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Janabel Xia: Algorithms, dance rhythms, and the drive to succeed

When the senior isn’t using mathematical and computational methods to boost driverless vehicles and fairer voting, she performs with MIT’s many dance groups to keep her on track.

Senior math major Janabel Xia is a study of a person in constant motion.

When she isn’t sorting algorithms and improving traffic control systems for driverless vehicles, she’s dancing as a member of at least four dance clubs. She’s joined several social justice organizations, worked on cryptography and web authentication technology, and created a polling app that allows users to vote anonymously.

In her final semester, she’s putting the pedal to the metal, with a green light to lessen the carbon footprint of urban transportation by using sensors at traffic light intersections.

First steps

Growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, Janabel has been competing on math teams since elementary school. On her math team, which met early mornings before the start of school, she discovered a love of problem-solving that challenged her more than her classroom “plug-and-chug exercises.”

At Lexington High School, she was math team captain, a two-time Math Olympiad attendee, and a silver medalist for Team USA at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad.

As a math major, she studies combinatorics and theoretical computer science, including theoretical and applied cryptography. In her sophomore year, she was a researcher in the Cryptography and Information Security Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where she conducted cryptanalysis research under Professor Vinod Vaikuntanathan.

Part of her interests in cryptography stem from the beauty of the underlying mathematics itself — the field feels like clever engineering with mathematical tools. But another part of her interest in cryptography stems from its political dimensions, including its potential to fundamentally change existing power structures and governance. Xia and students at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University created zkPoll, a private polling app written with the Circom programming language, that allows users to create polls for specific sets of people, while generating a zero-knowledge proof that keeps personal information hidden to decrease negative voting influences from public perception.

Her participation in the PKG Center’s Active Community Engagement Freshman Pre-Orientation Program introduced her to local community organizations focusing on food security, housing for formerly incarcerated individuals, and access to health care. She is also part of Reading for Revolution, a student book club that discusses race, class, and working-class movements within MIT and the Greater Boston area.

Xia’s educational journey led to her ongoing pursuit of combining mathematical and computational methods in areas adjacent to urban planning.  “When I realized how much planning was concerned with social justice as it was concerned with design, I became more attracted to the field.”

Going on autopilot

She took classes with the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and is currently working on an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project with Professor Cathy Wu in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Recent work on eco-driving by Wu and doctoral student Vindula Jayawardana investigated semi-autonomous vehicles that communicate with sensors localized at traffic intersections, which in theory could reduce carbon emissions by up to 21 percent.

Xia aims to optimize the implementation scheme for these sensors at traffic intersections, considering a graded scheme where perhaps only 20 percent of all sensors are initially installed, and more sensors get added in waves. She wants to maximize the emission reduction rates at each step of the process, as well as ensure there is no unnecessary installation and de-installation of such sensors.  

Dance numbers

Meanwhile, Xia has been a member of MIT’s Fixation, Ridonkulous, and MissBehavior groups, and as a traditional Chinese dance choreographer for the MIT Asian Dance Team. 

A dancer since she was 3, Xia started with Chinese traditional dance, and later added ballet and jazz. Because she is as much of a dancer as a researcher, she has figured out how to make her schedule work.

“Production weeks are always madness, with dancers running straight from class to dress rehearsals and shows all evening and coming back early next morning to take down lights and roll up marley [material that covers the stage floor],” she says. “As busy as it keeps me, I couldn’t have survived MIT without dance. I love the discipline, creativity, and most importantly the teamwork that dance demands of us. I really love the dance community here with my whole heart. These friends have inspired me and given me the love to power me through MIT.”

Xia lives with her fellow Dance Team members at the off-campus Women's Independent Living Group (WILG).  “I really value WILG's culture of independence, both in lifestyle — cooking, cleaning up after yourself, managing house facilities, etc. — and thought — questioning norms, staying away from status games, finding new passions.”

In addition to her UROP, she’s wrapping up some graduation requirements, finishing up a research paper on sorting algorithms from her summer at the University of Minnesota Duluth Research Experience for Undergraduates in combinatorics, and deciding between PhD programs in math and computer science.  

“My biggest goal right now is to figure out how to combine my interests in mathematics and urban studies, and more broadly connect technical perspectives with human-centered work in a way that feels right to me,” she says.

“Overall, MIT has given me so many avenues to explore that I would have never thought about before coming here, for which I’m infinitely grateful. Every time I find something new, it’s hard for me not to find it cool. There’s just so much out there to learn about. While it can feel overwhelming at times, I hope to continue that learning and exploration for the rest of my life.”

Jonathan Byrnes, MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics senior lecturer and visionary in supply chain management, dies at 75

A cherished colleague, Byrnes left an “immense” legacy as a key member of MIT CTL’s education programs for more than 30 years.

Jonathan L.S. Byrnes, a distinguished senior lecturer at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), passed away peacefully on May 7 after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a legacy of profound contributions to supply chain education, industry, and the MIT community. He was 75 years old.

“Jonathan was not just a brilliant mind in supply chain management,” reflects Yossi Sheffi, director of CTL and the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems. “He was a cherished colleague who had been a part of CTL for over half its existence. His impact on our community and the field of logistics is immense.”

Byrnes dedicated over three decades to teaching and shaping the future leaders of supply chain management (SCM). He authored over 200 influential publications and guided thesis work for numerous students and researchers. In 2021, Byrnes endowed the Jonathan Byrnes Prizes for Academic Distinction and Leadership, awarded each spring by CTL to a residential and a blended SCM master’s student who demonstrate, in Byrnes’s own words, "both a strong academic record (but not necessarily the strongest), linked with a strong contribution to student life."

Byrnes made a positive impact on countless MIT students. In 2019, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Master of Engineering in Logistics (MLOG)/SCM Program, several hundred alumni were asked to identify their most memorable class. Byrnes’s course, 1.261J - ESD.261J - 15.771J (Case Studies in Logistics and Supply Chain Management), was most frequently cited. Other anecdotal accounts and alumni surveys perennially note the course as their favorite and most highly recommended for its impact and influence on students’ careers.

Byrnes fostered a collaborative and discussion-oriented learning environment — a highly valued and sought-after experience of on-campus learning. “He was a gentle man, but was always so vigorous and energetic in class,” remembers Austin Saragih, MIT PhD student in transportation and a graduate research assistant at the MIT Megacity Logistics Lab, and a 2021 Byrnes Prize recipient.

Byrnes’s passion and influence extended beyond the realm of academia. He served on the boards of several companies, leaving an indelible mark on industry practices, and he co-founded Profit Isle Inc., revolutionizing profit analytics and acceleration.

Born in Lexington, Massachusetts, Byrnes earned his MBA from Columbia University in 1974 and his doctorate in business administration from Harvard University in 1980, where he served as president of the Harvard Alumni Association.

He is survived by his wife, Marsha (Feinman) Byrnes; sons Dan and Steve; daughter-in-law Nicole Ledoux; grandchildren Edison, George, and Adrian; and sister Pamela Byrnes and her husband Rick Jacobsen. He is predeceased by his daughter-in-law, Kristin Szatkiewicz Byrnes.

Remembrances may be made to Dana-Farber Cancer Center in gratitude to oncologist Toni Choueiri, or to the Experimental Model of Human Sarcoma Fund.

Researchers develop a detector for continuously monitoring toxic gases

The material could be made as a thin coating to analyze air quality in industrial or home settings over time.

Most systems used to detect toxic gases in industrial or domestic settings can be used only once, or at best a few times. Now, researchers at MIT have developed a detector that could provide continuous monitoring for the presence of these gases, at low cost.

The new system combines two existing technologies, bringing them together in a way that preserves the advantages of each while avoiding their limitations. The team used a material called a metal-organic framework, or MOF, which is highly sensitive to tiny traces of gas but whose performance quickly degrades, and combined it with a polymer material that is highly durable and easier to process, but much less sensitive.

The results are reported today in the journal Advanced Materials, in a paper by MIT professors Aristide Gumyusenge, Mircea Dinca, Heather Kulik, and Jesus del Alamo, graduate student Heejung Roh, and postdocs Dong-Ha Kim, Yeongsu Cho, and Young-Moo Jo.

Highly porous and with large surface areas, MOFs come in a variety of compositions. Some can be insulators, but the ones used for this work are highly electrically conductive. With their sponge-like form, they are effective at capturing molecules of various gases, and the sizes of their pores can be tailored to make them selective for particular kinds of gases. “If you are using them as a sensor, you can recognize if the gas is there if it has an effect on the resistivity of the MOF,” says Gumyusenge, the paper’s senior author and the Merton C. Flemings Career Development Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

The drawback for these materials’ use as detectors for gases is that they readily become saturated, and then can no longer detect and quantify new inputs. “That’s not what you want. You want to be able to detect and reuse,” Gumyusenge says. “So, we decided to use a polymer composite to achieve this reversibility.”

The team used a class of conductive polymers that Gumyusenge and his co-workers had previously shown can respond to gases without permanently binding to them. “The polymer, even though it doesn’t have the high surface area that the MOFs do, will at least provide this recognize-and-release type of phenomenon,” he says.

The team combined the polymers in a liquid solution along with the MOF material in powdered form, and deposited the mixture on a substrate, where they dry into a uniform, thin coating. By combining the polymer, with its quick detection capability, and the more sensitive MOFs, in a one-to-one ratio, he says, “suddenly we get a sensor that has both the high sensitivity we get from the MOF and the reversibility that is enabled by the presence of the polymer.”

The material changes its electrical resistance when molecules of the gas are temporarily trapped in the material. These changes in resistance can be continuously monitored by simply attaching an ohmmeter to track the resistance over time. Gumyusenge and his students demonstrated the composite material’s ability to detect nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas produced by many kinds of combustion, in a small lab-scale device. After 100 cycles of detection, the material was still maintaining its baseline performance within a margin of about 5 to 10 percent, demonstrating its long-term use potential.

In addition, this material has far greater sensitivity than most presently used detectors for nitrogen dioxide, the team reports. This gas is often detected after the use of stove ovens. And, with this gas recently linked to many asthma cases in the U.S., reliable detection in low concentrations is important. The team demonstrated that this new composite could detect, reversibly, the gas at concentrations as low as 2 parts per million.

While their demonstration was specifically aimed at nitrogen dioxide, Gumyusenge says, “we can definitely tailor the chemistry to target other volatile molecules,” as long as they are small polar analytes, “which tend to be most of the toxic gases.”

Besides being compatible with a simple hand-held detector or a smoke-alarm type of device, one advantage of the material is that the polymer allows it to be deposited as an extremely thin uniform film, unlike regular MOFs, which are generally in an inefficient powder form. Because the films are so thin, there is little material needed and production material costs could be low; the processing methods could be typical of those used for industrial coating processes. “So, maybe the limiting factor will be scaling up the synthesis of the polymers, which we’ve been synthesizing in small amounts,” Gumyusenge says.

“The next steps will be to evaluate these in real-life settings,” he says. For example, the material could be applied as a coating on chimneys or exhaust pipes to continuously monitor gases through readings from an attached resistance monitoring device. In such settings, he says, “we need tests to check if we truly differentiate it from other potential contaminants that we might have overlooked in the lab setting. Let’s put the sensors out in real-world scenarios and see how they do.”

The work was supported by the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC), the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

The beauty of biology

Senior Hanjun Lee planned to pursue chemistry at MIT. A course in genetics changed that.

When Hanjun Lee arrived at MIT, he was set on becoming a Course 5 chemistry student. Based on his experience in high school, biology was all about rote memorization.

That changed when he took course 7.03 (Genetics), taught by then-professor Aviv Regev, now head and executive vice president of research and early development at Genentech, and Peter Reddien, professor of biology and core member and associate director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

He notes that friends from other schools don’t cite a single course that changed their major, but he’s not alone in choosing Course 7 because of 7.03.

“Genetics has this interesting force, especially in MIT biology. The department’s historical — and active — role in genetics research ties directly into the way the course is taught,” Lee says. “Biology is about logic, scientific reasoning, and posing the right questions.”

A few years later, as a teaching assistant for class 7.002 (Fundamentals of Experimental Molecular Biology), he came to value how much care MIT biology professors take in presenting the material for all offered courses.

“I really appreciate how much effort MIT professors put into their teaching,” Lee says. “As a TA, you realize the beauty of how the professors organize these things — because they’re teaching you in a specific way, and you can grasp the beauty of it — there’s a beauty in studying and finding the patterns in nature.”

An undertaking to apply

To attend MIT at all hadn’t exactly been a lifelong dream. In fact, it didn’t occur to Lee that he could or should apply until he represented South Korea at the 49th International Chemistry Olympiad, where he won a Gold Medal in 2017. There, he had the chance to speak with MIT alumni, as well as current and aspiring students. More than half of those aspiring students eventually enrolled, Lee among them.

“Before that, MIT was this nearly mythical institution, so that experience really changed my life,” Lee recalls. “I heard so many different stories from people with so many different backgrounds — all converging towards the same enthusiasm towards science.” 

At the time, Lee was already attending medical school — a six-year undergraduate program in Korea — that would lead to a stable career in medicine. Attending MIT would involve both changing his career plans and uprooting his life, leaving all his friends and family behind.

His parents weren’t especially enthusiastic about his desire to study at MIT, so it was up to Lee to meet the application requirements. He woke up at 3 a.m. to find his own way to the only SAT testing site in South Korea — an undertaking he now recalls with a laugh. In just three months, he had gathered everything he needed; MIT was the only institution in the United States Lee applied to.

He arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2018 but attended MIT only for a semester before returning to Korea for his two years of mandatory military service.

“During military service, my goal was to read as many papers as possible, because I wondered what topic of science I’m drawn to — and many of the papers I was reading were authored by people I recognized, people who taught biology at MIT,” Lee says. “I became really interested in cancer biology.”

Return to MIT

When he returned to campus, Lee pledged to do everything he could to meet with faculty and discuss their work. To that end, he joined the MIT Undergraduate Research Journal, allowing him to interview professors. He notes that most MIT faculty are enthusiastic about being contacted by undergraduate students.

Stateside, Lee also reached out to Michael Lawrence, an assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and assistant geneticist at Mass General Cancer Center, about a preprint concerning APOBEC, an enzyme Lee had studied at Seoul National University. Lawrence’s lab was looking into APOBEC and cancer evolution — and the idea that the enzyme might drive drug resistance to cancer treatment.

“Since he joined my lab, I’ve been absolutely amazed by his scientific talents,” Lawrence says. “Hanjun’s scientific maturity and achievements are extremely rare, especially in an undergraduate student.”

Lee has made new discoveries from genomic data and was involved in publishing a paper in Molecular Cell and a paper in Nature Genetics. In the latter, the lab identified the source of background noise in chromosome conformation capture experiments, a technique for analyzing chromatin in cells.

Lawrence thinks Lee “is destined for great leadership in science.” In the meantime, Lee has gained valuable insights into how much work these types of achievements require.

“Doing research has been rewarding, but it also taught me to appreciate that science is almost 100 percent about failures,” Lee says. “It is those failures that end up leading you to the path of success.”

Widening the scope

Lee’s personal motto is that to excel in a specific field, one must have a broad sense of what the entire field looks like, and suggests other budding scientists enroll in courses distant from their research area. He also says it was key to see his peers as collaborators rather than competitors, and that each student will excel in their own unique way.

“Your MIT experience is defined by interactions with others,” Lee says. “They will help identify and shape your path.”

For his accomplishments, Lee was recently named an American Association for Cancer Research Undergraduate Scholar. Last year, he also spoke at the Gordon Research Conference on Cell Growth and Proliferation about his work on the retinoblastoma gene product RB. Lee was also among the 2024 Biology Undergraduate Award Winners, recognized with the Salvador E. Luria Prize for outstanding scholarship and research of publication quality.

Encouraged by positive course evaluations during his time as a TA, Lee hopes to inspire other students in the future through teaching. Lee has recently decided to pursue a PhD in cancer biology at Harvard Medical School, although his interests remain broad.

“I want to explore other fields of biology as well,” he says. “I have so many questions that I want to answer.”

Although initially resistant, Lee’s mother and father are now “immensely proud to be MIT parents” and will be coming to Cambridge in May to celebrate Lee’s graduation.

“Throughout my years here, they’ve been able to see how I’ve changed,” he says. “I don’t think I’m a great scientist, yet, but I now have some sense of how to become one.” 

Navigating longevity with industry leaders at MIT AgeLab PLAN Forum

A symposium for financial professionals imagines a new industry around longevity planning.

How can people better imagine and plan for their future selves? A two-day event hosted at MIT featured two chief executives at the forefront of an emerging industry centered around helping the public prepare for longer lives. Karen Lynch, CEO of CVS, and Penny Pennington, managing partner at Edward Jones, were the opening speakers for an MIT AgeLab symposium highlighting how new technologies, changing consumer preferences, and increasing life expectancy will shift the financial advisory profession into a new industry called longevity planning.

As described by MIT AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin, longevity planning is the transformation of the financial services and retirement planning industries into a holistic business of advice and services to help people navigate a 100-year lifespan.

The first step toward ensuring quality of life over 100 years is to know how to prepare for it. Is it possible to predict how long each of us can expect to live? Are there tools available that can help people better imagine and empathize with their future selves? Can we imagine advice and planning that is better tailored toward realizing our goals for later life?

The fireside chat between Lynch of CVS and Pennington of Edward Jones brought together major leaders in health care and finance, two bookends of longevity. “We can help people on their journey to live better, longer,” Lynch said. “The health care system has many entry points. CVS Health brings them together to deliver better health at lower costs through simpler, more convenient experiences. We engage consumers and connect people to care when, where, and how they want it.”

According to research from Edward Jones, financial advisory clients have four main priorities, in order of importance: their health, their family, their purpose, and finally, their financial plan. "During our conversation, Karen and I agreed that longevity planning for both the health and wealth industries has to be transformational, not transactional,” Pennington said. “Our industries need to be focused on advancing wellness — physical, emotional and financial — for our clients and our communities to help more people thrive in every stage of life.” 

A follow-up panel of experts in real estate and retail highlighted trends in consumer behavior. Brian Beitler, founder of Sune, an online retail company, said that contemporary consumers are defined by three qualities: They are more exploratory (and so less loyal), more discerning (due to being more information-saturated) and more influential (that is, more capable of generating success for their preferred products). Janice Dumont, CEO of Advisors Living, a residential real estate company, talked about the importance of crafting immersive experiences for customers who are considering making a large purchase like buying a home — not just providing information, but engaging people.

The second day of the symposium focused on new technologies that have potential to guide longevity planning. Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and health prediction technologies, among others, are tools that can help people imagine and predict their futures. Each panel was accompanied by a reflection session of financial advisors, who discussed how these new technologies might impact their industry.

In a panel on cutting-edge health diagnostic testing, Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT's Aging Brain Initiative, discussed the potential of genetic testing to identify patients’ predispositions toward Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease, which remains without a cure, could be better managed if identified as a risk earlier in life. Rita Shaknovich, vice president of medical affairs at Grail Inc., a health diagnostic company, discussed the development of technologies that can detect cancer at early stages through a blood test, with the aim of rendering the emperor of maladies a manageable chronic condition instead of an often fatal one.

A later panel focused on applications of artificial intelligence in medicine and health care and its implications for other industries, including financial services. Pranav Rajpurkar, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, discussed recent studies finding that when it came to providing medical advice online, an AI chatbot was viewed as more empathetic than a human doctor. For financial advisors and other professionals, this finding suggests both the promise and portent of AI-driven chatbots in client-facing industries.

Joe Kvedar, professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, former president of the American Telemedicine Association, and a self-described telemedicine evangelist, highlighted a key limit for new technologies to transform patient care in medicine: reluctance from patients, who may be protective of their privacy and autonomy, to adopt them, even if they are proven effective.

The last session of the symposium discussed the use of virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) to help people imagine their future selves. Sheng-Hung Lee, a PhD candidate with the MIT AgeLab, outlined his project called Design for Longevity, which uses AR and service design principles to enhance conversations between financial advisors and clients. Sara Wilson, a PhD student with the AgeLab, showcased a VR game that shows people how the future — in this case, the future of the biosphere — might be affected by their choices and behaviors.

The symposium was sponsored and attended by members of the Preparing for Longevity Advisory Network, or PLAN, an MIT AgeLab research consortium that aims to transform the financial services industry to become more engaged in helping people better prepare for and enjoy longer lifespans. PLAN members span advisory firms and financial product manufacturers from around the world. 

Jeong Min Park earns 2024 Schmidt Science Fellowship

The doctoral student will use the prize to find novel phases of matter and particles.

Physics graduate student Jeong Min (Jane) Park is among the 32 exceptional early-career scientists worldwide chosen to receive the prestigious 2024 Schmidt Science Fellows award.  

As a 2024 Schmidt Science Fellow, Park’s postdoctoral work will seek to directly detect phases that could host new particles by employing an instrument that can visualize subatomic-scale phenomena.  

With her advisor, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics, Park’s research at MIT focuses on discovering novel quantum phases of matter.

“When there are many electrons in a material, their interactions can lead to collective behaviors that are not expected from individual particles, known as emergent phenomena,” explains Park. “One example is superconductivity, where interacting electrons combine together as a pair at low temperatures to conduct electricity without energy loss.”

During her PhD studies, she has investigated novel types of superconductivity by designing new materials with targeted interactions and topology. In particular, she used graphene, atomically thin two-dimensional layers of graphite, the same material as pencil lead, and turned it into a “magic” material. This so-called magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene provided an extraordinarily strong form of superconductivity that is robust under high magnetic fields. Later, she found a whole “magic family” of these materials, elucidating the key mechanisms behind superconductivity and interaction-driven phenomena. These results have provided a new platform to study emergent phenomena in two dimensions, which can lead to innovations in electronics and quantum technology.

Park says she is looking forward to her postdoctoral studies with Princeton University physics professor Ali Yazdani's lab.

“I’m excited about the idea of discovering and studying new quantum phenomena that could further the understanding of fundamental physics,” says Park. “Having explored interaction-driven phenomena through the design of new materials, I’m now aiming to broaden my perspective and expertise to address a different kind of question, by combining my background in material design with the sophisticated local-scale measurements that I will adopt during my postdoc.”

She explains that elementary particles are classified as either bosons or fermions, with contrasting behaviors upon interchanging two identical particles, referred to as exchange statistics; bosons remain unchanged, while fermions acquire a minus sign in their quantum wavefunction.

Theories predict the existence of fundamentally different particles known as non-abelian anyons, whose wavefunctions braid upon particle exchange. Such a braiding process can be used to encode and store information, potentially opening the door to fault-tolerant quantum computing in the future.

Since 2018, this prestigious postdoctoral program has sought to break down silos among scientific fields to solve the world’s biggest challenges and support future leaders in STEM.

Schmidt Science Fellows, an initiative of Schmidt Sciences, delivered in partnership with the Rhodes Trust, identifies, develops, and amplifies the next generation of science leaders, by building a community of scientists and supporters of interdisciplinary science and leveraging this network to drive sector-wide change. The 2024 fellows consist of 17 nationalities across North America, Europe, and Asia.   

Nominated candidates undergo a rigorous selection process that includes a paper-based academic review with panels of experts in their home disciplines and final interviews with panels, including senior representatives from across many scientific disciplines and different business sectors.  

Scientists use generative AI to answer complex questions in physics

A new technique that can automatically classify phases of physical systems could help scientists investigate novel materials.

When water freezes, it transitions from a liquid phase to a solid phase, resulting in a drastic change in properties like density and volume. Phase transitions in water are so common most of us probably don’t even think about them, but phase transitions in novel materials or complex physical systems are an important area of study.

To fully understand these systems, scientists must be able to recognize phases and detect the transitions between. But how to quantify phase changes in an unknown system is often unclear, especially when data are scarce.

Researchers from MIT and the University of Basel in Switzerland applied generative artificial intelligence models to this problem, developing a new machine-learning framework that can automatically map out phase diagrams for novel physical systems.

Their physics-informed machine-learning approach is more efficient than laborious, manual techniques which rely on theoretical expertise. Importantly, because their approach leverages generative models, it does not require huge, labeled training datasets used in other machine-learning techniques.

Such a framework could help scientists investigate the thermodynamic properties of novel materials or detect entanglement in quantum systems, for instance. Ultimately, this technique could make it possible for scientists to discover unknown phases of matter autonomously.

“If you have a new system with fully unknown properties, how would you choose which observable quantity to study? The hope, at least with data-driven tools, is that you could scan large new systems in an automated way, and it will point you to important changes in the system. This might be a tool in the pipeline of automated scientific discovery of new, exotic properties of phases,” says Frank Schäfer, a postdoc in the Julia Lab in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and co-author of a paper on this approach.

Joining Schäfer on the paper are first author Julian Arnold, a graduate student at the University of Basel; Alan Edelman, applied mathematics professor in the Department of Mathematics and leader of the Julia Lab; and senior author Christoph Bruder, professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Basel. The research is published today in Physical Review Letters.

Detecting phase transitions using AI

While water transitioning to ice might be among the most obvious examples of a phase change, more exotic phase changes, like when a material transitions from being a normal conductor to a superconductor, are of keen interest to scientists.

These transitions can be detected by identifying an “order parameter,” a quantity that is important and expected to change. For instance, water freezes and transitions to a solid phase (ice) when its temperature drops below 0 degrees Celsius. In this case, an appropriate order parameter could be defined in terms of the proportion of water molecules that are part of the crystalline lattice versus those that remain in a disordered state.

In the past, researchers have relied on physics expertise to build phase diagrams manually, drawing on theoretical understanding to know which order parameters are important. Not only is this tedious for complex systems, and perhaps impossible for unknown systems with new behaviors, but it also introduces human bias into the solution.

More recently, researchers have begun using machine learning to build discriminative classifiers that can solve this task by learning to classify a measurement statistic as coming from a particular phase of the physical system, the same way such models classify an image as a cat or dog.

The MIT researchers demonstrated how generative models can be used to solve this classification task much more efficiently, and in a physics-informed manner.

The Julia Programming Language, a popular language for scientific computing that is also used in MIT’s introductory linear algebra classes, offers many tools that make it invaluable for constructing such generative models, Schäfer adds.

Generative models, like those that underlie ChatGPT and Dall-E, typically work by estimating the probability distribution of some data, which they use to generate new data points that fit the distribution (such as new cat images that are similar to existing cat images).

However, when simulations of a physical system using tried-and-true scientific techniques are available, researchers get a model of its probability distribution for free. This distribution describes the measurement statistics of the physical system.

A more knowledgeable model

The MIT team’s insight is that this probability distribution also defines a generative model upon which a classifier can be constructed. They plug the generative model into standard statistical formulas to directly construct a classifier instead of learning it from samples, as was done with discriminative approaches.

“This is a really nice way of incorporating something you know about your physical system deep inside your machine-learning scheme. It goes far beyond just performing feature engineering on your data samples or simple inductive biases,” Schäfer says.

This generative classifier can determine what phase the system is in given some parameter, like temperature or pressure. And because the researchers directly approximate the probability distributions underlying measurements from the physical system, the classifier has system knowledge.

This enables their method to perform better than other machine-learning techniques. And because it can work automatically without the need for extensive training, their approach significantly enhances the computational efficiency of identifying phase transitions.

At the end of the day, similar to how one might ask ChatGPT to solve a math problem, the researchers can ask the generative classifier questions like “does this sample belong to phase I or phase II?” or “was this sample generated at high temperature or low temperature?”

Scientists could also use this approach to solve different binary classification tasks in physical systems, possibly to detect entanglement in quantum systems (Is the state entangled or not?) or determine whether theory A or B is best suited to solve a particular problem. They could also use this approach to better understand and improve large language models like ChatGPT by identifying how certain parameters should be tuned so the chatbot gives the best outputs.

In the future, the researchers also want to study theoretical guarantees regarding how many measurements they would need to effectively detect phase transitions and estimate the amount of computation that would require.

This work was funded, in part, by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the MIT-Switzerland Lockheed Martin Seed Fund, and MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives.

New tool empowers users to fight online misinformation

The Trustnet browser extension lets individuals assess the accuracy of any content on any website.

“Less attention has been paid to decentralized approaches because some people think individuals can’t assess content,” she says. “Our studies have shown that is not true. But users shouldn’t just be left helpless to figure things out on their own. We can make fact-checking available to them, but in a way that lets them choose the content they want to see.”

Elaine Liu: Charging ahead

The MIT senior calculates how renewables and EVs impact the grid.

MIT senior Elaine Siyu Liu doesn’t own an electric car, or any car. But she sees the impact of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewables on the grid as two pieces of an energy puzzle she wants to solve.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the number of public and private EV charging ports nearly doubled in the past three years, and many more are in the works. Users expect to plug in at their convenience, charge up, and drive away. But what if the grid can’t handle it?

Electricity demand, long stagnant in the United States, has spiked due to EVs, data centers that drive artificial intelligence, and industry. Grid planners forecast an increase of 2.6 percent to 4.7 percent in electricity demand over the next five years, according to data reported to federal regulators. Everyone from EV charging-station operators to utility-system operators needs help navigating a system in flux.

That’s where Liu’s work comes in.

Liu, who is studying mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), is interested in distribution — how to get electricity from a centralized location to consumers. “I see power systems as a good venue for theoretical research as an application tool,” she says. “I'm interested in it because I'm familiar with the optimization and probability techniques used to map this level of problem.”

Liu grew up in Beijing, then after middle school moved with her parents to Canada and enrolled in a prep school in Oakville, Ontario, 30 miles outside Toronto.

Liu stumbled upon an opportunity to take part in a regional math competition and eventually started a math club, but at the time, the school’s culture surrounding math surprised her. Being exposed to what seemed to be some students’ aversion to math, she says, “I don’t think my feelings about math changed. I think my feelings about how people feel about math changed.”

Liu brought her passion for math to MIT. The summer after her sophomore year, she took on the first of the two Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program projects she completed with electric power system expert Marija Ilić, a joint adjunct professor in EECS and a senior research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.

Predicting the grid

Since 2022, with the help of funding from the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Liu has been working with Ilić on identifying ways in which the grid is challenged.

One factor is the addition of renewables to the energy pipeline. A gap in wind or sun might cause a lag in power generation. If this lag occurs during peak demand, it could mean trouble for a grid already taxed by extreme weather and other unforeseen events.

If you think of the grid as a network of dozens of interconnected parts, once an element in the network fails — say, a tree downs a transmission line — the electricity that used to go through that line needs to be rerouted. This may overload other lines, creating what’s known as a cascade failure.

“This all happens really quickly and has very large downstream effects,” Liu says. “Millions of people will have instant blackouts.”

Even if the system can handle a single downed line, Liu notes that “the nuance is that there are now a lot of renewables, and renewables are less predictable. You can't predict a gap in wind or sun. When such things happen, there’s suddenly not enough generation and too much demand. So the same kind of failure would happen, but on a larger and more uncontrollable scale.”

Renewables’ varying output has the added complication of causing voltage fluctuations. “We plug in our devices expecting a voltage of 110, but because of oscillations, you will never get exactly 110,” Liu says. “So even when you can deliver enough electricity, if you can't deliver it at the specific voltage level that is required, that’s a problem.”

Liu and Ilić are building a model to predict how and when the grid might fail. Lacking access to privatized data, Liu runs her models with European industry data and test cases made available to universities. “I have a fake power grid that I run my experiments on,” she says. “You can take the same tool and run it on the real power grid.”

Liu’s model predicts cascade failures as they evolve. Supply from a wind generator, for example, might drop precipitously over the course of an hour. The model analyzes which substations and which households will be affected. “After we know we need to do something, this prediction tool can enable system operators to strategically intervene ahead of time,” Liu says.

Dictating price and power

Last year, Liu turned her attention to EVs, which provide a different kind of challenge than renewables.

In 2022, S&P Global reported that lawmakers argued that the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) wholesale power rate structure was unfair for EV charging station operators.

In addition to operators paying by the kilowatt-hour, some also pay more for electricity during peak demand hours. Only a few EVs charging up during those hours could result in higher costs for the operator even if their overall energy use is low.

Anticipating how much power EVs will need is more complex than predicting energy needed for, say, heating and cooling. Unlike buildings, EVs move around, making it difficult to predict energy consumption at any given time. “If users don't like the price at one charging station or how long the line is, they'll go somewhere else,” Liu says. “Where to allocate EV chargers is a problem that a lot of people are dealing with right now.”

One approach would be for FERC to dictate to EV users when and where to charge and what price they'll pay. To Liu, this isn’t an attractive option. “No one likes to be told what to do,” she says.

Liu is looking at optimizing a market-based solution that would be acceptable to top-level energy producers — wind and solar farms and nuclear plants — all the way down to the municipal aggregators that secure electricity at competitive rates and oversee distribution to the consumer.

Analyzing the location, movement, and behavior patterns of all the EVs driven daily in Boston and other major energy hubs, she notes, could help demand aggregators determine where to place EV chargers and how much to charge consumers, akin to Walmart deciding how much to mark up wholesale eggs in different markets.

Last year, Liu presented the work at MITEI’s annual research conference. This spring, Liu and Ilić are submitting a paper on the market optimization analysis to a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Liu has come to terms with her early introduction to attitudes toward STEM that struck her as markedly different from those in China. She says, “I think the (prep) school had a very strong ‘math is for nerds’ vibe, especially for girls. There was a ‘why are you giving yourself more work?’ kind of mentality. But over time, I just learned to disregard that.”

After graduation, Liu, the only undergraduate researcher in Ilić’s MIT Electric Energy Systems Group, plans to apply to fellowships and graduate programs in EECS, applied math, and operations research.

Based on her analysis, Liu says that the market could effectively determine the price and availability of charging stations. Offering incentives for EV owners to charge during the day instead of at night when demand is high could help avoid grid overload and prevent extra costs to operators. “People would still retain the ability to go to a different charging station if they chose to,” she says. “I'm arguing that this works.”

2024 MIT Supply Chain Excellence Awards given to 35 undergraduates

Exceptional students from top programs across the US receive tuition fellowships and conditional acceptance to the MIT Supply Chain Management master’s program.

The MIT Supply Chain Management Master’s Program has recognized 35 exceptional students from eight renowned undergraduate programs specializing in supply chain management and engineering across the United States.

Presented annually, the MIT Supply Chain Excellence Awards honor undergraduate students who have demonstrated outstanding talent in supply chain management or industrial engineering. These students originate from institutions that have partnered with the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics’ Supply Chain Management master’s program to expand opportunities for graduate study and advance the field of supply chain and logistics.

In this year’s awards, the MIT SCM Master’s Program has provided over $900,000 in fellowship funding to 35 deserving recipients. These students come from respected schools like Arizona State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Lehigh University, Michigan State University, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico, Penn State University, Purdue University, and Texas A&M University.

Recipients can use their awards by applying to the MIT SCM program after gaining two to five years of professional experience post-graduation. The fellowship funds can be applied toward tuition fees for the SCM master’s program at MIT or at MIT Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) network centers in Spain, Malaysia, Luxembourg, or China.

Founded in 1973, MIT CTL is one of the world’s leading supply chain education and research centers. MIT CTL coordinates more than 100 supply chain research efforts across the MIT campus and around the globe. The center also educates students and corporate leaders in the essential principles of supply chain management and helps organizations to increase productivity and improve their environmental performance.

Founded in 1998 by the MIT CTL, MIT SCM attracts a diverse group of talented and motivated students from across the globe. Students work directly with researchers and industry experts on complex and challenging problems in all aspects of supply chain management. MIT SCM students propel their classroom and laboratory learning straight into industry. They graduate from our programs as thought leaders ready to engage in an international, highly competitive marketplace.

Faces of MIT: Reimi Hicks

The MITES associate director of recruitment and admissions plays a key role in introducing middle and high school students to the world of STEM.

After almost 50 years at the Institute, the MIT Introduction to Technology, Engineering, and Science (MITES) programs for middle and high school students continue to evolve. MITES increases confidence, creates community, and offers a challenging foundation in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) topics for seventh through 12th grade students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds. Someone who has overseen different aspects of the program over the last nine years is MITES Associate Director of Recruitment and Admissions Reimi Hicks.  

Hicks began her time with MITES by running MITES Summer, their flagship program since 1975, during which she lived with students in dorms on campus. As a testament to her leadership, her role expanded to oversee MITES’ suite of outreach programs. In her current role, Hicks manages all efforts related to student and staff recruitment. 

MITES advances equity and access in STEM through three outreach programs: MITES Saturdays, MITES Semester, and MITES Summer. The core of each program is college preparation activities, challenging coursework, and community building. Generous support from individuals, foundations, corporations, and MIT enables MITES to provide all programming and room and board at no cost to students or their families.   

MITES Summer is a six-week residential experience for rising seniors in high school. MITES Semester launched when a MITES Summer alum wanted to expand access to the program to more students. Out of the inquiry came MITES Semester, also for rising high school seniors, a virtual six-month enrichment program. MITES Saturdays is a hybrid initiative for students who attend public school in Boston, Cambridge, or Lawrence, Massachusetts, throughout the academic year. Students can enroll in MITES Saturdays as early as seventh grade and remain in the program until they graduate from high school.  

The focus of MITES is rigorous STEM academics. However, Hicks and the MITES team know that when students come to them the other parts of their lives do not fall away. For them to be effective, staff members need to engage with them in other, nonacademic ways. As a result, their programs include workshops, design challenges, mentor meetings, and social community-building events.  

Hicks refers to MITES as “a very high-touch program,” with one staff member for every five students. This ratio ensures that students feel seen, heard, and cared for. MITES instructors and mentors come from a variety of backgrounds and industries. Some are faculty or staff members at MIT, many are working professionals in STEM fields, and others are graduate students and postdocs from nearby colleges and universities. Each year, 100 temporary staff members join MITES to prepare students to attend college at places such as MIT, affirm their interest and their sense of belonging in STEM, and connect them with the information and the people they need to accomplish their goals. MITES alumni who volunteer to mentor students also play a pivotal role. 

Hicks and her colleagues take a multifaceted approach to outreach, and they prioritize proactively getting the word out to as many people as possible. They have built relationships with a wide network of schools and introduce hundreds of students to MITES programming each year. When Hicks visits schools, she opens the MIT Daily email newsletter and shows examples of how current MIT students are applying the nuts and bolts of the MITES programs to projects. Hicks notes that when she sees their eyes widen, it is a reminder that the work that happens at the Institute is extraordinary. 

Beyond leading the strategy of recruitment and admissions, Hicks’s job centers around relationship building. When telling high school students about MITES, Hicks and her colleagues take their role as people introducing students to college very seriously. While not all graduates of MITES attend MIT for higher education, it is the most popular school to which MITES alumni matriculate. 

“A lot of our work is about being positive ambassadors for the Institute,” Hicks explains. “It is very important to us to attract the most talented, motivated students, regardless of ZIP code, because our mission is to increase accessibility to STEM fields for young folks across the country.” 

The outreach is paying off. Over 4,000 students applied to MITES in 2024, the largest applicant pool in the program’s history. The MITES application is like a college application; students share a little bit about themselves including their backgrounds, their free time activities, work and volunteer experience, and extracurriculars in addition to their transcripts. Short-answer questions help the MITES team learn what is important to the students and what motivates them. The application process allows Hicks to get a sense of each student beyond their transcript. 

An important thought partner in the recruitment and marketing process are MITES alumni. This tight-knit group spreads the word about MITES to their networks and communities. In fact, MITES alumni were a part of Hicks’s interview process.  

“The alumni spoke about the importance of community,” Hicks recalls. “I cannot tell you how many alumni I have spoken to, and I have seen thousands of students come through our programs, who tell us that even 30 years later they are still friends with the people they met through MITES. They are study buddies at the same college, they become business partners, or they are best friends. That connection is important for the program's peers and instructors.” 

MITES uses the saying “It’s all about the Delta,” in reference to the Greek letter that symbolizes a measure of change. In other words, their programs are not about competing with other students for the best grades; instead, it is about individual growth over time. In the face of challenging coursework and high expectations, Hicks and her colleagues want participants to have personal growth and lift others up as they grow themselves. 

Soundbytes 

Q: What about your job brings you the most pride? 

A: What brings me the most pride is when I see students who participated in MITES ultimately find a home at MIT for college. When a student I spoke to as a sixth grader or one that I lived in the dorms with over a summer enrolls at MIT, I had the privilege of being a small part of their MIT journey. 

Q: What do you like the most about the people at MIT? 

A: What I appreciate the most about my colleagues is that they are all mission-driven. They care genuinely about the work that we do, which I find motivating. MIT attracts people who are open to feedback, willing to challenge themselves and their assumptions, and who work hard in the pursuit of solving a problem or accomplishing a goal. 

Q: What advice would you give to a new staff member at MIT? 

A: Find the right balance between doing and learning. The pace and volume of work can sometimes be a lot, but take the time to watch, learn, and collect information about how MIT operates. It will help you become effective in whatever role that you are in. 

John Joannopoulos receives 2024-2025 Killian Award

The MIT physicist is honored for pioneering work in photonics that helped to advance tools for telecommunications and biomedicine.

John Joannopoulos, an innovator and mentor in the fields of theoretical condensed matter physics and nanophotonics, has been named the recipient of the 2024-2025 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award.

Joannopoulos is the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics and director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. He has been a member of the MIT faculty for 50 years.

“Professor Joannopoulos’s profound and lasting impact on the field of theoretical condensed matter physics finds its roots in his pioneering work in harnessing ab initio physics to elucidate the behavior of materials at the atomic level,” states the award citation, which was announced at today’s faculty meeting by Roger White, chair of the Killian Award Selection Committee and professor of philosophy at MIT. “His seminal research in the development of photonic crystals has revolutionized understanding of light-matter interactions, laying the groundwork for transformative advancements in diverse fields ranging from telecommunications to biomedical engineering.”

The award also honors Joannopoulos’ service as a “legendary mentor to generations of students, inspiring them to achieve excellence in science while at the same time facilitating the practical benefit to society through entrepreneurship.”

The Killian Award was established in 1971 to recognize outstanding professional contributions by MIT faculty members. It is the highest honor that the faculty can give to one of its members.

“I have to tell you, it was a complete and utter surprise,” Joannopoulos told MIT News shortly after he received word of the award. “I didn’t expect it at all, and was extremely flattered, honored, and moved by it, frankly.”

Joannopoulous has spent his entire professional career at MIT. He came to the Institute in 1974, directly after receiving his PhD in physics at the University of California at Berkeley, where he also earned his bachelor’s degree. Starting out as an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Physics, he quickly set up a research program focused on theoretical condensed matter physics.

Over the first half of his MIT career, Joannopoulos worked to elucidate the fundamental nature of the electronic, vibrational, and optical structure of crystalline and amorphous bulk solids, their surfaces, interfaces, and defects. He and his students developed numerous theoretical methods to enable tractable and accurate calculations of these complex systems.

In the 1990s, his work with microscopic material systems expanded to a new class of materials, called photonic crystals — materials that could be engineered at the micro- and nanoscale to manipulate light in ways that impart surprising and exotic optical qualities to the material as a whole.

“I saw that you could create photonic crystals with defects that can affect the properties of photons, in much the same way that defects in a semiconductor affect the properties of electrons,” Joannopoulos says. “So I started working in this area to try and explore what anomalous light phenomena can we discover using this approach?”

Among his various breakthroughs in the field was the realization of a “perfect dielectric mirror” — a multilayered optical device that reflects light from all angles as normal metallic mirrors do, and that can also be tuned to reflect and trap light at specific frequencies. He and his colleagues saw potential for the mirror to be made into a hollow fiber that could serve as a highly effective optical conduit, for use in a wide range of applications. To further advance the technology, he and his colleagues launched a startup, which has since developed the technology into a flexible, fiber-optic “surgical scalpel.”

Throughout his career, Joannopoulos has helped to launch numerous startups and photonics-based technologies.

“His ability to bridge the gap between academia and industry has not only advanced scientific knowledge but also led to the creation of dozens of new companies, thousands of jobs, and groundbreaking products that continue to benefit society to this day,” the award citation states.

In 2006, Joannopoulos accepted the position as director of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), a collaboration between MIT researchers, industry partners, and military defense experts, who seek innovations to protect and enhance soldiers’ survivability in the field. In his role as ISN head, Joannopoulos has worked across MIT, making connections and supporting new projects with researchers specializing in fields far from his own.

“I get a chance to explore and learn fascinating new things,” says Joannopoulos, who is currently overseeing projects related to hyperspectral imaging, smart and responsive fabrics, and nanodrug delivery. “I love that aspect of really getting to understand what people in other fields are doing. And they’re doing great work across many, many different fields.”

Throughout his career at MIT, Joannopoulos has been especially inspired and motivated by his students, many of whom have gone on to found companies, lead top academic and research institutions, and make significant contributions to their respective fields, including one student who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998.

“One’s proudest moments are the successes of one’s students, and in that regard, I’ve been extremely lucky to have had truly exceptional students over the years,” Joannopolous says.

His many contributions to academia and industry have earned Joannopoulos numerous honors and awards, including his election to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“The Selection Committee is delighted to have this opportunity to honor Professor John Joannopoulos: a visionary scientist, a beloved mentor, a great believer in the goodness of people, and a leader whose contributions to MIT and the broader scientific community are immeasurable,” the award citation concludes.

Q&A: Exploring ethnic dynamics and climate change in Africa

Professor of political science Evan Lieberman discusses his research into perceptions among African and American citizens about the climate crisis and how their governments are responding.

Evan Lieberman is the Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa at MIT, and is also director of the Center for International Studies. During a semester-long sabbatical, he’s currently based at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town.

In this Q&A, Lieberman discusses several climate-related research projects he’s pursuing in South Africa and surrounding countries. This is part of an ongoing series exploring how the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is addressing the climate crisis.

Q: South Africa is a nation whose political and economic development you have long studied and written about. Do you see this visit as an extension of the kind of research you have been pursuing, or a departure from it?

A: Much of my previous work has been animated by the question of understanding the causes and consequences of group-based disparities, whether due to AIDS or Covid. These are problems that know no geographic boundaries, and where ethnic and racial minorities are often hardest hit. Climate change is an analogous problem, with these minority populations living in places where they are most vulnerable, in heat islands in cities, and in coastal areas where they are not protected. The reality is they might get hit much harder by longer-term trends and immediate shocks.

In one line of research, I seek to understand how people in different African countries, in different ethnic groups, perceive the problems of climate change and their governments’ response to it. There are ethnic divisions of labor in terms of what people do — whether they are farmers or pastoralists, or live in cities. So some ethnic groups are simply more affected by drought or extreme weather than others, and this can be a basis for conflict, especially when competing for often limited government resources.

In this area, just like in my previous research, learning what shapes ordinary citizen perspectives is really important, because these views affect people’s everyday practices, and the extent to which they support certain kinds of policies and investments their government makes in response to climate-related challenges. But I will also try to learn more about the perspectives of policymakers and various development partners who seek to balance climate-related challenges against a host of other problems and priorities.

Q: You recently published “Until We Have Won Our Liberty," which examines the difficult transition of South Africa from apartheid to a democratic government, scrutinizing in particular whether the quality of life for citizens has improved in terms of housing, employment, discrimination, and ethnic conflicts. How do climate change-linked issues fit into your scholarship?

A: I never saw myself as a climate researcher, but a number of years ago, heavily influenced by what I was learning at MIT, I began to recognize more and more how important the issue of climate change is. And I realized there were lots of ways in which the climate problem resonated with other kinds of problems I had tackled in earlier parts of my work.

There was once a time when climate and the environment was the purview primarily of white progressives: the “tree huggers.” And that’s really changed in recent decades as it has become evident that the people who've been most affected by the climate emergency are ethnic and racial minorities. We saw with Hurricane Katrina and other places [that] if you are Black, you’re more likely to live in a vulnerable area and to just generally experience more environmental harms, from pollution and emissions, leaving these communities much less resilient than white communities. Government has largely not addressed this inequity. When you look at American survey data in terms of who’s concerned about climate change, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans are more unified in their worries than are white Americans.

There are analogous problems in Africa, my career research focus. Governments there have long responded in different ways to different ethnic groups. The research I am starting looks at the extent to which there are disparities in how governments try to solve climate-related challenges.

Q: It’s difficult enough in the United States taking the measure of different groups’ perceptions of the impact of climate change and government’s effectiveness in contending with it. How do you go about this in Africa?

A: Surprisingly, there’s only been a little bit of work done so far on how ordinary African citizens, who are ostensibly being hit the hardest in the world by the climate emergency, are thinking about this problem. Climate change has not been politicized there in a very big way. In fact, only 50 percent of Africans in one poll had heard of the term.

In one of my new projects, with political science faculty colleague Devin Caughey and political science doctoral student Preston Johnston, we are analyzing social and climate survey data [generated by the Afrobarometer research network] from over 30 African countries to understand within and across countries the ways in which ethnic identities structure people’s perception of the climate crisis, and their beliefs in what government ought to be doing. In largely agricultural African societies, people routinely experience drought, extreme rain, and heat. They also lack the infrastructure that can shield them from the intense variability of weather patterns. But we’re adding a lens, which is looking at sources of inequality, especially ethnic differences.

I will also be investigating specific sectors. Africa is a continent where in most places people cannot take for granted universal, piped access to clean water. In Cape Town, several years ago, the combination of failure to replace infrastructure and lack of rain caused such extreme conditions that one of the world’s most important cities almost ran out of water.

While these studies are in progress, it is clear that in many countries, there are substantively large differences in perceptions of the severity of climate change, and attitudes about who should be doing what, and who’s capable of doing what. In several countries, both perceptions and policy preferences are differentiated along ethnic lines, more so than with respect to generational or class differences within societies.

This is interesting as a phenomenon, but substantively, I think it’s important in that it may provide the basis for how politicians and government actors decide to move on allocating resources and implementing climate-protection policies. We see this kind of political calculation in the U.S. and we shouldn’t be surprised that it happens in Africa as well.

That’s ultimately one of the challenges from the perch of MIT, where we’re really interested in understanding climate change, and creating technological tools and policies for mitigating the problem or adapting to it. The reality is frustrating. The political world — those who make decisions about whether to acknowledge the problem and whether to implement resources in the best technical way — are playing a whole other game. That game is about rewarding key supporters and being reelected.

Q: So how do you go from measuring perceptions and beliefs among citizens about climate change and government responsiveness to those problems, to policies and actions that might actually reduce disparities in the way climate-vulnerable African groups receive support?

A: Some of the work I have been doing involves understanding what local and national governments across Africa are actually doing to address these problems. We will have to drill down into government budgets to determine the actual resources devoted to addressing a challenge, what sorts of practices the government follows, and the political ramifications for governments that act aggressively versus those that don’t. With the Cape Town water crisis, for example, the government dramatically changed residents’ water usage through naming and shaming, and transformed institutional practices of water collection. They made it through a major drought by using much less water, and doing it with greater energy efficiency. Through the government’s strong policy and implementation, and citizens’ active responses, an entire city, with all its disparate groups, gained resilience. Maybe we can highlight creative solutions to major climate-related problems and use them as prods to push more effective policies and solutions in other places.

In the MIT Global Diversity Lab, along with political science faculty colleague Volha Charnysh, political science doctoral student Jared Kalow, and Institute for Data, Systems and Society doctoral student Erin Walk, we are exploring American perspectives on climate-related foreign aid, asking survey respondents whether the U.S. should be giving more to people in the global South who didn’t cause the problems of climate change but have to suffer the externalities. We are particularly interested in whether people’s desire to help vulnerable communities rests on the racial or national identity of those communities.

From my new seat as director of the Center for International Studies (CIS), I hope to do more and more to connect social science findings to relevant policymakers, whether in the U.S. or in other places. CIS is making climate one of our thematic priority areas, directing hundreds of thousands of dollars for MIT faculty to spark climate collaborations with researchers worldwide through the Global Seed Fund program. 

COP 28 (the U.N. Climate Change Conference), which I attended in December in Dubai, really drove home the importance of people coming together from around the world to exchange ideas and form networks. It was unbelievably large, with 85,000 people. But so many of us shared the belief that we are not doing enough. We need enforceable global solutions and innovation. We need ways of financing. We need to provide opportunities for journalists to broadcast the importance of this problem. And we need to understand the incentives that different actors have and what sorts of messages and strategies will resonate with them, and inspire those who have resources to be more generous.

Repurposed beer yeast may offer a cost-effective way to remove lead from water

A filter made from yeast encapsulated in hydrogels can quickly absorb lead as water flows through it.

Every year, beer breweries generate and discard thousands of tons of surplus yeast. Researchers from MIT and Georgia Tech have now come up with a way to repurpose that yeast to absorb lead from contaminated water.

Through a process called biosorption, yeast can quickly absorb even trace amounts of lead and other heavy metals from water. The researchers showed that they could package the yeast inside hydrogel capsules to create a filter that removes lead from water. Because the yeast cells are encapsulated, they can be easily removed from the water once it’s ready to drink.

“We have the hydrogel surrounding the free yeast that exists in the center, and this is porous enough to let water come in, interact with yeast as if they were freely moving in water, and then come out clean,” says Patricia Stathatou, a former postdoc at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, who is now a research scientist at Georgia Tech and an incoming assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “The fact that the yeast themselves are bio-based, benign, and biodegradable is a significant advantage over traditional technologies.”

The researchers envision that this process could be used to filter drinking water coming out of a faucet in homes, or scaled up to treat large quantities of water at treatment plants.

MIT graduate student Devashish Gokhale and Stathatou are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in the journal RSC Sustainability. Patrick Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, is the senior author of the paper, and Christos Athanasiou, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech and a former visiting scholar at MIT, is also an author.

Absorbing lead

The new study builds on work that Stathatou and Athanasiou began in 2021, when Athanasiou was a visiting scholar at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. That year, they calculated that waste yeast discarded from a single brewery in Boston would be enough to treat the city’s entire water supply.

Through biosorption, a process that is not fully understood, yeast cells can bind to and absorb heavy metal ions, even at challenging initial concentrations below 1 part per million. The MIT team found that this process could effectively decontaminate water with low concentrations of lead. However, one key obstacle remained, which was how to remove yeast from the water after they absorb the lead.

In a serendipitous coincidence, Stathatou and Athanasiou happened to present their research at the AIChE Annual Meeting in Boston in 2021, where Gokhale, a student in Doyle’s lab, was presenting his own research on using hydrogels to capture micropollutants in water. The two sets of researchers decided to join forces and explore whether the yeast-based strategy could be easier to scale up if the yeast were encapsulated in hydrogels developed by Gokhale and Doyle.

“What we decided to do was make these hollow capsules — something like a multivitamin pill, but instead of filling them up with vitamins, we fill them up with yeast cells,” Gokhale says. “These capsules are porous, so the water can go into the capsules and the yeast are able to bind all of that lead, but the yeast themselves can’t escape into the water.”

The capsules are made from a polymer called polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is widely used in medical applications. To form the capsules, the researchers suspend freeze-dried yeast in water, then mix them with the polymer subunits. When UV light is shone on the mixture, the polymers link together to form capsules with yeast trapped inside.

Each capsule is about half a millimeter in diameter. Because the hydrogels are very thin and porous, water can easily pass through and encounter the yeast inside, while the yeast remain trapped.

In this study, the researchers showed that the encapsulated yeast could remove trace lead from water just as rapidly as the unencapsulated yeast from Stathatou and Athanasiou’s original 2021 study.

Scaling up

Led by Athanasiou, the researchers tested the mechanical stability of the hydrogel capsules and found that the capsules and the yeast inside can withstand forces similar to those generated by water running from a faucet. They also calculated that the yeast-laden capsules should be able to withstand forces generated by flows in water treatment plants serving several hundred residences.

“Lack of mechanical robustness is a common cause of failure of previous attempts to scale-up biosorption using immobilized cells; in our work we wanted to make sure that this aspect is thoroughly addressed from the very beginning to ensure scalability,” Athanasiou says.

After assessing the mechanical robustness of the yeast-laden capsules, the researchers constructed a proof-of-concept packed-bed biofilter, capable of treating trace lead-contaminated water and meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking water guidelines while operating continuously for 12 days.

This process would likely consume less energy than existing physicochemical processes for removing trace inorganic compounds from water, such as precipitation and membrane filtration, the researchers say.

This approach, rooted in circular economy principles, could minimize waste and environmental impact while also fostering economic opportunities within local communities. Although numerous lead contamination incidents have been reported in various locations in the United States, this approach could have an especially significant impact in low-income areas that have historically faced environmental pollution and limited access to clean water, and may not be able to afford other ways to remediate it, the researchers say.

“We think that there’s an interesting environmental justice aspect to this, especially when you start with something as low-cost and sustainable as yeast, which is essentially available anywhere,” Gokhale says.

The researchers are now exploring strategies for recycling and replacing the yeast once they’re used up, and trying to calculate how often that will need to occur. They also hope to investigate whether they could use feedstocks derived from biomass to make the hydrogels, instead of fossil-fuel-based polymers, and whether the yeast can be used to capture other types of contaminants.

“Moving forward, this is a technology that can be evolved to target other trace contaminants of emerging concern, such as PFAS or even microplastics,” Stathatou says. “We really view this as an example with a lot of potential applications in the future.”

The research was funded by the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions, the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), and the Renewable Bioproducts Institute at Georgia Tech.

Newly discovered Earth-sized planet may lack an atmosphere

Circling a cold, Jupiter-sized star, the new world could offer an unobstructed view of its surface composition and history.

Astronomers at MIT, the University of Liège, and elsewhere have discovered a new planet orbiting a small cold star, a mere 55 light years away. The nearby planet is similar to Earth in its size and rocky composition, though that’s where the similarities end. Because this new world is likely missing an atmosphere.

In a paper appearing today in Nature Astronomy, the researchers confirm the detection of SPECULOOS-3b, an Earth-sized, likely airless planet that the team discovered using a network of telescopes as part of the SPECULOOS (Search for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project.

The new planet orbits a nearby ultracool dwarf — a type of star that is smaller and colder than the sun. Ultracool dwarf stars are thought to be the most common type of star in our galaxy, though they are also the faintest, making them difficult to spot in the night sky.

The ultracool dwarf that hosts the new planet is about one-tenth the size of, and 1,000 times dimmer than, the sun. The star is more similar in size to Jupiter and is twice as cold as the sun. Nevertheless, the dwarf star radiates an enormous amount of energy onto the planet’s surface due to the planet’s extremely close proximity: SPECULOOS-3b circles its star in just 17 hours. One year on the new planet, then, is shorter than one day on Earth.

Because it is so close to its star, the planet is blasted with 16 times more radiation per second compared to what the Earth receives from the sun. The team believes that such intense and relentless exposure has likely vaporized any atmosphere that the planet once held, leaving it an airless, exposed, blistering ball of rock.

If the planet lacks an atmosphere, scientists might soon be able to zero in on exactly what type of rocks are on its surface and even what sort of geological processes shaped its landscape, such as whether the planet’s crust experienced magma oceans, volcanic activity, and plate tectonics in its past.

“SPECULOOS-3b is the first planet for which we can consider moving toward constraining surface properties of planets beyond the solar system,” says study co-author Julien de Wit, associate professor of planetary sciences at MIT. “With this world, we could basically start doing exoplanetary geology. How cool is that?”

The study’s MIT co-authors include research scientists Benjamin Rackham and Artem Burdanov, along with lead author Michel Gillon of the University of Liège and colleagues from collaborating institutions and observatories around the world.

Lining up

Astronomers observed the first inklings of the new planet in 2021, with observations taken by SPECULOOS — a network of six robotic, 1-meter telescopes (four in the Southern Hemisphere, and two in the Northern Hemisphere) that continuously observe the sky for signs of planets orbiting around ultracool dwarf stars. SPECULOOS is the parent project of the TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope-South) survey, which discovered seven terrestrial planets — several potentially habitable — around a small cold star named TRAPPIST-1.

SPECULOOS aims to observe about 1,600 nearby ultracool dwarf stars. As these stars are small, any planets that orbit and cross in front of them should momentarily block their light, by a more noticeable amount compared to planets that orbit around larger, brighter stars. Ultracool dwarf stars, then, could give astronomers a better view of any planets that they host.

In 2021, a telescope in SPECULOOS’ network picked up some inconclusive signs of a transit, in front of one ultracool dwarf star about 55 light years away. Then in 2022, a close monitoring with MIT’s Artemis telescope changed the game.

“While there were structures in the 2021 data that didn’t look convincing, the 2022 Artemis data really got our attention,” recalls MIT’s Artem Burdanov, who manages the SPECULOOS Northern Observatory. “We started to analyze one clear transit-like signal in the Artemis data, quickly decided to launch a campaign around this star, and then things just started lining up.”

Robotic “SuperLimbs” could help moonwalkers recover from falls

A new MIT system could help astronauts conserve energy and extend missions on the lunar surface.

Need a moment of levity? Try watching videos of astronauts falling on the moon. NASA’s outtakes of Apollo astronauts tripping and stumbling as they bounce in slow motion are delightfully relatable.

For MIT engineers, the lunar bloopers also highlight an opportunity to innovate.

“Astronauts are physically very capable, but they can struggle on the moon, where gravity is one-sixth that of Earth’s but their inertia is still the same. Furthermore, wearing a spacesuit is a significant burden and can constrict their movements,” says Harry Asada, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “We want to provide a safe way for astronauts to get back on their feet if they fall.”

Asada and his colleagues are designing a pair of wearable robotic limbs that can physically support an astronaut and lift them back on their feet after a fall. The system, which the researchers have dubbed Supernumerary Robotic Limbs or “SuperLimbs” is designed to extend from a backpack, which would also carry the astronaut’s life support system, along with the controller and motors to power the limbs.

The researchers have built a physical prototype, as well as a control system to direct the limbs, based on feedback from the astronaut using it. The team tested a preliminary version on healthy subjects who also volunteered to wear a constrictive garment similar to an astronaut’s spacesuit. When the volunteers attempted to get up from a sitting or lying position, they did so with less effort when assisted by SuperLimbs, compared to when they had to recover on their own.

The MIT team envisions that SuperLimbs can physically assist astronauts after a fall and, in the process, help them conserve their energy for other essential tasks. The design could prove especially useful in the coming years, with the launch of NASA’s Artemis mission, which plans to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. Unlike the largely exploratory mission of Apollo, Artemis astronauts will endeavor to build the first permanent moon base — a physically demanding task that will require multiple extended extravehicular activities (EVAs).

“During the Apollo era, when astronauts would fall, 80 percent of the time it was when they were doing excavation or some sort of job with a tool,” says team member and MIT doctoral student Erik Ballesteros. “The Artemis missions will really focus on construction and excavation, so the risk of falling is much higher. We think that SuperLimbs can help them recover so they can be more productive, and extend their EVAs.”

Asada, Ballesteros, and their colleagues will present their design and study this week at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Their co-authors include MIT postdoc Sang-Yoep Lee and Kalind Carpenter of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Taking a stand

The team’s design is the latest application of SuperLimbs, which Asada first developed about a decade ago and has since adapted for a range of applications, including assisting workers in aircraft manufacturing, construction, and ship building.

Most recently, Asada and Ballesteros wondered whether SuperLimbs might assist astronauts, particularly as NASA plans to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon.

“In communications with NASA, we learned that this issue of falling on the moon is a serious risk,” Asada says. “We realized that we could make some modifications to our design to help astronauts recover from falls and carry on with their work.”

The team first took a step back, to study the ways in which humans naturally recover from a fall. In their new study, they asked several healthy volunteers to attempt to stand upright after lying on their side, front, and back.

The researchers then looked at how the volunteers’ attempts to stand changed when their movements were constricted, similar to the way astronauts’ movements are limited by the bulk of their spacesuits. The team built a suit to mimic the stiffness of traditional spacesuits, and had volunteers don the suit before again attempting to stand up from various fallen positions. The volunteers’ sequence of movements was similar, though required much more effort compared to their unencumbered attempts.

The team mapped the movements of each volunteer as they stood up, and found that they each carried out a common sequence of motions, moving from one pose, or “waypoint,” to the next, in a predictable order.

“Those ergonomic experiments helped us to model in a straightforward way, how a human stands up,” Ballesteros says. “We could postulate that about 80 percent of humans stand up in a similar way. Then we designed a controller around that trajectory.”

Helping hand

The team developed software to generate a trajectory for a robot, following a sequence that would help support a human and lift them back on their feet. They applied the controller to a heavy, fixed robotic arm, which they attached to a large backpack. The researchers then attached the backpack to the bulky suit and helped volunteers back into the suit. They asked the volunteers to again lie on their back, front, or side, and then had them attempt to stand as the robot sensed the person’s movements and adapted to help them to their feet.

Overall, the volunteers were able to stand stably with much less effort when assisted by the robot, compared to when they tried to stand alone while wearing the bulky suit.

“It feels kind of like an extra force moving with you,” says Ballesteros, who also tried out the suit and arm assist. “Imagine wearing a backpack and someone grabs the top and sort of pulls you up. Over time, it becomes sort of natural.”

The experiments confirmed that the control system can successfully direct a robot to help a person stand back up after a fall. The researchers plan to pair the control system with their latest version of SuperLimbs, which comprises two multijointed robotic arms that can extend out from a backpack. The backpack would also contain the robot’s battery and motors, along with an astronaut’s ventilation system.

“We designed these robotic arms based on an AI search and design optimization, to look for designs of classic robot manipulators with certain engineering constraints,” Ballesteros says. “We filtered through many designs and looked for the design that consumes the least amount of energy to lift a person up. This version of SuperLimbs is the product of that process.”

Over the summer, Ballesteros will build out the full SuperLimbs system at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he plans to streamline the design and minimize the weight of its parts and motors using advanced, lightweight materials. Then, he hopes to pair the limbs with astronaut suits, and test them in low-gravity simulators, with the goal of someday assisting astronauts on future missions to the moon and Mars.

“Wearing a spacesuit can be a physical burden,” Asada notes. “Robotic systems can help ease that burden, and help astronauts be more productive during their missions.”

This research was supported, in part, by NASA.

Five MIT faculty elected to the National Academy of Sciences for 2024

Guoping Feng, Piotr Indyk, Daniel Kleitman, Daniela Rus, Senthil Todadri, and nine alumni are recognized by their peers for their outstanding contributions to research.

The National Academy of Sciences has elected 120 members and 24 international members, including five faculty members from MIT. Guoping Feng, Piotr Indyk, Daniel J. Kleitman, Daniela Rus, and Senthil Todadri were elected in recognition of their “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” Membership to the National Academy of Sciences is one of the highest honors a scientist can receive in their career.

Among the new members added this year are also nine MIT alumni, including Zvi Bern ’82; Harold Hwang ’93, SM ’93; Leonard Kleinrock SM ’59, PhD ’63; Jeffrey C. Lagarias ’71, SM ’72, PhD ’74; Ann Pearson PhD ’00; Robin Pemantle PhD ’88; Jonas C. Peters PhD ’98; Lynn Talley PhD ’82; and Peter T. Wolczanski ’76. Those elected this year bring the total number of active members to 2,617, with 537 international members.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

Guoping Feng

Guoping Feng is the James W. (1963) and Patricia T. Poitras Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He is also associate director and investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and director of the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research.

His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate the development and function of synapses, the places in the brain where neurons connect and communicate. He’s interested in how defects in the synapses can contribute to psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. By understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind these disorders, he’s producing foundational knowledge that may guide the development of new treatments for conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia.

Feng received his medical training at Zhejiang University Medical School in Hangzhou, China, and his PhD in molecular genetics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He did his postdoctoral training at Washington University at St. Louis and was on the faculty at Duke University School of Medicine before coming to MIT in 2010. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023.

Piotr Indyk

Piotr Indyk is the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He received his magister degree from the University of Warsaw and his PhD from Stanford University before coming to MIT in 2000.

Indyk’s research focuses on building efficient, sublinear, and streaming algorithms. He’s developed, for example, algorithms that can use limited time and space to navigate massive data streams, that can separate signals into individual frequencies faster than other methods, and can address the “nearest neighbor” problem by finding highly similar data points without needing to scan an entire database. His work has applications on everything from machine learning to data mining.

He has been named a Simons Investigator and a fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery. In 2023, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Daniel J. Kleitman

Daniel Kleitman, a professor emeritus of applied mathematics, has been at MIT since 1966. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his master's and PhD in physics from Harvard University before doing postdoctoral work at Harvard and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Kleitman’s research interests include operations research, genomics, graph theory, and combinatorics, the area of math concerned with counting. He was actually a professor of physics at Brandeis University before changing his field to math, encouraged by the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős. In fact, Kleitman has the rare distinction of having an Erdős number of just one. The number is a measure of the “collaborative distance” between a mathematician and Erdős in terms of authorship of papers, and studies have shown that leading mathematicians have particularly low numbers.

He’s a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has made important contributions to the MIT community throughout his career. He was head of the Department of Mathematics and served on a number of committees, including the Applied Mathematics Committee. He also helped create web-based technology and an online textbook for several of the department’s core undergraduate courses. He was even a math advisor for the MIT-based film “Good Will Hunting.”

Daniela Rus

Daniela Rus, the Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). She also serves as director of the Toyota-CSAIL Joint Research Center.

Her research on robotics, artificial intelligence, and data science is geared toward understanding the science and engineering of autonomy. Her ultimate goal is to create a future where machines are seamlessly integrated into daily life to support people with cognitive and physical tasks, and deployed in way that ensures they benefit humanity. She’s working to increase the ability of machines to reason, learn, and adapt to complex tasks in human-centered environments with applications for agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, construction, and other industries. She’s also interested in creating new tools for designing and fabricating robots and in improving the interfaces between robots and people, and she’s done collaborative projects at the intersection of technology and artistic performance.

Rus received her undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa and her PhD in computer science from Cornell University. She was a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College before coming to MIT in 2004. She is part of the Class of 2002 MacArthur Fellows; was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and is a fellow of the Association for Computer Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

Senthil Todadri

Senthil Todadri, a professor of physics, came to MIT in 2001. He received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur and his PhD from Yale University before working as a postdoc at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California.

Todadri’s research focuses on condensed matter theory. He’s interested in novel phases and phase transitions of quantum matter that expand beyond existing paradigms. Combining modeling experiments and abstract methods, he’s working to develop a theoretical framework for describing the physics of these systems. Much of that work involves understanding the phenomena that arise because of impurities or strong interactions between electrons in solids that don’t conform with conventional physical theories. He also pioneered the theory of deconfined quantum criticality, which describes a class of phase transitions, and he discovered the dualities of quantum field theories in two dimensional superconducting states, which has important applications to many problems in the field.

Todadri has been named a Simons Investigator, a Sloan Research Fellow, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2023, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Professor Emeritus Jerome Connor, pioneer in structural mechanics, dies at 91

Longtime influential professor and expert in structural engineering remembered for his mentorship and contributions to the field.

Jerome J. Connor ’53, SM ’54, ScD ’59, professor emeritus in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a member of the MIT faculty since 1959, died on March 31. He was 91 years old.

Over a remarkable career spanning nearly six decades at the Institute, Connor was a prolific scholar and highly respected mentor to several generations of students, many of whom now hold notable positions in academia and industry around the world. His earliest research contributed to the pioneering numerical methods widely used today in structural engineering, such as the finite element method, and was also an early pioneer of the boundary element method. In addition, Connor was the lead proponent of the technical discipline referred to as motion-based design, which is based on limiting displacements against earthquake effects by means of structural control. His leadership role in the application of numerical methods to structural engineering led to significant advances in the numerical simulation of structural and material behavior.

“He was well-known for his intellectual leadership, exceptional dedication to the department, and extraordinary mentoring of students, faculty, and staff,” says Oral Buyukozturk, the George Macomber Professor in Construction Management, who first met Connor when he was an adjunct associate professor at Brown University and was invited to lecture at MIT.

Connor led the department in new teaching and research directions, advocating the importance of materials research and of design education in the civil engineering curriculum. For over 20 years, Connor led the high-performance structures track in the Master of Engineering (MEng) program as faculty advisor. In addition to classroom teaching, he helped MEng students think outside of the box in their design of skyscrapers and bridges. He often accompanied students on weeklong national and international visits to prominent construction sites during MIT’s Independent Activities Period. With his wife Barbara and their family, he regularly entertained students at their summer home on Cape Cod. His dedication and development of the program contributed to its success and recognition at peer institutions as one of the best professional MEng programs in the nation — eagerly sought out by students in structural engineering.

“Connor was truly devoted to our students and he was passionate about the field of structural design. He introduced a number of pedagogical innovations that we still use today, such as semester-long design projects as well as on-site visits to innovative, signature projects together with their design engineers,” says John Ochsendorf, professor of architecture and civil and environmental engineering, who taught with Connor for 10 years and currently leads the structural mechanics and design track of the MEng program.

Adoring mentor and visionary

Connor was a beloved mentor, and from 2007 to 2014 organized and managed MIT undergraduates’ participation in the National Steel Bridge competition. Buyukozturk recalls how “he was always coming up with new and innovative concepts for the competition; several times his team was selected as top in the nation and year after year his students were placed in the top three.”

MIT professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering Eduardo Kausel, who was a graduate student of Connor’s and then later a colleague, remembers him fondly as an incredible teacher and colleague.

"Jerry was an excellent teacher and I enjoyed taking his advanced computational mechanics class. He was brilliant in computational mechanics and excelled in everything he did,” says Kausel. “As a colleague, he was always kind and had a gentle demeanor; I never saw him getting angry or voicing harsh words. He also had this fantastic ability to mentor students who would go on not only to become very successful as outstanding professionals, but also very wealthy,” Kausel says.

Kausel also remembers Connor’s uncanny ability to look into the future and know where the next big trend occurred in the field. Connor was one of the first researchers to work on the boundary element method in structural engineering. The method is effective in understanding how fluid interacts with structures to ensure its stability, safety, and efficiency. Connor also experimented with artificial intelligence well before it became popular and played a significant role in leading a team of MIT researchers in the development of the STRUDL computer code, which became a highly influential software package for structural analysis and design.

In addition to structural mechanics, he pursued computational fluid mechanics, helping develop early finite element analysis in both the time and frequency domains. His models had applications to offshore engineering, including tidal circulation, and the behavior and design of marine structures for resiliency in withstanding extreme events, including those related to climate change.

Buyukozturk credits the way the department has evolved into what it is today because of Connor’s direction and vision. “Priorities for research change over time, but Jerry set forth a basic roadmap for prioritizing research in computational mechanics, engineering design, and the development of sustainable materials that cut across the entire department in a wider scope,” he says. 

Influential wide-ranging career

Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, on May 19, 1932, Connor attended Boston College High School and received his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees in civil engineering from MIT. Before he returned to MIT to become a faculty member, he went to work at the Army Materials Lab in Watertown, designing missile systems during the Vietnam War. While on sabbatical in 1983, he served as the dean of the Department of Engineering at Northeastern University and the director of the MIT Sea Grant Program.

Over the span of his career, Connor’s research in structural mechanics attracted the interest of the international community. He spoke at conferences around the world and consulted on many engineering projects, including the Hancock Tower glass crisis, the Twin Towers in New York, and the Parthenon in Greece, among many others. His papers were cited and published among the top engineering journals, and he was honored with numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Thessaloniki in Greece. He authored many books on structural engineering, the boundary element method, motion-based design, and computational fluid mechanics. His books have been used in doctoral programs at universities around the world.  

Connor led a rich and adventurous life outside of his academic one. Known as “Jerry” to his friends and colleagues, Connor traveled to more than 25 different countries around the world with his wife, Barbara, but was especially fond of the Provence in southern France. Some of his memorable adventures included taking the family by Volkswagen bus throughout Europe during the holiday periods and, during a sabbatical from MIT in 1970, sailing to England on the Queen Elizabeth 2 with his then-young children.

Connor is survived by his wife Barbara, and by his six children: Patricia and her husband Richard, Stephen and his wife Madeline, Brian and his wife Michele, Michael and his wife Christine, Mark and his wife Kathy, Tracey and her husband Maurice, and 14 grandchildren. Gifts in Connor’s memory can be made to Boston College High School.

MIT’s Master of Applied Science in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy program adds a public policy track

Students have new avenues for learning and research on the most effective approaches to fighting poverty in the US and other high-income countries.

MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Department of Economics have announced an expansion of their jointly administered Master of Applied Science in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP) program. This expansion adds a new public policy track to complement the existing international development track, opening up new avenues for student learning and research. 

Designed to tackle poverty alleviation and other pressing policy challenges in the United States and other high-income countries, the curriculum of the new track spans a diverse set of issues, from domestic concerns like minimum wage and consumer welfare to global matters including trade, climate change, and immigration. Applications for the public policy track will open this fall, with the inaugural cohort set to arrive on MIT’s campus in spring 2026.

The DEDP program, led by MIT professors and Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, along with professors Sara Fisher Ellison and Benjamin Olken, was established with the mission of equipping diverse cohorts of talented professionals with the knowledge and skills to tackle poverty using evidence-based approaches. The new master’s degree track will support this mission while also underscoring the program’s commitment to addressing a broad array of critical challenges in the fight against poverty worldwide.

"The DEDP program has proven successful on many dimensions, and we are enthusiastic about leveraging its successes to address a broader set of social challenges,” says Ellison, a faculty lead for the program. “The public policy track will enable us to apply evidence-based methodology to poverty alleviation and other related issues in the context of high-income countries, as well. Given increasing levels of wealth and income inequality in these countries, we feel that the timing is opportune and the need is great."

The DEDP program distinguishes itself with an innovative admissions model that prioritizes demonstrated ability and motivation over traditional credentials, such as standardized tests and recommendation letters. To be eligible to apply to the master’s program, candidates must have earned a DEDP MicroMasters credential by passing five of the DEDP online courses. The courses are completely free to audit. Those who wish to earn a course certificate can pay a fee, which varies by the learner’s ability to pay, to take the proctored exam. While applications are reviewed holistically, performance in these classes is the primary factor in admissions decisions.

This approach democratizes access to higher education, enabling students from typically underrepresented backgrounds to demonstrate their potential for success. Notably, the program has welcomed many students from nontraditional backgrounds, such as a student who enrolled directly from high school (and who is now a second-year PhD student in economics at MIT), reflecting the ambition of its faculty directors to make higher education more accessible.

Sofia Martinez, a graduate of the class of 2023 and now co-founder of Learning Alliance, says, "Without the MicroMasters paving the way, applying to MIT or any similar institution would have been unthinkable for us. Initially, my aim in taking the online courses wasn't to pursue the residential program; it was only after witnessing my own progress that I realized the possibility wasn't so distant after all. This sentiment resonates with many in our cohort, which is truly humbling.”

Since its launch in 2020, the DEDP master’s program has conferred degrees to 87 students from 44 countries, showcasing its global reach and the success of its admissions model. Upon arriving on campus, students embark on an accelerated master's program. They complete a full course load in the spring, followed by a capstone project in the summer, applying the theoretical knowledge and practical skills gained through the program at research and policy organizations.

Astronomers spot a giant planet that is as light as cotton candy

The new world is the second-lightest planet discovered to date.

Astronomers at MIT, the University of Liège in Belgium, and elsewhere have discovered a huge, fluffy oddball of a planet orbiting a distant star in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery, reported today in the journal Nature Astronomy, is a promising key to the mystery of how such giant, super-light planets form.

The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density. The scientists found that the gas giant is 50 percent bigger than Jupiter, and about a tenth as dense — an extremely low density, comparable to that of cotton candy.

WASP-193b is the second lightest planet discovered to date, after the smaller, Neptune-like world, Kepler 51d. The new planet’s much larger size, combined with its super-light density, make WASP-193b something of an oddity among the more than 5,400 planets discovered to date.

“To find these giant objects with such a small density is really, really rare,” says lead study author and MIT postdoc Khalid Barkaoui. “There’s a class of planets called puffy Jupiters, and it’s been a mystery for 15 years now as to what they are. And this is an extreme case of that class.”

“We don’t know where to put this planet in all the formation theories we have right now, because it’s an outlier of all of them,” adds co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in Spain. “We cannot explain how this planet was formed, based on classical evolution models. Looking more closely at its atmosphere will allow us to obtain an evolutionary path of this planet.”

The study’s MIT co-authors include Julien de Wit, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and MIT postdoc Artem Burdanov, along with collaborators from multiple institutions across Europe.

“An interesting twist”

The new planet was initially spotted by the Wide Angle Search for Planets, or WASP — an international collaboration of academic institutions that together operate two robotic observatories, one in the northern hemisphere and the other in the south. Each observatory uses an array of wide-angle cameras to measure the brightness of thousands of individual stars across the entire sky.

In surveys taken between 2006 and 2008, and again from 2011 to 2012, the WASP-South observatory detected periodic transits, or dips in light, from WASP-193 — a bright, nearby, sun-like star located 1,232 light years from Earth. Astronomers determined that the star’s periodic dips in brightness were consistent with a planet circling the star and blocking its light every 6.25 days. The scientists measured the total amount of light the planet blocked with each transit, which gave them an estimate of the planet’s giant, super-Jupiter size.

The astronomers then looked to pin down the planet’s mass — a measure that would then reveal its density and potentially also clues to its composition. To get a mass estimate, astronomers typically employ radial velocity, a technique in which scientists analyze a star’s spectrum, or various wavelengths of light, as a planet circles the star. A star’s spectrum can be shifted in specific ways depending on whatever is pulling on the star, such as an orbiting planet. The more massive a planet is, and the closer it is to its star, the more its spectrum can shift — a distortion that can give scientists an idea of a planet’s mass.

For WASP-193 b, astronomers obtained additional high-resolution spectra of the star taken by various ground-based telescopes, and attempted to employ radial velocity to calculate the planet’s mass. But they kept coming up empty — precisely because, as it turned out, the planet was far too light to have any detectable pull on its star.

“Typically, big planets are pretty easy to detect because they are usually massive, and lead to a big pull on their star,” de Wit explains. “But what was tricky about this planet was, even though it’s big — huge — its mass and density are so low that it was actually very difficult to detect with just the radial velocity technique. It was an interesting twist.”

“[WASP-193b] is so very light that it took four years to gather data and show that there is a mass signal, but it’s really, really tiny,” Barkaoui says.

“We were initially getting extremely low densities, which were very difficult to believe in the beginning,” Pozuelos adds. “We repeated the process of all the data analysis several times to make sure this was the real density of the planet because this was super rare.”

An inflated world

In the end, the team confirmed that the planet was indeed extremely light. Its mass, they calculated, was about 0.14 that of Jupiter. And its density, derived from its mass, came out to about 0.059 grams per cubic centimeter. Jupiter, in contrast, is about 1.33 grams per cubic centimeter; and Earth is a more substantial 5.51 grams per cubic centimeter. Perhaps the material closest in density to the new, puffy planet is cotton candy, which has a density of about 0.05 grams per cubic centimeter.

“The planet is so light that it’s difficult to think of an analogous, solid-state material,” Barkaoui says. “The reason why it’s close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy.”

The researchers suspect that the new planet is made mostly from hydrogen and helium, like most other gas giants in the galaxy. For WASP-193b, these gases likely form a hugely inflated atmosphere that extends tens of thousands of kilometers farther than Jupiter’s own atmosphere. Exactly how a planet can inflate so far while maintaining a super-light density is a question that no existing theory of planetary formation can yet answer.

To get a better picture of the new fluffy world, the team plans to use a technique de Wit previously developed, to first derive certain properties of the planet’s atmosphere, such as its temperature, composition, and pressure at various depths. These characteristics can then be used to precisely work out the planet’s mass. For now, the team sees WASP-193b as an ideal candidate for follow-up study by observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

“The bigger a planet’s atmosphere, the more light can go through,” de Wit says. “So it’s clear that this planet is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters.”

This research was funded, in part, by consortium universities and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council for WASP; the European Research Council; the Wallonia-Brussels Federation; and the Heising-Simons Foundation, Colin and Leslie Masson, and Peter A. Gilman, supporting Artemis and the other SPECULOOS Telescopes.

Scientists develop an affordable sensor for lead contamination

The chip-scale device could provide sensitive detection of lead levels in drinking water, whose toxicity affects 240 million people worldwide.

Engineers at MIT, Nanyang Technological University, and several companies have developed a compact and inexpensive technology for detecting and measuring lead concentrations in water, potentially enabling a significant advance in tackling this persistent global health issue.

The World Health Organization estimates that 240 million people worldwide are exposed to drinking water that contains unsafe amounts of toxic lead, which can affect brain development in children, cause birth defects, and produce a variety of neurological, cardiac, and other damaging effects. In the United States alone, an estimated 10 million households still get drinking water delivered through lead pipes.

“It’s an unaddressed public health crisis that leads to over 1 million deaths annually,” says Jia Xu Brian Sia, an MIT postdoc and the senior author of the paper describing the new technology.

But testing for lead in water requires expensive, cumbersome equipment and typically requires days to get results. Or, it uses simple test strips that simply reveal a yes-or-no answer about the presence of lead but no information about its concentration. Current EPA regulations require drinking water to contain no more that 15 parts per billion of lead, a concentration so low it is difficult to detect.

The new system, which could be ready for commercial deployment within two or three years, could detect lead concentrations as low as 1 part per billion, with high accuracy, using a simple chip-based detector housed in a handheld device. The technology gives nearly instant quantitative measurements and requires just a droplet of water.

The findings are described in a paper appearing today in the journal Nature Communications, by Sia, MIT graduate student and lead author Luigi Ranno, Professor Juejun Hu, and 12 others at MIT and other institutions in academia and industry.

The team set out to find a simple detection method based on the use of photonic chips, which use light to perform measurements. The challenging part was finding a way to attach to the photonic chip surface certain ring-shaped molecules known as crown ethers, which can capture specific ions such as lead. After years of effort, they were able to achieve that attachment via a chemical process known as Fischer esterification. “That is one of the essential breakthroughs we have made in this technology,” Sia says.

In testing the new chip, the researchers showed that it can detect lead in water at concentrations as low as one part per billion. At much higher concentrations, which may be relevant for testing environmental contamination such as mine tailings, the accuracy is within 4 percent.

The device works in water with varying levels of acidity, ranging from pH values of 6 to 8, “which covers most environmental samples,” Sia says. They have tested the device with seawater as well as tap water, and verified the accuracy of the measurements.

In order to achieve such levels of accuracy, current testing requires a device called an inductive coupled plasma mass spectrometer. “These setups can be big and expensive,” Sia says. The sample processing can take days and requires experienced technical personnel.

While the new chip system they developed is “the core part of the innovation,” Ranno says, further work will be needed to develop this into an integrated, handheld device for practical use. “For making an actual product, you would need to package it into a usable form factor,” he explains. This would involve having a small chip-based laser coupled to the photonic chip. “It’s a matter of mechanical design, some optical design, some chemistry, and figuring out the supply chain,” he says. While that takes time, he says, the underlying concepts are straightforward.

The system can be adapted to detect other similar contaminants in water, including cadmium, copper, lithium, barium, cesium, and radium, Ranno says. The device could be used with simple cartridges that can be swapped out to detect different elements, each using slightly different crown ethers that can bind to a specific ion.

“There’s this problem that people don’t measure their water enough, especially in the developing countries,” Ranno says. “And that’s because they need to collect the water, prepare the sample, and bring it to these huge instruments that are extremely expensive.” Instead, “having this handheld device, something compact that even untrained personnel can just bring to the source for on-site monitoring, at low costs,” could make regular, ongoing widespread testing feasible.

Hu, who is the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, says, “I’m hoping this will be quickly implemented, so we can benefit human society. This is a good example of a technology coming from a lab innovation where it may actually make a very tangible impact on society, which is of course very fulfilling.”

“If this study can be extended to simultaneous detection of multiple metal elements, especially the presently concerning radioactive elements, its potential would be immense,” says Hou Wang, an associate professor of environmental science and engineering at Hunan University in China, who was not associated with this work.

Wang adds, “This research has engineered a sensor capable of instantaneously detecting lead concentration in water. This can be utilized in real-time to monitor the lead pollution concentration in wastewater discharged from industries such as battery manufacturing and lead smelting, facilitating the establishment of industrial wastewater monitoring systems. I think the innovative aspects and developmental potential of this research are quite commendable.”

Wang Qian, a principal research scientist at the Institute of Materials Research in Singapore, who also was not affiliated with this work, says, “The ability for the pervasive, portable, and quantitative detection of lead has proved to be challenging primarily due to cost concerns. This work demonstrates the potential to do so in a highly integrated form factor and is compatible with large-scale, low-cost manufacturing.”

The team included researchers at MIT, at Nanyang Technological University and Temasek Laboratories in Singapore, at the University of Southampton in the U.K., and at companies Fingate Technologies, in Singapore, and Vulcan Photonics, headquartered in Malaysia. The work used facilities at MIT.nano, the Harvard University Center for Nanoscale Systems, NTU’s Center for Micro- and Nano-Electronics, and the Nanyang Nanofabrication Center.

MIT researchers discover the universe’s oldest stars in our own galactic backyard

Three stars circling the Milky Way’s halo formed 12 to 13 billion years ago.

MIT researchers, including several undergraduate students, have discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they happen to live in our own galactic neighborhood.

The team spotted the stars in the Milky Way’s “halo” — the cloud of stars that envelopes the entire main galactic disk. Based on the team’s analysis, the three stars formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, the time when the very first galaxies were taking shape.

The researchers have coined the stars “SASS,” for Small Accreted Stellar System stars, as they believe each star once belonged to its own small, primitive galaxy that was later absorbed by the larger but still growing Milky Way. Today, the three stars are all that are left of their respective galaxies. They circle the outskirts of the Milky Way, where the team suspects there may be more such ancient stellar survivors.

“These oldest stars should definitely be there, given what we know of galaxy formation,” says MIT professor of physics Anna Frebel. “They are part of our cosmic family tree. And we now have a new way to find them.”

As they uncover similar SASS stars, the researchers hope to use them as analogs of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies, which are thought to be some of the universe’s surviving first galaxies. Such galaxies are still intact today but are too distant and faint for astronomers to study in depth. As SASS stars may have once belonged to similarly primitive dwarf galaxies but are in the Milky Way and as such much closer, they could be an accessible key to understanding the evolution of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies.

“Now we can look for more analogs in the Milky Way, that are much brighter, and study their chemical evolution without having to chase these extremely faint stars,” Frebel says.

She and her colleagues have published their findings today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS). The study’s co-authors are Mohammad Mardini, at Zarqa University, in Jordan; Hillary Andales ’23; and current MIT undergraduates Ananda Santos and Casey Fienberg.

Stellar frontier

The team’s discoveries grew out of a classroom concept. During the 2022 fall semester, Frebel launched a new course, 8.S30 (Observational Stellar Archaeology), in which students learned techniques for analyzing ancient stars and then applied those tools to stars that had never been studied before, to determine their origins.

“While most of our classes are taught from the ground up, this class immediately put us at the frontier of research in astrophysics,” Andales says.

The students worked from star data collected by Frebel over the years from the 6.5-meter Magellan-Clay telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory. She keeps hard copies of the data in a large binder in her office, which the students combed through to look for stars of interest.

In particular, they were searching ancient stars that formed soon after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. At this time, the universe was made mostly of hydrogen and helium and very low abundances of other chemical elements, such as strontium and barium. So, the students looked through Frebel’s binder for stars with spectra, or measurements of starlight, that indicated low abundances of strontium and barium.

Their search narrowed in on three stars that were originally observed by the Magellan telescope between 2013 and 2014. Astronomers never followed up on these particular stars to interpret their spectra and deduce their origins. They were, then, perfect candidates for the students in Frebel’s class.

The students learned how to characterize a star in order to prepare for the analysis of the spectra for each of the three stars. They were able to determine the chemical composition of each one with various stellar models. The intensity of a particular feature in the stellar spectrum, corresponding to a specific wavelength of light, corresponds to a particular abundance of a specific element.

After finalizing their analysis, the students were able to confidently conclude that the three stars did hold very low abundances of strontium, barium, and other elements such as iron, compared to their reference star — our own sun. In fact, one star contained less than 1/10,000 the amount of iron to helium compared to the sun today.

“It took a lot of hours staring at a computer, and a lot of debugging, frantically texting and emailing each other to figure this out,” Santos recalls. “It was a big learning curve, and a special experience.”

“On the run”

The stars’ low chemical abundance did hint that they originally formed 12 to 13 billion years ago. In fact, their low chemical signatures were similar to what astronomers had previously measured for some ancient, ultrafaint dwarf galaxies. Did the team’s stars originate in similar galaxies? And how did they come to be in the Milky Way?

On a hunch, the scientists checked out the stars’ orbital patterns and how they move across the sky. The three stars are in different locations throughout the Milky Way’s halo and are estimated to be about 30,000 light years from Earth. (For reference, the disk of the Milky Way spans 100,000 light years across.)

As they retraced each star’s motion about the galactic center using observations from the Gaia astrometric satellite, the team noticed a curious thing: Relative to most of the stars in the main disk, which move like cars on a racetrack, all three stars seemed to be going the wrong way. In astronomy, this is known as “retrograde motion” and is a tipoff that an object was once “accreted,” or drawn in from elsewhere.

“The only way you can have stars going the wrong way from the rest of the gang is if you threw them in the wrong way,” Frebel says.

The fact that these three stars were orbiting in completely different ways from the rest of the galactic disk and even the halo, combined with the fact that they held low chemical abundances, made a strong case that the stars were indeed ancient and once belonged to older, smaller dwarf galaxies that fell into the Milky Way at random angles and continued their stubborn trajectories billions of years later.

Frebel, curious as to whether retrograde motion was a feature of other ancient stars in the halo that astronomers previously analyzed, looked through the scientific literature and found 65 other stars, also with low strontium and barium abundances, that appeared to also be going against the galactic flow.

“Interestingly they’re all quite fast — hundreds of kilometers per second, going the wrong way,” Frebel says. “They’re on the run! We don’t know why that’s the case, but it was the piece to the puzzle that we needed, and that I didn’t quite anticipate when we started.”

The team is eager to search out other ancient SASS stars, and they now have a relatively simple recipe to do so: First, look for stars with low chemical abundances, and then track their orbital patterns for signs of retrograde motion. Of the more than 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, they anticipate that the method will turn up a small but significant number of the universe’s oldest stars.

Frebel plans to relaunch the class this fall, and looks back at that first course, and the three students who took their results through to publication, with admiration and gratitude.

“It’s been awesome to work with three women undergrads. That’s a first for me,” she says. “It’s really an example of the MIT way. We do. And whoever says, ‘I want to participate,’ they can do that, and good things happen.”

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Four from MIT named 2024 Knight-Hennessy Scholars

The fellowship funds graduate studies at Stanford University.

MIT senior Owen Dugan, graduate student Vittorio Colicci ’22, predoctoral research fellow Carine You ’22, and recent alumna Carina Letong Hong ’22 are recipients of this year’s Knight-Hennessy Scholarships. The competitive fellowship, now in its seventh year, funds up to three years of graduate studies in any field at Stanford University. To date, 22 MIT students and alumni have been awarded Knight-Hennessy Scholarships.

“We are excited for these students to continue their education at Stanford with the generous support of the Knight Hennessy Scholarship,” says Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development. “They have all demonstrated extraordinary dedication, intellect, and leadership, and this opportunity will allow them to further hone their skills to make real-world change.”

Vittorio Colicci ’22

Vittorio Colicci, from Trumbull, Connecticut, graduated from MIT in May 2022 with a BS in aerospace engineering and physics. He will receive his master’s degree in planetary sciences this spring. At Stanford, Colicci will pursue a PhD in earth and planetary sciences at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He hopes to investigate how surface processes on Earth and Mars have evolved through time alongside changes in habitability. Colicci has worked largely on spacecraft engineering projects, developing a monodisperse silica ceramic for electrospray thrusters and fabricating high-energy diffraction gratings for space telescopes. As a Presidential Graduate Fellow at MIT, he examined the influence of root geometry on soil cohesion for early terrestrial plants using 3D-printed reconstructions. Outside of research, Colicci served as co-director of TEDxMIT and propulsion lead for the MIT Rocket Team. He is also passionate about STEM engagement and outreach, having taught educational workshops in Zambia and India.

Owen Dugan

Owen Dugan, from Sleepy Hollow, New York, is a senior majoring in physics. As a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, he will pursue a PhD in computer science at the Stanford School of Engineering. Dugan aspires to combine artificial intelligence and physics, developing AI that enables breakthroughs in physics and using physics techniques to design more capable and safe AI systems. He has collaborated with researchers from Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and DeepMind, and has presented his first-author research at venues including the International Conference on Machine Learning, the MIT Mechanistic Interpretability Conference, and the American Physical Society March Meeting. Among other awards, Dugan is a Hertz Finalist, a U.S. Presidential Scholar, an MIT Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awardee, a Research Science Institute Scholar, and a Neo Scholar. He is also a co-founder of VeriLens, a funded startup enabling trust on the internet by cryptographically verifying digital media.

Carina Letong Hong ’22

Carina Letong Hong, from Canton, China, is currently pursuing a JD/PhD in mathematics at Stanford. A first-generation college student, Hong graduated from MIT in May 2022 with a double major in mathematics and physics and was inducted into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. She then earned a neuroscience master’s degree with dissertation distinctions from the University of Oxford, where she conducted artificial intelligence and machine learning research at Sainsbury Wellcome Center’s Gatsby Unit. At Stanford Law School, Hong provides legal aid to low-income workers and uses economic analysis to push for law enforcement reform. She has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals, served as an expert referee for journals and conferences, and spoken at summits in the United States, Germany, France, the U.K., and China. She was the recipient of the AMS-MAA-SIAM Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research, the highest honor for an undergraduate in mathematics in North America; the AWM Alice T. Schafer Prize for Mathematical Excellence, given annually to an undergraduate woman in the United States; the Maryam Mirzakhani Fellowship; and a Rhodes Scholarship.

Carine You ’22

Carine You, from San Diego, California, graduated from MIT in May 2022 with bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and in mathematics. Since graduating, You has worked as a predoctoral research assistant with Professor Amy Finkelstein in the MIT Department of Economics, where she has studied the quality of Medicare nursing home care and the targeting of medical screening technologies. This fall, You will embark on a PhD in economic analysis and policy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She wishes to address pressing issues in environmental and health-care markets, with a particular focus on economic efficiency and equity. You previously developed audio signal processing algorithms at Bose, refined mechanistic models to inform respiratory monitoring at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, and analyzed corruption in developmental projects in India at the World Bank. Through Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow, she taught computer science to Israeli and Palestinian students in Jerusalem and spearheaded an online pilot expansion for the organization. At MIT, she was named a Burchard Scholar.

Taking RNAi from interesting science to impactful new treatments

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, founded by MIT professors and former postdocs, has turned the promise of RNAi research into a new class of powerful therapies.

There are many hurdles to clear before a research discovery becomes a life-changing treatment for patients. That’s especially true when the treatments being developed represent an entirely new class of medicines. But overcoming those obstacles can revolutionize our ability to treat diseases.

Few companies exemplify that process better than Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. Alnylam was founded by a group of MIT-affiliated researchers who believed in the promise of a technology — RNA interference, or RNAi.

The researchers had done foundational work to understand how RNAi, which is a naturally occurring process, works to silence genes through the degradation of messenger RNA. But it was their decision to found Alnylam in 2002 that attracted the funding and expertise necessary to turn their discoveries into a new class of medicines. Since that decision, Alnylam has made remarkable progress taking RNAi from an interesting scientific discovery to an impactful new treatment pathway.

Today Alnylam has five medicines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (one Alnylam-discovered RNAi therapeutic is licensed to Novartis) and a rapidly expanding clinical pipeline. The company’s approved medicines are for debilitating, sometimes fatal conditions that many patients have grappled with for decades with few other options.

The company estimates its treatments helped more than 5,000 patients in 2023 alone. Behind that number are patient stories that illustrate how Alnylam has changed lives. A mother of three says Alnylam’s treatments helped her take back control of her life after being bed-ridden with attacks associated with the rare genetic disease acute intermittent porphyria (AIP). Another patient reported that one of the company’s treatments helped her attend her daughter’s wedding. A third patient, who had left college due to frequent AIP attacks, was able to return to school.

These days Alnylam is not the only company developing RNAi-based medicines. But it is still a pioneer in the field, and the company’s founders — MIT Institute Professor Phil Sharp, Professor David Bartel, Professor Emeritus Paul Schimmel, and former MIT postdocs Thomas Tuschl and Phillip Zamore — see Alnylam as a champion for the field more broadly.

“Alnylam has published more than 250 scientific papers over 20 years,” says Sharp, who currently serves as chair of Alnylam’s scientific advisory board. “Not only did we do the science, not only did we translate it to benefit patients, but we also described every step. We established this as a modality to treat patients, and I’m very proud of that record.”

Pioneering RNAi development

MIT’s involvement in RNAi dates back to its discovery. Before Andrew Fire PhD ’83 shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of RNAi in 1998, he worked on understanding how DNA was transcribed into RNA, as a graduate student in Sharp’s lab.

After leaving MIT, Fire and collaborators showed that double-stranded RNA could be used to silence specific genes in worms. But the biochemical mechanisms that allowed double-stranded RNA to work were unknown until MIT professors Sharp, Bartel, and Ruth Lehmann, along with Zamore and Tuschl, published foundational papers explaining the process. The researchers developed a system for studying RNAi and showed how RNAi can be controlled using different genetic sequences. Soon after Tuschl left MIT, he showed that a similar process could also be used to silence specific genes in human cells, opening up a new frontier in studying genes and ultimately treating diseases.

“Tom showed you could synthesize these small RNAs, transfect them into cells, and get a very specific knockdown of the gene that corresponded to that the small RNAs,” Bartel explains. “That discovery transformed biological research. The ability to specifically knockdown a mammalian gene was huge. You could suddenly study the function of any gene you were interested in by knocking it down and seeing what happens. … The research community immediately started using that approach to study the function of their favorite genes in mammalian cells.”

Beyond illuminating gene function, another application came to mind.

“Because almost all diseases are related to genes, could we take these small RNAs and silence genes to treat patients?” Sharp remembers wondering.

To answer the question, the researchers founded Alnylam in 2002. (They recruited Schimmel, a biotech veteran, around the same time.) But there was a lot of work to be done before the technology could be tried in patients. The main challenge was getting RNAi into the cytoplasm of the patients’ cells.

“Through work in Dave Bartel and Phil Sharp's lab, among others, it became evident that to make RNAi into therapies, there were three problems to solve: delivery, delivery, and delivery,” says Alnylam Chief Scientific Officer Kevin Fitzgerald, who has been with the company since 2005.

Early on, Alnylam collaborated with MIT drug delivery expert and Institute Professor Bob Langer. Eventually, Alnylam developed the first lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that could be used to encase RNA and deliver it into patient cells. LNPs were later used in the mRNA vaccines for Covid-19.

“Alnylam has invested over 20 years and more than $4 billion in RNAi to develop these new therapeutics,” Sharp says. “That is the means by which innovations can be translated to the benefit of society.”

From scientific breakthrough to patient bedside

Alnylam received its first FDA approval in 2018 for treatment of the polyneuropathy of hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, a rare and fatal disease. It doubled as the first RNAi therapeutic to reach the market and the first drug approved to treat that condition in the United States.

“What I keep in mind is, at the end of the day for certain patients, two months is everything,” Fitzgerald says. “The diseases that we’re trying to treat progress month by month, day by day, and patients can get to a point where nothing is helping them. If you can move their disease by a stage, that’s huge.”

Since that first treatment, Alnylam has updated its RNAi delivery system — including by conjugating small interfering RNAs to molecules that help them gain entry to cells — and earned approvals to treat other rare genetic diseases along with high cholesterol (the treatment licensed to Novartis). All of those treatments primarily work by silencing genes that encode for the production of proteins in the liver, which has proven to be the easiest place to deliver RNAi molecules. But Alnylam’s team is confident they can deliver RNAi to other areas of the body, which would unlock a new world of treatment possibilities. The company has reported promising early results in the central nervous system and says a phase one study last year was the first RNAi therapeutic to demonstrate gene silencing in the human brain.

“There’s a lot of work being done at Alnylam and other companies to deliver these RNAis to other tissues: muscles, immune cells, lung cells, etc.,” Sharp says. “But to me the most interesting application is delivery to the brain. We think we have a therapeutic modality that can very specifically control the activity of certain genes in the nervous system. I think that’s extraordinarily important, for diseases from Alzheimer’s to schizophrenia and depression.”

The central nervous system work is particularly significant for Fitzgerald, who watched his father struggle with Parkinson’s.

“Our goal is to be in every organ in the human body, and then combinations of organs, and then combinations of targets within individual organs, and then combinations of targets within multi-organs,” Fitzgerald says. “We’re really at the very beginning of what this technology is going do for human health.”

It’s an exciting time for the RNAi scientific community, including many who continue to study it at MIT. Still, Alnylam will need to continue executing in its drug development efforts to deliver on that promise and help an expanding pool of patients.

“I think this is a real frontier,” Sharp says. “There’s major therapeutic need, and I think this technology could have a huge impact. But we have to prove it. That’s why Alnylam exists: to pursue new science that unlocks new possibilities and discover if they can be made to work. That, of course, also why MIT is here: to improve lives.”

The power of App Inventor: Democratizing possibilities for mobile applications

More than a decade since its launch, App Inventor recently hosted its 100 millionth project and registered its 20 millionth user. Now hosted by MIT, the app also supports experimenting with AI.

In June 2007, Apple unveiled the first iPhone. But the company made a strategic decision about iPhone software: its new App Store would be a walled garden. An iPhone user wouldn’t be able to install applications that Apple itself hadn’t vetted, at least not without breaking Apple’s terms of service.

That business decision, however, left educators out in the cold. They had no way to bring mobile software development — about to become part of everyday life — into the classroom. How could a young student code, futz with, and share apps if they couldn’t get it into the App Store?

MIT professor Hal Abelson was on sabbatical at Google at the time, when the company was deciding how to respond to Apple’s gambit to corner the mobile hardware and software market. Abelson recognized the restrictions Apple was placing on young developers; Google recognized the market need for an open-source alternative operating system — what became Android. Both saw the opportunity that became App Inventor.

“Google started the Android project sort of in reaction to the iPhone,” Abelson says. “And I was there, looking at what we did at MIT with education-focused software like Logo and Scratch, and said ‘what a cool thing it would be if kids could make mobile apps also.’”

Google software engineer Mark Friedman volunteered to work with Abelson on what became “Young Android,” soon renamed Google App Inventor. Like Scratch, App Inventor is a block-based language, allowing programmers to visually snap together pre-made “blocks” of code rather than need to learn specialized programming syntax.

Friedman describes it as novel for the time, particularly for mobile development, to make it as easy as possible to build simple mobile apps. “That meant a web-based app,” he says, “where everything was online and no external tools were required, with a simple programming model, drag-and-drop user interface designing, and blocks-based visual programming.” Thus an app someone programmed in a web interface could be installed on an Android device.

App Inventor scratched an itch. Boosted by the explosion in smartphone adoption and the fact App Inventor is free (and eventually open source), soon more than 70,000 teachers were using it with hundreds of thousands of students, with Google providing the backend infrastructure to keep it going.

“I remember answering a question from my manager at Google who asked how many users I thought we'd get in the first year,” Friedman says. “I thought it would be about 15,000 — and I remember thinking that might be too optimistic. I was ultimately off by a factor of 10–20.” Friedman was quick to credit more than their choices about the app. “I think that it's fair to say that while some of that growth was due to the quality of the tool, I don't think you can discount the effect of it being from Google and of the effect of Hal Abelson's reputation and network.”

Some early apps took App Inventor in ambitious, unexpected directions, such as “Discardious,” developed by teenage girls in Nigeria. Discardious helped business owners and individuals dispose of waste in communities where disposal was unreliable or too cumbersome.

But even before apps like Discardious came along, the team knew Google’s support wouldn’t be open-ended. No one wanted to cut teachers off from a tool they were thriving with, so around 2010, Google and Abelson agreed to transfer App Inventor to MIT. The transition meant major staff contributions to recreate App Inventor without Google’s proprietary software but MIT needing to work with Google to continue to provide the network resources to keep App Inventor free for the world.

With such a large user base, however, that left Abelson “worried the whole thing was going to collapse” without Google’s direct participation.

Friedman agrees. “I would have to say that I had my fears. App Inventor has a pretty complicated technical implementation, involving multiple programming languages, libraries and frameworks, and by the end of its time at Google we had a team of about 10 people working on it.”

Yet not only did Google provide significant funding to aid the transfer, but, Friedman says of the transfer’s ultimate success, “Hal would be in charge and he had fairly extensive knowledge of the system and, of course, had great passion for the vision and the product.”

MIT enterprise architect Jeffrey Schiller, who built the Institute’s computer network and became its manager in 1984, was another key part in sustaining App Inventor after its transition, helping introduce technical features fundamental to its accessibility and long-term success. He led the integration of the platform into web browsers, the addition of WiFi support rather than needing to connect phones and computers via USB, and the laying of groundwork for technical support of older phones because, as Schiller says, “many of our users cannot rush out and purchase the latest and most expensive devices.”

These collaborations and contributions over time resulted in App Inventor’s greatest resource: its user base. As it grew, and with support from community managers, volunteer know-how grew with it. Now, more than a decade since its launch and four years after its overdue inclusion in the Apple App Store, App Inventor recently crossed several major milestones, the most remarkable being the creation of its 100 millionth project and registration of its 20 millionth user. Young developers continue to make incredible applications, boosted now by the advantages of AI. College students created “Brazilian XôDengue” as a way for users to use phone cameras to identify mosquito larvae that may be carrying the dengue virus. High school students recently developed “Calmify,” a journaling app that uses AI for emotion detection. And a mother in Kuwait wanted something to help manage the often-overwhelming experience of new motherhood when returning to work, so she built the chatbot “PAM (Personal Advisor to Mothers)” as a non-judgmental space to talk through the challenges.

App Inventor’s long-term sustainability now rests with the App Inventor Foundation, created in 2022 to grow its resources and further drive its adoption. It is led by executive director Natalie Lao.

In a letter to the App Inventor community, Lao highlighted the foundation’s commitment to equitable access to educational resources, which for App Inventor required a rapid shift toward AI education — but in a way that upholds App Inventor’s core values to be “a free, open-source, easy-to-use platform” for mobile devices. “Our mission is to not only democratize access to technology,” Lao wrote, “but also foster a culture of innovation and digital literacy.”

Within MIT, App Inventor today falls under the umbrella of the MIT RAISE Initiative — Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, run by Dean for Digital Learning Cynthia Breazeal, Professor Eric Klopfer, and Abelson. Together they are able to integrate App Inventor into ever-broader communities, events, and funding streams, leading to opportunities like this summer’s inaugural AI and Education Summit on July 24-26. The summit will include awards for winners of a Global AI Hackathon, whose roughly 180 submissions used App Inventor to create AI tools in two tracks: Climate & Sustainability and Health & Wellness. Tying together another of RAISE’s major projects, participants were encouraged to draw from Day of AI curricula, including its newest courses on data science and climate change.

“Over the past year, there's been an enormous mushrooming in the possibilities for mobile apps through the integration of AI,” says Abelson. “The opportunity for App Inventor and MIT is to democratize those new possibilities for young people — and for everyone — as an enhanced source of power and creativity.”

Using MRI, engineers have found a way to detect light deep in the brain

The new technique could enable detailed studies of how brain cells develop and communicate with each other.

Scientists often label cells with proteins that glow, allowing them to track the growth of a tumor, or measure changes in gene expression that occur as cells differentiate.

While this technique works well in cells and some tissues of the body, it has been difficult to apply this technique to image structures deep within the brain, because the light scatters too much before it can be detected.

MIT engineers have now come up with a novel way to detect this type of light, known as bioluminescence, in the brain: They engineered blood vessels of the brain to express a protein that causes them to dilate in the presence of light. That dilation can then be observed with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allowing researchers to pinpoint the source of light.

“A well-known problem that we face in neuroscience, as well as other fields, is that it’s very difficult to use optical tools in deep tissue. One of the core objectives of our study was to come up with a way to image bioluminescent molecules in deep tissue with reasonably high resolution,” says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and nuclear science and engineering.

The new technique developed by Jasanoff and his colleagues could enable researchers to explore the inner workings of the brain in more detail than has previously been possible.

Jasanoff, who is also an associate investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Former MIT postdocs Robert Ohlendorf and Nan Li are the lead authors of the paper.

Detecting light

Bioluminescent proteins are found in many organisms, including jellyfish and fireflies. Scientists use these proteins to label specific proteins or cells, whose glow can be detected by a luminometer. One of the proteins often used for this purpose is luciferase, which comes in a variety of forms that glow in different colors.

Jasanoff’s lab, which specializes in developing new ways to image the brain using MRI, wanted to find a way to detect luciferase deep within the brain. To achieve that, they came up with a method for transforming the blood vessels of the brain into light detectors. A popular form of MRI works by imaging changes in blood flow in the brain, so the researchers engineered the blood vessels themselves to respond to light by dilating.

“Blood vessels are a dominant source of imaging contrast in functional MRI and other non-invasive imaging techniques, so we thought we could convert the intrinsic ability of these techniques to image blood vessels into a means for imaging light, by photosensitizing the blood vessels themselves,” Jasanoff says.

To make the blood vessels sensitive to light, the researcher engineered them to express a bacterial protein called Beggiatoa photoactivated adenylate cyclase (bPAC). When exposed to light, this enzyme produces a molecule called cAMP, which causes blood vessels to dilate. When blood vessels dilate, it alters the balance of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin, which have different magnetic properties. This shift in magnetic properties can be detected by MRI.

BPAC responds specifically to blue light, which has a short wavelength, so it detects light generated within close range. The researchers used a viral vector to deliver the gene for bPAC specifically to the smooth muscle cells that make up blood vessels. When this vector was injected in rats, blood vessels throughout a large area of the brain became light-sensitive.

“Blood vessels form a network in the brain that is extremely dense. Every cell in the brain is within a couple dozen microns of a blood vessel,” Jasanoff says. “The way I like to describe our approach is that we essentially turn the vasculature of the brain into a three-dimensional camera.”

Once the blood vessels were sensitized to light, the researchers implanted cells that had been engineered to express luciferase if a substrate called CZT is present. In the rats, the researchers were able to detect luciferase by imaging the brain with MRI, which revealed dilated blood vessels.

Tracking changes in the brain

The researchers then tested whether their technique could detect light produced by the brain’s own cells, if they were engineered to express luciferase. They delivered the gene for a type of luciferase called GLuc to cells in a deep brain region known as the striatum. When the CZT substrate was injected into the animals, MRI imaging revealed the sites where light had been emitted.

This technique, which the researchers dubbed bioluminescence imaging using hemodynamics, or BLUsH, could be used in a variety of ways to help scientists learn more about the brain, Jasanoff says.

For one, it could be used to map changes in gene expression, by linking the expression of luciferase to a specific gene. This could help researchers observe how gene expression changes during embryonic development and cell differentiation, or when new memories form. Luciferase could also be used to map anatomical connections between cells or to reveal how cells communicate with each other.

The researchers now plan to explore some of those applications, as well as adapting the technique for use in mice and other animal models.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation, Lore Harp McGovern, Gardner Hendrie, a fellowship from the German Research Foundation, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship from the European Union, and a Y. Eva Tan Fellowship and a J. Douglas Tan Fellowship, both from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

A better way to control shape-shifting soft robots

A new algorithm learns to squish, bend, or stretch a robot’s entire body to accomplish diverse tasks like avoiding obstacles or retrieving items.

Imagine a slime-like robot that can seamlessly change its shape to squeeze through narrow spaces, which could be deployed inside the human body to remove an unwanted item.

While such a robot does not yet exist outside a laboratory, researchers are working to develop reconfigurable soft robots for applications in health care, wearable devices, and industrial systems.

But how can one control a squishy robot that doesn’t have joints, limbs, or fingers that can be manipulated, and instead can drastically alter its entire shape at will? MIT researchers are working to answer that question.

They developed a control algorithm that can autonomously learn how to move, stretch, and shape a reconfigurable robot to complete a specific task, even when that task requires the robot to change its morphology multiple times. The team also built a simulator to test control algorithms for deformable soft robots on a series of challenging, shape-changing tasks.

Their method completed each of the eight tasks they evaluated while outperforming other algorithms. The technique worked especially well on multifaceted tasks. For instance, in one test, the robot had to reduce its height while growing two tiny legs to squeeze through a narrow pipe, and then un-grow those legs and extend its torso to open the pipe’s lid.

While reconfigurable soft robots are still in their infancy, such a technique could someday enable general-purpose robots that can adapt their shapes to accomplish diverse tasks.

“When people think about soft robots, they tend to think about robots that are elastic, but return to their original shape. Our robot is like slime and can actually change its morphology. It is very striking that our method worked so well because we are dealing with something very new,” says Boyuan Chen, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and co-author of a paper on this approach.

Chen’s co-authors include lead author Suning Huang, an undergraduate student at Tsinghua University in China who completed this work while a visiting student at MIT; Huazhe Xu, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University; and senior author Vincent Sitzmann, an assistant professor of EECS at MIT who leads the Scene Representation Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.

Controlling dynamic motion

Scientists often teach robots to complete tasks using a machine-learning approach known as reinforcement learning, which is a trial-and-error process in which the robot is rewarded for actions that move it closer to a goal.

This can be effective when the robot’s moving parts are consistent and well-defined, like a gripper with three fingers. With a robotic gripper, a reinforcement learning algorithm might move one finger slightly, learning by trial and error whether that motion earns it a reward. Then it would move on to the next finger, and so on.

But shape-shifting robots, which are controlled by magnetic fields, can dynamically squish, bend, or elongate their entire bodies.

“Such a robot could have thousands of small pieces of muscle to control, so it is very hard to learn in a traditional way,” says Chen.

To solve this problem, he and his collaborators had to think about it differently. Rather than moving each tiny muscle individually, their reinforcement learning algorithm begins by learning to control groups of adjacent muscles that work together.

Then, after the algorithm has explored the space of possible actions by focusing on groups of muscles, it drills down into finer detail to optimize the policy, or action plan, it has learned. In this way, the control algorithm follows a coarse-to-fine methodology.

“Coarse-to-fine means that when you take a random action, that random action is likely to make a difference. The change in the outcome is likely very significant because you coarsely control several muscles at the same time,” Sitzmann says.

To enable this, the researchers treat a robot’s action space, or how it can move in a certain area, like an image.

Their machine-learning model uses images of the robot’s environment to generate a 2D action space, which includes the robot and the area around it. They simulate robot motion using what is known as the material-point-method, where the action space is covered by points, like image pixels, and overlayed with a grid.

The same way nearby pixels in an image are related (like the pixels that form a tree in a photo), they built their algorithm to understand that nearby action points have stronger correlations. Points around the robot’s “shoulder” will move similarly when it changes shape, while points on the robot’s “leg” will also move similarly, but in a different way than those on the “shoulder.”

In addition, the researchers use the same machine-learning model to look at the environment and predict the actions the robot should take, which makes it more efficient.

Building a simulator

After developing this approach, the researchers needed a way to test it, so they created a simulation environment called DittoGym.

DittoGym features eight tasks that evaluate a reconfigurable robot’s ability to dynamically change shape. In one, the robot must elongate and curve its body so it can weave around obstacles to reach a target point. In another, it must change its shape to mimic letters of the alphabet.

“Our task selection in DittoGym follows both generic reinforcement learning benchmark design principles and the specific needs of reconfigurable robots. Each task is designed to represent certain properties that we deem important, such as the capability to navigate through long-horizon explorations, the ability to analyze the environment, and interact with external objects,” Huang says. “We believe they together can give users a comprehensive understanding of the flexibility of reconfigurable robots and the effectiveness of our reinforcement learning scheme.”

Their algorithm outperformed baseline methods and was the only technique suitable for completing multistage tasks that required several shape changes.

“We have a stronger correlation between action points that are closer to each other, and I think that is key to making this work so well,” says Chen.

While it may be many years before shape-shifting robots are deployed in the real world, Chen and his collaborators hope their work inspires other scientists not only to study reconfigurable soft robots but also to think about leveraging 2D action spaces for other complex control problems.

From steel engineering to ovarian tumor research

Ashutosh Kumar, a materials science and engineering PhD student and MathWorks Fellow, applies his eclectic skills to studying the relationship between bacteria and cancer.

Ashutosh Kumar is a classically trained materials engineer. Having grown up with a passion for making things, he has explored steel design and studied stress fractures in alloys.

Throughout Kumar’s education, however, he was also drawn to biology and medicine. When he was accepted into an undergraduate metallurgical engineering and materials science program at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, the native of Jamshedpur was very excited — and “a little dissatisfied, since I couldn’t do biology anymore.”

Now a PhD candidate and a MathWorks Fellow in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and a researcher for the Koch Institute, Kumar can merge his wide-ranging interests. He studies the effect of certain bacteria that have been observed encouraging the spread of ovarian cancer and possibly reducing the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

“Some microbes have an affinity toward infecting ovarian cancer cells, which can lead to changes in the cellular structure and reprogramming cells to survive in stressful conditions,” Kumar says. “This means that cells can migrate to different sites and may have a mechanism to develop chemoresistance. This opens an avenue to develop therapies to see if we can start to undo some of these changes.”

Kumar’s research combines microbiology, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, big data, and materials science. Using microbiome sequencing and AI, he aims to define microbiome changes that may correlate with poor patient outcomes. Ultimately, his goal is to engineer bacteriophage viruses to reprogram bacteria to work therapeutically.

Kumar started inching toward work in the health sciences just months into earning his bachelor's degree at IIT Bombay.

“I realized engineering is so flexible that its applications extend to any field,” he says, adding that he started working with biomaterials “to respect both my degree program and my interests."

“I loved it so much that I decided to go to graduate school,” he adds.

Starting his PhD program at MIT, he says, “was a fantastic opportunity to switch gears and work on more interdisciplinary or ‘MIT-type’ work.”

Kumar says he and Angela Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of biological engineering, materials science and of the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, began discussing the impact of the microbiome on ovarian cancer when he first arrived at MIT.

“I shared my enthusiasm about human health and biology, and we started brainstorming,” he says. “We realized that there’s an unmet need to understand a lot of gynecological cancers. Ovarian cancer is an aggressive cancer, which is usually diagnosed when it’s too late and has already spread.”

In 2022, Kumar was awarded a MathWorks Fellowship. The fellowships are awarded to School of Engineering graduate students, preferably those who use MATLAB or Simulink — which were developed by the mathematical computer software company MathWorks — in their research. The philanthropic support fueled Kumar’s full transition into health science research.

“The work we are doing now was initially not funded by traditional sources, and the MathWorks Fellowship gave us the flexibility to pursue this field,” Kumar says. “It provided me with opportunities to learn new skills and ask questions about this topic. MathWorks gave me a chance to explore my interests and helped me navigate from being a steel engineer to a cancer scientist.”

Kumar’s work on the relationship between bacteria and ovarian cancer started with studying which bacteria are incorporated into tumors in mouse models.

“We started looking closely at changes in cell structure and how those changes impact cancer progression,” he says, adding that MATLAB image processing helps him and his collaborators track tumor metastasis.

The research team also uses RNA sequencing and MATLAB algorithms to construct a taxonomy of the bacteria.

“Once we have identified the microbiome composition,” Kumar says, “we want to see how the microbiome changes as cancer progresses and identify changes in, let’s say, patients who develop chemoresistance.”

He says recent findings that ovarian cancer may originate in the fallopian tubes are promising because detecting cancer-related biomarkers or lesions before cancer spreads to the ovaries could lead to better prognoses.

As he pursues his research, Kumar says he is extremely thankful to Belcher “for believing in me to work on this project.

“She trusted me and my passion for making an impact on human health — even though I come from a materials engineering background — and supported me throughout. It was her passion to take on new challenges that made it possible for me to work on this idea. She has been an amazing mentor and motivated me to continue moving forward.”

For her part, Belcher is equally enthralled.

“It has been amazing to work with Ashutosh on this ovarian cancer microbiome project," she says. "He has been so passionate and dedicated to looking for less-conventional approaches to solve this debilitating disease. His innovations around looking for very early changes in the microenvironment of this disease could be critical in interception and prevention of ovarian cancer. We started this project with very little preliminary data, so his MathWorks fellowship was critical in the initiation of the project.”

Kumar, who has been very active in student government and community-building activities, believes it is very important for students to feel included and at home at their institutions so they can develop in ways outside of academics. He says that his own involvement helps him take time off from work.

“Science can never stop, and there will always be something to do,” he says, explaining that he deliberately schedules time off and that social engagement helps him to experience downtime. “Engaging with community members through events on campus or at the dorm helps set a mental boundary with work.”

Regarding his unusual route through materials science to cancer research, Kumar regards it as something that occurred organically.

“I have observed that life is very dynamic,” he says. “What we think we might do versus what we end up doing is never consistent. Five years back, I had no idea I would be at MIT working with such excellent scientific mentors around me.”

Professor Emeritus David Lanning, nuclear engineer and key contributor to the MIT Reactor, dies at 96

Remembering the research contributions of a nuclear engineering expert and passionate teacher.

David Lanning, MIT professor emeritus of nuclear science and engineering and a key contributor to the MIT Reactor project, passed away on April 26 at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts, at the age of 96.

Born in Baker, Oregon, on March 30, 1928, Lanning graduated in 1951 from the University of Oregon with a BS in physics. While taking night classes in nuclear engineering, in lieu of an available degree program at the time, he started his career path working for General Electric in Richland, Washington. There he conducted critical-mass studies for handling and designing safe plutonium-bearing systems in separation plants at the Hanford Atomic Products Operation, making him a pioneer in nuclear fuel cycle management.

Lanning was then involved in the design, construction, and startup of the Physical Constants Testing Reactor (PCTR). As one of the few people qualified to operate the experimental reactor, he trained others to safely assess and handle its highly radioactive components.

Lanning supervised experiments at the PCTR to find the critical conditions of various lattices in a safe manner and conduct reactivity measurements to determine relative flux distributions. This primed him to be an indispensable asset to the MIT Reactor (MITR), which was being constructed on the opposite side of the country.

An early authority in nuclear engineering comes to MIT

Lanning came to MIT in 1957 to join what was being called the “MIT Reactor Project” after being recruited by the MITR’s designer and first director, Theos “Tommy” J. Thompson, to serve as one of the MITR’s first operating supervisors. With only a handful of people on the operations team at the time, Lanning also completed the emergency plan and startup procedures for the MITR, which achieved criticality on July 21, 1958.

In addition to becoming a faculty member in the Department of Nuclear Engineering in 1962, Lanning’s roles at the MITR went from reactor operations superintendent in the 1950s and early 1960s, to assistant director in 1962, and then acting director in 1963, when Thompson went on sabbatical.

In his faculty position, Lanning took responsibility for supervising lab subjects and research projects at the MITR, including the Heavy Water Lattice Project. This project supported the thesis work of more than 30 students doing experimental studies of sub-critical uranium fuel rods — including Lanning’s own thesis. He received his PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT in fall 1963.

Lanning decided to leave MIT in July 1965 and return to Hanford as the manager of their Reactor Neutronics Section. Despite not having plans to return to work for MIT, Lanning agreed when Thompson requested that he renew his MITR operator’s license shortly after leaving.

“Because of his thorough familiarity with our facility, it is anticipated that Dr. Lanning may be asked to return to MIT for temporary tours of duty at our reactor. It is always possible that there may be changes in the key personnel presently operating the MIT Reactor and the possible availability of Dr. Lanning to fill in, even temporarily, could be a very important factor in maintaining a high level of competence at the reactor during its continued operation,” Theos J. Thompson wrote in a letter to the Atomic Energy Commission on Sept. 21, 1965

One modification, many changes

This was an invaluable decision to continue the MITR’s success as a nuclear research facility. In 1969 Thompson accepted a two-year term appointment as a U.S. atomic energy commissioner and requested Lanning to return to MIT to take his place during his temporary absence. Thompson initiated feasibility studies for a new MITR core design and believed Lanning was the most capable person to continue the task of seeing the MITR redesign to fruition.

Lanning returned to MIT in July 1969 with a faculty appointment to take over the subjects Thompson was teaching, in addition to being co-director of the MITR with Lincoln Clark Jr. during the redesign. Tragically, Thompson was killed in a plane accident in November 1970, just one week after Lanning and his team submitted the application for the redesign’s construction permit.

Thompson’s death meant his responsibilities were now Lanning’s on a permanent basis. Lanning continued to completion the redesign of the MITR, known today as the MITR-II. The redesign increased the neutron flux level by a factor of three without changing its operating power — expanding the reactor’s research capabilities and refreshing its status as a premier research facility.

Construction and startup tests for the MITR-II were completed in 1975 and the MITR-II went critical on Aug. 14, 1975. Management of the MITR-II was transferred the following year from the Nuclear Engineering Department to its own interdepartmental research center, the Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, where Lanning continued to use the MITR-II for research.

Beyond the redesign

In 1970, Lanning combined two reactor design courses he inherited and introduced a new course in which he had students apply their knowledge and critique the design and economic considerations of a reactor presented by a student in a prior term. He taught these courses through the late 1990s, in addition to leading new courses with other faculty for industry professionals on reactor safety.

Co-author of over 70 papers, many on the forefront of nuclear engineering, Lanning’s research included studies to improve the efficiency, cycle management, and design of nuclear fuel, as well as making reactors safer and more economical to operate.

Lanning was part of an ongoing research project team that introduced and demonstrated digital control and automation in nuclear reactor control mechanisms before any of the sort were found in reactors in the United States. Their research improved the regulatory barriers preventing commercial plants from replacing aging analog reactor control components with digital ones. The project also demonstrated that reactor operations would be more reliable, safe, and economical by introducing automation in certain reactor control systems. This led to the MITR being one of the first reactors in the United States licensed to operate using digital technology to control reactor power.

Lanning became professor emeritus in May 1989 and retired in 1994, but continued his passion for teaching through the late 1990s as a thesis advisor and reader. His legacy lives on in the still-operational MITR-II, with his former students following in his footsteps by working on fuel studies for the next version of the MITR core. 

Lanning is predeceased by his wife of 60 years, Gloria Lanning, and is survived by his two children, a brother, and his many grandchildren.

MIT Supply Chain Management Program earns top honors in three 2024 rankings

MIT has been a world leader in supply chain management education and research for more than five decades.

MIT's Supply Chain Management (SCM) Master's Program, housed within the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) at the Institute's School of Engineering, has been named top master's program for supply chain management for 2024 by three leading global rankings institutions: QS World University Rankings, Eduniversal, and Supply Chain Digital.

QS World University Rankings, recognized for its thorough evaluation of over 1,500 institutions across 104 locations worldwide, has singled out MIT SCM as the premier program in the field. QS considers five main facets in determining rankings: employability of degree recipients; alumni CEO and executive outcomes; tuition, alumni salaries, and return on investment; thought leadership and research impact; and class and faculty diversity. With an emphasis on career sustainability and growth, QS's acknowledgment reflects MIT's commitment to preparing students for success in today's dynamic business landscape.

Eduniversal, known for its exhaustive review of over 5,800 master's and MBA programs across 50-plus fields of study spanning more than 150 countries, also bestowed the No. 1 ranking upon MIT's SCM program. Eduniversal's assessment takes into consideration the MIT Global SCALE Network of six innovation centers (MIT CTL, Ningbo China Institute for Supply Chain Innovation, Zaragoza Logistics Center, Center for Latin-American Logistics Innovation, the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation, and Luxembourg Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management), underscoring MIT's global impact and leadership in real-world applications in supply chain education.

Supply Chain Digital, a leading industry publication with an audience of global logistics executives, recently honored MIT CTL as the provider of the No. 1 supply chain program globally. This recognition highlights MIT’s influence in shaping the future of supply chain from the perspective of company leadership and management.

In addition to its master’s program, MIT CTL offers an online MicroMasters program, which registered its one-millionth learner in late 2022. After finishing the online program, certificate holders can apply to MIT (and other universities) and obtain a full master’s degree in a single semester.

“Our program prides itself on its interdisciplinary curriculum and close collaboration with industry leaders,” says Maria Jesús Saénz, executive director of the MIT SCM Masters Programs, “so that our graduates can emerge equipped with the skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to tackle the complex and dynamic challenges facing modern supply chains. We are as committed as ever to fostering excellence and driving positive, real-world challenges.”

MIT CTL has been a world leader in supply chain management education and research for more than five decades. The center has made significant contributions to supply chain and logistics and has helped numerous companies gain competitive advantage from its cutting-edge research.

“We are thrilled by the recognition of the SCM program by these esteemed organizations,” says Professor Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT CTL. “This achievement reflects the dedication of our faculty, staff, and students in serving as a world leader in supply chain management education and research by driving supply chain innovation into practice.”

New treatment could reverse hair loss caused by an autoimmune skin disease

A microneedle patch that delivers immune-regulating molecules can teach T cells not to attack hair follicles, helping hair to regrow.

Researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School have developed a potential new treatment for alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair loss and affects people of all ages, including children.

For most patients with this type of hair loss, there is no effective treatment. The team developed a microneedle patch that can be painlessly applied to the scalp and releases drugs that help to rebalance the immune response at the site, halting the autoimmune attack.

In a study of mice, the researchers found that this treatment allowed hair to regrow and dramatically reduced inflammation at the treatment site, while avoiding systemic immune effects elsewhere in the body. This strategy could also be adapted to treat other autoimmune skin diseases such as vitiligo, atopic dermatitis, and psoriasis, the researchers say.

“This innovative approach marks a paradigm shift. Rather than suppressing the immune system, we’re now focusing on regulating it precisely at the site of antigen encounter to generate immune tolerance,” says Natalie Artzi, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an associate faculty member at the Wyss Institute of Harvard University.

Artzi and Jamil R. Azzi, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, are the senior authors of the new study, which appears in the journal Advanced Materials. Nour Younis, a Brigham and Women’s postdoc, and Nuria Puigmal, a Brigham and Women’s postdoc and former MIT research affiliate, are the lead authors of the paper.

The researchers are now working on launching a company to further develop the technology, led by Puigmal, who was recently awarded a Harvard Business School Blavatnik Fellowship.

Direct delivery

Alopecia areata, which affects more than 6 million Americans, occurs when the body’s own T cells attack hair follicles, leading the hair to fall out. The only treatment available to most patients — injections of immunosuppressant steroids into the scalp — is painful and patients often can’t tolerate it.

Some patients with alopecia areata and other autoimmune skin diseases can also be treated with immunosuppressant drugs that are given orally, but these drugs lead to widespread suppression of the immune system, which can have adverse side effects.

“This approach silences the entire immune system, offering relief from inflammation symptoms but leading to frequent recurrences. Moreover, it increases susceptibility to infections, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer,” Artzi says.

A few years ago, at a working group meeting in Washington, Artzi happened to be seated next to Azzi (the seating was alphabetical), an immunologist and transplant physican who was seeking new ways to deliver drugs directly to the skin to treat skin-related diseases.

Their conversation led to a new collaboration, and the two labs joined forces to work on a microneedle patch to deliver drugs to the skin. In 2021, they reported that such a patch can be used to prevent rejection following skin transplant. In the new study, they began applying this approach to autoimmune skin disorders.

“The skin is the only organ in our body that we can see and touch, and yet when it comes to drug delivery to the skin, we revert to systemic administration. We saw great potential in utilizing the microneedle patch to reprogram the immune system locally,” Azzi says.

The microneedle patches used in this study are made from hyaluronic acid crosslinked with polyethylene glycol (PEG), both of which are biocompatible and commonly used in medical applications. With this delivery method, drugs can pass through the tough outer layer of the epidermis, which can’t be penetrated by creams applied to the skin.

“This polymer formulation allows us to create highly durable needles capable of effectively penetrating the skin. Additionally, it gives us the flexibility to incorporate any desired drug,” Artzi says. For this study, the researchers loaded the patches with a combination of the cytokines IL-2 and CCL-22. Together, these immune molecules help to recruit regulatory T cells, which proliferate and help to tamp down inflammation. These cells also help the immune system learn to recognize that hair follicles are not foreign antigens, so that it will stop attacking them.

Hair regrowth

The researchers found that mice treated with this patch every other day for three weeks had many more regulatory T cells present at the site, along with a reduction in inflammation. Hair was able to regrow at those sites, and this growth was maintained for several weeks after the treatment ended. In these mice, there were no changes in the levels of regulatory T cells in the spleen or lymph nodes, suggesting that the treatment affected only the site where the patch was applied.

In another set of experiments, the researchers grafted human skin onto mice with a humanized immune system. In these mice, the microneedle treatment also induced proliferation of regulatory T cells and a reduction in inflammation.

The researchers designed the microneedle patches so that after releasing their drug payload, they can also collect samples that could be used to monitor the progress of the treatment. Hyaluronic acid causes the needles to swell about tenfold after entering the skin, which allows them to absorb interstitial fluid containing biomolecules and immune cells from the skin.

Following patch removal, researchers can analyze samples to measure levels of regulatory T cells and inflammation markers. This could prove valuable for monitoring future patients who may undergo this treatment.

The researchers now plan to further develop this approach for treating alopecia, and to expand into other autoimmune skin diseases.

The research was funded by the Ignite Fund and Shark Tank Fund awards from the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Study: Heavy snowfall and rain may contribute to some earthquakes

The results suggest that climate may influence seismic activity.

When scientists look for an earthquake’s cause, their search often starts underground. As centuries of seismic studies have made clear, it’s the collision of tectonic plates and the movement of subsurface faults and fissures that primarily trigger a temblor.

But MIT scientists have now found that certain weather events may also play a role in setting off some quakes.

In a study appearing today in Science Advances, the researchers report that episodes of heavy snowfall and rain likely contributed to a swarm of earthquakes over the past several years in northern Japan. The study is the first to show that climate conditions could initiate some quakes.

“We see that snowfall and other environmental loading at the surface impacts the stress state underground, and the timing of intense precipitation events is well-correlated with the start of this earthquake swarm,” says study author William Frank, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “So, climate obviously has an impact on the response of the solid earth, and part of that response is earthquakes.”

The new study focuses on a series of ongoing earthquakes in Japan’s Noto Peninsula. The team discovered that seismic activity in the region is surprisingly synchronized with certain changes in underground pressure, and that those changes are influenced by seasonal patterns of snowfall and precipitation. The scientists suspect that this new connection between quakes and climate may not be unique to Japan and could play a role in shaking up other parts of the world.

Looking to the future, they predict that the climate’s influence on earthquakes could be more pronounced with global warming.

“If we’re going into a climate that’s changing, with more extreme precipitation events, and we expect a redistribution of water in the atmosphere, oceans, and continents, that will change how the Earth’s crust is loaded,” Frank adds. “That will have an impact for sure, and it’s a link we could further explore.”

The study’s lead author is former MIT research associate Qing-Yu Wang (now at Grenoble Alpes University), and also includes EAPS postdoc Xin Cui, Yang Lu of the University of Vienna, Takashi Hirose of Tohoku University, and Kazushige Obara of the University of Tokyo.

Seismic speed

Since late 2020, hundreds of small earthquakes have shaken up Japan’s Noto Peninsula — a finger of land that curves north from the country’s main island into the Sea of Japan. Unlike a typical earthquake sequence, which begins as a main shock that gives way to a series of aftershocks before dying out, Noto’s seismic activity is an “earthquake swarm” — a pattern of multiple, ongoing quakes with no obvious main shock, or seismic trigger.

The MIT team, along with their colleagues in Japan, aimed to spot any patterns in the swarm that would explain the persistent quakes. They started by looking through the Japanese Meteorological Agency’s catalog of earthquakes that provides data on seismic activity throughout the country over time. They focused on quakes in the Noto Peninsula over the last 11 years, during which the region has experienced episodic earthquake activity, including the most recent swarm.

With seismic data from the catalog, the team counted the number of seismic events that occurred in the region over time, and found that the timing of quakes prior to 2020 appeared sporadic and unrelated, compared to late 2020, when earthquakes grew more intense and clustered in time, signaling the start of the swarm, with quakes that are correlated in some way.

The scientists then looked to a second dataset of seismic measurements taken by monitoring stations over the same 11-year period. Each station continuously records any displacement, or local shaking that occurs. The shaking from one station to another can give scientists an idea of how fast a seismic wave travels between stations. This “seismic velocity” is related to the structure of the Earth through which the seismic wave is traveling. Wang used the station measurements to calculate the seismic velocity between every station in and around Noto over the last 11 years.

The researchers generated an evolving picture of seismic velocity beneath the Noto Peninsula and observed a surprising pattern: In 2020, around when the earthquake swarm is thought to have begun, changes in seismic velocity appeared to be synchronized with the seasons.

“We then had to explain why we were observing this seasonal variation,” Frank says.

Snow pressure

The team wondered whether environmental changes from season to season could influence the underlying structure of the Earth in a way that would set off an earthquake swarm. Specifically, they looked at how seasonal precipitation would affect the underground “pore fluid pressure” — the amount of pressure that fluids in the Earth’s cracks and fissures exert within the bedrock.

“When it rains or snows, that adds weight, which increases pore pressure, which allows seismic waves to travel through slower,” Frank explains. “When all that weight is removed, through evaporation or runoff, all of a sudden, that pore pressure decreases and seismic waves are faster.”

Wang and Cui developed a hydromechanical model of the Noto Peninsula to simulate the underlying pore pressure over the last 11 years in response to seasonal changes in precipitation. They fed into the model meteorological data from this same period, including measurements of daily snow, rainfall, and sea-level changes. From their model, they were able to track changes in excess pore pressure beneath the Noto Peninsula, before and during the earthquake swarm. They then compared this timeline of evolving pore pressure with their evolving picture of seismic velocity.

“We had seismic velocity observations, and we had the model of excess pore pressure, and when we overlapped them, we saw they just fit extremely well,” Frank says.

In particular, they found that when they included snowfall data, and especially, extreme snowfall events, the fit between the model and observations was stronger than if they only considered rainfall and other events. In other words, the ongoing earthquake swarm that Noto residents have been experiencing can be explained in part by seasonal precipitation, and particularly, heavy snowfall events.

“We can see that the timing of these earthquakes lines up extremely well with multiple times where we see intense snowfall,” Frank says. “It’s well-correlated with earthquake activity. And we think there’s a physical link between the two.”

The researchers suspect that heavy snowfall and similar extreme precipitation could play a role in earthquakes elsewhere, though they emphasize that the primary trigger will always originate underground.

“When we first want to understand how earthquakes work, we look to plate tectonics, because that is and will always be the number one reason why an earthquake happens,” Frank says. “But, what are the other things that could affect when and how an earthquake happens? That’s when you start to go to second-order controlling factors, and the climate is obviously one of those.”

This research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

Two MIT PhD students awarded J-WAFS fellowships for their research on water

Jonathan Bessette and Akash Ball have been named 2024-25 J-WAFS Fellows for water treatment technologies.

Since 2014, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has advanced interdisciplinary research aimed at solving the world's most pressing water and food security challenges to meet human needs. In 2017, J-WAFS established the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Water Solutions Fellowship and the J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship. These fellowships provide support to outstanding MIT graduate students who are pursuing research that has the potential to improve water and food systems around the world. 

Recently, J-WAFS awarded the 2024-25 fellowships to Jonathan Bessette and Akash Ball, two MIT PhD students dedicated to addressing water scarcity by enhancing desalination and purification processes. This work is of important relevance since the world's freshwater supply has been steadily depleting due to the effects of climate change. In fact, one-third of the global population lacks access to safe drinking water. Bessette and Ball are focused on designing innovative solutions to enhance the resilience and sustainability of global water systems. To support their endeavors, J-WAFS will provide each recipient with funding for one academic semester for continued research and related activities.

“This year, we received many strong fellowship applications,” says J-WAFS executive director Renee J. Robins. “Bessette and Ball both stood out, even in a very competitive pool of candidates. The award of the J-WAFS fellowships to these two students underscores our confidence in their potential to bring transformative solutions to global water challenges.”

2024-25 Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions

The Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions is a doctoral fellowship for students pursuing research related to water and water supply at MIT. The fellowship is made possible by Elina and Nikhil Meswani and family. 

Jonathan Bessette is a doctoral student in the Global Engineering and Research (GEAR) Center within the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, advised by Professor Amos Winter. His research is focused on water treatment systems for the developing world, mainly desalination, or the process in which salts are removed from water. Currently, Bessette is working on designing and constructing a low-cost, deployable, community-scale desalination system for humanitarian crises.

In arid and semi-arid regions, groundwater often serves as the sole water source, despite its common salinity issues. Many remote and developing areas lack reliable centralized power and water systems, making brackish groundwater desalination a vital, sustainable solution for global water scarcity. 

“An overlooked need for desalination is inland groundwater aquifers, rather than in coastal areas,” says Bessette. “This is because much of the population lives far enough from a coast that seawater desalination could never reach them. My work involves designing low-cost, sustainable, renewable-powered desalination technologies for highly constrained situations, such as drinking water for remote communities,” he adds.

To achieve this goal, Bessette developed a batteryless, renewable electrodialysis desalination system. The technology is energy-efficient, conserves water, and is particularly suited for challenging environments, as it is decentralized and sustainable. The system offers significant advantages over the conventional reverse osmosis method, especially in terms of reduced energy consumption for treating brackish water. Highlighting Bessette’s capacity for engineering insight, his advisor noted the “simple and elegant solution” that Bessette and a staff engineer, Shane Pratt, devised that negated the need for the system to have large batteries. Bessette is now focusing on simplifying the system’s architecture to make it more reliable and cost-effective for deployment in remote areas.

Growing up in upstate New York, Bessette completed a bachelor's degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. As an undergrad, he taught middle and high school students in low-income areas of Buffalo about engineering and sustainability. However, he cited his junior-year travel to India and his experience there measuring water contaminants in rural sites as cementing his dedication to a career addressing food, water, and sanitation challenges. In addition to his doctoral research, his commitment to these goals is further evidenced by another project he is pursuing, funded by a J-WAFS India grant, that uses low-cost, remote sensors to better understand water fetching practices. Bessette is conducting this work with fellow MIT student Gokul Sampath in order to help families in rural India gain access to safe drinking water.

2024-25 J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship for Water and Food Solutions

The J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship is supported by the J-WAFS Research Affiliate Program, which offers companies the opportunity to engage with MIT on water and food research. Current fellowship support was provided by two J-WAFS Research Affiliates: Xylem, a leading U.S.-based provider of water treatment and infrastructure solutions, and GoAigua, a Spanish company at the forefront of digital transformation in the water industry through innovative solutions. 

Akash Ball is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering, advised by Professor Heather Kulik. His research focuses on the computational discovery of novel functional materials for energy-efficient ion separation membranes with high selectivity. Advanced membranes like these are increasingly needed for applications such as water desalination, battery recycling, and removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater. 

“Climate change, water pollution, and scarce freshwater reserves cause severe water distress for about 4 billion people annually, with 2 billion in India and China’s semiarid regions,” Ball notes. “One potential solution to this global water predicament is the desalination of seawater, since seawater accounts for 97 percent of all water on Earth.”

Although several commercial reverse osmosis membranes are currently available, these membranes suffer several problems, like slow water permeation, permeability-selectivity trade-off, and high fabrication costs. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous crystalline materials that are promising candidates for highly selective ion separation with fast water transport due to high surface area, the presence of different pore windows, and the tunability of chemical functionality.

In the Kulik lab, Ball is developing a systematic understanding of how MOF chemistry and pore geometry affect water transport and ion rejection rates. By the end of his PhD, Ball plans to identify existing, best-performing MOFs with unparalleled water uptake using machine learning models, propose novel hypothetical MOFs tailored to specific ion separations from water, and discover experimental design rules that enable the synthesis of next-generation membranes.  

Ball’s advisor praised the creativity he brings to his research, and his leadership skills that benefit her whole lab. Before coming to MIT, Ball obtained a master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Jadavpur University in India. During a research internship at IIT Bombay in 2018, he worked on developing a technology for in situ arsenic detection in water. Like Bessette, he noted the impact of this prior research experience on his interest in global water challenges, along with his personal experience growing up in an area in India where access to safe drinking water was not guaranteed.

Exploring the mysterious alphabet of sperm whales

MIT CSAIL and Project CETI researchers reveal complex communication patterns in sperm whales, deepening our understanding of animal language systems.

The allure of whales has stoked human consciousness for millennia, casting these ocean giants as enigmatic residents of the deep seas. From the biblical Leviathan to Herman Melville's formidable Moby Dick, whales have been central to mythologies and folklore. And while cetology, or whale science, has improved our knowledge of these marine mammals in the past century in particular, studying whales has remained a formidable a challenge.

Now, thanks to machine learning, we're a little closer to understanding these gentle giants. Researchers from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) recently used algorithms to decode the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” revealing sophisticated structures in sperm whale communication akin to human phonetics and communication systems in other animal species. 

In a new open-access study published in Nature Communications, the research shows that sperm whales codas, or short bursts of clicks that they use to communicate, vary significantly in structure depending on the conversational context, revealing a communication system far more intricate than previously understood. 

Nine thousand codas, collected from Eastern Caribbean sperm whale families observed by the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, proved an instrumental starting point in uncovering the creatures’ complex communication system. Alongside the data gold mine, the team used a mix of algorithms for pattern recognition and classification, as well as on-body recording equipment. It turned out that sperm whale communications were indeed not random or simplistic, but rather structured in a complex, combinatorial manner. 

The researchers identified something of a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet,” where various elements that researchers call  “rhythm,” “tempo,” “rubato,” and “ornamentation” interplay to form a vast array of distinguishable codas. For example, the whales would systematically modulate certain aspects of their codas based on the conversational context, such as smoothly varying the duration of the calls — rubato — or adding extra ornamental clicks. But even more remarkably, they found that the basic building blocks of these codas could be combined in a combinatorial fashion, allowing the whales to construct a vast repertoire of distinct vocalizations.

The experiments were conducted using acoustic bio-logging tags (specifically something called “D-tags”) deployed on whales from the Eastern Caribbean clan. These tags captured the intricate details of the whales’ vocal patterns. By developing new visualization and data analysis techniques, the CSAIL researchers found that individual sperm whales could emit various coda patterns in long exchanges, not just repeats of the same coda. These patterns, they say, are nuanced, and include fine-grained variations that other whales also produce and recognize.

“We are venturing into the unknown, to decipher the mysteries of sperm whale communication without any pre-existing ground truth data,” says Daniela Rus, CSAIL director and professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) at MIT. “Using machine learning is important for identifying the features of their communications and predicting what they say next. Our findings indicate the presence of structured information content and also challenges the prevailing belief among many linguists that complex communication is unique to humans. This is a step toward showing that other species have levels of communication complexity that have not been identified so far, deeply connected to behavior. Our next steps aim to decipher the meaning behind these communications and explore the societal-level correlations between what is being said and group actions."

Whaling around

Sperm whales have the largest brains among all known animals. This is accompanied by very complex social behaviors between families and cultural groups, necessitating strong communication for coordination, especially in pressurized environments like deep sea hunting.

Whales owe much to Roger Payne, former Project CETI advisor, whale biologist, conservationist, and MacArthur Fellow who was a major figure in elucidating their musical careers. In the noted 1971 Science article “Songs of Humpback Whales,” Payne documented how whales can sing. His work later catalyzed the “Save the Whales” movement, a successful and timely conservation initiative.

“Roger’s research highlights the impact science can have on society. His finding that whales sing led to the marine mammal protection act and helped save several whale species from extinction. This interdisciplinary research now brings us one step closer to knowing what sperm whales are saying,” says David Gruber, lead and founder of Project CETI and distinguished professor of biology at the City University of New York.

Today, CETI’s upcoming research aims to discern whether elements like rhythm, tempo, ornamentation, and rubato carry specific communicative intents, potentially providing insights into the “duality of patterning” — a linguistic phenomenon where simple elements combine to convey complex meanings previously thought unique to human language.

Aliens among us

“One of the intriguing aspects of our research is that it parallels the hypothetical scenario of contacting alien species. It’s about understanding a species with a completely different environment and communication protocols, where their interactions are distinctly different from human norms,” says Pratyusha Sharma, an MIT PhD student in EECS, CSAIL affiliate, and the study’s lead author. “We’re exploring how to interpret the basic units of meaning in their communication. This isn’t just about teaching animals a subset of human language, but decoding a naturally evolved communication system within their unique biological and environmental constraints. Essentially, our work could lay the groundwork for deciphering how an ‘alien civilization’ might communicate, providing insights into creating algorithms or systems to understand entirely unfamiliar forms of communication.”

“Many animal species have repertoires of several distinct signals, but we are only beginning to uncover the extent to which they combine these signals to create new messages,” says Robert Seyfarth, a University of Pennsylvania professor emeritus of psychology who was not involved in the research. “Scientists are particularly interested in whether signal combinations vary according to the social or ecological context in which they are given, and the extent to which signal combinations follow discernible ‘rules’ that are recognized by listeners. The problem is particularly challenging in the case of marine mammals, because scientists usually cannot see their subjects or identify in complete detail the context of communication. Nonetheless, this paper offers new, tantalizing details of call combinations and the rules that underlie them in sperm whales.”

Joining Sharma, Rus, and Gruber are two others from MIT, both CSAIL principal investigators and professors in EECS: Jacob Andreas and Antonio Torralba. They join Shane Gero, biology lead at CETI, founder of the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, and scientist-in residence at Carleton University. The paper was funded by Project CETI via Dalio Philanthropies and Ocean X, Sea Grape Foundation, Rosamund Zander/Hansjorg Wyss, and Chris Anderson/Jacqueline Novogratz through The Audacious Project: a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED, with further support from the J.H. and E.V. Wade Fund at MIT.

This sound-suppressing silk can create quiet spaces

Researchers engineered a hair-thin fabric to create a lightweight, compact, and efficient mechanism to reduce noise transmission in a large room.

We are living in a very noisy world. From the hum of traffic outside your window to the next-door neighbor’s blaring TV to sounds from a co-worker’s cubicle, unwanted noise remains a resounding problem.

To cut through the din, an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers from MIT and elsewhere developed a sound-suppressing silk fabric that could be used to create quiet spaces.

The fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, contains a special fiber that vibrates when a voltage is applied to it. The researchers leveraged those vibrations to suppress sound in two different ways.

In one, the vibrating fabric generates sound waves that interfere with an unwanted noise to cancel it out, similar to noise-canceling headphones, which work well in a small space like your ears but do not work in large enclosures like rooms or planes.

In the other, more surprising technique, the fabric is held still to suppress vibrations that are key to the transmission of sound. This prevents noise from being transmitted through the fabric and quiets the volume beyond. This second approach allows for noise reduction in much larger spaces like rooms or cars.

By using common materials like silk, canvas, and muslin, the researchers created noise-suppressing fabrics which would be practical to implement in real-world spaces. For instance, one could use such a fabric to make dividers in open workspaces or thin fabric walls that prevent sound from getting through.

“Noise is a lot easier to create than quiet. In fact, to keep noise out we dedicate a lot of space to thick walls. [First author] Grace’s work provides a new mechanism for creating quiet spaces with a thin sheet of fabric,” says Yoel Fink, a professor in the departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and senior author of a paper on the fabric.

The study’s lead author is Grace (Noel) Yang SM ’21, PhD ’24. Co-authors include MIT graduate students Taigyu Joo, Hyunhee Lee, Henry Cheung, and Yongyi Zhao; Zachary Smith, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT; graduate student Guanchun Rui and professor Lei Zhu of Case Western University; graduate student Jinuan Lin and Assistant Professor Chu Ma of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; and Latika Balachander, a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design. An open-access paper about the research appeared recently in Advanced Materials.

Silky silence

The sound-suppressing silk builds off the group’s prior work to create fabric microphones.

In that research, they sewed a single strand of piezoelectric fiber into fabric. Piezoelectric materials produce an electrical signal when squeezed or bent. When a nearby noise causes the fabric to vibrate, the piezoelectric fiber converts those vibrations into an electrical signal, which can capture the sound.

In the new work, the researchers flipped that idea to create a fabric loudspeaker that can be used to cancel out soundwaves.

“While we can use fabric to create sound, there is already so much noise in our world. We thought creating silence could be even more valuable,” Yang says.

Applying an electrical signal to the piezoelectric fiber causes it to vibrate, which generates sound. The researchers demonstrated this by playing Bach’s “Air” using a 130-micrometer sheet of silk mounted on a circular frame.

To enable direct sound suppression, the researchers use a silk fabric loudspeaker to emit sound waves that destructively interfere with unwanted sound waves. They control the vibrations of the piezoelectric fiber so that sound waves emitted by the fabric are opposite of unwanted sound waves that strike the fabric, which can cancel out the noise.

However, this technique is only effective over a small area. So, the researchers built off this idea to develop a technique that uses fabric vibrations to suppress sound in much larger areas, like a bedroom.

Let’s say your next-door neighbors are playing foosball in the middle of the night. You hear noise in your bedroom because the sound in their apartment causes your shared wall to vibrate, which forms sound waves on your side.

To suppress that sound, the researchers could place the silk fabric onto your side of the shared wall, controlling the vibrations in the fiber to force the fabric to remain still. This vibration-mediated suppression prevents sound from being transmitted through the fabric.

“If we can control those vibrations and stop them from happening, we can stop the noise that is generated, as well,” Yang says.

A mirror for sound

Surprisingly, the researchers found that holding the fabric still causes sound to be reflected by the fabric, resulting in a thin piece of silk that reflects sound like a mirror does with light.

Their experiments also revealed that both the mechanical properties of a fabric and the size of its pores affect the efficiency of sound generation. While silk and muslin have similar mechanical properties, the smaller pore sizes of silk make it a better fabric loudspeaker.

But the effective pore size also depends on the frequency of sound waves. If the frequency is low enough, even a fabric with relatively large pores could function effectively, Yang says.

When they tested the silk fabric in direct suppression mode, the researchers found that it could significantly reduce the volume of sounds up to 65 decibels (about as loud as enthusiastic human conversation). In vibration-mediated suppression mode, the fabric could reduce sound transmission up to 75 percent.

These results were only possible due to a robust group of collaborators, Fink says. Graduate students at the Rhode Island School of Design helped the researchers understand the details of constructing fabrics; scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison conducted simulations; researchers at Case Western Reserve University characterized materials; and chemical engineers in the Smith Group at MIT used their expertise in gas membrane separation to measure airflow through the fabric.

Moving forward, the researchers want to explore the use of their fabric to block sound of multiple frequencies. This would likely require complex signal processing and additional electronics.

In addition, they want to further study the architecture of the fabric to see how changing things like the number of piezoelectric fibers, the direction in which they are sewn, or the applied voltages could improve performance.

“There are a lot of knobs we can turn to make this sound-suppressing fabric really effective. We want to get people thinking about controlling structural vibrations to suppress sound. This is just the beginning,” says Yang.

This work is funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office (ARO), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

William Green named director of MIT Energy Initiative

In his new role, the professor of chemical engineering plans to speed up the consensus process among academics, business leaders, and policymakers for a successful energy transition.

MIT professor William H. Green has been named director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI).

In appointing Green, then-MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber highlighted his expertise in chemical kinetics — the understanding of the rates of chemical reactions — and the work of his research team in reaction kinetics, quantum chemistry, numerical methods, and fuel chemistry, as well as his work performing techno-economic assessments of proposed fuel and vehicle changes and biofuel production options.

“Bill has been an active participant in MITEI; his broad view of energy science and technology will be a major asset and will position him well to contribute to the success of MIT’s exciting new Climate Project,” Zuber wrote in a letter announcing the appointment, which went into effect April 1. 

Green is the Hoyt C. Hottel Professor of Chemical Engineering and previously served as the executive officer of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering from 2012 to 2015. He sees MITEI’s role today as bringing together the voices of engineering, science, industry, and policy to quickly drive the global energy transition.

“MITEI has a very important role in fostering the energy and climate innovations happening at MIT and in building broader consensus, first in the engineering community and then ultimately to start the conversations that will lead to public acceptance and societal consensus,” says Green.

Achieving consensus much more quickly is essential, says Green, who noted that it was during the 1992 Rio Summit that globally we recognized the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, yet almost a quarter-century passed before the Paris Agreement came into force. Eight years after the Paris Agreement, there is still disagreement over how to address this challenge in most sectors of the economy, and much work to be done to translate the Paris pledges into reality.

“Many people feel we’re collectively too slow in dealing with the climate problem,” he says. “It’s very important to keep helping the research community be more effective and faster to provide the solutions that society needs, but we also need to work on being faster at reaching consensus around the good solutions we do have, and supporting them so they’ll actually be economically attractive so that investors can feel safe to invest in them, and to change regulations to make them feasible, when needed.”

With experience in industry, policy, and academia, Green is well positioned to facilitate this acceleration. “I can see the situation from the point of view of a scientist, from the point of view of an engineer, from the point of view of the big companies, from the point of view of a startup company, and from the point of view of a parent concerned about the effects of climate change on the world my children are inheriting,” he says.

Green also intends to extend MITEI’s engagement with a broader range of countries, industries, and economic sectors as MITEI focuses on decarbonization and accelerating the much-needed energy transition worldwide.

Green received a PhD in physical chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley and a BA in chemistry from Swarthmore College. He joined MIT in 1997. He is the recipient of the AIChE’s R.H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering and is an inaugural Fellow of the Combustion Institute.

He succeeds Robert Stoner, who served as interim director of MITEI beginning in July 2023, when longtime director Robert C. Armstrong retired after serving in the role for a decade.

President Sally Kornbluth and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman discuss the future of AI

The conversation in Kresge Auditorium touched on the promise and perils of the rapidly evolving technology.

How is the field of artificial intelligence evolving and what does it mean for the future of work, education, and humanity? MIT President Sally Kornbluth and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman covered all that and more in a wide-ranging discussion on MIT’s campus May 2.

The success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language models has helped spur a wave of investment and innovation in the field of artificial intelligence. ChatGPT-3.5 became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history after its release at the end of 2022, with hundreds of millions of people using the tool. Since then, OpenAI has also demonstrated AI-driven image-, audio-, and video-generation products and partnered with Microsoft.

The event, which took place in a packed Kresge Auditorium, captured the excitement of the moment around AI, with an eye toward what’s next.

“I think most of us remember the first time we saw ChatGPT and were like, ‘Oh my god, that is so cool!’” Kornbluth said. “Now we’re trying to figure out what the next generation of all this is going to be.”

For his part, Altman welcomes the high expectations around his company and the field of artificial intelligence more broadly.

“I think it’s awesome that for two weeks, everybody was freaking out about ChatGPT-4, and then by the third week, everyone was like, ‘Come on, where’s GPT-5?’” Altman said. “I think that says something legitimately great about human expectation and striving and why we all have to [be working to] make things better.”

The problems with AI

Early on in their discussion, Kornbluth and Altman discussed the many ethical dilemmas posed by AI.

“I think we’ve made surprisingly good progress around how to align a system around a set of values,” Altman said. “As much as people like to say ‘You can’t use these things because they’re spewing toxic waste all the time,’ GPT-4 behaves kind of the way you want it to, and we’re able to get it to follow a given set of values, not perfectly well, but better than I expected by this point.”

Altman also pointed out that people don’t agree on exactly how an AI system should behave in many situations, complicating efforts to create a universal code of conduct.

“How do we decide what values a system should have?” Altman asked. “How do we decide what a system should do? How much does society define boundaries versus trusting the user with these tools? Not everyone will use them the way we like, but that’s just kind of the case with tools. I think it’s important to give people a lot of control … but there are some things a system just shouldn’t do, and we’ll have to collectively negotiate what those are.”

Kornbluth agreed doing things like eradicating bias in AI systems will be difficult.

“It’s interesting to think about whether or not we can make models less biased than we are as human beings,” she said.

Kornbluth also brought up privacy concerns associated with the vast amounts of data needed to train today’s large language models. Altman said society has been grappling with those concerns since the dawn of the internet, but AI is making such considerations more complex and higher-stakes. He also sees entirely new questions raised by the prospect of powerful AI systems.

“How are we going to navigate the privacy versus utility versus safety tradeoffs?” Altman asked. “Where we all individually decide to set those tradeoffs, and the advantages that will be possible if someone lets the system be trained on their entire life, is a new thing for society to navigate. I don’t know what the answers will be.”

For both privacy and energy consumption concerns surrounding AI, Altman said he believes progress in future versions of AI models will help.

"What we want out of GPT-5 or 6 or whatever is for it to be the best reasoning engine possible,” Altman said. “It is true that right now, the only way we’re able to do that is by training it on tons and tons of data. In that process, it’s learning something about how to do very, very limited reasoning or cognition or whatever you want to call it. But the fact that it can memorize data, or the fact that it’s storing data at all in its parameter space, I think we'll look back and say, ‘That was kind of a weird waste of resources.’ I assume at some point, we’ll figure out how to separate the reasoning engine from the need for tons of data or storing the data in [the model], and be able to treat them as separate things.”

Kornbluth also asked about how AI might lead to job displacement.

“One of the things that annoys me most about people who work on AI is when they stand up with a straight face and say, ‘This will never cause any job elimination. This is just an additive thing. This is just all going to be great,’” Altman said. “This is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function, and this is going to create entirely new jobs. That always happens with technology."

The promise of AI

Altman believes progress in AI will make grappling with all of the field’s current problems worth it.

“If we spent 1 percent of the world’s electricity training a powerful AI, and that AI helped us figure out how to get to non-carbon-based energy or make deep carbon capture better, that would be a massive win,” Altman said.

He also said the application of AI he’s most interested in is scientific discovery.

“I believe [scientific discovery] is the core engine of human progress and that it is the only way we drive sustainable economic growth,” Altman said. “People aren’t content with GPT-4. They want things to get better. Everyone wants life more and better and faster, and science is how we get there.”

Kornbluth also asked Altman for his advice for students thinking about their careers. He urged students not to limit themselves.

“The most important lesson to learn early on in your career is that you can kind of figure anything out, and no one has all of the answers when they start out,” Altman said. “You just sort of stumble your way through, have a fast iteration speed, and try to drift toward the most interesting problems to you, and be around the most impressive people and have this trust that you’ll successfully iterate to the right thing. ... You can do more than you think, faster than you think.”

The advice was part of a broader message Altman had about staying optimistic and working to create a better future.

“The way we are teaching our young people that the world is totally screwed and that it’s hopeless to try to solve problems, that all we can do is sit in our bedrooms in the dark and think about how awful we are, is a really deeply unproductive streak,” Altman said. “I hope MIT is different than a lot of other college campuses. I assume it is. But you all need to make it part of your life mission to fight against this. Prosperity, abundance, a better life next year, a better life for our children. That is the only path forward. That is the only way to have a functioning society ... and the anti-progress streak, the anti ‘people deserve a great life’ streak, is something I hope you all fight against.”

MIT astronomers observe elusive stellar light surrounding ancient quasars

The observations suggest some of earliest “monster” black holes grew from massive cosmic seeds.

MIT astronomers have observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The distant signals, which trace back more than 13 billion years to the universe’s infancy, are revealing clues to how the very first black holes and galaxies evolved.

Quasars are the blazing centers of active galaxies, which host an insatiable supermassive black hole at their core. Most galaxies host a central black hole that may occasionally feast on gas and stellar debris, generating a brief burst of light in the form of a glowing ring as material swirls in toward the black hole.

Quasars, by contrast, can consume enormous amounts of matter over much longer stretches of time, generating an extremely bright and long-lasting ring — so bright, in fact, that quasars are among the most luminous objects in the universe.

Because they are so bright, quasars outshine the rest of the galaxy in which they reside. But the MIT team was able for the first time to observe the much fainter light from stars in the host galaxies of three ancient quasars.

Based on this elusive stellar light, the researchers estimated the mass of each host galaxy, compared to the mass of its central supermassive black hole. They found that for these quasars, the central black holes were much more massive relative to their host galaxies, compared to their modern counterparts.

The findings, published today in the Astrophysical Journal, may shed light on how the earliest supermassive black holes became so massive despite having a relatively short amount of cosmic time in which to grow. In particular, those earliest monster black holes may have sprouted from more massive “seeds” than more modern black holes did.

“After the universe came into existence, there were seed black holes that then consumed material and grew in a very short time,” says study author Minghao Yue, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “One of the big questions is to understand how those monster black holes could grow so big, so fast.”

“These black holes are billions of times more massive than the sun, at a time when the universe is still in its infancy,” says study author Anna-Christina Eilers, assistant professor of physics at MIT. “Our results imply that in the early universe, supermassive black holes might have gained their mass before their host galaxies did, and the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive than today.”

Eilers’ and Yue’s co-authors include MIT Kavli Director Robert Simcoe, MIT Hubble Fellow and postdoc Rohan Naidu, and collaborators in Switzerland, Austria, Japan, and at North Carolina State University.

Dazzling cores

A quasar’s extreme luminosity has been obvious since astronomers first discovered the objects in the 1960s. They assumed then that the quasar’s light stemmed from a single, star-like “point source.” Scientists designated the objects “quasars,” as a portmanteau of a “quasi-stellar” object. Since those first observations, scientists have realized that quasars are in fact not stellar in origin but emanate from the accretion of intensely powerful and persistent supermassive black holes sitting at the center of galaxies that also host stars, which are much fainter in comparison to their dazzling cores.

It’s been extremely challenging to separate the light from a quasar’s central black hole from the light of the host galaxy’s stars. The task is a bit like discerning a field of fireflies around a central, massive searchlight. But in recent years, astronomers have had a much better chance of doing so with the launch of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which has been able to peer farther back in time, and with much higher sensitivity and resolution, than any existing observatory.

In their new study, Yue and Eilers used dedicated time on JWST to observe six known, ancient quasars, intermittently from the fall of 2022 through the following spring. In total, the team collected more than 120 hours of observations of the six distant objects.

“The quasar outshines its host galaxy by orders of magnitude. And previous images were not sharp enough to distinguish what the host galaxy with all its stars looks like,” Yue says. “Now for the first time, we are able to reveal the light from these stars by very carefully modeling JWST’s much sharper images of those quasars.”

A light balance

The team took stock of the imaging data collected by JWST of each of the six distant quasars, which they estimated to be about 13 billion years old. That data included measurements of each quasar’s light in different wavelengths. The researchers fed that data into a model of how much of that light likely comes from a compact “point source,” such as a central black hole’s accretion disk, versus a more diffuse source, such as light from the host galaxy’s surrounding, scattered stars.

Through this modeling, the team teased apart each quasar’s light into two components: light from the central black hole’s luminous disk and light from the host galaxy’s more diffuse stars. The amount of light from both sources is a reflection of their total mass. The researchers estimate that for these quasars, the ratio between the mass of the central black hole and the mass of the host galaxy was about 1:10. This, they realized, was in stark contrast to today’s mass balance of 1:1,000, in which more recently formed black holes are much less massive compared to their host galaxies.

“This tells us something about what grows first: Is it the black hole that grows first, and then the galaxy catches up? Or is the galaxy and its stars that first grow, and they dominate and regulate the black hole’s growth?” Eilers explains. “We see that black holes in the early universe seem to be growing faster than their host galaxies. That is tentative evidence that the initial black hole seeds could have been more massive back then.”

“There must have been some mechanism to make a black hole gain their mass earlier than their host galaxy in those first billion years,” Yue adds. “It’s kind of the first evidence we see for this, which is exciting.”

President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana visits the Legatum Center at MIT

His delegation’s trip to campus included a conference on entrepreneurship and a meeting with Institute President Sally Kornbluth.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana visited the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT on Tuesday, delivering a speech on the value of entrepreneurship in growing economies and affirming an interest in working with the center on spurring innovation in his own country.

“Innovation is … not a privilege for the few, but a powerful tool that should be accessible for all,” Masisi said during a speech at the Legatum Center’s “Innovation in Global Growth Markets: Prosperity Through Entrepreneurship” conference, marking the center’s 15th anniversary.

Botswana, Masisi said, should undertake a “deliberate effort to deliver a vibrant innovation ecosystem by increasing investment in science, technology, and innovation, thus creating space for our current and future generations … to thrive and ensure an improved quality of life” in the country.

MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth also spoke at the event, highlighting the ways that the Legatum Center — which is part of the MIT Sloan School of Management — enables innovation-driven economic growth.

The goal, Kornbluth said, is to “help advance innovative ideas that have the potential for real impact and require long-term investment to succeeed; help connect promising entrpreneurs with investors, mentors, and advisors; and provide the resources that are needed to develop, scale, and deploy their solutions.”

Kornbluth also highlighted MIT’s new effort to combat climate change, the Climate Project at MIT. She noted that more than a quarter of MIT faculty have already been working on climate issues but that the new Institute-wide effort can produce “ways to have talented people do more together than they can do alone, so that we can help direct that collective power to deliver climate solutions to the world, in time.”

Georgia Perakis, the John C Head III Dean (Interim) of MIT Sloan, also delivered remarks at the conference, noting that MIT Sloan and the Legatum Center are committed to “educating principled innovation leaders and entrepreneurs who will make a difference and have an impact in the world.” She added, “And I know with the support of everybody here, this is what we are accomplishing.”

In addition to his appearance at the conference, Masisi, along with a delegation of government leaders from Botswana, met directly with Kornbluth, as well as with Dina H. Sherif, executive director of the Legatum Center, and other MIT administrators and faculty members.

In opening remarks at the conference, Sherif observed, “The majority of the world’s growth now comes from what has historically been referred to as the developing world. It is time for us to start recognizing that our time is now. We are not rising. We are here, we are strong, and it is up to us to create the prosperity that we need.”

Sherif added: “Long heralded as a regional reference for good governance and stability, Botswana is now uniquely positioned to become more influential globally and set an example for a rapid transition to a knowledge economy, leading the path for the rest of Africa.”

Masisi has been president of Botswana since 2018. He served as the country’s vice president from 2014 through 2018 and as a member of parliament from 2009 through 2018. The son of a longtime Botswana politican, Edison Masisi, he has a BA from the University of Botswana and an MA from Florida State University.

Botswana has one of the highest per-capita incomes in Africa. The country gained independence from Britain in 1966 and has been a democracy ever since. However, leaders are continuing to examine ways of diversifying the country’s economy.

As such, Botswana and the Legatum Center issued a memorandum of understanding to explore new ways to enhance innovation-driven growth in the country. Elements of the memorandum include establishing a fellowship for African innovation-driven entrepreneurs and student fellows in the mode of the Legatum Center’s fellowships, accelerating the country’s digitalization through uses of artificial intelligence, building an MIT Sandbox program to encourage entrepreneurship within Botswana, participation in the MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program, and possibly other joint activities.

For its part, the Legatum Center also issued a report summarizing its 15 years of impact in global growth markets. The center was initially housed in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, during which it supported graduate students from all five schools at MIT. It then became part of the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2014.

The Legatum Center’s Student Fellowship supplies MIT students with curriculum, tuition support, advisor networks, and experiential learning opportunities to help drive their venture ideas ahead. So far, the center has provided over $10 million in fellowship funding to 326 fellows. In turn, those Legatum Fellows have created 282 ventures, about three-quarters of which still exist, raising over $1 billion in funding and creating over 17,000 jobs by themselves.

Among the center’s core aspirations has been to “create a home for immensely talented and promising young entrepreneurs,” said Legatum Group CEO Mark Stoleson, during an interview with MIT News between conference panel sessions.

In turn, Stoleson added, those Legatum Fellows will then “hopefully go back to the countries they came from and start businesses, create jobs, and be leaders within the ecosystem of entrepeneurship and prosperity within their countries.”

3 Questions: Paul Cheek on tactics for new startups

The Trust Center executive director has penned a new book that gives entrepreneurs a sequence of actions to get their ventures out into the world.

Paul Cheek, the executive director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, has firsthand experience leading successful startups. Over the last six years, he has also advised hundreds of MIT entrepreneurs as they have launched their own ventures.

Those experiences have helped Cheek, who is also a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, distill entrepreneurship down to its key components. In a new book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship: Startup Tactics,” Cheek offers an action-oriented framework to help entrepreneurs turn ideas into successful businesses.

The book, released April 2, serves as a complement to Trust Center Managing Director Bill Aulet’s 2013 book “Disciplined Entrepreneurship,” which has been translated into over 20 languages and served as the basis for three edX courses since its release. A new edition of Aulet’s book was also released in April.

MIT News sat down with Cheek to learn more about his book.

Q: Why write this book?

A: I want to help entrepreneurs get their ideas into the world to have an impact. At MIT, we are focused on impact, and entrepreneurship is one of the ways in which we can take the research, the technology, the science that’s here on campus and push it out to the world to help other people.

Entrepreneurs don’t always know how to execute in the functional areas that allow them to unlock additional resources so they can grow and scale their business. The three things that I hear most often from entrepreneurs are: We need help building a product, we need help building our team, and we need help raising money. My response to that is almost always, “Why should somebody join your team instead of one of the other startups? Why should an investor choose to invest in you instead of another startup? What traction do you have to get there?” Those are the questions that I ask entrepreneurs to consider.

The way they get that traction is through action. That doesn’t just mean building the strategy and the plan for a new business. It means actually taking that plan and getting it out into the real world.

The book covers 15 functional tactics so they can do just enough in each to hit the next milestone. The book is based on the curriculum that we use here at MIT to help entrepreneurs get traction. I want to help entrepreneurs learn this entrepreneurial mindset and skillset for life. We’re not just focused on commercializing research and starting a company today; we want to help them become highly effective individuals throughout their careers, within startups or existing organizations, whether in industry, academia, government, or elsewhere.

Q: How is the book structured?

A: We like to think a lot about entrepreneurial math at the Trust Center and at MIT more broadly. There’s this order of operations known as PEMDAS that’s used to solve math problems. There's also an order of operations in entrepreneurship, and that’s how “Startup Tactics” is structured. It starts with setting a really strong set of foundations. The first section covers goal-setting and systems you can use to track progress toward those goals.

Everybody thinks they’re good at setting goals until the rubber meets the road. We realize that sometimes goals need to be revised. In a large organization, goals and structure are provided to you. But when you’re an entrepreneur, you need to find your own structure. You have to set your own goals that will help you work toward the long-term vision and avoid investing resources in the wrong places.

Once we have those goals set, we move to market testing. We don’t start by building the product; we start by testing. Does the market want what you believe it does? We discuss how to do primary market research, how to communicate to the world with visual assets the value that you can create for them, and we look at marketing and sales for market testing. Marketing within a large organization is much different than marketing in a day-zero startup.

We also explore how to attract a precise target audience and how to market not a product but a value proposition. Does the market respond when we present a value proposition to them? We look at how to run the first sales process to get customers, and once we have a line of customers waiting down the street, we move into product development.

The saying, “If you build it, they will come” is not generally true in entrepreneurship. We want to build customer lists — people who want what we have — even before we start building the product.

Product development is about taking a really lean approach to designing a product, testing the product with users before we’ve even built it, and then engineering the simplest possible minimum viable business product. Once we have customers waiting in a line down the street and the product built, we go to resource acquisition. Because we have traction, we explore incorporating a startup, dividing equity, building a financial model, building a pitch deck that tells a story, and going through the fundraising and hiring processes as an early-stage startup.

This order of operations is important to entrepreneurs because it allows them to use their resources as effectively as possible and ultimately get to the point where they can get more money and time.

Q: Who is this book written for?

A: “Startup Tactics” is for people who want to have an impact through innovation-driven entrepreneurship. It’s about building a business that has the potential to scale and have global impact. We’re generally looking at high-tech businesses, but “Startup Tactics” is also a process that entrepreneurs can follow to start any type of business.

We take an engineering approach to the entrepreneurial process to improve the odds of success for individuals who are about to pursue the entrepreneurial journey. [Aulet’s book] “Disciplined Entrepreneurship” provides the strategy and framework of entrepreneurship. It tells you what to do and why to do it. My book takes you one step further with the how: how to build a business, how to go from an idea or technology to a business plan, and how to take that plan and put it into the world. What are the actions you need to take?

This comes back to some of those things that I’ve heard most often from entrepreneurs in terms of what they need help with. “Startup Tactics” stems from my experience as an entrepreneur building my businesses, but it’s also a combination of what I’ve heard from other entrepreneurs who are out there building their businesses. A lot of what’s gone into the book is the foundation of the courses that I teach here at MIT: 15.390/15.3901 (New Enterprises) and 15.388 (Venture Creation Tactics). The output of the book is also the result of several iterations of running that course, semester after semester.

What has really stood out as important to me is having an integrated approach. We now have a full-stack entrepreneurship education experience. By that I mean we have the theory of entrepreneurship, the practice of entrepreneurship, and the tactics of entrepreneurship. It’s that integration that best sets entrepreneurs up for success. That’s what I’ve seen from working with so many students.

Weaving memory into textiles

For the MIT Visiting Artist Chloé Bensahel, fabric itself tells the story.

In 2021, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution contacted Chloé Bensahel, currently the MIT 2023-24 Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence, and told her about some objects that had been made for space missions. “They were weavings of conductive yarn with magnetic pieces in them,” Bensahel says. “After World War II, you had these really powerful computers but no way to store data, so scientists at MIT and Harvard came up with this magnetic core memory. It was the last moment, I think, in computing history when information was visible: You can actually see the code because of the little magnets that were turned on or turned off.”

What really captured the attention of Bensahel, who works with textiles, is that those items had been woven by hand at MIT. “They’re the result of two histories in New England that are coinciding: the declining textile industry and the increasing space research,” she says. “Legend has it that the women who were getting laid off from the textile industries got hired by MIT to make these objects. They were weaving here on campus.”

Reinventing codes

Eventually, Bensahel connected with Zach Lieberman, an adjunct associate professor who runs the Future Sketches group at the MIT Media Lab, who applied for a MIT Center for Art Science and Technology (CAST) grant to bring her to campus as a visiting artist. The pair share an interest in various forms of code and communication — Bensahel, for example, sees textiles as carrying information, not just in what they visually display, like, say, a slogan on a T-shirt, but in the very way they are made. Now, they are working together at MIT, which has been unfurling in connection with Bensahel’s residency at Villa Albertine, an arts institution launched in 2021 by the French Embassy in the United States that supports cultural exchange between the United States, France and beyond, including offering more than 50 residencies each year for artists, thinkers, and creators across all disciplines.

Bensahel is building on MIT’s groundbreaking legacy in the weaving of memory technology, which complements the research conducted by her MIT collaborators, whether they are faculty members or research assistants. “We’re primarily software-oriented here,” Lieberman says, referring to his group. “We are working in the realm of bits and with language. Chloe’s work is also really intimately concerned with language, but she’s coming at it from a perspective of materials and trying to figure out how to weave them in different ways, and connect with electronics and sensing.”

Theory and craftsmanship

Born in France, Bensahel moved to the United States when she was 7. She attended Parsons School of Design, in New York City. She specialized in integrated design with a focus on textiles, and graduated in 2013. The coursework was essentially theoretical and philosophical, though, and afterward Bensahel moved to France to hone her craftsmanship. “I wanted to learn with my hands, not just my mind,” she says — no doubt making her a perfect fit for MIT, whose motto, “mens et manus,” translates as “mind and hand.”

This interest in the interaction of the physical with the ineffable continues to guide her art, which essentially renders communication tactile. “Chloe’s work is so much about listening to materials and finding ways to hear how they talk, hear the sounds that they make,” Lieberman says. This approach is in evidence at a forthcoming exhibition “Tisser L’Hybride: Chloe Bensahel” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, which features three interactive tapestries. According to Bensahel, the artwork in the exhibit and what she is doing at MIT are “not going to be directly connected,” but she also points out that “they benefit from one another, for sure.”

Indeed, keeping an open mind to different fields and different ways of thinking has been enriching Bensahel’s time on campus. In addition to such public-facing activities as a presentation and demonstration at the MIT Museum’s After Dark series, in March, she has been actively collaborating with various entities, faculty, and students. For instance, she has been leveraging prototyping equipment and exploring potential industrial applications of her work with the public-private partnership Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, of which MIT is a member. “I love that something that could  be in a museum could also be in a hospital,” Bensahel says. AFFOA staff members Jesse Jur, director of technical program development, and Frannie Logan, textile technologist, have been providing technical support as well.

Thriving on collaboration

Interlocutors on campus include Azra Akšamija, the director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab, and Vera van de Seyp, a research assistant in the Future Sketches group, whose interests and experiences complement Bensahel’s. “A lot of my work is text-based and I’m not a typography or graphic designer at all, so it’s really nice to work with Vera, because what we're essentially doing is thinking about form and function at the same time,” Bensahel says. “I’m working on how I can make a textile that can be magnetized, in the way that magnetic core memory was magnetic. I would like for it to tense up or move in different ways, so that essentially you have a textile that can assemble in different ways.”

Most of all, perhaps, it’s the constant intellectual activity at MIT that has spurred and inspired Bensahel, who relishes the opportunity to integrate perspectives that are new to her. “I’ve had a lot of really eye-opening conversations on what magnetism means,” she says. “I just had lunch with a researcher and she was like, ‘Bacteria sometimes have magnetic fields to know how to grow.’ This place, it's really about the people,” Bensahel continues. “It’s a very dense group of brilliant people so no matter who you're running into, they’re going to have this very powerful depth of knowledge in one specific field. Being here also shifted my perspective: I didn’t really consider myself a researcher, or a scientist for that matter, and I feel more comfortable in that space now. Every day, I find new applications or new directions.”

Three from MIT named 2024-25 Goldwater Scholars

Undergraduates Ben Lou, Srinath Mahankali, and Kenta Suzuki, whose research explores math and physics, are honored for their academic excellence.

MIT students Ben Lou, Srinath Mahankali, and Kenta Suzuki have been selected to receive Barry Goldwater Scholarships for the 2024-25 academic year. They are among just 438 recipients from across the country selected based on academic merit from an estimated pool of more than 5,000 college sophomores and juniors, approximately 1,350 of whom were nominated by their academic institution to compete for the scholarship.

Since 1989, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation has awarded nearly 11,000 Goldwater scholarships to support undergraduates who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering and have the potential to become leaders in their respective fields. Past scholars have gone on to win an impressive array of prestigious postgraduate fellowships. Almost all, including the three MIT recipients, intend to obtain doctorates in their area of research.

Ben Lou

Ben Lou is a third-year student originally from San Diego, California, majoring in physics and math with a minor in philosophy.

“My research interests are scattered across different disciplines,” says Lou. “I want to draw from a wide range of topics in math and physics, finding novel connections between them, to push forward the frontier of knowledge.”

Since January 2022, he has worked with Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the School of Science, and Hudson Loughlin, a graduate student in the LIGO group, which studies the detection of gravitational waves. Lou is working with them to advance the field of quantum measurement and better understand quantum gravity.

“Ben has enormous intellectual horsepower and works with remarkable independence,” writes Mavalvala in her recommendation letter. “I have no doubt he has an outstanding career in physics ahead of him.”

Lou, for his part, is grateful to Mavalvala and Loughlin, as well as all of his scientific mentors that have supported him along his research path. That includes MIT professors Alan Guth and Barton Zwiebach, who introduced him to quantum physics, as well as his first-year advisor, Richard Price; current advisor, Janet Conrad; Elijah Bodish and Roman Bezrukavnikov in the Department of Mathematics; and David W. Brown of the San Diego Math Circle.

In terms of his future career goals, Lou wants to be a professor of theoretical physics and study, as he says, the “fundamental aspects of reality” while also inspiring students to love math and physics.

In addition to his research, Lou is currently the vice president of the Assistive Technology Club at MIT and actively engaged in raising money for Spinal Muscular Atrophy research. In the future, he’d like to continue his philanthropy work and use his personal experience to advise an assistive technology company.

Srinath Mahankali

Srinath Mahankali is a third-year student from New York City majoring in computer science.

Since June 2022, Mahankali has been an undergraduate researcher in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Working with Pulkit Agrawal, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and head of the Improbable AI Lab, Mahankali’s research is on training robots. Currently, his focus is on training quadruped robots to move in an energy-efficient manner and training agents to interact in environments with minimal feedback. But in the future, he’d like to develop robots that can complete athletic tasks like gymnastics.

“The experience of discussing research with Srinath is similar to discussions with the best PhD students in my group,” writes Agrawal in his recommendation letter. “He is fearless, willing to take risks, persistent, creative, and gets things done.”

Before coming to MIT, Mahankali was a 2021 Regeneron STS scholar, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious awards for math and science students. In 2020, he was also a participant in the MIT PRIMES program, studying objective functions in optimization problems with Yunan Yang, an assistant professor of math at Cornell University.

“I’m deeply grateful to all my research advisors for their invaluable mentorship and guidance,” says Mahankali, extending his thanks to PhD students Zhang-Wei Hong and Gabe Margolis, as well as assistant professor of math at Brandeis, Promit Ghosal, and all of the organizers of the PRIMES program. “I’m also very grateful to all the members of the Improbable AI Lab for their support, encouragement, and willingness to help and discuss any questions I have,”

In the future, Mahankali wants to obtain a PhD and one day lead his own lab in robotics and artificial intelligence.

Kenta Suzuki

Kenta Suzuki is a third-year student majoring in mathematics from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Tokyo, Japan.

Currently, Suzuki works with professor of mathematics Roman Bezrukavnikov on research at the intersection of number and representation theory, using geometric methods to represent p-adic groups. Suzuki has also previously worked with math professors Wei Zhang and Zhiwei Yun, crediting the latter with inspiring him to pursue research in representation theory.

In his recommendation letter, Yun writes, “Kenta is the best undergraduate student that I have worked with in terms of the combination of raw talent, mathematical maturity, and research abilities.”

Before coming to MIT, Suzuki was a Yau Science Award USA finalist in 2020, receiving a gold in math, and he received honorable mention from the Davidson Institute Fellows program in 2021. He also participated in the MIT PRIMES program in 2020. Suzuki credits his PRIMES mentor, Michael Zieve at the University of Michigan, with giving him his first taste of mathematical research. In addition, he extended his thanks to all of his math mentors, including the organizers of MIT Summer Program in Undergraduate Research.

After MIT, Suzuki intends to obtain a PhD in pure math, continuing his research in representation theory and number theory and, one day, teaching at a research-oriented institution.

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by U.S. Congress in 1986 to honor Senator Barry Goldwater, a soldier and national leader who served the country for 56 years. Awardees receive scholarships of up to $7,500 a year to cover costs related to tuition, room and board, fees, and books.

Physicists arrange atoms in extremely close proximity

The technique opens possibilities for exploring exotic states of matter and building new quantum materials.

Proximity is key for many quantum phenomena, as interactions between atoms are stronger when the particles are close. In many quantum simulators, scientists arrange atoms as close together as possible to explore exotic states of matter and build new quantum materials.

They typically do this by cooling the atoms to a stand-still, then using laser light to position the particles as close as 500 nanometers apart — a limit that is set by the wavelength of light. Now, MIT physicists have developed a technique that allows them to arrange atoms in much closer proximity, down to a mere 50 nanometers. For context, a red blood cell is about 1,000 nanometers wide.

The physicists demonstrated the new approach in experiments with dysprosium, which is the most magnetic atom in nature. They used the new approach to manipulate two layers of dysprosium atoms, and positioned the layers precisely 50 nanometers apart. At this extreme proximity, the magnetic interactions were 1,000 times stronger than if the layers were separated by 500 nanometers.

What’s more, the scientists were able to measure two new effects caused by the atoms’ proximity. Their enhanced magnetic forces caused “thermalization,” or the transfer of heat from one layer to another, as well as synchronized oscillations between layers. These effects petered out as the layers were spaced farther apart.

“We have gone from positioning atoms from 500 nanometers to 50 nanometers apart, and there is a lot you can do with this,” says Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT. “At 50 nanometers, the behavior of atoms is so much different that we’re really entering a new regime here.”

Ketterle and his colleagues say the new approach can be applied to many other atoms to study quantum phenomena. For their part, the group plans to use the technique to manipulate atoms into configurations that could generate the first purely magnetic quantum gate — a key building block for a new type of quantum computer.

The team has published their results today in the journal Science. The study’s co-authors include lead author and physics graduate student Li Du, along with Pierre Barral, Michael Cantara, Julius de Hond, and Yu-Kun Lu — all members of the MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms, the Department of Physics, and the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.

Peaks and valleys

To manipulate and arrange atoms, physicists typically first cool a cloud of atoms to temperatures approaching absolute zero, then use a system of laser beams to corral the atoms into an optical trap.

Laser light is an electromagnetic wave with a specific wavelength (the distance between maxima of the electric field) and frequency. The wavelength limits the smallest pattern into which light can be shaped to typically 500 nanometers, the so-called optical resolution limit. Since atoms are attracted by laser light of certain frequencies, atoms will be positioned at the points of peak laser intensity. For this reason, existing techniques have been limited in how close they can position atomic particles, and could not be used to explore phenomena that happen at much shorter distances.

“Conventional techniques stop at 500 nanometers, limited not by the atoms but by the wavelength of light,” Ketterle explains. “We have found now a new trick with light where we can break through that limit.”

The team’s new approach, like current techniques, starts by cooling a cloud of atoms — in this case, to about 1 microkelvin, just a hair above absolute zero — at which point, the atoms come to a near-standstill. Physicists can then use lasers to move the frozen particles into desired configurations.

Then, Du and his collaborators worked with two laser beams, each with a different frequency, or color, and circular polarization, or direction of the laser’s electric field. When the two beams travel through a super-cooled cloud of atoms, the atoms can orient their spin in opposite directions, following either of the two lasers’ polarization. The result is that the beams produce two groups of the same atoms, only with opposite spins.

Each laser beam formed a standing wave, a periodic pattern of electric field intensity with a spatial period of 500 nanometers. Due to their different polarizations, each standing wave attracted and corralled one of two groups of atoms, depending on their spin. The lasers could be overlaid and tuned such that the distance between their respective peaks is as small as 50 nanometers, meaning that the atoms gravitating to each respective laser’s peaks would be separated by the same 50 nanometers.

But in order for this to happen, the lasers would have to be extremely stable and immune to all external noise, such as from shaking or even breathing on the experiment. The team realized they could stabilize both lasers by directing them through an optical fiber, which served to lock the light beams in place in relation to each other.

“The idea of sending both beams through the optical fiber meant the whole machine could shake violently, but the two laser beams stayed absolutely stable with respect to each others,” Du says.

Magnetic forces at close range

As a first test of their new technique, the team used atoms of dysprosium — a rare-earth metal that is one of the strongest magnetic elements in the periodic table, particularly at ultracold temperatures. However, at the scale of atoms, the element’s magnetic interactions are relatively weak at distances of even 500 nanometers. As with common refrigerator magnets, the magnetic attraction between atoms increases with proximity, and the scientists suspected that if their new technique could space dysprosium atoms as close as 50 nanometers apart, they might observe the emergence of otherwise weak interactions between the magnetic atoms.

“We could suddenly have magnetic interactions, which used to be almost neglible but now are really strong,” Ketterle says.

The team applied their technique to dysprosium, first super-cooling the atoms, then passing two lasers through to split the atoms into two spin groups, or layers. They then directed the lasers through an optical fiber to stabilize them, and found that indeed, the two layers of dysprosium atoms gravitated to their respective laser peaks, which in effect separated the layers of atoms by 50 nanometers — the closest distance that any ultracold atom experiment has been able to achieve.

At this extremely close proximity, the atoms’ natural magnetic interactions were significantly enhanced, and were 1,000 times stronger than if they were positioned 500 nanometers apart. The team observed that these interactions resulted in two novel quantum phenomena: collective oscillation, in which one layer’s vibrations caused the other layer to vibrate in sync; and thermalization, in which one layer transferred heat to the other, purely through magnetic fluctuations in the atoms.

“Until now, heat between atoms could only by exchanged when they were in the same physical space and could collide,” Du notes. “Now we have seen atomic layers, separated by vacuum, and they exchange heat via fluctuating magnetic fields.”

The team’s results introduce a new technique that can be used to position many types of atom in close proximity. They also show that atoms, placed close enough together, can exhibit interesting quantum phenomena, that could be harnessed to build new quantum materials, and potentially, magnetically-driven atomic systems for quantum computers.

“We are really bringing super-resolution methods to the field, and it will become a general tool for doing quantum simulations,” Ketterle says. “There are many variants possible, which we are working on.”

This research was funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense.

Epigenomic analysis sheds light on risk factors for ALS

In a study of cells from nearly 400 ALS patients, researchers identified genomic regions with chemical modifications linked to disease progression.

For most patients, it’s unknown exactly what causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease characterized by degeneration of motor neurons that impairs muscle control and eventually leads to death.

Studies have identified certain genes that confer a higher risk of the disease, but scientists believe there are many more genetic risk factors that have yet to be discovered. One reason why these drivers have been hard to find is that some are found in very few patients, making it hard to pick them out without a very large sample of patients. Additionally, some of the risk may be driven by epigenomic factors, rather than mutations in protein-coding genes.

Working with the Answer ALS consortium, a team of MIT researchers has analyzed epigenetic modifications — tags that determine which genes are turned on in a cell — in motor neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells from 380 ALS patients.

This analysis revealed a strong differential signal associated with a known subtype of ALS, and about 30 locations with modifications that appear to be linked to rates of disease progression in ALS patients. The findings may help scientists develop new treatments that are targeted to patients with certain genetic risk factors.

“If the root causes are different for all these different versions of the disease, the drugs will be very different and the signals in IPS cells will be very different,” says Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study. “We may get to a point in a decade or so where we don’t even think of ALS as one disease, where there are drugs that are treating specific types of ALS that only work for one group of patients and not for another.”

MIT postdoc Stanislav Tsitkov is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Communications.

Finding risk factors

ALS is a rare disease that is estimated to affect about 30,000 people in the United States. One of the challenges in studying the disease is that while genetic variants are believed to account for about 50 percent of ALS risk (with environmental factors making up the rest), most of the variants that contribute to that risk have not been identified.

Similar to Alzheimer’s disease, there may be a large number of genetic variants that can confer risk, but each individual patient may carry only a small number of those. This makes it difficult to identify the risk factors unless scientists have a very large population of patients to analyze.

“Because we expect the disease to be heterogeneous, you need to have large numbers of patients before you can pick up on signals like this. To really be able to classify the subtypes of disease, we’re going to need to look at a lot of people,” Fraenkel says.

About 10 years ago, the Answer ALS consortium began to collect large numbers of patient samples, which could allow for larger-scale studies that might reveal some of the genetic drivers of the disease. From blood samples, researchers can create induced pluripotent stem cells and then induce them to differentiate into motor neurons, the cells most affected by ALS.

“We don’t think all ALS patients are going to be the same, just like all cancers are not the same. And the goal is being able to find drivers of the disease that could be therapeutic targets,” Fraenkel says.

In this study, Fraenkel and his colleagues wanted to see if patient-derived cells could offer any information about molecular differences that are relevant to ALS. They focused on epigenomic modifications, using a method called ATAC-seq to measure chromatin density across the genome of each cell. Chromatin is a complex of DNA and proteins that determines which genes are accessible to be transcribed by the cell, depending on how densely packed the chromatin is.

In data that were collected and analyzed over several years, the researchers did not find any global signal that clearly differentiated the 380 ALS patients in their study from 80 healthy control subjects. However, they did find a strong differential signal associated with a subtype of ALS, characterized by a genetic mutation in the C9orf72 gene.

Additionally, they identified about 30 regions that were associated with slower rates of disease progression in ALS patients. Many of these regions are located near genes related to the cellular inflammatory response; interestingly, several of the identified genes have also been implicated in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease.

“You can use a small number of these epigenomic regions and look at the intensity of the signal there, and predict how quickly someone’s disease will progress. That really validates the hypothesis that the epigenomics can be used as a filter to better understand the contribution of the person’s genome,” Fraenkel says.

“By harnessing the very large number of participant samples and extensive data collected by the Answer ALS Consortium, these studies were able to rigorously test whether the observed changes might be artifacts related to the techniques of sample collection, storage, processing, and analysis, or truly reflective of important biology,” says Lyle Ostrow, an associate professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, who was not involved in the study. “They developed standard ways to control for these variables, to make sure the results can be accurately compared. Such studies are incredibly important for accelerating ALS therapy development, as they will enable data and samples collected from different studies to be analyzed together.”

Targeted drugs

The researchers now hope to further investigate these genomic regions and see how they might drive different aspects of ALS progression in different subsets of patients. This could help scientists develop drugs that might work in different groups of patients, and help them identify which patients should be chosen for clinical trials of those drugs, based on genetic or epigenetic markers.

Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called tofersen, which can be used in ALS patients with a mutation in a gene called SOD1. This drug is very effective for those patients, who make up about 1 percent of the total population of people with ALS. Fraenkel’s hope is that more drugs can be developed for, and tested in, people with other genetic drivers of ALS.

“If you had a drug like tofersen that works for 1 percent of patients and you just gave it to a typical phase two clinical trial, you probably wouldn’t have anybody with that mutation in the trial, and it would’ve failed. And so that drug, which is a lifesaver for people, would never have gotten through,” Fraenkel says.

The MIT team is now using an approach called quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis to try to identify subgroups of ALS patients whose disease is driven by specific genomic variants.

“We can integrate the genomics, the transcriptomics, and the epigenomics, as a way to find subgroups of ALS patients who have distinct phenotypic signatures from other ALS patients and healthy controls,” Tsitkov says. “We have already found a few potential hits in that direction.”

The research was funded by the Answer ALS program, which is supported by the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University, Travelers Insurance, ALS Finding a Cure Foundation, Stay Strong Vs. ALS, Answer ALS Foundation, Microsoft, Caterpillar Foundation, American Airlines, Team Gleason, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Fishman Family Foundation, Aviators Against ALS, AbbVie Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, ALS Association, National Football League, F. Prime, M. Armstrong, Bruce Edwards Foundation, the Judith and Jean Pape Adams Charitable Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association, Les Turner ALS Foundation, PGA Tour, Gates Ventures, and Bari Lipp Foundation. This work was also supported, in part, by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the MIT-GSK Gertrude B. Elion Research Fellowship Program for Drug Discovery and Disease.

Francis Fan Lee, former professor and interdisciplinary speech processing inventor, dies

The former EECS professor and RLE affiliate helped to develop a machine that read text out loud and won an Emmy for work on subtly speeding up film and audio without a noticeable loss of pitch.

Francis Fan Lee ’50, SM ’51, PhD ’66, a former professor of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, died on Jan. 12. He was approximately 97.

Born in 1927 in Nanjing, China, to professors Li Rumian and Zhou Huizhan, Lee learned English from his father, a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Wuhan. Lee’s mastery of the language led to an interpreter position at the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and eventually a passport and permission from the Chinese government to study in the United States. 

Lee left China via steamship in 1948 to pursue his undergraduate education at MIT. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering in 1950 and 1951, respectively, before going into industry. Around this time, he became reacquainted with a friend he’d known in China, who had since emigrated; he married Teresa Jen Lee, and the two welcomed children Franklin, Elizabeth, Gloria, and Roberta over the next decade. 

During his 10-year industrial career, Lee distinguished himself in roles at Ultrasonic (where he worked on instrument type servomechanisms, circuit design, and a missile simulator), RCA Camden (where he worked on an experimental time-shared digital processor for department store point-of-sale interactions), and UNIVAC Corp. (where he held a variety of roles, culminating in a stint in Philadelphia, planning next-generation computing systems.)

Lee returned to MIT to earn his PhD in 1966, after which he joined the then-Department of Electrical Engineering as an associate professor with tenure, affiliated with the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). There, he pursued the subject of his doctoral research: the development of a machine that would read printed text out loud — a tremendously ambitious and complex goal for the time.

Work on the “RLE reading machine,” as it was called, was inherently interdisciplinary, and Lee drew upon the influences of multiple contemporaries, including linguists Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky, and engineer Kenneth Stevens, whose quantal theory of speech production and recognition broke down human speech into discrete, and limited, combinations of sound. One of Lee’s greatest contributions to the machine, which he co-built with Donald Troxel, was a clever and efficient storage system that used root words, prefixes, and suffixes to make the real-time synthesis of half-a-million English words possible, while only requiring about 32,000 words’ worth of storage. The solution was emblematic of Lee’s creative approach to solving complex research problems, an approach which earned him respect and admiration from his colleagues and contemporaries.

In reflection of Lee’s remarkable accomplishments in both industry and building the reading machine, he was promoted to full professor in 1969, just three years after he earned his PhD. Many awards and other recognition followed, including the IEEE Fellowship in 1971 and the Audio Engineering Society Best Paper Award in 1972. Additionally, Lee occupied several important roles within the department, including over a decade spent as the undergraduate advisor. He consistently supported and advocated for more funding to go to ongoing professional education for faculty members, especially those who were no longer junior faculty, identifying ongoing development as an important, but often-overlooked, priority.

Lee’s research work continued to straddle both novel inquiry and practical, commercial application — in 1969, together with Charles Bagnaschi, he founded American Data Sciences, later changing the company’s name to Lexicon Inc. The company specialized in producing devices that expanded on Lee’s work in digital signal compression and expansion: for example, the first commercially available speech compressor and pitch shifter, which was marketed as an educational tool for blind students and those with speech processing disorders. The device, called Varispeech, allowed students to speed up written material without losing pitch — much as modern audiobook listeners speed up their chapters to absorb books at their preferred rate. Later innovations of Lee’s included the Time Compressor Model 1200, which added a film and video component to the speeding-up process, allowing television producers to subtly speed up a movie, sitcom, or advertisement to precisely fill a limited time slot without having to resort to making cuts. For this work, he received an Emmy Award for technical contributions to editing.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, Lee’s influential academic career was brought to a close by a series of deeply personal tragedies, including the 1984 murder of his daughter Roberta, and the subsequent and sudden deaths of his wife, Theresa, and his son, Franklin. Reeling from his losses, Lee ultimately decided to take an early retirement, dedicating his energy to healing. For the next two decades, he would explore the world extensively, a nomadic second chapter that included multiple road trips across the United States in a Volkswagen camper van. He eventually settled in California, where he met his last wife, Ellen, and where his lively intellectual life persisted despite diagnoses of deafness and dementia; as his family recalled, he enjoyed playing games of Scrabble until his final weeks. 

He is survived by his wife Ellen Li; his daughters Elizabeth Lee (David Goya) and Gloria Lee (Matthew Lynaugh); his grandsons Alex, Benjamin, Mason, and Sam; his sister Li Zhong (Lei Tongshen); and family friend Angelique Agbigay. His family have asked that gifts honoring Francis Fan Lee’s life be directed to the Hertz Foundation. 

Nuno Loureiro named director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center

A lauded professor, theoretical physicist, and fusion scientist, Loureiro is keenly positioned to advance the center’s research and education goals.

Nuno Loureiro, professor of nuclear science and engineering and of physics, has been appointed the new director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, effective May 1.

Loureiro is taking the helm of one of MIT’s largest labs: more than 250 full-time researchers, staff members, and students work and study in seven buildings with 250,000 square feet of lab space. A theoretical physicist and fusion scientist, Loureiro joined MIT as a faculty member in 2016, and was appointed deputy director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) in 2022. Loureiro succeeds Dennis Whyte, who stepped down at the end of 2023 to return to teaching and research.

Stepping into his new role as director, Loureiro says, “The PSFC has an impressive tradition of discovery and leadership in plasma and fusion science and engineering. Becoming director of the PSFC is an incredible opportunity to shape the future of these fields. We have a world-class team, and it’s an honor to be chosen as its leader.”

Loureiro’s own research ranges widely. He is recognized for advancing the understanding of multiple aspects of plasma behavior, particularly turbulence and the physics underpinning solar flares and other astronomical phenomena. In the fusion domain, his work enables the design of fusion devices that can more efficiently control and harness the energy of fusing plasmas, bringing the dream of clean, near-limitless fusion power that much closer. 

Plasma physics is foundational to advancing fusion science, a fact Loureiro has embraced and that is relevant as he considers the direction of the PSFC’s multidisciplinary research. “But plasma physics is only one aspect of our focus. Building a scientific agenda that continues and expands on the PSFC’s history of innovation in all aspects of fusion science and engineering is vital, and a key facet of that work is facilitating our researchers’ efforts to produce the breakthroughs that are necessary for the realization of fusion energy.”

As the climate crisis accelerates, fusion power continues to grow in appeal: It produces no carbon emissions, its fuel is plentiful, and dangerous “meltdowns” are impossible. The sooner that fusion power is commercially available, the greater impact it can have on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting global climate goals. While technical challenges remain, “the PSFC is well poised to meet them, and continue to show leadership. We are a mission-driven lab, and our students and staff are incredibly motivated,” Loureiro comments.

“As MIT continues to lead the way toward the delivery of clean fusion power onto the grid, I have no doubt that Nuno is the right person to step into this key position at this critical time,” says Maria T. Zuber, MIT’s presidential advisor for science and technology policy. “I look forward to the steady advance of plasma physics and fusion science at MIT under Nuno’s leadership.”

Over the last decade, there have been massive leaps forward in the field of fusion energy, driven in part by innovations like high-temperature superconducting magnets developed at the PSFC. Further progress is guaranteed: Loureiro believes that “The next few years are certain to be an exciting time for us, and for fusion as a whole. It’s the dawn of a new era with burning plasma experiments” — a reference to the collaboration between the PSFC and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup company spun out of the PSFC, to build SPARC, a fusion device that is slated to turn on in 2026 and produce a burning plasma that yields more energy than it consumes. “It’s going to be a watershed moment,” says Loureiro.

He continues, “In addition, we have strong connections to inertial confinement fusion experiments, including those at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and we’re looking forward to expanding our research into stellarators, which are another kind of magnetic fusion device.” Over recent years, the PSFC has significantly increased its collaboration with industrial partners such Eni, IBM, and others. Loureiro sees great value in this: “These collaborations are mutually beneficial: they allow us to grow our research portfolio while advancing companies’ R&D efforts. It’s very dynamic and exciting.”

Loureiro’s directorship begins as the PSFC is launching key tech development projects like LIBRA, a “blanket” of molten salt that can be wrapped around fusion vessels and perform double duty as a neutron energy absorber and a breeder for tritium (the fuel for fusion). Researchers at the PSFC have also developed a way to rapidly test the durability of materials being considered for use in a fusion power plant environment, and are now creating an experiment that will utilize a powerful particle accelerator called a gyrotron to irradiate candidate materials.

Interest in fusion is at an all-time high; the demand for researchers and engineers, particularly in the nascent commercial fusion industry, is reflected by the record number of graduate students that are studying at the PSFC — more than 90 across seven affiliated MIT departments. The PSFC’s classrooms are full, and Loureiro notes a palpable sense of excitement. “Students are our greatest strength,” says Loureiro. “They come here to do world-class research but also to grow as individuals, and I want to give them a great place to do that. Supporting those experiences, making sure they can be as successful as possible is one of my top priorities.” Loureiro plans to continue teaching and advising students after his appointment begins.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s recently announced Climate Project is a clarion call for Loureiro: “It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” he says. “Fusion is a hard problem, but it can be solved with resolve and ingenuity — characteristics that define MIT. Fusion energy will change the course of human history. It’s both humbling and exciting to be leading a research center that will play a key role in enabling that change.” 

Studies in empathy and analytics

Senior James Simon wants to effect change in two ways: by quantifying societal issues and working directly with disadvantaged communities.

Upon the advice of one of his soccer teammates, James Simon enrolled in 14.73 (The Challenge of World Poverty) as a first-year student to fulfill a humanities requirement. He went from knowing nothing about economics to learning about the subject from Nobel laureates.

The lessons created by professors Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee revealed to Simon an entirely new way to use science to help humanity. One of the projects Simon learned about in this class assessed an area of India with a low vaccination rate and created a randomized, controlled trial to figure out the best way to fix this problem.

“What was really cool about the class was that it talked about huge problems in the world, like poverty, hunger, and lack of vaccinations, and it talked about how you could break them down using experiments and quantify the best way to solve them,” he says.

Galvanized by this experience, Simon joined a research project in the economics department and committed to a blended major in computer science, economics, and data. He began working on a research project with Senior Lecturer Sara Ellison in 2021 and has since contributed to multiple research papers published by the group, many concerning developmental economic issues. One of his most memorable projects explored the question of whether internet access helps bridge the gap between poor and wealthy countries. Simon collected data, conducted interviews, and did statistical analysis to develop answers to the group’s questions. Their paper was published in Competition Policy International in 2021.

Further bridging his economics studies with real-world efforts, Simon has become involved with the Guatemalan charity Project Somos, which is dedicated to challenging poverty through access to food and education. Through MIT’s Global Research and Consulting Group, he led a team of seven students to analyze the program’s data, measure its impact in the community, and provide the organization with easy-to-use data analytics tools. He has continued working with Project Somos through his undergraduate years and has joined its board of directors.

Simon hopes to quantify the most effective approaches to solutions for the people and groups he works with. “The charity I work for says ‘Use your head and your heart.’ If you can approach the problems in the world with empathy and analytics, I think that is a really important way to help a lot of people” he says.

Simon’s desire to positively impact his community is threaded through other areas of his life at MIT. He is a member of the varsity soccer team and the Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity, and has volunteered for the MIT Little Beavers Special Needs Running Club.

On the field, court, and trail

Athletics are a major part of Simon’s life, year-round. Soccer has long been his main sport; he joined the varsity soccer team as a first-year and has played ever since. In his second year with the team, Simon was recognized as an Academic All-American. He also earned the honor of NEWMAC First Team All-Conference in 2021.

Despite the long hours of practice, Simon says he is most relaxed when it’s game season. “It’s a nice, competitive outlet to have every day. You’re working with people that you like spending time with, to win games and have fun and practice to get better. Everything going on kind of fades away, and you’re just focused on playing your sport,” he explains.

Simon has also used his time at MIT to try new sports. In winter 2023, he joined the wrestling club. “I thought, ‘I’ve never done anything like this before. But maybe I’ll try it out,’” he says. “And so I tried it out knowing nothing. They were super welcoming and there were people with all experience levels, and I just really fell in love with it.” Simon also joined the MIT basketball team as a walk-on his senior year.

When not competing, Simon enjoys hiking. He recalls one of his favorite memories from the past four years being a trip to Yosemite National Park he took with friends while interning in San Francisco. There, he hiked upward of 20 miles each day. Simon also embarks on hiking trips with friends closer to campus in New Hampshire and Acadia National Park.

Social impact

Simon believes his philanthropic work has been pivotal to his experience at MIT. Through the MIT Global Research and Consulting Group, which he served as a case leader for, he has connected with charity groups around the world, including in Guatemala and South Africa.

On campus, Simon has worked to build social connections within both his school and city-wide community. During his sophomore year, he spent his Sundays with the Little Beavers Running Team, a program that pairs children from the Boston area who are on the autism spectrum with an MIT student to practice running and other sports activities. “Throughout the course of a semester when you’re working with a kid, you’re able to see their confidence and social skills improve. That’s really rewarding to me,” Simon says.

Simon is also a member of the Phi Beta Epsilon fraternity. He joined the group in his first year at MIT and has lived with the other members of the fraternity since his sophomore year. He appreciates the group’s strong focus on supporting the social and professional skills of its members. Simon served as the chapter’s president for one semester and describes his experience as “very impactful.”

“There’s something really cool about having 40 of your friends all live in a house together,” he says. “A lot of my good memories from college are of sitting around in our common rooms late at night and just talking about random stuff.”

Technical projects and helping others

Next fall, Simon will continue his studies at MIT, pursuing a master’s degree in economics. Following this, he plans to move to New York to work in finance. In the summer of 2023 he interned at BlackRock, a large finance company, where he worked on a team that invested on behalf of people looking to grow their retirement funds. Simon says, “I thought it was cool that I was able to apply things I learned in school to have an impact on a ton of different people around the country by helping them prepare for retirement.”

Simon has done similar work in past internships. In the summer after his first year at MIT, he worked for Surge Employment Solutions, a startup that connected formerly incarcerated people to jobs. His responsibility was to quantify the social impacts of the startup, which was shown to help the unemployment rate of formerly incarcerated individuals and help high-turnover businesses save money by retaining employees.

On his community work, Simon says, “There’s always a lot more similarities between people than differences. So, I think getting to know people and being able to use what I learned to help people make their lives even a little bit better is cool. You think maybe as a college student, you wouldn’t be able to do a lot to make an impact around the world. But I think even with just the computer science and economics skills that I’ve learned in college, it’s always kind of surprising to me how much of an impact you can make on people if you just put in the effort to seek out opportunities.”

Offering clean energy around the clock

MIT spinout 247Solar is building high-temperature concentrated solar power systems that use overnight thermal energy storage to provide power and heat.

As remarkable as the rise of solar and wind farms has been over the last 20 years, achieving complete decarbonization is going to require a host of complementary technologies. That’s because renewables offer only intermittent power. They also can’t directly provide the high temperatures necessary for many industrial processes.

Now, 247Solar is building high-temperature concentrated solar power systems that use overnight thermal energy storage to provide round-the-clock power and industrial-grade heat.

The company’s modular systems can be used as standalone microgrids for communities or to provide power in remote places like mines and farms. They can also be used in conjunction with wind and conventional solar farms, giving customers 24/7 power from renewables and allowing them to offset use of the grid.

“One of my motivations for working on this system was trying to solve the problem of intermittency,” 247Solar CEO Bruce Anderson ’69, SM ’73 says. “I just couldn’t see how we could get to zero emissions with solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind. Even with PV, wind, and batteries, we can’t get there, because there’s always bad weather, and current batteries aren’t economical over long periods. You have to have a solution that operates 24 hours a day.”

The company’s system is inspired by the design of a high-temperature heat exchanger by the late MIT Professor Emeritus David Gordon Wilson, who co-founded the company with Anderson. The company integrates that heat exchanger into what Anderson describes as a conventional, jet-engine-like turbine, enabling the turbine to produce power by circulating ambient pressure hot air with no combustion or emissions — what the company calls a first in the industry.

Here’s how the system works: Each 247Solar system uses a field of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats to reflect sunlight to the top of a central tower. The tower features a proprietary solar receiver that heats air to around 1,000 Celsius at atmospheric pressure. The air is then used to drive 247Solar’s turbines and generate 400 kilowatts of electricity and 600 kilowatts of heat. Some of the hot air is also routed through a long-duration thermal energy storage system, where it heats solid materials that retain the heat. The stored heat is then used to drive the turbines when the sun stops shining.

“We offer round-the-clock electricity, but we also offer a combined heat and power option, with the ability to take heat up to 970 Celsius for use in industrial processes,” Anderson says. “It’s a very flexible system.”

The company’s first deployment will be with a large utility in India. If that goes well, 247Solar hopes to scale up rapidly with other utilities, corporations, and communities around the globe.

A new approach to concentrated solar

Anderson kept in touch with his MIT network after graduating in 1973. He served as the director of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) between 1996 and 2000 and was elected as an alumni member of the MIT Corporation in 2013. The ILP connects companies with MIT’s network of students, faculty, and alumni to facilitate innovation, and the experience changed the course of Anderson’s career.

“That was an extremely fascinating job, and from it two things happened,” Anderson says. “One is that I realized I was really an entrepreneur and was not well-suited to the university environment, and the other is that I was reminded of the countless amazing innovations coming out of MIT.”

After leaving as director, Anderson began a startup incubator where he worked with MIT professors to start companies. Eventually, one of those professors was Wilson, who had invented the new heat exchanger and a ceramic turbine. Anderson and Wilson ended up putting together a small team to commercialize the technology in the early 2000s.

Anderson had done his MIT master’s thesis on solar energy in the 1970s, and the team realized the heat exchanger made possible a novel approach to concentrated solar power. In 2010, they received a $6 million development grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. But their first solar receiver was damaged during shipping to a national laboratory for testing, and the company ran out of money.

It wasn’t until 2015 that Anderson was able to raise money to get the company back off the ground. By that time, a new high-temperature metal alloy had been developed that Anderson swapped out for Wilson’s ceramic heat exchanger.

The Covid-19 pandemic further slowed 247’s plans to build a demonstration facility at its test site in Arizona, but strong customer interest has kept the company busy. Concentrated solar power doesn’t work everywhere — Arizona’s clear sunshine is a better fit than Florida’s hazy skies, for example — but Anderson is currently in talks with communities in parts of the U.S., India, Africa, and Australia where the technology would be a good fit.

These days, the company is increasingly proposing combining its systems with traditional solar PV, which lets customers reap the benefits of low-cost solar electricity during the day while using 247’s energy at night.

“That way we can get at least 24, if not more, hours of energy from a sunny day,” Anderson says. “We’re really moving toward these hybrid systems, which work like a Prius: Sometimes you’re using one source of energy, sometimes you’re using the other.”

The company also sells its HeatStorE thermal batteries as standalone systems. Instead of being heated by the solar system, the thermal storage is heated by circulating air through an electric coil that’s been heated by electricity, either from the grid, standalone PV, or wind. The heat can be stored for nine hours or more on a single charge and then dispatched as electricity plus industrial process heat at 250 Celsius, or as heat only, up to 970 Celsius.

Anderson says 247’s thermal battery is about one-seventh the cost of lithium-ion batteries per kilowatt hour produced.

Scaling a new model

The company is keeping its system flexible for whatever path customers want to take to complete decarbonization.

In addition to 247’s India project, the company is in advanced talks with off-grid communities in the Unites States and Egypt, mining operators around the world, and the government of a small country in Africa. Anderson says the company’s next customer will likely be an off-grid community in the U.S. that currently relies on diesel generators for power.

The company has also partnered with a financial company that will allow it to access capital to fund its own projects and sell clean energy directly to customers, which Anderson says will help 247 grow faster than relying solely on selling entire systems to each customer.

As it works to scale up its deployments, Anderson believes 247 offers a solution to help customers respond to increasing pressure from governments as well as community members.

“Emerging economies in places like Africa don’t have any alternative to fossil fuels if they want 24/7 electricity,” Anderson says. “Our owning and operating costs are less than half that of diesel gen-sets. Customers today really want to stop producing emissions if they can, so you’ve got villages, mines, industries, and entire countries where the people inside are saying, ‘We can’t burn diesel anymore.’”

Exploring the history of data-driven arguments in public life

William Deringer studies “very old things and very technical things” — that have never been more relevant.

Political debates today may not always be exceptionally rational, but they are often infused with numbers. If people are discussing the economy or health care or climate change, sooner or later they will invoke statistics.

It was not always thus. Our habit of using numbers to make political arguments has a history, and William Deringer is a leading historian of it. Indeed, in recent years Deringer, an associate professor in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), has carved out a distinctive niche through his scholarship showing how quantitative reasoning has become part of public life.

In his prize-winning 2018 book “Calculated Values” (Harvard University Press), Deringer identified a time in British public life from the 1680s to the 1720s as a key moment when the practice of making numerical arguments took hold — a trend deeply connected with the rise of parliamentary power and political parties. Crucially, freedom of the press also expanded, allowing greater scope for politicians and the public to have frank discussions about the world as it was, backed by empirical evidence.

Deringer’s second book project, in progress and under contract to Yale University Press, digs further into a concept from the first book — the idea of financial discounting. This is a calculation to estimate what money (or other things) in the future is worth today, to assign those future objects a “present value.” Some skilled mathematicians understood discounting in medieval times; its use expanded in the 1600s; today it is very common in finance and is the subject of debate in relation to climate change, as experts try to estimate ideal spending levels on climate matters.

“The book is about how this particular technique came to have the power to weigh in on profound social questions,” Deringer says. “It’s basically about compound interest, and it’s at the center of the most important global question we have to confront.”

Numbers alone do not make a debate rational or informative; they can be false, misleading, used to entrench interests, and so on. Indeed, a key theme in Deringer’s work is that when quantitative reasoning gains more ground, the question is why, and to whose benefit. In this sense his work aligns with the long-running and always-relevant approach of the Institute’s STS faculty, in thinking carefully about how technology and knowledge is applied to the world.

“The broader culture more has become attuned to STS, whether it’s conversations about AI or algorithmic fairness or climate change or energy, these are simultaneously technical and social issues,” Deringer says. “Teaching undergraduates, I’ve found the awareness of that at MIT has only increased.” For both his research and teaching, Deringer received tenure from MIT earlier this year.

Dig in, work outward

Deringer has been focused on these topics since he was an undergraduate at Harvard University.

“I found myself becoming really interested in the history of economics, the history of practical mathematics, data, statistics, and how it came to be that so much of our world is organized quantitatively,” he says.

Deringer wrote a college thesis about how England measured the land it was seizing from Ireland in the 1600s, and then, after graduating, went to work in the finance sector, which gave him a further chance to think about the application of quantification to modern life.

“That was not what I wanted to do forever, but for some of the conceptual questions I was interested in, the societal life of calculations, I found it to be a really interesting space,” Deringer says.

He returned to academia by pursuing his PhD in the history of science at Princeton University. There, in his first year of graduate school, in the archives, Deringer found 18th-century pamphlets about financial calculations concering the value of stock involved in the infamous episode of speculation known as the South Sea Bubble. That became part of his dissertation; skeptics of the South Sea Bubble were among the prominent early voices bringing data into public debates. It has also helped inform his second book.

First, though, Deringer earned his doctorate from Princeton in 2012, then spent three years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University. He joined the MIT faculty in 2015. At the Institute, he finished turning his dissertation into the “Calculated Values” book — which won the 2019 Oscar Kenshur Prize for the best book from the Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University, and was co-winner of the 2021 Joseph J. Spengler Prize for best book from the History of Economics Society.

“My method as a scholar is to dig into the technical details, then work outward historically from them,” Deringer says.

A long historical chain

Even as Deringer was writing his first book, the idea for the second one was taking root in his mind. Those South Sea Bubble pamphets he had found while at Princeton incorporated discounting, which was intermittently present in “Calculated Values.” Deringer was intrigued by how adept 18th-century figures were at discounting.

“Something that I thought of as a very modern technique seemed to be really well-known by a lot of people in the 1720s,” he says.

At the same time, a conversation with an academic colleague in philosophy made it clear to Deringer how different conclusions about discounting had become debated in climate change policy. He soon resolved to write the “biography of a calculation” about financial discounting.

“I knew my next book had to be about this,” Deringer says. “I was very interested in the deep historical roots of discounting, and it has a lot of present urgency.”

Deringer says the book will incorporate material about the financing of English cathedrals, the heavy use of discounting in the mining industry during the Industrial Revolution, a revival of discounting in 1960s policy circles, and climate change, among other things. In each case, he is carefully looking at the interests and historical dynamics behind the use of discounting.

“For people who use discounting regularly, it’s like gravity: It’s very obvious that to be rational is to discount the future according to this formula,” Deringer says. “But if you look at history, what is thought of as rational is part of a very long historical chain of people applying this calculation in various ways, and over time that’s just how things are done. I’m really interested in pulling apart that idea that this is a sort of timeless rational calculation, as opposed to a product of this interesting history.”

Working in STS, Deringer notes, has helped encourage him to link together numerous historical time periods into one book about the numerous ways discounting has been used.

“I’m not sure that pursuing a book that stretches from the 17th century to the 21st century is something I would have done in other contexts,” Deringer says. He is also quick to credit his colleagues in STS and in other programs for helping create the scholarly environment in which he is thriving.

“I came in with a really amazing cohort of other scholars in SHASS,” Deringer notes, referring to the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. He cites others receiving tenure in the last year such as his STS colleague Robin Scheffler, historian Megan Black, and historian Caley Horan, with whom Deringer has taught graduate classes on the concept of risk in history. In all, Deringer says, the Institute has been an excellent place for him to pursue interdisciplinary work on technical thought in history.

“I work on very old things and very technical things,” Deringer says. “But I’ve found a wonderful welcoming at MIT from people in different fields who light up when they hear what I’m interested in.”

Seven from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2024

The prestigious honor society announces more than 250 new members.

Seven MIT faculty members are among the 250 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 24.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, as well as studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.

Those elected from MIT in 2024 are:

• Edward F. Crawley, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, post-tenure;
• Nathaniel Hendren, professor of economics;
• Mei Hong, David A. Leighty Professor of Chemistry;
• Tod Machover, Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media;
• Anna Mikusheva, professor of economics;
• Elchanan Mossel, professor of mathematics; and
• Xiao-Gang Wen, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics.

“We honor these artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders in the public, non-profit, and private sectors for their accomplishments and for the curiosity, creativity, and courage required to reach new heights,” says David Oxtoby, president of the academy. “We invite these exceptional individuals to join in the academy’s work to address serious challenges and advance the common good.”

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading thinkers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Daniel Webster in the 19th century, and Toni Morrison and Albert Einstein in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.