The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) announced 10 new projects supporting research tackling challenges related to water and food for human use, including an aquaculture initiative with MIT Sea Grant. The team, led by MIT Sea Grant Assistant Director Robert Vincent, MIT CEE Associate Professor Otto Cordero, and MIT Sea Grant Director Professor Michael Triantafyllou, aims to control harmful bacteria blooms in aquaculture production.

Congratulations to all students recognized at the MIT Mechanical Engineering De Florez Award Competition! MIT Sea Grant students Emma Rutherford, Alexander Zhang and Maaya Prasad, won 1st prize in Undergraduate Science & Design for their housing design for a high-speed underwater camera.

NOAA Sea Grant has announced $27 million in projects that will address the prevention and removal of debris in marine and Great Lakes environments throughout the U.S.

MIT Sea Grant, partnering with Stonehill College and the Cohasset Center for Student Coastal Research, will be awarded $286K to form a coalition of K-12 educators and students, environmental organizations, communities, and commercial fishermen to address issues of marine debris in eastern Massachusetts together.

The MIT Arcturus Team traveled to Sarasota, FL for RoboBoat, an international competition in which teams build and program autonomous boats to navigate challenges. This year, 23 teams competed from nine countries. The MIT team won the Technology Award and 1st Place for Documentation, Video, and Website!

Illustration by Lindsay Bolino (MIT BioE ’23)

MIT Sea Grant welcomes MIT alumna and Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Kaitlyn Becker as a 2023 Doherty Professor in Ocean Utilization for her research, “Soft robotic design and fabrication for marine biology”. 

Congratulations to Arianna Ilvonen on winning Best UROP Poster Award at the annual MIT Mechanical Engineering Research Exhibition! Arianna developed and deployed an autonomous, cable-mounted coastal monitoring robot that can collect data even in turbulent environments.

MIT researchers have developed deformable underwater swimming robots using repeating substructures to allow for virtually unlimited variations, creating forms ranging from eel-like to wing-shaped. The work is published in the journal Soft Robotics, in a paper by MIT research assistant Alfonso Parra Rubio, professors Michael Triantafyllou and Neil Gershenfeld, and six others including MIT Sea Grant affiliates Dixia Fan and PhD candidate Jose del Aguila Ferrandis.

NOAA Sea Grant announces investments through two complementary initiatives aimed at improving resilience with coastal communities. MIT Sea Grant will build a collaborative network between academic, community and policy groups across MA to help integrate traditional ecological knowledge and STEAM.

A team of researchers from the EPA, BU, MIT and others, including MIT Sea Grant Coastal Ecologist Dr. Juliet Simpson, published a new blue carbon paper in the journal, Science of the Total Environment.

The paper, Spatial heterogeneity in sediment and carbon accretion rates within a seagrass meadow correlated with the hydrodynamic intensity (Lei, et. al., 2022) examines the connection between sediment and carbon accretion rates, wave velocity, and turbulent kinetic energy within a single eelgrass meadow in Nahant.

MIT Sea Grant and Woods Hole Sea Grant jointly announce two fellows with new Massachusetts Sea Grant Graduate Research Fellowship — Nicole Vandale, who will be starting at Northeastern University this fall, and Sarah Guitart, who will be starting at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Sea Grant, DOE, and NOAA Fisheries today announce six funded projects for the coexistence of offshore energy with Northeast fishing and coastal communities. The selected projects were collectively awarded over $1.1 million in federal funds.

MIT students and engineers from MIT Sea Grant work with Ward Aquafarms in Cape Cod to help tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges. The Oystamaran demonstrates that robots can perform extremely useful tasks in the ocean and serves as a model for future innovations in aquaculture.

Photo/Video by John Freidah, MIT MechE

The International Maritime Organization has set a 50% reduction goal for annual greenhouse gas emissions from ships, including carbon, from 2008 levels by 2050.

Researchers at the MIT Sea Grant Design Lab developed a decarbonization code to provide rapid assessments of fuel-saving technologies for cargo ships (J. S. Chalfant, L. Bonfiglio, C. Chryssostomidis, sponsor support from Hightide Foundation and Marsoft, Inc.).

Challenging conditions for familiar species like lobsters and scallops loom by mid-century.

MIT Sea Grant Research Scientist Carolina Bastidas contributed to this report with a team from across New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces, providing up-to-date information on the Gulf of Maine and actionable solutions to increase resiliency.

MIT Sea Grant sends seasonal newsletters, along with updates and opportunities for Massachusetts communities and stakeholders.

Photo by MIT Sea Grant Education Administrator Dr. Andrew Bennett, with students in MechE class 2.017