Questions: Marking the 10th anniversary of the Higgs boson discovery

Christoph Paus, the MIT physicist who co-led efforts to detect the Higgs boson, looks back on 10 years since the discovery and ahead to the next 10 years of particle physics research. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts

MIT engineers have flown the first silent, fuel-free “ion plane.” The light aircraft is the first plane to fly with no propellers, turbine blades, or other moving parts. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Building explainability into the components of machine-learning models

MIT researchers have created a taxonomy and outlined steps that developers can take to design features in machine-learning models that are easier for decision-makers to understand. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Tapping into the million-year energy source below our feet

MIT spinout Quaise Energy is working to create geothermal wells made from the world’s deepest holes in order to repurpose coal and gas plants. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Progress in Parkinsons

MIT neuroscientists identified three circuits in the thalamus that influence the development of motor and nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. And by manipulating these circuits, they could reverse Parkinson’s symptoms in mice. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Quantum sensor can detect electromagnetic signals of any frequency

MIT researchers developed a method to enable quantum sensors to detect any arbitrary frequency, with no loss of their ability to measure nanometer-scale features. Quantum sensors detect the most minute variations in magnetic or electrical fields, but until now they have only been … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Q&A: Neil Thompson on computing power and innovation

For nearly two decades, researchers have been warning that Moore’s Law, the famous prediction that the number of transistors that can be packed onto a microchip will double every year or two, is slowing down. In a new working paper, MIT researchers quantify the impacts these expo … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Artificial intelligence predicts patients’ race from their medical images

MIT researchers find artificial intelligence can pick out racial identity from medical images — even when no clear indication of race is present. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Taking the guesswork out of dental care with artificial intelligence

The MIT alumni-founded Overjet uses artificial intelligence to analyze and annotate dental X-rays to help dentists improve care. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Study illuminates trade-off between complex words and complex sentences

MIT and Mass General neuroscience researchers found that in both healthy people and aphasia patients, speakers trade off lexical complexity and syntactical complexity. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Seeing the Whole from Some of the Parts

MIT CSAIL researchers developed a novel method to "see through" objects in a scene, and exploit the projection for 3D reconstruction and reasoning. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

New model helps identify mutations that drive cancer

An MIT-led team built a computer model that can rapidly scan the entire genome of cancer cells and identify mutations that occur more frequently than expected, suggesting that they are driving tumor growth. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

How the debt crisis of 2008-09 fueled populist politics

Research by MIT’s Emil Verner shows that rising debt helped fuel right-wing populist gains in Hungarian politics. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Nanoparticle sensor can distinguish between viral and bacterial pneumonia

A new MIT sensor can distinguish between viral and bacterial pneumonia infections. This could help doctors choose the appropriate treatment and avoid prescribing antibiotics when they won’t help. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Engineers build Lego-like artificial intelligence chip

MIT engineers built a LEGO-like artificial intelligence chip, with a view toward sustainable, modular electronics. The chip can be reconfigured, with layers that can be swapped out or stacked on, such as to add new sensors or updated processors. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

New CRISPR-based map ties every human gene to its function

A new CRISPR-based map ties every human gene to its function using a tool called Perturb-seq. The work was led by Jonathan Weissman and colleagues at MIT and the Whitehead Institute, and is free for other scientists to use. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Keeping web-browsing data safe from hackers

MIT researchers analyzed a powerful machine-learning-assisted cyberattack and uncovered a security vulnerability that an attacker can exploit to predict the website a user is browsing with almost perfect accuracy. Then, they developed two mitigation strategies that dramatically r … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Molecules found in mucus can thwart fungal infection

MIT researchers identified components of mucus that can interact with the fungus Candida albicans and prevent it from causing infection. These glycans molecules are a major constituent of mucins, the gel-forming polymers that make up mucus. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Study: Trade can worsen income inequality

International trade exacerbates domestic income inequality, according to new research using Ecuador as a case study and co-authored by MIT economists. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Faster computing results without fear of errors

A new technique can dramatically accelerate programs known as shell scripts, through a process called parallelization, while ensuring the programs return accurate results. The work comes from an international team led by researchers in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Inte … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Hallucinating to Better Text Translation

A machine learning model called VALHALLA uses a trained neural network to understand and digest a source sentence in one language, hallucinate an image of what that sentence describes, and translate into a target language. The work was led by researchers from MIT, IBM, and UC San … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

How the brain responds to surprising events

MIT researchers find that one key role of the neuromodulator noradrenaline, produced by the locus coeruleus, is to help the brain learn from surprising outcomes. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Questions: Ariel Ekblaw on building beautiful architecture in space

MIT’s futuristic space architecture project TESSERAE has flown on the first fully private mission to International Space Station. Ariel Ekblaw discusses how TESSERAE fared, and what the future of space habitats might hold. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Peter Shor receives 2022-2023 Killian Award

Renowned mathematician and quantum computing pioneer Peter W. Shor PhD ’85 has been named the recipient of MIT’s 2022-2023 James R. Killian Jr. Faculty Achievement Award, the highest honor the Institute faculty can bestow upon one of its members each academic year. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Unpacking black-box models

MIT researchers created a mathematical framework to formally quantify and evaluate the understandability of explanations that seek to describe the behavior of a machine-learning model. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Search reveals eight new sources of black hole echoes

MIT astronomers discovered eight new echoing black hole binaries in our galaxy, enabling them to piece together a general picture of how a black hole evolves during an outburst. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

A Single Memory Is Stored Across Many Connected Brain Regions

The mammalian brain stores a single memory across a widely distributed, functionally connected complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or even a few places. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Learning to think critically about machine learning

Graduate students are helping to infuse ethical computing content into MIT’s largest machine learning course, as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing initiative. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button

MIT researchers created a portable desalination unit that can remove particles and salts simultaneously to generate drinking water. The user-friendly unit, which weighs less than 10 kilograms and does not require filters, can be powered by a small, portable solar panel. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

MIT researchers created an ultrathin loudspeaker that can turn any rigid surface into a high-quality, active audio source. The fabrication process can enable the thin-film devices to be produced at scale. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

MIT researchers develop a paper thin loudspeaker

MIT researchers created an ultrathin loudspeaker that can turn any rigid surface into a high-quality, active audio source. The fabrication process can enable the thin-film devices to be produced at scale. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Estimating the Informativeness of Data

MIT researchers discovered a new way to estimate the amount of information contained in a piece of data using probabilistic programming and probabilistic inference. The breakthrough entropy estimators open up new applications in medicine, scientific discovery, cognitive science, … | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Game-theory logic underpins many of our seemingly odd and irrational decisions

Erez Yoeli of the MIT Sloan School of Management is the co-author of “Hidden Games,” a new book explaining how game theory applies to everyday situations. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

A new state of the art for unsupervised vision

MIT CSAIL scientists created an algorithm called STEGO to solve one of the hardest tasks in computer vision: assigning every pixel in the world a label without any human supervision. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Engineered bacteria could help protect “good” gut microbes from antibiotics

MIT researchers engineered a strain of bacteria that can help protect the natural flora of the human digestive tract from antibiotics and curb the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

The MIT spinout Frequency Therapeutics uses a new kind of druggable regenerative therapy that targets progenitor cells to create hair cells of the inner ear and reverse hearing loss. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

A new heat engine with no moving parts is as efficient as a steam turbine

Engineers at MIT and NREL have developed a heat engine with no moving parts that is as efficient as a steam turbine. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Study reveals the dynamics of human milk production

MIT researchers performed a large-scale, high resolution study of the cells in human breast milk, allowing them to track how these cells change over time in nursing mothers. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Security tool guarantees privacy in surveillance footage

Privid is a new system that provides better privacy in video footage from surveillance cameras. The system, developed out of MIT CSAIL, lets analysts submit video data queries, and adds a bit of noise to the end result to ensure an individual can’t be identified. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

The Sahara swung between lush and desert conditions every 20k years (2019)

An MIT analysis of Saharan dust records over last 240,000 years reveals a new “pacemaker” of North African climate. The results show Sahara swung between wet and dry conditions every 20,000 years, in synch with changes in monsoon activity. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

TspDB, a system to make highly accurate predictions on multi-time-series data

By adapting a powerful algorithm, MIT researchers created a user-friendly tool that enables a nonexpert to make predictions with high accuracy using time-series data with just a few keystrokes and in a matter of seconds. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Thesan Simulations: How the first stars evolved, immediately after the Big Bang

Thesan is a new universe simulation that models the first billion years of the universe with the highest resolution, over the largest volume, to date. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Making quantum circuits more robust

A new technique identifies parameterized quantum circuits that are more robust to noise. The work could improve the accuracy of quantum machine learning and quantum chemistry tasks, while using less computational resources in the circuit design process. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

How the MIT mini cheetah learns to run

MIT CSAIL scientists came up with a learning pipeline for the four-legged MIT mini cheetah robot that learns to run and adapt to new terrains entirely by trial and error in simulation. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

A fabric that “hears” your heart's sounds

Inspired by the human ear, a new acoustic fabric converts audible sounds into electrical signals. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Microbes and minerals may have set off Earth's oxygenation

Around 2.3 billion years ago, oxygen began building up in the atmosphere, eventually reaching the life-sustaining levels we breathe today. A new hypothesis proposed by MIT scientists suggests a mechanism for how this may have happened. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

Size matters in particle treatments of traumatic injuries

MIT chemical engineers tested how different-sized polymer nanoparticles circulate in the body and interact with platelets, the cells that promote blood clotting. Such particles could be used to help stop internal bleeding after traumatic injuries. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago

The benefits of peripheral vision for machines

New research from MIT suggests that a certain type of computer vision model that is trained to be robust to imperceptible noise added to image data encodes visual representations similarly to the way humans do using peripheral vision. | Continue reading


@news.mit.edu | 2 years ago