News and Blog Landing | MIT Sustainability

Sara Jex MCP ’25 (second from left) and family members visit 7000 Central Ave. in Cleveland, Ohio, a vacant 183,000-square-foot factory once used to manufacture Hulett unloaders. The building is among the first strategic acquisitions of the Site Readiness Fund for Good Jobs, which is working to redevelop disinvested industrial sites.

MIT News Office

April 3, 2026

Urban planning students engage with communities through the Freedom Summer Fellowship

“You can’t teach planning today without grappling with how policy actually unfolds within communities,” says Professor Phillip Thompson.

“By becoming a nuclear engineer, you become one of a select number of people responsible for carbon-free energy generation in the United States,” says MIT Assistant Professor Dean Price.

MIT News Office

April 3, 2026

Working to advance the nuclear renaissance

Dean Price, assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, sees a bright future for nuclear power, and believes AI can help us realize that vision.

New work by MIT researchers shows how to generate nearly real-time vehicle emissions information — which can measure the effects of policy changes, such as New York City's congestion pricing.

MIT News Office

April 2, 2026

MIT researchers measure traffic emissions, to the block, in real-time

A new study pieces together existing data sources in order to develop a detailed, dynamic picture of auto emissions.

MIT researchers developed an easy-to-use tool that generates an accurate, aesthetics-first preview of how an object will look before it is 3D printed, in an effort to help makers avoid reprints that waste time, effort, and material.

MIT News Office

April 1, 2026

Preview tool helps makers visualize 3D-printed objects

By quickly generating aesthetically accurate previews of fabricated objects, the VisiPrint system could make prototyping faster and less wasteful.

As sea surface temperatures rise over the next century, phytoplankton in polar regions will adapt to be less rich in proteins, heavier in carbohydrates, and lower in nutrients overall. “We’re moving in the poles toward a sort of fast-food ocean,” says MIT postdoc Shlomit Sharoni.

MIT News Office

March 31, 2026

Climate change may produce “fast-food” phytoplankton

With warmer ocean temperatures, the composition of marine plankton could shift from protein-rich to carb-heavy, a new study suggests.

Researchers used a new visual technique to measure stress in a material as a dendrite crack grows. Here, the four graphs have the same data with different color schemes. Brighter colors correspond to higher stress, and a bowtie-shaped pattern can be seen at the crack tip.

MIT News Office

March 25, 2026

Why solid-state batteries keep short-circuiting

New insights into metallic cracks that harm battery performance could advance the longstanding quest to develop energy-dense solid-state batteries.

“We’ve now reached the point where stellarator performances can exceed those of tokamaks, because we’re able to optimize them very well, but you have to put the effort in,” says Sophia Henneberg.

MIT News Office

March 25, 2026

Championing fusion’s promising underdog

Sophia Henneberg, assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, is developing stellarators to harness fusion energy.

MIT researchers developed a model to study how some natural, methane-cleansing molecules known as the “atmosphere’s detergent” will shift in a changing climate.

MIT News Office

March 24, 2026

A complicated future for a methane-cleansing molecule

A new model shows how levels of the “atmosphere’s detergent” may rise and fall in response to climate change.

The calving front of the Ross Ice Sheet in western Antarctica

MIT News Office

March 23, 2026

Investigating Antarctic ice shelf melting with global navigation satellite systems

Observations suggest a major melting event at the Ross Ice Shelf was connected to atmospheric turbulence.