MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD)

The MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) is an interdisciplinary hub for design education, research, and entrepreneurship. MAD aims to educate future generations in design, foster design innovation, and encourage entrepreneurship to empower individual and collective problem-solving capacity around the globe.

Morningside Academy -- a campus hub launched in October 2022 thanks to a $100 million gift from the Morningside Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the T.H. Chan family. The academy will be a center of design education, research, thinking, and entrepreneurship, drawing projects and people from across MIT. That will help bring ideas, research advances, and innovations from the lab and classroom into everyday life. Design is the process through which the possibilities of innovation are made tangible, from small-scale technologies to consumer products to large-scale civic initiatives.

MAD aspires to transform learning by further integrating design methodologies into MIT courses and curricula that will spread beyond campus as our graduates move through the world. For K-12 educators, students, and learners everywhere, we are creating a public reservoir of design projects for all to access.

MAD catalyzes innovation through its graduate Design Fellows, who work with faculty and researchers to interweave design with other fields to create effective resolutions to societal challenges.

MAD is a space where people turn ideas into design solutions that empower society. MAD brings together a diverse community of researchers and designers, and through specific projects, its Fellows’ work, in-residence programs, and public programming, offers new approaches and solutions to local and global challenges.