Ian A. Waitz
Dean of Engineering
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The seeds of future breakthroughs germinate as often in
MIT's classrooms or dorms as in our labs. Whether an idea originates
with a class project, like the MIT Hyperloop team, or comes from a social need identified by students, like Lean on Me, or stems from new technologies, like KitCube, innovation is baked into our community.
Even the confirmation of gravitational waves—the two-toned blip heard around the world—by colleagues in the School of Science and at Caltech began as a discussion in an MIT class several decades ago.
From the day they step on campus, our student innovators
are not afraid to go after the hardest problems. The ones that might
take a miracle (or two) to realize, like practical fusion and quantum
computing. Challenges that require years of dedication without a dollar
in sight. Problems where there’s never going to be “an app for that.”
We need to up our game in kind, so we are investing in our students. The launch of the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program
is a big step toward helping any interested student develop the
knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be successful innovators and
entrepreneurs (while here at MIT, and for the rest of their lives).
Add a bit of seed money and a network of savvy mentors, and
our students will tell us where the next great breakthroughs will
happen in science, engineering—and anything else they set their minds
to. |
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