Pooling MIT’s resources to ‘rethink’ water
In early May, a ruptured water pipe caused a breech in Boston’s water supply that forced 2 million residents to boil water for several days. That inconvenience should serve as a “striking reminder” of the daily reality for more than one billion people across the world who don’t have access to clean water, President Susan Hockfield told about 280 members of the MIT community at a workshop on Friday. “We have an obligation — a responsibility — to act,” Hockfield said at the workshop, titled “Rethinking Water: A Critical Resource.” The event was intended to provide a glimpse of the range of work currently being done at MIT to address the scarcity of fresh water worldwide, and how MIT must help to address that crisis by designing better water systems and policies to be adopted across different geographic and cultural contexts.With more than 50 faculty members from each of MIT’s...