Dear colleagues, students, and friends,

 

Join us on our journey toward building a better world!

 

The Global Humanities Initiative (GHI) was born in 2021 with the goal of creating an MIT-based worldwide community that works globally towards reinvigorating humanistic learning and education by radically expanding the geographical scope and temporal depth of humanistic disciplines, thereby reimagining their critical relevance to the grand challenges of today’s world.

 

True to an enhanced version of MIT’s motto, “mens, manus et cor” (mind, hand & heart), GHI proposes a hands-on approach to addressing the pressing challenges of our time. Our motto is “Legacies for Our Future,” setting our compass on promoting human flourishing now, and creating good legacies for the future of humankind and our planet.

 

We invite you to a special evening celebrating our humanity and community. The event will feature a distinguished surprise speaker, dynamic pitches from GHI members, a keynote address by Kim Jae-hui, Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Boston, a special performance by Grammy Award-winning pioneering multi-style cellist Mike Block, a reinterpretation of Asian traditional dance by the student dance team MIT Flow, and a Korean folk painting (minhwa) experience with three artists during the reception.

 

Join us on this shared journey to reimagine the power of the humanities—together!

 

Warmest regards,

Wiebke Denecke and the GHI team

---

 

1. Main Event:     

- Distinguished Surprise Guest

- Welcome: Wiebke Denecke (Faculty Lead of GHI, Literature)

 

GHI Member Pitches

Sandy Alexandre (Literature, MIT)Jason Chen (MIT'25,Mechanical Engineering & Literature)Otto Scharmer (Sloan School of Management, MIT)Alicia Stevens (Cambridge University) & Kyaw Moe KhineRichard Eberhardt (Game Lab, MIT)Kelly Kim (MIT'26,Literature & Management)Margery Resnick (Literature, MIT)Johannes Makar (Harvard University)Diana Henderson (Literature, MIT)Michael Puett (Harvard University) 

- Mike Block - Opening musical performance

 

- MIT Flow Dance Team – Arirang 《阿里郎》

 

- Kim Jae-Hui (Consul General of the Republic of Korea) – The Art of Cultural Diplomacy in an Age of Global Imbalance

 

- MIT Flow Dance Team – By the Water 《在水一方》

 

- Mike Block – Closing musical performance


2. Reception with Ch'aekkŏri (Scholars’ Studio Art) Donation Ceremony & Korean Painting Workshop

- Painting Donation Ceremony

Chung Byungmo (Director of the School of Korean Folk Art, Seoul) 

- Opening of buffet and Korean Folk Art experience

Kwak Yunmi, Kim Hakyung & Lee Jisun (Minhwa Artists, Seoul)
For questions, please contact the GHI coordinator Dr. Johann Noh at noh1214@mit.edu.

Event Information:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/invitation-celebrate-global-humanities-mit-for-a-better-world

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INVITATION: Celebrate Global Humanities @ MIT for a Better World

For Researchers Interested in Commercializing their New Technology  

Explore taking your new technology to the marketplace Get entrepreneurial training, support to identify customers Learn how to apply for $50,000 from the NSFIncrease your chances of receiving an SBIR/STTR awardClick here for more details

Event Information:
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MIT I-Corps: For Researchers Considering a Technology-based Startup

New England I-Corps: For Researchers Considering a Technology-based Startup

Discussion ODSC Startup Showcase at the Open Data Science Conference

ODSC Startup Showcase

13 new startups emerge from MITdesignX this year.

We start off Pitch and Demo Day at 2pm, giving the live audience a chance to meet with the teams and see their new products and services. A lunch buffet will be served.

At 3pm, we begin our presentations with a recap of the year at MITdesignX and pitches by all the new startups. This segment of the day will be hybrid and livestreamed online to a global audience.

We hope to see you in person or online on May 16! Please register here.

Event Information:
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MITdesignX Demo + Pitch Day 2025

MITdesignX Pitch/Demo 2025

Speaker/ Moderator: Manish Bharadwaj, Ph.D.

Manish directs Keller Center's Design for Innovation program for faculty in the humanities and social sciences. He was previously the James Wei Visiting Professor at Keller, where he taught idealism in entrepreneurship. Manish is the CEO and co-founder of Innovators In Health, which is devoted to delivering world-class healthcare to the rural poor in India. Manish is also a Fellow of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT. Manish believes that a venture to make the world more just is fundamentally a moral, not technical, undertaking. It requires cultivating a moral imagination, an ability to imagine why people do right or wrong, the root of empathy, itself the root of all enduring change. He believes that accompaniment, to stand with the marginalized, literally and figuratively, is a moral imperative, and in and of itself a powerful means of change.

Event Information:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/copy-of-student-roundtable-entrepreneurship-for-the-idealist

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Student Roundtable: Can Social Change-makers make the World Just?

As universities renowned for their scientific contributions that benefit society, both MIT and Imperial College London share a commitment to address key global challenges. Over the last 10 years, they have done so through the MIT-Imperial Seed Fund, which aims to help kick-start early-stage projects between two of the world’s leading universities that lead to high-impact research, discovery science and the deployment of frontier technologies

This event will celebrate 10 years of our strategic partnership by showcasing several MIT-Imperial joint projects and their key outcomes and achievements. Please join us as we demonstrate the benefits and impact of this significant transatlantic collaboration.

Please register for the event here.

Event Information:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/mit-imperial-seed-fund-10th-anniversary-celebration-a-decade-of-transatlantic-collaboration-in-science-technology

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MIT-Imperial Seed Fund 10th Anniversary Celebration: A Decade of Transatlantic Collaboration in Science & Technology

For Researchers Interested in Commercializing their New Technology

Learn what I-Corps is all about and what to expect in the programExplore the benefits of participating in our I-Corps short courseWhat will the next steps be toward a potential $2MM in non-dilutive funding support 

There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of the session

Event Information:
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New England I-Corps Program Information Session

The MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative will be dissolving at the end of June, and a celebration will be held to honor its legacy and the many people who contributed to its mission. 

 

It’s worth noting that its research and education projects will soon be resettled across the Institute — in places like The Climate Project and Department of Architecture — so that the work continues. 

 

The ESI was launched in 2014 as a major campus-wide effort to coordinate and develop interdisciplinary solutions to urgent challenges in environment and sustainability. The ESI's research programs have included Natural Climate Solutions (NCS), Mining and the Circular Economy (MCE), Cities and Climate Change, Plastics and the Environment, Arts and Climate, and Climate Justice. On the educational front, they've housed the environment and sustainability minor, as well as the Martin Family Fellows for Sustainability and Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit (CJIT). The MIT Climate Portal, the MIT Climate Primer, and TILClimate podcast, which are now part of The Climate Project, also have their roots at the ESI. 

 

Please fill out the following form so that appropriate catering can be arranged: https://forms.gle/CXEqcwWVRJznnFdw9   

 

Students, staff, faculty, and collaborators are all encouraged to attend.

Event Information:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/a-celebration-of-the-mit-environmental-solutions-initiative

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A Celebration of the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

Each year, MIT supports five journalists around the country in developing deeply-reported stories about climate change and its solutions, for the news outlets Americans trust the most: the local and regional newsrooms where reporters write about their own communities. This spring, these MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellows focused on the under-covered climate challenges of the food, agriculture and waste sector—which accounts for over 10% of America's climate pollution and the majority of our powerful, fast-warming methane.

Join MIT's newest class of Fellows as they discuss their work covering food, waste and climate in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, Maryland and Illinois. Special guest moderator Jenny Splitter, editor-in-chief of Sentient Media, will lead a conversation with our fellows on the diverse audiences they engaged, the challenges and opportunities of climate reporting in local outlets, and how they connected their stories to local values and priorities—for their readers, and for the farmers, waste managers and city and state officials with the greatest capacity to effect change.

 

About the panelists

Karina Atkins is a Chicago-based environmental journalist covering how climate change is affecting the Midwest. Her fellowship project for the Chicago Tribune explores overlooked threats to Illinois’ farmland and groundwater that, if left unaddressed, could prove catastrophic for national food security in the face of climate change, while showing how, with proper regulations and investment, Illinois still has time to become a hub for climate-smart agriculture.

Carolyn Beans is a science reporter covering food, agriculture, and health from her home base in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her food writing has appeared in Undark, The Atlantic, PNAS Front Matter, Slate, The Washington Post, TED-Ed, The Food and Environment Reporting Network and other outlets. Her project reports on Pennsylvania dairy farmers’ efforts to measure and minimize greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately earn a return on climate-smart milk.

Elena Bruess covers the environment and climate for the Houston Landing. She has covered water, climate, environment and health issues throughout the Midwest and Texas, including as a Pulitzer Center reporting fellow. Her fellowship project explores landfill pollution, methane emissions, remediation and the historic and disproportionate impact landfills and trash incinerators have had on marginalized communities in Houston.

Nina Ignaczak is an award-winning journalist and editor based in Detroit, and the founder of Planet Detroit, a digital media startup producing public interest journalism on climate, equity, health, and the environment, centering grassroots voices and solutions. Her project project investigates how food waste and methane emissions in Metro Detroit contribute to Michigan’s climate challenges, and explores community-driven solutions to reduce emissions and build climate resilience.

Paul Ruffins was one of the first journalists to cover the complexities of environmentalism in Black communities and served as a delegate to the first People of Color Environmental Justice Summit. Since then, he has been the managing editor for several community newspapers and social justice organizations. His project investigates a pioneering experiment in food composting in Prince George’s County in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., illuminating how it works, whether it is delivering as promised, and how successes can be replicated regionally and nationally.

Jenny Splitter (moderator) is the Editor-in-Chief of Sentient, the only nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to reporting on factory farms, and an award-winning food and climate journalist. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Popular Mechanics, New York Magazine, Vox and others.

 

About the MIT Climate Project

The MIT Climate Project is a new, whole-of-MIT initiative to respond to the multiple challenges of global climate change. Through this project MIT seeks to become, within a decade, one of the world’s most prolific and collaborative sources of technological, behavioral, and policy solutions—solutions that will change the expected trajectory of global climate outcomes for the better. Learn more

Among the programs housed at the MIT Climate Project is the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship, which since 2021 has supported freelance or staff journalists associated with U.S. local and regional newsrooms in developing high-impact news projects that connect local perspectives, values and priorities with climate change science and solutions. By engaging Americans who are unsure, disengaged, or doubtful about the need to act on climate change, these reporting projects advance the frontiers of public opinion on climate as both the impacts and the solutions to climate change grow more visible in Americans’ daily lives. Learn more

Event Information:
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Reporting on Food, Waste and Climate in America

MITdesignX seeks diverse, interdisciplinary teams working on challenging ideas with clear vision, passion and drive to design solutions and launch a real venture.  Applications go through a rigorous selection process that reviews ideas based on human, environmental and social impact, feasibility, uniqueness, and scalability as well as team composition, diversity and skillset.

Up to 12 teams are selected for each cohort. Applicants can include graduate students, researchers, staff and faculty members from across MIT, as well as their colleagues from other institutions or industry.

Participants receive a 10K seed grant, 18 credits, workspace, and mentoring. Apply here now!

Event Information:
https://calendar.mit.edu/event/mitdesignx-2025-cohort-application

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MITdesignX 2025 Cohort Application

Women's Health Challenge Launched

The Massachusetts eHealth Institute at MassTech (MeHI) is seeking digital health startups from across the U.S. to compete in the second Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Challenge. The Women’s Health Challenge is focused on finding digital health solutions that address women+ health, as well as inequities, in the areas of mental health, maternal health, reproductive health, menopause, cancer, and cardiovascular health.

Challenge finalists will compete for prizes worth $150,000

Up to eight finalists will be selected to participate in the program and compete for prizes worth up to $150,000. Selected entrepreneurs will participate in a two-month, virtual introduction to the Massachusetts digital health ecosystem program. 

During the program, participants will be assessed on their testing and validation needs and then matched with members of the Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Network, a group of cutting-edge research and development organizations supporting digital health companies. Participants will work with their Sandbox partners to scope detailed testing and validation projects.

Applications are due December 1, 2023

Challenge Goal:
The Massachusetts eHealth Institute seeks startups and entrepreneurs who are developing and validating digital health-based solutions that support women+ health to compete in the second Massachusetts Digital Health Sandbox Challenge. We use the term “women+ health”, as defined by Rock Health, to encompass the health needs of cisgender women and transgender or nonbinary individuals whose health needs relate to those of cisgender women. This Challenge is focused on finding digital health solutions that address women+ health and inequities including in the areas of behavioral and cognitive health, physical activity, disease control, medication management, nutrition, and community connections.

Startups and entrepreneurs with digital health solutions designed to support women+ health are encouraged to apply.

Register for the information session on October 18th.

Early Application Opportunity:
Applications submitted by midnight on November 3, 2023 will be reviewed by MassTech staff and will receive initial feedback by November 17, 2023. Early applicants may incorporate the feedback and resubmit their application by the final deadline of December 1, 2023. Please note this opportunity is applicable only to applications received by midnight on November 3rd. Those received after November 3rd will be reviewed through the normal application process