The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.
The Institute admitted its first students in 1865, four years after the approval of its founding charter. The opening marked the culmination of an extended effort by William Barton Rogers, a distinguished natural scientist, to establish a new kind of independent educational institution relevant to an increasingly industrialized America. Rogers stressed the pragmatic and practicable. He believed that professional competence is best fostered by coupling teaching and research and by focusing attention on real-world problems. Toward this end, he pioneered the development of the teaching laboratory.
Today MIT is a world-class educational institution. Teaching and research—with relevance to the practical world as a guiding principle—continue to be its primary purpose. MIT is independent, coeducational, and privately endowed. Its five schools and one college encompass numerous academic departments, divisions, and degree-granting programs, as well as interdisciplinary centers, laboratories, and programs whose work cuts across traditional departmental boundaries.
The Paris Agreement was a breakthrough in global climate talks, but nations now face major hurdles to meeting long-term emissions goals – and maintaining global support for the deal.
A time-lapse image showing the plane flying across a gymnasium.
Steven Barrett, MIT
Ionic winds – charged particles flowing through the air – can move airplanes using only electricity; no propellers or jet engines needed. The scholar who led the project explains how it works.
Without rapid and dramatic changes, the world will face a higher risk of extreme weather and other effects of climate change.
AP Photo/Mike Groll
The UN's panel on climate change said that technologies to remove CO2 will be necessary to limit global temperature rise to only 1.5 degrees Celsius. But these techniques are largely unproven.
Prototype vehicle built with 3D printing – but is it green?
Tim Gutowski
More students must acquire IT skills in order to secure jobs with upward mobility, according to a researcher who developed an index that shows a dramatic growth in 'IT intensive' jobs.
Many associate entrepreneurship with youth – like Mark Zuckerberg, who famously started Facebook as a student at Harvard.
AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File
Metode baru yang menganalisis gelombagn suara bawah air bisa memberi peringatan dini tsunami lebih cepat.
New research concludes that there are many “Lost Einsteins” in America – children who had the ability to become inventors but didn’t because of where they were born.
Shutterstock.com
Julia Leonard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Persistence and self-control are valuable traits that can help kids succeed in school and beyond. A new study suggests infants can learn stick-to-itiveness by watching adults persist in a difficult task.
Everyone sees them all, but we don’t all give them the same distinct names.
lazyllama/Shutterstock.com
Ted Gibson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bevil R. Conway, National Institutes of Health
People across the globe all see millions of distinct colors. But the terms we use to describe them vary across cultures. New cognitive science research suggests it's about what we want to communicate.
The first U.S. offshore wind farm, near Block Island, Rhode Island, started delivering commercial electricity in December 2016.
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
When utilities plan investments, they think decades ahead. A recent study shows why power companies should be spending more on renewables despite the Trump administration's tilt toward fossil fuels.
A resident of New York City Housing Authority’s Chelsea-Elliot Houses.
AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
Lawrence Vale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Since the 1990s, the supply of deeply subsidized housing has decreased as the US population and need for housing have increased. Trump's proposed cuts to HUD won't help.
Between the Earth and the moon: An artist’s rendering of a refueling depot for deep-space exploration.
Sung Wha Kang (RISD)
To get us to Mars and beyond, a team of students from around the world has a plan involving lunar rovers mining ice and a space station between the Earth and the moon.
Palace of Westminster at dusk in 2007.
Diliff/Wikipedia
Timothy Hyde, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A century before the modern environmental era, experts realized that London's dirty air was corroding its new Parliament building. This insight led to some of the first air pollution laws.
John Carrier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The problems that cause us to be so frustrated we contemplate throwing a computer can be much more serious than a multimillionaire football coach having a minor tantrum on a Sunday afternoon.