Curiosity Unbounded, Ep 1: How a free-range kid from Maine is helping green-up industrial practices — Desirée Plata

Established after World War II, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences is an integral part of the MIT experience. Three faculty reflect on the school's ongoing impact.

In this episode, MIT President Sally Kornbluth sits down with associate professor of political science and faculty co-director of MIT-Africa, Mai Hassan. Her work looks at bureaucracy, public administration, and the state in Africa, and more recently, how people mobilize against repressive dictatorships.

MIT researchers have made an open-source version of the “City Scanner” mobile pollution detector that lets people check air quality anywhere, cheaply. Pictured are some examples of the latest version of the device, called Flatburn, as well as a researcher attaching a prototype to a car.

In a new study, MIT researchers have developed strategies for beneficial electric vehicle charging to reduce peak electricity demand and store solar energy.

Predicting what it takes to push through sand, gravel, or other soft media can help engineers drive a rover over Martian soil, anchor a ship in rough seas, and walk a robot through sand and mud. But modeling the forces involved in such processes is a huge computational challenge that often takes days to weeks to solve.