MIT engineers have devised a new way to deliver certain drugs in higher doses with less pain, by injecting them as a suspension of tiny crystals. Once under the skin, the crystals assemble into a drug 'depot' that could last for months or years, eliminating the need for frequent drug injections. This approach could prove useful for delivering long-lasting contraceptives or other drugs that need to be given for extended periods of time. Because the drugs are dispersed in a suspension before injection, they can be administered through a narrow needle that is easier for patients to tolerate. 'We showed that we can have very controlled, sustained delivery, likely for multiple months and even years through a small needle,' says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), an associate member of the Broad Institute, and the senior author of the study. The lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Nature Chemical Engineering, are former MIT and BWH postdoc Vivian Feig, who is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University; MIT graduate student Sanghyun Park; and Pier Rivano, a former visiting research scholar in Traverso's lab....

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 we live in today. Creating materials that have the benefits of plastics while reducing the harms of traditional production methods is a goal of chemical engineering and materials science labs the world over, including that of Bradley Olsen, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Olsen, a Fulbright Amazonia scholar and the faculty lead of MIT-Brazil, works with communities to develop alternative plastics solutions that can be derived from resources within their own environments. 'The word that we use for this is co-design,' says Olsen. 'The idea is, instead of engineers just designing something independently, they engage and jointly design the solution with the stakeholders.'...

Converting one type of cell to another ' for example, a skin cell to a neuron ' can be done through a process that requires the skin cell to be induced into a 'pluripotent' stem cell, then differentiated into a neuron. Researchers at MIT have now devised a simplified process that bypasses the stem cell stage, converting a skin cell directly into a neuron. Working with mouse cells, the researchers developed a conversion method that is highly efficient and can produce more than 10 neurons from a single skin cell. If replicated in human cells, this approach could enable the generation of large quantities of motor neurons, which could potentially be used to treat patients with spinal cord injuries or diseases that impair mobility. 'We were able to get to yields where we could ask questions about whether these cells can be viable candidates for the cell replacement therapies, which we hope they could be. That's where these types of reprogramming technologies can take us,' says Katie Galloway, the W. M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering....

The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Statistics and Operational Research. MIT also placed second in seven subject areas: Accounting and Finance; Architecture/Built Environment; Biological Sciences; Business and Management Studies; Chemistry; Earth and Marine Sciences; and Economics and Econometrics. For 2024, universities were evaluated in 55 specific subjects and five broader subject areas. MIT was ranked No. 1 in the broader subject area of Engineering and Technology and No. 2 in Natural Sciences. Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually, are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools in their field of interest. Rankings are based on research quality and accomplishments, academic reputation, and graduate employment....