funding Archives - Phonesnews.com

October 21, 2025

MIT Global Seed Funds catalyze research in over 20 countries

Since launching in 2008, the MIT Global Seed Funds (GSF) program has awarded roughly $30 million to more than 1,300 high-impact faculty research projects across the world, spurring consequential collaborations on topics that include swine-fever vaccines, deforestation of the Amazon, the impact of “coral mucus” on the Japanese island of Okinawa, and the creation of an AI-driven STEM-education lab within Nigeria’s oldest university.

Administered by the MIT Center for International Studies (CIS) and open to MIT faculty and principal investigators, GSF boasts a unique funding structure consisting of both a general fund for unrestricted geographical use and more than 20 different specific funds for individual universities, regions, and countries.

GSF projects often tackle critical challenges that require international solutions, culminating in patents, policy changes, and published papers in journals such as Nature and Science. Some faculty-led projects from this year include Professor Hugh Herr’s modular crutches for people with disabilities in Sierra Leone,

» Read More

October 20, 2025

Darcy McRose and Mehtaab Sawhney ’20, PhD ’24 named 2025 Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has announced that two MIT affiliates have been named 2025 Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering. Darcy McRose, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Assistant Professor in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been honored, along with Mehtaab Sawhney ’20, PhD ’24, a graduate of the Department of Mathematics who is now at Columbia University.

The honorees are among 20 junior faculty named among the nation’s most innovative early-career scientists and engineers. Each Packard Fellow receives an unrestricted research grant of $875,000 over five years to support their pursuit of pioneering research and bold new ideas.

“I’m incredibly grateful and honored to be awarded a Packard Fellowship,” says McRose. “It will allow us to continue our work exploring how small molecules control microbial communities in soils and on plant roots,

» Read More

October 10, 2025

MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MBZUAI launch international collaboration to shape the future of AI

The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) recently celebrated the launch of the MIT–MBZUAI Collaborative Research Program, a new effort to strengthen the building blocks of artificial intelligence and accelerate its use in pressing scientific and societal challenges.

Under the five-year agreement, faculty, students, and research staff from both institutions will collaborate on fundamental research projects to advance the technological foundations of AI and its applications in three core areas: scientific discovery, human thriving, and the health of the planet.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming nearly every aspect of human endeavor. MIT’s leadership in AI is greatly enriched through collaborations with leading academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “Our collaboration with MBZUAI reflects a shared commitment to advancing AI in ways that are responsible,

» Read More

September 26, 2025

How federal research support has helped create life-changing medicines

Gleevec, a cancer drug first approved for sale in 2001, has dramatically changed the lives of people with chronic myeloid leukemia. This form of cancer was once regarded as very difficult to combat, but survival rates of patients who respond to Gleevec now resemble that of the population at large.

Gleevec is also a medicine developed with the help of federally funded research. That support helped scientists better understand how to create drugs targeting the BCR-ABL oncoprotein, the cancer-causing protein behind chronic myeloid leukemia.

A new study co-authored by MIT researchers quantifies how many such examples of drug development exist. The current administration is proposing a nearly 40 percent budget reduction to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which sponsors a significant portion of biomedical research. The study finds that over 50 percent of small-molecule drug patents this century cite at least one piece of NIH-backed research that would likely be vulnerable to that potential level of funding change.

» Read More

September 23, 2025

MIT affiliates win AI for Math grants to accelerate mathematical discovery

$mit-affiliates-win-ai-for-math-grants-to-accelerate-mathematical-discovery$

MIT Department of Mathematics researchers David Roe ’06 and Andrew Sutherland ’90, PhD ’07 are among the inaugural recipients of the Renaissance Philanthropy and XTX Markets’ AI for Math grants.

Four additional MIT alumni — Anshula Gandhi ’19, Viktor Kunčak SM ’01, PhD ’07; Gireeja Ranade ’07; and Damiano Testa PhD ’05 — were also honored for separate projects.

The first 29 winning projects will support mathematicians and researchers at universities and organizations working to develop artificial intelligence systems that help advance mathematical discovery and research across several key tasks.

Roe and Sutherland, along with Chris Birkbeck of the University of East Anglia, will use their grant to boost automated theorem proving by building connections between the L-Functions and Modular Forms Database (LMFDB) and the Lean4 mathematics library (mathlib).

» Read More

August 27, 2025

J-PAL North America launches Initiative for Effective US Crime Policy

Crime and public safety are among the most pressing concerns across communities in the United States. Violence fractures lives and carries staggering costs; the economic burden of gun violence alone tops $100 billion each year. More than 5 million people live under supervision through incarceration, probation, or parole, while countless more experience the collateral consequences of arrests and criminal charges. Achieving lasting public safety requires confronting both crime itself and the collateral consequences of the U.S. criminal justice system.

To help meet these dual challenges, J-PAL North America — a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) — with generous grant support from Arnold Ventures, launched the Initiative for Effective US Crime Policy (IECP). This initiative will generate rigorous evidence on strategies to make communities safer, reduce discrimination, and improve outcomes at every stage of the criminal justice process.

» Read More

July 18, 2025

MIT launches a “moonshot for menstruation science”

The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Fairbairn Menstruation Science Fund, supporting a bold, high-impact initiative designed to revolutionize women’s health research.

Established through a gift from Emily and Malcolm Fairbairn, the fund will advance groundbreaking research on the function of the human uterus and its impact on sex-based differences in human immunology that contribute to gynecological disorders such as endometriosis, as well as other chronic systemic inflammatory diseases that disproportionately affect women, such as Lyme disease and lupus. The Fairbairns, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, have committed $10 million, with a call to action for an additional $10 million in matching funds.

“I’m deeply grateful to Emily and Malcolm Fairbairn for their visionary support of menstruation science at MIT. For too long, this area of research has lacked broad scientific investment and visibility, despite its profound impact on the health and lives of over half the population,” says Anantha P.

» Read More

July 7, 2025

New postdoctoral fellowship program to accelerate innovation in health care

The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) is launching the Biswas Postdoctoral Fellowship Program to advance the work of outstanding early-career researchers in health and life sciences. Supported by a gift from the Biswas Family Foundation, the program aims to help apply cutting-edge research to improve health care and the lives of millions.

The program will support exceptional postdocs dedicated to innovation in human health care through a full range of pathways, such as leveraging AI in health-related research, developing low-cost diagnostics, and the convergence of life sciences with such areas as economics, business, policy, or the humanities. With initial funding of $12 million, five four-year fellowships will be awarded for each of the next four years, starting in early 2026.

“An essential goal of MIT HEALS is to find new ways and opportunities to deliver health care solutions at scale, and the Biswas Family Foundation shares our commitment to scalable innovation and broad impact.

» Read More

June 29, 2025

MIT and Mass General Brigham launch joint seed program to accelerate innovations in health

Leveraging the strengths of two world-class research institutions, MIT and Mass General Brigham (MGB) recently celebrated the launch of the MIT-MGB Seed Program. The new initiative, which is supported by Analog Devices Inc. (ADI), will fund joint research projects led by researchers at MIT and Mass General Brigham. These collaborative projects will advance research in human health, with the goal of developing next-generation therapies, diagnostics, and digital tools that can improve lives at scale.

The program represents a unique opportunity to dramatically accelerate innovations that address some of the most urgent challenges in human health. By supporting interdisciplinary teams from MIT and Mass General Brigham, including both researchers and clinicians, the seed program will foster groundbreaking work that brings together expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and measurement and sensing technologies with pioneering clinical research and patient care.

“The power of this program is that it combines MIT’s strength in science,

» Read More

June 21, 2025

Researchers present bold ideas for AI at MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium kickoff event

Launched in February of this year, the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC), a presidential initiative led by MIT’s Office of Innovation and Strategy and administered by the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, issued a call for proposals, inviting researchers from across MIT to submit ideas for innovative projects studying high-impact uses of generative AI models.

The call received 180 submissions from nearly 250 faculty members, spanning all of MIT’s five schools and the college. The overwhelming response across the Institute exemplifies the growing interest in AI and follows in the wake of MIT’s Generative AI Week and call for impact papers. Fifty-five proposals were selected for MGAIC’s inaugural seed grants, with several more selected to be funded by the consortium’s founding company members.

Over 30 funding recipients presented their proposals to the greater MIT community at a kickoff event on May 13.

» Read More