MIT prides itself on recruiting the cream of the crop, so it's no wonder that out of the top 5 senior projects, 3 of them were devoted to making a difference in the world. Here is a general overview of these brilliant seniors' start up projects that could very well improve the lives of many.

#1 - The Open-Source Green Car (VDS Vision)

Two years ago, MIT whizzes Robyn Allen and Anna Jaffe set their
sights on India, where a $2500 car is just the beginning. "Over the
next 30 years they'll buy an extra 90 million cars," Jaffe says. "So
our thought was, Well, what if we could develop a vehicle that was
much, much more efficient—that maybe hit 200 miles per gallon, that
plugged into a grid, that was really designed around Indian needs and
expectations and wants."

These MIT students organized the Vehicle Design Summit, a global consortium of
students working in teams to build a better car from the ground up,
leveraging the collective brainpower of a new generation of engineers
and the massive resources of their respective educational institutions.
This summer, teams will rendezvous in Torino, Italy, to flesh out a
final prototype for the VDS Vision 100, a six-passenger electric car
powered by a gas generator. It's expected to get 100 miles per gallon
and could be production ready in 2009.

#3 - The Off The Shelf Sun Booster (Solar Concentrator)

At present, solar power has a hard time competing with fossil-fuel
equivalents, but a team of students led by freshly minted MIT graduate
Spencer Ahrens is working to bring costs down with a solar
concentrator—essentially a 12-foot network of shiny mirrors—that boosts
the sun's intensity by up to 1,000 times, producing 10,000 watts of
heat and, eventually, 3,500 watts of electricity.

What's more, they're doing it with cheap, off-the-shelf parts and
simple mechanics: Their device tracks the sun with an elegant array of
electric motors triggered by baffled photocells—almost like a sundial.
When the cells drift into shadow, motors whirr and rotate the
contraption until it's once again perfectly aligned.

"It's basically just a big set of mirrors on a stick—just holding a
mirror up to the sun," Ahrens says. "Our design mantra is basically to
use commodity materials to make it as low-cost as possible so that it
really can make a huge impact without all these government subsidies." 

#5 - The Sundanese Stairmaster (Treadle Pumps)

For many of Sudan's subsistence farmers, "irrigation" amounts to
hauling water to their crops in buckets—diesel pumps are far too
expensive, as is the fuel to run them. So MIT classmates Zahir Dossa
and Mustafa Dafalla looked for a cheap, reliable, low-tech solution,
and settled on treadle pumps—a pair of human powered levers that use
pistons to suck water up from depths of 20 ft. or more in just a few
glute-tightening hours per day.

"It's basically like a Stairmaster—you just shift your weight from one
foot to the other," Dossa says. "Pretty much all the farmers live on
the Nile river basin, which makes it optimal for this kind of water
pump."

The first shipment of 375 pumps will land under farmers' feet in the
first week of July; proceeds will allow the non-profit company to
purchase and sell more throughout the region. Each pump will triple a
farmer's food production, Dossa says, paying for itself within a year. 

For the complete list of the top 5 senior projects check out:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4268172.html
And congratulations to MIT's Class of 2008 who graduated June 6, 2008!

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