Join MIT Solve for its flagship event, Solve at MIT and this opening plenary.

What does an equitable and sustainable future look like? How can we continue making progress amidst conflict, pandemics, and climate disasters? We’ve invited global leaders to our opening plenary, to address these universal questions, and share how they’re wielding technology through global crises.

Speakers will include MIT President Sally Kornbluth, WHO Director-General Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health, Dr. Vanessa Kerry, and Grammy-nominated artist, Simón Mejía of Bomba Estéreo. More speakers will be announced in the next few weeks!

Solve is an initiative of MIT. We believe that to achieve a more sustainable and equitable future for all, we need new voices and ideas. We launch open calls for exceptional and diverse solutions to the most pressing global challenges from anyone, anywhere in the world. Selected innovators get the backing of MIT and our community of supporters to scale their impact and drive lasting change. Join us on this mission.Submit your solution. Support our work. Fund your own challenge.

Vitamin D is important for bone and muscle strength, but the belief that it significantly reduces the risk of heart disease, cancer and numerous other conditions is questionable. Although Vitamin D supplements are still widely used, well designed studies have established that the supplements are not needed by most people. Moderate sunshine and normal diets provide adequate vitamin D for most people.
Dr. JoAnn Manson led one of the largest and most cited randomized trials that contradicted the belief that vitamin D supplements are a cure-all. In this discussion she explains why there has been confusion about vitamin D. She also addresses the importance of the structure of scientific studies in determining the effects of medications and supplements.

Dr. JoAnn E. Manson is an endocrinologist, epidemiologist, and Principal Investigator of several research studies, including the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL; PI with Dr. J. Buring since study inception in 2009); the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study (COSMOS, PI with Dr. H. Sesso since 2014); and others. Her primary research interests include randomized clinical prevention trials of nutritional and lifestyle factors related to heart disease, diabetes, and cancer and the role of endogenous and exogenous estrogens as determinants of chronic disease.

Understanding the accelerating expansion of our universe is one of the most important goals of modern astronomy. And it is a huge technical challenge. Paul Martini, with an international team of almost 500 researchers, built the unique telescope, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), that captures (via spectrographs) light from galaxies and supermassive black holes (quasars) 11 billion light-years away. The first results are amazing, and provide the best explanation of dark energy and cosmic expansion that is currently possible. Dr. Martini describes the DESI project, its scientific significance, and the very exciting results so far.

In 2014, Jeffrey K Smith wrote "The Museum Effect" in which he put forth the case that museums, libraries and cultural institutions educate and civilize us as individuals and as societies. He suggested that visitors who spend time with their thoughts elevated, leave the institution as better people in some meaningful fashion than when they entered.

We will discuss this idea with Natalie Dykstra, the acclaimed biographer, of CHASING BEAUTY, about the life and legacy of Isabella Stewart Gardner, one of the first female art collectors in America. "Isabella Stewart Gardner is best known today for the Boston museum that bears her name, but as Dykstra makes clear in her luminous new biography, the Gilded Age doyenne was herself a figure to be reckoned with. A daughter of wealth who married into more, the flamboyant Gardner quickly became the queen of haute bohemia — and in the process, one of America’s most serious collectors. A lively portrait of a moment, a woman and the power of art". - NYT

Was Gardner doing essential work in the cultural education of her fellow Americans or just satisfying her own wanderlust by spending money on expensive indulgences. Join the conversation to express your views and discover more.

Natalie Dykstra, professor emerita of English at Hope College in Michigan, is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and has served as a board member of the Biographers International Organization since 2020.

Historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor Joseph McGill Jr. has logged more than 200 nights sleeping in slave dwellings at historic sites in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. In this enlightening personal account, he tells the story of his groundbreaking Slave Dwelling project. His quest to share the experience of the enslaved took him throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist.

With journalist Herb Frazier, McGill reveals the fascinating history behind these sites and sheds light on larger issues of race in America

Herb Frazier is a Charleston S.C.-based writer. He is senior projects editor at the Charleston City Paper. Frazier has edited or reported for five daily newspapers in the South. He is the author of Behind God’s Back: Gullah Memories.

Joseph McGill Jr., of Ladson, S.C., is founder of the Slave Dwelling Project. He was previously a field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is the former executive director of the African American Museum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and the former director of history and culture at Penn Center, St. Helena Island, South Carolina.