SHASS News

In India, many kids who work in retail markets have good math skills: They can quickly perform a range of calculations to complete transactions. But as a new study shows, these kids often perform much worse on the same kinds of problems as they are taught in the classroom. This happens even though many of […]

As the story goes, the Scottish inventor James Watt envisioned how steam engines should work on one day in 1765, when he was walking across Glasgow Green, a park in his hometown. Watt realized that putting a separate condenser in an engine would allow its main cylinder to remain hot, making the engine more efficient […]

MIT senior Mishael Quraishi has been selected as a 2025-26 Churchill Scholar and will undertake an MPhil in archaeological research at Cambridge University in the U.K. this fall. Quraishi, who is majoring in material sciences and archeology with a minor in ancient and medieval studies, envisions a future career as a materials scientist, using archeological […]

Senior Audrey Lorvo is researching AI safety, which seeks to ensure increasingly intelligent AI models are reliable and can benefit humanity. The growing field focuses on technical challenges like robustness and AI alignment with human values, as well as societal concerns like transparency and accountability. Practitioners are also concerned with the potential existential risks associated with […]

The selected projects feature “an incredible array of bold, creative proposals and ideas,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth.