- Home
DSpace@MIT is a growing collection of MIT’s research that includes peer-reviewed articles, technical reports, working papers, theses and more. End-user downloads of the 70,000+ items regularly exceed one million per month.
The MIT Open Access Articles Collection contains over 11,000 scholarly articles that MIT Faculty have made openly available under their Open Access Policy.
In the 5 years since the establishment of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, articles in the Open Access Articles Collection have been downloaded nearly 2,000,000 times, with requests from nearly every country in the world.
DSpace@MIT contains selected theses and dissertations from all MIT departments dating as far back as the mid-1800s. Since 2004, all new Masters and Ph.D theses have been added to the collection after degrees have been awarded.
The MIT Sloan School of Management is one of the world’s leading business schools, where faculty conduct cutting-edge research that creates and redefines ideas at the forefront of management theory and practice around the globe.
CSAIL studies the vast, compelling field of computation in an effort to unlock the secrets of human intelligence, extend the functional capabilities of machines, and explore human/machine interactions. View publications archive.
Featured Collections
MIT Research in the News
Germs that go to great lengths
April 16th, 2014
A new study by MIT researchers shows that the droplets our noses and mouths release during coughs and sneezes can travel much further than previously thought. John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics, and Lydia Bourouiba, an assistant professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, are two of the coauthors on a recent paper, “Violent expiratory events: on coughing and sneezing.” The researchers directly observed sneezing and coughing, and also simulated it in the lab, and found that coughs and sneezes produce “turbulent buoyant momentum puffs,” or respiratory clouds, that can carry potentially infected droplets five to 200 times further than known before. This could mean airborne pathogens are more easily transmitted through ventilation systems and enclosed spaces.
Gleason named Associate Provost
April 3rd, 2014
Chemical Engineering professor Karen Gleason was named this week as MIT’s Associate Provost. Gleason, a faculty member since 1987, has previously served in several administrative roles, including associate dean of engineering for research. She holds 18 patents for work in chemical vapor deposition polymers and their applications in optoelectronics, sensing, microfluidics, energy, biomedicine, and membranes. Provost Martin Schmidt said Gleason’s entrepreneurship and experience with industry will be helpful in “strengthening MIT’s industrial engagements.”
New evidence for the ‘bang’ of the Big Bang
March 20th, 2014
This week, a team of astronomers announced the first “smoking gun” evidence of inflation, a theory of cosmology that describes the quick and violent expansion of the universe in its first fractions of a second. Inflation is the “‘bang’ of the Big Bang,” says Alan Guth, an MIT physics professor who first proposed the theory in 1980. “In its original form, the Big Bang theory never was a theory of the bang. It said nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged.”
The astronomers peered into the cosmic microwave background, a bath of radiation from the early universe, and saw the influence of ripples in space-time, known as gravitational waves. These offer extremely strong evidence that the universe expanded by a repulsive form of gravity, as described by Guth and others.
White House co-sponsor big data workshop
March 12th, 2014
Last week, MIT hosted a daylong workshop on big data and privacy, co-sponsored by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as part of a government review of these issues and policies related to them. Several faculty from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory spoke about their work. Among them was John Guttag, who described research done by one of his graduate students to develop an algorithm that uses hospital data to identify patients at risk for bacterial infection. Shafi Goldwasser and Nickolai Zeldovich both discussed schemes that would allow researchers to perform computations on encrypted data without decrypting it.
Explore Professor Guttag's research
A breakthrough in endometriosis research
February 26th, 2014
Over the years Linda Griffith has undergone many surgeries for endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that normally grows in the uterus is found elsewhere in the body and can cause lesions, inflammation, and infertility. The disease is poorly understood, and so it made sense to Griffith, a professor of biological and mechanical engineering, to start researching it. In a paper published earlier this month, Griffith and colleagues, including bioengineering professor Douglas Lauffenburger, studied pelvic fluid from women with endometriosis and in about a third they found elevated levels of a group of immune system proteins. The work is an early step towards classifying the disease and, eventually, finding new treatments for it. “We’re not claiming we found a mechanism — the mechanism for endometriosis,” Griffith told the Boston Globe. “We have found a very convincing approach to understand an immune network.”
MIT names new provost and chancellor
February 12th, 2014
Two MIT faculty members have been named provost and chancellor, the Institute's two most senior academic posts. Martin Schmidt, the new provost, is an electrical engineering professor and had been associate provost since 2008. The provost is the senior academic and budget officer on campus. Cynthia Barnhart, a professor in civil and environmental engineering, has been associate dean of the School of Engineering since 2007. In Barnhart's job as chancellor she’s responsible for undergraduate and graduate education and student life.
January 30th, 2014
A study coauthored by MIT economics professor Amy Finkelstein shows that newly health-insured adults are more likely to visit emergency rooms than their uninsured peers. The study, published earlier this month, used data from a 2008 Medicaid expansion program in Oregon and found that the newly insured visited ERs about 40 percent more often. Researchers looked at emergency department records over an 18-month period for about 25,000 low-income adults, some of whom were randomly selected in a lottery to receive Medicaid.
Medicaid increases visits to the ER
January 21st, 2014
Sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder sometimes undergo a treatment in which they re-experience a fearful memory in a safe place, with the hope that their brains will rewrite the memory so it no longer triggers them. But this therapy doesn’t always work and its effects may not last, especially if the memory is years old. MIT neuroscientists, including Picower Institute for Learning and Memory director Li-Huei Tsai, have shown they can lessen traumatic memories in mice when pairing the behavioral therapy with a dose of a drug that that makes the brain more malleable. “Our experiments really strongly argue that either the old memories are permanently being modified, or a new much more potent memory is formed that completely overwrites the old memory,” Tsai told the MIT News.
Kastner to be nominated to DOE
December 11th, 2013
Last month, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Marc Kastner, dean of MIT’s School of Science, to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The office is the largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States; its 2013 budget is $4.9 billion. Kastner, who works in condensed matter physics, has led the School of Science since 2007. “A brilliant physicist and highly effective manager, Marc Kastner is ideally suited to manage DOE’s basic science portfolio and its network of national labs,” said MIT President Rafael Reif. “He argues eloquently for the value of basic science but has worked with equal enthusiasm to help MIT faculty transform emerging ideas into important real-world technologies. He knows the challenges of building a sustainable energy future, and I can think of no one better to help the U.S. seize the opportunities, as well.”
November 25th, 2013
After a couple of years of coaching his daughter’s middle-school math team, MIT economist Glenn Ellison compiled his notes into a self-published book, Hard Math for Middle School. The book was intended for members of the math league his daughter participated in, but in the five years since it was published it has sold thousands of copies nationwide. Now (at the urging of his youngest daughter), Ellison has released a second book for third- to sixth-graders looking for a challenge beyond what they learn in the classroom. The goal is to keep math interesting for advanced students. “What would be great is if in 10 to 12 years my MIT students come up to me and say ‘I used your book when I was in fifth grade,’” says Ellison. “That would be really awesome.”
New way to monitor induced-coma patients
November 14th, 2013
Brain injury patients are sometimes deliberately placed in a coma with anesthesia drugs to allow swelling to go down and their brains to heal. Comas can last for days, during which patients’ brain activity must be regularly monitored to ensure the right level of sedation. The constant checking is “totally inefficient,” says Emery Brown, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a professor in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Brown and his colleagues at MGH have developed a “brain-machine interface” that automatically monitors brain activity and adjusts drug dosages accordingly. They’ve tested the system on rats and are now planning human trials.
Nanoparticles attack aggressive tumors
October 31st, 2013
MIT chemical engineers have developed a new treatment for an aggressive form of breast cancer whose tumors resist chemotherapy drugs. Led by David H. Koch Professor in Engineering Paula Hammond, the team designed nanoparticles that pack a one-two punch: They deliver a cancer drug along with short strands of RNA that shut off genes used by cancer cells to escape the drug. The nanoparticles are also coated with an outer layer that protects them from degrading while en route to the cancer cells. The researchers used the particles to successfully shrink breast tumors in mice, as they report in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano. The lead author on the paper is Jason Deng, a postdoc in Hammond’s lab.
Changes to auditing may help reduce pollution
October 15th, 2013
Economists at MIT have co-authored a study that underscores a troubling aspect of the auditing industry, in which auditors, because they’re paid by the companies they scrutinize, have an incentive to not deliver bad reviews. The study looked at about 500 industrial plants in a western Indian state and found that when auditors were randomly assigned to plants and paid from central funds, their results were very different. For example, auditors in the study found that nearly 60% of the plants were violating India’s particulates emissions laws; previous audits had cited only 7%. The state is now using this information to help enforce pollution laws.
“There is a fundamental conflict of interest in the way auditing markets are set up around the world,” said Professor Michael Greenstone, an author on the paper with his colleague Esther Duflo. “The ultimate hope with the experiment was definitely to see pollution at the firm level drop,” said Duflo.
October 2nd, 2013
Two MIT professors are among two dozen nationwide recipients of the 2013 MacArthur Fellowships, known as the “genius grants.” Dina Katabi, a computer scientist, works on wireless data transmission. The MacArthur Foundation cites her leadership in “accelerating our capacity to communicate high volumes of information securely without restricting mobility.” Astrophysicist Sara Seager explores planets outside our solar system; nearly a thousand have been identified since the mid-90s. The Foundation cites her as a “visionary scientist contributing importantly in every aspect of her field.” The fellowship includes a five-year $625,000 prize.
Using solar power to clean water
September 18th, 2013
A team of MIT researchers, led by mechanical engineering professor Steven Dubowsky, are developing a solar-powered system that can produce 1,000 liters of clean drinking water a day—a potential boon in areas where fresh water is scarce and expensive. Over the past several months, the researchers have traveled to remote areas in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to test the purification system, which includes several photovoltaic panels, a tank, pumps, filters, and computers. Communities there can be a day’s drive from drinkable water. “There may be 25 million indigenous people in Mexico alone,” Dubowsky says. “This is not a small problem. The potential for a system like this is huge.” The researchers may do similar tests of the system in other countries.
Maier was “one of the key intellectual figures in her field”
September 4th, 2013
Historian Pauline Maier, who wrote award-winning books on 18th-century America, died last month at age 75. Maier had been on the MIT faculty since 1978. In one of her best-known books, American Scripture, she helped show that the Declaration of Independence was a “secular document” and a collaborative effort, not a sacred text that Thomas Jefferson wrote on his own: In her research Maier found dozens of local resolutions to declare independence from the British Crown. The New York Times named American Scripture one of the 11 best books of 1997.
Maier was on the original faculty committee that put forward the MIT faculty Open Access Policy.
August 21st, 2013
Crimes like burglary often go unwitnessed, which makes it difficult to predict and prevent a criminal’s future acts. Police analysts scour reports and databases for patterns in criminal activity, but the work is labor and time intensive. Two Sloan School of Management researchers, including associate professor Cynthia Rudin, have teamed up with Cambridge police crime analysts to develop an algorithm that quickly detects patterns including where, when, and how a crime happened. “You’re trying to find the [modus operandi] of the suspect,” Rudin told the Boston Globe. “If you can do this really effectively it can lead to an accurate suspect description.” The algorithm, called Series Finder, is built on data from nearly 5,000 housebreaks in Cambridge over a decade.
Programming with natural language
July 26th, 2013
Researchers in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have demonstrated it’s possible to use English instead of specialized programming languages to complete some computing tasks. Regina Barzilay, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering, recently coauthored two new papers: One shows that a computer can take similar natural language requests and convert them into notation that allows flexible and specific searching. In the other, Barzilay and researchers describe a system that can automatically write working software programs based on natural language specifications.
Challenges for women entrepreneurs
July 11th, 2013
Last month, Dell released its first Gender Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), a report analyzing conditions that help women entrepreneurs flourish in various countries. The United States was the top-ranked nation in the list, though the report notes there is room for improvement in all countries because “women and men are not on a level playing field in terms of access to resources, which continues to impact women’s ability to start and grow businesses.” In light of the GEDI study, MIT News recently spoke with Fiona Murray, a professor in the Sloan School of Management, about her research and MIT’s role in supporting women entrepreneurs.
Bertschinger appointed as Community & Equity Officer
June 27th, 2013
Last week, MIT Provost Chris Kaiser announced that physics department head Edmund Bertschinger will take on a newly created role as Institute Community and Equity Officer. Bertschinger will work with Kaiser and President Rafael Reif to “help make MIT a place where everyone truly feels they belong,” said Reif. Bertschinger has worked for years on issues of diversity and inclusion: he’s served on MIT’s Committee on Race and Diversity since 2009 and has chaired the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Office of Minority Education since 2010. As department head, he has used mentoring to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to get involved in physics research and education. Bertschinger’s research is in cosmology with a focus on the growth of the structure in the universe.
June 13th, 2013
New studies coauthored by biological engineering professor Ram Sasisekharan show that two bird flu strains could become highly infectious among humans with just a few genetic mutations. Both strains have already jumped from birds to humans, though neither has spread beyond a few hundred people. “There is cause for concern,” Sasisekharan told the MIT News. But the researchers hope their work can be used to develop better vaccines. “Our research provides insights to help keep track of potentially important mutations so that proactive steps can be taken to be better prepared against dangerous viruses,” he said.
May 30th, 2013
Earlier this month, more than 250 members of the MIT community gathered on Jack Berry Field carrying specially made umbrellas that lit up with red, blue, and green LED lights via handheld controllers. They were there to perform UP: The Umbrella Project, a collaboration between CSAIL’s Distributed Robotics Lab and the dance company Pilobolus. Directed by a Pilobolus team member and shot by video from above, UP participants walked about, changing the hue of their umbrellas in a live performance piece. The purpose wasn’t solely artistic: CSAIL director Daniela Rus and fellow researchers will study the video to explore the behaviors of large groups. “While our work with robotics and Pilobolus’ work with modern dance may seem at first glance unrelated, we have found there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained at the intersection of art and science that offers deep insight into human behavior, findings that are incredibly useful to the field of computer science,” said Rus.
