In 2025, six faculty were granted tenure in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Sara Brown is an associate professor in the Music and Theater Arts Section. She develops stage designs for theater, opera, and dance by approaching the scenographic space as a catalyst for collective imagination. Her work is rooted in curiosity and interdisciplinary collaboration, and spans virtual environments, immersive performance installations, and evocative stage landscapes. Her recent projects include “Carousel” at the Boston Lyric Opera; the virtual dance performance “The Other Shore” at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Jacob’s Pillow; and “The Lehman Trilogy” at the Huntington Theatre Company. Her upcoming co-directed work, “Circlusion,” takes place within a fully immersive inflatable space and reimagines the female body’s response to power and violence. Her designs have been seen at the BAM Next Wave Festival in New York, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge.

Naoki Egami is a professor in the Department of Political Science. He is also a faculty affiliate of the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Egami specializes in political methodology and develops statistical methods for questions in political science and the social sciences. His current research programs focus on three areas: external validity and generalizability; machine learning and AI for the social sciences; and causal inference with network and spatial data. His work has appeared in various academic journals in political science, statistics, and computer science, such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series B), NeurIPS, and Science Advances. Before joining MIT, Egami was an assistant professor at Columbia University. He received a PhD from Princeton University (2020) and a BA from the University of Tokyo (2015).

Rachel Fraser is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Before coming to MIT, Fraser taught at the University of Oxford, where she also completed her graduate work in philosophy. She has interests in epistemology, language, feminism, aesthetics, and political philosophy. At present, her main project is a book manuscript on the epistemology of narrative.

Brian Hedden PhD ’12 is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, with a shared appointment in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research focuses on how we ought to form beliefs and make decisions. He works in epistemology, decision theory, and ethics, including ethics of AI. He is the author of “Reasons without Persons: Rationality, Identity, and Time” (Oxford University Press, 2015) and articles on topics including collective action problems, legal standards of proof, algorithmic fairness, and political polarization, among others. Prior to joining MIT, he was a faculty member at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney, and a junior research fellow at Oxford. He received his BA From Princeton University in 2006 and his PhD from MIT in 2012.

Viola Schmitt is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. She is a linguist with a special interest in semantics. Much of her work focuses on trying to understand general constraints on human language meaning; that is, the principles regulating which meanings can be expressed by human languages and how languages can package meaning. Variants of this question were also central to grants she received from the Austrian and German research foundations. She earned her PhD in linguistics from the University of Vienna and worked as a postdoc and/or lecturer at the Universities of Vienna, Graz, Göttingen, and at the University of California at Los Angeles. Her most recent position was as a junior professor at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Miguel Zenón is an associate professor in the Music and Theater Arts Section. The Puerto Rican alto saxophonist, composer, band leader, music producer, and educator is a Grammy Award winner, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Doris Duke Artist Award. He also holds an honorary doctorate degree in the arts from Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. Zenón has released 18 albums as a band leader and collaborated with some of the great musicians and ensembles of his time. As a composer, Zenón has been commissioned by Chamber Music America, Logan Center for The Arts, The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Miller Theater, The Hewlett Foundation, Peak Performances, and many of his peers. Zenón has given hundreds of lectures and master classes at institutions all over the world, and in 2011 he founded Caravana Cultural — a program that presents jazz concerts free of charge in rural areas of Puerto Rico.

Cancer cells have one relentless goal: to grow and divide. While most stick together within the original tumor, some rogue cells break away to traverse to distant organs. There, they can lie dormant — undetectable and not dividing — for years, like landmines waiting to go off.

This migration of cancer cells, called metastasis, is especially common in breast cancer. For many patients, the disease can return months — or even decades — after initial treatment, this time in an entirely different organ.

Robert Weinberg, the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and a Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research founding member, has spent decades unraveling the complex biology of metastasis and pursuing research that could improve survival rates among patients with metastatic breast cancer — or prevent metastasis altogether.

In his latest study, Weinberg, postdoc Jingwei Zhang, and colleagues ask a critical question: What causes these dormant cancer cells to erupt into a frenzy of growth and division? The group’s findings, published Sept. 1 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), point to a unique culprit.

This awakening of dormant cancer cells, they’ve discovered, isn’t a spontaneous process. Instead, the wake-up call comes from the inflamed tissue surrounding the cells. One trigger for this inflammation is bleomycin, a common chemotherapy drug that can scar and thicken lung tissue.

“The inflammation jolts the dormant cancer cells awake,” Weinberg says. “Once awakened, they start multiplying again, seeding new life-threatening tumors in the body.”

Decoding metastasis

There’s a lot that scientists still don’t know about metastasis, but this much is clear: Cancer cells must undergo a long and arduous journey to achieve it. The first step is to break away from their neighbors within the original tumor.

Normally, cells stick to one another using surface proteins that act as molecular “velcro,” but some cancer cells can acquire genetic changes that disrupt the production of these proteins and make them more mobile and invasive, allowing them to detach from the parent tumor. 

Once detached, they can penetrate blood vessels and lymphatic channels, which act as highways to distant organs.

While most cancer cells die at some point during this journey, a few persist. These cells exit the bloodstream and invade different tissues—lungs, liver, bone, and even the brain — to give birth to new, often more-aggressive tumors.

“Almost 90 percent of cancer-related deaths occur not from the original tumor, but when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body,” says Weinberg. “This is why it’s so important to understand how these ‘sleeping’ cancer cells can wake up and start growing again.”

Setting up shop in new tissue comes with changes in surroundings — the “tumor microenvironment” — to which the cancer cells may not be well-suited. These cells face constant threats, including detection and attack by the immune system. 

To survive, they often enter a protective state of dormancy that puts a pause on growth and division. This dormant state also makes them resistant to conventional cancer treatments, which often target rapidly dividing cells.

To investigate what makes this dormancy reversible months or years down the line, researchers in the Weinberg Lab injected human breast cancer cells into mice. These cancer cells were modified to produce a fluorescent protein, allowing the scientists to track their behavior in the body.

The group then focused on cancer cells that had lodged themselves in the lung tissue. By examining them for specific proteins — Ki67, ITGB4, and p63 — that act as markers of cell activity and state, the researchers were able to confirm that these cells were in a non-dividing, dormant state.

Previous work from the Weinberg Lab had shown that inflammation in organ tissue can provoke dormant breast cancer cells to start growing again. In this study, the team tested bleomycin — a chemotherapy drug known to cause lung inflammation — that can be given to patients after surgery to lower the risk of cancer recurrence.

The researchers found that lung inflammation from bleomycin was sufficient to trigger the growth of large lung cancer colonies in treated mice — and to shift the character of these once-dormant cells to those that are more invasive and mobile.

Zeroing in on the tumor microenvironment, the team identified a type of immune cells, called M2 macrophages, as drivers of this process. These macrophages release molecules called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) ligands, which bind to receptors on the surface of dormant cancer cells. This activates a cascade of signals that provoke dormant cancer cells to start multiplying rapidly. 

But EGFR signaling is only the initial spark that ignites the fire. “We found that once dormant cancer cells are awakened, they retain what we call an ‘awakening memory,’” Zhang says. “They no longer require ongoing inflammatory signals from the microenvironment to stay active [growing and multiplying] — they remember the awakened state.”

While signals related to inflammation are necessary to awaken dormant cancer cells, exactly how much signaling is needed remains unclear. “This aspect of cancer biology is particularly challenging, because multiple signals contribute to the state change in these dormant cells,” Zhang says.

The team has already identified one key player in the awakening process, but understanding the full set of signals and how each contributes is far more complex — a question they are continuing to investigate in their new work. 

Studying these pivotal changes in the lives of cancer cells — such as their transition from dormancy to active growth — will deepen our scientific understanding of metastasis and, as researchers in the Weinberg Lab hope, lead to more effective treatments for patients with metastatic cancers.

Cancer cells have one relentless goal: to grow and divide. While most stick together within the original tumor, some rogue cells break away to traverse to distant organs. There, they can lie dormant — undetectable and not dividing — for years, like landmines waiting to go off.

This migration of cancer cells, called metastasis, is especially common in breast cancer. For many patients, the disease can return months — or even decades — after initial treatment, this time in an entirely different organ.

Robert Weinberg, the Daniel K. Ludwig Professor for Cancer Research at MIT and a Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research founding member, has spent decades unraveling the complex biology of metastasis and pursuing research that could improve survival rates among patients with metastatic breast cancer — or prevent metastasis altogether.

In his latest study, Weinberg, postdoc Jingwei Zhang, and colleagues ask a critical question: What causes these dormant cancer cells to erupt into a frenzy of growth and division? The group’s findings, published Sept. 1 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), point to a unique culprit.

This awakening of dormant cancer cells, they’ve discovered, isn’t a spontaneous process. Instead, the wake-up call comes from the inflamed tissue surrounding the cells. One trigger for this inflammation is bleomycin, a common chemotherapy drug that can scar and thicken lung tissue.

“The inflammation jolts the dormant cancer cells awake,” Weinberg says. “Once awakened, they start multiplying again, seeding new life-threatening tumors in the body.”

Decoding metastasis

There’s a lot that scientists still don’t know about metastasis, but this much is clear: Cancer cells must undergo a long and arduous journey to achieve it. The first step is to break away from their neighbors within the original tumor.

Normally, cells stick to one another using surface proteins that act as molecular “velcro,” but some cancer cells can acquire genetic changes that disrupt the production of these proteins and make them more mobile and invasive, allowing them to detach from the parent tumor. 

Once detached, they can penetrate blood vessels and lymphatic channels, which act as highways to distant organs.

While most cancer cells die at some point during this journey, a few persist. These cells exit the bloodstream and invade different tissues—lungs, liver, bone, and even the brain — to give birth to new, often more-aggressive tumors.

“Almost 90 percent of cancer-related deaths occur not from the original tumor, but when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body,” says Weinberg. “This is why it’s so important to understand how these ‘sleeping’ cancer cells can wake up and start growing again.”

Setting up shop in new tissue comes with changes in surroundings — the “tumor microenvironment” — to which the cancer cells may not be well-suited. These cells face constant threats, including detection and attack by the immune system. 

To survive, they often enter a protective state of dormancy that puts a pause on growth and division. This dormant state also makes them resistant to conventional cancer treatments, which often target rapidly dividing cells.

To investigate what makes this dormancy reversible months or years down the line, researchers in the Weinberg Lab injected human breast cancer cells into mice. These cancer cells were modified to produce a fluorescent protein, allowing the scientists to track their behavior in the body.

The group then focused on cancer cells that had lodged themselves in the lung tissue. By examining them for specific proteins — Ki67, ITGB4, and p63 — that act as markers of cell activity and state, the researchers were able to confirm that these cells were in a non-dividing, dormant state.

Previous work from the Weinberg Lab had shown that inflammation in organ tissue can provoke dormant breast cancer cells to start growing again. In this study, the team tested bleomycin — a chemotherapy drug known to cause lung inflammation — that can be given to patients after surgery to lower the risk of cancer recurrence.

The researchers found that lung inflammation from bleomycin was sufficient to trigger the growth of large lung cancer colonies in treated mice — and to shift the character of these once-dormant cells to those that are more invasive and mobile.

Zeroing in on the tumor microenvironment, the team identified a type of immune cells, called M2 macrophages, as drivers of this process. These macrophages release molecules called epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) ligands, which bind to receptors on the surface of dormant cancer cells. This activates a cascade of signals that provoke dormant cancer cells to start multiplying rapidly. 

But EGFR signaling is only the initial spark that ignites the fire. “We found that once dormant cancer cells are awakened, they retain what we call an ‘awakening memory,’” Zhang says. “They no longer require ongoing inflammatory signals from the microenvironment to stay active [growing and multiplying] — they remember the awakened state.”

While signals related to inflammation are necessary to awaken dormant cancer cells, exactly how much signaling is needed remains unclear. “This aspect of cancer biology is particularly challenging, because multiple signals contribute to the state change in these dormant cells,” Zhang says.

The team has already identified one key player in the awakening process, but understanding the full set of signals and how each contributes is far more complex — a question they are continuing to investigate in their new work. 

Studying these pivotal changes in the lives of cancer cells — such as their transition from dormancy to active growth — will deepen our scientific understanding of metastasis and, as researchers in the Weinberg Lab hope, lead to more effective treatments for patients with metastatic cancers.

By Provost’s Chair Prof Sing Tien Foo from the Dept of Real Estate at NUS Business School

• The Straits Times, 17 September 2025, Opinion, pB3

By Prof Teo Yik Ying, Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and Vice President of the Office of Global Health at NUS

• The Straits Times, 17 September 2025, Opinion, pB1 & B2

By Mr Ma Qi Xiang and Mr Yi Xin, Research Fellows at the Asia Competitiveness Institute at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS

• The Business Times, 17 September 2025, p16

The last gasp of a primordial black hole may be the source of the highest-energy “ghost particle” detected to date, a new MIT study proposes.

In a paper appearing today in Physical Review Letters, MIT physicists put forth a strong theoretical case that a recently observed, highly energetic neutrino may have been the product of a primordial black hole exploding outside our solar system.

Neutrinos are sometimes referred to as ghost particles, for their invisible yet pervasive nature: They are the most abundant particle type in the universe, yet they leave barely a trace. Scientists recently identified signs of a neutrino with the highest energy ever recorded, but the source of such an unusually powerful particle has yet to be confirmed.

The MIT researchers propose that the mysterious neutrino may have come from the inevitable explosion of a primordial black hole. Primordial black holes (PBHs) are hypothetical black holes that are microscopic versions of the much more massive black holes that lie at the center of most galaxies. PBHs are theorized to have formed in the first moments following the Big Bang. Some scientists believe that primordial black holes could constitute most or all of the dark matter in the universe today.

Like their more massive counterparts, PBHs should leak energy and shrink over their lifetimes, in a process known as Hawking radiation, which was predicted by the physicist Stephen Hawking. The more a black hole radiates, the hotter it gets and the more high-energy particles it releases. This is a runaway process that should produce an incredibly violent explosion of the most energetic particles just before a black hole evaporates away.

The MIT physicists calculate that, if PBHs make up most of the dark matter in the universe, then a small subpopulation of them would be undergoing their final explosions today throughout the Milky Way galaxy. And, there should be a statistically significant possibility that such an explosion could have occurred relatively close to our solar system. The explosion would have released a burst of high-energy particles, including neutrinos, one of which could have had a good chance of hitting a detector on Earth.

If such a scenario had indeed occurred, the recent detection of the highest-energy neutrino would represent the first observation of Hawking radiation, which has long been assumed, but has never been directly observed from any black hole. What’s more, the event might indicate that primordial black holes exist and that they make up most of dark matter — a mysterious substance that comprises 85 percent of the total matter in the universe, the nature of which remains unknown.

“It turns out there’s this scenario where everything seems to line up, and not only can we show that most of the dark matter [in this scenario] is made of primordial black holes, but we can also produce these high-energy neutrinos from a fluke nearby PBH explosion,” says study lead author Alexandra Klipfel, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Physics. “It’s something we can now try to look for and confirm with various experiments.”

The study’s other co-author is David Kaiser, professor of physics and the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at MIT.

High-energy tension

In February, scientists at the Cubic Kilometer Neutrino Telescope, or KM3NeT, reported the detection of the highest-energy neutrino recorded to date. KM3NeT is a large-scale underwater neutrino detector located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, where the environment is meant to mute the effects of any particles other than neutrinos.

The scientists operating the detector picked up signatures of a passing neutrino with an energy of over 100 peta-electron-volts. One peta-electron volt is equivalent to the energy of 1 quadrillion electron volts.

“This is an incredibly high energy, far beyond anything humans are capable of accelerating particles up to,” Klipfel says. “There’s not much consensus on the origin of such high-energy particles.”

Similarly high-energy neutrinos, though not as high as what KM3NeT observed, have been detected by the IceCube Observatory — a neutrino detector embedded deep in the ice at the South Pole. IceCube has detected about half a dozen such neutrinos, whose unusually high energies have also eluded explanation. Whatever their source, the IceCube observations enable scientists to work out a plausible rate at which neutrinos of those energies typically hit Earth. If this rate were correct, however, it would be extremely unlikely to have seen the ultra-high-energy neutrino that KM3NeT recently detected. The two detectors’ discoveries, then, seemed to be what scientists call “in tension.”

Kaiser and Klipfel, who had been working on a separate project involving primordial black holes, wondered: Could a PBH have produced both the KM3NeT neutrino and the handful of IceCube neutrinos, under conditions in which PBHs comprise most of the dark matter in the galaxy? If they could show a chance existed, it would raise an even more exciting possibility — that both observatories observed not only high-energy neutrinos but also the remnants of Hawking radiation.

“Our best chance”

The first step the scientists took in their theoretical analysis was to calculate how many particles would be emitted by an exploding black hole. All black holes should slowly radiate over time. The larger a black hole, the colder it is, and the lower-energy particles it emits as it slowly evaporates. Thus, any particles that are emitted as Hawking radiation from heavy stellar-mass black holes would be near impossible to detect. By the same token, however, much smaller primordial black holes would be very hot and emit high-energy particles in a process that accelerates the closer the black hole gets to disappearing entirely.

“We don’t have any hope of detecting Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes,” Klipfel says. “So if we ever want to see it, the smallest primordial black holes are our best chance.”

The researchers calculated the number and energies of particles that a black hole should emit, given its temperature and shrinking mass. In its final nanosecond, they estimate that once a black hole is smaller than an atom, it should emit a final burst of particles, including about 10²⁰ neutrinos, or about a sextillion of the particles, with energies of about 100 peta-electron-volts (around the energy that KM3NeT observed).

They used this result to calculate the number of PBH explosions that would have to occur in a galaxy in order to explain the reported IceCube results. They found that, in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, about 1,000 primordial black holes should be exploding per cubic parsec per year. (A parsec is a unit of distance equal to about 3 light years, which is more than 10 trillion kilometers.)

They then calculated the distance at which one such explosion in the Milky Way could have occurred, such that just a handful of the high-energy neutrinos could have reached Earth and produced the recent KM3NeT event. They find that a PBH would have to explode relatively close to our solar system — at a distance about 2,000 times further than the distance between the Earth and our sun.

The particles emitted from such a nearby explosion would radiate in all directions. However, the team found there is a small, 8 percent chance that an explosion can happen close enough to the solar system, once every 14 years, such that enough ultra-high-energy neutrinos hit the Earth.

“An 8 percent chance is not terribly high, but it’s well within the range for which we should take such chances seriously — all the more so because so far, no other explanation has been found that can account for both the unexplained very-high-energy neutrinos and the even more surprising ultra-high-energy neutrino event,” Kaiser says.

The team’s scenario seems to hold up, at least in theory. To confirm their idea will require many more detections of particles, including neutrinos at “insanely high energies.” Then, scientists can build up better statistics regarding such rare events.

“In that case, we could use all of our combined experience and instrumentation, to try to measure still-hypothetical Hawking radiation,” Kaiser says. “That would provide the first-of-its-kind evidence for one of the pillars of our understanding of black holes — and could account for these otherwise anomalous high-energy neutrino events as well. That’s a very exciting prospect!”

In tandem, other efforts to detect nearby PBHs could further bolster the hypothesis that these unusual objects make up most or all of the dark matter.

This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

• 8world Online, 15 September 2025
• Lianhe Zaobao, 16 September 2025, Singapore, p9

• Lianhe Zaobao, 16 September 2025, Singapore, p7

• CNA Online, 16 September 2025

By Mr Ng Chia Wee, Teaching Assistant in the Dept of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS; and Dr Fung Fun Man, Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Dept of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at NUS

• The Straits Times, 16 September 2025, Opinion, pB2

• zbSunday, 14 September 2025, News, p8

George Tynan followed a nonlinear path to fusion.

Following his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering, Tynann's work in the industry spurred his interest in rocket propulsion technology. Because most methods for propulsion involve the manipulation of hot ionized matter, or plasmas, Tynan focused his attention on plasma physics.

It was then that he realized that plasmas could also drive nuclear fusion. “As a potential energy source, it could really be transformative, and the idea that I could work on something that could have that kind of impact on the future was really attractive to me,” he says.

That same drive, to realize the promise of fusion by researching both plasma physics and fusion engineering, drives Tynan today. It’s work he will be pursuing as the Norman C. Rasmussen Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

An early interest in fluid flow

Tynan’s enthusiasm for science and engineering traces back to his childhood. His electrical engineer father found employment in the U.S. space program and moved the family to Cape Canaveral in Florida.

“This was in the ’60s, when we were launching Saturn V to the moon, and I got to watch all the launches from the beach,” Tynan remembers. That experience was formative and Tynan became fascinated with how fluids flow.

“I would stick my hand out the window and pretend it was an airplane wing and tilt it with oncoming wind flow and see how the force would change on my hand,” Tynan laughs. The interest eventually led to an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

The switch to a new career would happen after work in the private sector, when Tynan discovered an interest in the use of plasmas for propulsion systems. He moved to the University of California at Los Angeles for graduate school, and it was here that the realization that plasmas could also anchor fusion moved Tynan into this field.

This was in the ’80s, when climate change was not as much in the public consciousness as it is today. Even so, “I knew there’s not an infinite amount of oil and gas around, and that at some point we would have to have widespread adoption of nuclear-based sources,” Tynan remembers. He was also attracted by the sustained effort it would take to make fusion a reality.

Doctoral work

To create energy from fusion, it’s important to get an accurate measurement of the “energy confinement time,” which is a measure of how long it takes for the hot fuel to cool down when all heat sources are turned off. When Tynan started graduate school, this measure was still an empirical guess. He decided to focus his research on the physics of observable confinement time.

It was during this doctoral research that Tynan was able to study the fundamental differences in the behavior of turbulence in plasma as compared to conventional fluids. Typically, when an ordinary fluid is stirred with increasing vigor, the fluid’s motion eventually becomes chaotic or turbulent. However, plasmas can act in a surprising way: confined plasmas, when heated sufficiently strongly, would spontaneously quench the turbulent transport at the boundary of the plasma

An experiment in Germany had unexpectedly discovered this plasma behavior. While subsequent work on other experimental devices confirmed this surprising finding, all earlier experiments lacked the ability to measure the turbulence in detail.

Brian LaBombard, now a senior research scientist at PSFC, was a postdoc at UCLA at the time. Under LaBombard’s direction, Tynan developed a set of Langmuir probes, which are reasonably simple diagnostics for plasma turbulence studies, to further investigate this unusual phenomenon. It formed the basis for his doctoral dissertation. “I happened to be at the right place at the right time so I could study this turbulence quenching phenomenon in much more detail than anyone else could, up until that time,” Tynan says.

As a PhD student and then postdoc, Tynan studied the phenomenon in depth, shuttling between research facilities in Germany, Princeton University’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, and UCLA.

Fusion at UCSD

After completing his doctorate and postdoctoral work, Tynan worked at a startup for a few years when he learned that the University of California at San Diego was launching a new fusion research group at the engineering school. When they reached out, Tynan joined the faculty and built a research program focused on plasma turbulence and plasma-material interactions in fusion systems. Eventually, he became associate dean of engineering, and later, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, serving in these roles for nearly a decade.

Tynan visited MIT on sabbatical in 2023, when his conversations with NSE faculty members Dennis Whyte, Zach Hartwig, and Michael Short excited him about the challenges the private sector faces in making fusion a reality. He saw opportunities to solve important problems at MIT that complemented his work at UC San Diego.

Tynan is excited to tackle what he calls, “the big physics and engineering challenges of fusion plasmas” at NSE: how to remove the heat and exhaust generated by burning plasma so it doesn’t damage the walls of the fusion device and the plasma does not choke on the helium ash. He also hopes to explore robust engineering solutions for practical fusion energy, with a particular focus on developing better materials for use in fusion devices that will make them longer-lasting, while  minimizing the production of radioactive waste.

“Ten or 15 years ago, I was somewhat pessimistic that I would ever see commercial exploitation of fusion in my lifetime,” Tynan says. But that outlook has changed, as he has seen collaborations between MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and other private-sector firms that seek to accelerate the timeline to the deployment of fusion in the real world.

In 2021, for example, MIT’s PSFC and CFS took a significant step toward commercial carbon-free power generation. They designed and built a high-temperature superconducting magnet, the strongest fusion magnet in the world.

The milestone was especially exciting because the promise of realizing the dream of fusion energy now felt closer. And being at MIT “seemed like a really quick way to get deeply connected with what’s going on in the efforts to develop fusion energy,” Tynan says.

In addition, “while on sabbatical at MIT, I saw how quickly research staff and students can capitalize on a suggestion of a new idea, and that intrigued me,” he adds.

Tynan brings his special blend of expertise to the table. In addition to extensive experience in plasma physics, he has spent a lot more time on hardcore engineering issues like materials, as well. “The key is to integrate the whole thing into a workable and viable system,” Tynan says.

To most, the Arctic can feel like an abstract place, difficult to imagine beyond images of ice and polar bears. But researcher David Whelihan of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group is no stranger to the Arctic. Through Operation Ice Camp, a U.S. Navy–sponsored biennial mission to assess operational readiness in the Arctic region, he has traveled to this vast and remote wilderness twice over the past few years to test low-cost sensor nodes developed by the group to monitor loss in Arctic sea ice extent and thickness. The research team envisions establishing a network of such sensors across the Arctic that will persistently detect ice-fracturing events and correlate these events with environmental conditions to provide insights into why the sea ice is breaking up. Whelihan shared his perspectives on why the Arctic matters and what operating there is like.

Q: Why do we need to be able to operate in the Arctic?

A: Spanning approximately 5.5 million square miles, the Arctic is huge, and one of its salient features is that the ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean is decreasing in volume with every passing year. Melting ice opens up previously impassable areas, resulting in increasing interest from potential adversaries and allies alike for activities such as military operations, commercial shipping, and natural resource extraction. Through Alaska, the United States has approximately 1,060 miles of Arctic coastline that is becoming much more accessible because of reduced ice cover. So, U.S. operation in the Arctic is a matter of national security.  

Q: What are the technological limitations to Arctic operations?

A: The Arctic is an incredibly harsh environment. The cold kills battery life, so collecting sensor data at high rates over long periods of time is very difficult. The ice is dynamic and can easily swallow or crush sensors. In addition, most deployments involve "boots-on-the-ice," which is expensive and at times dangerous. One of the technological limitations is how to deploy sensors while keeping humans alive.

Q: How does the group's sensor node R&D work seek to support Arctic operations?

A: A lot of the work we put into our sensors pertains to deployability. Our ultimate goal is to free researchers from going onto the ice to deploy sensors. This goal will become increasingly necessary as the shrinking ice pack becomes more dynamic, unstable, and unpredictable. At the last Operation Ice Camp (OIC) in March 2024, we built and rapidly tested deployable and recoverable sensors, as well as novel concepts such as using UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles), or drones, as "data mules" that can fly out to and interrogate the sensors to see what they captured. We also built a prototype wearable system that cues automatic download of sensor data over Wi-Fi so that operators don't have to take off their gloves.

Q: The Arctic Circle is the northernmost region on Earth. How do you reach this remote place?

A: We usually fly on commercial airlines from Boston to Seattle to Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. From there, the Navy flies us on small prop planes, like Single and Twin Otters, about 200 miles north and lands us on an ice runway built by the Navy's Arctic Submarine Lab (ASL). The runway is part of a temporary camp that ASL establishes on floating sea ice for their operational readiness exercises conducted during OIC.

Q: Think back to the first time you stepped foot in the Arctic. Can you paint a picture of what you experienced?

A: My first experience was at Prudhoe Bay, coming out of the airport, which is a corrugated metal building with a single gate. Before you open the door to the outside, a sign warns you to be on the lookout for polar bears. Walking out into the sheer desolation and blinding whiteness of everything made me realize I was experiencing something very new.

When I flew out onto the ice and stepped out of the plane, I was amazed that the area could somehow be even more desolate. Bright white snowy ice goes in every direction, broken up by pressure ridges that form when ice sheets collide. The sun is low, and seems to move horizontally only. It is very hard to tell the time. The air temperature is really variable. On our first trip in 2022, it really wasn't (relatively) that cold — only around minus 5 or 10 degrees during the day. On our second trip in 2024, we were hit by minus 30 almost every day, and with winds of 20 to 25 miles per hour. The last night we were on the ice that year, it warmed up a bit to minus 10 to 20, but the winds kicked up and started blowing snow onto the heaters attached to our tents. Those heaters started failing one by one as the blowing snow covered them, blocking airflow. After our heater failed, I asked myself, while warm in my bed, whether I wanted to go outside to the command tent for help or try to make it until dawn in my thick sleeping bag. I picked the first option, but mostly because the heater control was beeping loudly right next to my bunk, so I couldn’t sleep anyway. Shout-out to the ASL staff who ran around fixing heaters all night!

Q: How do you survive in a place generally inhospitable to humans?

A: In partnership with the native population, ASL brings a lot of gear — from insulated, heated tents and communications equipment to large snowblowers to keep the runway clear. A few months before OIC, participants attend training on what conditions you will be exposed to and how to protect yourself through appropriate clothing, and how to use survival gear in case of an emergency.

Q: Do you have plans to return to the Arctic?  

A: We are hoping to go back this winter as part of OIC 2026! We plan to test a through-ice communication device. Communicating through 4 to 12 feet of ice is pretty tricky but could allow us to connect underwater drones and stationary sensors under the ice to the rest of the world. To support the through-ice communication system, we will repurpose our sensor-node boxes deployed during OIC 2024. If this setup works, those same boxes could be used as control centers for all sorts of undersea systems and relay information about the under-ice world back home via satellite.

Q: What lessons learned will you bring to your upcoming trip, and any potential future trips?

A: After the first trip, I had a visceral understanding of how hard operating there is. Prototyping of systems becomes a different game. Prototypes are often fragile, but fragility doesn't go over too well on the ice. So, there is a robustification step, which can take some time.

On this last trip, I realized that you have to really be careful with your energy expenditure and pace yourself. While the average adult may require about 2,000 calories a day, an Arctic explorer may burn several times more than that exerting themselves (we do a lot of walking around camp) and keeping warm. Usually, we live on the same freeze-dried food that you would take on camping trips. Each package only has so many calories, so you find yourself eating multiple of those and supplementing with lots of snacks such as Clif Bars or, my favorite, Babybel cheeses (which I bring myself). You also have to be really careful of dehydration. Your body's reaction to extreme cold is to reduce blood flow to your skin, which generally results in less liquid in your body. We have to drink constantly — water, cocoa, and coffee — to avoid dehydration.

We only have access to the ice every two years with the Navy, so we try to make the most of our time. In the several-day lead-up to our field expedition, my research partner Ben and I were really pushing ourselves to ready our sensor nodes for deployment and probably not eating and drinking as regularly as we should. When we ventured to our sensor deployment site about 5 kilometers outside of camp, I had to learn to slow down so I didn't sweat under my gear, as sweating in the extremely cold conditions can quickly lead to hypothermia. I also learned to pay more attention to exposed places on my face, as I got a bit of frostnip around my goggles.

Operating in the Arctic is a fine balance: you can't spend too much time out there, but you also can't rush.

The field of tissue engineering aims to replicate the structure and function of real biological tissues. This engineered tissue has potential applications in disease modeling, drug discovery, and implantable grafts.

3D bioprinting, which uses living cells, biocompatible materials, and growth factors to build three-dimensional tissue and organ structures, has emerged as a key tool in the field. To date, one of the most-used approaches for bioprinting relies on additive manufacturing techniques and digital models, depositing 2D layers of bio-inks, composed of cells in a soft gel, into a support bath, layer-by-layer, to build a 3D structure. While these techniques do enable fabrication of complex architectures with features that are not easy to build manually, current approaches have limitations.

“A major drawback of current 3D bioprinting approaches is that they do not integrate process control methods that limit defects in printed tissues. Incorporating process control could improve inter-tissue reproducibility and enhance resource efficiency, for example limiting material waste,” says Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Chair of Tissue Engineering and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

She adds, “given the diverse array of available 3D bioprinting tools, there is a significant need to develop process optimization techniques that are modular, efficient, and accessible.”

The need motivated Raman to seek the expertise of Professor Bianca Colosimo of the Polytechnic University of Milan, also known as Polimi. Colosimo recently completed a sabbatical at MIT, which was hosted by John Hart, Class of 1922 Professor, co-director of MIT’s Initiative for New Manufacturing, director of the Center for Advanced Production Technologies, and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

“Artificial Intelligence and data mining are already reshaping our daily lives, and their impact will be even more profound in the emerging field of 3D bioprinting, and in manufacturing at large,” says Colosimo. During her MIT sabbatical, she collaborated with Raman and her team to co-develop a solution that represents a first step toward intelligent bioprinting.

“This solution is now available in both our labs at Polimi and MIT, serving as a twin platform to exchange data and results across different environments and paving the way for many new joint projects in the years to come,” Colosimo says.

A new paper by Raman, Colosimo, and lead authors Giovanni Zanderigo, a Rocca Fellow at Polimi, and Ferdows Afghah of MIT published this week in the journal Device presents a novel technique that addresses this challenge. The team built and validated a modular, low-cost, and printer-agnostic monitoring technique that integrates a compact tool for layer-by-layer imaging. In their method, a digital microscope captures high-resolution images of tissues during printing and rapidly compares them to the intended design with an AI-based image analysis pipeline.

“This method enabled us to quickly identify print defects, such as depositing too much or too little bio-ink, thus helping us identify optimal print parameters for a variety of different materials,” says Raman. “The approach is a low-cost — less than $500 — scalable, and adaptable solution that can be readily implemented on any standard 3D bioprinter. Here at MIT, the monitoring platform has already been integrated into the 3D bioprinting facilities in The SHED. Beyond MIT, our research offers a practical path toward greater reproducibility, improved sustainability, and automation in the field of tissue engineering. This research could have a positive impact on human health by improving the quality of the tissues we fabricate to study and treat debilitating injuries and disease.”

The authors indicate that the new method is more than a monitoring tool. It also ‎serves as a foundation for intelligent process control in embedded bioprinting. By enabling real-‎time inspection, adaptive correction, and automated parameter tuning, the researchers anticipate that the approach can improve ‎reproducibility, reduce material waste, and accelerate process optimization‎ for real-world applications in tissue engineering.

George Tynan followed a nonlinear path to fusion.

Following his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering, Tynann's work in the industry spurred his interest in rocket propulsion technology. Because most methods for propulsion involve the manipulation of hot ionized matter, or plasmas, Tynan focused his attention on plasma physics.

It was then that he realized that plasmas could also drive nuclear fusion. “As a potential energy source, it could really be transformative, and the idea that I could work on something that could have that kind of impact on the future was really attractive to me,” he says.

That same drive, to realize the promise of fusion by researching both plasma physics and fusion engineering, drives Tynan today. It’s work he will be pursuing as the Norman C. Rasmussen Adjunct Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) and at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

An early interest in fluid flow

Tynan’s enthusiasm for science and engineering traces back to his childhood. His electrical engineer father found employment in the U.S. space program and moved the family to Cape Canaveral in Florida.

“This was in the ’60s, when we were launching Saturn V to the moon, and I got to watch all the launches from the beach,” Tynan remembers. That experience was formative and Tynan became fascinated with how fluids flow.

“I would stick my hand out the window and pretend it was an airplane wing and tilt it with oncoming wind flow and see how the force would change on my hand,” Tynan laughs. The interest eventually led to an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

The switch to a new career would happen after work in the private sector, when Tynan discovered an interest in the use of plasmas for propulsion systems. He moved to the University of California at Los Angeles for graduate school, and it was here that the realization that plasmas could also anchor fusion moved Tynan into this field.

This was in the ’80s, when climate change was not as much in the public consciousness as it is today. Even so, “I knew there’s not an infinite amount of oil and gas around, and that at some point we would have to have widespread adoption of nuclear-based sources,” Tynan remembers. He was also attracted by the sustained effort it would take to make fusion a reality.

Doctoral work

To create energy from fusion, it’s important to get an accurate measurement of the “energy confinement time,” which is a measure of how long it takes for the hot fuel to cool down when all heat sources are turned off. When Tynan started graduate school, this measure was still an empirical guess. He decided to focus his research on the physics of observable confinement time.

It was during this doctoral research that Tynan was able to study the fundamental differences in the behavior of turbulence in plasma as compared to conventional fluids. Typically, when an ordinary fluid is stirred with increasing vigor, the fluid’s motion eventually becomes chaotic or turbulent. However, plasmas can act in a surprising way: confined plasmas, when heated sufficiently strongly, would spontaneously quench the turbulent transport at the boundary of the plasma

An experiment in Germany had unexpectedly discovered this plasma behavior. While subsequent work on other experimental devices confirmed this surprising finding, all earlier experiments lacked the ability to measure the turbulence in detail.

Brian LaBombard, now a senior research scientist at PSFC, was a postdoc at UCLA at the time. Under LaBombard’s direction, Tynan developed a set of Langmuir probes, which are reasonably simple diagnostics for plasma turbulence studies, to further investigate this unusual phenomenon. It formed the basis for his doctoral dissertation. “I happened to be at the right place at the right time so I could study this turbulence quenching phenomenon in much more detail than anyone else could, up until that time,” Tynan says.

As a PhD student and then postdoc, Tynan studied the phenomenon in depth, shuttling between research facilities in Germany, Princeton University’s Plasma Physics Laboratory, and UCLA.

Fusion at UCSD

After completing his doctorate and postdoctoral work, Tynan worked at a startup for a few years when he learned that the University of California at San Diego was launching a new fusion research group at the engineering school. When they reached out, Tynan joined the faculty and built a research program focused on plasma turbulence and plasma-material interactions in fusion systems. Eventually, he became associate dean of engineering, and later, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, serving in these roles for nearly a decade.

Tynan visited MIT on sabbatical in 2023, when his conversations with NSE faculty members Dennis Whyte, Zach Hartwig, and Michael Short excited him about the challenges the private sector faces in making fusion a reality. He saw opportunities to solve important problems at MIT that complemented his work at UC San Diego.

Tynan is excited to tackle what he calls, “the big physics and engineering challenges of fusion plasmas” at NSE: how to remove the heat and exhaust generated by burning plasma so it doesn’t damage the walls of the fusion device and the plasma does not choke on the helium ash. He also hopes to explore robust engineering solutions for practical fusion energy, with a particular focus on developing better materials for use in fusion devices that will make them longer-lasting, while  minimizing the production of radioactive waste.

“Ten or 15 years ago, I was somewhat pessimistic that I would ever see commercial exploitation of fusion in my lifetime,” Tynan says. But that outlook has changed, as he has seen collaborations between MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and other private-sector firms that seek to accelerate the timeline to the deployment of fusion in the real world.

In 2021, for example, MIT’s PSFC and CFS took a significant step toward commercial carbon-free power generation. They designed and built a high-temperature superconducting magnet, the strongest fusion magnet in the world.

The milestone was especially exciting because the promise of realizing the dream of fusion energy now felt closer. And being at MIT “seemed like a really quick way to get deeply connected with what’s going on in the efforts to develop fusion energy,” Tynan says.

In addition, “while on sabbatical at MIT, I saw how quickly research staff and students can capitalize on a suggestion of a new idea, and that intrigued me,” he adds.

Tynan brings his special blend of expertise to the table. In addition to extensive experience in plasma physics, he has spent a lot more time on hardcore engineering issues like materials, as well. “The key is to integrate the whole thing into a workable and viable system,” Tynan says.

To most, the Arctic can feel like an abstract place, difficult to imagine beyond images of ice and polar bears. But researcher David Whelihan of MIT Lincoln Laboratory's Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology Group is no stranger to the Arctic. Through Operation Ice Camp, a U.S. Navy–sponsored biennial mission to assess operational readiness in the Arctic region, he has traveled to this vast and remote wilderness twice over the past few years to test low-cost sensor nodes developed by the group to monitor loss in Arctic sea ice extent and thickness. The research team envisions establishing a network of such sensors across the Arctic that will persistently detect ice-fracturing events and correlate these events with environmental conditions to provide insights into why the sea ice is breaking up. Whelihan shared his perspectives on why the Arctic matters and what operating there is like.

Q: Why do we need to be able to operate in the Arctic?

A: Spanning approximately 5.5 million square miles, the Arctic is huge, and one of its salient features is that the ice covering much of the Arctic Ocean is decreasing in volume with every passing year. Melting ice opens up previously impassable areas, resulting in increasing interest from potential adversaries and allies alike for activities such as military operations, commercial shipping, and natural resource extraction. Through Alaska, the United States has approximately 1,060 miles of Arctic coastline that is becoming much more accessible because of reduced ice cover. So, U.S. operation in the Arctic is a matter of national security.  

Q: What are the technological limitations to Arctic operations?

A: The Arctic is an incredibly harsh environment. The cold kills battery life, so collecting sensor data at high rates over long periods of time is very difficult. The ice is dynamic and can easily swallow or crush sensors. In addition, most deployments involve "boots-on-the-ice," which is expensive and at times dangerous. One of the technological limitations is how to deploy sensors while keeping humans alive.

Q: How does the group's sensor node R&D work seek to support Arctic operations?

A: A lot of the work we put into our sensors pertains to deployability. Our ultimate goal is to free researchers from going onto the ice to deploy sensors. This goal will become increasingly necessary as the shrinking ice pack becomes more dynamic, unstable, and unpredictable. At the last Operation Ice Camp (OIC) in March 2024, we built and rapidly tested deployable and recoverable sensors, as well as novel concepts such as using UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles), or drones, as "data mules" that can fly out to and interrogate the sensors to see what they captured. We also built a prototype wearable system that cues automatic download of sensor data over Wi-Fi so that operators don't have to take off their gloves.

Q: The Arctic Circle is the northernmost region on Earth. How do you reach this remote place?

A: We usually fly on commercial airlines from Boston to Seattle to Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope of Alaska. From there, the Navy flies us on small prop planes, like Single and Twin Otters, about 200 miles north and lands us on an ice runway built by the Navy's Arctic Submarine Lab (ASL). The runway is part of a temporary camp that ASL establishes on floating sea ice for their operational readiness exercises conducted during OIC.

Q: Think back to the first time you stepped foot in the Arctic. Can you paint a picture of what you experienced?

A: My first experience was at Prudhoe Bay, coming out of the airport, which is a corrugated metal building with a single gate. Before you open the door to the outside, a sign warns you to be on the lookout for polar bears. Walking out into the sheer desolation and blinding whiteness of everything made me realize I was experiencing something very new.

When I flew out onto the ice and stepped out of the plane, I was amazed that the area could somehow be even more desolate. Bright white snowy ice goes in every direction, broken up by pressure ridges that form when ice sheets collide. The sun is low, and seems to move horizontally only. It is very hard to tell the time. The air temperature is really variable. On our first trip in 2022, it really wasn't (relatively) that cold — only around minus 5 or 10 degrees during the day. On our second trip in 2024, we were hit by minus 30 almost every day, and with winds of 20 to 25 miles per hour. The last night we were on the ice that year, it warmed up a bit to minus 10 to 20, but the winds kicked up and started blowing snow onto the heaters attached to our tents. Those heaters started failing one by one as the blowing snow covered them, blocking airflow. After our heater failed, I asked myself, while warm in my bed, whether I wanted to go outside to the command tent for help or try to make it until dawn in my thick sleeping bag. I picked the first option, but mostly because the heater control was beeping loudly right next to my bunk, so I couldn’t sleep anyway. Shout-out to the ASL staff who ran around fixing heaters all night!

Q: How do you survive in a place generally inhospitable to humans?

A: In partnership with the native population, ASL brings a lot of gear — from insulated, heated tents and communications equipment to large snowblowers to keep the runway clear. A few months before OIC, participants attend training on what conditions you will be exposed to and how to protect yourself through appropriate clothing, and how to use survival gear in case of an emergency.

Q: Do you have plans to return to the Arctic?  

A: We are hoping to go back this winter as part of OIC 2026! We plan to test a through-ice communication device. Communicating through 4 to 12 feet of ice is pretty tricky but could allow us to connect underwater drones and stationary sensors under the ice to the rest of the world. To support the through-ice communication system, we will repurpose our sensor-node boxes deployed during OIC 2024. If this setup works, those same boxes could be used as control centers for all sorts of undersea systems and relay information about the under-ice world back home via satellite.

Q: What lessons learned will you bring to your upcoming trip, and any potential future trips?

A: After the first trip, I had a visceral understanding of how hard operating there is. Prototyping of systems becomes a different game. Prototypes are often fragile, but fragility doesn't go over too well on the ice. So, there is a robustification step, which can take some time.

On this last trip, I realized that you have to really be careful with your energy expenditure and pace yourself. While the average adult may require about 2,000 calories a day, an Arctic explorer may burn several times more than that exerting themselves (we do a lot of walking around camp) and keeping warm. Usually, we live on the same freeze-dried food that you would take on camping trips. Each package only has so many calories, so you find yourself eating multiple of those and supplementing with lots of snacks such as Clif Bars or, my favorite, Babybel cheeses (which I bring myself). You also have to be really careful of dehydration. Your body's reaction to extreme cold is to reduce blood flow to your skin, which generally results in less liquid in your body. We have to drink constantly — water, cocoa, and coffee — to avoid dehydration.

We only have access to the ice every two years with the Navy, so we try to make the most of our time. In the several-day lead-up to our field expedition, my research partner Ben and I were really pushing ourselves to ready our sensor nodes for deployment and probably not eating and drinking as regularly as we should. When we ventured to our sensor deployment site about 5 kilometers outside of camp, I had to learn to slow down so I didn't sweat under my gear, as sweating in the extremely cold conditions can quickly lead to hypothermia. I also learned to pay more attention to exposed places on my face, as I got a bit of frostnip around my goggles.

Operating in the Arctic is a fine balance: you can't spend too much time out there, but you also can't rush.

A genome-editing technique known as prime editing holds potential for treating many diseases by transforming faulty genes into functional ones. However, the process carries a small chance of inserting errors that could be harmful.

MIT researchers have now found a way to dramatically lower the error rate of prime editing, using modified versions of the proteins involved in the process. This advance could make it easier to develop gene therapy treatments for a variety of diseases, the researchers say.

“This paper outlines a new approach to doing gene editing that doesn’t complicate the delivery system and doesn’t add additional steps, but results in a much more precise edit with fewer unwanted mutations,” says Phillip Sharp, an MIT Institute Professor Emeritus, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and one of the senior authors of the new study.

With their new strategy, the MIT team was able to improve the error rate of prime editors from about one error in seven edits to one in 101 for the most-used editing mode, or from one error in 122 edits to one in 543 for a high-precision mode.

“For any drug, what you want is something that is effective, but with as few side effects as possible,” says Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, a member of the Koch Institute, and one of the senior authors of the new study. “For any disease where you might do genome editing, I would think this would ultimately be a safer, better way of doing it.”

Koch Institute research scientist Vikash Chauhan is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature.

The potential for error

The earliest forms of gene therapy, first tested in the 1990s, involved delivering new genes carried by viruses. Subsequently, gene-editing techniques that use enzymes such as zinc finger nucleases to correct genes were developed. These nucleases are difficult to engineer, however, so adapting them to target different DNA sequences is a very laborious process.

Many years later, the CRISPR genome-editing system was discovered in bacteria, offering scientists a potentially much easier way to edit the genome. The CRISPR system consists of an enzyme called Cas9 that can cut double-stranded DNA at a particular spot, along with a guide RNA that tells Cas9 where to cut. Researchers have adapted this approach to cut out faulty gene sequences or to insert new ones, following an RNA template.

In 2019, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported the development of prime editing: a new system, based on CRISPR, that is more precise and has fewer off-target effects. A recent study reported that prime editors were successfully used to treat a patient with chronic granulomatous disease (CGD), a rare genetic disease that affects white blood cells.

“In principle, this technology could eventually be used to address many hundreds of genetic diseases by correcting small mutations directly in cells and tissues,” Chauhan says.

One of the advantages of prime editing is that it doesn’t require making a double-stranded cut in the target DNA. Instead, it uses a modified version of Cas9 that cuts just one of the complementary strands, opening up a flap where a new sequence can be inserted. A guide RNA delivered along with the prime editor serves as the template for the new sequence.

Once the new sequence has been copied, however, it must compete with the old DNA strand to be incorporated into the genome. If the old strand outcompetes the new one, the extra flap of new DNA hanging off may accidentally get incorporated somewhere else, giving rise to errors.

Many of these errors might be relatively harmless, but it’s possible that some could eventually lead to tumor development or other complications. With the most recent version of prime editors, this error rate ranges from one per seven edits to one per 121 edits for different editing modes.

“The technologies we have now are really a lot better than earlier gene therapy tools, but there’s always a chance for these unintended consequences,” Chauhan says.

Precise editing

To reduce those error rates, the MIT team decided to take advantage of a phenomenon they had observed in a 2023 study. In that paper, they found that while Cas9 usually cuts in the same DNA location every time, some mutated versions of the protein show a relaxation of those constraints. Instead of always cutting the same location, those Cas9 proteins would sometimes make their cut one or two bases further along the DNA sequence.

This relaxation, the researchers discovered, makes the old DNA strands less stable, so they get degraded, making it easier for the new strands to be incorporated without introducing any errors.

In the new study, the researchers were able to identify Cas9 mutations that dropped the error rate to 1/20th its original value. Then, by combining pairs of those mutations, they created a Cas9 editor that lowered the error rate even further, to 1/36th the original amount.

To make the editors even more accurate, the researchers incorporated their new Cas9 proteins into a prime editing system that has an RNA binding protein that stabilizes the ends of the RNA template more efficiently. This final editor, which the researchers call vPE, had an error rate just 1/60th of the original, ranging from one in 101 edits to one in 543 edits for different editing modes. These tests were performed in mouse and human cells.

The MIT team is now working on further improving the efficiency of prime editors, through further modifications of Cas9 and the RNA template. They are also working on ways to deliver the editors to specific tissues of the body, which is a longstanding challenge in gene therapy.

They also hope that other labs will begin using the new prime editing approach in their research studies. Prime editors are commonly used to explore many different questions, including how tissues develop, how populations of cancer cells evolve, and how cells respond to drug treatment.

“Genome editors are used extensively in research labs,” Chauhan says. “So the therapeutic aspect is exciting, but we are really excited to see how people start to integrate our editors into their research workflows.”

The research was funded by the Life Sciences Research Foundation, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Cancer Institute, and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

As we celebrate 120 years of excellence, the National University of Singapore (NUS) continues to expand the frontiers of knowledge and discovery. Innovations That Matter, a five-part Channel NewsAsia (CNA) documentary series, uncovers how our faculty, researchers, staff, students and alumni are driving solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. From the lab to the community, these game-changing ideas — across ageing, sustainability, AI, entrepreneurship and cross-generational impact — are transforming lives in Singapore and beyond.

Discover how 120 years of NUS breakthroughs continue to shape the future in these episodes:

• The Straits Times, 15 September 2025, Singapore, pA14

• The Straits Times, 15 September 2025, Science, pA16

Can a material once dismissed as the “poor man’s timber” be reframed as a sustainable solution to counter deforestation? A group of NUS College students have set in motion a mindset shift towards bamboo in the Philippines with a two-year project that engaged Filipino youths in hands-on workshops to demonstrate the plant’s potential.

The group of seven students, dubbed Team Bayanihan, worked with Grow School Philippines to design and lead a series of Bamboo for the Future workshops that has reached more than 100 youths. Through activities such as weaving coasters and constructing catapults, the workshops aimed to shift perceptions of bamboo as a low-cost material to a sustainable and economically promising alternative.

This student-led project is one of more than 30 initiatives showcased today at the inaugural Impact Festival, themed ‘Emergence’ and organised by NUS College (NUSC), the honours college of the National University of Singapore. (See Annexe for highlights of the IEx projects showcased at the Impact Festival.)

The festival is a celebration of community-driven change powered by NUSC students through the College’s signature Impact Experience (IEx) programme, in which the students work in interdisciplinary teams with community and regional partners over two years to tackle complex real-world challenges across Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Building a generation of changemakers

IEx is designed to enable NUSC students to create real-world success and impact through their work, beyond the confines of a traditional university course. Working closely with local and regional communities, students hone critical competencies, a global orientation and relationship-building skills as they tackle pressing issues such as sustainability, food security, education and social isolation. They develop a community-first mindset, learning to collaborate effectively across diverse disciplines and cultures to create social impact that is both deep and scalable.

The Impact Festival celebrates the efforts of more than 350 students from NUSC’s first cohort, who over the course of the two-year programme have learnt how to work across disciplines, cultures and communities to put people and partnerships at the heart of problem-solving.

“The Impact Experience is at the heart of what makes NUS College distinctive. It’s not just about what our students learn in the classroom, but how they take that knowledge into the world, work alongside communities and create meaningful change. The Impact Festival celebrates their dedication and the tangible impact they’ve made,” said Professor Simon Chesterman, Dean of NUSC.

“We chose the theme ‘Emergence’ because it reflects both the students’ growth and the new possibilities that arise when diverse people come together to tackle complex problems. What emerges is not just solutions to today’s challenges, but a new generation of leaders who are imaginative, responsible and deeply connected to the region we call home,” he added.

At the festival, Team Bayanihan will screen Project Bambusiness, a narrative film they produced about their experience of working with youths in the Philippines to shift perceptions, raise sustainability awareness and improve livelihoods.

Andrew Toh Yung Weii, a final-year Communications and New Media major from Team Bayanihan, shared: “Working with my peers and our partner Grow School Philippines to create our Bamboo for the Future Workshop has been exciting and fulfilling. We have engaged over 100 youths and raised awareness about bamboo’s versatility and value as a sustainable material with economic potential. Running this project has also inspired us to embrace our role as environmental stewards in other aspects of our lives, such as being more conscious of our everyday decisions and their impact on the environment.”

Also on showcase will be Would You Love Me If I Were A Worm?, a children’s book featuring Jerome, a boy who wonders if his mother would still love him if he were a worm. Through playful storytelling, the book introduces composting to young readers and their families, encouraging them to adopt small sustainable habits like reducing waste and starting their own gardens.

The book was developed by w(eight)st not!, a team whose project tackled food waste in Singapore’s hospitality industry while supporting community gardens. Working with Fairmont Singapore and Corridor Farmers, the team piloted a circular waste management that successfully recycled 100 kg of hotel kitchen scraps by turning them into compost that was distributed to community partners such as MINDS and the Metta Welfare Association.

Platform for dialogue and collaboration

The Impact Festival aims to spark dialogue and drive meaningful collaborations between Singapore and Southeast Asia to co-create sustainable solutions for the future. It is open to the public, welcoming students, policymakers, non-governmental organisations and the wider community to join the conversation.

The festival features interactive project showcases of community initiatives around the region, ranging from films and agriculture-themed games to art activities. Visitors can also contribute to a participatory art installation by renowned Singaporean artist Wang Ruobing, where they will use marine debris to co-create a giant map of Southeast Asia to inspire dialogue on sustainability.

Another festival highlight is the IEx Roundtable, where NUSC students and their IEx project community partners will share insights from their experience on how collaborative partnerships can drive lasting social change.

Before batteries lose power, fail suddenly, or burst into flames, they tend to produce faint sounds over time that provide a signature of the degradation processes going on within their structure. But until now, nobody had figured out how to interpret exactly what those sounds meant, and how to distinguish between ordinary background noise and significant signs of possible trouble.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering have done a detailed analysis of the sounds emanating from lithium ion batteries, and has been able to correlate particular sound patterns with specific degradation processes taking place inside the cells. The new findings could provide the basis for relatively simple, totally passive and nondestructive devices that could continuously monitor the health of battery systems, for example in electric vehicles or grid-scale storage facilities, to provide ways of predicting useful operating lifetimes and forecasting failures before they occur.

The findings were reported Sept. 5 in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT graduate students Yash Samantaray and Alexander Cohen, former MIT research scientist Daniel Cogswell PhD ’10, and Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and professor of mathematics Martin Z. Bazant.

“In this study, through some careful scientific work, our team has managed to decode the acoustic emissions,” Bazant says. “We were able to classify them as coming from gas bubbles that are generated by side reactions, or by fractures from the expansion and contraction of the active material, and to find signatures of those signals even in noisy data.”

Samantaray explains that, “I think the core of this work is to look at a way to investigate internal battery mechanisms while they’re still charging and discharging, and to do this nondestructively.” He adds, “Out there in the world now, there are a few methods that exist, but most are very expensive and not really conducive to batteries in their normal format.”

To carry out their analysis, the team coupled electrochemical testing with recording of the acoustic emissions, under real-world charging and discharging conditions, using detailed signal processing to correlate the electrical and acoustic data. By doing so, he says, “we were able to come up with a very cost-effective and efficient method of actually understanding gas generation and fracture of materials.”

Gas generation and fracturing are two primary mechanisms of degradation and failure in batteries, so being able to detect and distinguish those processes, just by monitoring the sounds produced by the batteries, could be a significant tool for those managing battery systems.

Previous approaches have simply monitored the sounds and recorded times when the overall sound level exceeded some threshold. But in this work, by simultaneously monitoring the voltage and current as well as the sound characteristics, Bazant says, “We know that [sound] emissions happen at a certain potential [voltage], and that helps us identify what the process might be that is causing that emission.”

After these tests, they would then take the batteries apart and study them under an electron microscope to detect fracturing of the materials.

In addition, they took a wavelet transform — essentially, a way of encoding the frequency and duration of each signal that is captured, providing distinct signatures that can then be more easily extracted from background noise. “No one had done that before,” Bazant says, “so that was another breakthrough.”

Acoustic emissions are widely used in engineering, he points out, for example to monitor structures such as bridges for signs of incipient failure. “It’s a great way to monitor a system,” he says, “because those emissions are happening whether you’re listening to them or not,” so by listening, you can learn something about internal processes that would otherwise be invisible.

With batteries, he says, “we often have a hard time interpreting the voltage and current information as precisely as we’d like, to know what’s happening inside a cell. And so this offers another window into the cell’s state of health, including its remaining useful life, and safety, too.” In a related paper with Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers, the team has shown that acoustic emissions can provide an early warning of thermal runaway, a situation that can lead to fires if not caught. The new study suggests that these sounds can be used to detect gas generation prior to combustion, “like seeing the first tiny bubbles in a pot of heated water, long before it boils,” says Bazant.

The next step will be to take this new knowledge of how certain sounds relate to specific conditions, and develop a practical, inexpensive monitoring system based on this understanding. For example, the team has a grant from Tata Motors to develop a battery monitoring system for its electric vehicles. “Now, we know what to look for, and how to correlate that with lifetime and health and safety,” Bazant says.

One possible application of this new understanding, Samantaray says, is “as a lab tool for groups that are trying to develop new materials or test new environments, so they can actually determine gas generation or active material fracturing without having to open up the battery.”

Bazant adds that the system could also be useful for quality control in battery manufacturing. “The most expensive and rate-limiting process in battery production is often the formation cycling,” he says. This is the process where batteries are cycled through charging and discharging to break them in, and part of that process involves chemical reactions that release some gas. The new system would allow detection of these gas formation signatures, he says, “and by sensing them, it may be easier to isolate well-formed cells from poorly formed cells very early, even before the useful life of the battery, when it’s being made,” he says.

The work was supported by the Toyota Research Institute, the Center for Battery Sustainability, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, and made use of the facilities of MIT.nano.

When researchers are building large language models (LLMs), they aim to maximize performance under a particular computational and financial budget. Since training a model can amount to millions of dollars, developers need to be judicious with cost-impacting decisions about, for instance, the model architecture, optimizers, and training datasets before committing to a model. To anticipate the quality and accuracy of a large model’s predictions, practitioners often turn to scaling laws: using smaller, cheaper models to try to approximate the performance of a much larger target model. The challenge, however, is that there are thousands of ways to create a scaling law.

New work from MIT and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers addresses this by amassing and releasing a collection of hundreds of models and metrics concerning training and performance to approximate more than a thousand scaling laws. From this, the team developed a meta-analysis and guide for how to select small models and estimate scaling laws for different LLM model families, so that the budget is optimally applied toward generating reliable performance predictions.

“The notion that you might want to try to build mathematical models of the training process is a couple of years old, but I think what was new here is that most of the work that people had been doing before is saying, ‘can we say something post-hoc about what happened when we trained all of these models, so that when we’re trying to figure out how to train a new large-scale model, we can make the best decisions about how to use our compute budget?’” says Jacob Andreas, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and principal investigator with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

The research was recently presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning by Andreas, along with MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers Leshem Choshen and Yang Zhang of IBM Research.

Extrapolating performance

No matter how you slice it, developing LLMs is an expensive endeavor: from decision-making regarding the numbers of parameters and tokens, data selection and size, and training techniques to determining output accuracy and tuning to the target applications and tasks. Scaling laws offer a way to forecast model behavior by relating a large model’s loss to the performance of smaller, less-costly models from the same family, avoiding the need to fully train every candidate. Mainly, the differences between the smaller models are the number of parameters and token training size. According to Choshen, elucidating scaling laws not only enable better pre-training decisions, but also democratize the field by enabling researchers without vast resources to understand and build effective scaling laws.

The functional form of scaling laws is relatively simple, incorporating components from the small models that capture the number of parameters and their scaling effect, the number of training tokens and their scaling effect, and the baseline performance for the model family of interest. Together, they help researchers estimate a target large model’s performance loss; the smaller the loss, the better the target model’s outputs are likely to be.

These laws allow research teams to weigh trade-offs efficiently and to test how best to allocate limited resources. They’re particularly useful for evaluating scaling of a certain variable, like the number of tokens, and for A/B testing of different pre-training setups.

In general, scaling laws aren’t new; however, in the field of AI, they emerged as models grew and costs skyrocketed. “It’s like scaling laws just appeared at some point in the field,” says Choshen. “They started getting attention, but no one really tested how good they are and what you need to do to make a good scaling law.” Further, scaling laws were themselves also a black box, in a sense. “Whenever people have created scaling laws in the past, it has always just been one model, or one model family, and one dataset, and one developer,” says Andreas. “There hadn’t really been a lot of systematic meta-analysis, as everybody is individually training their own scaling laws. So, [we wanted to know,] are there high-level trends that you see across those things?”

Building better

To investigate this, Choshen, Andreas, and Zhang created a large dataset. They collected LLMs from 40 model families, including Pythia, OPT, OLMO, LLaMA, Bloom, T5-Pile, ModuleFormer mixture-of-experts, GPT, and other families. These included 485 unique, pre-trained models, and where available, data about their training checkpoints, computational cost (FLOPs), training epochs, and the seed, along with 1.9 million performance metrics of loss and downstream tasks. The models differed in their architectures, weights, and so on. Using these models, the researchers fit over 1,000 scaling laws and compared their accuracy across architectures, model sizes, and training regimes, as well as testing how the number of models, inclusion of intermediate training checkpoints, and partial training impacted the predictive power of scaling laws to target models. They used measurements of absolute relative error (ARE); this is the difference between the scaling law’s prediction and the observed loss of a large, trained model. With this, the team compared the scaling laws, and after analysis, distilled practical recommendations for AI practitioners about what makes effective scaling laws.

Their shared guidelines walk the developer through steps and options to consider and expectations. First, it’s critical to decide on a compute budget and target model accuracy. The team found that 4 percent ARE is about the best achievable accuracy one could expect due to random seed noise, but up to 20 percent ARE is still useful for decision-making. The researchers identified several factors that improve predictions, like including intermediate training checkpoints, rather than relying only on final losses; this made scaling laws more reliable. However, very early training data before 10 billion tokens are noisy, reduce accuracy, and should be discarded. They recommend prioritizing training more models across a spread of sizes to improve robustness of the scaling law’s prediction, not just larger models; selecting five models provides a solid starting point. 

Generally, including larger models improves prediction, but costs can be saved by partially training the target model to about 30 percent of its dataset and using that for extrapolation. If the budget is considerably constrained, developers should consider training one smaller model within the target model family and borrow scaling law parameters from a model family with similar architecture; however, this may not work for encoder–decoder models. Lastly, the MIT-IBM research group found that when scaling laws were compared across model families, there was strong correlation between two sets of hyperparameters, meaning that three of the five hyperparameters explained nearly all of the variation and could likely capture the model behavior. Together, these guidelines provide a systematic approach to making scaling law estimation more efficient, reliable, and accessible for AI researchers working under varying budget constraints.

Several surprises arose during this work: small models partially trained are still very predictive, and further, the intermediate training stages from a fully trained model can be used (as if they are individual models) for prediction of another target model. “Basically, you don’t pay anything in the training, because you already trained the full model, so the half-trained model, for instance, is just a byproduct of what you did,” says Choshen. Another feature Andreas pointed out was that, when aggregated, the variability across model families and different experiments jumped out and was noisier than expected. Unexpectedly, the researchers found that it’s possible to utilize the scaling laws on large models to predict performance down to smaller models. Other research in the field has hypothesized that smaller models were a “different beast” compared to large ones; however, Choshen disagrees. “If they’re totally different, they should have shown totally different behavior, and they don’t.”

While this work focused on model training time, the researchers plan to extend their analysis to model inference. Andreas says it’s not, “how does my model get better as I add more training data or more parameters, but instead as I let it think for longer, draw more samples. I think there are definitely lessons to be learned here about how to also build predictive models of how much thinking you need to do at run time.” He says the theory of inference time scaling laws might become even more critical because, “it’s not like I'm going to train one model and then be done. [Rather,] it’s every time a user comes to me, they’re going to have a new query, and I need to figure out how hard [my model needs] to think to come up with the best answer. So, being able to build those kinds of predictive models, like we’re doing in this paper, is even more important.”

This research was supported, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and a Sloan Research Fellowship. 

Before batteries lose power, fail suddenly, or burst into flames, they tend to produce faint sounds over time that provide a signature of the degradation processes going on within their structure. But until now, nobody had figured out how to interpret exactly what those sounds meant, and how to distinguish between ordinary background noise and significant signs of possible trouble.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering have done a detailed analysis of the sounds emanating from lithium ion batteries, and has been able to correlate particular sound patterns with specific degradation processes taking place inside the cells. The new findings could provide the basis for relatively simple, totally passive and nondestructive devices that could continuously monitor the health of battery systems, for example in electric vehicles or grid-scale storage facilities, to provide ways of predicting useful operating lifetimes and forecasting failures before they occur.

The findings were reported Sept. 5 in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT graduate students Yash Samantaray and Alexander Cohen, former MIT research scientist Daniel Cogswell PhD ’10, and Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and professor of mathematics Martin Z. Bazant.

“In this study, through some careful scientific work, our team has managed to decode the acoustic emissions,” Bazant says. “We were able to classify them as coming from gas bubbles that are generated by side reactions, or by fractures from the expansion and contraction of the active material, and to find signatures of those signals even in noisy data.”

Samantaray explains that, “I think the core of this work is to look at a way to investigate internal battery mechanisms while they’re still charging and discharging, and to do this nondestructively.” He adds, “Out there in the world now, there are a few methods that exist, but most are very expensive and not really conducive to batteries in their normal format.”

To carry out their analysis, the team coupled electrochemical testing with recording of the acoustic emissions, under real-world charging and discharging conditions, using detailed signal processing to correlate the electrical and acoustic data. By doing so, he says, “we were able to come up with a very cost-effective and efficient method of actually understanding gas generation and fracture of materials.”

Gas generation and fracturing are two primary mechanisms of degradation and failure in batteries, so being able to detect and distinguish those processes, just by monitoring the sounds produced by the batteries, could be a significant tool for those managing battery systems.

Previous approaches have simply monitored the sounds and recorded times when the overall sound level exceeded some threshold. But in this work, by simultaneously monitoring the voltage and current as well as the sound characteristics, Bazant says, “We know that [sound] emissions happen at a certain potential [voltage], and that helps us identify what the process might be that is causing that emission.”

After these tests, they would then take the batteries apart and study them under an electron microscope to detect fracturing of the materials.

In addition, they took a wavelet transform — essentially, a way of encoding the frequency and duration of each signal that is captured, providing distinct signatures that can then be more easily extracted from background noise. “No one had done that before,” Bazant says, “so that was another breakthrough.”

Acoustic emissions are widely used in engineering, he points out, for example to monitor structures such as bridges for signs of incipient failure. “It’s a great way to monitor a system,” he says, “because those emissions are happening whether you’re listening to them or not,” so by listening, you can learn something about internal processes that would otherwise be invisible.

With batteries, he says, “we often have a hard time interpreting the voltage and current information as precisely as we’d like, to know what’s happening inside a cell. And so this offers another window into the cell’s state of health, including its remaining useful life, and safety, too.” In a related paper with Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers, the team has shown that acoustic emissions can provide an early warning of thermal runaway, a situation that can lead to fires if not caught. The new study suggests that these sounds can be used to detect gas generation prior to combustion, “like seeing the first tiny bubbles in a pot of heated water, long before it boils,” says Bazant.

The next step will be to take this new knowledge of how certain sounds relate to specific conditions, and develop a practical, inexpensive monitoring system based on this understanding. For example, the team has a grant from Tata Motors to develop a battery monitoring system for its electric vehicles. “Now, we know what to look for, and how to correlate that with lifetime and health and safety,” Bazant says.

One possible application of this new understanding, Samantaray says, is “as a lab tool for groups that are trying to develop new materials or test new environments, so they can actually determine gas generation or active material fracturing without having to open up the battery.”

Bazant adds that the system could also be useful for quality control in battery manufacturing. “The most expensive and rate-limiting process in battery production is often the formation cycling,” he says. This is the process where batteries are cycled through charging and discharging to break them in, and part of that process involves chemical reactions that release some gas. The new system would allow detection of these gas formation signatures, he says, “and by sensing them, it may be easier to isolate well-formed cells from poorly formed cells very early, even before the useful life of the battery, when it’s being made,” he says.

The work was supported by the Toyota Research Institute, the Center for Battery Sustainability, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, and made use of the facilities of MIT.nano.

For the past decade, MIT has offered doctoral-level study in computational science and engineering (CSE) exclusively through an interdisciplinary program designed for students applying computation within a specific science or engineering field.

As interest grew among students focused primarily on advancing CSE methodology itself, it became clear that a dedicated academic home for this group — students and faculty deeply invested in the foundations of computational science and engineering — was needed.

Now, with a stand-alone CSE PhD program, they have not only a space for fostering discovery in the cross-cutting methodological dimensions of computational science and engineering, but also a tight-knit community.

“This program recognizes the existence of computational science and engineering as a discipline in and of itself, so you don’t have to be doing this work through the lens of mechanical or chemical engineering, but instead in its own right,” says Nicolas Hadjiconstantinou, co-director of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE).

Offered by CCSE and launched in 2023, the stand-alone program blends both coursework and a thesis, much like other MIT PhD programs, yet its methodological focus sets it apart from other Institute offerings.

“What’s unique about this program is that it’s not hosted by one specific department. The stand-alone program is, at its core, about computational science and cross-cutting methodology. We connect this research with people in a lot of different application areas. We have oceanographers, people doing materials science, students with a focus on aeronautics and astronautics, and more,” says outgoing co-director Youssef Marzouk, now the associate dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

Expanding horizons

Hadjiconstantinou, the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Marzouk, the Breene M. Kerr Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, have led the center’s efforts since 2018, and developed the program and curriculum together. The duo was intentional about crafting a program that fosters students’ individual research while also exposing them to all the field has to offer.

To expand students’ horizons and continue to build a collaborative community, the PhD in CSE program features two popular seminar series: weekly community seminars that focus primarily on internal speakers (current graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, and faculty), and monthly distinguished seminars in CSE, which are Institute-wide and bring external speakers from various institutions and industry roles.

“Something surprising about the program has been the seminars. I thought it would be the same people I see in my classes and labs, but it’s much broader than that,” says Emily Williams, a fourth-year PhD student and a Department of Energy Computational Science graduate fellow. “One of the most interesting seminars was around simulating fluid flow for biomedical applications. My background is in fluids, so I understand that part, but seeing it applied in a totally different domain than what I work in was eye-opening,” says Williams.

That seminar, “Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics at Exascale,” presented by James Stone, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study and at Princeton University, represented one of many opportunities for CSE students to engage with practitioners in small groups, gaining academic insight as well as a wider perspective on future career paths.

Designing for impact

The interdisciplinary PhD program served as a departure point from which Hadjiconstantinou and Marzouk created a new offering that was uniquely its own.

For Marzouk, that meant focusing on expanding the stand-alone program to be able to constantly grow and pivot to retain relevancy as technology speeds up, too: “In my view, the vitality of this program is that science and engineering applications nowadays rest on computation in a really foundational way, whether it’s engineering design or scientific discovery. So it’s essential to perform research on the building blocks of this kind of computation. This research also has to be shaped by the way that we apply it so that scientists or engineers will actually use it,” Marzouk says.

The curriculum is structured around six core focus areas, or “ways of thinking,” that are fundamental to CSE:

• Discretization and numerical methods for partial differential equations;
• Optimization methods;
• Inference, statistical computing, and data-driven modeling;
• High performance computing, software engineering, and algorithms;
• Mathematical foundations (e.g., functional analysis, probability); and
• Modeling (i.e., a subject that treats computational modeling in any science or engineering discipline).

Students select and build their own thesis committee that consists of faculty from across MIT, not just those associated with CCSE. The combination of a curriculum that’s “modern and applicable to what employers are looking for in industry and academics," according to Williams, and the ability to build your own group of engaged advisors, allows for a level of specialization that’s hard to find elsewhere.

“Academically, I feel like this program is designed in such a flexible and interdisciplinary way. You have a lot of control in terms of which direction you want to go in,” says Rosen Yu, a PhD student. Yu’s research is focused on engineering design optimization, an interest she discovered during her first year of research at MIT with Professor Faez Ahmed. The CSE PhD was about to launch, and it became clear that her research interests skewed more toward computation than the existing mechanical engineering degree; it was a natural fit.

“At other schools, you often see just a pure computer science program or an engineering department with hardly any intersection. But this CSE program, I like to say it’s like a glue between these two communities,” says Yu.

That “glue” is strengthening, with more students matriculating each year, as well as Institute faculty and staff becoming affiliated with CSE. While the thesis topics of students range from WIlliams’ stochastic methods for model reduction of multiscale chaotic systems to scalable and robust GPU-cased optimization for energy systems, the goal of the program remains the same: develop students and research that will make a difference.

“That's why MIT is an ‘Institute of Technology’ and not a ‘university.’ There’s always this question, no matter what you’re studying: what is it good for? Our students will go on to work in systems biology, simulators of climate models, electrification, hypersonic vehicles, and more, but the whole point is that their research is helping with something,” says Hadjiconstantinou.

When researchers are building large language models (LLMs), they aim to maximize performance under a particular computational and financial budget. Since training a model can amount to millions of dollars, developers need to be judicious with cost-impacting decisions about, for instance, the model architecture, optimizers, and training datasets before committing to a model. To anticipate the quality and accuracy of a large model’s predictions, practitioners often turn to scaling laws: using smaller, cheaper models to try to approximate the performance of a much larger target model. The challenge, however, is that there are thousands of ways to create a scaling law.

New work from MIT and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers addresses this by amassing and releasing a collection of hundreds of models and metrics concerning training and performance to approximate more than a thousand scaling laws. From this, the team developed a meta-analysis and guide for how to select small models and estimate scaling laws for different LLM model families, so that the budget is optimally applied toward generating reliable performance predictions.

“The notion that you might want to try to build mathematical models of the training process is a couple of years old, but I think what was new here is that most of the work that people had been doing before is saying, ‘can we say something post-hoc about what happened when we trained all of these models, so that when we’re trying to figure out how to train a new large-scale model, we can make the best decisions about how to use our compute budget?’” says Jacob Andreas, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and principal investigator with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

The research was recently presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning by Andreas, along with MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers Leshem Choshen and Yang Zhang of IBM Research.

Extrapolating performance

No matter how you slice it, developing LLMs is an expensive endeavor: from decision-making regarding the numbers of parameters and tokens, data selection and size, and training techniques to determining output accuracy and tuning to the target applications and tasks. Scaling laws offer a way to forecast model behavior by relating a large model’s loss to the performance of smaller, less-costly models from the same family, avoiding the need to fully train every candidate. Mainly, the differences between the smaller models are the number of parameters and token training size. According to Choshen, elucidating scaling laws not only enable better pre-training decisions, but also democratize the field by enabling researchers without vast resources to understand and build effective scaling laws.

The functional form of scaling laws is relatively simple, incorporating components from the small models that capture the number of parameters and their scaling effect, the number of training tokens and their scaling effect, and the baseline performance for the model family of interest. Together, they help researchers estimate a target large model’s performance loss; the smaller the loss, the better the target model’s outputs are likely to be.

These laws allow research teams to weigh trade-offs efficiently and to test how best to allocate limited resources. They’re particularly useful for evaluating scaling of a certain variable, like the number of tokens, and for A/B testing of different pre-training setups.

In general, scaling laws aren’t new; however, in the field of AI, they emerged as models grew and costs skyrocketed. “It’s like scaling laws just appeared at some point in the field,” says Choshen. “They started getting attention, but no one really tested how good they are and what you need to do to make a good scaling law.” Further, scaling laws were themselves also a black box, in a sense. “Whenever people have created scaling laws in the past, it has always just been one model, or one model family, and one dataset, and one developer,” says Andreas. “There hadn’t really been a lot of systematic meta-analysis, as everybody is individually training their own scaling laws. So, [we wanted to know,] are there high-level trends that you see across those things?”

Building better

To investigate this, Choshen, Andreas, and Zhang created a large dataset. They collected LLMs from 40 model families, including Pythia, OPT, OLMO, LLaMA, Bloom, T5-Pile, ModuleFormer mixture-of-experts, GPT, and other families. These included 485 unique, pre-trained models, and where available, data about their training checkpoints, computational cost (FLOPs), training epochs, and the seed, along with 1.9 million performance metrics of loss and downstream tasks. The models differed in their architectures, weights, and so on. Using these models, the researchers fit over 1,000 scaling laws and compared their accuracy across architectures, model sizes, and training regimes, as well as testing how the number of models, inclusion of intermediate training checkpoints, and partial training impacted the predictive power of scaling laws to target models. They used measurements of absolute relative error (ARE); this is the difference between the scaling law’s prediction and the observed loss of a large, trained model. With this, the team compared the scaling laws, and after analysis, distilled practical recommendations for AI practitioners about what makes effective scaling laws.

Their shared guidelines walk the developer through steps and options to consider and expectations. First, it’s critical to decide on a compute budget and target model accuracy. The team found that 4 percent ARE is about the best achievable accuracy one could expect due to random seed noise, but up to 20 percent ARE is still useful for decision-making. The researchers identified several factors that improve predictions, like including intermediate training checkpoints, rather than relying only on final losses; this made scaling laws more reliable. However, very early training data before 10 billion tokens are noisy, reduce accuracy, and should be discarded. They recommend prioritizing training more models across a spread of sizes to improve robustness of the scaling law’s prediction, not just larger models; selecting five models provides a solid starting point. 

Generally, including larger models improves prediction, but costs can be saved by partially training the target model to about 30 percent of its dataset and using that for extrapolation. If the budget is considerably constrained, developers should consider training one smaller model within the target model family and borrow scaling law parameters from a model family with similar architecture; however, this may not work for encoder–decoder models. Lastly, the MIT-IBM research group found that when scaling laws were compared across model families, there was strong correlation between two sets of hyperparameters, meaning that three of the five hyperparameters explained nearly all of the variation and could likely capture the model behavior. Together, these guidelines provide a systematic approach to making scaling law estimation more efficient, reliable, and accessible for AI researchers working under varying budget constraints.

Several surprises arose during this work: small models partially trained are still very predictive, and further, the intermediate training stages from a fully trained model can be used (as if they are individual models) for prediction of another target model. “Basically, you don’t pay anything in the training, because you already trained the full model, so the half-trained model, for instance, is just a byproduct of what you did,” says Choshen. Another feature Andreas pointed out was that, when aggregated, the variability across model families and different experiments jumped out and was noisier than expected. Unexpectedly, the researchers found that it’s possible to utilize the scaling laws on large models to predict performance down to smaller models. Other research in the field has hypothesized that smaller models were a “different beast” compared to large ones; however, Choshen disagrees. “If they’re totally different, they should have shown totally different behavior, and they don’t.”

While this work focused on model training time, the researchers plan to extend their analysis to model inference. Andreas says it’s not, “how does my model get better as I add more training data or more parameters, but instead as I let it think for longer, draw more samples. I think there are definitely lessons to be learned here about how to also build predictive models of how much thinking you need to do at run time.” He says the theory of inference time scaling laws might become even more critical because, “it’s not like I'm going to train one model and then be done. [Rather,] it’s every time a user comes to me, they’re going to have a new query, and I need to figure out how hard [my model needs] to think to come up with the best answer. So, being able to build those kinds of predictive models, like we’re doing in this paper, is even more important.”

This research was supported, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and a Sloan Research Fellowship. 

From fully believing that he had bungled one of his speeches to emerging champion at his first international public speaking competition, NUS Law final-year student Kamal Ashraf Bin Kamil Jumat’s experience at the World Universities Public Speaking Invitational Championship 2025 was quite the rollercoaster ride.

The University of Macau invited 11 prestigious universities, including NUS, Tsinghua University, Korea University, the University of Oxford and the University of British Columbia, to send representatives to the inaugural edition of the championship that it hosted on 30 August 2025. Participants were required to prepare and deliver a speech based on the theme “Creating a Diverse Future Together”, answer questions from a panel of judges, and deliver an impromptu speech based on a randomly selected topic.

When NUS was invited to field a student speaker for the competition, Ms Sim Ee Waun, a tutor at the Department of Communications and New Media (CNM), immediately recognised her student Kamal’s potential to do well on this stage and put his name into the pool of nominees. After he was selected, she mentored him in the lead-up to the competition.

Despite battling nervousness as a first-time competitor in a field of high-calibre speakers, Kamal completed the first two segments with relative confidence, trusting in his pre-competition training and rehearsals. His prepared speech, entitled “Bringing Tomorrow”, discussed how diversity grows through active, consistent efforts and used stories such as the origins of Singlish and his own experiences as a firefighter in National Service to encourage listeners to build trust through communication.

For the third segment, he hoped to draw topics relating to Education or Culture from the three possible categories of impromptu speech topics, as they could relate more closely to his experiences in youth and community volunteering.

Instead, he drew “How do friendships shape our personal growth?” from the Friendship category.

With just 10 seconds of preparation time, he recalled Ms Sim’s advice to “give a speech only you can give” and rapidly composed a speech using the philosophical metaphor of tabula rasa to frame anecdotes of how his multicultural friendships have shaped him.

Kamal felt extremely nervous during the impromptu speech and left the stage disappointed with his performance. He immediately texted Ms Sim: “I don’t think I made it.”

Ms Sim was watching the livestreamed competition and disagreed with his assessment. She described his impromptu speech as “brilliant,” noting: “Not only was his speech eloquent and personal, it carried good points too. Believe me, it is not easy to do this in 10 seconds.”

She added: “His win reminds us that on the world stage, we should expect to win. Why not? We may be a little red dot, but we do punch way above our weight, and Kamal is a shining example of that.”

Although Kamal was unhappy with the speech at the time, it ended up being a meaningful and precious element of his win.

“I managed to talk about how my friends from other races have always been allies to me, helping me to feel comfortable in preserving my traditions and my daily practices. These anecdotes didn’t fit into my prepared speech, so I’m glad I got to present these messages that are important to me, at a time when Singapore is celebrating SG60, diversity and multiculturalism,” he said.

Speaking from the heart

As a debater since primary school and now a law student, Kamal is no stranger to speaking before judges and an audience. He currently serves as a part-time debate coach for a local secondary school and chairs a national debating academy organised by the Malay Youth Literary Association. His law training also includes polishing his trial advocacy and interpersonal communication skills through pro bono projects at the Syariah Court.

In his quest to learn more about the art of public speaking, he took up Public Speaking and Critical Reasoning offered by CNM as an elective course in Semester 2 of AY2024/2025. “I wanted to learn the technical skills behind speaking in front of people and connecting with them — something a bit more based on personality and more heartfelt, rather than doing it as part of a job,” said Kamal, noting that he learnt how to tailor material to the audience and craft speeches in different styles.

Nominating him for the competition was an easy decision, said Ms Sim. “In my five years of teaching public speaking at NUS, Kamal stands out as an incredibly talented public speaker who speaks with conviction and polish, and he is sharp as a pin. So when there was a call to nominate students for this competition, it was only natural that I put his name forward.”

Kamal spent the second half of the semester and part of his summer writing and rewriting his draft with Ms Sim’s help via WhatsApp and Zoom calls, while juggling an internship that left him with little time to rehearse until he arrived in Macau two days before the competition.

He started his days in Macau at 6am to rehearse intensively in his hotel room before heading out for activities organised by the University of Macau, such as soundchecks and workshops with his fellow competitors. Although most of the contestants were friendly, Kamal grew nervous as he learnt about their competitive speaking experience and training.

“These were some of the best public speakers I’ve ever met,” he said. “They were fantastic and they came from very established institutions that are well known for their craft in the English language, so the pressure was there.”

His nervousness was offset by the knowledge that he had supportive family and friends who would be happy for him regardless of the results. His mother frequently reminded him to just enjoy himself, and his friends refrained from pressuring him to come back with a win.

“They knew there was no point in adding pressure onto me, because they knew I was going to do it myself anyway,” said Kamal in jest.

He came away from the experience with a deep respect for the other contestants and a drive to continue improving his craft. When he was asked to give an acceptance speech with some of his public speaking tips at the competition’s closing dinner, Kamal expressed his admiration for his fellow competitors by asking them to share their own tips with him.

“Some of them had styles which I couldn’t pull off. Sofia (Lopez Castillo, first runner-up) from the University of British Columbia — her style was very emotional, very heartfelt. I’m a bit too clean or refined sometimes, and it’s hard for me to dig deep and hit those emotive notes,” he said. “For every one word of advice I was asked to give, I knew I had ten times as much to learn in return.”

Another outstanding speaker he recalled was second runner-up Benjamin Thomas from Stanford University, who was impressively calm in his delivery, especially when answering the impromptu questions.

Kamal concluded: “There are elements that I want to take from all 10 other speakers to become a better speaker, because this is just at the university level and I can see all these different skills that I need to pick up. The biggest takeaway for me is that there’s a lot more that I can learn.”

The full recording of the World Universities Public Speaking Invitational Championship 2025 is available on YouTube.

The ground-shaking that an earthquake generates is only a fraction of the total energy that a quake releases. A quake can also generate a flash of heat, along with a domino-like fracturing of underground rocks. But exactly how much energy goes into each of these three processes is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to measure in the field.

Now MIT geologists have traced the energy that is released by “lab quakes” — miniature analogs of natural earthquakes that are carefully triggered in a controlled laboratory setting. For the first time, they have quantified the complete energy budget of such quakes, in terms of the fraction of energy that goes into heat, shaking, and fracturing.

They found that only about 10 percent of a lab quake’s energy causes physical shaking. An even smaller fraction — less than 1 percent — goes into breaking up rock and creating new surfaces. The overwhelming portion of a quake’s energy — on average 80 percent — goes into heating up the immediate region around a quake’s epicenter. In fact, the researchers observed that a lab quake can produce a temperature spike hot enough to melt surrounding material and turn it briefly into liquid melt.

The geologists also found that a quake’s energy budget depends on a region’s deformation history — the degree to which rocks have been shifted and disturbed by previous tectonic motions. The fractions of quake energy that produce heat, shaking, and rock fracturing can shift depending on what the region has experienced in the past.

“The deformation history — essentially what the rock remembers — really influences how destructive an earthquake could be,” says Daniel Ortega-Arroyo, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “That history affects a lot of the material properties in the rock, and it dictates to some degree how it is going to slip.”

The team’s lab quakes are a simplified analog of what occurs during a natural earthquake. Down the road, their results could help seismologists predict the likelihood of earthquakes in regions that are prone to seismic events. For instance, if scientists have an idea of how much shaking a quake generated in the past, they might be able to estimate the degree to which the quake’s energy also affected rocks deep underground by melting or breaking them apart. This in turn could reveal how much more or less vulnerable the region is to future quakes.

“We could never reproduce the complexity of the Earth, so we have to isolate the physics of what is happening, in these lab quakes,” says Matěj Peč, associate professor of geophysics at MIT. “We hope to understand these processes and try to extrapolate them to nature.”

Peč (pronounced “Peck”) and Ortega-Arroyo reported their results on Aug. 28 in the journal AGU Advances. Their MIT co-authors are Hoagy O’Ghaffari and Camilla Cattania, along with Zheng Gong and Roger Fu at Harvard University and Markus Ohl and Oliver Plümper at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Under the surface

Earthquakes are driven by energy that is stored up in rocks over millions of years. As tectonic plates slowly grind against each other, stress accumulates through the crust. When rocks are pushed past their material strength, they can suddenly slip along a narrow zone, creating a geologic fault. As rocks slip on either side of the fault, they produce seismic waves that ripple outward and upward.

We perceive an earthquake’s energy mainly in the form of ground shaking, which can be measured using seismometers and other ground-based instruments. But the other two major forms of a quake’s energy — heat and underground fracturing — are largely inaccessible with current technologies.

“Unlike the weather, where we can see daily patterns and measure a number of pertinent variables, it’s very hard to do that very deep in the Earth,” Ortega-Arroyo says. “We don’t know what’s happening to the rocks themselves, and the timescales over which earthquakes repeat within a fault zone are on the century-to-millenia timescales, making any sort of actionable forecast challenging.”

To get an idea of how an earthquake’s energy is partitioned, and how that energy budget might affect a region’s seismic risk, he and Peč went into the lab. Over the last seven years, Peč’s group at MIT has developed methods and instrumentation to simulate seismic events, at the microscale, in an effort to understand how earthquakes at the macroscale may play out.

“We are focusing on what’s happening on a really small scale, where we can control many aspects of failure and try to understand it before we can do any scaling to nature,” Ortega-Arroyo says.

Microshakes

For their new study, the team generated miniature lab quakes that simulate a seismic slipping of rocks along a fault zone. They worked with small samples of granite, which are representative of rocks in the seismogenic layer — the geologic region in the continental crust where earthquakes typically originate. They ground up the granite into a fine powder and mixed the crushed granite with a much finer powder of magnetic particles, which they used as a sort of internal temperature gauge. (A particle’s magnetic field strength will change in response to a fluctuation in temperature.)

The researchers placed samples of the powdered granite — each about 10 square millimeters and 1 millimeter thin — between two small pistons and wrapped the ensemble in a gold jacket. They then applied a strong magnetic field to orient the powder’s magnetic particles in the same initial direction and to the same field strength. They reasoned that any change in the particles’ orientation and field strength afterward should be a sign of how much heat that region experienced as a result of any seismic event.

Once samples were prepared, the team placed them one at a time into a custom-built apparatus that the researchers tuned to apply steadily increasing pressure, similar to the pressures that rocks experience in the Earth’s seismogenic layer, about 10 to 20 kilometers below the surface. They used custom-made piezoelectric sensors, developed by co-author O’Ghaffari, which they attached to either end of a sample to measure any shaking that occurred as they increased the stress on the sample.

They observed that at certain stresses, some samples slipped, producing a microscale seismic event similar to an earthquake. By analyzing the magnetic particles in the samples after the fact, they obtained an estimate of how much each sample was temporarily heated — a method developed in collaboration with Roger Fu’s lab at Harvard University. They also estimated the amount of shaking each sample experienced, using measurements from the piezoelectric sensor and numerical models. The researchers also examined each sample under the microscope, at different magnifications, to assess how the size of the granite grains changed — whether and how many grains broke into smaller pieces, for instance.

From all these measurements, the team was able to estimate each lab quake’s energy budget. On average, they found that about 80 percent of a quake’s energy goes into heat, while 10 percent generates shaking, and less than 1 percent goes into rock fracturing, or creating new, smaller particle surfaces. 

“In some instances we saw that, close to the fault, the sample went from room temperature to 1,200 degrees Celsius in a matter of microseconds, and then immediately cooled down once the motion stopped,” Ortega-Arroyo says. “And in one sample, we saw the fault move by about 100 microns, which implies slip velocities essentially about 10 meters per second. It moves very fast, though it doesn’t last very long.”

The researchers suspect that similar processes play out in actual, kilometer-scale quakes.

“Our experiments offer an integrated approach that provides one of the most complete views of the physics of earthquake-like ruptures in rocks to date,” Peč says. “This will provide clues on how to improve our current earthquake models and natural hazard mitigation.”

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

By Prof Sing Tien Foo, Provost's Chair Professor from the Dept of Real Estate at NUS Business School

• Lianhe Zaobao, 12 September 2025, Opinion, p18

• Lianhe Zaobao, 12 September 2025, Business, p21

• Lianhe Zaobao, 12 September 2025, Singapore, p8

Traditionally, developing new materials for cutting-edge applications — such as SpaceX’s Raptor engine — has taken a decade or more. But thanks to a breakthrough technology pioneered by an MIT research group now celebrating its 40th year, a key material for the Raptor was delivered in just a few years. The same innovation has accelerated the development of high-performance materials for the Apple Watch, U.S. Air Force jets, and Formula One race cars.

The MIT Steel Research Group (SRG) also led to a national initiative that “has already sparked a paradigm shift in how new materials are discovered, developed, and deployed,” according to a White House story describing the Materials Genome Initiative’s first five years.

Gregory B. Olson founded the SRG in 1985 with the goal of using computers to accelerate the hunt for new materials by plumbing databases of those materials’ fundamental properties. It was the beginning of a new field: computational materials design.

At the time, “nobody knew whether we could really do this,” remembers Olson, a professor of the practice in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “I have some documented evidence of agencies resisting the entire concept because, in their opinion, a material could never be designed.”

Eventually, however, Olson and colleagues showed that the approach worked. One of the most important results: In 2011 President Barack Obama made a speech “essentially announcing that this technology is real and it’s what everybody should be doing,” says Olson, who is also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory. In the speech, Obama launched the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI).

The MGI is developing “a fundamental database of the parameters that direct the assembly of the structures of materials,” much like the Human Genome Project “is a database that directs the assembly of the structures of life,” says Olson.

The goal is to use the MGI database to discover, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, and at a fraction of the cost, compared to traditional methods, according to the MGI website.

At MIT, the SRG continues to focus on steel, “because it’s the material [the world has] studied the longest, so we have the deepest fundamental understanding of its properties,” says Olson, project principal investigator.

The Cybersteels Project, funded by the Office of Naval Research, brings together eight MIT faculty who are working to expand our knowledge of steel, eventually adding their data to the MGI. Major areas of study include the boundaries between the microscopic grains that make up a steel and the economic modeling of new steels.

Concludes Olson, “it has been tremendously satisfying to see how this technology has really blossomed in the hands of leading corporations and led to a national initiative to take it even further.”

For pregnant women, ultrasounds are an informative (and sometimes necessary) procedure. They typically produce two-dimensional black-and-white scans of fetuses that can reveal key insights, including biological sex, approximate size, and abnormalities like heart issues or cleft lip. If your doctor wants a closer look, they may use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses magnetic fields to capture images that can be combined to create a 3D view of the fetus.

MRIs aren’t a catch-all, though; the 3D scans are difficult for doctors to interpret well enough to diagnose problems because our visual system is not accustomed to processing 3D volumetric scans (in other words, a wrap-around look that also shows us the inner structures of a subject). Enter machine learning, which could help model a fetus’s development more clearly and accurately from data — although no such algorithm has been able to model their somewhat random movements and various body shapes.

That is, until a new approach called “Fetal SMPL” from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), and Harvard Medical School presented clinicians with a more detailed picture of fetal health. It was adapted from “SMPL” (Skinned Multi-Person Linear model), a 3D model developed in computer graphics to capture adult body shapes and poses, as a way to represent fetal body shapes and poses accurately. Fetal SMPL was then trained on 20,000 MRI volumes to predict the location and size of a fetus and create sculpture-like 3D representations. Inside each model is a skeleton with 23 articulated joints called a “kinematic tree,” which the system uses to pose and move like the fetuses it saw during training.

The extensive, real-world scans that Fetal SMPL learned from helped it develop pinpoint accuracy. Imagine stepping into a stranger’s footprint while blindfolded, and not only does it fit perfectly, but you correctly guess what shoe they wore — similarly, the tool closely matched the position and size of fetuses in MRI frames it hadn’t seen before. Fetal SMPL was only misaligned by an average of about 3.1 millimeters, a gap smaller than a single grain of rice.

The approach could enable doctors to precisely measure things like the size of a baby’s head or abdomen and compare these metrics with healthy fetuses at the same age. Fetal SMPL has demonstrated its clinical potential in early tests, where it achieved accurate alignment results on a small group of real-world scans.

“It can be challenging to estimate the shape and pose of a fetus because they’re crammed into the tight confines of the uterus,” says lead author, MIT PhD student, and CSAIL researcher Yingcheng Liu SM ’21. “Our approach overcomes this challenge using a system of interconnected bones under the surface of the 3D model, which represent the fetal body and its motions realistically. Then, it relies on a coordinate descent algorithm to make a prediction, essentially alternating between guessing pose and shape from tricky data until it finds a reliable estimate.”

In utero

Fetal SMPL was tested on shape and pose accuracy against the closest baseline the researchers could find: a system that models infant growth called “SMIL.” Since babies out of the womb are larger than fetuses, the team shrank those models by 75 percent to level the playing field.

The system outperformed this baseline on a dataset of fetal MRIs between the gestational ages of 24 and 37 weeks taken at Boston Children’s Hospital. Fetal SMPL was able to recreate real scans more precisely, as its models closely lined up with real MRIs.

The method was efficient at lining up their models to images, only needing three iterations to arrive at a reasonable alignment. In an experiment that counted how many incorrect guesses Fetal SMPL had made before arriving at a final estimate, its accuracy plateaued from the fourth step onward.

The researchers have just begun testing their system in the real world, where it produced similarly accurate models in initial clinical tests. While these results are promising, the team notes that they’ll need to apply their results to larger populations, different gestational ages, and a variety of disease cases to better understand the system’s capabilities.

Only skin deep

Liu also notes that their system only helps analyze what doctors can see on the surface of a fetus, since only bone-like structures lie beneath the skin of the models. To better monitor babies’ internal health, such as liver, lung, and muscle development, the team intends to make their tool volumetric, modeling the fetus’s inner anatomy from scans. Such upgrades would make the models more human-like, but the current version of Fetal SMPL already presents a precise (and unique) upgrade to 3D fetal health analysis.

“This study introduces a method specifically designed for fetal MRI that effectively captures fetal movements, enhancing the assessment of fetal development and health,” says Kiho Im, Harvard Medical School associate professor of pediatrics and staff scientist in the Division of Newborn Medicine at BCH’s Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center. Im, who was not involved with the paper, adds that this approach “will not only improve the diagnostic utility of fetal MRI, but also provide insights into the early functional development of the fetal brain in relation to body movements.”

“This work reaches a pioneering milestone by extending parametric surface human body models for the earliest shapes of human life: fetuses,” says Sergi Pujades, an associate professor at University Grenoble Alpes, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It allows us to detangle the shape and motion of a human, which has already proven to be key in understanding how adult body shape relates to metabolic conditions and how infant motion relates to neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition, the fact that the fetal model stems from, and is compatible with, the adult (SMPL) and infant (SMIL) body models, will allow us to study human shape and pose evolution over long periods of time. This is an unprecedented opportunity to further quantify how human shape growth and motion are affected by different conditions.”

Liu wrote the paper with three CSAIL members: Peiqi Wang SM ’22, PhD ’25; MIT PhD student Sebastian Diaz; and senior author Polina Golland, the Sunlin and Priscilla Chou Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a principal investigator in MIT CSAIL, and the leader of the Medical Vision Group. BCH assistant professor of pediatrics Esra Abaci Turk, Inria researcher Benjamin Billot, and Harvard Medical School professor of pediatrics and professor of radiology Patricia Ellen Grant are also authors on the paper. This work was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health and the MIT CSAIL-Wistron Program.

The researchers will present their work at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) in September.

For pregnant women, ultrasounds are an informative (and sometimes necessary) procedure. They typically produce two-dimensional black-and-white scans of fetuses that can reveal key insights, including biological sex, approximate size, and abnormalities like heart issues or cleft lip. If your doctor wants a closer look, they may use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses magnetic fields to capture images that can be combined to create a 3D view of the fetus.

MRIs aren’t a catch-all, though; the 3D scans are difficult for doctors to interpret well enough to diagnose problems because our visual system is not accustomed to processing 3D volumetric scans (in other words, a wrap-around look that also shows us the inner structures of a subject). Enter machine learning, which could help model a fetus’s development more clearly and accurately from data — although no such algorithm has been able to model their somewhat random movements and various body shapes.

That is, until a new approach called “Fetal SMPL” from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), and Harvard Medical School presented clinicians with a more detailed picture of fetal health. It was adapted from “SMPL” (Skinned Multi-Person Linear model), a 3D model developed in computer graphics to capture adult body shapes and poses, as a way to represent fetal body shapes and poses accurately. Fetal SMPL was then trained on 20,000 MRI volumes to predict the location and size of a fetus and create sculpture-like 3D representations. Inside each model is a skeleton with 23 articulated joints called a “kinematic tree,” which the system uses to pose and move like the fetuses it saw during training.

The extensive, real-world scans that Fetal SMPL learned from helped it develop pinpoint accuracy. Imagine stepping into a stranger’s footprint while blindfolded, and not only does it fit perfectly, but you correctly guess what shoe they wore — similarly, the tool closely matched the position and size of fetuses in MRI frames it hadn’t seen before. Fetal SMPL was only misaligned by an average of about 3.1 millimeters, a gap smaller than a single grain of rice.

The approach could enable doctors to precisely measure things like the size of a baby’s head or abdomen and compare these metrics with healthy fetuses at the same age. Fetal SMPL has demonstrated its clinical potential in early tests, where it achieved accurate alignment results on a small group of real-world scans.

“It can be challenging to estimate the shape and pose of a fetus because they’re crammed into the tight confines of the uterus,” says lead author, MIT PhD student, and CSAIL researcher Yingcheng Liu SM ’21. “Our approach overcomes this challenge using a system of interconnected bones under the surface of the 3D model, which represent the fetal body and its motions realistically. Then, it relies on a coordinate descent algorithm to make a prediction, essentially alternating between guessing pose and shape from tricky data until it finds a reliable estimate.”

In utero

Fetal SMPL was tested on shape and pose accuracy against the closest baseline the researchers could find: a system that models infant growth called “SMIL.” Since babies out of the womb are larger than fetuses, the team shrank those models by 75 percent to level the playing field.

The system outperformed this baseline on a dataset of fetal MRIs between the gestational ages of 24 and 37 weeks taken at Boston Children’s Hospital. Fetal SMPL was able to recreate real scans more precisely, as its models closely lined up with real MRIs.

The method was efficient at lining up their models to images, only needing three iterations to arrive at a reasonable alignment. In an experiment that counted how many incorrect guesses Fetal SMPL had made before arriving at a final estimate, its accuracy plateaued from the fourth step onward.

The researchers have just begun testing their system in the real world, where it produced similarly accurate models in initial clinical tests. While these results are promising, the team notes that they’ll need to apply their results to larger populations, different gestational ages, and a variety of disease cases to better understand the system’s capabilities.

Only skin deep

Liu also notes that their system only helps analyze what doctors can see on the surface of a fetus, since only bone-like structures lie beneath the skin of the models. To better monitor babies’ internal health, such as liver, lung, and muscle development, the team intends to make their tool volumetric, modeling the fetus’s inner anatomy from scans. Such upgrades would make the models more human-like, but the current version of Fetal SMPL already presents a precise (and unique) upgrade to 3D fetal health analysis.

“This study introduces a method specifically designed for fetal MRI that effectively captures fetal movements, enhancing the assessment of fetal development and health,” says Kiho Im, Harvard Medical School associate professor of pediatrics and staff scientist in the Division of Newborn Medicine at BCH’s Fetal-Neonatal Neuroimaging and Developmental Science Center. Im, who was not involved with the paper, adds that this approach “will not only improve the diagnostic utility of fetal MRI, but also provide insights into the early functional development of the fetal brain in relation to body movements.”

“This work reaches a pioneering milestone by extending parametric surface human body models for the earliest shapes of human life: fetuses,” says Sergi Pujades, an associate professor at University Grenoble Alpes, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It allows us to detangle the shape and motion of a human, which has already proven to be key in understanding how adult body shape relates to metabolic conditions and how infant motion relates to neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition, the fact that the fetal model stems from, and is compatible with, the adult (SMPL) and infant (SMIL) body models, will allow us to study human shape and pose evolution over long periods of time. This is an unprecedented opportunity to further quantify how human shape growth and motion are affected by different conditions.”

Liu wrote the paper with three CSAIL members: Peiqi Wang SM ’22, PhD ’25; MIT PhD student Sebastian Diaz; and senior author Polina Golland, the Sunlin and Priscilla Chou Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a principal investigator in MIT CSAIL, and the leader of the Medical Vision Group. BCH assistant professor of pediatrics Esra Abaci Turk, Inria researcher Benjamin Billot, and Harvard Medical School professor of pediatrics and professor of radiology Patricia Ellen Grant are also authors on the paper. This work was supported, in part, by the National Institutes of Health and the MIT CSAIL-Wistron Program.

The researchers will present their work at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) in September.

This spring, J-PAL North America — a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) — launched its first ever Learning Lab, centered on climate action. The Learning Lab convened a cohort of government leaders who are enacting a broad range of policies and programs to support the transition to a low-carbon economy. Through the Learning Lab, participants explored how to embed randomized evaluation into promising solutions to determine how to maximize changes in behavior — a strategy that can help advance decarbonization in the most cost-effective ways to benefit all communities. The inaugural cohort included more than 25 participants from state agencies and cities, including the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, and the cities of Lincoln, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Orlando, Florida; and Philadelphia.

“State and local governments have demonstrated tremendous leadership in designing and implementing decarbonization policies and climate action plans over the past few years,” said Peter Christensen, scientific advisor of the J-PAL North America Environment, Energy, and Climate Change Sector. “And while these are informed by scientific projections on which programs and technologies may effectively and equitably reduce emissions, the projection methods involve a lot of assumptions. It can be challenging for governments to determine whether their programs are actually achieving the expected level of emissions reductions that we desperately need. The Climate Action Learning Lab was designed to support state and local governments in addressing this need — helping them to rigorously evaluate their programs to detect their true impact.”

From May to July, the Learning Lab offered a suite of resources for participants to leverage rigorous evaluation to identify effective and equitable climate mitigation solutions. Offerings included training lectures, one-on-one strategy sessions, peer learning engagements, and researcher collaboration. State and local leaders built skills and knowledge in evidence generation and use, reviewed and applied research insights to their own programmatic areas, and identified priority research questions to guide evidence-building and decision-making practices. Programs prioritized for evaluation covered topics such as compliance with building energy benchmarking policies, take-up rates of energy-efficient home improvement programs such as heat pumps and Solar for All, and scoring criteria for affordable housing development programs.

“We appreciated the chance to learn about randomized evaluation methodology, and how this impact assessment tool could be utilized in our ongoing climate action planning. With so many potential initiatives to pursue, this approach will help us prioritize our time and resources on the most effective solutions,” said Anna Shugoll, program manager at the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability.

This phase of the Learning Lab was possible thanks to grant funding from J-PAL North America’s longtime supporter and collaborator Arnold Ventures. The work culminated in an in-person summit in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on July 23, where Learning Lab participants delivered a presentation on their jurisdiction’s priority research questions and strategic evaluation plans. They also connected with researchers in the J-PAL network to further explore impact evaluation opportunities for promising decarbonization programs.

“The Climate Action Learning Lab has helped us identify research questions for some of the City of Orlando’s deep decarbonization goals. J-PAL staff, along with researchers in the J-PAL network, worked hard to bridge the gap between behavior change theory and the applied, tangible benefits that we achieve through rigorous evaluation of our programs,” said Brittany Sellers, assistant director for sustainability, resilience and future-ready for Orlando. “Whether we’re discussing an energy-efficiency policy for some of the biggest buildings in the City of Orlando or expanding [electric vehicle] adoption across the city, it’s been very easy to communicate some of these high-level research concepts and what they can help us do to actually pursue our decarbonization goals.”

The next phase of the Climate Action Learning Lab will center on building partnerships between jurisdictions and researchers in the J-PAL network to explore the launch of randomized evaluations, deepening the community of practice among current cohort members, and cultivating a broad culture of evidence building and use in the climate space.

“The Climate Action Learning Lab provided a critical space for our city to collaborate with other cities and states seeking to implement similar decarbonization programs, as well as with researchers in the J-PAL network to help rigorously evaluate these programs,” said Daniel Collins, innovation team director at the City of Newport News. “We look forward to further collaboration and opportunities to learn from evaluations of our mitigation efforts so we, as a city, can better allocate resources to the most effective solutions.”

The Climate Action Learning Lab is one of several offerings under the J-PAL North America Evidence for Climate Action Project. The project’s goal is to convene an influential network of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to generate rigorous evidence to identify and advance equitable, high-impact policy solutions to climate change in the United States. In addition to the Learning Lab, J-PAL North America will launch a climate special topic request for proposals this fall to fund research on climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives. J-PAL will welcome applications from both research partnerships formed through the Learning Lab as well as other eligible applicants.

Local government leaders, researchers, potential partners, or funders committed to advancing climate solutions that work, and who want to learn more about the Evidence for Climate Action Project, may email na_eecc@povertyactionlab.org or subscribe to the J-PAL North America Climate Action newsletter.

NUS Chief Information Technology Officer, Ms Tan Shui-Min, has been named Transformational CIO of the Year at the SPARK Asia Digital Leaders Award 2025, which honours Chief Information Officers across Asia who have delivered game-changing outcomes through digital innovation.

Under Ms Tan’s visionary leadership, NUS has reimagined its digital landscape — from developing AI-Know, a university-wide platform that democratises AI access, to implementing green IT infrastructure that advances both operational efficiency and sustainability. AI-Know has introduced tools such as AI-Minute for automated meeting summaries and AI-Create for building no-code digital agents, saving the University more than 265,000 man-hours in 2024 and set to generate millions in cost savings and cost avoidance.

She has also championed sustainability through the Green Data Centre Network Upgrade Project, which reduced power consumption by 45 per cent and rack space by 49 per cent, resulting in significant energy and cost savings while advancing NUS’ Green Plan 2030 commitments.

Collaboration is a hallmark of Ms Tan’s leadership. She has pioneered a co-creation model with more than 120 departments, working closely with colleagues to identify pain points and design fit-for-purpose AI solutions. Examples include the laboratory inspection tool with the Office of Risk Management and Compliance, and chatbots with the Offices of Finance and Human Resources. These partnerships ensure business relevance, foster shared ownership, and accelerate adoption. She also spearheaded My Virtual Lab, NUS’ first 3D immersive virtual laboratory, which redefines STEM education by enabling interactive, risk-free training and collaborative simulations.

Looking ahead, NUS is scaling up research capabilities through expanded high-performance computing facilities, currently ranked among the world’s top 110 supercomputers. At the same time, initiatives such as NUSHub and the NextGeneSIS programme are enhancing student engagement and optimising the learner experience across both degree and lifelong learning pathways.

These initiatives are guided by the IT Strategic Plan blueprint envisioned and driven by Ms Tan in 2023. Anchored by four strategic goals — Digitally Empowered Business, Cyber Fortress, Flexible Infrastructure, and Future-Ready IT Workforce — the roadmap ensures technology initiatives are closely aligned with NUS’ mission and vision, supporting both operational excellence and future growth.

Reflecting on the award, Ms Tan said: “I am deeply honoured by this recognition, which is a testament to the collective spirit of NUS. It reflects our shared commitment to building a ‘Borderless University, Powered by Infinite Technology,’ where innovation is open and accessible to all. My guiding principle has always been to empower others – fostering an environment where staff and students feel encouraged to experiment, learn, and thrive.

Looking ahead, I remain committed to advancing our digital transformation, ensuring that technology not only keeps pace with the evolving needs of our university but truly enriches the everyday experiences of our community.”

The University’s flagship sustainability festival, NUS Sustainability CONNECT, returns for its third edition this September – featuring close to 40 events throughout the month!

While the festival has typically showcased sustainability research and best practices, there is a growing momentum across the wider NUS community to incorporate green initiatives into day-to-day work. More NUS units outside the traditional sustainability sphere are recognising the value and relevance of sustainability and are eager to share their efforts.

For instance, this year’s CONNECT welcomes partners such as NUS Libraries, NUS College (NUSC) and University Health Centre (UHC), all of which are organising events to engage and inspire the broader NUS community on sustainability efforts.

Walking the talk in sustainability: NUS Libraries’ guided tours and solar panel exhibition 

Did you know that BookBridge on Level 2 of NUS Central Library was among the first structures in Singapore to use tropical mass engineered timber, a renewable and sustainable building material?

Choosing eco-friendly construction materials is just one of the many ways NUS Libraries is making sustainability a daily reality. To showcase its efforts, NUS Libraries will be conducting a guided tour of the Central Library on 17 September 2025 to share how it is walking the talk in sustainability, including reducing its carbon footprint in daily operations.

In recent years, NUS Libraries has been steadily developing its four sustainability pillars – green libraries; green resources; green programming; and green digital and innovation – in support of the Singapore Green Plan 2030 and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Beyond this, NUS Libraries will also be hosting a guided tour to a garden that was set up on campus in the early 1980s. Happening on 24 September 2025, this historical garden under the care of the Department of Biological Sciences, houses legacy plants, such as the cycads, which have been around in the garden since its founding years. Rarely open to the public, the garden offers a glimpse into the space that supports the department’s outreach and teaching activities.

In addition, NUS Central Library is running an exhibition – Solar Energising Heritage: Coloured Solar Panel Development for Historical Shophouses – from now till 6 October 2025. This collaborative project with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS), NUS Museum and NUS Baba House features custom-designed coloured Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) panels developed for NUS Baba House, using SERIS’ unique dotlism pattern technology.

Going forward, NUS Libraries is committed to paving the way in advancing sustainability in teaching, learning and research.

Inspiring change: Student-led sustainability initiatives at NUS College’s Impact Festival

Committed to delivering interdisciplinary education, NUSC will present the Impact Festival on 17 September 2025 – a vibrant showcase of student projects from the Impact Experience programme. This is a capstone course where students collaborate with communities in Singapore and across Southeast Asia to drive meaningful social change.

Given that sustainability is inherently interdisciplinary, it is no surprise that a number of these projects focused on sustainability-related themes such as transforming food waste management, promoting sustainable tourism, protecting animal welfare, restoring coral reefs and cultivating sustainable agriculture.

One notable example is a project led by Team Bayanihan (which means unity in Tagalog) comprising seven NUSC students. For decades, bamboo has been viewed as the poor man’s timber in the Philippines. To change this mindset, the team developed a unique bamboo-based curriculum to help Filipino youth appreciate this sustainable resource that is readily available in their own backyard. 

In partnership with Grow School Philippines, Team Bayanihan conducted three workshops in Nasugbu, Batangas, teaching hundreds of young people the art of bamboo weaving and the science of structural design. The goal was to showcase bamboo’s versatility, both as a material for crafts and a medium for constructing larger structures, to the next generation of Filipinos. Through this, Team Bayanihan hopes to inspire youth across the Philippines to embrace the beauty and utility of bamboo in building a more sustainable future.  

Championing sustainability through healthy eating: UHC’s sustainable granola workshop

Eating healthily and supporting the planet can go hand in hand, and UHC is keen to demonstrate how.

It is conducting a sustainable granola workshop on 19 September 2025 to share with participants how spent grains can be upcycled into nutritious granola. Guided by experts in the sustainable food innovation sector, participants will not only create and sample their own sustainable granola, but also take home a recipe kit on how to make these wholesome grains.

The complimentary workshop for NUS staff, which was fully booked within a day, is part of the Centre’s Feel Good Friday series, which explores practical ways for the NUS community to adopt greener habits while maintaining a balanced diet and nutrition.

Encouraged by the strong response, UHC plans to offer more workshops to promote sustainable habits and healthy eating across the NUS community.

To learn more about NUS Sustainability CONNECT or register your interest for the above events, please click here.

By NUS Sustainability and Resilience Unit

By Dr Clemens Chay, Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute at NUS

• CNA Online, 10 September 2025

• Lianhe Zaobao Online, 10 September 2025

Each year, the U.S. energy industry loses an estimated 3 percent of its natural gas production, valued at $1 billion in revenue, to leaky infrastructure. Escaping invisibly into the air, these methane gas plumes can now be detected, imaged, and measured using a specialized lidar flown on small aircraft.

This lidar is a product of Bridger Photonics, a leading methane-sensing company based in Bozeman, Montana. MIT Lincoln Laboratory developed the lidar's optical-power amplifier, a key component of the system, by advancing its existing slab-coupled optical waveguide amplifier (SCOWA) technology. The methane-detecting lidar is 10 to 50 times more capable than other airborne remote sensors on the market.

"This drone-capable sensor for imaging methane is a great example of Lincoln Laboratory technology at work, matched with an impactful commercial application," says Paul Juodawlkis, who pioneered the SCOWA technology with Jason Plant in the Advanced Technology Division and collaborated with Bridger Photonics to enable its commercial application.

Today, the product is being adopted widely, including by nine of the top 10 natural gas producers in the United States. "Keeping gas in the pipe is good for everyone — it helps companies bring the gas to market, improves safety, and protects the outdoors," says Pete Roos, founder and chief innovation officer at Bridger. "The challenge with methane is that you can't see it. We solved a fundamental problem with Lincoln Laboratory."

A laser source "miracle"

In 2014, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) was seeking a cost-effective and precise way to detect methane leaks. Highly flammable and a potent pollutant, methane gas (the primary constituent of natural gas) moves through the country via a vast and intricate pipeline network. Bridger submitted a research proposal in response to ARPA-E's call and was awarded funding to develop a small, sensitive aerial lidar.

Aerial lidar sends laser light down to the ground and measures the light that reflects back to the sensor. Such lidar is often used for producing detailed topography maps. Bridger's idea was to merge topography mapping with gas measurements. Methane absorbs light at the infrared wavelength of 1.65 microns. Operating a laser at that wavelength could allow a lidar to sense the invisible plumes and measure leak rates.

"This laser source was one of the hardest parts to get right. It's a key element," Roos says. His team needed a laser source with specific characteristics to emit powerfully enough at a wavelength of 1.65 microns to work from useful altitudes. Roos recalled the ARPA-E program manager saying they needed a "miracle" to pull it off.

Through mutual connections, Bridger was introduced to a Lincoln Laboratory technology for optically amplifying laser signals: the SCOWA. When Bridger contacted Juodawlkis and Plant, they had been working on SCOWAs for a decade. Although they had never investigated SCOWAs at 1.65 microns, they thought that the fundamental technology could be extended to operate at that wavelength. Lincoln Laboratory received ARPA-E funding to develop 1.65-micron SCOWAs and provide prototype units to Bridger for incorporation into their gas-mapping lidar systems.

"That was the miracle we needed," Roos says.

A legacy in laser innovation

Lincoln Laboratory has long been a leader in semiconductor laser and optical emitter technology. In 1962, the laboratory was among the first to demonstrate the diode laser, which is now the most widespread laser used globally. Several spinout companies, such as Lasertron and TeraDiode, have commercialized innovations stemming from the laboratory's laser research, including those for fiber-optic telecommunications and metal-cutting applications.

In the early 2000s, Juodawlkis, Plant, and others at the laboratory recognized a need for a stable, powerful, and bright single-mode semiconductor optical amplifier, which could enhance lidar and optical communications. They developed the SCOWA (slab-coupled optical waveguide amplifier) concept by extending earlier work on slab-coupled optical waveguide lasers (SCOWLs). The initial SCOWA was funded under the laboratory's internal technology investment portfolio, a pool of R&D funding provided by the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering to seed new technology ideas. These ideas often mature into sponsored programs or lead to commercialized technology.

"Soon, we developed a semiconductor optical amplifier that was 10 times better than anything that had ever been demonstrated before," Plant says. Like other semiconductor optical amplifiers, the SCOWA guides laser light through semiconductor material. This process increases optical power as the laser light interacts with electrons, causing them to shed photons at the same wavelength as the input laser. The SCOWA's unique light-guiding design enables it to reach much higher output powers, creating a powerful and efficient beam. They demonstrated SCOWAs at various wavelengths and applied the technology to projects for the Department of Defense.

When Bridger Photonics reached out to Lincoln Laboratory, the most impactful application of the device yet emerged. Working iteratively through the ARPA-E funding and a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), the team increased Bridger's laser power by more than tenfold. This power boost enabled them to extend the range of the lidar to elevations over 1,000 feet.

"Lincoln Laboratory had the knowledge of what goes on inside the optical amplifier — they could take our input, adjust the recipe, and make a device that worked very well for us," Roos says.

The Gas Mapping Lidar was commercially released in 2019. That same year, the product won an R&D 100 Award, recognizing it as a revolutionary advancement in the marketplace.

A technology transfer takes off

Today, the United States is the world's largest natural gas supplier, driving growth in the methane-sensing market. Bridger Photonics deploys its Gas Mapping Lidar for customers nationwide, attaching the sensor to planes and drones and pinpointing leaks across the entire supply chain, from where gas is extracted, piped through the country, and delivered to businesses and homes. Customers buy the data from these scans to efficiently locate and repair leaks in their gas infrastructure. In January 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency provided regulatory approval for the technology.

According to Bruce Niemeyer, president of Chevron's shale and tight operations, the lidar capability has been game-changing: "Our goal is simple — keep methane in the pipe. This technology helps us assure we are doing that … It can find leaks that are 10 times smaller than other commercial providers are capable of spotting."

At Lincoln Laboratory, researchers continue to innovate new devices in the national interest. The SCOWA is one of many technologies in the toolkit of the laboratory's Microsystems Prototyping Foundry, which will soon be expanded to include a new Compound Semiconductor Laboratory – Microsystem Integration Facility. Government, industry, and academia can access these facilities through government-funded projects, CRADAs, test agreements, and other mechanisms.

At the direction of the U.S. government, the laboratory is also seeking industry transfer partners for a technology that couples SCOWA with a photonic integrated circuit platform. Such a platform could advance quantum computing and sensing, among other applications.

"Lincoln Laboratory is a national resource for semiconductor optical emitter technology," Juodawlkis says.

NUS paid tribute to seven outstanding educators, researchers and professionals for their contributions to the University, Singapore and the global community at the NUS University Awards 2025. The annual Awards recognise members of the NUS community who are trailblazers in their fields and have made sterling contributions to NUS, Singapore, and the global community.

Speaking at the awards ceremony held at the University Cultural Centre on 12 September 2025, NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye highlighted the significance of this year’s awards, noting that 2025 marks NUS’ 120th anniversary. He thanked all award winners for their contributions and commitment towards building NUS into what it is today. 

Acknowledging the central role of AI in shaping the future, Prof Tan emphasised that as a forward-looking university, NUS must not remain on the sidelines while others build capabilities, innovate and ride the AI wave. To this end, NUS is mounting a robust and comprehensive approach to AI that spans its core mission areas of education, research, innovation and enterprise, as well as administration. “We will stay ahead, empower and uplift the whole organisation to fully leverage on AI in all that we do. We are striving forward, with AI and through AI, towards our vision to be a leading global university, shaping the future,” he added.

Top accolade - Outstanding Service Award

This year, the prestigious Outstanding Service Award was conferred on Professor Cheong Koon Hean, Rector of NUS College and Chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities Advisory Panel under the Ministry of National Development; and Mr Liew Mun Leong, CEO of Gelephu Mindfulness City and Founder and Principal Consultant of Building People Consultancy Pte Ltd., in recognition of their inspiring leadership and dedicated service. Both are accomplished individuals who have made sustained contributions in selflessly serving the University and society.

Professor Cheong Koon Hean

A globally recognised urban planner and architect, Prof Cheong is instrumental in shaping Singapore’s urban form across multiple decades, from strategic land use and heritage conservation to sustainable public housing and smart‑town innovation.

As former CEO of both the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Housing & Development Board, she redefined the standards of city-making—spearheading transformative plans for Marina Bay and introducing new generations of public housing marked by inclusivity, biophilia and smart technologies.

As a member of the NUS Board of Trustees for 12 years and now the Rector of NUS College, Prof Cheong bridges academia with public policy through her extensive experience in public service. She has also served on the advisory committees of the former NUS School of Design and Engineering, and NUS Faculty of Engineering.

Currently Chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities Advisory Panel and the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Prof Cheong continues to influence national and international agendas on urban innovation and sustainability. She also advances global urban sustainability through her many advisory and leadership roles with institutes such as the International Federation for Housing and Planning, the Urban Land Institute, and the World Economic Forum’s Real Estate and Urbanisation Council.

Delivering the citation for Prof Cheong’s conferment, Professor Simon Chesterman, NUS Vice Provost (Educational Innovation) and Dean of NUS College said, “Professor Cheong is a stateswoman of city planning and a champion of public service. Her leadership exemplifies the integration of academic excellence, policy insight and civic responsibility.”

On her motivation to serve, Prof Cheong shared, “One of the greatest rewards in serving NUS is to see it grow from strength to strength. My wish is for NUS to not only achieve world-class academic excellence, but to also be the catalyst that encourages curiosity, innovation and risk-taking, nurturing young hearts and minds to think beyond grades and self, aspiring to make a better world.”

Watch this inspiring video on Prof Cheong’s dedicated contributions towards the University and society.

Mr Liew Mun Leong

The veteran corporate leader’s five-decade career is marked by many valuable contributions to both public infrastructure and private enterprise. Contributing to Singapore’s journey towards becoming a key transportation hub, Mr Liew played a pivotal role in the corporatisation of Changi Airport. He also provided strategic leadership across major infrastructure projects, including Terminal 4, Jewel Changi Airport and Changi East.

In the private sector over a span of 32 years, he led as CEO and was an active board member of several significant companies, many of which were publicly listed. These include CapitaLand, Capital Mall Trust (the first REIT in Singapore) and the Singapore Exchange. He also chaired the boards of Capital Mall Asia, Changi Airport Group, Surbana Jurong Consultancy Holding and Pavilion Gas.

Throughout his extensive career, Mr Liew has shared his expertise in engineering, strategic management and infrastructure development on various boards and panels. In 2024, he was appointed by Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck as CEO of Gelephu Mindfulness City, a special administrative region envisioned as a vibrant economic hub within Bhutan.

An NUS alumnus, Mr Liew was Provost’s Chair Professor (Practice) at the NUS Business School, Faculty of Engineering, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He also provided expertise on various boards within NUS, including NUS Business School's management advisory board and NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education’s inaugural industry advisory board, where he fostered collaborations between academia and industry. Mr Liew was also the Rector of Ridge View Residential College, where he provided mentorship to students.

Delivering the citation for Mr Liew’s conferment, Professor Teo Kie Leong, Dean of the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, lauded his visionary leadership and dedicated services to Singapore, as well as NUS, “Mr Liew’s impact is felt both nationally and internationally, spanning the fields of engineering, infrastructure development, business and public service.”

Sharing his aspirations for the University, Mr Liew said, “Having served as Practice Chair Professor (pro-bono) across Business, Public Policy, and Engineering in NUS, I encourage the university to deepen its engagement and foster stronger collaboration between academia and industry. A university’s ultimate measure lies not only in education but in the practical application of knowledge—preparing graduates to innovate, lead and deliver impactful solutions to real-world challenges.

Watch this inspiring video on Mr Liew’s dedicated contributions towards the University and society.

The honour roll

The NUS University Awards 2025 also recognised the accomplishments of five outstanding educators and researchers.

University Research Recognition Award

Professor Liu Xiaogang, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, and the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, was recognised for his groundbreaking research that has placed NUS at the forefront of his area of expertise.  

A global leader in nanophotonics and bioimaging, Prof Liu has made transformative contributions to the development of advanced X-ray imaging and optical sensing technologies. His work on all-inorganic perovskite nanoscintillators and high-resolution X-ray luminescence extension imaging has redefined deep-tissue visualisation. This remarkable research has enabled breakthroughs in diagnostics, radiotherapy monitoring and multi-spectral imaging.

Young Researcher Award

Assistant Professor Hou Yi from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Design and Engineering; and Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore was commended for conducting groundbreaking research with the potential to extend the frontiers of knowledge in his field.

A Presidential Young Professor, Asst Prof Hou has made sterling contributions to the field of renewable energy, particularly in perovskite solar cell technology. He has received global acknowledgement for his work, including his inclusion in the MIT Innovators Under 35 list for the Asia-Pacific region. His recognition as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in the Cross-Field category from 2022 to 2024 further highlights his exceptional impact on his field.

Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award

Professor Yan Ning from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Design and Engineering, was honoured for his excellent and committed mentorship in nurturing the next generation of scholars and thought leaders.

Prof Yan is one of the world’s foremost names in the broad area of catalysis, particularly in the conversion of waste biomass feedstocks into valuable molecules such as amino acids and fuels. Under his guidance, his students have made many impactful research contributions, won prestigious awards at various international scientific competitions, and flourished in diverse and illustrious careers as academics, industry practitioners, and even entrepreneurs.

Outstanding Educator Award

Two faculty members were acknowledged for being exemplary educators who have excelled in engaging and inspiring students in their quest for knowledge:

1) Associate Professor Damith Chatura Rajapakse from the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing

Assoc Prof Rajapakse is a teacher who inspires, a mentor who empowers, and an innovator whose influence is felt far beyond the campus. His teaching evaluations consistently soar above School and Department averages, and his students regularly nominate him for best teaching in every course he conducts. A trailblazer in educational technology, Assoc Prof Rajapakse also has a flagship innovation known as TEAMMATES, a peer-evaluation platform now used by over a million users across more than 1,500 institutions worldwide, which has significantly enhanced collaborative learning.

2) Associate Professor Peter Alan Todd from the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science; and Tropical Marine Science Institute

An experimental marine ecologist who focuses on organism-environment interactions in nearshore waters, Assoc Prof Todd’s teaching philosophy is “learning by doing science”. He employs problem-based learning to inspire creative thinking and designs authentic assignments that challenge students to use high-level cognitive skills. His courses are designed to encourage knowledge synthesis where students get to produce “ready-for-submission” scientific papers. Over 50 journal papers by undergraduate students as first authors have been published with his guidance.

Read more about the NUS University Awards recipients here and the NUS press release here.

A new MIT initiative known as Day of Design offers free, open-source, hands-on design activities for all classrooms, in addition to professional development opportunities and signature events. The material engages pK-12 learners in the skills they need to solve complex open-ended problems while also considering user, social, and environmental needs. Inspired by Day of AI and Day of Climate, it is a new collaborative effort by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) and the WPS Institute, with support from the MIT Museum and the MIT pK-12 Initiative.

“At MIT, design is practiced across departments — from the more obvious ones, like architecture and mechanical engineering, to less apparent ones, like biology and chemistry. Design skills support students in becoming strong collaborators, idea-makers, and human-centered problem-solvers. The Day of Design initiative seeks to share these skills with the K-12 audience through bite-sized, engaging activities for every classroom,” says Rosa Weinberg, who co-led the development of Day of Design and serves as MAD’s K–12 design education lead.

These interdisciplinary resources are designed collaboratively with feedback from teachers and grounded in exciting themes across science, humanities, art, engineering, and other subject areas, serving educators and learners regardless of their experience with design and making. Activities are scaffolded like “grammar lessons” for design education, including classroom-ready slides, handouts, tutorial videos, and facilitation tips supporting 21st century mindsets. All materials will be shared online, enabling educators to use the content as-is, or modify it as needed for their classrooms and other informal learning settings.

Rachel Adams, a former teacher and head of teaching and learning at the WPS Institute, explains, “There can be a gap between open-ended teaching materials and what teachers actually need in their classrooms. Day of Design classroom materials are piloted and workshopped by an interdisciplinary cohort of teachers who make up our Teacher Innovation Fellowship. This collaborative design process allows us to bridge the gap between cutting-edge MIT research with practical student-centered design lessons. These materials represent a new way of thinking that honors both the innovation happening in the labs at MIT and the real-world needs of educators.” 

Day of Design also features signature events and a yearly, real-world challenge that brings all the design skills together. It is intended for educators who want ready-to-use design and making activities that connect to their subject areas and mindsets, and for students eager to develop problem-solving skills, creativity, and hands-on experience. Schools and districts looking to engage learners through interdisciplinary, project-based approaches can adopt the program as a flexible framework, while community partners can use it to provide young people with tools and spaces to create.

Cedric Jacobson, a chemistry teacher at Brooke High School in Boston who participated in MAD’s Teacher Innovation Fellowship and contributed to testing the Day of Design curriculum, emphasizes it “provides opportunities for teachers to practice and interact with design principles in concrete ways through multiple lesson structures. This process empowers them to try design principles in model lessons before preparing to use them in their own curriculum.”

Evan Milstein-Greengart, another Teacher Innovation Fellow, describes how “having this hands-on experience changed the way I thought about education. I felt like a kid again — going back to playground learning — and I want to bring that same spirit into my classroom.” 

Closing the skills gap through design education

Technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotech are reshaping work and society. The World Economic Forum estimates that 39 percent of key job skills will change by 2030. At the same time, research shows student engagement drops sharply in high school, with a third of students experiencing what is often called the “engagement cliff.” Many do not encounter design until college, if at all.

There is a growing need to foster not just technical literacy, but design fluency — the ability to approach complex problems with empathy, creativity, and critical thinking. Design education helps students prototype solutions, iterate based on feedback, and communicate ideas clearly. Studies have shown it can improve creative thinking, motivation, problem-solving, self-efficacy, and academic achievement.

At MIT, design is a way of thinking and creating that spans disciplines — from bioengineering and architecture to mechanical systems and public policy. It is both creative and analytical, grounded in iteration, user input, and systems thinking. Day of Design reflects MIT’s “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”) motto and extends the tools of design to young learners and educators.

“The workshops help students develop skills that can be applied across multiple subject areas, using topics that draw context from MIT research while remaining exciting and accessible to middle and high school students,” explains Weinberg. “For example, ‘Cosmic Comfort,’ one of our pilot workshops, was inspired by MIT's Space Architecture course (MAS.S66/4.154/16.89). It challenges students to consider how you might make a lunar habitat feel like home, while focusing on developing the crucial design skill of ideation — the ability to generate multiple creative solutions.”

Building on an MIT legacy

Day of Design builds on the model of Day of AI and Day of Climate, two ongoing efforts by MIT RAISE and the MIT pK-12 Initiative. All three initiatives share free, open-source activities, professional development materials, and events that connect MIT research with educators and students worldwide. Since 2021, Day of AI has reached more than 42,000 teachers and 1.5 million students in 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states. Day of Climate, launched in March 2025, has already recorded over 50,000 website visitors, 300 downloads of professional development materials, and an April launch event at the MIT Museum that drew 200 participants.

“Day of Design builds on the spirit of Day of AI and Day of Climate by inviting young people to engage with real-world challenges through creative work, meaningful collaboration, and deep empathy for others. These initiatives reflect MIT’s commitment to hands-on, transdisciplinary learning, empowering future young leaders not just to understand the world, but to shape it,” says Claudia Urrea, executive director for the pK–12 Initiative at MIT Open Learning. 

Kicking off with connection

“Learning and creating together in person sparks the kind of ideas and connections that are hard to make any other way. Collective learning helps everyone think bigger and more creatively, while building a more deeply connected community that keeps that growth alive,” observes Caitlin Morris, PhD student in Fluid Interfaces, a 2024 MAD Design Fellow, and co-organizer of Day of Design: Connect, which will kick off Day of Design on Sept. 25. 

Following the launch, the first set of classroom resources will be introduced during the 2025–26 school year, starting with activities for grades 7–12. Additional resources for younger learners, along with training opportunities for educators, will be added over time. Each year, new design skills and mindsets will be incorporated, creating a growing library of activities. While initial events will take place at MIT, organizers plan to expand programming globally.

Teacher Innovation Fellow Jessica Toupin, who piloted Day of Design activities in her math classroom, reflects on the impact: “As a math teacher, I don’t always get to focus on design. This material reminded me of the joy of learning — and when I brought it into my classroom, students who had struggled came alive. Just the ability to play and build showed me they were capable of so much more.”

The National University of Singapore (NUS) today recognised seven outstanding individuals who distinguished themselves with their achievements and contributions in the areas of education, research, mentorship and service to the University, Singapore and the global community. They are recipients of the annual NUS University Awards which recognise educators, researchers and professionals for their exceptional contributions to the University, Singapore and the global community.

This year, the prestigious Outstanding Service Award was conferred on Professor Cheong Koon Hean, Rector of NUS College and Chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities Advisory Panel, Ministry of National Development; and Mr Liew Mun Leong, CEO of Gelephu Mindfulness City and Founder and Principal Consultant of Building People Consultancy Pte Ltd., in recognition of their inspiring leadership and dedicated service. Both are accomplished individuals who have made sustained contributions in selflessly serving the University and society.

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said, “This year’s University Awards recipients have won their award in a special year. 2025 is a significant year for NUS as we celebrate our 120th anniversary. We are proud of the profound dedication of our winners to pursuing excellence in education, research and service at the highest levels, raising the standards and reputation of NUS as a leading global university, shaping the future. The impact of their work is far-reaching, and their contributions have left an indelible mark that inspires us to scale greater heights. I extend my heartiest congratulations to all award recipients.”

Besides the Outstanding Service Award, the other award categories are University Research Recognition Award, Young Researcher Award, Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award and Outstanding Educator Award.

Outstanding Service Award

Professor Cheong Koon Hean

A globally recognised urban planner and architect, Professor Cheong Koon Hean is instrumental in shaping Singapore’s urban form across multiple decades, from strategic land use and heritage conservation to sustainable public housing and smart‑town innovation.

As former CEO of both the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Housing & Development Board, she redefined the standards of city-making—spearheading transformative plans for Marina Bay and introducing new generations of public housing marked by inclusivity, biophilia and smart technologies.

As a member of the NUS Board of Trustees for 12 years and now the Rector of NUS College, Professor Cheong bridges academia with public policy through her extensive experience in public service. She has also served on the advisory committees of the former NUS School of Design and Engineering, and NUS Faculty of Engineering.

Currently Chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities Advisory Panel, Ministry of National Development and the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities, Professor Cheong continues to influence national and international agendas on urban innovation and sustainability. She also advances global urban sustainability through her many advisory and leadership roles with institutes such as the International Federation for Housing and Planning, the Urban Land Institute, and the World Economic Forum’s Real Estate and Urbanisation Council.

Mr Liew Mun Leong

Mr Liew Mun Leong’s five-decade career as a veteran corporate leader is marked by many valuable contributions to both public infrastructure and private enterprise. Contributing to Singapore’s journey towards becoming a key transportation hub, he played a pivotal role in the corporatisation of Changi Airport. He also provided strategic leadership across major infrastructure projects, including Terminal 4, Jewel Changi Airport and Changi East.

In the private sector over a span of 32 years, he led as CEO and was an active board member of several significant companies, many of which were publicly listed. These include CapitaLand, Capital Mall Trust (the first REIT in Singapore) and the Singapore Exchange. He also chaired the boards of Capital Mall Asia, Changi Airport Group, Surbana Jurong Consultancy Holding and Pavilion Gas.

Throughout his extensive career, Mr Liew has shared his expertise in engineering, strategic management and infrastructure development on various boards and panels. In 2024, he was appointed by Bhutan’s King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck as CEO of Gelephu Mindfulness City, a special administrative region envisioned as a vibrant economic hub within Bhutan.

An NUS alumnus, Mr Liew was Provost’s Chair Professor (Practice) at the NUS Business School, Faculty of Engineering, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He also provided expertise on various boards within NUS, including NUS Business School's management advisory board and NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education’s inaugural industry advisory board, where he fostered collaborations between academia and industry. Mr Liew was also the Rector of Ridge View Residential College, where he provided mentorship to students.

Five exemplary educators and researchers honoured

The NUS University Awards also celebrated the accomplishments of five outstanding academics and researchers:

University Research Recognition Award

1) Professor Liu Xiaogang, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science; and the Department of Surgery, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

A global leader in nanophotonics and bioimaging, Prof Liu has made transformative contributions to the development of advanced X-ray imaging and optical sensing technologies. His work on all-inorganic perovskite nanoscintillators and high-resolution X-ray luminescence extension imaging has redefined deep-tissue visualisation. This remarkable research has enabled breakthroughs in diagnostics, radiotherapy monitoring and multi-spectral imaging.

Young Researcher Award

2) Assistant Professor Hou Yi, Presidential Young Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Design and Engineering; and Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore

Asst Prof Hou has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of renewable energy, particularly in perovskite solar cell technology. He has received global acknowledgement for his work, including his inclusion in the MIT Innovators Under 35 list for the Asia-Pacific region. His recognition as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in the Cross-Field category from 2022 to 2024 further highlights his exceptional impact on his field.

Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award

3) Professor Yan Ning from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Design and Engineering

Prof Yan is one of the world’s foremost names in the broad area of catalysis, particularly in the conversion of waste biomass feedstocks into valuable molecules such as amino acids and fuels. Under his guidance, his students have made many impactful research contributions, won prestigious awards at various international scientific competitions, and flourished in diverse and illustrious careers as academics, industry practitioners, and even entrepreneurs.

Outstanding Educator Award

4) Associate Professor Damith Chatura Rajapakse from the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing

Assoc Prof Rajapakse is a teacher who inspires, a mentor who empowers, and an innovator whose influence is felt far beyond the campus. His teaching evaluations consistently soar above School and Department averages, and his students regularly nominate him for best teaching in every course he conducts. A trailblazer in educational technology, Assoc Prof Rajapakse also has a flagship innovation known as TEAMMATES, a peer-evaluation platform now used by over a million users across more than 1,500 institutions worldwide, which has significantly enhanced collaborative learning.

5) Associate Professor Peter Alan Todd from the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science; and Tropical Marine Science Institute

An experimental marine ecologist who focuses on organism-environment interactions in nearshore waters, Assoc Prof Todd’s teaching philosophy is “learning by doing science”. He employs problem-based learning to inspire creative thinking, and designs authentic assignments that challenge students to use high-level cognitive skills. His courses are designed to encourage knowledge synthesis where students get to produce “ready-for-submission” scientific papers. Over 50 journal papers by undergraduate students as first authors have been published with his guidance.

As part of NUS Global Relations Office’s Study Trips for Engagement and EnRichment (STEER) programme, 15 NUS students from the College of Alice & Peter Tan (CAPT) embarked on a 10-day overseas trip to multiple municipalities and districts in Timor-Leste, including Dili, Ermera and Metinaro. Led by Dr Toh Tai Chong, Director of Residential Life and Resident Fellow at CAPT, the trip centred on the themes of youth and community development. Despite being the youngest Southeast Asian country, independent since 2002, Timor-Leste offered students the chance to gain deep insights into the country’s agricultural, educational and community leadership systems through engagement with various stakeholders, communities and organisations.

Agriculture as the backbone of Timor-Leste’s economy

Coffee is one of Timor-Leste’s top export crops, deeply rooted in the country’s history due to Portuguese colonisation. Today it remains a vital part of the nation’s economy and identity, and the team had the chance to visit various coffee production sites and local cafes, experiencing firsthand the full harvesting process.

Alongside coffee production, the Timorese government is also positioning agriculture as one of the country’s key exports by tapping on the country’s land space and natural potential for agricultural production. To support this push, universities like Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa'e and University of Peace, are training youth in agriculture.

Through conversations with university students and professors, the CAPT team discovered the importance Timorese youths placed on agricultural education as a pathway to improve their country’s farming industry. Many have aspirations to work abroad, particularly in places like Australia, in order to bring back new agricultural techniques to benefit their communities.

However, it has been challenging with the country’s long dry seasons lasting up to nine months, and growing concerns about climate change, resource depletion and pollution that make environmental conservation even more critical. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like Permatil hope to address this by equipping young people with knowledge about permaculture and water restoration, empowering them to implement sustainable agricultural practices in their own communities.

Education as a means to engage and empower youths

To learn more about the youths and the local education system, the team visited different educational institutions, from pre-schools to universities. They were able to gather deeper insights on the ground about the education scene in relation to their pre-trip seminars conducted by  professionals who shared their personal and professional experiences working in Timor-Leste. One notable takeaway was how the importance of agriculture was actively communicated to young people. Many universities offer agricultural courses aimed at equipping the next generation with the skills needed to sustain and advance the industry so vital to the country’s development.

On a more personal level, the team was deeply moved by conversations with students, teachers and staff, many of whom shared that they aspired to become educators in order to give back to society. Clarence, a Year Three CAPTain from the Faculty of Science, said, “It is heartening to see the passion of these students and staff — not just in educating us, but in their eagerness to connect. Despite the challenges they face, it was truly inspiring to witness their determination and intentionality they display in creating meaning and value for themselves and their communities.”

Uniting communities through community leadership

Another key theme which surfaced during the trip was the quiet strength of community leadership. Many of the community leaders the students met shared about their desire to give back and empower fellow Timorese by providing them with jobs, training and skills to uplift their families. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and a deep commitment to their communities, these leaders have creatively leveraged existing resources to advocate for a range of causes – from sustainability and women’s rights, to coffee production and local spirits – while carefully balancing support from NGOs with their pursuit of self-reliance. When visiting one of the NGO, Alola Foundation, Year 2 CAPTain and Business student Lynette Saw (pictured in the left photo below) was inspired by the stories that were shared at the visit and how it only takes a collective vision to spark meaningful, intergenerational change for women in Timor Leste.

Given the constraints faced by the local government, the students saw how community leadership plays an important role in Timor-Leste’s development, and how local initiatives and grassroots leaders complement the government’s work by helping to drive social progress and enhance community resilience. Year Three CAPTain from the College of Design and Engineering Tan When Young, not only held deep respect for the community leaders but developed a newfound respect for the meaningful work that the NGOs do. “Many of the NGOs truly went above and beyond in the work to support the local communities. While it is definitely not easy and there are a lot of challenges, it is heartening to witness the fruits of their labour.”

The trip left the team cognisant of the challenges this young nation faces, yet deeply hopeful about its untapped potential. With the right support systems and sustained investment in the local communities, they believe that Timor-Leste has the potential to flourish – grounded in unity and driven by a shared vision and strong sense of national identity.

• Channel 5 News, 9 September 2025
• The Straits Times, 10 September 2025, The Big Story, pA2
• Lianhe Zaobao, 10 September 2025, Focus, p3
• CNA Online, 10 September 2025
• Suria News Online, 10 September 2025
• Berita Harian, 10 September 2025, p10
• Warna 94.2FM, 10 September 2025
• Tamil Murasu, 11 September 2025, p2

By Dr Azhar Ibrahim Alwee, Senior Lecturer from the Dept of Malay Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS

• Suria News Online, 9 September 2025

Researchers at the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have developed a powerful tool capable of scanning thousands of biological samples to detect transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) modifications — tiny chemical changes to RNA molecules that help control how cells grow, adapt to stress, and respond to diseases such as cancer and antibiotic‑resistant infections. This tool opens up new possibilities for science, health care, and industry — from accelerating disease research and enabling more precise diagnostics to guiding the development of more effective medical treatments for diseases such as cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections.

For this study, the SMART AMR team worked in collaboration with researchers at MIT, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Florida, the University at Albany in New York, and Lodz University of Technology in Poland.

Addressing current limitations in RNA modification profiling

Cancer and infectious diseases are complicated health conditions in which cells are forced to function abnormally by mutations in their genetic material or by instructions from an invading microorganism. The SMART-led research team is among the world’s leaders in understanding how the epitranscriptome — the over 170 different chemical modifications of all forms of RNA — controls growth of normal cells and how cells respond to stressful changes in the environment, such as loss of nutrients or exposure to toxic chemicals. The researchers are also studying how this system is corrupted in cancer or exploited by viruses, bacteria, and parasites in infectious diseases.

Current molecular methods used to study the expansive epitranscriptome and all of the thousands of different types of modified RNA are often slow, labor-intensive, costly, and involve hazardous chemicals, which limits research capacity and speed.

To solve this problem, the SMART team developed a new tool that enables fast, automated profiling of tRNA modifications — molecular changes that regulate how cells survive, adapt to stress, and respond to disease. This capability allows scientists to map cell regulatory networks, discover novel enzymes, and link molecular patterns to disease mechanisms, paving the way for better drug discovery and development, and more accurate disease diagnostics. 

Unlocking the complexity of RNA modifications

SMART’s open-access research, recently published in Nucleic Acids Research and titled “tRNA modification profiling reveals epitranscriptome regulatory networks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa,” shows that the tool has already enabled the discovery of previously unknown RNA-modifying enzymes and the mapping of complex gene regulatory networks. These networks are crucial for cellular adaptation to stress and disease, providing important insights into how RNA modifications control bacterial survival mechanisms. 

Using robotic liquid handlers, researchers extracted tRNA from more than 5,700 genetically modified strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes infections such as pneumonia, urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections, and wound infections. Samples were enzymatically digested and analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), a technique that separates molecules based on their physical properties and identifies them with high precision and sensitivity. 

As part of the study, the process generated over 200,000 data points in a high-resolution approach that revealed new tRNA-modifying enzymes and simplified gene networks controlling how cells respond and adapt to stress. For example, the data revealed that the methylthiotransferase MiaB, one of the enzymes responsible for tRNA modification ms2i6A, was found to be sensitive to the availability of iron and sulfur and to metabolic changes when oxygen is low. Discoveries like this highlight how cells respond to environmental stresses, and could lead to future development of therapies or diagnostics.

SMART’s automated system was specially designed to profile tRNA modifications across thousands of samples rapidly and safely. Unlike traditional methods, this tool integrates robotics to automate sample preparation and analysis, eliminating the need for hazardous chemical handling and reducing costs. This advancement increases safety, throughput, and affordability, enabling routine large-scale use in research and clinical labs.

A faster and automated way to study RNA

As the first system capable of quantitative, system‑wide profiling of tRNA modifications at this scale, the tool provides a unique and comprehensive view of the epitranscriptome — the complete set of RNA chemical modifications within cells. This capability allows researchers to validate hypotheses about RNA modifications, uncover novel biology, and identify promising molecular targets for developing new therapies.

“This pioneering tool marks a transformative advance in decoding the complex language of RNA modifications that regulate cellular responses,” says Professor Peter Dedon, co-lead principal investigator at SMART AMR, professor of biological engineering at MIT, and corresponding author of the paper. “Leveraging AMR’s expertise in mass spectrometry and RNA epitranscriptomics, our research uncovers new methods to detect complex gene networks critical for understanding and treating cancer, as well as antibiotic-resistant infections. By enabling rapid, large-scale analysis, the tool accelerates both fundamental scientific discovery and the development of targeted diagnostics and therapies that will address urgent global health challenges.”

Accelerating research, industry, and health-care applications

This versatile tool has broad applications across scientific research, industry, and health care. It enables large-scale studies of gene regulation, RNA biology, and cellular responses to environmental and therapeutic challenges. The pharmaceutical and biotech industry can harness it for drug discovery and biomarker screening, efficiently evaluating how potential drugs affect RNA modifications and cellular behavior. This aids the development of targeted therapies and personalized medical treatments.

“This is the first tool that can rapidly and quantitatively profile RNA modifications across thousands of samples,” says Jingjing Sun, research scientist at SMART AMR and first author of the paper. “It has not only allowed us to discover new RNA-modifying enzymes and gene networks, but also opens the door to identifying biomarkers and therapeutic targets for diseases such as cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections. For the first time, large-scale epitranscriptomic analysis is practical and accessible.”

Looking ahead: advancing clinical and pharmaceutical applications

Moving forward, SMART AMR plans to expand the tool’s capabilities to analyze RNA modifications in human cells and tissues, moving beyond microbial models to deepen understanding of disease mechanisms in humans. Future efforts will focus on integrating the platform into clinical research to accelerate the discovery of biomarkers and therapeutic targets. The translation of the technology into an epitranscriptome-wide analysis tool that can be used in pharmaceutical and health-care settings will drive the development of more effective and personalized treatments.

The research conducted at SMART is supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise program.

Researchers at the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, have developed a powerful tool capable of scanning thousands of biological samples to detect transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) modifications — tiny chemical changes to RNA molecules that help control how cells grow, adapt to stress, and respond to diseases such as cancer and antibiotic‑resistant infections. This tool opens up new possibilities for science, health care, and industry — from accelerating disease research and enabling more precise diagnostics to guiding the development of more effective medical treatments for diseases such as cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections.

For this study, the SMART AMR team worked in collaboration with researchers at MIT, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the University of Florida, the University at Albany in New York, and Lodz University of Technology in Poland.

Addressing current limitations in RNA modification profiling

Cancer and infectious diseases are complicated health conditions in which cells are forced to function abnormally by mutations in their genetic material or by instructions from an invading microorganism. The SMART-led research team is among the world’s leaders in understanding how the epitranscriptome — the over 170 different chemical modifications of all forms of RNA — controls growth of normal cells and how cells respond to stressful changes in the environment, such as loss of nutrients or exposure to toxic chemicals. The researchers are also studying how this system is corrupted in cancer or exploited by viruses, bacteria, and parasites in infectious diseases.

Current molecular methods used to study the expansive epitranscriptome and all of the thousands of different types of modified RNA are often slow, labor-intensive, costly, and involve hazardous chemicals, which limits research capacity and speed.

To solve this problem, the SMART team developed a new tool that enables fast, automated profiling of tRNA modifications — molecular changes that regulate how cells survive, adapt to stress, and respond to disease. This capability allows scientists to map cell regulatory networks, discover novel enzymes, and link molecular patterns to disease mechanisms, paving the way for better drug discovery and development, and more accurate disease diagnostics. 

Unlocking the complexity of RNA modifications

SMART’s open-access research, recently published in Nucleic Acids Research and titled “tRNA modification profiling reveals epitranscriptome regulatory networks in Pseudomonas aeruginosa,” shows that the tool has already enabled the discovery of previously unknown RNA-modifying enzymes and the mapping of complex gene regulatory networks. These networks are crucial for cellular adaptation to stress and disease, providing important insights into how RNA modifications control bacterial survival mechanisms. 

Using robotic liquid handlers, researchers extracted tRNA from more than 5,700 genetically modified strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that causes infections such as pneumonia, urinary tract infections, bloodstream infections, and wound infections. Samples were enzymatically digested and analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), a technique that separates molecules based on their physical properties and identifies them with high precision and sensitivity. 

As part of the study, the process generated over 200,000 data points in a high-resolution approach that revealed new tRNA-modifying enzymes and simplified gene networks controlling how cells respond and adapt to stress. For example, the data revealed that the methylthiotransferase MiaB, one of the enzymes responsible for tRNA modification ms2i6A, was found to be sensitive to the availability of iron and sulfur and to metabolic changes when oxygen is low. Discoveries like this highlight how cells respond to environmental stresses, and could lead to future development of therapies or diagnostics.

SMART’s automated system was specially designed to profile tRNA modifications across thousands of samples rapidly and safely. Unlike traditional methods, this tool integrates robotics to automate sample preparation and analysis, eliminating the need for hazardous chemical handling and reducing costs. This advancement increases safety, throughput, and affordability, enabling routine large-scale use in research and clinical labs.

A faster and automated way to study RNA

As the first system capable of quantitative, system‑wide profiling of tRNA modifications at this scale, the tool provides a unique and comprehensive view of the epitranscriptome — the complete set of RNA chemical modifications within cells. This capability allows researchers to validate hypotheses about RNA modifications, uncover novel biology, and identify promising molecular targets for developing new therapies.

“This pioneering tool marks a transformative advance in decoding the complex language of RNA modifications that regulate cellular responses,” says Professor Peter Dedon, co-lead principal investigator at SMART AMR, professor of biological engineering at MIT, and corresponding author of the paper. “Leveraging AMR’s expertise in mass spectrometry and RNA epitranscriptomics, our research uncovers new methods to detect complex gene networks critical for understanding and treating cancer, as well as antibiotic-resistant infections. By enabling rapid, large-scale analysis, the tool accelerates both fundamental scientific discovery and the development of targeted diagnostics and therapies that will address urgent global health challenges.”

Accelerating research, industry, and health-care applications

This versatile tool has broad applications across scientific research, industry, and health care. It enables large-scale studies of gene regulation, RNA biology, and cellular responses to environmental and therapeutic challenges. The pharmaceutical and biotech industry can harness it for drug discovery and biomarker screening, efficiently evaluating how potential drugs affect RNA modifications and cellular behavior. This aids the development of targeted therapies and personalized medical treatments.

“This is the first tool that can rapidly and quantitatively profile RNA modifications across thousands of samples,” says Jingjing Sun, research scientist at SMART AMR and first author of the paper. “It has not only allowed us to discover new RNA-modifying enzymes and gene networks, but also opens the door to identifying biomarkers and therapeutic targets for diseases such as cancer and antibiotic-resistant infections. For the first time, large-scale epitranscriptomic analysis is practical and accessible.”

Looking ahead: advancing clinical and pharmaceutical applications

Moving forward, SMART AMR plans to expand the tool’s capabilities to analyze RNA modifications in human cells and tissues, moving beyond microbial models to deepen understanding of disease mechanisms in humans. Future efforts will focus on integrating the platform into clinical research to accelerate the discovery of biomarkers and therapeutic targets. The translation of the technology into an epitranscriptome-wide analysis tool that can be used in pharmaceutical and health-care settings will drive the development of more effective and personalized treatments.

The research conducted at SMART is supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise program.

By Dr Qi Dongtao, Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute at NUS

• Lianhe Zaobao, 9 September 2025, Opinion, p17

By Dr Ruklanthi de Alwis, Deputy Director of the Centre for Outbreak Preparedness and Asst Prof in the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme, Duke-NUS Medical School; Assoc Prof Yeo Tsin Wen, from the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at NTU and from Woodlands Health; Prof Lisa Ng, Executive Director of the Infectious Diseases Labs at A*STAR; and Prof Neelika Malavige, from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura

• The Straits Times, 9 September 2025, Opinion, pB2

By Mr Sriram Iyer, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Dept of Management and Organisation at NUS Business School

• The Straits Times, 9 September 2025, Opinion, pB2

• Suria News Online, 9 September 2025

• The Business Times, 9 September 2025, p3

• The Straits Times Online, 8 September 2025

• CNA, 8 September 2025
• Channel 5 News, 8 September 2025
• CNA Online, 8 September 2025
• Suria News Online, 8 September 2025
• Lianhe Zaobao, 9 September 2025, Singapore, p6

• Suria News Online, 7 September 2025

• The Straits Times, 8 September 2025, Science, pA16

• The Straits Times, 8 September 2025, Science, pA16

• The Straits Times, 8 September 2025, Singapore, pA15
• Tamil Murasu, 8 September 2025, p3

Solar photovoltaics (PV) and green roofs are increasingly being adopted worldwide as sustainable solutions for urban environments. While PV systems help to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lower greenhouse gas emissions, green roofs lower building energy use for air conditioning, mitigate urban heat island effects, and enhance the aesthetics of rooftops.

When combined, these systems allow for more efficient use of rooftop space by harnessing the cooling benefits of rooftop greenery and the generation of renewable electricity from solar panels.

A joint research study by the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), and the National Parks Board (NParks) demonstrates the benefits of co-locating solar panels and green roofs in tropical climates – an area that is less well-studied compared to temperate regions.

Leading the research effort from NUS is Associate Professor Stephen Tay from the Department of the Built Environment at the College of Design and Engineering in NUS. The research findings were published online in the scientific journal Applied Energy on 4 June 2025.

“Our study shows that co-locating solar photovoltaics with green roofs in a tropical climate is technically feasible with multiple benefits – from improving solar panel performance and supporting greenery growth, to lowering roof surface temperature. These findings highlight the potential of integrating solar energy generation with rooftop greenery to advance sustainable urban developments in Singapore and beyond,” said Assoc Prof Tay.

Comparative analysis of four different set-ups

To evaluate the performance of co-located solar panels and green roofs under tropical conditions, an experimental study was conducted on the seventh-floor rooftop of Alexandra Primary School. Four different set-ups were monitored over a 12-month period, from November 2021 to October 2022, and a comparative analysis was conducted to assess the impact on solar energy generation, plant growth, and roof temperature.

The four rooftop set-ups comprised a bare concrete roof (BR-CT), a bare green roof (BR-GR), solar panels on bare concrete (PV-CT), and solar panels with green roof (PV-GR).

The study found that the PV-GR set-up delivered the highest overall performance, achieving both the highest photovoltaic performance, along with the lowest and most stable roof surface temperature. This enhances solar energy generation while providing effective cooling through greenery and shading. In addition, greenery growth in the PV-GR set-up improved significantly compared to the BR-GR set-up, with a 19.8 per cent higher horizontal coverage.

Other benefits were also highlighted in the study. Firstly, in the PV-GR set-up, evapotranspiration from plants was found to have a cooling effect on solar panels, which increased the performance ratio of the solar panels by an average of 1.3 per cent under clear sky conditions as compared to the PV-CT set-up.

Secondly, the co-location of solar panels and green roofs allows buildings to stay cooler. Roof surface temperatures were reduced by up to 4.7 deg C when compared to the BR-CT set-up, while indoor ceiling surface temperatures decreased by as much as 3 deg C when compared to the PV-CT set-up, as the roof is shielded from direct sunlight. Additionally, the PV-GR set-up exhibited the lowest variability in indoor ceiling temperatures, with average ceiling temperatures remaining below 30.5 deg C when compared with the PV-CT set-up, where indoor ceiling temperature can exceed 33 deg C in the day.

Thirdly, the research also tested five shade-tolerant plant species for green roof applications. Among them, Pilea depressa, Pilea nummulariifolia, Heterotis rotundifolia, and Sphagneticola trilobata achieved an average of 20 per cent higher horizontal coverage for the PV-GR set-up. Notably, Pilea depressa showed the most significant improvement when compared to the BR-GR set-up, indicating its suitability for co-located solar panel–green roof installations.

Optimising Singapore’s rooftop spaces for synergistic benefits

This study demonstrates that co-locating solar panels with green roofs is technically feasible, and offers three key benefits – enhanced solar energy generation, improved greenery coverage, and reduced thermal impact to the building.

For building owners, the outcomes from this study demonstrate the feasibility and added benefits of solar panel-green roof systems. Cumulatively, the impact from these benefits may translate into potential cost savings.

Given Singapore’s limited rooftop space, the co-location of solar panels and green roofs represents a smarter use of space, contributing to the nation’s green building initiatives and advancing its vision of becoming both a “Low-Carbon City” and a “City in Nature”.

“No man is an island.” This maxim held true during the inaugural Shaping Healthcare Innovation For Tomorrow (SHIFT) hackathon, a ground-up hackathon that empowers students to co-create innovative solutions to real-world healthcare challenges.

Organised by the Singapore Nursing Innovation Group (SNIG), a student-led initiative under the NUS Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies (NUS Nursing), over 100 students from five local universities and polytechnics — NUS, the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), Ngee Ann Polytechnic , Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and the Institute of Technical Education — collaborated on winning innovations spanning three subthemes: Chronic Disease Prevention & Early Detection, Lifestyle & Behavioural Health Modification, and Ageing Population & Preventive Care.

Held from 31 August to 6 September 2025, the interdisciplinary hackathon comprised almost 30 teams, with at least one Nursing student per team, offering a valuable opportunity for students to collaborate across fields and gain mentorship from healthcare professionals.

At the final showcase on 6 September 2025, three teams walked away with top honours for their innovative ideas — a smart sock, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) social network, and a behavioural change virtual pet — all poised to shape the future of healthcare.

Grand Prize: SafeStep Smart Sock

The top prize went to Team Wildcard — a trio from NUS comprising Magdalene Lim from NUS Nursing, Roopashini Sivananthan  from NUS College of Design and Engineering, and Hanzalah bin Azmi from the NUS Faculty of Law. Their prototype, SafeStep, is a breathable smart sock equipped with sensors that detect falls in real time and alert both wearer and caregiver. Designed for visually impaired elders, the sock aims to reduce fall-related injuries, one of the greatest impediments to seniors’ independence.

The smart sock is not the team’s first healthcare project. The trio, who first met at a design thinking workshop, had earlier collaborated on a pacifier for babies with cleft palates. They are now testing the viability and user experience of SafeStep by advancing it into the prototyping stage, with plans to conduct user interviews and design validation to ensure it meets patient and caregiver needs.

For Magdalene, the hackathon was a chance to bridge classroom learning with real-world insights. “As a student nurse, I don’t always have the full picture of what is being done in the community,” she said. “Our mentor’s wealth of experience really helped us see where the true pain points and gaps lie. That guidance shaped how we refined our idea, and it gave me a much deeper appreciation of how innovation must be rooted in real-world practice.”

1st Runner-Up: KampongNET for Seniors

Ctrl + Alt + Debride — comprising Winnie Low and Ivan Tan from NUS Nursing and NUS Faculty of Science (FoS), Maryam Syamilah Binti Mahmood Shah from SIT Computing Science, and Yi Jiaxin and Onquit Jake Davis Areglo from NYP School of Information Technology — took second place with KampongNET, a digital social platform with an AI voice assistant. Built for seniors living in rental homes within Silver Zone areas, the solution combats social isolation by fostering conversations and connections.

Several members of the team first met in NYP as volunteers. Winnie was the catalyst who brought them together, spurred by the opportunity to merge two disciplines rarely seen side by side. “Coding and nursing are such distinct fields, but through this hackathon we finally had the opportunity to merge them. I don’t see many nursing-focused hackathons — most are technically heavy and can feel daunting. When I saw this opportunity, I wanted to give it a try, especially with friends I knew from NYP,” she said.

2nd Runner-Up: HabiTot Virtual Pet

In third place, The Fantastic Four — Jin Li Yao and Daniel Chong Zhao Yang from FoS), Guo Xinyi from NUS Nursing, and Peh Jia En Leticia from NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences — developed HabiTot, a Tamagotchi-inspired virtual pet that rewards children for spending less time on screens. The playful interface nudges kids toward social interaction, hobbies, and healthier daily routines.

Team member Li Yao said the hackathon provided a springboard for the team to think bigger. “We see real potential in HabiTot, and when time allows, we hope to expand the idea into a patent and explore collaborations to turn it into a working prototype. This hackathon gave us a starting point, and we’re excited to see how far it could go with the right partners.”

For NUS Nursing Asst Prof Jocelyn Chew, who founded SNIG, this stemmed from a conviction that nursing should be recognised not only for its role in bedside care, but also for its strength in problem-solving at the frontlines.

Her vision is for SNIG to grow into a national platform where nurses at all levels engage in cross-institutional collaboration, entrepreneurship, and evidence-based change. “We want to create an ecosystem that empowers nurses to go beyond solely delivering care, to also design the systems, technologies, and models of care that will shape the future of healthcare,” she said. That philosophy inspired SNIG’s first flagship project, the SHIFT Hackathon — a proving ground where students, practitioners, technologists, and community partners came together to co-create solutions.

SHIFT’s student organising committee, led by third-year NUS Nursing students Weslyn Low and Magdalene Tong, spearheaded the planning of the hackathon. They were supported by 25 nursing mentors from hospitals across Singapore, who guided teams through the fast-paced ideation and prototyping process.

Dr Lee Yee Mei, Deputy Director of Nursing at National University Hospital and one of the mentors, described the hackathon as both inspiring and a proud moment for the profession. Seeing students step up to innovate, she said, showed their potential to create ideas that benefit patients and nurses alike. She encouraged students to view innovation as part of nursing education itself — where even something as basic as measuring vital signs can be re-imagined.

Mr Wong Kok Cheong, Deputy Director of Nursing at Changi General Hospital and one of the judges for the hackathon, shared that it was indicative of a larger shift in nursing as a profession. “Nursing innovation is the next milestone for nurses – with an ageing population and shrinking workforce, innovation is essential to improving productivity and patient outcomes.”

At MIT, a few scribbles on a whiteboard can turn into a potentially transformational cancer treatment.

This scenario came to fruition this week when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a system for treating an aggressive form of bladder cancer. More than a decade ago, the system started as an idea in the lab of MIT Professor Michael Cima at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, enabled by funding from the National Institutes of Health and MIT’s Deshpande Center.

The work that started with a few researchers at MIT turned into a startup, TARIS Biomedical LLC, that was co-founded by Cima and David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert Langer, and acquired by Johnson & Johnson in 2019. In developing the core concept of a device for local drug delivery to the bladder — which represents a new paradigm in bladder cancer treatment — the MIT team approached drug delivery like an engineering problem.

“We spoke to urologists and sketched out the problems with past treatments to get to a set of design parameters,” says Cima, a David H. Koch Professor of Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering. “Part of our criteria was it had to fit into urologists’ existing procedures. We wanted urologists to know what to do with the system without even reading the instructions for use. That’s pretty much how it came out.”

To date, the system has been used in patients thousands of times. In one study involving people with high-risk, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer whose disease had proven resistant to standard care, doctors could find no evidence of cancer in 82.4 percent of patients treated with the system. More than 50 percent of those patients were still cancer-free nine months after treatment.

The results are extremely gratifying for the team of researchers that worked on it at MIT, including Langer and Heejin Lee SM ’04, PhD ’09, who developed the system as part of his PhD thesis. And Cima says far more people deserve credit than just the ones who scribbled on his whiteboard all those years ago.

“Drug products like this take an enormous amount of effort,” says Cima. “There are probably more than 1,000 people that have been involved in developing and commercializing the system: the MIT inventors, the urologists they consulted, the scientists at TARIS, the scientists at Johnson & Johnson — and that’s not including all the patients who participated in clinical trials. I also want to emphasize the importance of the MIT ecosystem, and the importance of giving people the resources to pursue arguably crazy ideas. We need to continue to support those kinds of activities.”

In the mid 2000s, Langer connected Cima with a urologist at Boston Children’s Hospital who was seeking a new treatment for a painful bladder disease known as interstitial cystitis. The standard treatment required frequent drug infusions into a patient’s bladder through a catheter, which provided only temporary relief.

A group of researchers including Cima; Lee; Hong Linh Ho Duc SM ’05, PhD ’09; Grace Kim PhD ’08; and Karen Daniel PhD ’09 began speaking with urologists and people who had run failed clinical trials involving bladder treatments to understand what went wrong. All that information went on Cima’s whiteboard over the course of several weeks. Fortunately, Cima also scribbled “Do not erase!”

“We learned a lot in the process of writing everything down,” Cima says. “We learned what not to build and what to avoid.”

With the problem well-defined, Cima received a grant from MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, which allowed Lee to work on designing a better solution as part of his PhD thesis.

One of the key advances the group made was using a special alloy that gave the device “shape memory” so that it could be straightened out and inserted into the bladder through a catheter. Then it would fold up, preventing it from being expelled during urination.

The new design was able to slowly release drugs over a two-week period — far longer than any other approach — and could then be removed using a thin, flexible tube commonly used in urology, called a cystoscope. The progress was enough for Cima and Langer, who are both serial entrepreneurs, to found TARIS Biomedical and license the technology from MIT. Lee and three other MIT graduates joined the company.

“It was a real pleasure working with Mike Cima, our students, and colleagues on this novel drug delivery system, which is already changing patients’ lives,” Langer says, “It’s a great example of how research at the Koch Institute starts with basic science and engineering and ends up with new treatments for cancer patients.”

The FDA’s approval of the system for the treatment of certain patients with high-risk, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer now means that patients with this disease may have a better treatment option. Moving forward, Cima hopes the system continues to be explored to treat other diseases.