SHASS News
Ray Kurzweil ’70 receives the 2025 Robert A. Muh Alumni Award
The prolific inventor, thinker, and futurist is being honored for his contributions to literature, music, and technology.
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Three economists with MIT ties win BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Olivier Blanchard PhD ’77, the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics Emeritus, has been named a winner of the 2025 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management for “profoundly influencing modern macroeconomic analysis by establishing rigorous foundations for the study of business cycle fluctuations,” as described in the BBVA Foundation’s award […]
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When did human language emerge?
It is a deep question, from deep in our history: When did human language as we know it emerge? A new survey of genomic evidence suggests our unique language capacity was present at least 135,000 years ago. Subsequently, language might have entered social use 100,000 years ago. Our species, Homo sapiens, is about 230,000 years […]
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A collaboration across continents to solve a plastics problem
More than 60,000 tons of plastic makes the journey down the Amazon River to the Atlantic Ocean every year. And that doesn’t include what finds its way to the river’s banks, or the microplastics ingested by the region’s abundant and diverse wildlife. It’s easy to demonize plastic, but it has been crucial in developing the society […]
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2025 MacVicar Faculty Fellows named
Three outstanding educators have been named MacVicar Faculty Fellows: associate professor in comparative media studies/writing Paloma Duong, associate professor of economics Frank Schilbach, and associate professor of urban studies and planning Justin Steil. For more than 30 years, the MacVicar Faculty Fellows Program has recognized exemplary and sustained contributions to undergraduate education at MIT. The program is named […]
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