...
The pandemic underscored an urgent need: The best-educated workers are prospering, but too many others are being left behind. To address this challenge, community colleges can be rich resources...
The urgent need to cut carbon emissions is prompting a rapid move toward electrified mobility and expanded deployment of solar and wind on the electric grid. If those trends escalate as expected,...