MIT’s top research stories of 2024

Stories on tamper-proof ID tags, sound-suppressing silk, and generative AI’s understanding of the world were some of the most popular topics on MIT News. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 days ago

MIT community in 2024: A year in review

Top stories highlighted the Climate Project at MIT and two new Institute collaborative projects; free tuition for most new undergraduates; Nobels and other major awards; a solar eclipse over campus; and more. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 days ago

MIT in the media: 2024 in review

MIT community members made headlines with key research advances and their efforts to tackle pressing challenges. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 days ago

Celebrating the opening of the new Graduate Junction residence

MIT grad students and their families joined project and construction staff to mark the collaborative effort to plan and create MIT’s newest graduate residence. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 days ago

Bacteria in the human gut rarely update their CRISPR defense systems

A new study of the microbiome finds intestinal bacterial interact much less often with viruses that trigger immunity updates than bacteria in the lab. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 days ago

Why open secrets are a big problem

Philosopher Sam Berstler diagnoses the corrosive effects of not acknowledging troubling truths. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 days ago

Helping students bring about decarbonization, from benchtop to global energy marketplace

Professor Jessika Trancik’s course helps students understand energy levers for addressing climate change at the macro and micro scales. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 3 days ago

Ecologists find computer vision models’ blind spots in retrieving wildlife images

Biodiversity researchers tested vision systems on how well they could retrieve relevant nature images. More advanced models performed well on simple queries but struggled with more research-specific prompts. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 5 days ago

Tiny, wireless antennas use light to monitor cellular communication

As part of a high-resolution biosensing device without wires, the antennas could help researchers decode intricate electrical signals sent by cells. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

MIT-Kalaniyot launches programs for visiting Israeli scholars

Inviting recent postdocs and sabbatical-eligible faculty to pursue their research at MIT, new programs envision eventually supporting 16 Israeli scholars on campus annually. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

Global MIT At-Risk Fellows Program expands to invite Palestinian scholars

GMAF’s second international cohort will comprise up to 10 early- to mid-career Palestinian scholars for a two-year pilot fellowship program at MIT. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

Startup’s autonomous drones precisely track warehouse inventories

Corvus Robotics, founded by Mohammed Kabir ’21, is using drones that can navigate in GPS-denied environments to expedite inventory management. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

MIT affiliates receive 2025 IEEE honors

Five MIT faculty and staff, along with five alumni, are honored for electrical engineering and computer science advances. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

Making classical music and math more accessible

In math and in music, senior Holden Mui values interesting ideas, solving problems creatively, and finding meaning in their structures. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

MIT welcomes Frida Polli as its next visiting innovation scholar

The neuroscientist turned entrepreneur will be hosted by the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and focus on advancing the intersection of behavioral science and AI across MIT. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 6 days ago

Need a research hypothesis? Ask AI.

MIT engineers developed AI frameworks to identify evidence-driven hypotheses that could advance biologically inspired materials. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 7 days ago

Surface-based sonar system could rapidly map the ocean floor at high resolution

A small fleet of autonomous surface vessels forms a large sonar array for finding submerged objects. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

New autism research projects represent a broad range of approaches to achieving a shared goal

At a symposium of the Simons Center for the Social Brain, six speakers described a diversity of recently launched studies aimed at improving understanding of the autistic brain. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

Physicists magnetize a material with light

The technique provides researchers with a powerful tool for controlling magnetism, and could help in designing faster, smaller, more energy-efficient memory chips. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

MIT engineers grow “high-rise” 3D chips

An electronic stacking technique could exponentially increase the number of transistors on chips, enabling more efficient AI hardware. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

How humans continuously adapt while walking stably

Research could help improve motor rehabilitation programs and assistive robot control. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

Turning adversity into opportunity

How a love for math and access to MIT Open Learning’s online learning resources helped a Sudanese learner pursue a career in data science. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

Miracle, or marginal gain?

Industrial policy is said to have sparked huge growth in East Asia. Two MIT economists say the numbers tell a more complex story. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

When MIT’s interdisciplinary NEET program is a perfect fit

Junior Katie Spivakovsky describes her path through New Engineering Education Transformation to biomedical research and beyond. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

3 Questions: Tracking MIT graduates’ career trajectories

Deborah Liverman, executive director of MIT Career Advising and Professional Development, offers a window into undergraduate and graduate students’ post-graduation paths. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 8 days ago

MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems unveils plans for the world’s first fusion power plant

The company has announced that it will build the first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 9 days ago

MIT researchers introduce Boltz-1, a fully open-source model for predicting biomolecular structures

With models like AlphaFold3 limited to academic research, the team built an equivalent alternative, to encourage innovation more broadly. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 9 days ago

Aurora mapping across North America

Haystack Observatory researchers and citizen scientists team up to map the aurora. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 9 days ago

A new method to detect dehydration in plants

Sensors developed by SMART researchers are capable of detecting pH changes in plant xylem enable farmers to detect drought stress up to 48 hours before visible physical symptoms manifest. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 9 days ago

Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

Researchers at MIT, NYU, and UCLA develop an approach to help evaluate whether large language models like GPT-4 are equitable enough to be clinically viable for mental health support. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 9 days ago

New climate chemistry model finds “non-negligible” impacts of potential hydrogen fuel leakage

MIT study confirms the climate impacts of hydrogen and recommends that leak prevention be a priority as the infrastructure for handling this clean-burning fuel is built. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 10 days ago

Lara Ozkan named 2025 Marshall Scholar

The MIT senior will pursue graduate studies in the UK at Cambridge University and Imperial College London. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 10 days ago

Street smarts

Andres Sevtsuk applies new sources of data to creating more sustainable, walkable, and economically thriving city spaces. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 11 days ago

MIT affiliates named 2024 Schmidt Futures AI2050 Fellows

Five MIT faculty members and two additional alumni are honored with fellowships to advance research on beneficial AI. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 12 days ago

Artifacts from a half-century of cancer research

Ten objects on display in the Koch Institute Public Galleries offer uncommon insights into the people and progress of MIT's cancer research community. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 12 days ago

Teaching a robot its limits, to complete open-ended tasks safely

The “PRoC3S” method helps an LLM create a viable action plan by testing each step in a simulation. This strategy could eventually aid in-home robots to complete more ambiguous chore requests. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 13 days ago

Students strive for “Balance!” in a lively product showcase

New products presented at the 2.009 prototype launch included a crash-detecting bicycle helmet, an augmented reality mask for divers, and a respirator for wildland firefighters. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 14 days ago

Hank Green to deliver MIT’s 2025 Commencement address

The science communicator, video producer, and entrepreneur has built online communities of people who love diving into complex issues. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 14 days ago

Enabling a circular economy in the built environment

A better understanding of construction industry stakeholders’ motivations can lead to greater adoption of circular practices. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 14 days ago

Photos: 2024 Nobel winners with MIT ties honored in Stockholm

Laureates participated in various Nobel Week events, including lectures, a concert, a banquet, and the Nobel ceremony on Dec. 10. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 14 days ago

Noninvasive imaging method can penetrate deeper into living tissue

Using high-powered lasers, this new method could help biologists study the body’s immune responses and develop new medicines. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 15 days ago

Transforming fusion from a scientific curiosity into a powerful clean energy source

Driven to solve hard problems, Associate Professor Zachary Hartwig is advancing a new approach to commercial fusion energy. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 15 days ago

Researchers reduce bias in AI models while preserving or improving accuracy

A new technique identifies and removes the training examples that contribute most to a machine-learning model’s failures. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 15 days ago

Cellular traffic congestion in chronic diseases suggests new therapeutic targets

Chronic diseases like diabetes are prevalent, costly, and challenging to treat. A common denominator driving them may be a promising new therapeutic target. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 15 days ago

Revisiting reinforcement learning

A detailed new look at dopamine signaling suggests neuroscientists’ model of reinforcement learning may need to be revised. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 15 days ago

Enabling AI to explain its predictions in plain language

Using LLMs to convert machine-learning explanations into readable narratives could help users make better decisions about when to trust a model. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 16 days ago

Daniela Rus wins John Scott Award

MIT CSAIL director and EECS professor named a co-recipient of the honor for her robotics research, which has expanded our understanding of what a robot can be. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 16 days ago

Professor Emeritus Hale Van Dorn Bradt, an X-ray astronomy pioneer, dies at 93

Longtime MIT faculty member used X-ray astronomy to study neutron stars and black holes and led the All-Sky Monitor instrument on NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 16 days ago