This article was originally reported in December 2025.
Undergraduates in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology‘s New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program designed, built and installed a solar-powered charging station in a campus courtyard, reviving an old MIT tradition of student-built installations on campus. NEET founding executive director Amitava “Babi” Mitra called it the first time “a cross-departmental team of undergraduates designed, created, and installed” green technology on MIT’s campus (MIT News, December 9, 2025).
The project
- Class: the station was built in 22.03/3.0061, Introduction to Design Thinking and Rapid Prototyping, a for-credit class in NEET’s Climate and Sustainability Systems (CSS) thread. Students learn laser cutting, 3D printing, CAD, electronics prototyping, microcontroller programming and composites manufacturing.
- Team: students majoring in chemical engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclear science and engineering.
- Design: a forest-inspired structure with “tree trunks” made from flax fiber-based composite layups (a more sustainable alternative to conventional composites), four curved solar panels that follow the shape of a canopy, and an oyster mushroom-shaped desk where students can work outdoors while charging phones, laptops and tablets.
- Approvals: more than a dozen campus entities had to sign off, including campus police, MIT’s insurance provider and the facilities department, and the team had to adjust the design after installation.
“There was never the case of a professor saying, ‘We need to do it this way,'” said Aaron De Leon, a nuclear science and engineering major in NEET CSS. NEET lecturer Nathan Melenbrink, lead instructor for the CSS thread, said older MIT staff remember a time when “there was always somebody … lugging some giant, odd-looking prototype” across campus. Elsa Olivetti, professor of materials science and engineering, said: “Students don’t have to wait until they graduate or enter the job market to make a contribution.”
First-year students in SP.248 (The NEET Experience) studied the finished station and suggested improvements, and the next Introduction to Design Thinking and Rapid Prototyping class is to build a new charging station with its own design (MIT News).
What NEET is
- NEET launched in 2017 to rethink undergraduate engineering at MIT around interdisciplinary, project-centered learning (MIT News).
- It is a three-year program alongside a student’s major. Students can join from their second year and choose one of four threads: Autonomous Machines, Climate + Sustainability Systems, Digital Cities, or Living Machines.
- Students who complete it receive a NEET certificate from the MIT School of Engineering in their thread in addition to their degree. NEET describes its community as hundreds of students from more than 30 majors (MIT NEET).
What international students should know
- NEET is not a separate admission. Students apply to MIT as undergraduates and can join NEET later at MIT, so it is open to international students on the same terms as other MIT students.
- Financial aid: MIT admits undergraduates need-blind regardless of citizenship and meets full demonstrated need without loans (MIT Course Catalog, Financial Aid). MIT’s 2026–27 undergraduate tuition is $66,720.
- Rankings: MIT ranks No. 1 in the 2027 U.S. News national universities ranking and No. 1 in the QS World University Rankings 2027. See Forward Pathway’s MIT page for admissions data and international enrollment.