MIT Alumni News

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Super Mario is mathier than you think

Here’s a problem you probably didn’t solve in school: You’re an ambitious young plumber from Brooklyn in a world inhabited by violent human-size mushrooms called Goombas. The love of your life has been kidnapped, so you embark on a quest to rescue her, venturing through stretches of pipe-filled and monster-­ridden terrain where your only means […]

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Opening a door to mental-health help online

Rob Morris, SM ’09, PhD ’15, didn’t know where to turn when he first felt symptoms of depression as a teenager: “I had no exposure to healthy coping strategies. I had no vocabulary for what was happening to me.”  That experience, he says, has driven his work on Koko, a tech nonprofit that grew out of

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The new word in home construction could be “plastics”

Single-use plastics are a persistent source of environmental pollution, and the need to house a growing global population puts increasing pressure on resources such as timber. MIT engineers have an idea that could make a dent in both problems at once. In a recent study, a team led by mechanical engineering professor David Hardt, SM

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Caring for service dogs

Brenda Schafer Kennedy, SM ’93, knows that sometimes the best medicine comes with four legs and fur. Kennedy is the chief veterinary and research officer for Canine Companions, a California-based, nationwide organization that provides assistance dogs at no cost to children, veterans, and adults with disabilities.  “The need is enormous: One in four people in

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Inventor recalls eye imaging breakthrough

If you’ve been to an eye doctor and had an image taken of the inside of your eye, chances are good it was done with optical coherence tomography (OCT)—a technology invented by clinician-scientist David Huang ’85, SM ’89, PhD ’93, and now used in 40 million procedures per year.  OCT is a noninvasive technique used

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Recent books from the MIT community

Priority Technologies: Ensuring US Security and Shared ProsperityEdited by Elisabeth B. Reynolds, professor of the practice of urban studies and planning and former executive director of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future MIT PRESS, 2026, $24.95 The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and LiveBy Alan Lightman, professor of the practice

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Get ready for hotter, muggier, stormier summers

A long stretch of humid heat followed by a powerful thunderstorm is a familiar weather pattern in the tropics, but it’s also becoming more common in midlatitude regions such as the US Midwest. A recent study by two MIT scientists identifies a key atmospheric condition that determines how hot, humid, and stormy such a region

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