At MIT, collaboration between researchers working in the life sciences and engineering is a frequent occurrence. Under a new initiative launched last week, the Institute plans to strengthen and expand those collaborations to take on some of the most pressing health challenges facing the world. The new MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, or MIT HEALS, will bring together researchers from all over the Institute to find new solutions to challenges in health care. HEALS will draw on MIT's strengths in life sciences and other fields, including artificial intelligence and chemical and biological engineering, to accelerate progress in improving patient care. 'As a source of new knowledge, of new tools and new cures, and of the innovators and the innovations that will shape the future of biomedicine and health care, there is just no place like MIT,' MIT President Sally Kornbluth said at a launch event last Wednesday in Kresge Auditorium. 'Our goal with MIT HEALS is to help inspire, accelerate, and deliver solutions, at scale, to some of society's most urgent and intractable health challenges.'...

Although it is less abundant than carbon dioxide, methane gas contributes disproportionately to global warming because it traps more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, due to its molecular structure. 'What to do with methane has been a longstanding problem,' says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study. 'It's a source of carbon, and we want to keep it out of the atmosphere but also turn it into something useful.' Daniel Lundberg PhD '24 and MIT postdoc Jimin Kim are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Catalysis. Former postdoc Yu-Ming Tu and postdoc Cody Ritt also authors of the paper. Methane is produced by bacteria known as methanogens, which are often highly concentrated in landfills, swamps, and other sites of decaying biomass. Agriculture is a major source of methane, and methane gas is also generated as a byproduct of transporting, storing, and burning natural gas. Overall, it is believed to account for about 15 percent of global temperature increases....

To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, 'we have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,' said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI's Annual Research Conference. 'But how the heck do we actually achieve this goal when the United States is in the middle of a divisive election campaign, and globally, we're facing all kinds of geopolitical conflicts, trade protectionism, weather disasters, increasing demand from developing countries building a middle class, and data centers in countries like the U.S.'' Researchers, government officials, and business leaders convened in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sept. 25-26 to wrestle with this vexing question at the conference that was themed, 'A durable energy transition: How to stay on track in the face of increasing demand and unpredictable obstacles.' The critical role of consensus-building in driving the energy transition arose repeatedly in conference sessions, whether the topic involved developing and adopting new technologies, constructing and siting infrastructure, drafting and passing vital energy policies, or attracting and retaining a skilled workforce....

Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang, a doctoral candidate in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, recently won the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition, medaling in both the Graduate and People's Choice categories for developing materials to stabilize nutrients in food with the goal of improving global health. The annual competition, organized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), celebrates college and university student inventors. The finalists present their inventions to a panel of final-round judges composed of National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees and USPTO officials. No stranger to having her work in the limelight, Zhang is a three-time winner of the Koch Institute Image Awards in 2022, 2023, and 2024, as well as a 2022 fellow at the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab. "Rhoda is an exceptionally dedicated and creative student. Her well-deserved award recognizes the potential of her research on nutrient stabilization, which could have a significant impact on society," says Ana Jaklenec, one of Zhang's advisors and a principal investigator at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Zhang is also advised by David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor Robert Langer....