Giving Back: Finding the Best Way to Make a Difference

The world's most intractable problems might be cracked if more of our "brightest minds" could be tempted to work on them, asserts Bill Gates.

Sustainable Accessibility: A Grand Challenge for the World and for MIT

02/09/2010 4:00 PM 3"270John Sterman, PhD '82, Forrester Professor of Management and Engineering Systems, and; Director, System Dynamics Group, MIT Description: Transportation systems, as we know them today, will simply not sustain the worlds' growing population. ...

Deploying Our Gifts for the Betterment of Humankind: What Would Dr. King ...

02/04/2010 7:30 AM Walker Morss HallGerry Hudson, Executive Vice President of SEIU "Service Employees International Union; Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, MITDescription: Woven into the fabric of MIT life, says Susan Hockfield, is the "perpetual striving to be ever ...

Toward India 2020: Challenges and Opportunities

09/09/2009 11:00 AM Bartos theaterDr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Indian Planning CommissionDescription: People sometimes ask Montek Singh Ahluwalia questions loaded with "aspirational objectives," such as when India will "get rid of poverty." Few are as ...

Legatum Lecture - Paul Polak

Paul Polak isn't your everyday global poverty fighter. He's a 75-year old former psychiatrist who believes that the world's poorest people, most of whom are farmers living on less than $2/day, are capable entrepreneurs and viable consumers. It's a philosophy that drove him to start ...

Legatum Lecture: Michael Chu, Micro-finance Pioneer (updated)

Michael Chu discusses bottom-up development and entrepreneurship in emerging markets. Chu is Managing Director and co-founder of the Ignia Fund, an equity firm based in Mexico dedicated to investing in and developing commercial enterprises focused on low ...

What Is the CoLab?

Harish Hande: Energy Services for the Poor

This seminar was given on October 7, 2008 as part of the MITEI Seminar Series. Abstract: The poor in the world pay more for energy services, which are often unreliable and from unsustainable sources. There are ways to provide the poor with energy services from ...

Health Care Policy and the Next U.S. Administration

10/22/2008 6:00 PM e"25"111Jonathan Gruber, '87, Professor of Economics MacVicar Faculty Fellow; Description: In an energetic talk delivered prior to the U.S. presidential election, Jonathan Gruberprovides a useful breakdown of the two candidates' remedies for the ...

Projects for Change: Bringing Management Tools and Ideas, Collaboration, ...

06/07/2008 11:00 AM Anjali Sastry, '86, PhD '95, Senior LecturerDescription: The Latin motto on the MIT seal, mens et manus _ mind and hand _ encapsulates Anjali Sastry's view of the combined theoretical and practical education that students gain at the Institute. She ...

Diversifying Cities: Migration, Habitation, and Community Development

04/04/2008 3:15 PM Broad InstituteXavier de Souza Briggs, Associate Professor of Sociology and Urban Planning, MIT ; Jessica Andors, MCP '99, Deputy Director, Lawrence CommunityWorks; Abel Valenzuela, Jr., MCP '88, PhD '95, Professor, Director, Center for the Study of ...

Sustaining Cities: Environment, Economic Development, and Empowerment

04/04/2008 10:30 AM Broad InstituteJudith Layzer, PhD '99, Linde Career Development Associate Professor of Environmental Policy; Jason Corburn, MCP '96, PhD '02, Assistant Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of California, Berkeley; J. ...

Bridging the Delivery Gap to Global Health

11/19/2007 12:00 PM Wong AuditoriumDr. Jim Yong Kim, Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights, Harvard Medical School; Board of Directors, Partners in Health Description: Jim Yong Kim and Partners in Health are paradoxically suffering from their ...

Global Health Equity

11/15/2007 4:00 PM Kirsch 32"123Paul Farmer, Founder, Partners in HealthDescription: Don't foolishly advise Paul Farmer that his bold projects can't succeed. For the past 20 years, Farmer's been toppling orthodoxies concerning the delivery of health care to people of developing nations, and ...

Games and Civic Engagement

Video games could transform the world some day, if only their potential could be fully realized.