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How is DNA like a bridge? This question is not a riddle or logic game, it is a concern of Johannes Kalliauer’s doctoral thesis.

As a student at TU Wien in Austria, Kalliauer was faced with a monumental task: combining approaches from civil engineering and theoretical physics to better understand the forces that act on DNA.

Kalliauer, now a postdoc at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub, says he modeled DNA as though it were a beam, using molecular dynamics principles to understand its structural properties.

Read more here.

MIT engineers John Cohn and Franz-Josef Ulm and are among 111 new members and 22 international members elected to the National Academy of Engineering for 2022. Nineteen MIT alumni were also elected as new members.

John Cohn ’81, an IBM Fellow in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, was honored for improving design productivity of high-performance analog and mixed-signal circuits and for evangelizing STEM education. Cohn, a computer scientist with more than 100 worldwide patents, uses his playful love for science and technology to promote STEM careers. He’s active in education issues at the local, state, and national levels, and his passion for STEM education led him to spend 59 days living and inventing in an abandoned steel mill as part of the Discovery Channel’s technical survival show “The Colony.”

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represent a unique opportunity to transform America’s infrastructure. Nevertheless, it closes less than half of the investment gap needed to build a world class infrastructure within the United States. As such, policymakers still need to spend funds wisely to get the most from their investment. In this research brief, the MIT CSHub shows how a fresh approach to asset management including flexible decision-making, taking a long-term perspective, and including a diverse set of materials and maintenance technologies provides a powerful tool to provide the most bang for our infrastructure buck.

MIT CSHub had an eventful 2021, spearheading successful research and communications initiatives in the spheres of infrastructure, decarbonization, and sustainability. Read more in our 2021 annual report.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act represent a unique opportunity to transform America’s infrastructure. Nevertheless, it closes less than half of the investment gap needed to build a world class infrastructure within the United States. As such, policymakers still need to spend funds wisely to get the most from their investment. In this research brief, the MIT CSHub shows how a fresh approach to asset management including flexible decision-making, taking a long-term perspective, and including a diverse set of materials and maintenance technologies provides a powerful tool to provide the most bang for our infrastructure buck.

Click here to read.

MIT CSHub had an eventful 2021, spearheading successful research and communications initiatives in the spheres of infrastructure, decarbonization, and sustainability. Read more in our 2021 annual report.

How can concrete pavements reach carbon neutrality? In this research brief, we outline the various strategies to reduce the emissions of concrete and present a pathway by which the concrete in the U.S. pavement network could attain carbon neutrality by 2050.   

Click here to read.