MIT D-Lab: Designing for a More Equitable World

This video, created for D-Lab’s 15th anniversary and featuring alumni, faculty, and staff, provides an overview of its approach to international development.

MIT D-Lab works with people around the world to develop and advance collaborative approaches and practical solutions to global poverty challenges. Begun as a single class, D-Lab now offers more than 20 MIT subjects. “The classes that we teach are aimed at teaching students about development—both the theory and the practice but also equipping them with a toolkit so that when they go out into the field they have skills they can bring to bear,” says founding director Amy Smith ’84, ENG ’95, SM ’95.

Currently, D-Lab has student and staff fieldwork projects, research programs, and fellows in more than 25 countries around the world. “The most important ingredient in a D-Lab project is relevance,” says professor of mechanical engineering Dan Frey PhD ’97, the program’s faculty director for research. “We would like for the outcomes of that project to have a direct impact on the lives of people who are living in poverty.”