Benedetto Marelli

For the past decade MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has supported interdisciplinary collaborations and high-risk, high-reward projects, enabling MIT faculty to pursue groundbreaking research that addresses some of the world's most pressing challenges facing our water and food systems.

The world's first covalent organic framework sensors can detect pH changes in living plants, which can provide early warning of drought stress in plants up to 48 hours before traditional methods.

Researchers across MIT are taking on the agricultural challenges posed by climate change, from engineering plants that sound an alarm when they're under stress to making seeds more resilient to drought.

MIT faculty members Michael Birnbaum, Tamara Broderick, Tal Cohen, Betar Gallant, Rafael Jaramillo, Benedetto Marelli, Ellen Roche, Serguei Saavedra, and Justin Solomon have been granted tenure in six units across MIT's School of Engineering in 2023.

Average crop yields in Africa are consistently far below expected, and one significant reason is the prevalence of counterfeit seeds whose germination rates are far lower than those of the genuine ones. The World Bank estimates that as much as half of all seeds sold in some African countries are fake, which could help to account for crop production that is far below potential.

In Boston, a biotech startup called Mori is developing an edible coating that extends the shelf life of food, prevents bacterial contamination, and reduces the need for packaging. Launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology assistant professor Benedetto Marelli, the technology extracts fibroin from silk industry waste and applies it to everything from vegetables to steaks.  […]

A filter developed at MIT might provide a nature-based solution to PFAS water contamination. Made from natural silk and cellulose, the material can remove many of these "forever chemicals" as well as heavy metals, and its antimicrobial properties can help keep the filters from fouling.

The Climate Project at MIT has appointed leaders for each of its six focal areas, or Climate Missions, MIT President Sally Kornbluth has announced.

Researchers developed a biodegradable system based on silk to replace microplastics added to agricultural products, paints, and cosmetics. The processing method is simple and tunable, so the material could be adapted to work on existing manufacturing equipment.

MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering opened their labs to first-year students looking to gain research experience and collaborate with current graduate students and postdocs.

A microneedle-based drug delivery technique for plants that can deliver controlled amounts of agrochemicals to plant tissues could be used to improve crop quality and disease management. The work was developed at SMART, MIT, and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory.

The Silklab at Tufts University has pioneered the use of silk as a biological solution for many technological challenges. Just like the silk that goes into fine fabric, the silk used in the lab comes from the cocoons of silkworms, but it is processed in a very different way to break it down to its fibrous protein base. Tufts researchers have formed that base into all sorts of useful materials, from faux leather to…

The MIT community met with President Sally Kornbluth and the six faculty mission directors of The Climate Project at MIT, the new Institute-wide effort to implement climate solutions.

MIT Professor Benedetto Marelli develops silk-based technologies with uses "from lab to fork," including helping crops grow and preserving perishable foods.

Fake seeds can threaten food security. One fix: silk-based tags encoding unique patterns that can't be copied.