Health
‘Devastating’ global health void, Gawande says
Surgeon-author speaks from his experience as a leader at USAID before it was gutted
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 30, 2025
4 min read
Atul Gawande with Marcia Castro.Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Surgeon and best-selling author Atul Gawande on Monday provided a close-up account of the damage inflicted by the
Surgeon-author speaks from his experience as a leader at USAID before it was gutted
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Atul Gawande with Marcia Castro.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Surgeon and best-selling author Atul Gawande on Monday provided a close-up account of the damage inflicted by the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency of International Development, but with a note of encouragement to students and faculty to stay committed to science and medicine.
Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and faculty member at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Medical School, took leave from the University in 2021 after President Joe Biden nominated him to head USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, a post he called “the best job in medicine that you’ve likely never heard of.” He stepped down at the end of Biden’s term.
“USAID cannot be restored to what it was, but it is not too late to save our health and science infrastructure and our talent.”
Atul Gawande
The firing of nearly all USAID staff and the termination of more than 85 percent of its programs have caused “devastating” damage to millions of people and to the U.S. as a global health leader, he said.
“What I know now, three months from when I departed my role at USAID, is USAID cannot be restored to what it was, but it is not too late to save our health and science infrastructure and our talent,” he said during a conversation with Marcia de Castro, Andelot Professor of Demography at the Chan School. “And it’s not too late to stop the destruction.”
Referencing recent government actions halting Harvard research funding, he added: “I’ve returned to this community as it’s come under attack.”
Under threat, he noted, are federal programs supporting health and science, including at the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control, and partnerships with universities and medical centers. The funding freeze has hit Ariadne Labs, a Harvard- and Brigham and Women’s-affiliated research center Gawande founded in 2012, endangering research and testing related to surgery, childbirth, and primary care, he said.
Recalling his time with USAID, Gawande said that the agency, working with half the budget of a typical Boston hospital, built a 50-country network to surveil deadly diseases like Ebola and bird flu faster than ever before, cutting emergency response time to global outbreaks from more than two weeks to less than 48 hours. Programs to prevent maternal and childhood deaths, which reached 93 million women and children under 5, added six years to their life spans, he said, while support for programs to prevent and treat HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria dramatically improved outcomes for tens of millions of people. Before he stepped down, USAID was preparing to scale up a novel and inexpensive treatment package to reduce severe hemorrhaging after childbirth, the leading cause of maternal deaths.
Most countries USAID was assisting still have six- to nine-month stocks of medications; it’s the immediate cuts to staffing and services that will now affect health outcomes most acutely, said Gawande, who is this year’s Harvard Alumni Day speaker.
“It’s not just having a solution; it’s the follow-through,” he said. “So much of the power of what USAID does, that I see [the World Health Organization] doing as well, is the technical assistance that gets you from 60 percent vaccination to 80 percent and then to 90 percent vaccination.”
Gawande, who in addition to his work in a medicine is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of several books, maintained that he’s “hopeful” about global health in the long run. Still, he said, “As an American, one of the things I’m quite uncertain about is whether America is going to be part of leading and part of the solution any time soon.”
But if the U.S. is no longer going to take a leading role in global health, he said, other countries and individuals will almost certainly emerge to take the reins — along with leaders in Massachusetts and other states.
Whatever happens in the near term, the work of global health remains vital, he told students.
“You and your expertise will be needed no matter what,” he said.
Health
More proof that money isn’t everything
“It raises important questions with regard to whether we are investing enough in our youth,” said Tyler VanderWeele about findings from a new study he led on global well-being.File photo by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 30, 2025
6 min read
Major global study of flourishing ranks wealthy, lower-income na
“It raises important questions with regard to whether we are investing enough in our youth,” said Tyler VanderWeele about findings from a new study he led on global well-being.
File photo by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
Major global study of flourishing ranks wealthy, lower-income nations, reinforces concerns over well-being among youth
A major global study of human flourishing reinforces prior warnings about the lack of well-being among youth, particularly in the U.S., and highlights the adage that money isn’t everything, with middle-income — not wealthy — countries topping a ranking of 22 nations.
“It raises important questions with regard to whether we are investing enough in our youth,” said Tyler VanderWeele, the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and one of the study’s lead authors. “Patterns around the world are complex, but in many countries — especially Western countries — this pattern is real.”
The results stem from a huge trove of data gathered by The Global Flourishing Study, a major investigation into individual well-being within specific communities and environments. The survey enrolled about 203,000 people speaking 40 languages and spanning an array of nations, cultures, histories, and economic circumstances. Launched in 2021, the study was conducted on all six inhabited continents and represents about 64 percent of the world’s population, organizers said during a media briefing Monday.
The study’s data allow for comparison across and within nations. Respondents were asked questions about seven variables that together define “flourishing” — health, happiness, meaning, character, relationships, financial security, and spiritual well-being.
It also gathered demographic data such as age, sex, marital and employment status, education, health, religious service attendance, and information about personal history, specifically childhood, including family financial circumstances and exposure to abuse.
VanderWeele called the findings on youth flourishing “troubling.” He said they bear out other recent findings that point to change.
Formerly, a typical life pattern of flourishing looked like a U-shaped curve, with satisfaction highest early and late in life. The lowest point came during the middle years when the pressures of raising children, meeting work expectations, and caring for aging parents come to bear.
It has now shifted to something like a J-shape, with measures of flourishing turning nearly flat from the late teens into the 20s before rising later in life. That pattern was seen in several nations, VanderWeele said, but the U.S. had one of the steepest gradients between flourishing levels of its youth and older adults.
The study, published in the journal Nature Mental Health and sponsored by eight private foundations, was led by researchers at Harvard and Baylor universities and included colleagues from 21 institutions, including universities in the U.S., Germany, Poland, Spain, Canada, and the U.K., as well as the Gallup polling firm.
VanderWeele said the national ranking data was the study’s biggest surprise, offering strong evidence that financial circumstances alone don’t guarantee flourishing. The study surveyed 22 countries and one territory (Hong Kong) that organizers said span an array of cultures, races, economic circumstances, and living conditions.
A ranking without financial indicators put Indonesia at the top, followed by Mexico, the Philippines, Israel, and Nigeria. The U.S. was 15th on that list. Adding financial indicators reordered the list slightly, with Israel and Mexico switching places, and Poland moving into the top 5, bumping Nigeria down. The U.S. moved up to 12th in that ranking. Last on both lists, however, was Japan.
Brendan Case, associate director for research at the Human Flourishing Program and a paper author, said the national rankings call into question prevailing models of economic development that raise as examples nations such as Japan — whose rapid post-World War II modernization made it a global industrial power. That contrasts with Indonesia, a nation often cited as an example of the “middle-income trap” where developing nations’ initial economic progress turns to long-term stagnation.
While Japan is wealthier and its people live longer, respondents there were the least likely to answer “yes” to a question asking whether they had an intimate friend, Case said. Indonesia, meanwhile, ranked higher in measures of relationships and pro-social character traits, which foster social connections and community.
“We’re not here to say those outcomes [wealth, longer lifespans] don’t matter a lot, or that we shouldn’t care about democracy, we shouldn’t care about economic growth, we shouldn’t care about public health,” Case said, “but it’s interesting to consider that the Global Flourishing Study raises some important questions about the potential tradeoffs involved in that process.”
While many of the survey’s broader trends masked significant variability, there were a few findings that were nearly universal. Having good maternal and paternal relationships as a child and excellent childhood health were universally associated with higher adult flourishing.
Weekly or more frequent attendance at religious services also was nearly universally associated with adult flourishing. Authors said the salutary effect of religious participation tracks with previous studies in the West and now has been documented globally.
“The results also raise important questions for the future progress of society,” the authors wrote. “Are we sufficiently investing in the future given the notable flourishing-age gradient with the youngest groups often faring the most poorly? Can we carry out economic development in ways that do not compromise meaning and purpose and relationships and character, given that many economically developed nations are not faring as well on these measures? With economic development and secularization, have we sometimes been neglecting, or even suppressing, powerful spiritual pathways to flourishing?”
Researchers said the dataset is enormous — it’s the result of what are essentially 23 separate national or territorial longitudinal studies — and contains many interesting patterns, more of which will emerge with additional analysis. It also extends globally the investigation into human flourishing, which has been mainly focused on populations in the West.
“Each country is a unique place, and we’re keen to study and understand that,” said Tim Lomas, a research scientist in epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School and at the Human Flourishing Program and a paper author.
Some of the questions raised by the survey may be answered as additional data is collected, Case said. The study, which resulted from a Harvard conference six years ago, is longitudinal, so researchers will resurvey respondents annually, with additional analyses planned to be released over the next five years.
“If society is to ultimately flourish,” the authors wrote, “these questions of age, and of development, and of spiritual dynamics need to be taken into consideration.”
For policymakers investigating the effective transition of an economy from agriculture to manufacturing and services, there are complex economic, institutional, and practical considerations. “Are certain regions trapped in an under-industrialization state?” asks Tishara Garg, an economics doctoral student at MIT. “If so, can government policy help them escape this trap and transition to an economy characterized by higher levels of industrialization and better-paying jobs?” Garg’s research focuse
For policymakers investigating the effective transition of an economy from agriculture to manufacturing and services, there are complex economic, institutional, and practical considerations. “Are certain regions trapped in an under-industrialization state?” asks Tishara Garg, an economics doctoral student at MIT. “If so, can government policy help them escape this trap and transition to an economy characterized by higher levels of industrialization and better-paying jobs?”
Garg’s research focuses on trade, economic geography, and development. Her studies yielded the paper “Can Industrial Policy Overcome Coordination Failures: Theory and Evidence from Industrial Zones,” which investigates whether economic policy can shift an economy from an undesirable state to a desirable state.
Garg’s work combines tools from industrial organization and numerical algebraic geometry. Her paper finds that regions in India with state-developed industrial zones are 38 percent more likely to shift from a low to high industrialization state over a 15-year period than those without such zones.
The kinds of questions uncovered during her studies aren’t easily answered using standard technical and econometric tools, so she’s developing new ones. “One of my study’s main contributions is a methodological framework that draws on ideas from different areas,” she notes. “These tools not only help me study the question I want to answer, but are also general enough to help study a broader set of questions around multiple challenges.”
The new tools she’s developed, along with a willingness to engage with other disciplines, have helped her discover innovative ways to approach these challenges while learning to work with new ones, options she asserts are actively encouraged at an institution like MIT.
“I benefited from having an open mind and learning different things,” she says.
“I was introduced to academia late”
Garg’s journey from Kaithal, India, to MIT wasn’t especially smooth, as societal pressures exerted a powerful influence. “The traditional path for someone like me is to finish school, enter an arranged marriage, and start a family,” she says. “But I was good at school and wanted to do more.”
Garg, who hails from a background with limited access to information on career development opportunities, took to math early. “I chose business in high school because I planned to become an accountant,” she recalls. “My uncle was an accountant.”
While pursuing the successful completion of a high school business track, she became interested in economics. “I didn’t know much about economics, but I came to enjoy it,” she says. Garg relishes the pursuit of deductive reasoning that begins with a set of assumptions and builds, step by step, toward a well-defined, clear conclusion. She especially enjoys grappling with the arguments she found in textbooks. She continued to study economics as an undergraduate at the University of Delhi, and later earned her master’s from the Indian Statistical Institute. Doctoral study wasn’t an option until she made it one.
“It took me some time to convince my parents,” she says. She spent a year at a hedge fund before applying to economics doctoral programs in the United States and choosing MIT. “I was introduced to academia late,” she notes. “But my heart was being drawn to the academic path.”
Answering ambitious and important questions
Garg, who hadn’t left India before her arrival in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found the transition challenging. “There were new cultural norms, a language barrier, different foods, and no preexisting social network,” she says. Garg relied on friends and MIT faculty for support when she arrived in 2019.
“When Covid hit, the department looked out for me,” she says. Garg recalls regular check-ins from a faculty advisor and the kind of camaraderie that can grow from shared circumstances, like Covid-related sheltering protocols. A world that forced her to successfully navigate a new and unfamiliar reality helped reshape how she viewed herself. “Support from the community at MIT helped me grow in many ways,” she recalls, “I found my voice here.”
Once she began her studies, one of the major differences Garg found was the diversity of opinions in her field of inquiry. “At MIT, I could speak with students and faculty specializing in trade, development economics, industrial organization, macroeconomics, and more,” she says. “I had limited exposure to many of these subfields before coming to MIT.”
She quickly found her footing, leaning heavily on both her past successes and the academic habits she developed during her studies in India. “I’m not a passive learner,” she says. “My style is active, critical, and engaged.”
Conducting her research exposes Garg to new ideas. She learned the value of exploring other disciplines’ approaches to problem-solving, which was encouraged and enabled at MIT.
One of the classes she came to enjoy most was a course in industrial organization taught by Tobias Salz. “I had little familiarity with the material, and it was highly technical — but he taught it in such a clear and intuitive way that I found myself truly enjoying the class, even though it was held during the pandemic,” she recalls. That early experience laid the groundwork for future research. Salz went on to advise her dissertation, helping her engage with work she would build upon.
“Answering ambitious and important questions is what draws me to the work,” Garg says. “I enjoy learning, I enjoy the creative process of bringing different ideas together and MIT's environment has made it easy for me to pick up new things.”
Working with her advisors at MIT helped Garg formalize her research and appreciate the value of uncovering questions and developing approaches to answer them. Professor Abhijit Banerjee, an advisor and Nobel laureate, helped her understand the importance of appreciating different traditions while also staying true to how you think about the problem, she recalls. “That gave me the confidence to pursue the questions in ways that felt most compelling and personal to me,” she says, “even if they didn’t fit neatly into disciplinary boundaries.”
This encouragement, combined with the breadth of perspectives at MIT, pushed her to think creatively about research challenges and to look beyond traditional tools to discover solutions. “MIT’s faculty have helped me improve the way I think and refine my approach to this work,” she says.
Paying it forward
Garg, who will continue her research as a postdoc at Princeton University in the fall and begin her career as a professor at Stanford University in 2026, singles out her network of friends and advisors for special praise.
“From regular check-ins with my advisors to the relationships that help me find balance with my studies, the people at MIT have been invaluable,” she says.
Garg is especially invested in mentorship opportunities available as a researcher and professor. “I benefited from the network of friends and mentors at MIT and I want to pay it forward — especially for women, and others from backgrounds like mine,” she says.
She cites the work of her advisors, David Atkin and Dave Donaldson — with whom she is also collaborating on research studying incidences of economic distortions — as both major influences on her development and a key reason she’s committed to mentoring others. “They’ve been with me every step of the way,” she says.
Garg recommends keeping an open mind, above all. “Some of my students didn’t come from a math-heavy background and would restrict themselves or otherwise get discouraged from pursuing theoretical work,” she says. “But I always encouraged them to pursue their interests above all, even if it scared them.”
The variety of ideas available in her area of inquiry still fascinates Garg, who’s excited about what’s next. “Don’t shy from big questions,” she says. “Explore the big idea.”
With war continuing to disrupt education for millions of Ukrainian high school and college students, many are turning to online resources, including MIT OpenCourseWare, a part of MIT Open Learning offering educational materials from more than 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses.For Ukrainian high school senior Sofiia Lipkevych and other students, MIT OpenCourseWare has provided valuable opportunities to take courses in key subject areas. However, while multiple Ukrainian students study
With war continuing to disrupt education for millions of Ukrainian high school and college students, many are turning to online resources, including MIT OpenCourseWare, a part of MIT Open Learning offering educational materials from more than 2,500 MIT undergraduate and graduate courses.
For Ukrainian high school senior Sofiia Lipkevych and other students, MIT OpenCourseWare has provided valuable opportunities to take courses in key subject areas. However, while multiple Ukrainian students study English, many do not yet have sufficient command of the language to be able to fully understand and use the often very technical and complex OpenCourseWare content and materials.
“At my school, I saw firsthand how language barriers prevented many Ukrainian students from accessing world-class education,” says Lipkevych.
She was able to address this challenge as a participant in the Ukrainian Leadership and Technology Academy (ULTA), established by Ukrainian MIT students Dima Yanovsky and Andrii Zahorodnii. During summer 2024 at ULTA, Lipkevych worked on a browser extension that translated YouTube videos in real-time. Since MIT OpenCourseWare was a main source of learning materials for students participating in ULTA, she was inspired to translate OpenCourseWare lectures directly and to have this translation widely available on the OpenCourseWare website and YouTube channel. She reached out to Professor Elizabeth Wood, founding director of the MIT Ukraine Program, who connected her with MIT OpenCourseWare Director Curt Newton.
Although there had been some translations of MIT OpenCourseWare’s educational resources available beginning in 2004, these initial translations were conducted manually by several global partners, without the efficiencies of the latest artificial intelligence tools, and over time the programs couldn’t be sustained, and shut down.
“We were thrilled to have this contact with ULTA,” says Newton. “We’ve been missing having a vibrant translation community, and we are excited to have a ‘phase 2’ of translations emerge.”
The ULTA team developed multiple tools to help break language barriers. For MIT OpenCourseWare’s PDF content available through the ULTA program, they created a specialized tool that uses optical character recognition to recognize LaTeX in documents — such as problem sets and other materials — and then used a few large language models to translate them, all while maintaining technical accuracy. The team built a glossary of technical terms used in the courses and their corresponding Ukrainian translations, to help make sure that the wording was correct and consistent. Each translation also undergoes human review to further ensure accuracy and high quality.
For video content, the team initially created a browser extension that can translate YouTube video captions in real-time. They ultimately collaborated with ElevenLabs, implementing their advanced AI dubbing editor that preserves the original speaker's tone, pace, and emotional delivery. The lectures are translated in the ElevenLabs dubbing editor, and then the audio is uploaded to the MIT OpenCourseWare YouTube channel.
The team is currently finalizing the translation of the audio for class 9.13 (The Human Brain), taught by MIT Professor Nancy Kanwisher, which Lipkevych says they selected for its interdisciplinary nature and appeal to a wide variety of learners.
This Ukrainian translation project highlights the transformative potential of the latest translation technologies, building upon a 2023 MIT OpenCourseWare experiment using the Google Aloud AI dubbing prototype on a few courses, including MIT Professor Patrick Winston’s How to Speak. The advanced capabilities of the dubbing editor used in this project are opening up possibilities for a much greater variety of language offerings throughout MIT OpenCourseWare materials.
“I expect that in a few years we’ll look back and see that this was the moment when things shifted for OpenCourseWare to be truly usable for the whole world,” says Newton.
Community-led language translations of MIT OpenCourseWare materials serve as a high-impact example of the power of OpenCourseWare’s Creative Commons licensing, which grants everyone the right to revise materials to suit their particular needs and redistribute those revisions to the world.
While there isn’t currently a way for users of the MIT OpenCourseWare platform to quickly identify which videos are available in which languages, MIT OpenCourseWare is working toward building this capability into its website, as well as expanding its number of offerings in different languages.
“This project represents more than just translation,” says Lipkevych. “We’re enabling thousands of Ukrainians to build skills that will be essential for the country’s eventual reconstruction. We’re also hoping this model of collaboration can be extended to other languages and institutions, creating a template for making high-quality education accessible worldwide.”
“We're enabling thousands of Ukrainians to build skills that will be essential for the country's eventual reconstruction," says Sofiia Lipkevych, a Ukrainian high school senior who worked on a browser extension that translates YouTube videos of MIT lectures into Ukrainian in real-time.
Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science an
Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.
In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.
“One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point. Over the years, we’ve learned each other’s systems, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been able to create a synergy that would not have existed if we worked together for a short period of time,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.
Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are eager to take the program’s existing research projects further, while adding new areas of focus identified by MIT and FCT. Known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the national public agency supporting research in science, technology and innovation under Portugal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.
“Over the past two decades, the partnership with MIT has built a foundation of trust that has fostered collaboration among researchers and the development of projects with significant scientific impact and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for education, science, and innovation, says. “In this new phase of the partnership, running from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and impact — raising Portuguese science and its capacity to transform the economy and improve our society to even higher levels, while helping to address the challenges we face in areas such as climate change and the oceans, digitalization, and space.”
“International collaborations like the MIT-Portugal Program are absolutely vital to MIT’s mission of research, education and service. I’m thrilled to see the program move into its next phase,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our faculty and students opportunities to work in unique research environments where they not only make new findings and learn new methods but also contribute to solving urgent local and global problems. MPP’s work in the realm of ocean science and climate is a prime example of how international partnerships like this can help solve important human problems."
Sharing MIT’s commitment to academic independence and excellence, Kornbluth adds, “the institutions and researchers we partner with through MPP enhance MIT’s ability to achieve its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting standards of intellectual and creative distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world leader in scientific discovery.”
The epitome of an effective international collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to deliver results here in the U.S. and in Portugal for nearly two decades — prevailing amid myriad shifts in the political, social, and economic landscape. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual research conference and educational summits such as an Innovation Workshop at MIT each June and a Marine Robotics Summer School in the Azores in July, as well as student and faculty exchanges that facilitate collaborative research. During the third phase of the program alone, 59 MIT students and 53 faculty and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 students and 49 faculty and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.
In each roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers focus on a handful of core research areas. For Phase 3, MPP advanced cutting-edge research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Within these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers worked together on numerous small-scale projects and several large “flagship” ones, including development of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite, a collaboration between MPP and several Portuguese universities and companies that marked the country’s second satellite launch and the first in 30 years.
While work in the Phase 3 fields will continue during Phase 4, researchers will also turn their attention to four more areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (a previous focus in Phase 2), artificial intelligence, and space.
“We are opening up the aperture for additional collaboration areas,” Hansman says.
In addition to focusing on distinct subject areas, each phase has emphasized the various parts of MPP’s mission to differing degrees. While Phase 3 accentuated collaborative research more than educational exchanges and entrepreneurship, those two aspects will be given more weight under the Phase 4 agreement, Hart said.
“We have approval in Phase 4 to bring a number of Portuguese students over, and our principal investigators will benefit from close collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.
The longevity of MPP and the recent launch of Phase 4 are evidence of the program’s value. The program has played a role in the educational, technological and economic progress Portugal has achieved over the past two decades, as well.
“The Portugal of today is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and many of the places where they are stronger have been impacted by the program,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “green” energy, in particular. “We can’t take direct credit, but we’ve been part of Portugal’s journey forward.”
Since MPP began, Hart adds, “Portugal has become much more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many more start-up companies are coming out of Portuguese universities than there used to be.”
A recent analysis of MPP and FCT’s other U.S. collaborations highlighted a number of positive outcomes. The report noted that collaborations with MIT and other US universities have enhanced Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in the national R&D ecosystem, while providing Portuguese universities and companies with opportunities to engage in complex projects that would have been difficult to undertake on their own.
Regarding MIT in particular, the report found that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the establishment of sustained doctoral programs and pointed to a marked shift within Portugal’s educational ecosystem toward globally aligned standards. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the education of 198 Portuguese PhDs.
Portugal’s universities, students and companies are not alone in benefitting from the research, networks, and economic activity MPP has spawned. MPP also delivers unique value to MIT, as well as to the broader US science and research community. Among the program’s consistent themes over the years, for example, is “joint interest in the Atlantic,” Hansman says.
This summer, Faial Island in the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Master’s and first year PhD students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The course, which includes lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculty and other researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is always my favorite,” said Hart.
“I get to work with some of the best researchers in the world there, and some of the top students coming out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, adding that some of his previous Marine Robotics Summer School students have come to study at MIT and then gone on to become professors in ocean science.
“So, it’s been exciting to see the growth of students coming out of that program, certainly a positive impact,” Hart says.
MPP provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for ocean research due to the unique marine facilities available in Portugal, including not only open ocean off the Azores but also Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility just south of Lisbon that is available for collaborative research by international scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are also strongly invested in climate change research — a field of study keenly related to ocean systems.
“The international collaboration has allowed us to test and further develop our research prototypes in different aquaculture environments both in the US and in Portugal, while building on the unique expertise of our Portuguese faculty collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the University of Aveiro and our industry collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Mueller points to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD student Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer School participant, whose research is aimed at developing an economical system to monitor the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the spread of harmful bacteria associated with ocean warming. In addition to participating in the summer school as a student, Xia returned to the Azores for two subsequent years as a teaching assistant.
“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our research on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential disease outbreaks,” Mueller says.
As MPP enters its next phase, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about the program’s continuing success on both sides of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impact going forward.
“I think, at this point, the research is going really well, and we’ve got a lot of connections. I think one of our goals is to expand not the science of the program necessarily, but the groups involved,” Hart says, noting that MPP could have a bigger presence in technical fields such as AI and micro-nano manufacturing, as well as in social sciences and humanities.
“We’d like to involve many more people and new people here at MIT, as well as in Portugal,” he says, “so that we can reach a larger slice of the population.”
Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science an
Since its founding 19 years ago as a pioneering collaboration with Portuguese universities, research institutions and corporations, the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) has achieved a slew of successes — from enabling 47 entrepreneurial spinoffs and funding over 220 joint projects between MIT and Portuguese researchers to training a generation of exceptional researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.
In March, with nearly two decades of collaboration under their belts, MIT and the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) signed an agreement that officially launches the program’s next chapter. Running through 2030, MPP’s Phase 4 will support continued exploration of innovative ideas and solutions in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and nanotechnology to climate change — both on the MIT campus and with partners throughout Portugal.
“One of the advantages of having a program that has gone on so long is that we are pretty well familiar with each other at this point. Over the years, we’ve learned each other’s systems, strengths and weaknesses and we’ve been able to create a synergy that would not have existed if we worked together for a short period of time,” says Douglas Hart, MIT mechanical engineering professor and MPP co-director.
Hart and John Hansman, the T. Wilson Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and MPP co-director, are eager to take the program’s existing research projects further, while adding new areas of focus identified by MIT and FCT. Known as the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in Portugal, FCT is the national public agency supporting research in science, technology and innovation under Portugal’s Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.
“Over the past two decades, the partnership with MIT has built a foundation of trust that has fostered collaboration among researchers and the development of projects with significant scientific impact and contributions to the Portuguese economy,” Fernando Alexandre, Portugal’s minister for education, science, and innovation, says. “In this new phase of the partnership, running from 2025 to 2030, we expect even greater ambition and impact — raising Portuguese science and its capacity to transform the economy and improve our society to even higher levels, while helping to address the challenges we face in areas such as climate change and the oceans, digitalization, and space.”
“International collaborations like the MIT-Portugal Program are absolutely vital to MIT’s mission of research, education and service. I’m thrilled to see the program move into its next phase,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “MPP offers our faculty and students opportunities to work in unique research environments where they not only make new findings and learn new methods but also contribute to solving urgent local and global problems. MPP’s work in the realm of ocean science and climate is a prime example of how international partnerships like this can help solve important human problems."
Sharing MIT’s commitment to academic independence and excellence, Kornbluth adds, “the institutions and researchers we partner with through MPP enhance MIT’s ability to achieve its mission, enabling us to pursue the exacting standards of intellectual and creative distinction that make MIT a cradle of innovation and world leader in scientific discovery.”
The epitome of an effective international collaboration, MPP has stayed true to its mission and continued to deliver results here in the U.S. and in Portugal for nearly two decades — prevailing amid myriad shifts in the political, social, and economic landscape. The multifaceted program encompasses an annual research conference and educational summits such as an Innovation Workshop at MIT each June and a Marine Robotics Summer School in the Azores in July, as well as student and faculty exchanges that facilitate collaborative research. During the third phase of the program alone, 59 MIT students and 53 faculty and researchers visited Portugal, and MIT hosted 131 students and 49 faculty and researchers from Portuguese universities and other institutions.
In each roughly five-year phase, MPP researchers focus on a handful of core research areas. For Phase 3, MPP advanced cutting-edge research in four strategic areas: climate science and climate change; Earth systems: oceans to near space; digital transformation in manufacturing; and sustainable cities. Within these broad areas, MIT and FCT researchers worked together on numerous small-scale projects and several large “flagship” ones, including development of Portugal’s CubeSat satellite, a collaboration between MPP and several Portuguese universities and companies that marked the country’s second satellite launch and the first in 30 years.
While work in the Phase 3 fields will continue during Phase 4, researchers will also turn their attention to four more areas: chips/nanotechnology, energy (a previous focus in Phase 2), artificial intelligence, and space.
“We are opening up the aperture for additional collaboration areas,” Hansman says.
In addition to focusing on distinct subject areas, each phase has emphasized the various parts of MPP’s mission to differing degrees. While Phase 3 accentuated collaborative research more than educational exchanges and entrepreneurship, those two aspects will be given more weight under the Phase 4 agreement, Hart said.
“We have approval in Phase 4 to bring a number of Portuguese students over, and our principal investigators will benefit from close collaborations with Portuguese researchers,” he says.
The longevity of MPP and the recent launch of Phase 4 are evidence of the program’s value. The program has played a role in the educational, technological and economic progress Portugal has achieved over the past two decades, as well.
“The Portugal of today is remarkably stronger than the Portugal of 20 years ago, and many of the places where they are stronger have been impacted by the program,” says Hansman, pointing to sustainable cities and “green” energy, in particular. “We can’t take direct credit, but we’ve been part of Portugal’s journey forward.”
Since MPP began, Hart adds, “Portugal has become much more entrepreneurial. Many, many, many more start-up companies are coming out of Portuguese universities than there used to be.”
A recent analysis of MPP and FCT’s other U.S. collaborations highlighted a number of positive outcomes. The report noted that collaborations with MIT and other US universities have enhanced Portuguese research capacities and promoted organizational upgrades in the national R&D ecosystem, while providing Portuguese universities and companies with opportunities to engage in complex projects that would have been difficult to undertake on their own.
Regarding MIT in particular, the report found that MPP’s long-term collaboration has spawned the establishment of sustained doctoral programs and pointed to a marked shift within Portugal’s educational ecosystem toward globally aligned standards. MPP, it reported, has facilitated the education of 198 Portuguese PhDs.
Portugal’s universities, students and companies are not alone in benefitting from the research, networks, and economic activity MPP has spawned. MPP also delivers unique value to MIT, as well as to the broader US science and research community. Among the program’s consistent themes over the years, for example, is “joint interest in the Atlantic,” Hansman says.
This summer, Faial Island in the Azores will host MPP’s fifth annual Marine Robotics Summer School, a two-week course open to 12 Portuguese Master’s and first year PhD students and 12 MIT upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The course, which includes lectures by MIT and Portuguese faculty and other researchers, workshops, labs and hands-on experiences, “is always my favorite,” said Hart.
“I get to work with some of the best researchers in the world there, and some of the top students coming out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, MIT, and Portugal,” he says, adding that some of his previous Marine Robotics Summer School students have come to study at MIT and then gone on to become professors in ocean science.
“So, it’s been exciting to see the growth of students coming out of that program, certainly a positive impact,” Hart says.
MPP provides one-of-a-kind opportunities for ocean research due to the unique marine facilities available in Portugal, including not only open ocean off the Azores but also Lisbon’s deep-water port and a Portuguese Naval facility just south of Lisbon that is available for collaborative research by international scientists. Like MIT, Portuguese universities are also strongly invested in climate change research — a field of study keenly related to ocean systems.
“The international collaboration has allowed us to test and further develop our research prototypes in different aquaculture environments both in the US and in Portugal, while building on the unique expertise of our Portuguese faculty collaborator Dr. Ricardo Calado from the University of Aveiro and our industry collaborators,” says Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and leader of the Human-Computer Interaction Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.
Mueller points to the work of MIT mechanical engineering PhD student Charlene Xia, a Marine Robotics Summer School participant, whose research is aimed at developing an economical system to monitor the microbiome of seaweed farms and halt the spread of harmful bacteria associated with ocean warming. In addition to participating in the summer school as a student, Xia returned to the Azores for two subsequent years as a teaching assistant.
“The MIT-Portugal Program has been a key enabler of our research on monitoring the aquatic microbiome for potential disease outbreaks,” Mueller says.
As MPP enters its next phase, Hart and Hansman are optimistic about the program’s continuing success on both sides of the Atlantic and envision broadening its impact going forward.
“I think, at this point, the research is going really well, and we’ve got a lot of connections. I think one of our goals is to expand not the science of the program necessarily, but the groups involved,” Hart says, noting that MPP could have a bigger presence in technical fields such as AI and micro-nano manufacturing, as well as in social sciences and humanities.
“We’d like to involve many more people and new people here at MIT, as well as in Portugal,” he says, “so that we can reach a larger slice of the population.”
Photo by Michael Goderre/Boston Children’s Hospital
Health
Fighting Alzheimer’s one discovery at a time
‘I was just following the science,’ says Beth Stevens
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
April 30, 2025
3 min read
Part of the
Profiles of Progress
series
In efforts to fight Alzheimer’s disease, neuroscientist Beth Stevens has driven a transform
In efforts to fight Alzheimer’s disease, neuroscientist Beth Stevens has driven a transformation in thinking about microglial cells, which serve as an immune system for the brain.
Microglia patrol the brain for signs of illness or injury, helping clear out dead or damaged cells and selectively pruning synapses, which transmit information among neurons.
But the process isn’t perfect.
The Stevens Lab, based at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has demonstrated that aberrant pruning can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and other disorders.
Stevens’ findings have created a foundation for new medicines to deploy against neurodegenerative disease and for new biomarkers to detect illnesses earlier. The research has the potential to affect treatment for the estimated 7 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s. As the U.S. population ages, the number of annual cases is expected to double by 2050, according to the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association, potentially increasing the cost of care from $360 million to $1 trillion.
“We would never have been able to move forward without the basic science and curiosity-driven science from the beginning.”
When she was starting out, in the early 2000s, Stevens, now an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, had no idea where her curiosity would take her.
“I was just following the science,” she said. “It was this interesting new area where the brain’s immune system was helping to sculpt synapses and circuits under normal development.”
She had a hunch about the potential downside of pruning — and she was right. Vital support from federal agencies helped her follow through.
“The foundation of our research, from the time I was a postdoc to the first decade of my lab, was almost entirely driven by the National Institutes of Health and other federal funding,” she said.
That foundational research doesn’t always have a clear outcome, noted Stevens, who was named a MacArthur “genius” for her work on microglia in 2015. “Someone that doesn’t think about disease implications might say, ‘Oh, Stevens Lab is studying the visual system of a mouse. They’re trying to understand how a mouse’s visual system wires up.’ It can seem like that’s so far from ever translating into anything. Who cares how a mouse might see?”
But these studies allow scientists to explore questions they couldn’t in humans, she noted — which leads to new discoveries, which lead to new understandings of disease, which lead to treatments that improve human lives.
“Our microglial research,” Stevens said, “is a great example of an immune-related pathway and cell type that we would never have been able to move forward without the basic science and curiosity-driven science from the beginning.”
Campus & Community
Four awarded Harvard Medal for exceptional service
A veritas shield hangs above the entrance to Memorial Church in Harvard Yard.File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
April 30, 2025
7 min read
To be honored on June 6 marking Alumni Day
Part of the
Commencement 2025
series
A collection of stories covering Harvard Un
A collection of stories covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has announced that Kathy Delaney-Smith, Paul J. Finnegan ’75, M.B.A. ’82, Carolyn Hughes ’54, and David Johnston ’63 will receive the 2025 Harvard Medal.
First awarded in 1981, the Harvard Medal recognizes extraordinary service to the University in areas that include leadership, fundraising, teaching, innovation, administration, and volunteerism. Alumni, former faculty and staff, and members of organizations affiliated with the University are eligible for consideration. The medals will be presented to recipients on Harvard Alumni Day on June 6.
Photo by Cheryl Clegg
Kathy Delaney-Smith
The all-time winningest coach of any sport — men’s or women’s — in Ivy League history and a trailblazer for gender equity, Kathy Delaney-Smith put Harvard basketball on the map and expanded its profile both nationally and internationally.
With 630 career victories, Delaney-Smith led Harvard Women’s Basketball to 11 Ivy League titles and 16 postseason appearances during her 40 seasons with the Crimson — the second-longest coaching tenure among NCAA Division 1 coaches. In honor of her illustrious career, the women’s coaching position was renamed the Kathy Delaney-Smith Head Coach for Harvard Women’s Basketball upon her retirement.
The first woman named to the Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame, Delaney-Smith has been honored for both her coaching abilities and her advocacy for gender equity in sports.
Her strong but caring coaching style was defined by her “act as if” mantra, which encouraged team members to carry themselves with the confidence of already having achieved their goals. She employed visualization, mindfulness, and sports psychology decades before they became commonplace, and throughout her long career has guided players through difficult experiences off the court. At the request of basketball alumnae, she wrote the book “Grit and Wit: Empowering Lives and Leaders,” published earlier this year.
Delaney-Smith came to Harvard in 1982 after compiling a 204–31 record at Westwood (Massachusetts) High School, with six undefeated regular seasons and one state title. During her tenure at Westwood, she worked to ensure that the girls’ team had sufficient resources. She also coached USA Women’s Basketball three times, including the team that won gold at the World University Games in Turkey in 2005.
A cancer survivor, Delaney-Smith has dedicated much of her time to helping the American Cancer Society and spreading the word of early detection, for which she received the Gilda Radner Award.
Paul J. Finnegan
Paul Finnegan has been a devoted and dynamic champion of Harvard for over 40 years, lending his expertise and steady voice to top leadership roles, including Harvard Corporation member, University treasurer, Harvard Overseer, chair of the Harvard Management Company, and HAA president. Guided by his passion for education and love for his alma mater, Finnegan has worked tirelessly to strengthen the University’s financial health, governance, and educational mission.
Finnegan was a member of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s senior governing board, for 12 years. From 2014 to 2023, he served as University treasurer, where his financial acumen and deep institutional knowledge informed the work of the University’s financial administration and guided major changes at Harvard Management Company, which he chaired from 2015 to 2024.
Finnegan was also a driving force behind The Harvard Campaign, planning and leading fundraising efforts as executive committee co-chair to raise a remarkable $9.6 billion — making it the most successful fundraising campaign in the history of higher education when it concluded in 2017.
A collegial leader admired for his down-to-earth nature and ability to see opportunities within challenges, Finnegan served from 2008 to 2012 as an elected member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, where he chaired the committee on finance, administration, and management. As HAA president from 2006 to 2007, he enhanced alumni communications systems and expanded global outreach.
Through the decades Finnegan has been closely involved with several Harvard Schools, serving on Harvard Business School’s Board of Dean’s Advisors, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Leadership Council, as honorary co-chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s campaign, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Dean’s Council, where he spurred meaningful improvements to the undergraduate experience.
A member of the Committee on University Resources, Finnegan was chair of the HBS Fund and of the College Class of 1975 reunion committee. He is a longtime supporter of Teach for America.
Rocco Chilelli/Camelot Photography Studios LLC
Carolyn Hughes
Motivated by a passion for education and a commitment to helping future generations of talented students attend Harvard, Carolyn Hughes has been a loyal and celebrated Harvard volunteer and ambassador for nearly 50 years, interviewing countless high school students and engaging alumni through her leadership of the Harvard Club of Long Island.
Hughes grew up in Boston’s Allston neighborhood, the daughter of a prison guard and a homemaker. Though she had not planned to attend college, an eighth-grade teacher insisted she take the academic program and be prepared. Four years later she was admitted to Radcliffe and given partial funding through her high school. Research work on the melting icebergs in the Arctic Ocean paid for the rest. After Radcliffe, she moved to New York and taught herself computer science and systems design, joining the first cohort of women in the field.
Never forgetting the tremendous opportunities Radcliffe provided, Hughes began volunteering in the late 1960s, interviewing college applicants as a member of the Radcliffe Club of Long Island — before it eventually merged with Harvard — and personally visiting 120 of the area’s high schools. In the five decades since, Hughes has served as an HAA director for Clubs and SIGs, an elected director of the HAA, and chair of the National Schools and Scholarship Committee within the Harvard College Admissions Office.
With unwavering dedication, she has held nearly every leadership position in the Harvard Club of Long Island, including president, helping to develop robust programming and outreach. As chair of the Long Island Schools Committee, her role expanded to training Harvard interviewers and organizing guidance counselor programs. She now serves as co-chair emerita of the Club’s Schools and Scholarship Committee.
Hughes has received numerous commendations, including the HAA Award in 1990, the Hiram S. Hunn Award in 2002, and the HAA Clubs Award in 2020.
Credit: Sgt. Ronald Duchesne, Rideau Hall, OSGG
David Johnston
The 28th governor general of Canada, a former university president, and a professor of law for more than four decades, David Johnston has dedicated his life in service to his country, to academia, and to Harvard — where he brought his strength as a consensus-builder and commitment to excellence to a variety of roles, including president of the University’s Board of Overseers.
Growing up in a mining town outside Sudbury, Ontario, Johnston quickly learned that an education could open many doors. He was first approached by Harvard at age 14 on the advice of an alumnus who had heard he was a promising scholar-athlete. Johnston enrolled in the College in 1959 on a scholarship, excelling in his studies while also becoming a two-time All-American ice hockey player. He graduated magna cum laude and was later named to the Harvard Varsity Club Hall of Fame.
Dedicated to ensuring talented students from all backgrounds have access to the same opportunities that Harvard afforded him, Johnston has been a steadfast volunteer, serving on his class reunion and gift committees for decades, as an HAA elected director, and on several Overseers visiting committees — including athletics; arts and humanities; finance, administration, and management; and information technology.
Elected to the Board of Overseers in 1992, Johnston was named chair in 1997 — the first non-U.S. citizen to hold the position. In recognition of his service to the University, the Harvard Club of Ottawa established the David Johnston Financial Aid Fund for Harvard, which supports students from Canada.
Johnston was Canada’s governor general from 2010 to 2017. He also served as dean of the faculty of law at the University of Western Ontario, principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University, and president of the University of Waterloo.
Married 61 years, Johnston and wife, Sharon, have five daughters, all in public service, and 14 grandchildren.
The rating system is the first of its kind and may help urban planners and robotics companies plan for future robot deployments that won’t disrupt existing sidewalk environments.
The rating system is the first of its kind and may help urban planners and robotics companies plan for future robot deployments that won’t disrupt existing sidewalk environments.
For the first time, scientists have sequenced the complete genome of one of Australias most iconic and endangered frogs the Southern Corroboree Frog (Pseudophryne corroboree).
For the first time, scientists have sequenced the complete genome of one of Australias most iconic and endangered frogs the Southern Corroboree Frog (Pseudophryne corroboree).
In the future, quantum computers could rapidly simulate new materials or help scientists develop faster machine-learning models, opening the door to many new possibilities.But these applications will only be possible if quantum computers can perform operations extremely quickly, so scientists can make measurements and perform corrections before compounding error rates reduce their accuracy and reliability.The efficiency of this measurement process, known as readout, relies on the strength of the
In the future, quantum computers could rapidly simulate new materials or help scientists develop faster machine-learning models, opening the door to many new possibilities.
But these applications will only be possible if quantum computers can perform operations extremely quickly, so scientists can make measurements and perform corrections before compounding error rates reduce their accuracy and reliability.
The efficiency of this measurement process, known as readout, relies on the strength of the coupling between photons, which are particles of light that carry quantum information, and artificial atoms, units of matter that are often used to store information in a quantum computer.
Now, MIT researchers have demonstrated what they believe is the strongest nonlinear light-matter coupling ever achieved in a quantum system. Their experiment is a step toward realizing quantum operations and readout that could be performed in a few nanoseconds.
The researchers used a novel superconducting circuit architecture to show nonlinear light-matter coupling that is about an order of magnitude stronger than prior demonstrations, which could enable a quantum processor to run about 10 times faster.
There is still much work to be done before the architecture could be used in a real quantum computer, but demonstrating the fundamental physics behind the process is a major step in the right direction, says Yufeng “Bright” Ye SM ’20, PhD ’24, lead author of a paper on this research.
“This would really eliminate one of the bottlenecks in quantum computing. Usually, you have to measure the results of your computations in between rounds of error correction. This could accelerate how quickly we can reach the fault-tolerant quantum computing stage and be able to get real-world applications and value out of our quantum computers,” says Ye.
He is joined on the paper by senior author Kevin O’Brien, an associate professor and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT who leads the Quantum Coherent Electronics Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), as well as others at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Harvard University. The research appears today in Nature Communications.
A new coupler
This physical demonstration builds on years of theoretical research in the O’Brien group.
After Ye joined the lab as a PhD student in 2019, he began developing a specialized photon detector to enhance quantum information processing.
Through that work, he invented a new type of quantum coupler, which is a device that facilitates interactions between qubits. Qubits are the building blocks of a quantum computer. This so-called quarton coupler had so many potential applications in quantum operations and readout that it quickly became a focus of the lab.
This quarton coupler is a special type of superconducting circuit that has the potential to generate extremely strong nonlinear coupling, which is essential for running most quantum algorithms. As the researchers feed more current into the coupler, it creates an even stronger nonlinear interaction. In this sense, nonlinearity means a system behaves in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts, exhibiting more complex properties.
“Most of the useful interactions in quantum computing come from nonlinear coupling of light and matter. If you can get a more versatile range of different types of coupling, and increase the coupling strength, then you can essentially increase the processing speed of the quantum computer,” Ye explains.
For quantum readout, researchers shine microwave light onto a qubit and then, depending on whether that qubit is in state 0 or 1, there is a frequency shift on its associated readout resonator. They measure this shift to determine the qubit’s state.
Nonlinear light-matter coupling between the qubit and resonator enables this measurement process.
The MIT researchers designed an architecture with a quarton coupler connected to two superconducting qubits on a chip. They turn one qubit into a resonator and use the other qubit as an artificial atom which stores quantum information. This information is transferred in the form of microwave light particles called photons.
“The interaction between these superconducting artificial atoms and the microwave light that routes the signal is basically how an entire superconducting quantum computer is built,” Ye explains.
Enabling faster readout
The quarton coupler creates nonlinear light-matter coupling between the qubit and resonator that’s about an order of magnitude stronger than researchers had achieved before. This could enable a quantum system with lightning-fast readout.
“This work is not the end of the story. This is the fundamental physics demonstration, but there is work going on in the group now to realize really fast readout,” O’Brien says.
That would involve adding additional electronic components, such as filters, to produce a readout circuit that could be incorporated into a larger quantum system.
The researchers also demonstrated extremely strong matter-matter coupling, another type of qubit interaction that is important for quantum operations. This is another area they plan to explore with future work.
Fast operations and readout are especially important for quantum computers because qubits have finite lifespans, a concept known as coherence time.
Stronger nonlinear coupling enables a quantum processor to run faster and with lower error, so the qubits can perform more operations in the same amount of time. This means the qubits can run more rounds of error correction during their lifespans.
“The more runs of error correction you can get in, the lower the error will be in the results,” Ye says.
In the long run, this work could help scientists build a fault-tolerant quantum computer, which is essential for practical, large-scale quantum computation.
This research was supported, in part, by the Army Research Office, the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, and the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering.
Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster readout and operations using qubits, which are the fundamental units of information in quantum computing.
Newly published results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Japan among more than 170 children aged 1 to 6 who underwent surgery show that by using electroencephalogram (EEG) readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain each patient’s anesthetized state. On average, the little patients experienced significant improvements in several post-operative outcomes, includi
Newly published results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Japan among more than 170 children aged 1 to 6 who underwent surgery show that by using electroencephalogram (EEG) readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain each patient’s anesthetized state. On average, the little patients experienced significant improvements in several post-operative outcomes, including quicker recovery and reduced incidence of delirium.
“I think the main takeaway is that in kids, using the EEG, we can reduce the amount of anesthesia we give them and maintain the same level of unconsciousness,” says study co-author Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The study appeared April 21 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Yasuko Nagasaka, chair of anesthesiology at Tokyo Women’s Medical University and a former colleague of Brown’s in the United States, designed the study. She asked Brown to train and advise lead author Kiyoyuki Miyasaka of St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo on how to use EEG to monitor unconsciousness and adjust anesthesia dosing in children. Miyasaka then served as the anesthesiologist for all patients in the trial. Attending anesthesiologists not involved in the study were always on hand to supervise.
Brown’s research in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT has shown that a person’s level of consciousness under any particular anesthetic drug is discernible from patterns of their brain waves. Each child’s brain waves were measured with EEG, but in the control group Miyasaka adhered to standard anesthesia dosing protocols while in the experimental group he used the EEG measures as a guide for dosing. The results show that when he used EEG, he was able to induce the desired level of unconsciousness with a concentration of 2 percent sevoflurane gas, rather than the standard 5 percent. Maintenance of unconsciousness, meanwhile, only turned out to require 0.9 percent concentration, rather than the standard 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, a separate researcher, blinded to whether EEG or standard protocols were used, assessed the kids for “pediatric anesthesia emergence delirium” (PAED), in which children sometimes wake up from anesthesia with a set of side effects including lack of eye contact, inconsolability, unawareness of surroundings, restlessness, and non-purposeful movements. Children who received standard anesthesia dosing met the threshold for PAED in 35 percent of cases (30 out of 86), while children who received EEG-guided dosing met the threshold in 21 percent of cases (19 out of 91). The difference of 14 percentage points was statistically significant.
Meanwhile, the authors reported that, on average, EEG-guided patients had breathing tubes removed 3.3 minutes earlier, emerged from anesthesia 21.4 minutes earlier, and were discharged from post-acute care 16.5 minutes earlier than patients who received anesthesia according to the standard protocol. All of these differences were statistically significant. Also, no child in the study ever became aware during surgery.
The authors noted that the quicker recovery among patients who received EEG-guided anesthesia was not only better medically, but also reduced health-care costs. Time in post-acute care in the United States costs about $46 a minute, so the average reduced time of 16.5 minutes would save about $750 per case. Sevoflurane is also a potent greenhouse gas, Brown notes, so reducing its use is better for the environment.
In the study, the authors also present comparisons of the EEG recordings from children in the control and experimental groups. There are notable differences in the “spectrograms” that charted the power of individual brain wave frequencies both as children were undergoing surgery and while they were approaching emergence from anesthesia, Brown says.
For instance, among children who received EEG-guided dosing, there are well-defined bands of high power at about 1-3 Hertz and 10-12 Hz. In children who received standard protocol dosing, the entire range of frequencies up to about 15 Hz are at high power. In another example, children who experienced PAED showed higher power at several frequencies up to 30Hz than children who did not experience PAED.
The findings further validate the idea that monitoring brain waves during surgery can provide anesthesiologists with actionable guidance to improve patient care, Brown says. Training in reading EEGs and guiding dosing can readily be integrated in the continuing medical education practices of hospitals, he adds.
In addition to Miyasuka, Brown, and Nagasaka, Yasuyuki Suzuki is a study co-author.
Funding sources for the study include the MIT-Massachusetts General Brigham Brain Arousal State Control Innovation Center, the Freedom Together Foundation, and the Picower Institute.
Emery Brown, seen in his MIT Building 46 office at The Picower Institute, is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
Newly published results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Japan among more than 170 children aged 1 to 6 who underwent surgery show that by using electroencephalogram (EEG) readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain each patient’s anesthetized state. On average, the little patients experienced significant improvements in several post-operative outcomes, includi
Newly published results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Japan among more than 170 children aged 1 to 6 who underwent surgery show that by using electroencephalogram (EEG) readings of brain waves to monitor unconsciousness, an anesthesiologist can significantly reduce the amount of the anesthesia administered to safely induce and sustain each patient’s anesthetized state. On average, the little patients experienced significant improvements in several post-operative outcomes, including quicker recovery and reduced incidence of delirium.
“I think the main takeaway is that in kids, using the EEG, we can reduce the amount of anesthesia we give them and maintain the same level of unconsciousness,” says study co-author Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School. The study appeared April 21 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Yasuko Nagasaka, chair of anesthesiology at Tokyo Women’s Medical University and a former colleague of Brown’s in the United States, designed the study. She asked Brown to train and advise lead author Kiyoyuki Miyasaka of St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo on how to use EEG to monitor unconsciousness and adjust anesthesia dosing in children. Miyasaka then served as the anesthesiologist for all patients in the trial. Attending anesthesiologists not involved in the study were always on hand to supervise.
Brown’s research in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT has shown that a person’s level of consciousness under any particular anesthetic drug is discernible from patterns of their brain waves. Each child’s brain waves were measured with EEG, but in the control group Miyasaka adhered to standard anesthesia dosing protocols while in the experimental group he used the EEG measures as a guide for dosing. The results show that when he used EEG, he was able to induce the desired level of unconsciousness with a concentration of 2 percent sevoflurane gas, rather than the standard 5 percent. Maintenance of unconsciousness, meanwhile, only turned out to require 0.9 percent concentration, rather than the standard 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, a separate researcher, blinded to whether EEG or standard protocols were used, assessed the kids for “pediatric anesthesia emergence delirium” (PAED), in which children sometimes wake up from anesthesia with a set of side effects including lack of eye contact, inconsolability, unawareness of surroundings, restlessness, and non-purposeful movements. Children who received standard anesthesia dosing met the threshold for PAED in 35 percent of cases (30 out of 86), while children who received EEG-guided dosing met the threshold in 21 percent of cases (19 out of 91). The difference of 14 percentage points was statistically significant.
Meanwhile, the authors reported that, on average, EEG-guided patients had breathing tubes removed 3.3 minutes earlier, emerged from anesthesia 21.4 minutes earlier, and were discharged from post-acute care 16.5 minutes earlier than patients who received anesthesia according to the standard protocol. All of these differences were statistically significant. Also, no child in the study ever became aware during surgery.
The authors noted that the quicker recovery among patients who received EEG-guided anesthesia was not only better medically, but also reduced health-care costs. Time in post-acute care in the United States costs about $46 a minute, so the average reduced time of 16.5 minutes would save about $750 per case. Sevoflurane is also a potent greenhouse gas, Brown notes, so reducing its use is better for the environment.
In the study, the authors also present comparisons of the EEG recordings from children in the control and experimental groups. There are notable differences in the “spectrograms” that charted the power of individual brain wave frequencies both as children were undergoing surgery and while they were approaching emergence from anesthesia, Brown says.
For instance, among children who received EEG-guided dosing, there are well-defined bands of high power at about 1-3 Hertz and 10-12 Hz. In children who received standard protocol dosing, the entire range of frequencies up to about 15 Hz are at high power. In another example, children who experienced PAED showed higher power at several frequencies up to 30Hz than children who did not experience PAED.
The findings further validate the idea that monitoring brain waves during surgery can provide anesthesiologists with actionable guidance to improve patient care, Brown says. Training in reading EEGs and guiding dosing can readily be integrated in the continuing medical education practices of hospitals, he adds.
In addition to Miyasuka, Brown, and Nagasaka, Yasuyuki Suzuki is a study co-author.
Funding sources for the study include the MIT-Massachusetts General Brigham Brain Arousal State Control Innovation Center, the Freedom Together Foundation, and the Picower Institute.
Emery Brown, seen in his MIT Building 46 office at The Picower Institute, is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor at Harvard Medical School.
For more than 30 years, Course 7 (Biology) students have descended to the expansive, windowless basement of Building 68 to learn practical skills that are the centerpiece of undergraduate biology education at the Institute. The lines of benches and cabinets of supplies that make up the underground MIT Biology Teaching Lab could easily feel dark and isolated. In the corner of this room, however, sits Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02, who manages to make the space seem sunny and comm
For more than 30 years, Course 7 (Biology) students have descended to the expansive, windowless basement of Building 68 to learn practical skills that are the centerpiece of undergraduate biology education at the Institute. The lines of benches and cabinets of supplies that make up the underground MIT Biology Teaching Lab could easily feel dark and isolated.
In the corner of this room, however, sits Senior Technical Instructor Vanessa Cheung ’02, who manages to make the space seem sunny and communal.
“We joke that we could rig up a system of mirrors to get just enough daylight to bounce down from the stairwell,” Cheung says with a laugh. “It is a basement, but I am very lucky to have this teaching lab space. It is huge and has everything we need.”
Cheung’s love for biology can be traced back to her high school cross country and track coach, who also served as her second-year biology teacher. The sport and the fundamental biological processes she was learning about in the classroom were, in fact, closely intertwined.
“He told us about how things like ATP [adenosine triphosphate] and the energy cycle would affect our running,” she says. “Being able to see that connection really helped my interest in the subject.”
That inspiration carried her through a move from her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to pursue an undergraduate degree at MIT, and through her thesis work to earn a PhD in genetics at Harvard Medical School. She didn’t leave running behind either: To this day, she can often be found on the Charles River Esplanade, training for her next marathon.
She discovered her love of teaching during her PhD program. She enjoyed guiding students so much that she spent an extra semester as a teaching assistant, outside of the one required for her program.
“I love research, but I also really love telling people about research,” Cheung says.
Cheung herself describes lab instruction as the “best of both worlds,” enabling her to pursue her love of teaching while spending every day at the bench, doing experiments. She emphasizes for students the importance of being able not just to do the hands-on technical lab work, but also to understand the theory behind it.
“The students can tend to get hung up on the physical doing of things — they are really concerned when their experiments don’t work,” she says. “We focus on teaching students how to think about being in a lab — how to design an experiment and how to analyze the data.”
Although her talent for teaching and passion for science led her to the role, Cheung doesn’t hesitate to identify the students as her favorite part of the job.
“It sounds cheesy, but they really do keep the job very exciting,” she says.
Using mind and hand in the lab
Cheung is the type of person who lights up when describing how much she “loves working with yeast.”
“I always tell the students that maybe no one cares about yeast except me and like three other people in the world, but it is a model organism that we can use to apply what we learn to humans,” Cheung explains.
Though mastering basic lab skills can make hands-on laboratory courses feel “a bit cookbook,” Cheung is able to get the students excited with her enthusiasm and clever curriculum design.
“The students like things where they can get their own unique results, and things where they have a little bit of freedom to design their own experiments,” she says. So, the lab curriculum incorporates opportunities for students to do things like identify their own unique yeast mutants and design their own questions to test in a chemical engineering module.
Part of what makes theory as critical as technique is that new tools and discoveries are made frequently in biology, especially at MIT. For example, there has been a shift from a focus on RNAi to CRISPR as a popular lab technique in recent years, and Cheung muses that CRISPR itself may be overshadowed within only a few more years — keeping students learning at the cutting edge of biology is always on Cheung’s mind.
“Vanessa is the heart, soul, and mind of the biology lab courses here at MIT, embodying ‘mens et manus’ [‘mind and hand’],” says technical lab instructor and Biology Teaching Lab Manager Anthony Fuccione.
Support for all students
Cheung’s ability to mentor and guide students earned her a School of Science Dean’s Education and Advising Award in 2012, but her focus isn’t solely on MIT undergraduate students.
In fact, according to Cheung, the earlier students can be exposed to science, the better. In addition to her regular duties, Cheung also designs curriculum and teaches in the LEAH Knox Scholars Program. The two-year program provides lab experience and mentorship for low-income Boston- and Cambridge-area high school students.
Paloma Sanchez-Jauregui, outreach programs coordinator who works with Cheung on the program, says Cheung has a standout “growth mindset” that students really appreciate.
“Vanessa teaches students that challenges — like unexpected PCR results — are part of the learning process,” Sanchez-Jauregui says. “Students feel comfortable approaching her for help troubleshooting experiments or exploring new topics.”
Cheung’s colleagues report that they admire not only her talents, but also her focus on supporting those around her. Technical Instructor and colleague Eric Chu says Cheung “offers a lot of help to me and others, including those outside of the department, but does not expect reciprocity.”
Professor of biology and co-director of the Department of Biology undergraduate program Adam Martin says he “rarely has to worry about what is going on in the teaching lab.” According to Martin, Cheung is ”flexible, hard-working, dedicated, and resilient, all while being kind and supportive to our students. She is a joy to work with.”
Vanessa Cheung discovered a love of teaching during her PhD thesis work and spent an extra semester as a teaching assistant, outside of the one required for her program.
Campus & Community
Garber announces new initiatives to fight antisemitism, anti-Israeli bias
Co-chairs for the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Jared Ellias (left) and Derek Penslar.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Julie McDonough
Harvard Staff
April 29, 2025
long read
Actions come as task force releases full report
Harvard University will b
Garber announces new initiatives to fight antisemitism, anti-Israeli bias
Co-chairs for the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Jared Ellias (left) and Derek Penslar.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Julie McDonough
Harvard Staff
long read
Actions come as task force releases full report
Harvard University will build upon its previous work, as well as launch new initiatives and actions, to combat antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, President Alan M. Garber announced on Tuesday. The actions laid out by Garber come in conjunction with the release of the final report and recommendations from the Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.
In his community message, Garber thanked the members of the task force “for pursuing their work with a spirit of openness, empathy, and compassion during a period of unrest within our community,” noting that their report is “the product of strenuous, prolonged efforts by some of the most generous and dedicated citizens of our University.”
The actions announced by Garber focus on three main areas: nurturing a widespread sense of belonging and promoting respectful dialogue; revising and implementing policies, procedures, and training; and strengthening academic and residential life. Building upon work the University has done over the last 15 months, the new actions include launching a major initiative to promote viewpoint diversity; dedicating resources to the creation of a research project focused on antisemitism; further review of disciplinary policies and procedures to assess their effectiveness and efficiency; and the expansion of resources to directly support students who experience antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.
Harvard’s Schools are actively reviewing task force recommendations concerning admissions, appointments, curriculum, and orientation and training programs, including those organized by recognized student groups. Deans will work to strengthen existing academic review processes for courses and curricula to ensure that they uphold the highest standards of academic excellence and intellectual rigor. Action plans designed for the College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and each professional School will be shared with the president’s office by the end of the spring term.
“The scope of recommendations made by both task forces underscores the breadth of the challenges we face. They must be addressed with determination at every level of the University by effectively tackling issues that arise where our students congregate or live; ensuring that expectations for both students and teachers in the classroom are clearly communicated and met; nurturing vibrant debate and open speech in ways that encourage everyone to express their ideas freely; preserving the right to protest and dissent while avoiding disruption, harassment, and threats; and, when our policies are violated, ensuring that our disciplinary processes are fair, consistent, and effective. If we intend to make significant and durable change across Harvard, it is critical that we act decisively in each of these areas,” Garber wrote in his message.
The release of the task force’s report and recommendations caps off an effort that began in spring 2024 to document the experiences of Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, and staff on campus.
Through a series of listening sessions, as well as an online survey last spring and summer, the task force gathered extensive feedback from students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Members were not charged with investigating the reports they heard, though participants were advised of University policies under which they could file formal complaints. Stories are described in the report as they were heard. The task force also completed a comprehensive historical analysis of the Jewish experience at Harvard from the 1920s to present.
The report includes findings and a set of recommendations designed to address antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias across the University. By reviewing concerns about select courses, events, and programs, the report also identifies specific areas where the task force feels the University can improve its approach to teaching about Israel and Palestine and to ensuring that all students feel free to express their opinions without fear or reservation.
Research and findings
The task force, whose members were appointed in late February 2024, began their work by hosting in March and April 2024 a series of listening sessions with students, staff, and faculty. Nearly 50 sessions were held with about 500 participants. Following the listening sessions, the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias joined with the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias in jointly issuing a University-wide survey.
From those who attended the listening sessions, several themes emerged related to the Jewish and Israeli experience on campus. Most notable was the deterioration of the campus climate after the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Jewish students in general, and those who identify as Zionist in particular, felt that the climate had become less welcoming, even leading some to conceal their religious identity. Feelings of rejection and marginalization were common among Israeli students.
“The listening sessions provided a window into the real-time experience of Jewish students on campus, both inside the classroom and within the larger campus community,” said Jared Ellias, task force co-chair and the Scott C. Collins Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. “While specific incidents of antisemitism are of significant concern, there is also this larger issue of Jewish students feeling less of a sense of belonging at Harvard and less comfortable expressing their true selves and true identities.
The task force further explored programs, events, and courses at specific Schools that were perceived to be unbalanced in their approach to Israel and Palestine. In the report, task force members signal concern about these offerings and whether they are consistent with Harvard’s standards for excellence and academic integrity. The authors also argue that perceived bias in academic settings directly impacts the sense of belonging Jewish and Israeli students feel on campus.
The online survey of the Harvard community indicated that, across nearly every category, Jewish student respondents reported greater levels of discomfort and alienation than their Christian or atheist/agnostic peers. Though the number of individuals responding to the survey was not as high as similar University-wide surveys, the data allowed for a meaningful examination of the differences in responses by subgroup. Of the 2,295 respondents, 477 identified as Jewish. Jewish student respondents reported higher levels of concern about their physical and mental safety. They were also more likely to feel uncomfortable expressing their opinions and, in particular, their political opinions.
“Harvard makes a point of recruiting amazing students, staff, and faculty from all over the country and the world, and our work suggests that at some point in the recent past we stopped looking for ways to connect with one another as Harvard community members and started focusing on the issues that divide us,” Ellias said. “All the faculty on the task force were very surprised at how much student life had changed since we were college students.”
Many student respondents expressed concern about the University’s response to incidents of bias and were critical of both policies and the timeliness of responses. These concerns and experiences were exacerbated by what they saw from their classmates and, in some cases, teachers, on social media, which often served to amplify hostility and hateful rhetoric.
In addition to the qualitative and quantitative findings, the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias conducted a historical analysis of the Jewish experience at Harvard. This experience, the authors say, has been shaped by both the number of Jewish students on campus and the influence of world events on dialogue, discussion, and activism. The report finds the decline of respectful engagement regarding Israel and Palestine to be deeply troublesome and a significant contributing factor to the current campus climate.
“The historical analysis provided us with a unique lens into how the Jewish experience at Harvard has changed over time,” said Derek Penslar, co-chair of the task force and the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “It is clear that world events have often influenced campus events and activities. However, it also became clear that civil discourse on the issue of Israel and Palestine has declined over time, signaling to the faculty that we must help our students learn to engage with each other in respectful ways even when we disagree.”
Final recommendations
In June 2024, the task force issued a set of preliminary recommendations that identified near-term opportunities to address areas of concern prior to the 2024-25 academic year. Those recommendations asked leadership to clarify University values; act against discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate; improve student disciplinary processes; implement antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias education and training; foster constructive dialogue; and support Jewish life on campus.
The University rolled out a series of changes, including new campus and protest rules; centralized fact-finding in discipline cases across Schools; new training opportunities for faculty, staff, and students on identifying and preventing antisemitism; and new initiatives in the Schools for constructive dialogue and disagreement across differences.
In the final report, the task force has expanded upon these preliminary recommendations. The final recommendations fall into the following categories:
Admissions and early student experiences: The task force recommends a focus on attracting and admitting students who are eager to contribute to a learning community that is grounded in open inquiry and mutual respect. The report adds that once on campus, the University should ensure that these values and aspirations are emphasized in early student experiences.
Academics and academic offerings: The task force calls for the University to strive to ensure a classroom experience that is free from antisemitism, anti-Israeli bias, and all forms of discrimination. Moreover, the report recommends that the University’s academic offerings should include significantly more plentiful and diverse opportunities for the study of Jewish civilization, antisemitism and the Holocaust, Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Co-curricular activities and residential life and pluralism: The task force recommends providing student organizations with support and guidance to ensure that their activities do not have antisemitic or anti-Israeli impacts, so that their activities enhance the Harvard learning community. According to the task force, this recommendation goes hand in hand with building a pluralistic community in which students can express diverse opinions and viewpoints.
Religious life: The task force recommends steps to strengthen religious life on campus, better supporting Jewish students and students of all faiths.
Administrative infrastructure and complaint mechanisms: The task force recommends a robust administrative infrastructure to support and coordinate efforts. This recommendation includes efforts to strengthen complaint mechanisms and to develop equitable disciplinary procedures across Schools.
Oversight: The task force calls for changes related to governance issues to strengthen ladder faculty oversight of educational programs and instructor training across Schools.
Read the full report of the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, as well as President Garber’s message about the new University action plan and more information on the action steps Harvard has taken to respond to the concerns, information, and recommendations shared by the task force.
Campus & Community
Garber announces new steps to combat bias against Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians
Co-chairs for the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias Wafaie Fawzi (left) and Asim Ijaz Khwaja.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Julie McDonough
Harvard Staff
April 29, 2025
long read
Moves come amid release of final report from task force
In his community message, Garber thanked the members of the task force “for pursuing their work with a spirit of openness, empathy, and compassion during a period of unrest within our community,” noting that their report is “the product of strenuous, prolonged efforts by some of the most generous and dedicated citizens of our University.”
The actions Garber announced focus on three main areas: nurturing a widespread sense of belonging and promoting respectful dialogue; revising and implementing policies, procedures, and training; and strengthening academic and residential life. Building upon work the University has done over the last 15 months, the new actions include launching a major initiative to promote viewpoint diversity; undertaking a comprehensive historical overview of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at the University; and further review of disciplinary policies and procedures to assess their effectiveness in ensuring that every member of the community feels supported.
Harvard’s Schools are actively reviewing task force recommendations concerning admissions, appointments, curriculum, and orientation and training programs, including those organized by recognized student groups. Deans will work to strengthen existing academic review processes for courses and curricula to ensure they uphold the highest standards of academic excellence and intellectual rigor. Action plans designed for the College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and each professional school will be shared with the president’s office by the end of the spring term.
“The scope of recommendations made by both task forces underscores the breadth of the challenges we face. They must be addressed with determination at every level of the University by effectively tackling issues that arise where our students congregate or live; ensuring that expectations for both students and teachers in the classroom are clearly communicated and met; nurturing vibrant debate and open speech in ways that encourage everyone to express their ideas freely; preserving the right to protest and dissent while avoiding disruption, harassment, and threats; and, when our policies are violated, ensuring that our disciplinary processes are fair, consistent, and effective. If we intend to make significant and durable change across Harvard, it is critical that we act decisively in each of these areas,” Garber wrote in his message.
Last spring and summer, the task force gathered feedback from students, faculty, staff, and alumni through a series of listening sessions and a joint task force survey. In addition, the task force explored how salient events at the University over the past year and key world events over the last several decades impacted the campus climate.
The final report includes findings and a set of recommendations designed to address feelings of abandonment and silencing described by many Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian members of the Harvard community, especially following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and their aftermath. Through a review of the concerns raised by community members, the report outlines how the University can improve safety and anti-discrimination policies, uphold free expression and open inquiry inside and outside of the classroom, rebuild institutional trust through an emphasis on equal access and transparency, expand faculty and academic offerings that provide a more comprehensive and representative view of the histories, beliefs, and cultures of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians, and related topics.
Research and findings
Task force members were appointed in late February 2024 and began their work in early April 2024, hosting a series of listening sessions with students, staff, and faculty. Nearly 50 sessions were held with an estimated 500 participants. Following the sessions, the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias joined with the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias in issuing a University-wide survey that garnered 2,295 responses. The task force was not charged with investigating reports, but participants were advised of University policies under which they could file formal complaints. Stories were described in the report as they were heard.
From those who attended the gatherings, five themes emerged: descriptions of experiences of discrimination and hate against Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian members of the Harvard community; dissatisfaction with institutional response to incidents of bias and hate; growing divisions, self-censorship, and alienation within the community; concerns about educational experience and a desire for a more inclusive curriculum reflecting global complexities; and calls for divestment as a means for Harvard to address ethical concerns regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In addition to describing these themes, the report also notes that the history of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at Harvard reflects a complex and evolving narrative. It starts with a limited presence on campus in the 17th and 18th centuries confined mostly to theological studies. It was followed in the 20th and 21st centuries by a period of increasing Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian diversity among students and activism fueled by global events such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout this latter period, and due to events like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians reported facing marginalization, discrimination, misrepresentation, and silencing. According to the report, these issues continue today and now affect an even wider set of community members.
The survey also highlighted significant disparities in feelings of safety, belonging, and freedom of expression across religious and racial lines. The data included responses from individuals who self-identified as Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and atheist/agnostic/spiritual. Though the number of individuals responding to the survey was not as high as similar University-wide surveys, the data allow for a meaningful examination of the differences in responses by subgroup. Respondents who described themselves as Muslim and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) reported some of the worst outcomes on various measures of safety and belonging and freedom of expression: 47 percent of Muslims and 35 percent of MENA respondents felt physically unsafe on campus, and 92 percent of Muslims and 83 percent of MENA respondents felt there were academic/professional penalties for expressing political views. In examining contributing factors, respondents indicated that interactions within the Harvard community with faculty and peers were largely positive, whereas interactions with outside influences were generally perceived negatively.
“The listening sessions, combined with the University-wide survey, brought to light so much of the pain, struggle, and fear that those in the community here at Harvard were experiencing,” said Asim Ijaz Khwaja, task force co-chair and Sumitomo-Foundation of Advanced Studies in International Development Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. “It is critical that we document the experiences and biases faced by Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian members of our community through regular and systematic data gathering and analysis. This will enable us to better understand and address their concerns.”
Final recommendations
Following the review of qualitative findings last spring, the task force provided preliminary recommendations to President Garber in June 2024, which identified urgent issues the task force believed should be addressed prior to the start of the next academic year. Those recommendations included actions related to safety and security, recognition and representation, institutional response, freedom of expression, transparency and trust, relationships among affinity groups, and intellectual excellence. The University pursued a series of changes including new campus and protest rules, centralized fact-finding in discipline cases across Schools, new training opportunities for faculty, staff, and students on identifying and preventing anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian biases, and new initiatives at Harvard’s Schools for constructive dialogue and disagreement across differences.
In the final report, the task force expanded upon these preliminary recommendations and proposed additional ones.
“These recommendations align with Harvard’s academic mission by prioritizing the safety and security of our students, faculty, and staff, and aiming to ensure their full participation in the pursuit of knowledge while guaranteeing that all voices are heard and respected,” said Wafaie Fawzi, task force co-chair, Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences, and professor of Nutrition, Epidemiology, and Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “The University can support this mission by ensuring the institutional supports are in place — policies, procedures, and protocols — but also by providing opportunities for our community within and across affinity groups to come together and engage with each other.”
A summary of the final recommendations includes:
Safety and security concerns: The task force recommends continuing to address issues in this area expressed by Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Pro-Palestinian students, staff, and faculty. This includes both those involving physical and mental health. The recomendations include investing in culturally competent mental health support, offering comprehensive resources and training to combat doxxing, and formally defining instances of Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias within University policies.
Recognition and representation: The report recommends establishing a standing advisory committee of faculty and specialists well-versed in areas pertinent to Middle Eastern history to guide policy, programming, and University responses. It further calls for providing regular and ongoing in-person training for stakeholders and actively supporting programming on key community issues to enhance civil discourse and intellectual vitality within the University. The task force also recommends undertaking a comprehensive historical overview of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at Harvard to address bias and promote inclusivity on campus.
Institutional response: The task force calls for adopting clearly communicated, user-friendly, and transparent processes for bias incident complaints and anti-discrimination and anti-bullying procedures. The report also suggests establishing support roles to help manage and guide complainants through these protocols.
Freedom of expression: The task force recommends not only adopting policies to protect open academic inquiry, constructive dialogue, and active demonstrations of freedom of expression, but also proactively encouraging and supporting these efforts and providing safe spaces to exercise them. According to the report, clear and transparent policies should exist to manage protest and counterprotest activities, and it should be clearly communicated that the University celebrates community members exercising free speech, provided they respect time, place, and manner restrictions.
Transparency and trust: The task force recommends developing a shared policy framework adaptable by individual Schools, ensuring consistent understanding and flexible application across the University while recognizing the need for School-specific variations. The report suggests a unified communications strategy for these and related policies should be developed. In addition, the task force states that greater transparency and disclosure is needed on issues raised by some community members, such as divestment and greater engagement in the Middle East, including supporting Palestinian and other universities in the region and facilitating exchanges.
Relationships among affinity groups: To strengthen relationships between and within the community at Harvard, the task force recommends creating dedicated permanent spaces and programming that can address the diverse needs of the Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian community. To facilitate community relationships, both task forces call for a central hub for pluralism efforts. In addition, the report proposes a University-wide Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life to bolster multifaith work. As envisioned by the task force, these efforts would connect pluralism and multifaith practices across disciplines and enhance programs like interfaith collaborations and cultural events.
Intellectual excellence: As core to the mission of Harvard University, the task force emphasizes the need to enhance the intellectual experience on campus. The report suggests this could include expanding academic offerings by recruiting faculty and increasing courses on Palestinian studies and Arabic language, designing experiential learning programs to address issues like antisemitism and anti-Palestinian biases, and engaging in more University-wide dialogues on crisis issues, alongside existing campus efforts to model respectful dialogue. The task force also calls for leveraging regular surveys, like the Pulse survey, as well as building the capacity to collate and analyze administrative data to monitor community well-being and address key issues on an ongoing basis.
The full report of the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias can be found here, as well President Garber’s message about the new University action plan, and more information on the action steps Harvard has taken to date to respond to the concerns, information, and recommendations shared by the task force.
The ocean’s deep-sea bed is scattered with ancient rocks, each about the size of a closed fist, called “polymetallic nodules.” Elsewhere, along active and inactive hydrothermal vents and the deep ocean’s ridges, volcanic arcs, and tectonic plate boundaries, and on the flanks of seamounts, lie other types of mineral-rich deposits containing high-demand minerals.The minerals found in the deep ocean are used to manufacture products like the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, cel
The ocean’s deep-sea bed is scattered with ancient rocks, each about the size of a closed fist, called “polymetallic nodules.” Elsewhere, along active and inactive hydrothermal vents and the deep ocean’s ridges, volcanic arcs, and tectonic plate boundaries, and on the flanks of seamounts, lie other types of mineral-rich deposits containing high-demand minerals.
The minerals found in the deep ocean are used to manufacture products like the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, cell phones, or solar cells. In some cases, the estimated resources of critical mineral deposits in parts of the abyssal ocean exceed global land-based reserves severalfold.
“Society wants electric-powered vehicles, solar cells for clean energy, but all of this requires resources,” says Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, in a video discussing his research. “Land-based resources are getting depleted, or are more challenging to access. In parts of the ocean, there are much more of these resources than in land-based reserve. The question is: Can it be less impactful to mine some of these resources from the ocean, rather than from land?”
Deep-sea mining is a new frontier in mineral extraction, with potentially significant implications for industry and the global economy, and important environmental and societal considerations. Through research, scientists like Peacock study the impacts of deep-sea mining activity objectively and rigorously, and can bring evidence to bear on decision-making.
Mining activities, whether on land or at sea, can have significant impacts on the environment at local, regional, and global scales. As interest in deep-seabed mining is increasing, driven by the surging demand for critical minerals, scientific inquiries help illuminate the trade-offs.
Peacock has long studied the potential impacts of deep-sea mining in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), where polymetallic nodules abound. A decade ago, his research group began studying deep-sea mining, seeing a critical need to develop monitoring and modeling capabilities for assessing the scale of impact.
Today, his MIT Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab) is at the forefront of advancing understanding for emerging ocean utilization technologies. With research anchored in fundamental fluid dynamics, the team is developing cutting-edge monitoring programs, novel sensors, and modeling tools.
“We are studying the form of suspended sediment from deep sea mining operations, testing a new sensor for sediment and another new sensor for turbulence, studying the initial phases of the sediment plume development, and analyzing data from the 2021 and 2022 technology trials in the Pacific Ocean,” he explains.
In deep-sea nodule mining, vehicles collect nodules from the ocean floor and convey them back to a vessel above. After the critical materials are collected on the vessel, some leftover sediment may be returned to the deep-water column. The resulting sediment plumes, and their potential impacts, are a key focus of the team’s work.
A 2022 study conducted in the CCZ investigated the dynamics of sediment plumes near a deep-seabed polymetallic nodule mining vehicle. The experiments reveal most of the released sediment-laden water, between 92 and 98 percent, stayed close to the sea-bed floor, spreading laterally. The results suggest that turbidity current dynamics set the fraction of sediment that remains suspended in the water, along with the scale of the subsequent ambient sediment plume. The implications of the process, which had been previously overlooked, are substantial for plume modeling and informative for environmental impact statements.
“New model breakthroughs can help us make increasingly trustworthy predictions,” he says. The team also contributed to a recent study, published in the journal Nature, which showed that sediment deposited away from a test mining site gets cleared away, most likely by ocean currents, and reported on any observed biological recovery.
Researchers observed a site four decades after a nodule test mining experiment. Although biological impacts in many groups of organisms were present, populations of several organisms, including sediment macrofauna, mobile deposit feeders, and even large-sized sessile fauna, had begun to reestablish despite persistent physical changes at the seafloor. The study was led by the National Oceanography Centre in the U.K.
“A great deal has been learned about the fluid mechanics of deep-sea mining, in particular when it comes to deep-sea mining sediment plumes,” says Peacock, adding that the scientific progress continues with more results on the way. The work is setting new standards for in-situ monitoring of suspended sediment properties, and for how to interpret field data from recent technical trials.
Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and his team in the Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab), are at the forefront of advancing understanding for emerging ocean utilization technologies.
Whether you are a person about town or a worm in a dish, life can throw all kinds of circumstances your way. What you need is a nervous system flexible enough to cope. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists show how even a simple animal can repurpose brain circuits and the chemical signals, or “neuromodulators,” in its brain to muster an adaptive response to an infection. The study therefore may provide a model for understanding how brains in more complex organisms, including ourselves, manage to u
Whether you are a person about town or a worm in a dish, life can throw all kinds of circumstances your way. What you need is a nervous system flexible enough to cope. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists show how even a simple animal can repurpose brain circuits and the chemical signals, or “neuromodulators,” in its brain to muster an adaptive response to an infection. The study therefore may provide a model for understanding how brains in more complex organisms, including ourselves, manage to use what they have to cope with shifting internal states.
“Neuromodulators play pivotal roles in coupling changes in animals’ internal states to their behavior,” the scientists write in their paper, recently published in Nature Communications. “How combinations of neuromodulators released from different neuronal sources control the diverse internal states that animals exhibit remains an open question.”
When C. elegans worms fed on infectious Pseudomonas bacteria, they ate less and became more lethargic. When the researchers looked across the nervous system to see how that behavior happened, they discovered that the worm had completely revamped the roles of several of its 302 neurons and some of the peptides they secrete across the brain to modulate behavior. Systems that responded to stress in one case or satiety in another became reconfigured to cope with the infection.
“This is a question of, how do you adapt to your environment with the highest level of flexibility given the set of neurons and neuromodulators you have,” says postdoc Sreeparna Pradhan, co-lead author of the new study in Nature Communications. “How do you make the maximum set of options available to you?”
The research to find out took place in the lab of senior author Steve Flavell, an associate professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pradhan, who was supported by a fellowship from MIT’s K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center during the work, teamed up with former Flavell Lab graduate student Gurrein Madan to lead the research.
Pradhan says the team discovered several surprises in the course of the study, including that a neuropeptide called FLP-13 completely flipped its function in infected animals versus animals experiencing other forms of stress. Previous research had shown that when worms are stressed by heat, a neuron called ALA releases FLP-13 to cause the worms to go into quiescence, a sleep-like state. But when the worms in the new study ate Pseudomonas bacteria, a band of other neurons released FLP-13 to fight off quiescence, enabling the worms to survive longer. Meanwhile, ALA took on a completely different role during sickness: leading the charge to suppress feeding by emitting a different group of peptides.
A comprehensive approach
To understand how the worms responded to infection, the team tracked many features of the worms’ behavior for days and made genetic manipulations to probe the underlying mechanisms at play. They also recorded activity across the worms' whole brains. This kind of a comprehensive observation and experimentation is difficult to achieve in more complex animals, but C. elegans’ relative simplicity makes it a tractable testbed, Pradhan says. The team’s approach also is what allowed it to make so many unexpected findings.
For instance, Pradhan didn’t suspect that the ALA neuron would turn out to be the neuron that suppressed feeding, but when she observed their behavior for long enough, she started to realize the reduced feeding arose from the worms taking little breaks that they wouldn’t normally take. As she and Madan were manipulating more than a dozen genes they thought might be affecting behavior and feeding in the worm, she included another called ceh-17 that she had read about years ago that seemed to promote bouts of “microsleep” in the worms. When they knocked out ceh-17, they found that those worms didn’t reduce feeding when they got infected, unlike normal animals. It just so happens that ceh-17 is specifically needed for ALA to function properly, so that’s when the team realized ALA might be involved in the feeding-reduction behavior.
To know for sure, they then knocked out the various peptides that ALA releases and saw that when they knocked out three in particular, flp-24, nlp-8 and flp-7, infected worms didn’t exhibit reduced feeding upon infection. That clinched that ALA drives the reduced feeding behavior by emitting those three peptides.
Meanwhile, Pradhan and Madan’s screens also revealed that when infected worms were missing flp-13, they would go into a quiescence state much sooner than infected worms with the peptide available. Notably, the worms that fought off the quiescence state lived longer. They found that fighting off quiescence depended on the FLP-13 coming from four neurons (I5, I1, ASH and OLL), but not from ALA. Further experiments showed that FLP-13 acted on a widespread neuropeptide receptor called DMSR-1 to prevent quiescence.
Having a little nap
The last major surprise of the study was that the quiescence that Pseudomonas infection induces in worms is not the same as other forms of sleepiness that show up in other contexts, such as after satiety or heat stress. In those cases, worms don’t wake easily (with a little poke), but amid infection their quiescence was readily reversible. It seemed more like lethargy than sleep. Using the lab’s ability image all neural activity during behavior, Pradhan and Madan discerned that a neuron called ASI was particularly active during the bouts of lethargy. That observation solidified further when they showed that ASI’s secretion of the peptide DAF-7 was required for the quiescence to emerge in infected animals.
In all, the study showed that the worms repurpose and reconfigure — sometimes to the point of completely reversing — the functions of neurons and peptides to mount an adaptive response to infection, versus a different problem like stress. The results therefore shed light on what has been a tricky question to resolve. How do brains use their repertoire of cells, circuits, and neuromodulators to deal with what life hands them? At least part of the answer seems to be by reshuffling existing components, rather than creating unique ones for each situation.
“The states of stress, satiety, and infection are not induced by unique sets of neuromodulators," the authors wrote in their paper. "Instead, one larger set of neuromodulators may be deployed from different sources and in different combinations to specify these different internal states.”
In addition to Pradhan, Madan, and Flavell, the paper’s other authors are Di Kang, Eric Bueno, Adam Atanas, Talya Kramer, Ugur Dag, Jessica Lage, Matthew Gomes, Alicia Kun-Yang Lu, and Jungyeon Park.
Support for the research came from the the Picower Institute, the Freedom Together Foundation, the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center, and the Yang Tan Collective at MIT; the National Institutes of Health; the McKnight Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
For Mingmar Sherpa, a senior research support associate in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, community is more than just his colleagues in the lab, where he studies how mechanical forces affect cell division timing during embryogenesis. On his long and winding path to MIT, he never left behind the people he grew up among in Nepal. Sherpa has been dedicated, every step of his career — from rural Solukhumbu to Kathmandu to Alabama to Cambridge — to advancing education and health care am
For Mingmar Sherpa, a senior research support associate in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, community is more than just his colleagues in the lab, where he studies how mechanical forces affect cell division timing during embryogenesis. On his long and winding path to MIT, he never left behind the people he grew up among in Nepal. Sherpa has been dedicated, every step of his career — from rural Solukhumbu to Kathmandu to Alabama to Cambridge — to advancing education and health care among his people in any way he can.
Despite working more than 7,000 miles away from home, Mingmar Sherpa makes every effort to keep himself connected to his community in Nepal. Every month, for example, he sends home money to support a computer lab that he established in his hometown in rural Solukhumbu, the district of Nepal that houses Mount Everest — just $250 a month covers the costs of a teacher’s salary, electricity, internet, and a space to teach. In this lab, almost 250 students thus far have learned computer skills essential to working in today’s digitally driven world. In college, Sherpa also started The Bright Vision Foundation (The Bright Future), an organization to support health and education in Nepal, and during the pandemic raised funds to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and health care services across his home country.
While Sherpa’s ambition to help his home can be traced back to his childhood, he didn’t have it all figured out from the start, and found inspiration at each step of his career.
“This mindset of giving back to the community, helping policymakers or establishing an organization to help people do science, helping the scientific community to find cures for diseases — all these ideas came to me along the way,” Sherpa says. “It is the journey that matters.”
A journey driven by hope and optimism
“Sherpa” is a reference to the ethnic group native to the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, whose members are well-known for their mountaineering skills, which they use to guide and assist tourists who want to climb Mount Everest. Growing up in rural Solukhumbu, Sherpa was surrounded by people working in the tourism industry; few other occupations appeared feasible. There was just one hospital for the whole district, requiring locals to walk for days to get medical assistance.
The youngest of seven siblings, Sherpa went to an English-language middle school, which he had to walk for over an hour to get to. He excelled there, soon becoming the top student in his class and passing the national exam with distinction — success that allowed him to both dream of and accomplish a move to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, to study in the best school in the country.
It was an overwhelming transition, surrounded as he was for the first time by people from a very different social class, privileged with far more technological resources. The gaps between this well-equipped community and the one he left back home became increasingly obvious and left a strong impression on Sherpa.
There, he started thinking about how to use his newly acquired access to education and technology to uplift his community at home. He was especially fascinated by questions surrounding biology and human health, and next set his sights on attending college in the United States.
“If I came to the U.S., I could learn skills which I could not learn in Nepal,” he says. “I could prepare myself to solve the problems that I want to solve.”
At the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Sherpa continued to deepen his passion for biological science and joined a research lab. Through that work, he discovered the joys of basic research and the diverse set of skills it fosters.
“I joined the lab to learn science, but to do science, you need other skills, like research communication,” he says. “I was learning unintentionally from being in a research position.”
When Covid-19 spread around the globe, Sherpa wanted to apply the expertise and resources he had gained to help his people address the crisis. It was then that he started The Bright Vision Foundation, an organization aiming to raise the standards of health care and education in underserved communities in Nepal. Through the foundation, he raised funds to distribute PPE, provide health care services, and set up the computer lab in his childhood home.
“Today’s world is all about technology and innovation, but here are good people in my community who don’t even know about computers,” he says.
With the help of his brother, who serves as the lab instructor, and his parents, who provide the space and support the lab, and Sherpa’s own fundraising, he aims to help youths from backgrounds similar to his own be better prepared for the technologically advanced, globalized world of today.
The MIT chapter
Now, at MIT, Sherpa speaks with deep appreciation of the opportunities that the university has opened up for him — the people he has been meeting here, and the skills he has been learning.
Professor of biology Adam C. Martin, Sherpa’s principal investigator, views making sure that international trainees like Mingmar are aware of the wide range of opportunities MIT offers — whether it be workshops, collaborations, networking and funding possibilities, or help with the pathway toward graduate school — as a key part of creating a supportive environment.
Understanding the additional burdens on international trainees gives Martin extra appreciation for Sherpa’s perseverance, motivation, and desire to share his culture with the lab, sharing Nepalese food and providing context for Nepalese customs.
Being at such a research-intensive institution as MIT has helped Sherpa further clarify his goals and his view of the paths he can take to achieve them. Since college, his three passions have been intertwined: leadership, research, and human health.
Sherpa will pursue a PhD in biomedical and biological sciences with a focus in cancer biology at Cornell University in the fall. In the longer term, he plans to focus on developing policy to improve public health.
Although Sherpa recognizes that Nepal is not the only place that might need his help, he has a sharp focus and an acute sense of what he is best positioned to do now. Sherpa is gearing up to organize a health camp in the spring to bring doctors to rural areas in Nepal, not only to provide care, but also to gather data on nutrition and health in different regions of the country.
“I cannot, in a day, or even a year, bring the living conditions of people in vulnerable communities up to a higher level, but I can slowly increase the living standard of people in less-developed communities, especially in Nepal,” he says. “There might be other parts of the world which are even more vulnerable than Nepal, but I haven’t explored them yet. But I know my community in Nepal, so I want to help improve people’s lives there.”
A member of the Class of 2026, he was an English major, involved in the Korean Literature Club and Korean Student Association, and wrote for The Daily Princetonian.
A member of the Class of 2026, he was an English major, involved in the Korean Literature Club and Korean Student Association, and wrote for The Daily Princetonian.
The ocean’s deep-sea bed is scattered with ancient rocks, each about the size of a closed fist, called “polymetallic nodules.” Elsewhere, along active and inactive hydrothermal vents and the deep ocean’s ridges, volcanic arcs, and tectonic plate boundaries, and on the flanks of seamounts, lie other types of mineral-rich deposits containing high-demand minerals.The minerals found in the deep ocean are used to manufacture products like the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, cel
The ocean’s deep-sea bed is scattered with ancient rocks, each about the size of a closed fist, called “polymetallic nodules.” Elsewhere, along active and inactive hydrothermal vents and the deep ocean’s ridges, volcanic arcs, and tectonic plate boundaries, and on the flanks of seamounts, lie other types of mineral-rich deposits containing high-demand minerals.
The minerals found in the deep ocean are used to manufacture products like the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, cell phones, or solar cells. In some cases, the estimated resources of critical mineral deposits in parts of the abyssal ocean exceed global land-based reserves severalfold.
“Society wants electric-powered vehicles, solar cells for clean energy, but all of this requires resources,” says Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, in a video discussing his research. “Land-based resources are getting depleted, or are more challenging to access. In parts of the ocean, there are much more of these resources than in land-based reserve. The question is: Can it be less impactful to mine some of these resources from the ocean, rather than from land?”
Deep-sea mining is a new frontier in mineral extraction, with potentially significant implications for industry and the global economy, and important environmental and societal considerations. Through research, scientists like Peacock study the impacts of deep-sea mining activity objectively and rigorously, and can bring evidence to bear on decision-making.
Mining activities, whether on land or at sea, can have significant impacts on the environment at local, regional, and global scales. As interest in deep-seabed mining is increasing, driven by the surging demand for critical minerals, scientific inquiries help illuminate the trade-offs.
Peacock has long studied the potential impacts of deep-sea mining in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ), where polymetallic nodules abound. A decade ago, his research group began studying deep-sea mining, seeing a critical need to develop monitoring and modeling capabilities for assessing the scale of impact.
Today, his MIT Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab) is at the forefront of advancing understanding for emerging ocean utilization technologies. With research anchored in fundamental fluid dynamics, the team is developing cutting-edge monitoring programs, novel sensors, and modeling tools.
“We are studying the form of suspended sediment from deep sea mining operations, testing a new sensor for sediment and another new sensor for turbulence, studying the initial phases of the sediment plume development, and analyzing data from the 2021 and 2022 technology trials in the Pacific Ocean,” he explains.
In deep-sea nodule mining, vehicles collect nodules from the ocean floor and convey them back to a vessel above. After the critical materials are collected on the vessel, some leftover sediment may be returned to the deep-water column. The resulting sediment plumes, and their potential impacts, are a key focus of the team’s work.
A 2022 study conducted in the CCZ investigated the dynamics of sediment plumes near a deep-seabed polymetallic nodule mining vehicle. The experiments reveal most of the released sediment-laden water, between 92 and 98 percent, stayed close to the sea-bed floor, spreading laterally. The results suggest that turbidity current dynamics set the fraction of sediment that remains suspended in the water, along with the scale of the subsequent ambient sediment plume. The implications of the process, which had been previously overlooked, are substantial for plume modeling and informative for environmental impact statements.
“New model breakthroughs can help us make increasingly trustworthy predictions,” he says. The team also contributed to a recent study, published in the journal Nature, which showed that sediment deposited away from a test mining site gets cleared away, most likely by ocean currents, and reported on any observed biological recovery.
Researchers observed a site four decades after a nodule test mining experiment. Although biological impacts in many groups of organisms were present, populations of several organisms, including sediment macrofauna, mobile deposit feeders, and even large-sized sessile fauna, had begun to reestablish despite persistent physical changes at the seafloor. The study was led by the National Oceanography Centre in the U.K.
“A great deal has been learned about the fluid mechanics of deep-sea mining, in particular when it comes to deep-sea mining sediment plumes,” says Peacock, adding that the scientific progress continues with more results on the way. The work is setting new standards for in-situ monitoring of suspended sediment properties, and for how to interpret field data from recent technical trials.
Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and his team in the Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (ENDLab), are at the forefront of advancing understanding for emerging ocean utilization technologies.
Whether you are a person about town or a worm in a dish, life can throw all kinds of circumstances your way. What you need is a nervous system flexible enough to cope. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists show how even a simple animal can repurpose brain circuits and the chemical signals, or “neuromodulators,” in its brain to muster an adaptive response to an infection. The study therefore may provide a model for understanding how brains in more complex organisms, including ourselves, manage to u
Whether you are a person about town or a worm in a dish, life can throw all kinds of circumstances your way. What you need is a nervous system flexible enough to cope. In a new study, MIT neuroscientists show how even a simple animal can repurpose brain circuits and the chemical signals, or “neuromodulators,” in its brain to muster an adaptive response to an infection. The study therefore may provide a model for understanding how brains in more complex organisms, including ourselves, manage to use what they have to cope with shifting internal states.
“Neuromodulators play pivotal roles in coupling changes in animals’ internal states to their behavior,” the scientists write in their paper, recently published in Nature Communications. “How combinations of neuromodulators released from different neuronal sources control the diverse internal states that animals exhibit remains an open question.”
When C. elegans worms fed on infectious Pseudomonas bacteria, they ate less and became more lethargic. When the researchers looked across the nervous system to see how that behavior happened, they discovered that the worm had completely revamped the roles of several of its 302 neurons and some of the peptides they secrete across the brain to modulate behavior. Systems that responded to stress in one case or satiety in another became reconfigured to cope with the infection.
“This is a question of, how do you adapt to your environment with the highest level of flexibility given the set of neurons and neuromodulators you have,” says postdoc Sreeparna Pradhan, co-lead author of the new study in Nature Communications. “How do you make the maximum set of options available to you?”
The research to find out took place in the lab of senior author Steve Flavell, an associate professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pradhan, who was supported by a fellowship from MIT’s K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center during the work, teamed up with former Flavell Lab graduate student Gurrein Madan to lead the research.
Pradhan says the team discovered several surprises in the course of the study, including that a neuropeptide called FLP-13 completely flipped its function in infected animals versus animals experiencing other forms of stress. Previous research had shown that when worms are stressed by heat, a neuron called ALA releases FLP-13 to cause the worms to go into quiescence, a sleep-like state. But when the worms in the new study ate Pseudomonas bacteria, a band of other neurons released FLP-13 to fight off quiescence, enabling the worms to survive longer. Meanwhile, ALA took on a completely different role during sickness: leading the charge to suppress feeding by emitting a different group of peptides.
A comprehensive approach
To understand how the worms responded to infection, the team tracked many features of the worms’ behavior for days and made genetic manipulations to probe the underlying mechanisms at play. They also recorded activity across the worms' whole brains. This kind of a comprehensive observation and experimentation is difficult to achieve in more complex animals, but C. elegans’ relative simplicity makes it a tractable testbed, Pradhan says. The team’s approach also is what allowed it to make so many unexpected findings.
For instance, Pradhan didn’t suspect that the ALA neuron would turn out to be the neuron that suppressed feeding, but when she observed their behavior for long enough, she started to realize the reduced feeding arose from the worms taking little breaks that they wouldn’t normally take. As she and Madan were manipulating more than a dozen genes they thought might be affecting behavior and feeding in the worm, she included another called ceh-17 that she had read about years ago that seemed to promote bouts of “microsleep” in the worms. When they knocked out ceh-17, they found that those worms didn’t reduce feeding when they got infected, unlike normal animals. It just so happens that ceh-17 is specifically needed for ALA to function properly, so that’s when the team realized ALA might be involved in the feeding-reduction behavior.
To know for sure, they then knocked out the various peptides that ALA releases and saw that when they knocked out three in particular, flp-24, nlp-8 and flp-7, infected worms didn’t exhibit reduced feeding upon infection. That clinched that ALA drives the reduced feeding behavior by emitting those three peptides.
Meanwhile, Pradhan and Madan’s screens also revealed that when infected worms were missing flp-13, they would go into a quiescence state much sooner than infected worms with the peptide available. Notably, the worms that fought off the quiescence state lived longer. They found that fighting off quiescence depended on the FLP-13 coming from four neurons (I5, I1, ASH and OLL), but not from ALA. Further experiments showed that FLP-13 acted on a widespread neuropeptide receptor called DMSR-1 to prevent quiescence.
Having a little nap
The last major surprise of the study was that the quiescence that Pseudomonas infection induces in worms is not the same as other forms of sleepiness that show up in other contexts, such as after satiety or heat stress. In those cases, worms don’t wake easily (with a little poke), but amid infection their quiescence was readily reversible. It seemed more like lethargy than sleep. Using the lab’s ability image all neural activity during behavior, Pradhan and Madan discerned that a neuron called ASI was particularly active during the bouts of lethargy. That observation solidified further when they showed that ASI’s secretion of the peptide DAF-7 was required for the quiescence to emerge in infected animals.
In all, the study showed that the worms repurpose and reconfigure — sometimes to the point of completely reversing — the functions of neurons and peptides to mount an adaptive response to infection, versus a different problem like stress. The results therefore shed light on what has been a tricky question to resolve. How do brains use their repertoire of cells, circuits, and neuromodulators to deal with what life hands them? At least part of the answer seems to be by reshuffling existing components, rather than creating unique ones for each situation.
“The states of stress, satiety, and infection are not induced by unique sets of neuromodulators," the authors wrote in their paper. "Instead, one larger set of neuromodulators may be deployed from different sources and in different combinations to specify these different internal states.”
In addition to Pradhan, Madan, and Flavell, the paper’s other authors are Di Kang, Eric Bueno, Adam Atanas, Talya Kramer, Ugur Dag, Jessica Lage, Matthew Gomes, Alicia Kun-Yang Lu, and Jungyeon Park.
Support for the research came from the the Picower Institute, the Freedom Together Foundation, the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center, and the Yang Tan Collective at MIT; the National Institutes of Health; the McKnight Foundation; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
For Mingmar Sherpa, a senior research support associate in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, community is more than just his colleagues in the lab, where he studies how mechanical forces affect cell division timing during embryogenesis. On his long and winding path to MIT, he never left behind the people he grew up among in Nepal. Sherpa has been dedicated, every step of his career — from rural Solukhumbu to Kathmandu to Alabama to Cambridge — to advancing education and health care am
For Mingmar Sherpa, a senior research support associate in the Martin Lab in the Department of Biology, community is more than just his colleagues in the lab, where he studies how mechanical forces affect cell division timing during embryogenesis. On his long and winding path to MIT, he never left behind the people he grew up among in Nepal. Sherpa has been dedicated, every step of his career — from rural Solukhumbu to Kathmandu to Alabama to Cambridge — to advancing education and health care among his people in any way he can.
Despite working more than 7,000 miles away from home, Mingmar Sherpa makes every effort to keep himself connected to his community in Nepal. Every month, for example, he sends home money to support a computer lab that he established in his hometown in rural Solukhumbu, the district of Nepal that houses Mount Everest — just $250 a month covers the costs of a teacher’s salary, electricity, internet, and a space to teach. In this lab, almost 250 students thus far have learned computer skills essential to working in today’s digitally driven world. In college, Sherpa also started The Bright Vision Foundation (The Bright Future), an organization to support health and education in Nepal, and during the pandemic raised funds to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and health care services across his home country.
While Sherpa’s ambition to help his home can be traced back to his childhood, he didn’t have it all figured out from the start, and found inspiration at each step of his career.
“This mindset of giving back to the community, helping policymakers or establishing an organization to help people do science, helping the scientific community to find cures for diseases — all these ideas came to me along the way,” Sherpa says. “It is the journey that matters.”
A journey driven by hope and optimism
“Sherpa” is a reference to the ethnic group native to the mountainous regions of Nepal and Tibet, whose members are well-known for their mountaineering skills, which they use to guide and assist tourists who want to climb Mount Everest. Growing up in rural Solukhumbu, Sherpa was surrounded by people working in the tourism industry; few other occupations appeared feasible. There was just one hospital for the whole district, requiring locals to walk for days to get medical assistance.
The youngest of seven siblings, Sherpa went to an English-language middle school, which he had to walk for over an hour to get to. He excelled there, soon becoming the top student in his class and passing the national exam with distinction — success that allowed him to both dream of and accomplish a move to Kathmandu, the capital city of Nepal, to study in the best school in the country.
It was an overwhelming transition, surrounded as he was for the first time by people from a very different social class, privileged with far more technological resources. The gaps between this well-equipped community and the one he left back home became increasingly obvious and left a strong impression on Sherpa.
There, he started thinking about how to use his newly acquired access to education and technology to uplift his community at home. He was especially fascinated by questions surrounding biology and human health, and next set his sights on attending college in the United States.
“If I came to the U.S., I could learn skills which I could not learn in Nepal,” he says. “I could prepare myself to solve the problems that I want to solve.”
At the University of Alabama in Birmingham, Sherpa continued to deepen his passion for biological science and joined a research lab. Through that work, he discovered the joys of basic research and the diverse set of skills it fosters.
“I joined the lab to learn science, but to do science, you need other skills, like research communication,” he says. “I was learning unintentionally from being in a research position.”
When Covid-19 spread around the globe, Sherpa wanted to apply the expertise and resources he had gained to help his people address the crisis. It was then that he started The Bright Vision Foundation, an organization aiming to raise the standards of health care and education in underserved communities in Nepal. Through the foundation, he raised funds to distribute PPE, provide health care services, and set up the computer lab in his childhood home.
“Today’s world is all about technology and innovation, but here are good people in my community who don’t even know about computers,” he says.
With the help of his brother, who serves as the lab instructor, and his parents, who provide the space and support the lab, and Sherpa’s own fundraising, he aims to help youths from backgrounds similar to his own be better prepared for the technologically advanced, globalized world of today.
The MIT chapter
Now, at MIT, Sherpa speaks with deep appreciation of the opportunities that the university has opened up for him — the people he has been meeting here, and the skills he has been learning.
Professor of biology Adam C. Martin, Sherpa’s principal investigator, views making sure that international trainees like Mingmar are aware of the wide range of opportunities MIT offers — whether it be workshops, collaborations, networking and funding possibilities, or help with the pathway toward graduate school — as a key part of creating a supportive environment.
Understanding the additional burdens on international trainees gives Martin extra appreciation for Sherpa’s perseverance, motivation, and desire to share his culture with the lab, sharing Nepalese food and providing context for Nepalese customs.
Being at such a research-intensive institution as MIT has helped Sherpa further clarify his goals and his view of the paths he can take to achieve them. Since college, his three passions have been intertwined: leadership, research, and human health.
Sherpa will pursue a PhD in biomedical and biological sciences with a focus in cancer biology at Cornell University in the fall. In the longer term, he plans to focus on developing policy to improve public health.
Although Sherpa recognizes that Nepal is not the only place that might need his help, he has a sharp focus and an acute sense of what he is best positioned to do now. Sherpa is gearing up to organize a health camp in the spring to bring doctors to rural areas in Nepal, not only to provide care, but also to gather data on nutrition and health in different regions of the country.
“I cannot, in a day, or even a year, bring the living conditions of people in vulnerable communities up to a higher level, but I can slowly increase the living standard of people in less-developed communities, especially in Nepal,” he says. “There might be other parts of the world which are even more vulnerable than Nepal, but I haven’t explored them yet. But I know my community in Nepal, so I want to help improve people’s lives there.”
When farmers apply pesticides to their crops, 30 to 50 percent of the chemicals end up in the air or soil instead of on the plants. Now, a team of researchers from MIT and Singapore has developed a much more precise way to deliver substances to plants: tiny needles made of silk.In a study published today in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers developed a way to produce large amounts of these hollow silk microneedles. They used them to inject agrochemicals and nutrients into plants, and to mon
When farmers apply pesticides to their crops, 30 to 50 percent of the chemicals end up in the air or soil instead of on the plants. Now, a team of researchers from MIT and Singapore has developed a much more precise way to deliver substances to plants: tiny needles made of silk.
In a study published today in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers developed a way to produce large amounts of these hollow silk microneedles. They used them to inject agrochemicals and nutrients into plants, and to monitor their health.
“There’s a big need to make agriculture more efficient,” says Benedetto Marelli, the study’s senior author and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “Agrochemicals are important for supporting our food system, but they’re also expensive and bring environmental side effects, so there’s a big need to deliver them precisely.”
Yunteng Cao PhD ’22, currently a postdoc Yale University, and Doyoon Kim, a former postdoc in the Marelli lab, led the study, which included a collaboration with the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
In demonstrations, the team used the technique to give plants iron to treat a disease known as chlorosis, and to add vitamin B12 to tomato plants to make them more nutritious. The researchers also showed the microneedles could be used to monitor the quality of fluids flowing into plants and to detect when the surrounding soil contained heavy metals.
Overall, the researchers believe the microneedles could serve as a new kind of plant interface for real-time health monitoring and biofortification.
“These microneedles could be a tool for plant scientists so they can understand more about plant health and how they grow,” Marelli says. “But they can also be used to add value to crops, making them more resilient and possibly even increasing yields.”
The inner workings of plants
Accessing the inner tissues of living plants requires scientists to get through the plants’ waxy skin without causing too much stress. In previous work, the researchers used silk-based microneedles to deliver agrochemicals to plants in lab environments and to detect pH changes in living plants. But these initial efforts involved small payloads, limiting their applications in commercial agriculture.
“Microneedles were originally developed for the delivery of vaccines or other drugs in humans,” Marelli explains. “Now we’ve adapted it so that the technology can work with plants, but initially we could not deliver sufficient doses of agrochemicals and nutrients to mitigate stressors or enhance crop nutritional values.”
Hollow structures could increase the amount of chemicals microneedles can deliver, but Marelli says creating those structures at scale has historically required clean rooms and expensive facilities like the ones found inside the MIT.nano building.
For this study, Cao and Kim created a new way to manufacture hollow silk microneedles by combining silk fibroin protein with a salty solution inside tiny, cone-shaped molds. As water evaporated from the solution, the silk solidified into the mold while the salt forms crystalline structures inside the molds. When the salt was removed, it left behind in each needle a hollow structure or tiny pores, depending on the salt concentration and the separation of the organic and inorganic phases.
“It’s a pretty simple fabrication process. It can be done outside of a clean room — you could do it in your kitchen if you wanted,” Kim says. “It doesn’t require any expensive machinery.”
The researchers then tested their microneedles’ ability to deliver iron to iron-deficient tomato plants, which can cause a disease known as chlorosis. Chlorosis can decrease yields, but treating it by spraying crops is inefficient and can have environmental side effects. The researchers showed that their hollow microneedles could be used for the sustained delivery of iron without harming the plants.
The researchers also showed their microneedles could be used to fortify crops while they grow. Historically, crop fortification efforts have focused on minerals like zinc or iron, with vitamins only added after the food is harvested.
In each case, the researchers applied the microneedles to the stalks of plants by hand, but Marelli envisions equipping autonomous vehicles and other equipment already used in farms to automate and scale the process.
As part of the study, the researchers used microneedles to deliver vitamin B12, which is primarily found naturally in animal products, into the stalks of growing tomatoes, showing that vitamin B12 moved into the tomato fruits before harvest. The researchers propose their method could be used to fortify more plants with the vitamin.
Co-author Daisuke Urano, a plant scientist with DiSTAP, explains that “through a comprehensive assessment, we showed minimal adverse effects from microneedle injections in plants, with no observed short- or long-term negative impacts.”
“This new delivery mechanism opens up a lot of potential applications, so we wanted to do something nobody had done before,” Marelli explains.
Finally, the researchers explored the use of their microneedles to monitor the health of plants by studying tomatoes growing in hydroponic solutions contaminated with cadmium, a toxic metal commonly found in farms close to industrial and mining sites. They showed their microneedles absorbed the toxin within 15 minutes of being injected into the tomato stalks, offering a path to rapid detection.
Current advanced techniques for monitoring plant health, such as colorimetric and hyperspectral lead analyses, can only detect problems after plants growth is already being stunted. Other methods, such as sap sampling, can be too time-consuming.
Microneedles, in contrast, could be used to more easily collect sap for ongoing chemical analysis. For instance, the researchers showed they could monitor cadmium levels in tomatoes over the course of 18 hours.
A new platform for farming
The researchers believe the microneedles could be used to complement existing agricultural practices like spraying. The researchers also note the technology has applications beyond agriculture, such as in biomedical engineering.
“This new polymeric microneedle fabrication technique may also benefit research in microneedle-mediated transdermal and intradermal drug delivery and health monitoring,” Cao says.
For now, though, Marelli believes the microneedles offer a path to more precise, sustainable agriculture practices.
“We want to maximize the growth of plants without negatively affecting the health of the farm or the biodiversity of surrounding ecosystems,” Marelli says. “There shouldn’t be a trade-off between the agriculture industry and the environment. They should work together.”
This work was supported, in part, by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the U.S. National Science Foundation, SMART, the National Research Foundation of Singapore, and the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office.
In demonstrations, the team showed their new technique could be used to give plants iron to treat a disease known as chlorosis and to add B12 to tomato plants to make them more nutritious for humans.
New Cornell research reveals that social media users with disabilities prefer more personalized content moderation powered by AI systems that not only hide harmful content but also summarize or categorize it by the specific type of hate expressed.
New Cornell research reveals that social media users with disabilities prefer more personalized content moderation powered by AI systems that not only hide harmful content but also summarize or categorize it by the specific type of hate expressed.
An interdisciplinary research team from Bern and Zurich has developed a method to clean urinary stents and catheters non-invasively – through the skin and without surgery – using ultrasound-activated microstructures.
An interdisciplinary research team from Bern and Zurich has developed a method to clean urinary stents and catheters non-invasively – through the skin and without surgery – using ultrasound-activated microstructures.
By 2030, NUS aims to be a zero-waste establishment. To reach this goal, the University seeks to increase overall campus recycling rates to 60 per cent through incentives and schemes such as a “pay-as-you-throw” system in refuse bin centres, the adoption of reusable items for takeaways, and platforms for exchanging pre-loved items – efforts that encourage the community to embrace sustainability as a way of life.Two recent NUSOne initiatives are building on that effort by encouraging students to r
By 2030, NUS aims to be a zero-waste establishment. To reach this goal, the University seeks to increase overall campus recycling rates to 60 per cent through incentives and schemes such as a “pay-as-you-throw” system in refuse bin centres, the adoption of reusable items for takeaways, and platforms for exchanging pre-loved items – efforts that encourage the community to embrace sustainability as a way of life.
Two recent NUSOne initiatives are building on that effort by encouraging students to reduce waste and approach their consumption habits in a more sustainable and responsible manner. Held on Wednesday afternoons, these sessions aim to broaden students’ access to a wide range of activities, promoting holistic learning beyond the classroom.
On a visit to Google Asia-Pacific’s headquarters on 16 April 2025, over 40 NUS students had an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at Google’s innovative food sustainability practices, discovering how the global tech firm promotes health, reduces waste, and champions sustainability in its operations. As the final event this semester in a diverse series of NUSOne activities organised by NUS Enterprise, this highly oversubscribed visit sought to expose students to sustainability practices, rounding out a line-up that centred around entrepreneurial skills, self-discovery and resilience, culinary and cultural experiences, and community service and gratitude.
The visit was carefully curated to give the students a glimpse into Google’s mammoth operations, highlight the growing role of sustainability in shaping entrepreneurial mindsets and encourage students to reflect on how environmentally responsible practices can create value, enhance operational efficiency, and unlock new business opportunities. With three cafes and coffee bars as well as 14 micro-kitchens, the technology giant serves up an estimated 4,000 meals, including breakfast and 1,500 cups of coffee daily, in addition to 90 catered monthly events.
A key initiative for Google is single-use plastic reduction. As part of these measures, plastic bags for food deliveries have been replaced with reusable containers. Snacks are now served in bulk, replacing individually wrapped snacks that are often packed using single-use plastic. Conventional plastic pots used to serve yoghurt have also been swapped out for glass pots.
Students also learned creative ways to reuse food waste, which are at the forefront of Google’s food sustainability initiatives. In partnership with a local bakery, Google repurposes used coffee grounds to create artisanal sourdough loaves. This is in addition to transforming the flesh of carved pumpkins into comforting autumnal dishes on Halloween, and showcasing snack companies that utilise “imperfect” and otherwise unsellable produce, which is then turned into tasty products.
Some tips on caring for the environment were also shared, such as switching to eating more vegetables to reduce the environmental impact of food production. “I learned that food sustainability is not just about reducing food waste but also about upcycling,” said third-year student Haziq Hamzah from NUS Business School, noting that being eco-friendly can also involve “using materials such as biodegradable starch to make consumables such as tea bags.”
The students also visited the coffee bar – not to try the brew, but to learn how coffee husks, a waste product from coffee bean processing, are upcycled into durable, reusable cups to replace ceramic and plastic cup alternatives. Upon reaching the end of their life cycle, the cups are returned to a vendor and repurposed into entirely new products. In line with efforts to accelerate the transition to a circular economy, this regenerative approach minimises waste and maximises the reuse of finite resources by turning yesterday’s waste into tomorrow’s resource.
Google staff also explained the use of LeanPath, a programme that uses technology to generate data on food waste. In their micro-kitchens, mechanised scales measure food waste from meal preparations, with the interface displaying the weight of food wasted and the total cost incurred after each meal service. The programme also measures how much food was prepared in comparison with the amount that was consumed, which helps inform production levels. In this manner, Google tracks food consumption and expenditure patterns, helping them cater food according to estimated demand.
For Prashant Rai, a first-year student from the Faculty of Science, Google’s tracking of food waste and use of data to improve kitchen operations was inspiring. “It shows how small, consistent practices can build over time into something impactful. It also made me realise that if something is made easy to follow and built into your daily routine, it becomes second nature.”
Following this visit, Prashant is keen to play a part in advancing sustainability practices. One way he hopes to do so is through his start-up, WATTR, which promotes more mindful shower habits. Equipped with ultrasonic sensors that track the amount of water being used in real time, its device can be clipped onto water pipes, enabling users to adjust their water consumption on the spot.
“This visit showed me that sustainability is becoming a serious priority across all types of companies, even technology giants like Google, which takes bold steps to lower its environmental impact. This was encouraging to see as it reminded me that there is a real space and demand for sustainability-driven solutions. It also gave me confidence that if our product can help people save water while also lowering operational costs, there’s going to be a strong market for it,” he shared.
Another event that took place in early April was the upcycling workshop for textile waste. This event was one of NUS Office of Student Affairs (OSA)’s community engagement programmes, organised to support students in applying their skills and knowledge to enhance the well-being of the community and the environment.
In line with this aim, the workshop highlighted NUS’ broader zero-waste objective by repurposing single-use polyvinyl chloride (PVC) banners from major university events that would otherwise be discarded, giving them a new lease of life. OSA had also canvassed for these banners ahead of time.
During the three-hour-long workshop, over 20 participants were introduced to the basics of machine sewing and learned how to operate a sewing machine. Later, they put their newfound skills to practical use by crafting tote bags and pouches from the templates provided. In addition to the PVC banners, participants were provided with many second-hand textiles such as cut-up polo-tees, denim jeans, beads, and other fabrics. The hands-on nature of the workshop underscored the importance of individual ownership and environmental protection, emphasising the role everyone has to play in conserving the environment.
Caylee Chua, a final-year Master of Science student from the College of Design and Engineering, said of the workshop, “It was really fun and a great hands-on introduction to using a sewing machine. The variety of fabric scraps helped us see the potential creativity in upcycling – style isn't always about the newest trend, it's about recombining items you already have in new and exciting ways.”
Work & Economy
Can Trump fire Fed chairman?
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting in March. Photo by Sha Hanting/China News Service/VCG via AP
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 28, 2025
8 min read
Law professor and former Fed Board member says it’s possible but likely market reaction should give pause
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting in March.
Photo by Sha Hanting/China News Service/VCG via AP
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
8 min read
Law professor and former Fed Board member says it’s possible but likely market reaction should give pause
President Trump has had a difficult relationship with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Concerns over Trump’s global tariff plans roiled markets earlier this month. Powell, who was first nominated to the post by Trump in 2017, noted the president’s policies could lead to higher inflation and slower growth.
Trump accused the Fed chair of failing to boost the economy by not being more aggressive about cutting interest rates. (The two also disagreed over rates in Trump’s first term.) He also hinted he was contemplating ousting Powell before his four-year-term expires next year, further unsettling markets.
In this edited conversation, Daniel Tarullo, Nomura Professor of International Financial Regulatory Practice at Harvard Law School, discusses the potential fallout should the president make good on his threats to fire Powell. Tarullo served on the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the body that decides on interest rates, from 2009 to 2017.
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 allows governors to be removed for cause, but it doesn’t say anything about the FOMC chair. In your view, does a president, as head of the executive branch, have the power to oust Powell?
There are two separate issues. One is a statutory interpretation issue — whether the addition of the amendment to the Federal Reserve Act in the 1970s, which provided for Senate confirmation of the chair for a four-year term, incorporates the “for cause” protection the original Federal Reserve Act afforded to all members of the Board of Governors.
The alternate reading would be that the four-year term for the chair as chair is not protected by the “for cause” provision.
The second issue, of course, is whether — regardless of what the Federal Reserve Act provides — the Supreme Court believes that the Constitution gives the president removal power for anybody at an independent agency who is performing what the court considers to be “executive” functions. Those two issues are related, but in the first instance, they’re actually distinct.
Daniel Tarullo.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP file photo
Is the Supreme Court likely to support such a move given recent decisions on the scope of executive authority?
I think most observers expect some further erosion of the famous 1935 decision Humphrey’s Executor, which for 85 years was understood as validating “for cause” protection for the principals at independent agencies.
Whether the court will further erode Humphrey’s step by step or will sweep it away in a single case remains to be seen.
The issue, though, would be whether the Fed (and perhaps other agencies) would be treated differently. And I think we’ve seen some hints from three of the conservative justices — Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh — that they may regard the Federal Reserve differently from other agencies.
They may still hold a broad view of the president’s authority, but favor a carve-out for the Fed?
Yes. None of the three justices has done more than hint at a potential difference, so we don’t have a sense of what their basis for distinction would be.
One that is available is the legacy of the Federal Reserve in the First and Second Banks of the United States. There could be an argument that from the very first Congress, which convened right after the Constitution was ratified, there was an acknowledgement that Congress could create an independent central bank.
Now, the First Bank of the United States was not a central bank as we would think of it today, but in the late 18th century it was pretty close to what was then thought of as a central bank, epitomized by the Bank of England. So that argument would be available. It’s not overwhelmingly compelling, but it’s arguable. Besides, I haven’t thought that the court’s recent decisions on the “for cause” removal protection have themselves been compelling, so there is an opportunity for the court to do some picking and choosing.
Is there a good legal argument for removing Powell before his term ends?
We can go back to the fact that for 85 years “for cause” protection in independent agencies was generally thought to be the prevailing doctrine.
But the Supreme Court gave substantial reason to question that proposition in Seila Law, the 2020 case that found Congress’ grant of “for cause” removal protection to the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional.
So, it’s the court which has changed that 85-year-old understanding and left unanswered the question of how broadly it will ultimately rewrite Humphrey’s Executor.
If there were an effort by the president to remove the chair, the market reaction would be very significant — well before any court had an opportunity to pass on the issue. The anticipated market effect is a disincentive to try to remove the chair, no matter how unhappy the administration may be with his policies.
Given Powell’s term as chair now has only a year to run, that’s probably an additional argument for just waiting until the president can name his own person as a successor. And so, at some level, the market is as much a protection for the Board of Governors as the law may end up being.
Why is Wall Street rattled by the prospect of Powell removal?
Sitting administrations will almost always favor a looser monetary policy in order to promote near-term economic growth. The point of having some independence for a central bank is that the central bankers can look at the potential impact on inflation over the medium term and try to keep inflation closer to what today for the Fed is a 2 percent target. It’s a pretty simple rationale, but it’s a powerful one.
What markets fear is that if a president removes the chair or other members of the Board of Governors, it would be with the intent of having a looser monetary policy. At that point, the markets’ trust in the central bank will be substantially undermined, and thus, the central bank’s credibility as an inflation fighter will be undermined. Longer-term interest rates will then rise, probably dramatically.
Thus, there’s the potential for an odd situation in which the Fed central bank is more responsive to the administration’s desire for near-term growth and reduces short-term rates, but markets, thinking that’s going to be inflationary, essentially demand a higher premium for holding longer-term Treasuries and other longer-term debt. It’s for that reason that I believe that any action by any administration to try to remove the chair or other members of the board is ultimately self-defeating.
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent has quite understandably been focused on the 10-year Treasury rate, because that rate is very important for investment decisions throughout the economy. One would presume the administration doesn’t want to drive up that rate because of uncertainty in markets.
How much power does the chair actually have over internal policy deliberations?
There’s still some significant public misperception on just how powerful the chair is within the board and within the FOMC.
For a period when Alan Greenspan was chair, his preferences and decisions apparently more or less drove FOMC decisions. By the time I joined the Board of Governors in early 2009, that was certainly not the case. I think Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and now Jay Powell have all had to do a substantial amount of internal consultation and internal work trying to forge a consensus around monetary policy.
There’s no question that the chair is far and away the most important individual on the FOMC. But it’s not the case that the chair can simply dictate what policy is going to be and the rest of the FOMC will fall into line.
If Powell was replaced by someone with a certain pedigree, would that calm market jitters?
I think if there were an effort to remove him, the identity of the successor wouldn’t be all that consequential because I believe markets would read into the very act of removal an intent to have a significantly more accommodative monetary policy.
If Jay Powell is allowed to serve out his four-year term, then obviously the identity of the individual whom the president nominates to succeed him will be of substantial interest to markets.
Campus & Community
Pulse Survey finds strong sense of belonging and respect at Harvard
Widener Library in Harvard Yard.File photo by Grace DuVal
Julie McDonough
Harvard Correspondent
April 28, 2025
8 min read
Gaps identified, particularly related to sharing opinions and forming relationships with people holding different views.
Survey results released by Harvard Monday find a strong
Pulse Survey finds strong sense of belonging and respect at Harvard
Widener Library in Harvard Yard.
File photo by Grace DuVal
Julie McDonough
Harvard Correspondent
8 min read
Gaps identified, particularly related to sharing opinions and forming relationships with people holding different views.
Survey results released by Harvard Monday find a strong sense of belonging among community members, but lower levels of comfort sharing opinions and forming relationships across differences. The new data was released as part of a report of the Pulse Survey on Inclusion & Belonging.
First piloted in 2019 following a recommendation of the Task Force on Inclusion & Belonging, the survey seeks to take the “pulse” of the community and gauge the climate around inclusion and belonging of the entire campus community. Administered for the second time in September 2024, the survey asked every member of Harvard — students, faculty, researchers, and staff — to share their personal experience as an individual interacting with peers, and with the institution as a whole. The results will be integrated with other survey data and used to make improvements to programming related to culture and community.
“The Pulse Survey is a valuable tool for assessing how members of our community experience the University and understand their place in it,” said President Alan M. Garber. “The insights it provides will help guide us as we work toward creating a culture in which each of us feels included, respected, and valued.”
To understand the results of the survey, including areas of strength and areas for improvement, the Gazette sat down with Sherri Charleston, chief community and campus life officer, and Drew Allen, associate provost for institutional research and analytics. They shared key findings and next steps for improving campus culture related to inclusion and belonging.
Sherri, I see that you have a different title, and the name of your office has changed. Can you tell me how those changes came about?
Charleston: Over the past five years, we have evolved to direct a variety of services on campus. I started in 2020 as the chief diversity and inclusion officer, leading the Office for Diversity, Inclusion, & Belonging. Given the high-level outcomes of the last Pulse Survey, President Garber decided to rename the portfolio to Community and Campus Life to align with its current focus — building community and increasing belonging. As we administered the Pulse Survey again last fall and considered the best way to communicate all the services we offer, it seemed like the right time to adjust my title to better reflect what the offices under my direction do for our campus community.
Sherri Charleston.
Harvard file photo
Tell us more about the Pulse Survey.
Charleston: The Pulse Survey provides a snapshot of how we are faring as a University community relative to inclusion and belonging goals across a variety of metrics. Because it is a “pulse” and not an “MRI,” it is meant to provide us with data that is directional in nature, rather than diagnostic. It can then be supplemented with other survey data to provide a fuller picture of the climate here at Harvard relative to inclusion and belonging.
Allen: It is rare that we have a survey that allows us to hear directly from every member of our community — students, faculty, researchers, and staff. The data are powerful because they point us in the right direction and provide a catalyst for more specific efforts to examine inclusion and belonging at Schools and units across campus.
What did the survey ask and how many individuals responded?
Charleston: The survey questions sought to examine the full breadth of human experience levels at Harvard: individual, community, and institutional. The survey looked specifically at four dimensions of inclusion and belonging: sense of value, acceptance and integration, connection across difference, and supportive assets. We wanted to gauge if individuals felt valued, respected, and recognized. We also wanted to know if they were comfortable expressing themselves and forming meaningful relationships with other community members, including those with viewpoints different than their own.
Allen: Importantly, this survey was taken by over 10,000 members of the Harvard Campus community, representing approximately 20 percent of the population. Given the response rate, which is in line with response rates of similar surveys in higher education, we feel confident that the data give us a valuable pulse of the Harvard community and can provide important direction for future initiatives and resource allocation.
What are the key highlights from the 2024 Pulse Survey data?
Charleston: The survey showed that large majorities of our respondents — students, faculty, researchers, and staff — feel like they belong at Harvard (including 78 percent of students, 81 percent of staff, and 75 percent of faculty and academic personnel). Respondents also generally feel respected (80 percent of students, 79 percent of staff, and 74 percent of faculty/academic). These numbers are very promising, but of course, come with the caveat that there are portions of our community who do not feel like they belong and do not feel respected.
We also found that while most members of our community feel comfortable sharing opinions with others and have been able to form relationships with people who have different viewpoints, it is not as high as we would like it to be. So, this is another area that we will want to explore to consider how we can effectively expand and strengthen efforts like the President’s Building Bridges Fund, which funds student-driven programs to bring community members together across differences.
Allen: As Sherri points out, the survey did show that the majority of students do feel like they can be their authentic selves here at Harvard. In some cases, our data showed an even higher level of positivity than in 2019 when the survey was first administered. The survey provides us with solid data to inform our decisions moving forward.
Drew Allen.
How will the University use the data?
Charleston: We will use this data to improve the experience of belonging and connection on campus, particularly across differences. The learnings from this survey can be used directionally to help us make decisions around where we need to allocate resources, both in terms of capacity and focus.
Allen: I think the data can also be used to identify areas of further analysis. A survey is just one method by which we can try to understand inclusion and belonging, but there are other methods we can use to try to understand something that is difficult to measure directly. The Pulse Survey data will guide us to develop additional lines of inquiry that our institutional research office can pursue so that we can better understand our community and their needs.
What improvements or changes were made on campus after the Pulse Survey was administered in 2019?
Charleston: There has been a real focus on strengthening our community and increasing the sense of belonging here on campus. One specific example was the establishment of the Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund (HCLIF). Funded by the President’s Office, HCLIF supports project ideas that foster a culture of belonging on campus. Grants are awarded to teams that aim to have a direct impact on the University community, engage the broadest audience, and align with the University’s goals toward excellence.
In addition to HCLIF, we have leaned into both building digital communities and building communities in person on campus. Our office newsletter has about 16,000 subscribers and allows us to share information across many different communities. We have also focused on building communities on campus through our now annual forum, providing community spaces to combat isolation and polarization, and working with colleagues to promote opportunities for community support. Recently, we awarded funding through the President’s Building Bridges Fund to student-led projects designed to build connection and community across differences.
What are your next steps and when can we expect the next Pulse survey?
Charleston: Our first step will be to convene community members to help us think about what we have learned and how we can use this data moving forward. Another piece is for us to think about how the various surveys that the University has conducted over the past few years fit together and how we can integrate those findings. We can use this opportunity to ground our decision-making in data and ensure we take actions that will support and improve the sense of belonging and community at Harvard.
Allen: When we consider when to do this survey again, we want to make sure that enough time has passed so that we can measure meaningful progress. Consistency and timing for the next survey will be important so that the data we collect is valuable and informative.
The speed with which new technologies hit the market is nothing compared to the speed with which talented researchers find creative ways to use them, train them, even turn them into things we can’t live without. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.Kyaw takes technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics, a
The speed with which new technologies hit the market is nothing compared to the speed with which talented researchers find creative ways to use them, train them, even turn them into things we can’t live without. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.
Kyaw takes technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics, and combines them with gesture, speech, and object recognition to create human-AI workflows that have the potential to interact with our built environment, change how we shop, design complex structures, and make physical things.
One of his latest innovations is Curator AI, for which he and his MIT graduate student partners took first prize — $26,000 in OpenAI products and cash — at the MIT AI Conference’s AI Build: Generative Voice AI Solutions, a weeklong hackathon at MIT with final presentations held last fall in New York City. Working with Kyaw were Richa Gupta (architecture) and Bradley Bunch, Nidhish Sagar, and Michael Won — all from the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
Curator AI is designed to streamline online furniture shopping by providing context-aware product recommendations using AI and AR. The platform uses AR to take the dimensions of a room with locations of windows, doors, and existing furniture. Users can then speak to the software to describe what new furnishings they want, and the system will use a vision-language AI model to search for and display various options that match both the user’s prompts and the room’s visual characteristics.
“Shoppers can choose from the suggested options, visualize products in AR, and use natural language to ask for modifications to the search, making the furniture selection process more intuitive, efficient, and personalized,” Kyaw says. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that most people don’t know where to start when furnishing a room, so we developed Curator AI to provide smart, contextual recommendations based on what your room looks like.” Although Curator AI was developed for furniture shopping, it could be expanded for use in other markets.
Another example of Kyaw’s work is Estimate, a product that he and three other graduate students created during the MIT Sloan Product Tech Conference’s hackathon in March 2024. The focus of that competition was to help small businesses; Kyaw and team decided to base their work on a painting company in Cambridge that employs 10 people. Estimate uses AR and an object-recognition AI technology to take the exact measurements of a room and generate a detailed cost estimate for a renovation and/or paint job. It also leverages generative AI to display images of the room or rooms as they might look like after painting or renovating, and generates an invoice once the project is complete.
The team won that hackathon and $5,000 in cash. Kyaw’s teammates were Guillaume Allegre, May Khine, and Anna Mathy, all of whom graduated from MIT in 2024 with master’s degrees in business analytics.
In April, Kyaw will give a TedX talk at his alma mater, Cornell University, in which he’ll describe Curator AI, Estimate, and other projects that use AI, AR, and robotics to design and build things.
One of these projects is Unlog, for which Kyaw connected AR with gesture recognition to build a software that takes input from the touch of a fingertip on the surface of a material, or even in the air, to map the dimensions of building components. That’s how Unlog — a towering art sculpture made from ash logs that stands on the Cornell campus — came about.
Unlog represents the possibility that structures can be built directly from a whole log, rather than having the log travel to a lumber mill to be turned into planks or two-by-fours, then shipped to a wholesaler or retailer. It’s a good representation of Kyaw’s desire to use building materials in a more sustainable way. A paper on this work, “Gestural Recognition for Feedback-Based Mixed Reality Fabrication a Case Study of the UnLog Tower,” was published by Kyaw, Leslie Lok, Lawson Spencer, and Sasa Zivkovic in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication, January 2024.
Another system Kyaw developed integrates physics simulation, gesture recognition, and AR to design active bending structures built with bamboo poles. Gesture recognition allows users to manipulate digital bamboo modules in AR, and the physics simulation is integrated to visualize how the bamboo bends and where to attach the bamboo poles in ways that create a stable structure. This work appeared in the Proceedings of the 41st Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, August 2023, as “Active Bending in Physics-Based Mixed Reality: The Design and Fabrication of a Reconfigurable Modular Bamboo System.”
Kyaw pitched a similar idea using bamboo modules to create deployable structures last year to MITdesignX, an MIT MAD program that selects promising startups and provides coaching and funding to launch them. Kyaw has since founded BendShelters to build the prefabricated, modular bamboo shelters and community spaces for refugees and displaced persons in Myanmar, his home country.
“Where I grew up, in Myanmar, I’ve seen a lot of day-to-day effects of climate change and extreme poverty,” Kyaw says. “There’s a huge refugee crisis in the country, and I want to think about how I can contribute back to my community.”
His work with BendShelters has been recognized by MIT Sandbox, PKG Social Innovation Challenge, and the Amazon Robotics’ Prize for Social Good.
At MIT, Kyaw is collaborating with Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms, and PhD student Miana Smith to use speech recognition, 3D generative AI, and robotic arms to create a workflow that can build objects in an accessible, on-demand, and sustainable way. Kyaw holds bachelor’s degrees in architecture and computer science from Cornell. Last year, he was awarded an SJA Fellowship from the Steve Jobs Archive, which provides funding for projects at the intersection of technology and the arts.
“I enjoy exploring different kinds of technologies to design and make things,” Kyaw says. “Being part of MAD has made me think about how all my work connects, and helped clarify my intentions. My research vision is to design and develop systems and products that enable natural interactions between humans, machines, and the world around us.”
MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw is a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.
The speed with which new technologies hit the market is nothing compared to the speed with which talented researchers find creative ways to use them, train them, even turn them into things we can’t live without. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.Kyaw takes technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics, a
The speed with which new technologies hit the market is nothing compared to the speed with which talented researchers find creative ways to use them, train them, even turn them into things we can’t live without. One such researcher is MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw, a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.
Kyaw takes technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics, and combines them with gesture, speech, and object recognition to create human-AI workflows that have the potential to interact with our built environment, change how we shop, design complex structures, and make physical things.
One of his latest innovations is Curator AI, for which he and his MIT graduate student partners took first prize — $26,000 in OpenAI products and cash — at the MIT AI Conference’s AI Build: Generative Voice AI Solutions, a weeklong hackathon at MIT with final presentations held last fall in New York City. Working with Kyaw were Richa Gupta (architecture) and Bradley Bunch, Nidhish Sagar, and Michael Won — all from the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS).
Curator AI is designed to streamline online furniture shopping by providing context-aware product recommendations using AI and AR. The platform uses AR to take the dimensions of a room with locations of windows, doors, and existing furniture. Users can then speak to the software to describe what new furnishings they want, and the system will use a vision-language AI model to search for and display various options that match both the user’s prompts and the room’s visual characteristics.
“Shoppers can choose from the suggested options, visualize products in AR, and use natural language to ask for modifications to the search, making the furniture selection process more intuitive, efficient, and personalized,” Kyaw says. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that most people don’t know where to start when furnishing a room, so we developed Curator AI to provide smart, contextual recommendations based on what your room looks like.” Although Curator AI was developed for furniture shopping, it could be expanded for use in other markets.
Another example of Kyaw’s work is Estimate, a product that he and three other graduate students created during the MIT Sloan Product Tech Conference’s hackathon in March 2024. The focus of that competition was to help small businesses; Kyaw and team decided to base their work on a painting company in Cambridge that employs 10 people. Estimate uses AR and an object-recognition AI technology to take the exact measurements of a room and generate a detailed cost estimate for a renovation and/or paint job. It also leverages generative AI to display images of the room or rooms as they might look like after painting or renovating, and generates an invoice once the project is complete.
The team won that hackathon and $5,000 in cash. Kyaw’s teammates were Guillaume Allegre, May Khine, and Anna Mathy, all of whom graduated from MIT in 2024 with master’s degrees in business analytics.
In April, Kyaw will give a TedX talk at his alma mater, Cornell University, in which he’ll describe Curator AI, Estimate, and other projects that use AI, AR, and robotics to design and build things.
One of these projects is Unlog, for which Kyaw connected AR with gesture recognition to build a software that takes input from the touch of a fingertip on the surface of a material, or even in the air, to map the dimensions of building components. That’s how Unlog — a towering art sculpture made from ash logs that stands on the Cornell campus — came about.
Unlog represents the possibility that structures can be built directly from a whole log, rather than having the log travel to a lumber mill to be turned into planks or two-by-fours, then shipped to a wholesaler or retailer. It’s a good representation of Kyaw’s desire to use building materials in a more sustainable way. A paper on this work, “Gestural Recognition for Feedback-Based Mixed Reality Fabrication a Case Study of the UnLog Tower,” was published by Kyaw, Leslie Lok, Lawson Spencer, and Sasa Zivkovic in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication, January 2024.
Another system Kyaw developed integrates physics simulation, gesture recognition, and AR to design active bending structures built with bamboo poles. Gesture recognition allows users to manipulate digital bamboo modules in AR, and the physics simulation is integrated to visualize how the bamboo bends and where to attach the bamboo poles in ways that create a stable structure. This work appeared in the Proceedings of the 41st Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe, August 2023, as “Active Bending in Physics-Based Mixed Reality: The Design and Fabrication of a Reconfigurable Modular Bamboo System.”
Kyaw pitched a similar idea using bamboo modules to create deployable structures last year to MITdesignX, an MIT MAD program that selects promising startups and provides coaching and funding to launch them. Kyaw has since founded BendShelters to build the prefabricated, modular bamboo shelters and community spaces for refugees and displaced persons in Myanmar, his home country.
“Where I grew up, in Myanmar, I’ve seen a lot of day-to-day effects of climate change and extreme poverty,” Kyaw says. “There’s a huge refugee crisis in the country, and I want to think about how I can contribute back to my community.”
His work with BendShelters has been recognized by MIT Sandbox, PKG Social Innovation Challenge, and the Amazon Robotics’ Prize for Social Good.
At MIT, Kyaw is collaborating with Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms, and PhD student Miana Smith to use speech recognition, 3D generative AI, and robotic arms to create a workflow that can build objects in an accessible, on-demand, and sustainable way. Kyaw holds bachelor’s degrees in architecture and computer science from Cornell. Last year, he was awarded an SJA Fellowship from the Steve Jobs Archive, which provides funding for projects at the intersection of technology and the arts.
“I enjoy exploring different kinds of technologies to design and make things,” Kyaw says. “Being part of MAD has made me think about how all my work connects, and helped clarify my intentions. My research vision is to design and develop systems and products that enable natural interactions between humans, machines, and the world around us.”
MIT MAD Fellow Alexander Htet Kyaw is a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in architectural studies in computation and in electrical engineering and computer science.
As demand grows for more powerful and efficient microelectronics systems, industry is turning to 3D integration — stacking chips on top of each other. This vertically layered architecture could allow high-performance processors, like those used for artificial intelligence, to be packaged closely with other highly specialized chips for communication or imaging. But technologists everywhere face a major challenge: how to prevent these stacks from overheating.Now, MIT Lincoln Laboratory has develop
As demand grows for more powerful and efficient microelectronics systems, industry is turning to 3D integration — stacking chips on top of each other. This vertically layered architecture could allow high-performance processors, like those used for artificial intelligence, to be packaged closely with other highly specialized chips for communication or imaging. But technologists everywhere face a major challenge: how to prevent these stacks from overheating.
Now, MIT Lincoln Laboratory has developed a specialized chip to test and validate cooling solutions for packaged chip stacks. The chip dissipates extremely high power, mimicking high-performance logic chips, to generate heat through the silicon layer and in localized hot spots. Then, as cooling technologies are applied to the packaged stack, the chip measures temperature changes. When sandwiched in a stack, the chip will allow researchers to study how heat moves through stack layers and benchmark progress in keeping them cool.
"If you have just a single chip, you can cool it from above or below. But if you start stacking several chips on top of each other, the heat has nowhere to escape. No cooling methods exist today that allow industry to stack multiples of these really high-performance chips," says Chenson Chen, who led the development of the chip with Ryan Keech, both of the laboratory’s Advanced Materials and Microsystems Group.
The benchmarking chip is now being used at HRL Laboratories, a research and development company co-owned by Boeing and General Motors, as they develop cooling systems for 3D heterogenous integrated (3DHI) systems. Heterogenous integration refers to the stacking of silicon chips with non-silicon chips, such as III-V semiconductors used in radio-frequency (RF) systems.
"RF components can get very hot and run at very high powers — it adds an extra layer of complexity to 3D integration, which is why having this testing capability is so needed," Keech says.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the laboratory's development of the benchmarking chip to support the HRL program. All of this research stems from DARPA's Miniature Integrated Thermal Management Systems for 3D Heterogeneous Integration (Minitherms3D) program.
For the Department of Defense, 3DHI opens new opportunities for critical systems. For example, 3DHI could increase the range of radar and communication systems, enable the integration of advanced sensors on small platforms such as uncrewed aerial vehicles, or allow artificial intelligence data to be processed directly in fielded systems instead of remote data centers.
The test chip was developed through collaboration between circuit designers, electrical testing experts, and technicians in the laboratory's Microelectronics Laboratory.
The chip serves two functions: generating heat and sensing temperature. To generate heat, the team designed circuits that could operate at very high power densities, in the kilowatts-per-square-centimeter range, comparable to the projected power demands of high-performance chips today and into the future. They also replicated the layout of circuits in those chips, allowing the test chip to serve as a realistic stand-in.
"We adapted our existing silicon technology to essentially design chip-scale heaters," says Chen, who brings years of complex integration and chip design experience to the program. In the 2000s, he helped the laboratory pioneer the fabrication of two- and three-tier integrated circuits, leading early development of 3D integration.
The chip's heaters emulate both the background levels of heat within a stack and localized hot spots. Hot spots often occur in the most buried and inaccessible areas of a chip stack, making it difficult for 3D-chip developers to assess whether cooling schemes, such as microchannels delivering cold liquid, are reaching those spots and are effective enough.
That's where temperature-sensing elements come in. The chip is distributed with what Chen likens to "tiny thermometers" that read out the temperature in multiple locations across the chip as coolants are applied.
These thermometers are actually diodes, or switches that allow current to flow through a circuit as voltage is applied. As the diodes heat up, the current-to-voltage ratio changes. "We're able to check a diode's performance and know that it's 200 degrees C, or 100 degrees C, or 50 degrees C, for example," Keech says. "We thought creatively about how devices could fail from overheating, and then used those same properties to design useful measurement tools."
Chen and Keech — along with other design, fabrication, and electrical test experts across the laboratory — are now collaborating with HRL Laboratories researchers as they couple the chip with novel cooling technologies, and integrate those technologies into a 3DHI stack that could boost RF signal power. "We need to cool the heat equivalent of more than 190 laptop CPUs [central processing units], but in the size of a single CPU package," Christopher Roper, co-principal investigator at HRL, said in a recent press release announcing their program.
According to Keech, the rapid timeline for delivering the chip was a challenge overcome by teamwork through all phases of the chip's design, fabrication, test, and 3D heterogenous integration.
"Stacked architectures are considered the next frontier for microelectronics," he says. "We want to help the U.S. government get ahead in finding ways to integrate them effectively and enable the highest performance possible for these chips."
The laboratory team presented this work at the annual Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech), held March 17-20.
This silicon wafer contains chips designed to test cooling systems for 3D integrated microelectronics. Each chip comprises circuitry that generates heat within a 3D stack and measures temperature as cooling solutions are applied.
As demand grows for more powerful and efficient microelectronics systems, industry is turning to 3D integration — stacking chips on top of each other. This vertically layered architecture could allow high-performance processors, like those used for artificial intelligence, to be packaged closely with other highly specialized chips for communication or imaging. But technologists everywhere face a major challenge: how to prevent these stacks from overheating.Now, MIT Lincoln Laboratory has develop
As demand grows for more powerful and efficient microelectronics systems, industry is turning to 3D integration — stacking chips on top of each other. This vertically layered architecture could allow high-performance processors, like those used for artificial intelligence, to be packaged closely with other highly specialized chips for communication or imaging. But technologists everywhere face a major challenge: how to prevent these stacks from overheating.
Now, MIT Lincoln Laboratory has developed a specialized chip to test and validate cooling solutions for packaged chip stacks. The chip dissipates extremely high power, mimicking high-performance logic chips, to generate heat through the silicon layer and in localized hot spots. Then, as cooling technologies are applied to the packaged stack, the chip measures temperature changes. When sandwiched in a stack, the chip will allow researchers to study how heat moves through stack layers and benchmark progress in keeping them cool.
"If you have just a single chip, you can cool it from above or below. But if you start stacking several chips on top of each other, the heat has nowhere to escape. No cooling methods exist today that allow industry to stack multiples of these really high-performance chips," says Chenson Chen, who led the development of the chip with Ryan Keech, both of the laboratory’s Advanced Materials and Microsystems Group.
The benchmarking chip is now being used at HRL Laboratories, a research and development company co-owned by Boeing and General Motors, as they develop cooling systems for 3D heterogenous integrated (3DHI) systems. Heterogenous integration refers to the stacking of silicon chips with non-silicon chips, such as III-V semiconductors used in radio-frequency (RF) systems.
"RF components can get very hot and run at very high powers — it adds an extra layer of complexity to 3D integration, which is why having this testing capability is so needed," Keech says.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the laboratory's development of the benchmarking chip to support the HRL program. All of this research stems from DARPA's Miniature Integrated Thermal Management Systems for 3D Heterogeneous Integration (Minitherms3D) program.
For the Department of Defense, 3DHI opens new opportunities for critical systems. For example, 3DHI could increase the range of radar and communication systems, enable the integration of advanced sensors on small platforms such as uncrewed aerial vehicles, or allow artificial intelligence data to be processed directly in fielded systems instead of remote data centers.
The test chip was developed through collaboration between circuit designers, electrical testing experts, and technicians in the laboratory's Microelectronics Laboratory.
The chip serves two functions: generating heat and sensing temperature. To generate heat, the team designed circuits that could operate at very high power densities, in the kilowatts-per-square-centimeter range, comparable to the projected power demands of high-performance chips today and into the future. They also replicated the layout of circuits in those chips, allowing the test chip to serve as a realistic stand-in.
"We adapted our existing silicon technology to essentially design chip-scale heaters," says Chen, who brings years of complex integration and chip design experience to the program. In the 2000s, he helped the laboratory pioneer the fabrication of two- and three-tier integrated circuits, leading early development of 3D integration.
The chip's heaters emulate both the background levels of heat within a stack and localized hot spots. Hot spots often occur in the most buried and inaccessible areas of a chip stack, making it difficult for 3D-chip developers to assess whether cooling schemes, such as microchannels delivering cold liquid, are reaching those spots and are effective enough.
That's where temperature-sensing elements come in. The chip is distributed with what Chen likens to "tiny thermometers" that read out the temperature in multiple locations across the chip as coolants are applied.
These thermometers are actually diodes, or switches that allow current to flow through a circuit as voltage is applied. As the diodes heat up, the current-to-voltage ratio changes. "We're able to check a diode's performance and know that it's 200 degrees C, or 100 degrees C, or 50 degrees C, for example," Keech says. "We thought creatively about how devices could fail from overheating, and then used those same properties to design useful measurement tools."
Chen and Keech — along with other design, fabrication, and electrical test experts across the laboratory — are now collaborating with HRL Laboratories researchers as they couple the chip with novel cooling technologies, and integrate those technologies into a 3DHI stack that could boost RF signal power. "We need to cool the heat equivalent of more than 190 laptop CPUs [central processing units], but in the size of a single CPU package," Christopher Roper, co-principal investigator at HRL, said in a recent press release announcing their program.
According to Keech, the rapid timeline for delivering the chip was a challenge overcome by teamwork through all phases of the chip's design, fabrication, test, and 3D heterogenous integration.
"Stacked architectures are considered the next frontier for microelectronics," he says. "We want to help the U.S. government get ahead in finding ways to integrate them effectively and enable the highest performance possible for these chips."
The laboratory team presented this work at the annual Government Microcircuit Applications and Critical Technology Conference (GOMACTech), held March 17-20.
This silicon wafer contains chips designed to test cooling systems for 3D integrated microelectronics. Each chip comprises circuitry that generates heat within a 3D stack and measures temperature as cooling solutions are applied.
Health
How halt in funding hurts efforts to ensure safety of patients in medical research
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
April 28, 2025
6 min read
Stop-work order disrupts system that facilitates oversight of studies happening at multiple sites
The Trump administration’s freeze of more than $2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard has disrupted work in a number of areas, includ
How halt in funding hurts efforts to ensure safety of patients in medical research
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
Stop-work order disrupts system that facilitates oversight of studies happening at multiple sites
The Trump administration’s freeze of more than $2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard has disrupted work in a number of areas, including efforts to ensure the rights and safety of patients who take part in medical studies.
The administration sent the University a stop-work order for the SMART IRB federal funding contract on April 14. The notice came hours after Harvard rejected government demands that included changes to governance and hiring practices and “audits” of viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff, among other measures.
SMART IRB is a national system administered by a Harvard Catalyst team along with other collaborators. It is used by hospitals, universities, and federal agencies to facilitate oversight of medical research taking place at multiple sites.
Barbara Bierer is the principal investigator and program director of SMART IRB and director of the Regulatory Foundations, Law and Ethics Program at Harvard Catalyst, the University’s clinical and translational science center. She is also a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
In this edited conversation, she outlines how the funding cuts will impact patients who take part in research.
How do NIH funds go toward protecting patients?
Generally research, including NIH-funded research involving human participants, must be reviewed, approved, and then overseen by an institutional review board (IRB) to ensure compliance with applicable institutional, local, state, and federal rules, policies, laws, and regulations, as well as to ensure the rights and welfare of research participants.
For most universities and research institutions, IRB review and oversight are included as indirect costs in the research lifecycle. An NIH policy introduced in 2018 and applied more broadly to federally funded research in 2020 has also required multisite, collaborative research to be reviewed by a single IRB (an sIRB), which takes on the responsibility of reviewing and overseeing the research for all sites.
In some of these cases, the costs may be considered direct costs paid for by federal funding.
What role do these IRBs play in protecting patients?
IRBs, which are set up within — or independently work with — hospitals, universities, and other centers that conduct research, play a key role in carefully reviewing research proposals to ensure participants are protected in a number of ways.
These include consideration of the research question and study design, of recruitment plans, the process for obtaining and continuing to ensure informed consent, assessment and mitigation of risks of harm, participant safety, the determination of the relationship of adverse events to the research, data monitoring, etc.
“Every citizen who has benefited from the efforts of clinical research — taking a new drug, using a medical device, or undergoing a diagnostic test — is impacted by the way we conduct and monitor research.”
IRBs and the human research-protections programs also work to train and support investigators, manage interactions with sponsors, and work with federal and state regulators, among other responsibilities.
Think of IRBs as the “checks and balances” system that maintains the ethics and oversight that medical research studies need. Without this dedicated group of professionals and community members, our studies could potentially, and even inadvertently, cause harm to the individuals and communities that participate. Our valued federal laws and regulations were developed and continue to evolve in response to very real examples of such harms.
Across the U.S., thousands of people dedicate their careers to supporting the ethical oversight and conduct of research, working together every day to safeguard those of us who volunteer to take part in a study.
And of course, every citizen who has benefited from the efforts of clinical research — taking a new drug, using a medical device, or undergoing a diagnostic test — is impacted by the way we conduct and monitor research.
Where do we see this work have the biggest impact?
Concern for the safety, well-being, and protection of study participants drives this community of professionals. We make sure that a system exists for potential study participants to understand the research plan, risks, benefits, and burdens, and freely choose whether or not to participate in the research.
The IRB is also a resource to participants should they have questions or concerns about their participation in a study.
IRBs were the result of historical events that highlighted the need to monitor ethical issues that arise with human research. Can you talk about that a bit?
History has proven what’s at stake: the horrors of medical experimentation by German scientists during World War II; the tragic 1932-72 untreated syphilis study at Tuskegee that upended the public’s notion of safety and consent in medical trials and led to the system of oversight we have today in an act signed by Richard Nixon in 1974; the hepatitis studies at the Willowbrook State School for Children where children with developmental disabilities were intentionally infected with hepatitis; and the betrayal of trust and the principle of informed consent in genetic research involving members of the Havasupai Tribe.
Furthermore, our ability as a nation to advance scientific research is at stake. Imagine you have a dozen or more hospitals and universities across the country working on a new therapeutic that could treat Alzheimer’s disease. Before SMART IRB was available, these centers would have spent countless hours and faced numerous hurdles and delays just to collaborate. The process that is now available has reduced many of these blocks to innovation.
How will funding cuts impact this work?
Broadly, the increasingly expansive cuts to research funding, the cancellation of countless grants and contracts at exceptional research institutions across the country, will have a significant negative impact on research participants as well as on the IRBs and research professionals.
Studies halted midstream risk significant harms to participants and communities and can reinforce public skepticism and mistrust for the research enterprise and inhibit the commitment of researchers and institutions to fully, honestly, and collaboratively work with the communities they serve.
Since SMART IRB received a stop-work order on April 14, ongoing studies cannot add new clinical sites, more than 25 institutions have been prevented from joining, and dozens and dozens of research studies have been delayed.
At present, support from Harvard Medical School is allowing our team to continue the essential work of supporting collaborative research across the nation. It is our intention to continue to do so: The risks are too great, and the health and safety of the American people depend on it.
To understand what drives disease progression in tissues, scientists need more than just a snapshot of cells in isolation — they need to see where the cells are, how they interact, and how that spatial organization shifts across disease states. A new computational method called MESA (Multiomics and Ecological Spatial Analysis), detailed in a study published in Nature Genetics, is helping researchers study diseased tissues in more meaningful ways.The work details the results of a collaboration be
To understand what drives disease progression in tissues, scientists need more than just a snapshot of cells in isolation — they need to see where the cells are, how they interact, and how that spatial organization shifts across disease states. A new computational method called MESA (Multiomics and Ecological Spatial Analysis), detailed in a study published in Nature Genetics, is helping researchers study diseased tissues in more meaningful ways.
The work details the results of a collaboration between researchers from MIT, Stanford University, Weill Cornell Medicine, the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and was led by the Stanford team.
MESA brings an ecology-inspired lens to tissue analysis. It offers a pipeline to interpret spatial omics data — the product of cutting-edge technology that captures molecular information along with the location of cells in tissue samples. These data provide a high-resolution map of tissue “neighborhoods,” and MESA helps make sense of the structure of that map.
“By integrating approaches from traditionally distinct disciplines, MESA enables researchers to better appreciate how tissues are locally organized and how that organization changes in different disease contexts, powering new diagnostics and the identification of new targets for preventions and cures,” says Alex K. Shalek, the director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry, and an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, as well as an institute member of the Broad Institute and a member of the Ragon Institute.
“In ecology, people study biodiversity across regions — how animal species are distributed and interact,” explains Bokai Zhu, MIT postdoc and author on the study. “We realized we could apply those same ideas to cells in tissues. Instead of rabbits and snakes, we analyze T cells and B cells.”
By treating cell types like ecological species, MESA quantifies “biodiversity” within tissues and tracks how that diversity changes in disease. For example, in liver cancer samples, the method revealed zones where tumor cells consistently co-occurred with macrophages, suggesting these regions may drive unique disease outcomes.
“Our method reads tissues like ecosystems, uncovering cellular ‘hotspots’ that mark early signs of disease or treatment response,” Zhu adds. “This opens new possibilities for precision diagnostics and therapy design.”
MESA also offers another major advantage: It can computationally enrich tissue data without the need for more experiments. Using publicly available single-cell datasets, the tool transfers additional information — such as gene expression profiles — onto existing tissue samples. This approach deepens understanding of how spatial domains function, especially when comparing healthy and diseased tissue.
In tests across multiple datasets and tissue types, MESA uncovered spatial structures and key cell populations that were previously overlooked. It integrates different types of omics data, such as transcriptomics and proteomics, and builds a multilayered view of tissue architecture.
Currently available as a Python package, MESA is designed for academic and translational research. Although spatial omics is still too resource-intensive for routine in-hospital clinical use, the technology is gaining traction among pharmaceutical companies, particularly for drug trials where understanding tissue responses is critical.
“This is just the beginning,” says Zhu. “MESA opens the door to using ecological theory to unravel the spatial complexity of disease — and ultimately, to better predict and treat it.”
Alex Shalek and Bokai Zhu discuss their research on the MESA computational method and its ability to reveal distinct tissue remodeling in therapeutic targets including cancer and autoimmune disease.
To understand what drives disease progression in tissues, scientists need more than just a snapshot of cells in isolation — they need to see where the cells are, how they interact, and how that spatial organization shifts across disease states. A new computational method called MESA (Multiomics and Ecological Spatial Analysis), detailed in a study published in Nature Genetics, is helping researchers study diseased tissues in more meaningful ways.The work details the results of a collaboration be
To understand what drives disease progression in tissues, scientists need more than just a snapshot of cells in isolation — they need to see where the cells are, how they interact, and how that spatial organization shifts across disease states. A new computational method called MESA (Multiomics and Ecological Spatial Analysis), detailed in a study published in Nature Genetics, is helping researchers study diseased tissues in more meaningful ways.
The work details the results of a collaboration between researchers from MIT, Stanford University, Weill Cornell Medicine, the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and was led by the Stanford team.
MESA brings an ecology-inspired lens to tissue analysis. It offers a pipeline to interpret spatial omics data — the product of cutting-edge technology that captures molecular information along with the location of cells in tissue samples. These data provide a high-resolution map of tissue “neighborhoods,” and MESA helps make sense of the structure of that map.
“By integrating approaches from traditionally distinct disciplines, MESA enables researchers to better appreciate how tissues are locally organized and how that organization changes in different disease contexts, powering new diagnostics and the identification of new targets for preventions and cures,” says Alex K. Shalek, the director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in IMES and the Department of Chemistry, and an extramural member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, as well as an institute member of the Broad Institute and a member of the Ragon Institute.
“In ecology, people study biodiversity across regions — how animal species are distributed and interact,” explains Bokai Zhu, MIT postdoc and author on the study. “We realized we could apply those same ideas to cells in tissues. Instead of rabbits and snakes, we analyze T cells and B cells.”
By treating cell types like ecological species, MESA quantifies “biodiversity” within tissues and tracks how that diversity changes in disease. For example, in liver cancer samples, the method revealed zones where tumor cells consistently co-occurred with macrophages, suggesting these regions may drive unique disease outcomes.
“Our method reads tissues like ecosystems, uncovering cellular ‘hotspots’ that mark early signs of disease or treatment response,” Zhu adds. “This opens new possibilities for precision diagnostics and therapy design.”
MESA also offers another major advantage: It can computationally enrich tissue data without the need for more experiments. Using publicly available single-cell datasets, the tool transfers additional information — such as gene expression profiles — onto existing tissue samples. This approach deepens understanding of how spatial domains function, especially when comparing healthy and diseased tissue.
In tests across multiple datasets and tissue types, MESA uncovered spatial structures and key cell populations that were previously overlooked. It integrates different types of omics data, such as transcriptomics and proteomics, and builds a multilayered view of tissue architecture.
Currently available as a Python package, MESA is designed for academic and translational research. Although spatial omics is still too resource-intensive for routine in-hospital clinical use, the technology is gaining traction among pharmaceutical companies, particularly for drug trials where understanding tissue responses is critical.
“This is just the beginning,” says Zhu. “MESA opens the door to using ecological theory to unravel the spatial complexity of disease — and ultimately, to better predict and treat it.”
Alex Shalek and Bokai Zhu discuss their research on the MESA computational method and its ability to reveal distinct tissue remodeling in therapeutic targets including cancer and autoimmune disease.
Arts & Culture
Discoveries on a musical path
Yosvany Terry.Credit: @stagetimearts
Julie McDonough
Harvard Correspondent
April 28, 2025
9 min read
From Benin to Cuba to the Americas, Yosvany Terry sees how tradition safeguards culture and identity
During recent travels to the West African nation of Benin and to Cuba, his home country, internationally renowned musician and composer Yos
From Benin to Cuba to the Americas, Yosvany Terry sees how tradition safeguards culture and identity
During recent travels to the West African nation of Benin and to Cuba, his home country, internationally renowned musician and composer Yosvany Terry began to research the link between the musical traditions of Benin and the Caribbean.
He had the opportunity to visit with, learn from, and perform alongside musicians keeping those traditions alive. Now Terry, a senior lecturer on music and director of the Harvard Jazz Ensembles, intends to bring his findings to the classroom and his own performances, including one on May 1 as a part of ArtsThursdays.
In this edited conversation, the Gazette sat down with Terry, who shared insights into his research, the importance of expanding the arts through cross-departmental collaboration, and what he likes best about working with Harvard students.
Tell us about your most recent research project.
My research in Benin (the former Kingdom of Dahomey) in January, as well as the research I have conducted in Cuba over the years, is meant to better understand the roots of modern jazz and the impact of the African diaspora on musical traditions.
Going to Benin and visiting remote regions was an opportunity to engage with musicians, learn from them, and perform with them. I could sit with people who are steeped in this culture and its traditions. It was in those magic spaces where they shared their cultural treasures with me. These musical and cultural traditions are not often researched. My Cuban heritage and personal connections to this culture allowed me to be able to connect with the practitioners I met in Benin and to have access to the traditions they continue to practice.
West African musical and cultural traditions came to the Americas with the slave trade, and this profoundly influenced the music that grew as a result of contact with these African traditions.
As we know, slavery ended much later in Cuba than elsewhere. Slaves closely guarded their cultural traditions. Safeguarding these traditions became a part of their rebellion and a way of maintaining their cultural identity under pressure to assimilate. This movement of resistance allowed them to keep the music, dance, culinary arts, spirituality, and religious practices of the societies they came from.
What will you do with this research?
My plan is to give my students access to this primary source material. I want them to know how these traditions prevailed and were safeguarded, but also how they influenced the musical traditions of Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, and the development of American jazz. With this information we can explore how this music influences popular culture and more deeply, how it becomes part of the fabric of who we are — our identity. One of my missions as an artist and an educator is to give life to this incredible wealth of information and culture that gets overlooked. It is so much a part of our daily life, but for so many, we don’t know where it comes from.
“One of my missions as an artist and an educator is to give life to this incredible wealth of information and culture that gets overlooked.”
What impact will it have on you as a musician and composer?
As an artist, this research allows me to create a new body of work that is in conversation with these traditions. I may base new compositions on this research, or I may be inspired to create a new avenue of exploration and inquiry.
I am now working on writing an opera, which is based upon the life of the first free person of color who organized the first rebellion against the Spanish colonial system in 19th-century Cuba. It is relevant today because the core of this work is unearthing a history that has been overlooked or forgotten.
While I was in Benin, I also traveled with a friend, Davey Frankel, a great filmmaker who was filming and documenting our conversations with historians, musicians, and the people of Benin who still practice these music and cultural traditions. The hope is to create a documentary that would connect the dots between the old Kingdom of Dahomey and today’s jazz music.
As director of the Harvard Jazz Orchestra, what is your vision for students who participate in that group?
I was fortunate to inherit a program that Tom Everett founded in 1972. It became an important jumping-off point for jazz at Harvard because it created space for jazz masters to visit the University. With support from the Office for the Arts at Harvard, it grew into something that the University really embraced, naming more than 120 jazz masters.
Part of what I have done to advance the jazz program is to support the engagement of artists of Afro Latin American descent and to make this a fixture of the band. By inviting jazz masters from all different musical backgrounds, including Chucho Valdés, Angélique Kidjo, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and collaborating with other departments, we have expanded the scope and learning of students who participate. When we bring in artists of this caliber, we get feedback that this experience “changes students’ lives” Whether they decide to become professional musicians or simply to become lifelong supporters of the arts, we have planted the seed that stays with them.
The other piece I have emphasized with the jazz program is to learn from travel. We have visited Cuba and Dominican Republic, which are countries that students may not have otherwise chosen to visit on their own. These educational trips are not centered on tourist attractions, but rather on real learning from educators and other students in these countries. Our students hear lectures from masters of these musical traditions, including jazz band directors and professors. They engage with other music students in concerts and in jam sessions. These educational trips provide unique experiences that students tell us will stay with them for a very long time.
You have participated as a performer in ArtsThursdays a few different times. How has this programming raised the profile of the arts at Harvard and in the larger community?
ArtsThursdays, an initiative of the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA), has been vitally important to raising the visibility of art-making at Harvard, not only within Harvard but beyond Harvard into our surrounding communities. It has exposed these communities to the incredible work that is done by Harvard faculty who are active artists and performers, by inviting them to free concerts. Not only does it provide unique opportunities for faculty to engage with other artists, but it inspires students to imagine new possibilities. Importantly, it encourages art creators, students and faculty, to reach out across disciplines within the University, but also to bring artists in from other communities.
I am performing at ArtsThursdays again on May 1. At that performance, you will see a direct connection to the research that I did in Benin and Cuba. It reveals the way in which an artist moves from idea to performance — you can see the full circle — artist research, art-making and creation, and then finally, performance.
In conjunction with the May 1 performance, we are planning a dance workshop to engage dance students with these musical traditions. This is an example of the way in which ArtsThursdays inspires collaboration between departments that are not always in conversation. It’s a collaboration that could grow and might show up in our curriculum or classroom teaching in the future.
What is your favorite thing about teaching at Harvard?
Harvard students are, of course, very smart students who really want to learn. They have an enormous sense of curiosity. But many come to our department without knowing very much about the music or genre they are studying. Over the semester, it is so rewarding to see them grow and at the end, it’s possible to see how these courses have transformed their understanding of jazz and its history. They have this new wealth of information that they will take with them, and they become advocates for the information they have learned.
For me as an educator and composer, I love the collaboration with my colleagues across the different departments. I imagine the things you can do with collaboration in unusual departments. For example, I am working with my colleague Demba Ba, the Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering, on how we can use AI on creative aspects of composition. We are asking the question about how we can train new models to better learn and use aspects of certain musical traditions that AI has not been able to because of the death of data — traditions from West Africa, for example. Basically, how can we teach the system elasticity? This collaboration is exciting and important.
You have been at Harvard for 10 years. What is your hope for the arts in the next 10 years?
Since 2015 I have seen a lot of changes and growth, particularly in our music department. Those changes can be seen in what was offered before and what is offered now. We have been intentional about expanding our offerings to include different musical traditions. By doing so, we are now seeing a broader group of students coming through our department.
Of course, we cannot be complacent. We must continue with initiatives like HUCA, as well as inviting visiting artists and professors and hosting jazz masters in residence. We need to bring the brightest artistic minds to Harvard to spend time here in order to create new spaces for arts understanding. We need to push for new ways to reimagine arts at the University so that we have a healthy, robust, and diverse arts presence on our campus.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Health
Weighing cure for sick kids against troubling ethical questions
Science Center talk outlines potential and risks of gene editing
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 28, 2025
4 min read
If our differences are part of what make us human, do we have the right — or the responsibility — to change them? That question was at the crux of
Weighing cure for sick kids against troubling ethical questions
Science Center talk outlines potential and risks of gene editing
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
4 min read
If our differences are part of what make us human, do we have the right — or the responsibility — to change them? That question was at the crux of “The Promise and Peril of CRISPR,” a talk given by Neal Baer, Ed.M. ’79, M.D. ’96, co-director of Harvard Medical School’s master’s degree program in Media, Medicine, and Health. At the Science Center presentation co-sponsored by the FAS’ Division of Science and Harvard Library, Baer discussed the ethical issues surrounding the gene-editing technology with Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, director of the Medical School’s Center for Bioethics.
Introducing the subject — and the book he has edited with the same title — Baer recalled his “horrible” early experience treating children with sickle cell anemia at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. “They were suffering. They had strokes,” he recalled. “And there was very little we could do.
“Now,” thanks to CRISPR, “we can cure sickle cell,” he said.
But should we? That remains the central issue for Baer, who also works as a screenwriter, dramatizing medical issues for TV shows such as “Designated Survivor” and “Law and Order: SVU.” (“I am Olivia Benson,” he told the audience, referring to the “Law and Order” protagonist).
With CRISPR technology, scientists can now edit both somatic genes (from the body) and germline genes (from gametes, the sex cells that form embryos), literally clipping out and replacing parts of them. In the case of sickle cell, manipulation of somatic cells can and has removed the genes underlying the disease in individuals. If such changes were made in germline cells, the resulting embryo would never develop the disease at all.
But while curing this painful disease may seem like an unalloyed positive, the questions around gene editing raise many troubling ethical questions. “Should we be using CRISPR for diseases or syndromes that are compatible with life, like Down syndrome?” asked Baer. “Who is going to make those decisions?”
The cost of gene manipulation is another factor. The sickle cell “cure,” for example, comes at a cost of roughly $2.2 million. Noting that approximately 100,000 people in the U.S. suffer from sickle cell, he asked, “Who is going to pay for it?” The domestic population, he continued, is only a fraction of the global sufferers, which raises issues of fairness and health equity.
Neal Baer (left) and Rebecca Brendel speaking during the event.
Citing this “cautionary tale,” Brendel became pragmatic. “The reality is that when we have innovation it makes those who have, have more, and those who don’t have, have less,” she said. “We can’t just innovate without thinking of the ethics. We have to think about the health justice implications as well.”
Even if curing sickle cell is considered a good, Baer argued, the changes made possible by this technology are troubling. For example, what if two deaf parents want their child genetically modified to be able to hear? “Should parents make that decision for their child? Is it up to parents to decide what attributes their children should have?”
In one of the book’s chapters, contributor Ethan J. Weiss divulged that had he and his wife known of their daughter’s albinism, “We would have aborted. But now that we have her, we can’t think of the world without her.”
Baer went on to quote Carol Padden, dean of social sciences at the University of California, San Diego, who was born deaf. “I don’t have a pathology,” she has said. “I have something called human variation. I don’t need to be ‘fixed.’”
Another concern is oversight. “Yes, it is illegal to clone. Yes, it’s illegal to do germline editing. But who is monitoring in Russia?” Baer asked. “Or China?” As if taking a page from a TV drama script, he discussed the possibilities of soldiers genetically altered to feel less pain, fear, or fatigue.
Additionally, Baer pointed out, gene editing may have unintended consequences. He cited a recent advance by the doctor and pharmaceutical company executive Sekar Kathiresan that allowed him to edit the gene controlling LDL cholesterol. While permanently lowering “bad” cholesterol, which is implicated in heart disease and strokes, sounds like a “win,” said Baer, the science isn’t that simple. “This gene evolved over 3 billion years and is involved in dozens and dozens of other” reactions, he said, including those involving insulin and other factors.
“Genes don’t just pop out,” he said. “They evolve and interact and do many different things.”
Mia, a young bonobo female, vocalizes in response to distant group membersMartin Surbeck/Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project
Science & Tech
Turns out, bonobos ‘talk’ a lot like humans
Researchers compile dictionary of vocalizations suggesting the animals use equivalent of word compounds, phrasings to communicate complex social situations
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 28, 2025
4 min read
Researchers compile dictionary of vocalizations suggesting the animals use equivalent of word compounds, phrasings to communicate complex social situations
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
4 min read
How old is language? A new study from researchers at the University of Zurich and Harvard University reveals that bonobos, our closest living relatives alongside chimpanzees, use the equivalent of word compounds and phrasings, suggesting that the roots of language predate humans.
Communication has always been about more than just words, say the researchers, Assistant Professor Martin Surbeck of Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, and Professor Simon William Townsend and postdoc Melissa Berthet, both at the University of Zurich. The way we pair words to make phrases and sentences and then link these parts into phrases and sentences defines language, and our ability to communicate with each other.
This capability — known as “compositionality” — lets us create new words and phrases. For example, a “bad dancer” is not necessarily “bad” in any absolute sense. That modifier links with “dancer” to create an easily understandable neologism. Such phrasings can help communicate complex social situations.
“There’s been a long-held evolutionary relationship between vocal complexity and social complexity,” said Townsend. Humans are proof of that. “Arguably humans have the most complex social organization, and we also have the most complex communication system with the most complex forms of ‘combinator’ reality.”
‘A complex communication system’
A bonobo whistling in the forest, to coordinate group movements over larger distances.
A bonobo emits a subtle peep before the whistle, to denote tensed social situations.
The study details the researchers’ observations of the vocal behavior of wild bonobos, a key species for reconstructing human evolution, in the Kokolopori reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Using novel methods borrowed from human linguistics, the team demonstrated for the first time that bonobo vocal communication also relies extensively on compositionality.
Like humans, bonobos have complex social bonds. For example, their social group sometimes breaks off into smaller groups before coming together again. “The social organization is perhaps possible because of this more sophisticated communication,” said Berthet, lead author of the study.
The data collection, done over eight months, was painstaking. Researchers began with a list of roughly 300 contextual features to check off when a bonobo made a sound classified as a peep, yelp, or whistle, and “what they were doing or what was happening.” These assumed that a call could give an order — such as, “Run!” — announce an upcoming action (“I will travel”), express an interior state (“I am afraid”), or refer to an external event (“There is a predator”). The team recorded what happened for two minutes after each vocalization to see how that vocalization influenced the group.
Not only did various vocalizations link to various acts or occurrences, but strings of vocalizations revealed their own meanings, allowing the team to create “a dictionary of sorts,” said Berthet. This dictionary revealed how many of the call combinations had the compositionality recognized from human languages. “This dictionary represents an important step in understanding animal communication, as it is the first time researchers have systematically determined the meaning of all the calls of an animal,” Berthet wrote.
Olive, a first time bonobo mother, vocalizing toward distant group members.
Lukas Bierhoff/Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project
“The beauty of this approach is that all of a sudden we have something that allows us to quantify these aspects of the vocal repertoire in all different types of species,” said Surbeck. “It opens a new understanding into animal communication.”
Such structured language is not unique to humans and bonobos: Similar combinations have been observed in chimpanzees. However, that research has tended to focus on single-call combinations, while this new study looked at an entire vocal repertoire.
“It does seem to be the case that at least in chimpanzees and now bonobos, these species that are characterized by this quite complex social system and long-term social bonds between individuals, that you do start to see levels of combinatorial complexity that you might not see in species with less complex social systems,” said Townsend. This suggests that species “evolve a complex communication system so that you can keep the social bonds and the social relationships going at a distance.”
Because humans and bonobos share a common ancestor from approximately 7 million to 13 million years ago, said Surbeck, they share many traits by descent. “It appears that compositionality is likely one of them.”
Many diseases are caused by a missing or defective copy of a single gene. For decades, scientists have been working on gene therapy treatments that could cure such diseases by delivering a new copy of the missing genes to the affected cells.Despite those efforts, very few gene therapy treatments have been approved by the FDA. One of the challenges to developing these treatments has been achieving control over how much the new gene is expressed in cells — too little and it won’t succeed, too much
Many diseases are caused by a missing or defective copy of a single gene. For decades, scientists have been working on gene therapy treatments that could cure such diseases by delivering a new copy of the missing genes to the affected cells.
Despite those efforts, very few gene therapy treatments have been approved by the FDA. One of the challenges to developing these treatments has been achieving control over how much the new gene is expressed in cells — too little and it won’t succeed, too much and it could cause serious side effects.
To help achieve more precise control of gene therapy, MIT engineers have tuned and applied a control circuit that can keep expression levels within a target range. In human cells, they showed that they could use this method to deliver genes that could help treat diseases including fragile X syndrome, a disorder that leads to intellectual disability and other developmental problems.
“In theory, gene supplementation can solve monogenic disorders that are very diverse but have a relatively straightforward gene therapy fix if you could control the therapy well enough,” says Katie Galloway, the W. M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering and the senior author of the new study.
MIT graduate student Kasey Love is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Cell Systems. Other authors of the paper include MIT graduate students Christopher Johnstone, Emma Peterman, and Stephanie Gaglione, and Michael Birnbaum, an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT.
Delivering genes
While gene therapy holds promise for treating a variety of diseases, including hemophilia and sickle cell anemia, only a handful of treatments have been approved so far, for an inherited retinal disease and certain blood cancers.
Most gene therapy approaches use a virus to deliver a new copy of a gene, which is then integrated into the DNA of host cells. Some cells may take up many copies of the gene, while others don’t receive any.
“Simple overexpression of that payload can result in a really wide range of expression levels in the target genes as they take up different numbers of copies of those genes or just have different expression levels,” Love says. “If it's not expressing enough, that defeats the purpose of the therapy. But on the other hand, expressing at too high levels is also a problem, as that payload can be toxic.”
To try to overcome this, scientists have experimented with different types of control circuits that constrain expression of the therapeutic gene. In this study, the MIT team decided to use a type of circuit called an incoherent feedforward loop (IFFL).
In an IFFL circuit, activation of the target gene simultaneously activates production of a molecule that suppresses gene expression. One type of molecule that can be used to achieve that suppression is microRNA — a short RNA sequence that binds to messenger RNA, preventing it from being translated into protein.
In this study, the MIT team designed an IFFL circuit, called “ComMAND” (Compact microRNA-mediated attenuator of noise and dosage), so that a microRNA strand that represses mRNA translation is encoded within the therapeutic gene. The microRNA is located within a short segment called an intron, which gets spliced out of the gene when it is transcribed into mRNA. This means that whenever the gene is turned on, both the mRNA and the microRNA that represses it are produced in roughly equal amounts.
This approach allows the researchers to control the entire ComMAND circuit with just one promoter — the DNA site where gene transcription is turned on. By swapping in promoters of different strengths, the researchers can tailor how much of the therapeutic gene will be produced.
In addition to offering tighter control, the circuit’s compact design allows it to be carried on a single delivery vehicle, such as a lentivirus or adeno-associated virus, which could improve the manufacturability of these therapies. Both of those viruses are frequently used to deliver therapeutic cargoes.
“Other people have developed microRNA based incoherent feed forward loops, but what Kasey has done is put it all on a single transcript, and she showed that this gives the best possible control when you have variable delivery to cells,” Galloway says.
Precise control
To demonstrate this system, the researchers designed ComMAND circuits that could deliver the gene FXN, which is mutated in Friedreich’s ataxia — a disorder that affects the heart and nervous system. They also delivered the gene Fmr1, whose dysfunction causes fragile X syndrome. In tests in human cells, they showed that they could tune gene expression levels to about eight times the levels normally seen in healthy cells.
Without ComMAND, gene expression was more than 50 times the normal level, which could pose safety risks. Further tests in animal models would be needed to determine the optimal levels, the researchers say.
The researchers also performed tests in rat neurons, mouse fibroblasts, and human T-cells. For those cells, they delivered a gene that encodes a fluorescent protein, so they could easily measure the gene expression levels. In those cells, too, the researchers found that they could control gene expression levels more precisely than without the circuit.
The researchers now plan to study whether they could use this approach to deliver genes at a level that would restore normal function and reverse signs of disease, either in cultured cells or animal models.
“There's probably some tuning that would need to be done to the expression levels, but we understand some of those design principles, so if we needed to tune the levels up or down, I think we'd know potentially how to go about that,” Love says.
Other diseases that this approach could be applied to include Rett syndrome, muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, the researchers say.
“The challenge with a lot of those is they're also rare diseases, so you don't have large patient populations,” Galloway says. “We're trying to build out these tools that are robust so people can figure out how to do the tuning, because the patient populations are so small and there isn't a lot of funding for solving some of these disorders.”
The research was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.
In human cells, MIT engineers showed that they could use a new method to deliver genes that could help treat diseases including Fragile X syndrome, a disorder that leads to intellectual disability and other developmental problems.
Science & Tech
He got the stop-work order. Then the scrambling began.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 25, 2025
5 min read
Wyss’ Don Ingber details rush to hold onto consequential projects, talented researchers — and system that has driven American innovation
It was just hours after Harvard rejected the Trump administration’s demands th
He got the stop-work order. Then the scrambling began.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Wyss’ Don Ingber details rush to hold onto consequential projects, talented researchers — and system that has driven American innovation
It was just hours after Harvard rejected the Trump administration’s demands that the stop-work order arrived in Don Ingber’s inbox.
Ingber, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering’s founding director, said the April 14 order targeted two of his organ-on-a-chip projects, which together had more than $19 million in multiyear contracts with a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The move came in response to Harvard’s rejection of demands that included changes in governance, hiring and admissions, and audits of student, faculty, and staff opinions. A week later, Harvard filed a lawsuit, calling the demands an illegal and unconstitutional overreach and asking for funding to be restored.
After Ingber received the order, work halted but the scrambling — and uncertainty — began for everyone with a direct stake in the projects, including researchers, students, and postdoctoral fellows, he said.
With Harvard and the federal government at odds, with lawsuits filed, and after watching the Trump administration take dramatic steps in other areas only to walk them back, Ingber said he is reluctant to do anything permanent like layoffs.
“This is a stop-work order that could end next week, especially with the lawsuit going,” he said. “We’re going to take care of the people first. The projects need to stop in terms of expending funds, but if there’s spaces on other grants, we’re shifting people to them. We’ll try to find internal funds to keep them going at least until we figure out what’s going on.”
But decisions needed to be made quickly about how to wind down projects. Experiments halted midstream would likely be lost, as would the progress of students and postdoctoral fellows working on theses or papers based on those projects. There has also been a scramble to protect people, Ingber said, by finding places for them in other projects.
The research itself is also of consequence.
Ingber’s primary project uses organ-on-a-chip technology developed at the Wyss to investigate radiation damage to human lung, intestine, bone marrow, and lymph node, providing a tool to both model damage to tissues lining the chip’s tiny channels and identify new drugs that might ameliorate damaging effects.
Ingber said the research is particularly important given the administration’s plans to ramp up nuclear power production to support the energy-intensive artificial intelligence industry.
But even without AI, the project would be useful in modeling radiation damage to human organs in the event of an accident at a nuclear reactor, for cancer patients who undergo radiation therapy, and — in a worst-case scenario — a nuclear bomb explosion.
“What has driven the economy over the past 50 years is America’s innovation engine that fosters sciences which fuel technology development, driven by the pact between the government and academia.”
The second project uses organ-on-a-chip technology to model the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on astronauts in spaceflight. Scheduled to be aboard the Artemis II mission to the moon, the specialized chips incorporate the astronauts’ own cells to investigate the impact of spaceflight on bone marrow — where blood cells arise.
“Once you get past the Earth’s atmosphere, solar flares generate incredibly high energy radiation that can be lethal,” Ingber said. “Astronauts will undoubtedly be exposed on a long flight to Mars and you can’t just put them up in a capsule made of lead, which is what some people might suggest, because weight is critical to getting out of the atmosphere. Unless we solve that problem, we’re not going to get to Mars with humans. Maybe robots, but not humans.”
The uncertainty is forcing hard decisions. Ingber said he’s already been approached by one scientist on his team who had immigrated to the U.S. and has decided to leave the Wyss to pursue work in Europe. Ingber agreed to give her a recommendation and help her find a suitable position.
“She’s only been here for six or eight months, but she’s terrified. They’re all terrified,” Ingber said. “It’s hard to know what to tell them, other than we’re going to protect them as much as we can.”
It has also affected the decisions of scientists to come to Boston. A European postdoctoral scientist who had accepted a position at the Wyss recently withdrew his acceptance, saying he had been warned by family and friends it’s not safe to be a foreigner in the U.S.
“We’ve been the magnet for the best and brightest around the world. It’s a positive-feedback loop. They really do attract others, build new industries, and become tax-paying Americans,” Ingber said. “Now, no one from America is going to go into science with its lack of stability, and we already have people in Europe turning down job offers.”
Ingber is baffled at what positive outcome the administration hopes to achieve. He spent 90 percent of his time over the last week managing the crisis: meeting with his leadership team, researchers, and staff; consulting with University administrators; and figuring out where funding can be found to meet rapidly shifting priorities.
He’s also writing op-eds about cuts at the NIH, FDA, and CDC and talking to the media in an attempt to make the broader point that academic research is the foundation of America’s innovation economy and underlies many of the things we accept as part of everyday life, from computers to optical cables to iPhones.
“What has driven the economy over the past 50 years is America’s innovation engine that fosters sciences which fuel technology development, driven by the pact between the government and academia,” he said. “This seems to be coming to an end.”
Work & Economy
Stantcheva awarded Clark Medal
Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics (left), during a celebration honoring Stefanie Stantcheva, winner of John Bates Clark Medal.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
April 25, 2025
2 min read
Honored as a leading under-40 economist for pioneering insights on tax policy, innovation, be
Lawrence Katz, Elisabeth Allison Professor of Economics (left), during a celebration honoring Stefanie Stantcheva, winner of John Bates Clark Medal.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
2 min read
Honored as a leading under-40 economist for pioneering insights on tax policy, innovation, behavior
Harvard’s Stefanie Stantcheva has been awarded the American Economic Association’s 2025 John Bates Clark Medal, an annual prize recognizing an under-40 economist for significant contributions to the field.
“I’m incredibly honored, truly humbled, and very grateful for this award,” Stantcheva, the Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy, said Tuesday during a department celebration with colleagues and students.
In announcing the award, the association praised Stantcheva for exploring questions in public finance and producing new insights on tax policy and its impact on economic behavior.
Stefanie Stantcheva (left) and FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra.
“The tax system is something so powerful that can essentially make or break an economy,” Stantcheva said. “It can either encourage things like innovation — if it’s properly designed — or really discourage economic activity.”
In their 2022 paper, “Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century,” Stantcheva and her co-authors found that innovation responds to changes in tax policy with high elasticity. The study also revealed that higher taxes have a negative effect on the quantity of innovation but not the quality of inventions.
“Stefanie’s important contributions to the field make her so deserving of this award,” said Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “It’s wonderful to celebrate her alongside her colleagues, including several past winners, which speaks to the continued strength of this department.”
“We’ve been extremely lucky this year, but not surprised at all that Stefanie got it,” said Elie Tamer, Louis Berkman Professor of Economics and chair of the Economics Department. “She has done stellar work and we’re very proud. It’s a happy day for Harvard and Harvard economics in particular.”
Stantcheva founded the Social Economics Lab in 2018. Her recent work has tackled issues in trade, immigration, climate change, and social mobility.
“I am excited to continue the work at the Social Economics Lab to better understand how people think about economic issues and policies,” Stantcheva said. “We are currently exploring new topics — such as the interplay between emotions and policy — and key mindsets, such as zero-sum thinking.”
Researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, in collaboration with MIT, A*STAR Skin Research Labs, and the National University of Singapore, have developed a novel method that can quickly and automatically detect and monitor microbial contamination in cell therapy products (CTPs) early on during the manufacturing pro
Researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) interdisciplinary research group of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, in collaboration with MIT, A*STAR Skin Research Labs, and the National University of Singapore, have developed a novel method that can quickly and automatically detect and monitor microbial contamination in cell therapy products (CTPs) early on during the manufacturing process. By measuring ultraviolet light absorbance of cell culture fluids and using machine learning to recognize light absorption patterns associated with microbial contamination, this preliminary testing method aims to reduce the overall time taken for sterility testing and, subsequently, the time patients need to wait for CTP doses. This is especially crucial where timely administration of treatments can be life-saving for terminally ill patients.
Cell therapy represents a promising new frontier in medicine, especially in treating diseases such as cancers, inflammatory diseases, and chronic degenerative disorders by manipulating or replacing cells to restore function or fight disease. However, a major challenge in CTP manufacturing is quickly and effectively ensuring that cells are free from contamination before being administered to patients.
Existing sterility testing methods, based on microbiological methods, are labor-intensive and require up to 14 days to detect contamination, which could adversely affect critically ill patients who need immediate treatment. While advanced techniques such as rapid microbiological methods (RMMs) can reduce the testing period to seven days, they still require complex processes such as cell extraction and growth enrichment mediums, and they are highly dependent on skilled workers for procedures such as sample extraction, measurement, and analysis. This creates an urgent need for new methods that offer quicker outcomes without compromising the quality of CTPs, meet the patient-use timeline, and use a simple workflow that does not require additional preparation.
This method offers significant advantages over both traditional sterility tests and RMMs, as it eliminates the need for staining of cells to identify labelled organisms, avoids the invasive process of cell extraction, and delivers results in under half-an-hour. It provides an intuitive, rapid “yes/no” contamination assessment, facilitating automation of cell culture sampling with a simple workflow. Furthermore, the developed method does not require specialized equipment, resulting in lower costs.
“This rapid, label-free method is designed to be a preliminary step in the CTP manufacturing process as a form of continuous safety testing, which allows users to detect contamination early and implement timely corrective actions, including the use of RMMs only when possible contamination is detected. This approach saves costs, optimizes resource allocation, and ultimately accelerates the overall manufacturing timeline,” says Shruthi Pandi Chelvam, senior research engineer at SMART CAMP and first author of the paper.
“Traditionally, cell therapy manufacturing is labor-intensive and subject to operator variability. By introducing automation and machine learning, we hope to streamline cell therapy manufacturing and reduce the risk of contamination. Specifically, our method supports automated cell culture sampling at designated intervals to check for contamination, which reduces manual tasks such as sample extraction, measurement, and analysis. This enables cell cultures to be monitored continuously and contamination to be detected at early stages,” says Rajeev Ram, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, a principal investigator at SMART CAMP, and the corresponding author of the paper.
Moving forward, future research will focus on broadening the application of the method to encompass a wider range of microbial contaminants, specifically those representative of current good manufacturing practices environments and previously identified CTP contaminants. Additionally, the model’s robustness can be tested across more cell types apart from MSCs. Beyond cell therapy manufacturing, this method can also be applied to the food and beverage industry as part of microbial quality control testing to ensure food products meet safety standards.
Health
Bile imbalance linked to liver cancer
Heather Denny
HSDM Communications
April 25, 2025
3 min read
Key molecular switch identified, sheds new light on treatment interventions
A new study reveals how a critical imbalance in bile acids — the substances made by the liver that help digest fats — can trigger liver diseases, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form
Key molecular switch identified, sheds new light on treatment interventions
A new study reveals how a critical imbalance in bile acids — the substances made by the liver that help digest fats — can trigger liver diseases, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer. By identifying a key molecular switch that regulates bile, the study sheds new light on potential liver cancer treatment.
A unique function of the liver is to produce bile, which in turn acts as a natural detergent, breaking down fats into smaller droplets which are more readily absorbed by the cells in the lining of the small intestine. Beyond acting as a detergent, bile acids — a major component of the bile — also play a hormone-like function that governs a number of metabolic processes. Corresponding author of the study, Yingzi Yang, professor of developmental biology at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, looked at the delicate control of how bile acids are produced and how disruption of the tight regulation leads to liver injury, inflammation, and eventually HCC.
Yang and her team at HSDM have spent years studying cell signaling. One of the pathways they focus on is the Hippo/YAP pathway — a signaling pathway crucial for regulating cell growth related to cancer.
Yingzi Yang.
Photo by Tony Rinaldo
“In this study we discovered that YAP promotes tumor formation with a surprising role in regulating bile acid metabolism. Instead of encouraging cell growth as expected, YAP acts as a repressor, interfering with the function of a vital bile acid sensor called FXR,” she said.
YAP activation paralyzes FXR (Farnesoid X receptor), a nuclear receptor essential to bile acid homeostasis. This causes an overproduction of bile acids that build up in the liver, leading to fibrosis and inflammation, ultimately leading to liver cancer.
Blocking YAP’s repressor activity — either by enhancing FXR function or promoting bile acid excretion — could stop this damaging cycle, according to researchers. In experimental models, activating FXR, inhibiting HDAC1 that enables YAP repressor function, or increasing the expression of a bile acid export protein (BSEP), all helped reduce liver damage and cancer progression.
“With this finding, it could lead us to pharmacological solutions that stimulate FXR, which is very exciting” Yang said.
According to Yang, the findings have additional implications as more is discovered about how YAP influences metabolic control by regulating nutrient sensing. Yang’s interest in studying this function came from her longtime work in cell signaling in liver biology and cancer. She is also a member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
The Yang Laboratory uses molecular, cellular, genetic, and genomic approaches to investigate the critical roles of cell signaling in embryonic morphogenesis and adult physiology. Their research focuses on the mammalian skeleton and liver to explore human biology and address the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of diseases, including cancer.
This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.
Health
FDA-approved smoking cessation pill helps break vaping habit
Clinical trial shows teens and young adults had three times more success quitting than their placebo counterparts
Isabella Davis
Mass General Brigham Communications
April 25, 2025
3 min read
Teens and young adults who took varenicline — an FDA-approved, twice-daily smoking cessation pill for adults — are more than three
Clinical trial shows teens and young adults had three times more success quitting than their placebo counterparts
Isabella Davis
Mass General Brigham Communications
3 min read
Teens and young adults who took varenicline — an FDA-approved, twice-daily smoking cessation pill for adults — are more than three times as likely to successfully quit vaping compared to those who received only behavioral counseling, according to a new study from Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham. Results are published in JAMA.
“Vaping is extremely popular among kids, and we know that this early nicotine exposure can make drugs like cocaine more addictive down the line, yet ours is the first treatment study to look at this vulnerable population,” said lead author A. Eden Evins, director of the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and the William Cox Family Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We wanted to help teens and young adults quit, and we found that prescribing varenicline is the best way to do that.”
According to investigators, about a quarter of 18-to-25-year-olds vaped in 2023, and roughly 8 percent of high schoolers vaped in 2024. Vapes have become a popular alternative to cigarettes with the added challenge of being easy to conceal and easy to use in public places. Yet they contain many of the same familiar health threats, like nicotine addiction, carcinogen and heavy metal exposure, and pulmonary inflammation. Exploring treatment plans is crucial to provide teens and young adults with safe, effective avenues to quit.
Because varenicline is already approved for smoking cessation in adults, it can be prescribed for anyone aged 16 to 25 wanting to quit nicotine vaping.
To identify such a treatment avenue, the Mass General Brigham team recruited 261 participants aged 16 to 25 into a randomized clinical trial. Participants were sorted into three treatment groups. The first was varenicline, weekly behavioral counseling, and access to a free text support service called “This is Quitting.” The second was placebo pills, weekly behavioral counseling, and the text service. The third was the text service alone. Each group was treated for 12 weeks, then checked on monthly for another 12 weeks post-treatment.
Each week, participants reported whether they had successfully quit vaping, and their responses were verified with cotinine saliva tests. At the end of 12 weeks of treatment and at three-month follow-up, the varenicline group had the highest quitting success rate. At 12 weeks, 51 percent of varenicline users had stopped vaping, compared to 14 percent of placebo users and 6 percent of text-only users. At 24 weeks, 28 percent of varenicline users had stopped vaping, compared to 7 percent of placebo users and 4 percent of text-only users.
These findings demonstrate the importance of medication to help young people who are addicted to nicotine quit vaping, since the varenicline group had three times more success quitting vaping than their placebo counterparts — despite both engaging in behavioral therapy. Further research is needed to explore the potential impact of other therapeutic approaches, as well as to look at even younger people who use nicotine vapes.
Because varenicline is already approved for smoking cessation in adults, it can be prescribed for anyone aged 16 to 25 wanting to quit nicotine vaping.
“Not only was varenicline effective in this age group — it was safe. Crucially, we didn’t see any participants that quit vaping turn to cigarettes,” said Randi Schuster, founding director of the Center for School Behavioral Health at MGH and associate professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, HMS. “Our findings illustrate the effectiveness and safety of this therapy to address the urgent public health concern of adolescents addicted to nicotine because of vapes.”
This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Senior Madison Wang, a double major in creative writing and chemistry, developed her passion for writing in middle school. Her interest in chemistry fit nicely alongside her commitment to producing engaging narratives. Wang believes that world-building in stories supported by science and research can make for a more immersive reader experience.“In science and in writing, you have to tell an effective story,” she says. “People respond well to stories.” A native of Buffalo, New York, Wang applied
Senior Madison Wang, a double major in creative writing and chemistry, developed her passion for writing in middle school. Her interest in chemistry fit nicely alongside her commitment to producing engaging narratives.
Wang believes that world-building in stories supported by science and research can make for a more immersive reader experience.
“In science and in writing, you have to tell an effective story,” she says. “People respond well to stories.”
A native of Buffalo, New York, Wang applied early action for admission to MIT and learned quickly that the Institute was where she wanted to be. “It was a really good fit,” she says. “There was positive energy and vibes, and I had a great feeling overall.”
The power of science and good storytelling
“Chemistry is practical, complex, and interesting,” says Wang. “It’s about quantifying natural laws and understanding how reality works.”
Chemistry and writing both help us “see the world’s irregularity,” she continues. Together, they can erase the artificial and arbitrary line separating one from the other and work in concert to tell a more complete story about the world, the ways in which we participate in building it, and how people and objects exist in and move through it.
“Understanding magnetism, material properties, and believing in the power of magic in a good story … these are why we’re drawn to explore,” she says. “Chemistry describes why things are the way they are, and I use it for world-building in my creative writing.”
Wang lauds MIT’s creative writing program and cites a course she took with Comparative Media Studies/Writing Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz as an affirmation of her choice. Seeing and understanding the world through the eyes of a scientist — its building blocks, the ways the pieces fit and function together — help explain her passion for chemistry, especially inorganic and physical chemistry.
Wang cites the work of authors like Sam Kean and Knight Science Journalism Program Director Deborah Blum as part of her inspiration to study science. The books “The Disappearing Spoon” by Kean and “The Poisoner’s Handbook” by Blum “both present historical perspectives, opting for a story style to discuss the events and people involved,” she says. “They each put a lot of work into bridging the gap between what can sometimes be sterile science and an effective narrative that gets people to care about why the science matters.”
Genres like fantasy and science fiction are complementary, according to Wang. “Constructing an effective world means ensuring readers understand characters’ motivations — the ‘why’ — and ensuring it makes sense,” she says. “It’s also important to show how actions and their consequences influence and motivate characters.”
As she explores the world’s building blocks inside and outside the classroom, Wang works to navigate multiple genres in her writing, as with her studies in chemistry. “I like romance and horror, too,” she says. “I have gripes with committing to a single genre, so I just take whatever I like from each and put them in my stories.”
In chemistry, Wang favors an environment in which scientists can regularly test their ideas. “It’s important to ground chemistry in the real world to create connections for students,” she argues. Advancements in the field have occurred, she notes, because scientists could exit the realm of theory and apply ideas practically.
“Fritz Haber’s work on ammonia synthesis revolutionized approaches to food supply chains,” she says, referring to the German chemist and Nobel laureate. “Converting nitrogen and hydrogen gas to ammonia for fertilizer marked a dramatic shift in how farming could work.” This kind of work could only result from the consistent, controlled, practical application of the theories scientists consider in laboratory environments.
A future built on collaboration and cooperation
Watching the world change dramatically and seeing humanity struggle to grapple with the implications of phenomena like climate change, political unrest, and shifting alliances, Wang emphasizes the importance of deconstructing silos in academia and the workplace. Technology can be a tool for harm, she notes, so inviting more people inside previously segregated spaces helps everyone.
Criticism in both chemistry and writing, Wang believes, are valuable tools for continuous improvement. Effective communication, explaining complex concepts, and partnering to develop long-term solutions are invaluable when working at the intersection of history, art, and science. In writing, Wang says, criticism can help define areas to improve writers’ stories and shape interesting ideas.
“We’ve seen the positive results that can occur with effective science writing, which requires rigor and fact-checking,” she says. “MIT’s cross-disciplinary approach to our studies, alongside feedback from teachers and peers, is a great set of tools to carry with us regardless of where we are.”
Wang explores connections between science and stories in her leisure time, too. “I’m a member of MIT’s Anime Club and I enjoy participating in MIT’s Sport Taekwondo Club,” she says. The competitive aspect in tae kwon do allows for her to feed her competitive drive and gets her out of her head. Her participation in DAAMIT (Digital Art and Animation at MIT) creates connections with different groups of people and gives her ideas she can use to tell better stories. “It’s fascinating exploring others’ minds,” she says.
Wang argues that there’s a false divide between science and the humanities and wants the work she does after graduation to bridge that divide. “Writing and learning about science can help,” she asserts. “Fields like conservation and history allow for continued exploration of that intersection.”
Ultimately, Wang believes it’s important to examine narratives carefully and to question notions of science’s inherent superiority over humanities fields. “The humanities and science have equal value,” she says.
Every day, hundreds of chat messages flow between pilots, crew, and controllers of the Air Mobility Command's 618th Air Operations Center (AOC). These controllers direct a thousand-wide fleet of aircraft, juggling variables to determine which routes to fly, how much time fueling or loading supplies will take, or who can fly those missions. Their mission planning allows the U.S. Air Force to quickly respond to national security needs around the globe."It takes a lot of work to get a missile defen
Every day, hundreds of chat messages flow between pilots, crew, and controllers of the Air Mobility Command's 618th Air Operations Center (AOC). These controllers direct a thousand-wide fleet of aircraft, juggling variables to determine which routes to fly, how much time fueling or loading supplies will take, or who can fly those missions. Their mission planning allows the U.S. Air Force to quickly respond to national security needs around the globe.
"It takes a lot of work to get a missile defense system across the world, for example, and this coordination used to be done through phone and email. Now, we are using chat, which creates opportunities for artificial intelligence to enhance our workflows," says Colonel Joseph Monaco, the director of strategy at the 618th AOC, which is the Department of Defense's largest air operations center.
The 618th AOC is sponsoring Lincoln Laboratory to develop these artificial intelligence tools, through a project called Conversational AI Technology for Transition (CAITT).
During a visit to Lincoln Laboratory from the 618th AOC's headquarters at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Colonel Monaco, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Heaton, and Captain Laura Quitiquit met with laboratory researchers to discuss CAITT. CAITT is a part of a broader effort to transition AI technology into a major Air Force modernization initiative, called the Next Generation Information Technology for Mobility Readiness Enhancement (NITMRE).
The type of AI being used in this project is natural language processing (NLP), which allows models to read and process human language. "We are utilizing NLP to map major trends in chat conversations, retrieve and cite specific information, and identify and contextualize critical decision points," says Courtland VanDam, a researcher in Lincoln Laboratory's AI Technology and Systems Group, which is leading the project. CAITT encompasses a suite of tools leveraging NLP.
One of the most mature tools, topic summarization, extracts trending topics from chat messages and formats those topics in a user-friendly display highlighting critical conversations and emerging issues. For example, a trending topic might read, "Crew members missing Congo visas, potential for delay." The entry shows the number of chats related to the topic and summarizes in bullet points the main points of conversations, linking back to specific chat exchanges.
"Our missions are very time-dependent, so we have to synthesize a lot of information quickly. This feature can really cue us as to where our efforts should be focused," says Monaco.
Another tool in production is semantic search. This tool improves upon the chat service's search engine, which currently returns empty results if chat messages do not contain every word in the query. Using the new tool, users can ask questions in a natural language format, such as why a specific aircraft is delayed, and receive intelligent results. "It incorporates a search model based on neural networks that can understand the user intent of the query and go beyond term matching," says VanDam.
Other tools under development aim to automatically add users to chat conversations deemed relevant to their expertise, predict the amount of ground time needed to unload specific types of cargo from aircraft, and summarize key processes from regulatory documents as a guide to operators as they develop mission plans.
The CAITT project grew out of the DAF–MIT AI Accelerator, a three-pronged effort between MIT, Lincoln Laboratory, and the Department of the Air Force (DAF) to develop and transition AI algorithms and systems to advance both the DAF and society. "Through our involvement in the AI Accelerator via the NITMRE project, we realized we could do something innovative with all of the unstructured chat information in the 618th AOC," says Heaton.
As laboratory researchers advance their prototypes of CAITT tools, they have begun to transition them to the 402nd Software Engineering Group, a software provider for the Department of Defense. That group will implement the tools into the operational software environment in use by the 618th AOC.
The way DNA folds inside the nucleus of brain cells may hold the key to understanding a devastating form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, suggests a new preclinical study from Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.
The way DNA folds inside the nucleus of brain cells may hold the key to understanding a devastating form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, suggests a new preclinical study from Weill Cornell Medicine researchers.
Graubünden architect and ETH Professor Andrea Deplazes has embraced the linkage between design and construction both in teaching and practice. In the noughties, he became a pioneer of sustainable construction, epitomised by the Monte Rosa hut near Zermatt. Deplazes is set to retire in July.
Graubünden architect and ETH Professor Andrea Deplazes has embraced the linkage between design and construction both in teaching and practice. In the noughties, he became a pioneer of sustainable construction, epitomised by the Monte Rosa hut near Zermatt. Deplazes is set to retire in July.
Zoe Marks (from left), Mai Hassan, Alex de Waal, and David Miliband. Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nation & World
New, bigger humanitarian crisis in Darfur. But this time, no global outcry.
Regional specialists sound alarm, say displacement, starvation affect many more than two decades ago.
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
April 24, 2025
5 min read
Between 2003 and 2005, Sudan
New, bigger humanitarian crisis in Darfur. But this time, no global outcry.
Regional specialists sound alarm, say displacement, starvation affect many more than two decades ago.
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Between 2003 and 2005, Sudan’s Darfur region captured the world’s attention as the government, amid a civil conflict, carried out a campaign of mass killing against an estimated tens of thousands of ethnic Darfuri.
Nearly 20 years later, the country has plunged into another civil war that has led to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with around 25 million people, half of Sudan’s population, experiencing acute hunger and 12 million displaced from their homes, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program.
But this time, the international community is not paying attention, decried experts on Sudan during a panel on April 15, “Sudan in Crisis: A Civil War, Humanitarian Emergency, and the Consequences for a Nation and Region,” hosted by the JFK Jr. Forum’s Institute of Politics. The event was moderated by Zoe Marks, Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Center for African Studies at Harvard.
“This is an awful crisis, and just not enough light has been shed on it,” said Mai Hassan, faculty director of MIT-Africa. “It’s an understatement to say Sudan is in crisis or that Sudan is under fire. Over 150,000 people have died in this conflict. More than 10 million have been displaced, and more than 10 million are facing dire levels of hunger or starvation.”
“It’s an understatement to say Sudan is in crisis or that Sudan is under fire.”
Mai Hassan, MIT-Africa
The two-year ongoing conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has claimed the lives of 150,000 people and shows no signs of winding down. Hamid El-Bashir, a development expert originally from Sudan who participated remotely from Washington, D.C., lamented the international community’s apathy and indifference.
“When you look at the international response to the crisis in Sudan, there is no response,” said El-Bashir. “I attended the General Assembly a few months ago, and I came out with this conclusion: Sudan is going to collapse … There is no attention to this country.”
Twenty years ago, the global advocacy movement “Save Darfur” mobilized a worldwide response to condemn the atrocities and spearhead peace efforts in the region. In 2004, the U.S. government accused the government of Sudan and pro-government Arab militias before the U.N. Security Council of committing genocide.
Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation, recalled a visit he made then to Harvard to talk about the Darfur genocide, which became the first genocide of the 21st century.
“I remember being in this forum 20 years ago,” said de Waal. “There was a really vibrant movement on this campus, and other campuses, saying, ‘Save Darfur’ and ‘Never Again’ to genocide. What has happened to that passion, that commitment? And the celebrities who were so active then. They’re all silent now.”
Located in northeast Africa, Sudan is among the continent’s largest countries and boasts a strategic location bordering Egypt to the north and the Red Sea to the east. Sudan’s civil war has spilled over the region, with thousands of refugees having fled to South Sudan, Chad, and Egypt. The conflict is being fueled by regional powers supporting Sudan’s warring factions, which could further destabilize the region, said David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.
“It’s not as simple as a unified SAF and a unified SAF force, both of which came out of the Sudanese armed forces,” said Miliband. “There is a constellation of forces supporting each side. The United Arab Emirates, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia, Iran, Egypt are all in there supporting different sides, and they’re supporting them sufficiently that both sides think that they can win, and that there’s no reason to stop.”
One student asked for suggestions on how to rally international support to stop the civil war. The panelists highlighted the need to support humanitarian aid, start a widespread movement to demand a ceasefire, and begin a peace process that involves civilians, the United Nations, and Middle Eastern powers.
There needs to be pressure on the regional powers that are fueling the conflict, too, said Miliband, but the first step is to provide humanitarian aid. A community-led initiative formed in Sudan in 2019, the Emergency Response Rooms has sprung into action since the conflict started.
“First of all, you’ve got to stop things getting worse,” said Miliband. “Stopping the slide is very important. I always say humanitarian aid is the first step on the road to development. Unless you can stop things from getting worse, unless you stop the bleeding, we’re going to lose more people, and every bloodshed leads to further danger.”
For MIT-Africa’s Hassan, the situation is dire and requires international action. She remains hopeful that Sudanese civil society will rise up again despite the challenges.
“What’s awful about the situation, not only the actual empirics of it, but that it comes on the heels of a euphoric popular revolution that overthrew a despised Islamist regime,” said Hassan, referring to the 2019 military coup, which took place after a year of massive protests that deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir, who was in power for 30 years.
“I’m hopeful that civil society will be mobilized again in some fashion to help bring some kind of legitimacy to whatever new state emerges or when a peaceful resolution comes about,” said Hassan. “It’s going to involve a popular mobilization. I think civil society can be mobilized again.”
Coordinating complicated interactive systems, whether it’s the different modes of transportation in a city or the various components that must work together to make an effective and efficient robot, is an increasingly important subject for software designers to tackle. Now, researchers at MIT have developed an entirely new way of approaching these complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.They say the new method
Coordinating complicated interactive systems, whether it’s the different modes of transportation in a city or the various components that must work together to make an effective and efficient robot, is an increasingly important subject for software designers to tackle. Now, researchers at MIT have developed an entirely new way of approaching these complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.
They say the new method makes addressing these complex tasks so simple that it can be reduced to a drawing that would fit on the back of a napkin.
The new approach is described in the journal Transactions of Machine Learning Research, in a paper by incoming doctoral student Vincent Abbott and Professor Gioele Zardini of MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).
“We designed a new language to talk about these new systems,” Zardini says. This new diagram-based “language” is heavily based on something called category theory, he explains.
It all has to do with designing the underlying architecture of computer algorithms — the programs that will actually end up sensing and controlling the various different parts of the system that’s being optimized. “The components are different pieces of an algorithm, and they have to talk to each other, exchange information, but also account for energy usage, memory consumption, and so on.” Such optimizations are notoriously difficult because each change in one part of the system can in turn cause changes in other parts, which can further affect other parts, and so on.
The researchers decided to focus on the particular class of deep-learning algorithms, which are currently a hot topic of research. Deep learning is the basis of the large artificial intelligence models, including large language models such as ChatGPT and image-generation models such as Midjourney. These models manipulate data by a “deep” series of matrix multiplications interspersed with other operations. The numbers within matrices are parameters, and are updated during long training runs, allowing for complex patterns to be found. Models consist of billions of parameters, making computation expensive, and hence improved resource usage and optimization invaluable.
Diagrams can represent details of the parallelized operations that deep-learning models consist of, revealing the relationships between algorithms and the parallelized graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware they run on, supplied by companies such as NVIDIA. “I’m very excited about this,” says Zardini, because “we seem to have found a language that very nicely describes deep learning algorithms, explicitly representing all the important things, which is the operators you use,” for example the energy consumption, the memory allocation, and any other parameter that you’re trying to optimize for.
Much of the progress within deep learning has stemmed from resource efficiency optimizations. The latest DeepSeek model showed that a small team can compete with top models from OpenAI and other major labs by focusing on resource efficiency and the relationship between software and hardware. Typically, in deriving these optimizations, he says, “people need a lot of trial and error to discover new architectures.” For example, a widely used optimization program called FlashAttention took more than four years to develop, he says. But with the new framework they developed, “we can really approach this problem in a more formal way.” And all of this is represented visually in a precisely defined graphical language.
But the methods that have been used to find these improvements “are very limited,” he says. “I think this shows that there’s a major gap, in that we don’t have a formal systematic method of relating an algorithm to either its optimal execution, or even really understanding how many resources it will take to run.” But now, with the new diagram-based method they devised, such a system exists.
Category theory, which underlies this approach, is a way of mathematically describing the different components of a system and how they interact in a generalized, abstract manner. Different perspectives can be related. For example, mathematical formulas can be related to algorithms that implement them and use resources, or descriptions of systems can be related to robust “monoidal string diagrams.” These visualizations allow you to directly play around and experiment with how the different parts connect and interact. What they developed, he says, amounts to “string diagrams on steroids,” which incorporates many more graphical conventions and many more properties.
“Category theory can be thought of as the mathematics of abstraction and composition,” Abbott says. “Any compositional system can be described using category theory, and the relationship between compositional systems can then also be studied.” Algebraic rules that are typically associated with functions can also be represented as diagrams, he says. “Then, a lot of the visual tricks we can do with diagrams, we can relate to algebraic tricks and functions. So, it creates this correspondence between these different systems.”
As a result, he says, “this solves a very important problem, which is that we have these deep-learning algorithms, but they’re not clearly understood as mathematical models.” But by representing them as diagrams, it becomes possible to approach them formally and systematically, he says.
One thing this enables is a clear visual understanding of the way parallel real-world processes can be represented by parallel processing in multicore computer GPUs. “In this way,” Abbott says, “diagrams can both represent a function, and then reveal how to optimally execute it on a GPU.”
The “attention” algorithm is used by deep-learning algorithms that require general, contextual information, and is a key phase of the serialized blocks that constitute large language models such as ChatGPT. FlashAttention is an optimization that took years to develop, but resulted in a sixfold improvement in the speed of attention algorithms.
Applying their method to the well-established FlashAttention algorithm, Zardini says that “here we are able to derive it, literally, on a napkin.” He then adds, “OK, maybe it’s a large napkin.” But to drive home the point about how much their new approach can simplify dealing with these complex algorithms, they titled their formal research paper on the work “FlashAttention on a Napkin.”
This method, Abbott says, “allows for optimization to be really quickly derived, in contrast to prevailing methods.” While they initially applied this approach to the already existing FlashAttention algorithm, thus verifying its effectiveness, “we hope to now use this language to automate the detection of improvements,” says Zardini, who in addition to being a principal investigator in LIDS, is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and an affiliate faculty with the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
The plan is that ultimately, he says, they will develop the software to the point that “the researcher uploads their code, and with the new algorithm you automatically detect what can be improved, what can be optimized, and you return an optimized version of the algorithm to the user.”
In addition to automating algorithm optimization, Zardini notes that a robust analysis of how deep-learning algorithms relate to hardware resource usage allows for systematic co-design of hardware and software. This line of work integrates with Zardini’s focus on categorical co-design, which uses the tools of category theory to simultaneously optimize various components of engineered systems.
Abbott says that “this whole field of optimized deep learning models, I believe, is quite critically unaddressed, and that’s why these diagrams are so exciting. They open the doors to a systematic approach to this problem.”
“I’m very impressed by the quality of this research. ... The new approach to diagramming deep-learning algorithms used by this paper could be a very significant step,” says Jeremy Howard, founder and CEO of Answers.ai, who was not associated with this work. “This paper is the first time I’ve seen such a notation used to deeply analyze the performance of a deep-learning algorithm on real-world hardware. ... The next step will be to see whether real-world performance gains can be achieved.”
“This is a beautifully executed piece of theoretical research, which also aims for high accessibility to uninitiated readers — a trait rarely seen in papers of this kind,” says Petar Velickovic, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and a lecturer at Cambridge University, who was not associated with this work. These researchers, he says, “are clearly excellent communicators, and I cannot wait to see what they come up with next!”
The new diagram-based language, having been posted online, has already attracted great attention and interest from software developers. A reviewer from Abbott’s prior paper introducing the diagrams noted that “The proposed neural circuit diagrams look great from an artistic standpoint (as far as I am able to judge this).” “It’s technical research, but it’s also flashy!” Zardini says.
Researchers at MIT have developed a new way of approaching complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.
Martina Solano Soto is on a mission to pursue her passion for physics and, ultimately, to solve big problems. Since she was a kid, she has had a lot of questions: Why do animals exist? What are we doing here? Why don’t we know more about the Big Bang? And she has been determined to find answers. “That’s why I found MIT OpenCourseWare,” says Solano, of Girona, Spain. “When I was 14, I started to browse and wanted to find information that was reliable, dynamic, and updated. I found MIT resources b
Martina Solano Soto is on a mission to pursue her passion for physics and, ultimately, to solve big problems. Since she was a kid, she has had a lot of questions: Why do animals exist? What are we doing here? Why don’t we know more about the Big Bang? And she has been determined to find answers.
“That’s why I found MIT OpenCourseWare,” says Solano, of Girona, Spain. “When I was 14, I started to browse and wanted to find information that was reliable, dynamic, and updated. I found MIT resources by chance, and it’s one of the biggest things that has happened to me.”
In addition to OpenCourseWare, which offers free, online, open educational resources from more than 2,500 courses that span the MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum, Solano also took advantage of the MIT Open Learning Library. Part of MIT Open Learning, the library offers free courses and invites people to learn at their own pace while receiving immediate feedback through interactive content and exercises.
Solano, who is now 17, has studied quantum physics via OpenCourseWare — also part of MIT Open Learning — and she has taken Open Learning Library courses on electricity and magnetism, calculus, quantum computation, and kinematics. She even created her own syllabus, complete with homework, to ensure she stayed on track and kept her goals in mind. Those goals include studying math and physics as an undergraduate. She also hopes to study general relativity and quantum mechanics at the doctoral level. “I really want to unify them to find a theory of quantum gravity,” she says. “I want to spend all my life studying and learning.”
Solano was particularly motivated by Barton Zwiebach, professor of physics, whose courses Quantum Physics I and Quantum Physics II are available on MIT OpenCourseWare. She took advantage of all of the resources that were provided: video lectures, assignments, lecture notes, and exams.
“I was fascinated by the way he explained. I just understood everything, and it was amazing,” she says. “Then, I learned about his book, 'A First Course in String Theory,' and it was because of him that I learned about black holes and gravity. I’m extremely grateful.”
While Solano gives much credit to the variety and quality of Open Learning resources, she also stresses the importance of being organized. As a high school student, she has things other than string theory on her mind: her school, extracurriculars, friends, and family.
For anyone in a similar position, she recommends “figuring out what you’re most interested in and how you can take advantage of the flexibility of Open Learning resources. Is there a half-hour before bed to watch a video, or some time on the weekend to read lecture notes? If you figure out how to make it work for you, it is definitely worth the effort.”
“If you do that, you are going to grow academically and personally,” Solano says. “When you go to school, you will feel more confident.”
And Solano is not slowing down. She plans to continue using Open Learning resources, this time turning her attention to graduate-level courses, all in service of her curiosity and drive for knowledge.
“When I was younger, I read the book 'The God Equation,' by Michio Kaku, which explains quantum gravity theory. Something inside me awoke,” she recalls. “I really want to know what happens at the center of a black hole, and how we unify quantum mechanics, black holes, and general relativity. I decided that I want to invest my life in this.”
She is well on her way. Last summer, Solano applied for and received a scholarship to study particle physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. This summer, she’s applying for opportunities to study the cosmos. All of this, she says, is only possible thanks to what she has learned with MIT Open Learning resources.
“The applications ask you to explain what you like about physics, and thanks to MIT, I’m able to express that,” Solano says. “I’m able to go for these scholarships and really fight for what I dream.”
“I found MIT resources by chance, and it’s one of the biggest things that has happened to me,” says Martina Solano Soto, a high school student from Spain who is using free course materials from MIT Open Learning to pursue her passion for physics.
Coordinating complicated interactive systems, whether it’s the different modes of transportation in a city or the various components that must work together to make an effective and efficient robot, is an increasingly important subject for software designers to tackle. Now, researchers at MIT have developed an entirely new way of approaching these complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.They say the new method
Coordinating complicated interactive systems, whether it’s the different modes of transportation in a city or the various components that must work together to make an effective and efficient robot, is an increasingly important subject for software designers to tackle. Now, researchers at MIT have developed an entirely new way of approaching these complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.
They say the new method makes addressing these complex tasks so simple that it can be reduced to a drawing that would fit on the back of a napkin.
The new approach is described in the journal Transactions of Machine Learning Research, in a paper by incoming doctoral student Vincent Abbott and Professor Gioele Zardini of MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).
“We designed a new language to talk about these new systems,” Zardini says. This new diagram-based “language” is heavily based on something called category theory, he explains.
It all has to do with designing the underlying architecture of computer algorithms — the programs that will actually end up sensing and controlling the various different parts of the system that’s being optimized. “The components are different pieces of an algorithm, and they have to talk to each other, exchange information, but also account for energy usage, memory consumption, and so on.” Such optimizations are notoriously difficult because each change in one part of the system can in turn cause changes in other parts, which can further affect other parts, and so on.
The researchers decided to focus on the particular class of deep-learning algorithms, which are currently a hot topic of research. Deep learning is the basis of the large artificial intelligence models, including large language models such as ChatGPT and image-generation models such as Midjourney. These models manipulate data by a “deep” series of matrix multiplications interspersed with other operations. The numbers within matrices are parameters, and are updated during long training runs, allowing for complex patterns to be found. Models consist of billions of parameters, making computation expensive, and hence improved resource usage and optimization invaluable.
Diagrams can represent details of the parallelized operations that deep-learning models consist of, revealing the relationships between algorithms and the parallelized graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware they run on, supplied by companies such as NVIDIA. “I’m very excited about this,” says Zardini, because “we seem to have found a language that very nicely describes deep learning algorithms, explicitly representing all the important things, which is the operators you use,” for example the energy consumption, the memory allocation, and any other parameter that you’re trying to optimize for.
Much of the progress within deep learning has stemmed from resource efficiency optimizations. The latest DeepSeek model showed that a small team can compete with top models from OpenAI and other major labs by focusing on resource efficiency and the relationship between software and hardware. Typically, in deriving these optimizations, he says, “people need a lot of trial and error to discover new architectures.” For example, a widely used optimization program called FlashAttention took more than four years to develop, he says. But with the new framework they developed, “we can really approach this problem in a more formal way.” And all of this is represented visually in a precisely defined graphical language.
But the methods that have been used to find these improvements “are very limited,” he says. “I think this shows that there’s a major gap, in that we don’t have a formal systematic method of relating an algorithm to either its optimal execution, or even really understanding how many resources it will take to run.” But now, with the new diagram-based method they devised, such a system exists.
Category theory, which underlies this approach, is a way of mathematically describing the different components of a system and how they interact in a generalized, abstract manner. Different perspectives can be related. For example, mathematical formulas can be related to algorithms that implement them and use resources, or descriptions of systems can be related to robust “monoidal string diagrams.” These visualizations allow you to directly play around and experiment with how the different parts connect and interact. What they developed, he says, amounts to “string diagrams on steroids,” which incorporates many more graphical conventions and many more properties.
“Category theory can be thought of as the mathematics of abstraction and composition,” Abbott says. “Any compositional system can be described using category theory, and the relationship between compositional systems can then also be studied.” Algebraic rules that are typically associated with functions can also be represented as diagrams, he says. “Then, a lot of the visual tricks we can do with diagrams, we can relate to algebraic tricks and functions. So, it creates this correspondence between these different systems.”
As a result, he says, “this solves a very important problem, which is that we have these deep-learning algorithms, but they’re not clearly understood as mathematical models.” But by representing them as diagrams, it becomes possible to approach them formally and systematically, he says.
One thing this enables is a clear visual understanding of the way parallel real-world processes can be represented by parallel processing in multicore computer GPUs. “In this way,” Abbott says, “diagrams can both represent a function, and then reveal how to optimally execute it on a GPU.”
The “attention” algorithm is used by deep-learning algorithms that require general, contextual information, and is a key phase of the serialized blocks that constitute large language models such as ChatGPT. FlashAttention is an optimization that took years to develop, but resulted in a sixfold improvement in the speed of attention algorithms.
Applying their method to the well-established FlashAttention algorithm, Zardini says that “here we are able to derive it, literally, on a napkin.” He then adds, “OK, maybe it’s a large napkin.” But to drive home the point about how much their new approach can simplify dealing with these complex algorithms, they titled their formal research paper on the work “FlashAttention on a Napkin.”
This method, Abbott says, “allows for optimization to be really quickly derived, in contrast to prevailing methods.” While they initially applied this approach to the already existing FlashAttention algorithm, thus verifying its effectiveness, “we hope to now use this language to automate the detection of improvements,” says Zardini, who in addition to being a principal investigator in LIDS, is the Rudge and Nancy Allen Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and an affiliate faculty with the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
The plan is that ultimately, he says, they will develop the software to the point that “the researcher uploads their code, and with the new algorithm you automatically detect what can be improved, what can be optimized, and you return an optimized version of the algorithm to the user.”
In addition to automating algorithm optimization, Zardini notes that a robust analysis of how deep-learning algorithms relate to hardware resource usage allows for systematic co-design of hardware and software. This line of work integrates with Zardini’s focus on categorical co-design, which uses the tools of category theory to simultaneously optimize various components of engineered systems.
Abbott says that “this whole field of optimized deep learning models, I believe, is quite critically unaddressed, and that’s why these diagrams are so exciting. They open the doors to a systematic approach to this problem.”
“I’m very impressed by the quality of this research. ... The new approach to diagramming deep-learning algorithms used by this paper could be a very significant step,” says Jeremy Howard, founder and CEO of Answers.ai, who was not associated with this work. “This paper is the first time I’ve seen such a notation used to deeply analyze the performance of a deep-learning algorithm on real-world hardware. ... The next step will be to see whether real-world performance gains can be achieved.”
“This is a beautifully executed piece of theoretical research, which also aims for high accessibility to uninitiated readers — a trait rarely seen in papers of this kind,” says Petar Velickovic, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind and a lecturer at Cambridge University, who was not associated with this work. These researchers, he says, “are clearly excellent communicators, and I cannot wait to see what they come up with next!”
The new diagram-based language, having been posted online, has already attracted great attention and interest from software developers. A reviewer from Abbott’s prior paper introducing the diagrams noted that “The proposed neural circuit diagrams look great from an artistic standpoint (as far as I am able to judge this).” “It’s technical research, but it’s also flashy!” Zardini says.
Researchers at MIT have developed a new way of approaching complex problems, using simple diagrams as a tool to reveal better approaches to software optimization in deep-learning models.
On March 6, in one of the first U.S. lunar landings since the Apollo era, MIT sent three payloads — the AstroAnt, the RESOURCE 3D camera, and the HUMANS nanowafer — to the moon’s south polar region. The MIT component of the mission was based out of Luna, a control space designed by MIT Department of Architecture students and faculty in collaboration with the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, Inploration, and Simpson Gumpertz and Heger. Luna is installed in the MIT Media Lab ground-floor gallery
On March 6, in one of the first U.S. lunar landings since the Apollo era, MIT sent three payloads — the AstroAnt, the RESOURCE 3D camera, and the HUMANS nanowafer — to the moon’s south polar region. The MIT component of the mission was based out of Luna, a control space designed by MIT Department of Architecture students and faculty in collaboration with the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, Inploration, and Simpson Gumpertz and Heger. Luna is installed in the MIT Media Lab ground-floor gallery and opened to the public as part of Artfinity, MIT’s Festival for the Arts. The installation allows visitors to observe payload operators at work and interact with the software used for the mission, thanks to virtual reality.
While the lunar mission ended prematurely, the team says it achieved success in the design and construction of a control room embodying MIT’s design approach and capacity to explore new technologies while maintaining simplicity.
A central hub for mission operations, the control room is a structural and conceptual achievement, balancing technical challenges with a vision for an immersive experience, and the result of a multidisciplinary approach. “This will be our moon on Earth,” says Mateo Fernandez, a third-year MArch student and 2024 MAD Design Fellow, who designed and fabricated Luna in collaboration with Nebyu Haile, a PhD student in the Building Technology program in the Department of Architecture, and Simon Lesina Debiasi, a research assistant in the SMArchS Computation program and part of the Self-Assembly Lab. “The design was meant for people — for the researchers to be able to see what’s happening at all times, and for the spectators to have a 360 panoramic view of everything that’s going on,” explains Fernandez. “A key vision of the team was to create a control room that broke away from the traditional, closed-off model — one that instead invited the public to observe, ask questions, and engage with the mission,” adds Haile.
For this project, students were advised by Skylar Tibbits, founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab, associate professor of design research, and the Morningside Academy for Design (MAD)’s assistant director for education; J. Roc Jih, associate professor of the practice in architectural design; John Ochsendorf, MIT Class of 1942 Professor with appointments in the departments of Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering, and founding director of MAD; and Brandon Clifford, associate professor of architecture. The team worked closely with Cody Paige, director of the Space Exploration Initiative at the Media Lab, and her collaborators, emphasizing that they “tried to keep things very minimal, very simple, because at the end of the day,” explains Fernandez, “we wanted to create a design that allows the researchers to shine and the mission to shine.”
“This project grew out of the Space Architecture class we co-taught with Cody Paige and astronaut and MIT AeroAstro [Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics] faculty member Jeff Hoffman” in the fall semester, explains Tibbits. “Mateo was part of that studio, and from there, Cody invited us to design the mission control project. We then brought Mateo onboard, Simon, Nebyu, and the rest of the project team.” According to Tibbits, “this project represents MIT’s mind-and-hand ethos. We had designers, architects, artists, computational experts, and engineers working together, reflecting the polymath vision — left brain, right brain, the creative and the technical coming together to make this possible.”
Luna was funded and informed by Tibbits and Jih’s Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant Program. “J. Jih and I had been doing research for the Bose grant around basalt and mono-material construction,” says Tibbits, adding that they “had explored foamed glass materials similar to pumice or foamed basalt, which are also similar to lunar regolith.” “FOAMGLAS is typically used for insulation, but it has diverse applications, including direct ground contact and exterior walls, with strong acoustic and thermal properties,” says Jih. “We helped Mateo understand how the material is used in architecture today, and how it could be applied in this project, aligning with our work on new material palettes and mono-material construction techniques.”
Additional funding came from Inploration, a project run by creative director, author, and curator Lawrence Azerrad, as well as expeditionary artist, curator, and analog astronaut artist Richelle Ellis, and Comcast, a Media Lab member company. It was also supported by the MIT Morningside Academy for Design through Fernandez’s Design Fellowship. Additional support came from industry members such as Owens Corning (construction materials), Bose (communications), as well as MIT Media Lab member companies Dell Technologies (operations hardware) and Steelcase (operations seating).
A moon on Earth
Luna looks like variations of the moon, offering different perspectives of the moon’s round or crescent shape, depending on the viewer’s position.
“What’s remarkable is how close the final output is to Mateo’s original sketches and renderings,” Tibbits notes. “That often doesn’t happen — where the final built project aligns so precisely with the initial design intent.”
Luna’s entire structure is built from FOAMGLAS, a durable material composed of glass cells usually used for insulation. “FOAMGLAS is an interesting material,” says Lesina Debiasi, who supported fabrication efforts, ensuring a fast and safe process. “It’s relatively durable and light, but can easily be crumbled with a sharp edge or blade, requiring every step of the fabrication process — cutting, texturing, sealing — to be carefully controlled.”
Fernandez, whose design experience was influenced by the idea that “simple moves” are most powerful, explains: “We’re giving a second life to materials that are not thought of for building construction … and I think that’s an effective idea. Here, you don’t need wood, concrete, rebar — you can build with one material only.” While the interior of the dome-shaped construction is smooth, the exterior was hand textured to evoke the basalt-like surface of the moon.
The lightweight cellular glass produced by Owens Corning, which sponsored part of the material, comes as an unexpected choice for a compression structure — a type of architectural design where stability is achieved through the natural force of compression, usually implying heavy materials. The control room doesn’t use connections or additional supports, and depends upon the precise placement, size, and weight of individual blocks to create a stable form from a succession of arches.
“Traditional compression structures rely on their own weight for stability, but using a material that is more than 10 times lighter than masonry meant we had to rethink everything. It was about finding the perfect balance between design vision and structural integrity,” reflects Haile, who was responsible for the structural calculations for the dome and its support.
Compression relies on gravity, and wouldn’t be a viable construction method on the moon itself. “We’re building using physics, loads, structures, and equilibrium to create this thing that looks like the moon, but depends on Earth’s forces to be built. I think people don’t see that at first, but there’s something cheeky and ironic about it,” confides Fernandez, acknowledging that the project merges historical building methods with contemporary design.
The location and purpose of Luna — both a work space and an installation engaging the public — implied balancing privacy and transparency to achieve functionality. “One of the most important design elements that reflected this vision was the openness of the dome,” says Haile. “We worked closely from the start to find the right balance — adjusting the angle and size of the opening to make the space feel welcoming, while still offering some privacy to those working inside.”
The power of collaboration
With the FOAMGLAS material, the team had to invent a fabrication process that would achieve the initial vision while maintaining structural integrity. Sourcing a material with radically different properties compared to conventional construction implied collaborating closely on the engineering front, the lightweight nature of the cellular glass requiring creative problem-solving: “What appears perfect in digital models doesn’t always translate seamlessly into the real world,” says Haile. “The slope, curves, and overall geometry directly determine whether the dome will stand, requiring Mateo and me to work in sync from the very beginning through the end of construction.” While the engineering was primarily led by Haile and Ochsendorf, the structural design was officially reviewed and approved by Paul Kassabian at Simpson Gumpertz and Heger (SGH), ensuring compliance with engineering standards and building codes.
“None of us had worked with FOAMGLAS before, and we needed to figure out how best to cut, texture, and seal it,” says Lesina Debiasi. “Since each row consists of a distinct block shape and specific angles, ensuring accuracy and repeatability across all the blocks became a major challenge. Since we had to cut each individual block four times before we were able to groove and texture the surface, creating a safe production process and mitigating the distribution of dust was critical,” he explains. “Working inside a tent, wearing personal protective equipment like masks, visors, suits, and gloves made it possible to work for an extended period with this material.”
In addition, manufacturing introduced small margins of error threatening the structural integrity of the dome, prompting hands-on experimentation. “The control room is built from 12 arches,” explains Fernandez. “When one of the arches closes, it becomes stable, and you can move on to the next one … Going from side to side, you meet at the middle and close the arch using a special block — a keystone, which was cut to measure,” he says. “In conversations with our advisors, we decided to account for irregularities in the final keystone of each row. Once this custom keystone sat in place, the forces would stabilize the arch and make it secure,” adds Lesina Debiasi.
“This project exemplified the best practices of engineers and architects working closely together from design inception to completion — something that was historically common but is less typical today,” says Haile. “This collaboration was not just necessary — it ultimately improved the final result.”
Fernandez, who is supported this year by the MAD Design Fellowship, expressed how “the fellowship gave [him] the freedom to explore [his] passions and also keep [his] agency.”
“In a way, this project embodies what design education at MIT should be,” Tibbits reflects. “We’re building at full scale, with real-world constraints, experimenting at the limits of what we know — design, computation, engineering, and science. It’s hands-on, highly experimental, and deeply collaborative, which is exactly what we dream of for MAD, and MIT’s design education more broadly.”
“Luna, our physical lunar mission control, highlights the incredible collaboration across the Media Lab, Architecture, and the School of Engineering to bring our lunar mission to the world. We are democratizing access to space for all,” says Dava Newman, Media Lab director and Apollo Professor of Astronautics.
A full list of contributors and supporters can be found at the Morningside Academy for Design's website.
A central hub for mission operations, the control room is a structural and conceptual achievement, balancing technical challenges with a vision for an immersive experience.
Arts & Culture
Future doesn’t have to be dystopian, says Ruha Benjamin
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
April 24, 2025
3 min read
In Tanner Lectures, Princeton sociologist talks AI, social justice
The average citizen shouldn’t be afraid to imagine a radically different future for humanity, Ruha Benjamin argues. After all, the billionaire CE
Future doesn’t have to be dystopian, says Ruha Benjamin
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
3 min read
In Tanner Lectures, Princeton sociologist talks AI, social justice
The average citizen shouldn’t be afraid to imagine a radically different future for humanity, Ruha Benjamin argues. After all, the billionaire CEOs of tech companies are doing it.
The professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, who delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center last week, argued that proponents of AI-powered futures often frame their visions as altruistic despite actually being driven by self-interest.
“There’s absolutely no reason to trust that tech elites have any wisdom to offer when it comes to alleviating human suffering,” Benjamin told the audience who packed Paine Hall. “Billionaires building bunkers to survive AI apocalypse, attempting to disrupt death through cryopreservation, scouting the planet for pop-up cities and network states, are not reliable stewards of the collective good.”
Too often AI technologies marketed as “efficient” and “progressive” only create more oppression, Benjamin said, citing examples such as facial recognition software leading to false arrests and automated triage systems deciding who receives healthcare.
Benjamin said AI is often touted as a moral (or, at least, morally neutral) decision-making technology because it operates on math rather than emotion. But making decisions for society based on math and algorithms hurts the same marginalized groups harmed by the 20th-century eugenics movement, she said.
“One of the buzzwords that goes around is that these systems are so special because they’re engaged in ‘deep learning,’ by which people mean computational depth,” Benjamin said. “But what I suggest is that computational depth without social and historical depth ain’t that deep.”
Benjamin said it’s hypocritical to see superintelligence, Mars colonies, and underground apocalypse bunkers as bold innovations while viewing public goods such as free public transportation and affordable housing as impractical.
“This is an invitation to think about the different types of knowledges that we need around the table,” Benjamin said. “We can’t leave it simply to those who have technical know-how. Many of the problems we’re enduring right now are because those people who are creating tech solutions for society don’t know anything about society.”
Benjamin called for a renewed focus on creativity and imagination, urging universities to prioritize inquiry through arts and humanities.
“This is an invitation not only to be critical, but to be creative. To ask ourselves, ‘Now what?’” she said. “Instead of trying to make the world a little less harmful and make these systems a little less harmful, what if we were to completely reimagine them, envisioning a world beyond borders, beyond policing, beyond surveillance and supremacy? In the process, I think we’ll have to work on dismantling the walls in our own minds, those mental barriers that tell us to ‘get real’ when we attempt to imagine otherwise.”
Provost Kavita Bala and professors Anurag Agrawal and Dr. M. Virginia Pascual have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced on April 23.
Provost Kavita Bala and professors Anurag Agrawal and Dr. M. Virginia Pascual have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced on April 23.
Valerie Sticher and her co-author Aly Verjee argue that an international monitoring mission could bolster a ceasefire. But any new ceasefire faces serious challenges and will hold only if all parties heed the experience of past monitoring efforts in eastern Ukraine.
Valerie Sticher and her co-author Aly Verjee argue that an international monitoring mission could bolster a ceasefire. But any new ceasefire faces serious challenges and will hold only if all parties heed the experience of past monitoring efforts in eastern Ukraine.
ETH Zurich researchers have developed a method that makes AI responses increasingly reliable. Their algorithm specifically selects data relevant to the question. In addition, even AI models up to 40 times smaller achieve the same output performance as the best large AI models.
ETH Zurich researchers have developed a method that makes AI responses increasingly reliable. Their algorithm specifically selects data relevant to the question. In addition, even AI models up to 40 times smaller achieve the same output performance as the best large AI models.
For a robot, the real world is a lot to take in. Making sense of every data point in a scene can take a huge amount of computational effort and time. Using that information to then decide how to best help a human is an even thornier exercise.Now, MIT roboticists have a way to cut through the data noise, to help robots focus on the features in a scene that are most relevant for assisting humans.Their approach, which they aptly dub “Relevance,” enables a robot to use cues in a scene, such as audio
For a robot, the real world is a lot to take in. Making sense of every data point in a scene can take a huge amount of computational effort and time. Using that information to then decide how to best help a human is an even thornier exercise.
Now, MIT roboticists have a way to cut through the data noise, to help robots focus on the features in a scene that are most relevant for assisting humans.
Their approach, which they aptly dub “Relevance,” enables a robot to use cues in a scene, such as audio and visual information, to determine a human’s objective and then quickly identify the objects that are most likely to be relevant in fulfilling that objective. The robot then carries out a set of maneuvers to safely offer the relevant objects or actions to the human.
The researchers demonstrated the approach with an experiment that simulated a conference breakfast buffet. They set up a table with various fruits, drinks, snacks, and tableware, along with a robotic arm outfitted with a microphone and camera. Applying the new Relevance approach, they showed that the robot was able to correctly identify a human’s objective and appropriately assist them in different scenarios.
In one case, the robot took in visual cues of a human reaching for a can of prepared coffee, and quickly handed the person milk and a stir stick. In another scenario, the robot picked up on a conversation between two people talking about coffee, and offered them a can of coffee and creamer.
Overall, the robot was able to predict a human’s objective with 90 percent accuracy and to identify relevant objects with 96 percent accuracy. The method also improved a robot’s safety, reducing the number of collisions by more than 60 percent, compared to carrying out the same tasks without applying the new method.
“This approach of enabling relevance could make it much easier for a robot to interact with humans,” says Kamal Youcef-Toumi, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “A robot wouldn’t have to ask a human so many questions about what they need. It would just actively take information from the scene to figure out how to help.”
Youcef-Toumi’s group is exploring how robots programmed with Relevance can help in smart manufacturing and warehouse settings, where they envision robots working alongside and intuitively assisting humans.
Youcef-Toumi, along with graduate students Xiaotong Zhang and Dingcheng Huang, will present their new method at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in May. The work builds on another paper presented at ICRA the previous year.
Finding focus
The team’s approach is inspired by our own ability to gauge what’s relevant in daily life. Humans can filter out distractions and focus on what’s important, thanks to a region of the brain known as the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is a bundle of neurons in the brainstem that acts subconsciously to prune away unnecessary stimuli, so that a person can consciously perceive the relevant stimuli. The RAS helps to prevent sensory overload, keeping us, for example, from fixating on every single item on a kitchen counter, and instead helping us to focus on pouring a cup of coffee.
“The amazing thing is, these groups of neurons filter everything that is not important, and then it has the brain focus on what is relevant at the time,” Youcef-Toumi explains. “That’s basically what our proposition is.”
He and his team developed a robotic system that broadly mimics the RAS’s ability to selectively process and filter information. The approach consists of four main phases. The first is a watch-and-learn “perception” stage, during which a robot takes in audio and visual cues, for instance from a microphone and camera, that are continuously fed into an AI “toolkit.” This toolkit can include a large language model (LLM) that processes audio conversations to identify keywords and phrases, and various algorithms that detect and classify objects, humans, physical actions, and task objectives. The AI toolkit is designed to run continuously in the background, similarly to the subconscious filtering that the brain’s RAS performs.
The second stage is a “trigger check” phase, which is a periodic check that the system performs to assess if anything important is happening, such as whether a human is present or not. If a human has stepped into the environment, the system’s third phase will kick in. This phase is the heart of the team’s system, which acts to determine the features in the environment that are most likely relevant to assist the human.
To establish relevance, the researchers developed an algorithm that takes in real-time predictions made by the AI toolkit. For instance, the toolkit’s LLM may pick up the keyword “coffee,” and an action-classifying algorithm may label a person reaching for a cup as having the objective of “making coffee.” The team’s Relevance method would factor in this information to first determine the “class” of objects that have the highest probability of being relevant to the objective of “making coffee.” This might automatically filter out classes such as “fruits” and “snacks,” in favor of “cups” and “creamers.” The algorithm would then further filter within the relevant classes to determine the most relevant “elements.” For instance, based on visual cues of the environment, the system may label a cup closest to a person as more relevant — and helpful — than a cup that is farther away.
In the fourth and final phase, the robot would then take the identified relevant objects and plan a path to physically access and offer the objects to the human.
Helper mode
The researchers tested the new system in experiments that simulate a conference breakfast buffet. They chose this scenario based on the publicly available Breakfast Actions Dataset, which comprises videos and images of typical activities that people perform during breakfast time, such as preparing coffee, cooking pancakes, making cereal, and frying eggs. Actions in each video and image are labeled, along with the overall objective (frying eggs, versus making coffee).
Using this dataset, the team tested various algorithms in their AI toolkit, such that, when receiving actions of a person in a new scene, the algorithms could accurately label and classify the human tasks and objectives, and the associated relevant objects.
In their experiments, they set up a robotic arm and gripper and instructed the system to assist humans as they approached a table filled with various drinks, snacks, and tableware. They found that when no humans were present, the robot’s AI toolkit operated continuously in the background, labeling and classifying objects on the table.
When, during a trigger check, the robot detected a human, it snapped to attention, turning on its Relevance phase and quickly identifying objects in the scene that were most likely to be relevant, based on the human’s objective, which was determined by the AI toolkit.
“Relevance can guide the robot to generate seamless, intelligent, safe, and efficient assistance in a highly dynamic environment,” says co-author Zhang.
Going forward, the team hopes to apply the system to scenarios that resemble workplace and warehouse environments, as well as to other tasks and objectives typically performed in household settings.
“I would want to test this system in my home to see, for instance, if I’m reading the paper, maybe it can bring me coffee. If I’m doing laundry, it can bring me a laundry pod. If I’m doing repair, it can bring me a screwdriver,” Zhang says. “Our vision is to enable human-robot interactions that can be much more natural and fluent.”
This research was made possible by the support and partnership of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) through the Center for Complex Engineering Systems at MIT and KACST.
Using a novel relevance framework developed at MIT, the robot identifies and prioritizes objects in the scene to autonomously assist humans in a seamless, intelligent, and safe manner.
Nearly 150 years ago, scientists began to imagine how information might flow through the brain based on the shapes of neurons they had seen under the microscopes of the time. With today’s imaging technologies, scientists can zoom in much further, seeing the tiny synapses through which neurons communicate with one another, and even the molecules the cells use to relay their messages. These inside views can spark new ideas about how healthy brains work and reveal important changes that contribute
Nearly 150 years ago, scientists began to imagine how information might flow through the brain based on the shapes of neurons they had seen under the microscopes of the time. With today’s imaging technologies, scientists can zoom in much further, seeing the tiny synapses through which neurons communicate with one another, and even the molecules the cells use to relay their messages. These inside views can spark new ideas about how healthy brains work and reveal important changes that contribute to disease.
This sharper view of biology is not just about the advances that have made microscopes more powerful than ever before. Using methodology developed in the lab of MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research investigator Edward Boyden, researchers around the world are imaging samples that have been swollen to as much as 20 times their original size so their finest features can be seen more clearly.
“It’s a very different way to do microscopy,” says Boyden, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and biological engineering, and a member of the Yang Tan Collective at MIT. “In contrast to the last 300 years of bioimaging, where you use a lens to magnify an image of light from an object, we physically magnify objects themselves.” Once a tissue is expanded, Boyden says, researchers can see more even with widely available, conventional microscopy hardware.
Boyden’s team introduced this approach, which they named expansion microscopy (ExM), in 2015. Since then, they have been refining the method and adding to its capabilities, while researchers at MIT and beyond deploy it to learn about life on the smallest of scales.
“It’s spreading very rapidly throughout biology and medicine,” Boyden says. “It’s being applied to kidney disease, the fruit fly brain, plant seeds, the microbiome, Alzheimer’s disease, viruses, and more.”
Origins of ExM
To develop expansion microscopy, Boyden and his team turned to hydrogel, a material with remarkable water-absorbing properties that had already been put to practical use; it’s layered inside disposable diapers to keep babies dry. Boyden’s lab hypothesized that hydrogels could retain their structure while they absorbed hundreds of times their original weight in water, expanding the space between their chemical components as they swell.
After some experimentation, Boyden’s team settled on four key steps to enlarging tissue samples for better imaging. First, the tissue must be infused with a hydrogel. Components of the tissue, biomolecules, are anchored to the gel’s web-like matrix, linking them directly to the molecules that make up the gel. Then the tissue is chemically softened and water is added. As the hydrogel absorbs the water, it swells and the tissue expands, growing evenly so the relative positions of its components are preserved.
Boyden and graduate students Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg’s first report on expansion microscopy was published in the journal Science in 2015. In it, the team demonstrated that by spreading apart molecules that had been crowded inside cells, features that would have blurred together under a standard light microscope became separate and distinct. Light microscopes can discriminate between objects that are separated by about 300 nanometers — a limit imposed by the laws of physics. With expansion microscopy, Boyden’s group reported an effective resolution of about 70 nanometers, for a fourfold expansion.
Boyden says this is a level of clarity that biologists need. “Biology is fundamentally, in the end, a nanoscale science,” he says. “Biomolecules are nanoscale, and the interactions between biomolecules are over nanoscale distances. Many of the most important problems in biology and medicine involve nanoscale questions.” Several kinds of sophisticated microscopes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, can bring this kind of detail to light. But those methods are costly and require specialized skills, making them inaccessible for most researchers. “Expansion microscopy democratizes nanoimaging,” Boyden says. “Now, anybody can go look at the building blocks of life and how they relate to each other.”
Empowering scientists
Since Boyden’s team introduced expansion microscopy in 2015, research groups around the world have published hundreds of papers reporting on discoveries they have made using expansion microscopy. For neuroscientists, the technique has lit up the intricacies of elaborate neural circuits, exposed how particular proteins organize themselves at and across synapses to facilitate communication between neurons, and uncovered changes associated with aging and disease.
It has been equally empowering for studies beyond the brain. Sabrina Absalon uses expansion microscopy every week in her lab at Indiana University School of Medicine to study the malaria parasite, a single-celled organism packed with specialized structures that enable it to infect and live inside its hosts. The parasite is so small, most of those structures can’t be seen with ordinary light microscopy. “So as a cell biologist, I’m losing the biggest tool to infer protein function, organelle architecture, morphology, linked to function, and all those things — which is my eye,” she says. With expansion, she can not only see the organelles inside a malaria parasite, she can watch them assemble and follow what happens to them when the parasite divides. Understanding those processes, she says, could help drug developers find new ways to interfere with the parasite’s life cycle.
Absalon adds that the accessibility of expansion microscopy is particularly important in the field of parasitology, where a lot of research is happening in parts of the world where resources are limited. Workshops and training programs in Africa, South America, and Asia are ensuring the technology reaches scientists whose communities are directly impacted by malaria and other parasites. “Now they can get super-resolution imaging without very fancy equipment,” Absalon says.
Always improving
Since 2015, Boyden’s interdisciplinary lab group has found a variety of creative ways to improve expansion microscopy and use it in new ways. Their standard technique today enables better labeling, bigger expansion factors, and higher-resolution imaging. Cellular features less than 20 nanometers from one another can now be separated enough to appear distinct under a light microscope.
They’ve also adapted their protocols to work with a range of important sample types, from entire roundworms (popular among neuroscientists, developmental biologists, and other researchers) to clinical samples. In the latter regard, they’ve shown that expansion can help reveal subtle signs of disease, which could enable earlier or less-costly diagnoses.
Originally, the group optimized its protocol for visualizing proteins inside cells, by labeling proteins of interest and anchoring them to the hydrogel prior to expansion. With a new way of processing samples, users can now re-stain their expanded samples with new labels for multiple rounds of imaging, so they can pinpoint the positions of dozens of different proteins in the same tissue. That means researchers can visualize how molecules are organized with respect to one another and how they might interact, or survey large sets of proteins to see, for example, what changes with disease.
But better views of proteins were just the beginning for expansion microscopy. “We want to see everything,” Boyden says. “We’d love to see every biomolecule there is, with precision down to atomic scale.” They’re not there yet — but with new probes and modified procedures, it’s now possible to see not just proteins, but also RNA and lipids in expanded tissue samples.
Labeling lipids, including those that form the membranes surrounding cells, means researchers can now see clear outlines of cells in expanded tissues. With the enhanced resolution afforded by expansion, even the slender projections of neurons can be traced through an image. Typically, researchers have relied on electron microscopy, which generates exquisitely detailed pictures but requires expensive equipment, to map the brain’s circuitry. “Now, you can get images that look a lot like electron microscopy images, but on regular old light microscopes — the kind that everybody has access to,” Boyden says.
Boyden says expansion can be powerful in combination with other cutting-edge tools. When expanded samples are used with an ultra-fast imaging method developed by Eric Betzig, an HHMI investigator at the University of California at Berkeley, called lattice light-sheet microscopy, the entire brain of a fruit fly can be imaged at high resolution in just a few days.
And when RNA molecules are anchored within a hydrogel network and then sequenced in place, scientists can see exactly where inside cells the instructions for building specific proteins are positioned, which Boyden’s team demonstrated in a collaboration with Harvard University geneticist George Church and then-MIT-professor Aviv Regev. “Expansion basically upgrades many other technologies’ resolutions,” Boyden says. “You’re doing mass-spec imaging, X-ray imaging, or Raman imaging? Expansion just improved your instrument.”
Expanding possibilities
Ten years past the first demonstration of expansion microscopy’s power, Boyden and his team are committed to continuing to make expansion microscopy more powerful. “We want to optimize it for different kinds of problems, and making technologies faster, better, and cheaper is always important,” he says. But the future of expansion microscopy will be propelled by innovators outside the Boyden lab, too. “Expansion is not only easy to do, it’s easy to modify — so lots of other people are improving expansion in collaboration with us, or even on their own,” Boyden says.
Boyden points to a group led by Silvio Rizzoli at the University Medical Center Göttingen in Germany that, collaborating with Boyden, has adapted the expansion protocol to discern the physical shapes of proteins. At the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, researchers led by Jae-Byum Chang, a former postdoc in Boyden’s group, have worked out how to expand entire bodies of mouse embryos and young zebra fish, collaborating with Boyden to set the stage for examining developmental processes and long-distance neural connections with a new level of detail. And mapping connections within the brain’s dense neural circuits could become easier with light-microscopy based connectomics, an approach developed by Johann Danzl and colleagues at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria that takes advantage of both the high resolution and molecular information that expansion microscopy can reveal.
“The beauty of expansion is that it lets you see a biological system down to its smallest building blocks,” Boyden says.
His team is intent on pushing the method to its physical limits, and anticipates new opportunities for discovery as they do. “If you can map the brain or any biological system at the level of individual molecules, you might be able to see how they all work together as a network — how life really operates,” he says.
Expansion microscopy allows researchers to image tissue samples that have been swollen to as much as 20 times their original size so their finest features can be seen more clearly.
Nearly 150 years ago, scientists began to imagine how information might flow through the brain based on the shapes of neurons they had seen under the microscopes of the time. With today’s imaging technologies, scientists can zoom in much further, seeing the tiny synapses through which neurons communicate with one another, and even the molecules the cells use to relay their messages. These inside views can spark new ideas about how healthy brains work and reveal important changes that contribute
Nearly 150 years ago, scientists began to imagine how information might flow through the brain based on the shapes of neurons they had seen under the microscopes of the time. With today’s imaging technologies, scientists can zoom in much further, seeing the tiny synapses through which neurons communicate with one another, and even the molecules the cells use to relay their messages. These inside views can spark new ideas about how healthy brains work and reveal important changes that contribute to disease.
This sharper view of biology is not just about the advances that have made microscopes more powerful than ever before. Using methodology developed in the lab of MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research investigator Edward Boyden, researchers around the world are imaging samples that have been swollen to as much as 20 times their original size so their finest features can be seen more clearly.
“It’s a very different way to do microscopy,” says Boyden, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences and biological engineering, and a member of the Yang Tan Collective at MIT. “In contrast to the last 300 years of bioimaging, where you use a lens to magnify an image of light from an object, we physically magnify objects themselves.” Once a tissue is expanded, Boyden says, researchers can see more even with widely available, conventional microscopy hardware.
Boyden’s team introduced this approach, which they named expansion microscopy (ExM), in 2015. Since then, they have been refining the method and adding to its capabilities, while researchers at MIT and beyond deploy it to learn about life on the smallest of scales.
“It’s spreading very rapidly throughout biology and medicine,” Boyden says. “It’s being applied to kidney disease, the fruit fly brain, plant seeds, the microbiome, Alzheimer’s disease, viruses, and more.”
Origins of ExM
To develop expansion microscopy, Boyden and his team turned to hydrogel, a material with remarkable water-absorbing properties that had already been put to practical use; it’s layered inside disposable diapers to keep babies dry. Boyden’s lab hypothesized that hydrogels could retain their structure while they absorbed hundreds of times their original weight in water, expanding the space between their chemical components as they swell.
After some experimentation, Boyden’s team settled on four key steps to enlarging tissue samples for better imaging. First, the tissue must be infused with a hydrogel. Components of the tissue, biomolecules, are anchored to the gel’s web-like matrix, linking them directly to the molecules that make up the gel. Then the tissue is chemically softened and water is added. As the hydrogel absorbs the water, it swells and the tissue expands, growing evenly so the relative positions of its components are preserved.
Boyden and graduate students Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg’s first report on expansion microscopy was published in the journal Science in 2015. In it, the team demonstrated that by spreading apart molecules that had been crowded inside cells, features that would have blurred together under a standard light microscope became separate and distinct. Light microscopes can discriminate between objects that are separated by about 300 nanometers — a limit imposed by the laws of physics. With expansion microscopy, Boyden’s group reported an effective resolution of about 70 nanometers, for a fourfold expansion.
Boyden says this is a level of clarity that biologists need. “Biology is fundamentally, in the end, a nanoscale science,” he says. “Biomolecules are nanoscale, and the interactions between biomolecules are over nanoscale distances. Many of the most important problems in biology and medicine involve nanoscale questions.” Several kinds of sophisticated microscopes, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, can bring this kind of detail to light. But those methods are costly and require specialized skills, making them inaccessible for most researchers. “Expansion microscopy democratizes nanoimaging,” Boyden says. “Now, anybody can go look at the building blocks of life and how they relate to each other.”
Empowering scientists
Since Boyden’s team introduced expansion microscopy in 2015, research groups around the world have published hundreds of papers reporting on discoveries they have made using expansion microscopy. For neuroscientists, the technique has lit up the intricacies of elaborate neural circuits, exposed how particular proteins organize themselves at and across synapses to facilitate communication between neurons, and uncovered changes associated with aging and disease.
It has been equally empowering for studies beyond the brain. Sabrina Absalon uses expansion microscopy every week in her lab at Indiana University School of Medicine to study the malaria parasite, a single-celled organism packed with specialized structures that enable it to infect and live inside its hosts. The parasite is so small, most of those structures can’t be seen with ordinary light microscopy. “So as a cell biologist, I’m losing the biggest tool to infer protein function, organelle architecture, morphology, linked to function, and all those things — which is my eye,” she says. With expansion, she can not only see the organelles inside a malaria parasite, she can watch them assemble and follow what happens to them when the parasite divides. Understanding those processes, she says, could help drug developers find new ways to interfere with the parasite’s life cycle.
Absalon adds that the accessibility of expansion microscopy is particularly important in the field of parasitology, where a lot of research is happening in parts of the world where resources are limited. Workshops and training programs in Africa, South America, and Asia are ensuring the technology reaches scientists whose communities are directly impacted by malaria and other parasites. “Now they can get super-resolution imaging without very fancy equipment,” Absalon says.
Always improving
Since 2015, Boyden’s interdisciplinary lab group has found a variety of creative ways to improve expansion microscopy and use it in new ways. Their standard technique today enables better labeling, bigger expansion factors, and higher-resolution imaging. Cellular features less than 20 nanometers from one another can now be separated enough to appear distinct under a light microscope.
They’ve also adapted their protocols to work with a range of important sample types, from entire roundworms (popular among neuroscientists, developmental biologists, and other researchers) to clinical samples. In the latter regard, they’ve shown that expansion can help reveal subtle signs of disease, which could enable earlier or less-costly diagnoses.
Originally, the group optimized its protocol for visualizing proteins inside cells, by labeling proteins of interest and anchoring them to the hydrogel prior to expansion. With a new way of processing samples, users can now re-stain their expanded samples with new labels for multiple rounds of imaging, so they can pinpoint the positions of dozens of different proteins in the same tissue. That means researchers can visualize how molecules are organized with respect to one another and how they might interact, or survey large sets of proteins to see, for example, what changes with disease.
But better views of proteins were just the beginning for expansion microscopy. “We want to see everything,” Boyden says. “We’d love to see every biomolecule there is, with precision down to atomic scale.” They’re not there yet — but with new probes and modified procedures, it’s now possible to see not just proteins, but also RNA and lipids in expanded tissue samples.
Labeling lipids, including those that form the membranes surrounding cells, means researchers can now see clear outlines of cells in expanded tissues. With the enhanced resolution afforded by expansion, even the slender projections of neurons can be traced through an image. Typically, researchers have relied on electron microscopy, which generates exquisitely detailed pictures but requires expensive equipment, to map the brain’s circuitry. “Now, you can get images that look a lot like electron microscopy images, but on regular old light microscopes — the kind that everybody has access to,” Boyden says.
Boyden says expansion can be powerful in combination with other cutting-edge tools. When expanded samples are used with an ultra-fast imaging method developed by Eric Betzig, an HHMI investigator at the University of California at Berkeley, called lattice light-sheet microscopy, the entire brain of a fruit fly can be imaged at high resolution in just a few days.
And when RNA molecules are anchored within a hydrogel network and then sequenced in place, scientists can see exactly where inside cells the instructions for building specific proteins are positioned, which Boyden’s team demonstrated in a collaboration with Harvard University geneticist George Church and then-MIT-professor Aviv Regev. “Expansion basically upgrades many other technologies’ resolutions,” Boyden says. “You’re doing mass-spec imaging, X-ray imaging, or Raman imaging? Expansion just improved your instrument.”
Expanding possibilities
Ten years past the first demonstration of expansion microscopy’s power, Boyden and his team are committed to continuing to make expansion microscopy more powerful. “We want to optimize it for different kinds of problems, and making technologies faster, better, and cheaper is always important,” he says. But the future of expansion microscopy will be propelled by innovators outside the Boyden lab, too. “Expansion is not only easy to do, it’s easy to modify — so lots of other people are improving expansion in collaboration with us, or even on their own,” Boyden says.
Boyden points to a group led by Silvio Rizzoli at the University Medical Center Göttingen in Germany that, collaborating with Boyden, has adapted the expansion protocol to discern the physical shapes of proteins. At the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, researchers led by Jae-Byum Chang, a former postdoc in Boyden’s group, have worked out how to expand entire bodies of mouse embryos and young zebra fish, collaborating with Boyden to set the stage for examining developmental processes and long-distance neural connections with a new level of detail. And mapping connections within the brain’s dense neural circuits could become easier with light-microscopy based connectomics, an approach developed by Johann Danzl and colleagues at the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria that takes advantage of both the high resolution and molecular information that expansion microscopy can reveal.
“The beauty of expansion is that it lets you see a biological system down to its smallest building blocks,” Boyden says.
His team is intent on pushing the method to its physical limits, and anticipates new opportunities for discovery as they do. “If you can map the brain or any biological system at the level of individual molecules, you might be able to see how they all work together as a network — how life really operates,” he says.
Expansion microscopy allows researchers to image tissue samples that have been swollen to as much as 20 times their original size so their finest features can be seen more clearly.
Health
U.S. pregnancy-related deaths continuing to rise
Study researcher says nation, which leads high-income peers in maternal mortality, needs better prenatal, extended postpartum care
Anna Gibbs
Harvard Correspondent
April 23, 2025
7 min read
In the U.S., more than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Yet for many years, the nation has had the highest maternal morta
Study researcher says nation, which leads high-income peers in maternal mortality, needs better prenatal, extended postpartum care
Anna Gibbs
Harvard Correspondent
7 min read
In the U.S., more than 80 percent of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Yet for many years, the nation has had the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries. And that rate continued to rise between 2018 and 2022, with large disparities by state, race, and ethnicity, a new study reports.
A team of researchers at the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with Associate Professor Rose Molina of Harvard Medical School, used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study pregnancy-related deaths in that four-year period.
The sharpest rate increase occurred in 2021, likely reflecting the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While the rates then lowered, they were still higher in 2022 (32.6 deaths per 100,00 live births) than they were in 2018 (25.3 deaths per 100,000 live births).
The results were consistent with past research that has demonstrated significant disparities across racial groups. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the highest mortality rate (106.3 deaths per 100,000 live births), nearly four times higher than the rate among white women (27.6 deaths per 100,000 live births), followed by non-Hispanic Black women (76.9 deaths per 100,00 live births).
State rates also varied greatly, ranging from 18.5 to 59.7 deaths per 100,000 live births.
In this edited conversation, Molina, an obstetrician-gynecologist, discusses the findings and what needs to happen next.
Why is pregnancy-related death much higher in the U.S. than other high-income countries?
“There are many reasons: our patchwork healthcare system, inequitable policies, maternity care deserts, as well as persistent systems of bias and discrimination across racial and ethnic groups.”
There are many reasons: our patchwork healthcare system, inequitable policies, maternity care deserts, as well as persistent systems of bias and discrimination across racial and ethnic groups. It’s the way in which the healthcare system is designed. There are also signals that reproductive-age individuals are experiencing more chronic medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, at younger ages than before.
The results showed some significant racial disparities in maternal mortality rates. Was that surprising?
While I am saddened that the racial inequities have persisted, the reality is that this has been demonstrated over and over again in the literature. There have been some innovations aimed at reducing inequities between racial groups in health systems. But at a population level, as a country, we’re not seeing meaningful improvement yet.
Our study points to different policy levers that need to be addressed, because there shouldn’t be as much state-level variation as there is. One of our biggest findings is that we could have avoided 2,679 pregnancy-related deaths during this time period if the national rate were that of California. If California can do it, then how can we get other states to perform as well?
The overall leading cause of death in your study was cardiovascular disease, which accounted for just over 20 percent of deaths. Has that always been the case?
Over the decades in the U.S., we’ve seen a transition from hemorrhage to cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of pregnancy-related death. Cardiovascular disease encompasses a range of disorders: hypertension, pre-eclampsia, eclampsia, and peripartum cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrest, and stroke.
One reason for the shift may be that more and more people have chronic hypertension. We saw that the highest increased rate of pregnancy-related death was actually in the middle-age group (those 25 to 39), not the highest-age group. Therefore, one of the potential concerns is that chronic diseases like hypertension are affecting younger people. It’s been much more common to have hypertension if you’re 40 or older. But we’re beginning to see more hypertension at an earlier age.
“We saw that the highest increased rate of pregnancy-related death was actually in the middle-age group (those 25 to 39), not the highest-age group. Therefore, one of the potential concerns is that chronic diseases like hypertension are affecting younger people.”
In fact, pregnancy-related death increased for all age groups between 2018 and 2022. How significant is that rise?
It’s only four years, and the studied time period spanned the initial part of the COVID pandemic. But there’s still enough evidence that we should be paying more attention to this increase. Even in 2022, the rates were higher than in 2018. And the rates were already rising in 2019, before the pandemic started.
You also found that “late maternal deaths” — those that occur between 42 days and 1 year after pregnancy — accounted for nearly a third of the total. Yet the World Health Organization does not include late maternal death in its definition of pregnancy-related mortality. Why is it important to consider this time period?
Internationally, any death during pregnancy and up to 42 days after birth is considered a maternal mortality. In the U.S., we’re moving toward being inclusive of the full year after birth, because the 42 days postpartum is somewhat arbitrary.
There’s a growing recognition that the postpartum period doesn’t just end on a cliff at six weeks, even though that’s how many of our healthcare systems are designed, but rather postpartum recovery should be treated as a continuum. The high number of late maternal deaths points to why we need to design better systems of healthcare in those later months, as opposed to only focusing on the first six to 12 weeks.
Rose Molina.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
This study offers a fuller picture of the problem than past tallies. Can you talk a bit about that?
One of the biggest challenges in tracking maternal deaths in the United States is that we didn’t actually have a national system for tracking these deaths consistently until 2018, because that’s when the full implementation of the pregnancy checkbox on death certificates went into full effect across the 50 states.
What that means is that when someone dies, the death certificate now has a pregnancy check box, so there can be some indication as to whether the person who passed away was pregnant at the time. However, it took a long time for all states to fully implement that. That’s why our data is so interesting, because we looked at the data starting in 2018, when that process was fully implemented across the 50 states.
“The biggest take-home message is that we need to continue to invest in public health infrastructure. It’s very clear that we’re not getting better, and if anything, the rates of pregnancy-related deaths are getting worse.”
Now that everything is laid out, how can these numbers be improved? What needs to happen next?
The biggest take-home message is that we need to continue to invest in public health infrastructure. It’s very clear that we’re not getting better, and if anything, the rates of pregnancy-related deaths are getting worse. So we need to change something about how we are addressing this.
In particular, we need to increase investment in innovative solutions to address quality of care during pregnancy and the extended postpartum period. At the state level, we really need to be addressing policy differences and trying to understand why certain states fare so much worse than other states.
It’s a concerning moment because the public health infrastructure to track these deaths is at risk. Research dollars are being cut dramatically. Pregnancy is being deprioritized. These actions and cuts threaten any work trying to improve maternal health outcomes, which can help inform policy at the state level and advocacy to enhance access to quality full-spectrum pregnancy care.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Health
Rewriting genetic destiny
David Liu, Breakthrough Prize recipient, retraces path to an ‘incredibly exciting’ disease fighter: ‘This is the essence of basic science.’
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
April 23, 2025
5 min read
Part of the
Profiles of Progress
series
In 2022, Alyssa Tapley was 13, suffe
In 2022, Alyssa Tapley was 13, suffering from T-cell leukemia, and facing a grim prognosis after existing treatments failed to improve her condition. Then, a clinical trial using a novel gene-editing technology called base editing cleared her cancer. It was a breakthrough for science — Tapley’s therapy was the first enabled by base editing — and a lifeline for the patient.
“Now, 2½ years later, I’m 16, preparing for exams, spending time with my family, arguing with my brother, and doing all the things I thought I’d never be able to do,” Tapley told the audience at the 2025 Breakthrough Prize ceremony on April 5. The prizes, whose recipients this year included several Harvard researchers, honor achievements in physics, life sciences, and mathematics.
The scientist behind the technology that saved Tapley’s life is David Liu, the Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences and vice chair of the faculty at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
“It’s incredibly exciting, and also comes with a heavy sense of responsibility, to make sure that — to the extent humanly possible — we have done everything we can to make these agents as safe and effective as possible for use in patients,” Liu said.
Hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffer from genetic diseases. To help them, Liu, with support from the NIH, DARPA, and other federal agencies, has built on and looked beyond CRISPR-Cas9, the transformative gene-editing protein found in bacteria that cuts through DNA like scissors.
“That approach of cutting the DNA double helix is very useful for gene disruption or deletion,” he said. “But if your goal is to correct a mutation that causes a genetic disease, it’s not easy to use scissors to achieve gene correction.”
The limits of the “scissors” approach led Liu and his team, including former postdocs Alexis Komor and Nicole Gaudelli, to develop two new approaches to gene editing: base editing and prime editing. Base editing works on the four nucleotide bases of a DNA strand — A, C, G, and T — rather than on the entire double helix.
“You can change a C to a T, a T to a C, an A to a G, or a G to an A,” Liu said. “And those happen to be four of the most common kinds of mutations that cause genetic diseases.”
But what about genetic diseases caused by other kinds of single-letter swaps, or by unwanted extra letters, or by missing DNA letters? For those cases, Liu’s team, including former postdoc Andrew Anzalone, developed prime editors. Liu likened the tool to a word processor, able to search out a flawed piece of DNA and replace it with a synthesized DNA flap that is specified by the user.
“There was no knowledge of what CRISPR did, or whether it was going to be useful. But it was interesting enough for curious people to study.”
As of today, there are at least 18 clinical trials using base editing or prime editing to treat a range of diseases, with dozens of patients already treated, Liu said.
Liu connects his research to basic science — research that seeks to understand something new about the world without a clear application in mind — that began at Japan’s Osaka University in 1987. There, a team of researchers noticed something unusual in DNA from E. coli bacteria: highly repetitive DNA sequences that were interspersed with non-repetitive sequences, but with the exact same spacing. The phenomenon became known as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR.
“There was no knowledge of what CRISPR did, or whether it was going to be useful,” Liu said. “But it was interesting enough for curious people to study. This is the essence of basic science.”
Over the course of decades, researchers learned that CRISPR was a kind of immune system that bacteria use to protect themselves from viruses. When a virus enters a bacterial cell, the bacterium incorporates some of the virus’s DNA as a kind of genetic memory, allowing it to identify and destroy the virus if it encounters it again.
“You can imagine a critic saying, ‘Why do I care about a bacteria’s ability to kill a virus?’” Liu said. “The answer is that it turned out to lead to all the CRISPR nuclease clinical trials, and eventually led to base editing and prime editing, and now we can make just about any kind of change in the DNA of living systems, including correcting the vast majority of mutations that lead to genetic disease. And it all came from the basic science of geneticists who first looked at these clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and wondered what they were doing.”
Liu is loath to call his technologies a cure: “Scientists are reluctant to use that word until there’s evidence of years without any apparent symptoms of the disease,” he said. But, he added, “The writing’s already on the wall: In some of these clinical trials, the patients are no longer on any medication and don’t have any symptoms of the disease.”
Looking to the future of research and innovation, Liu says he’s deeply worried about the current threat to the partnership between higher ed and the federal government, especially as it relates to young scientists.
“There’s a lot of fear and chaos now that is preventing young scientists from entering the phase of their careers where they can contribute to society in a direct way,” he said. “And that’s a very real tragedy.”
Researchers found that home care workers, care agency staff and worker advocates lack understanding of AI technology, its data usage and the reasons AI systems retain their information.
Researchers found that home care workers, care agency staff and worker advocates lack understanding of AI technology, its data usage and the reasons AI systems retain their information.
MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices. As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric material — a class of heat-sensing material that produces an electric current in response to changes in temperature. The thinner
MIT engineers have developed a technique to grow and peel ultrathin “skins” of electronic material. The method could pave the way for new classes of electronic devices, such as ultrathin wearable sensors, flexible transistors and computing elements, and highly sensitive and compact imaging devices.
As a demonstration, the team fabricated a thin membrane of pyroelectric material — a class of heat-sensing material that produces an electric current in response to changes in temperature. The thinner the pyroelectric material, the better it is at sensing subtle thermal variations.
With their new method, the team fabricated the thinnest pyroelectric membrane yet, measuring 10 nanometers thick, and demonstrated that the film is highly sensitive to heat and radiation across the far-infrared spectrum.
The newly developed film could enable lighter, more portable, and highly accurate far-infrared (IR) sensing devices, with potential applications for night-vision eyewear and autonomous driving in foggy conditions. Current state-of-the-art far-IR sensors require bulky cooling elements. In contrast, the new pyroelectric thin film requires no cooling and is sensitive to much smaller changes in temperature. The researchers are exploring ways to incorporate the film into lighter, higher-precision night-vision glasses.
“This film considerably reduces weight and cost, making it lightweight, portable, and easier to integrate,” Xinyuan Zhang, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). “For example, it could be directly worn on glasses.”
The heat-sensing film could also have applications in environmental and biological sensing, as well as imaging of astrophysical phenomena that emit far-infrared radiation.
What’s more, the new lift-off technique is generalizable beyond pyroelectric materials. The researchers plan to apply the method to make other ultrathin, high-performance semiconducting films.
Their results are reported today in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. The study’s MIT co-authors are first author Xinyuan Zhang, Sangho Lee, Min-Kyu Song, Haihui Lan, Jun Min Suh, Jung-El Ryu, Yanjie Shao, Xudong Zheng, Ne Myo Han, and Jeehwan Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, along with researchers at the University Wisconsin at Madison led by Professor Chang-Beom Eom and authors from multiple other institutions.
Chemical peel
Kim’s group at MIT is finding new ways to make smaller, thinner, and more flexible electronics. They envision that such ultrathin computing “skins” can be incorporated into everything from smart contact lenses and wearable sensing fabrics to stretchy solar cells and bendable displays. To realize such devices, Kim and his colleagues have been experimenting with methods to grow, peel, and stack semiconducting elements, to fabricate ultrathin, multifunctional electronic thin-film membranes.
One method that Kim has pioneered is “remote epitaxy” — a technique where semiconducting materials are grown on a single-crystalline substrate, with an ultrathin layer of graphene in between. The substrate’s crystal structure serves as a scaffold along which the new material can grow. The graphene acts as a nonstick layer, similar to Teflon, making it easy for researchers to peel off the new film and transfer it onto flexible and stacked electronic devices. After peeling off the new film, the underlying substrate can be reused to make additional thin films.
Kim has applied remote epitaxy to fabricate thin films with various characteristics. In trying different combinations of semiconducting elements, the researchers happened to notice that a certain pyroelectric material, called PMN-PT, did not require an intermediate layer assist in order to separate from its substrate. Just by growing PMN-PT directly on a single-crystalline substrate, the researchers could then remove the grown film, with no rips or tears to its delicate lattice.
“It worked surprisingly well,” Zhang says. “We found the peeled film is atomically smooth.”
Lattice lift-off
In their new study, the MIT and UW Madison researchers took a closer look at the process and discovered that the key to the material’s easy-peel property was lead. As part of its chemical structure, the team, along with colleagues at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, discovered that the pyroelectric film contains an orderly arrangement of lead atoms that have a large “electron affinity,” meaning that lead attracts electrons and prevents the charge carriers from traveling and connecting to another materials such as an underlying substrate. The lead acts as tiny nonstick units, allowing the material as a whole to peel away, perfectly intact.
The team ran with the realization and fabricated multiple ultrathin films of PMN-PT, each about 10 nanometers thin. They peeled off pyroelectric films and transfered them onto a small chip to form an array of 100 ultrathin heat-sensing pixels, each about 60 square microns (about .006 square centimeters). They exposed the films to ever-slighter changes in temperature and found the pixels were highly sensitive to small changes across the far-infrared spectrum.
The sensitivity of the pyroelectric array is comparable to that of state-of-the-art night-vision devices. These devices are currently based on photodetector materials, in which a change in temperature induces the material’s electrons to jump in energy and briefly cross an energy “band gap,” before settling back into their ground state. This electron jump serves as an electrical signal of the temperature change. However, this signal can be affected by noise in the environment, and to prevent such effects, photodetectors have to also include cooling devices that bring the instruments down to liquid nitrogen temperatures.
Current night-vision goggles and scopes are heavy and bulky. With the group’s new pyroelectric-based approach, NVDs could have the same sensitivity without the cooling weight.
The researchers also found that the films were sensitive beyond the range of current night-vision devices and could respond to wavelengths across the entire infrared spectrum. This suggests that the films could be incorporated into small, lightweight, and portable devices for various applications that require different infrared regions. For instance, when integrated into autonomous vehicle platforms, the films could enable cars to “see” pedestrians and vehicles in complete darkness or in foggy and rainy conditions.
The film could also be used in gas sensors for real-time and on-site environmental monitoring, helping detect pollutants. In electronics, they could monitor heat changes in semiconductor chips to catch early signs of malfunctioning elements.
The team says the new lift-off method can be generalized to materials that may not themselves contain lead. In those cases, the researchers suspect that they can infuse Teflon-like lead atoms into the underlying substrate to induce a similar peel-off effect. For now, the team is actively working toward incorporating the pyroelectric films into a functional night-vision system.
“We envision that our ultrathin films could be made into high-performance night-vision goggles, considering its broad-spectrum infrared sensitivity at room-temperature, which allows for a lightweight design without a cooling system,” Zhang says. “To turn this into a night-vision system, a functional device array should be integrated with readout circuitry. Furthermore, testing in varied environmental conditions is essential for practical applications.”
This work was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
The newly developed film could enable lighter, more portable, and highly accurate far-infrared (IR) sensing devices, with potential applications for night-vision eyewear and autonomous driving in foggy conditions.
When chemists design new chemical reactions, one useful piece of information involves the reaction’s transition state — the point of no return from which a reaction must proceed.This information allows chemists to try to produce the right conditions that will allow the desired reaction to occur. However, current methods for predicting the transition state and the path that a chemical reaction will take are complicated and require a huge amount of computational power.MIT researchers have now deve
When chemists design new chemical reactions, one useful piece of information involves the reaction’s transition state — the point of no return from which a reaction must proceed.
This information allows chemists to try to produce the right conditions that will allow the desired reaction to occur. However, current methods for predicting the transition state and the path that a chemical reaction will take are complicated and require a huge amount of computational power.
MIT researchers have now developed a machine-learning model that can make these predictions in less than a second, with high accuracy. Their model could make it easier for chemists to design chemical reactions that could generate a variety of useful compounds, such as pharmaceuticals or fuels.
“We’d like to be able to ultimately design processes to take abundant natural resources and turn them into molecules that we need, such as materials and therapeutic drugs. Computational chemistry is really important for figuring out how to design more sustainable processes to get us from reactants to products,” says Heather Kulik, the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering, a professor of chemistry, and the senior author of the new study.
Former MIT graduate student Chenru Duan PhD ’22, who is now at Deep Principle; former Georgia Tech graduate student Guan-Horng Liu, who is now at Meta; and Cornell University graduate student Yuanqi Du are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Nature Machine Intelligence.
Better estimates
For any given chemical reaction to occur, it must go through a transition state, which takes place when it reaches the energy threshold needed for the reaction to proceed. These transition states are so fleeting that they’re nearly impossible to observe experimentally.
As an alternative, researchers can calculate the structures of transition states using techniques based on quantum chemistry. However, that process requires a great deal of computing power and can take hours or days to calculate a single transition state.
“Ideally, we’d like to be able to use computational chemistry to design more sustainable processes, but this computation in itself is a huge use of energy and resources in finding these transition states,” Kulik says.
In 2023, Kulik, Duan, and others reported on a machine-learning strategy that they developed to predict the transition states of reactions. This strategy is faster than using quantum chemistry techniques, but still slower than what would be ideal because it requires the model to generate about 40 structures, then run those predictions through a “confidence model” to predict which states were most likely to occur.
One reason why that model needs to be run so many times is that it uses randomly generated guesses for the starting point of the transition state structure, then performs dozens of calculations until it reaches its final, best guess. These randomly generated starting points may be very far from the actual transition state, which is why so many steps are needed.
The researchers’ new model, React-OT, described in the Nature Machine Intelligence paper, uses a different strategy. In this work, the researchers trained their model to begin from an estimate of the transition state generated by linear interpolation — a technique that estimates each atom’s position by moving it halfway between its position in the reactants and in the products, in three-dimensional space.
“A linear guess is a good starting point for approximating where that transition state will end up,” Kulik says. “What the model’s doing is starting from a much better initial guess than just a completely random guess, as in the prior work.”
Because of this, it takes the model fewer steps and less time to generate a prediction. In the new study, the researchers showed that their model could make predictions with only about five steps, taking about 0.4 seconds. These predictions don’t need to be fed through a confidence model, and they are about 25 percent more accurate than the predictions generated by the previous model.
“That really makes React-OT a practical model that we can directly integrate to the existing computational workflow in high-throughput screening to generate optimal transition state structures,” Duan says.
“A wide array of chemistry”
To create React-OT, the researchers trained it on the same dataset that they used to train their older model. These data contain structures of reactants, products, and transition states, calculated using quantum chemistry methods, for 9,000 different chemical reactions, mostly involving small organic or inorganic molecules.
Once trained, the model performed well on other reactions from this set, which had been held out of the training data. It also performed well on other types of reactions that it hadn’t been trained on, and could make accurate predictions involving reactions with larger reactants, which often have side chains that aren’t directly involved in the reaction.
“This is important because there are a lot of polymerization reactions where you have a big macromolecule, but the reaction is occurring in just one part. Having a model that generalizes across different system sizes means that it can tackle a wide array of chemistry,” Kulik says.
The researchers are now working on training the model so that it can predict transition states for reactions between molecules that include additional elements, including sulfur, phosphorus, chlorine, silicon, and lithium.
“To quickly predict transition state structures is key to all chemical understanding,” says Markus Reiher, a professor of theoretical chemistry at ETH Zurich, who was not involved in the study. “The new approach presented in the paper could very much accelerate our search and optimization processes, bringing us faster to our final result. As a consequence, also less energy will be consumed in these high-performance computing campaigns. Any progress that accelerates this optimization benefits all sorts of computational chemical research.”
The MIT team hopes that other scientists will make use of their approach in designing their own reactions, and have created an app for that purpose.
“Whenever you have a reactant and product, you can put them into the model and it will generate the transition state, from which you can estimate the energy barrier of your intended reaction, and see how likely it is to occur,” Duan says.
The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office, the U.S. Department of Defense Basic Research Office, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.
MIT researchers developed a machine-learning model that can predict the structures of transition states of chemical reactions in less than a second, with high accuracy.
By Dr Qi Dongshou, Senior Researcher, from the East Asian Institute at NUS and Professor Li Xiaodong from the Institute of International Relations at Yunnan UniversityLianhe Zaobao, 21 April 2025, Opinion, p20
By Dr Qi Dongshou, Senior Researcher, from the East Asian Institute at NUS and Professor Li Xiaodong from the Institute of International Relations at Yunnan University
In metamaterials design, the name of the game has long been “stronger is better.”Metamaterials are synthetic materials with microscopic structures that give the overall material exceptional properties. A huge focus has been in designing metamaterials that are stronger and stiffer than their conventional counterparts. But there’s a trade-off: The stiffer a material, the less flexible it is.MIT engineers have now found a way to fabricate a metamaterial that is both strong and stretchy. The base ma
In metamaterials design, the name of the game has long been “stronger is better.”
Metamaterials are synthetic materials with microscopic structures that give the overall material exceptional properties. A huge focus has been in designing metamaterials that are stronger and stiffer than their conventional counterparts. But there’s a trade-off: The stiffer a material, the less flexible it is.
MIT engineers have now found a way to fabricate a metamaterial that is both strong and stretchy. The base material is typically highly rigid and brittle, but it is printed in precise, intricate patterns that form a structure that is both strong and flexible.
The key to the new material’s dual properties is a combination of stiff microscopic struts and a softer woven architecture. This microscopic “double network,” which is printed using a plexiglass-like polymer, produced a material that could stretch over four times its size without fully breaking. In comparison, the polymer in other forms has little to no stretch and shatters easily once cracked.
The researchers say the new double-network design can be applied to other materials, for instance to fabricate stretchy ceramics, glass, and metals. Such tough yet bendy materials could be made into tear-resistant textiles, flexible semiconductors, electronic chip packaging, and durable yet compliant scaffolds on which to grow cells for tissue repair.
“We are opening up this new territory for metamaterials,” says Carlos Portela, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor at MIT. “You could print a double-network metal or ceramic, and you could get a lot of these benefits, in that it would take more energy to break them, and they would be significantly more stretchable.”
Along with other research groups, Portela and his colleagues have typically designed metamaterials by printing or nanofabricating microscopic lattices using conventional polymers similar to plexiglass and ceramic. The specific pattern, or architecture, that they print can impart exceptional strength and impact resistance to the resulting metamaterial.
Several years ago, Portela was curious whether a metamaterial could be made from an inherently stiff material, but be patterned in a way that would turn it into a much softer, stretchier version.
“We realized that the field of metamaterials has not really tried to make an impact in the soft matter realm,” he says. “So far, we’ve all been looking for the stiffest and strongest materials possible.”
Instead, he looked for a way to synthesize softer, stretchier metamaterials. Rather than printing microscopic struts and trusses, similar to those of conventional lattice-based metamaterials, he and his team made an architecture of interwoven springs, or coils. They found that, while the material they used was itself stiff like plexiglass, the resulting woven metamaterial was soft and springy, like rubber.
“They were stretchy, but too soft and compliant,” Portela recalls.
In looking for ways to bulk up their softer metamaterial, the team found inspiration in an entirely different material: hydrogel. Hydrogels are soft, stretchy, Jell-O-like materials that are composed of mostly water and a bit of polymer structure. Researchers including groups at MIT have devised ways to make hydrogels that are both soft and stretchy, and also tough. They do so by combining polymer networks with very different properties, such as a network of molecules that is naturally stiff, which gets chemically cross-linked with another molecular network that is inherently soft. Portela and his colleagues wondered whether such a double-network design could be adapted to metamaterials.
“That was our ‘aha’ moment,” Portela says. “We thought: Can we get inspiration from these hydrogels to create a metamaterial with similar stiff and stretchy properties?”
Strut and weave
For their new study, the team fabricated a metamaterial by combining two microscopic architectures. The first is a rigid, grid-like scaffold of struts and trusses. The second is a pattern of coils that weave around each strut and truss. Both networks are made from the same acrylic plastic and are printed in one go, using a high-precision, laser-based printing technique called two-photon lithography.
The researchers printed samples of the new double-network-inspired metamaterial, each measuring in size from several square microns to several square millimeters. They put the material through a series of stress tests, in which they attached either end of the sample to a specialized nanomechanical press and measured the force it took to pull the material apart. They also recorded high-resolution videos to observe the locations and ways in which the material stretched and tore as it was pulled apart.
They found their new double-network design was able stretch three times its own length, which also happened to be 10 times farther compared to a conventional lattice-patterned metamaterial printed with the same acrylic plastic. Portela says the new material’s stretchy resistance comes from the interactions between the material’s rigid struts and the messier, coiled weave as the material is stressed and pulled.
“Think of this woven network as a mess of spaghetti tangled around a lattice. As we break the monolithic lattice network, those broken parts come along for the ride, and now all this spaghetti gets entangled with the lattice pieces,” Portela explains. “That promotes more entanglement between woven fibers, which means you have more friction and more energy dissipation.”
In other words, the softer structure wound throughout the material’s rigid lattice takes on more stress thanks to multiple knots or entanglements promoted by the cracked struts. As this stress spreads unevenly through the material, an initial crack is unlikely to go straight through and quickly tear the material. What’s more, the team found that if they introduced strategic holes, or “defects,” in the metamaterial, they could further dissipate any stress that the material undergoes, making it even stretchier and more resistant to tearing apart.
“You might think this makes the material worse,” says study co-author Surjadi. “But we saw once we started adding defects, we doubled the amount of stretch we were able to do, and tripled the amount of energy that we dissipated. That gives us a material that’s both stiff and tough, which is usually a contradiction.”
The team has developed a computational framework that can help engineers estimate how a metamaterial will perform given the pattern of its stiff and stretchy networks. They envision such a blueprint will be useful in designing tear-proof textiles and fabrics.
“We also want to try this approach on more brittle materials, to give them multifunctionality,” Portela says. “So far we’ve talked of mechanical properties, but what if we could also make them conductive, or responsive to temperature? For that, the two networks could be made from different polymers, that respond to temperature in different ways, so that a fabric can open its pores or become more compliant when it’s warm and can be more rigid when it’s cold. That’s something we can explore now.”
This research was supported, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the MIT MechE MathWorks Seed Fund. This work was performed, in part, through the use of MIT.nano’s facilities.
Over 2,700 donors and partners supported ETH Zurich philanthropically in 2024. The ETH Foundation annual report provides insights into the wide-ranging support for projects and individuals over the last year.
Over 2,700 donors and partners supported ETH Zurich philanthropically in 2024. The ETH Foundation annual report provides insights into the wide-ranging support for projects and individuals over the last year.
MIT researchers have created a periodic table that shows how more than 20 classical machine-learning algorithms are connected. The new framework sheds light on how scientists could fuse strategies from different methods to improve existing AI models or come up with new ones.For instance, the researchers used their framework to combine elements of two different algorithms to create a new image-classification algorithm that performed 8 percent better than current state-of-the-art approaches.The pe
MIT researchers have created a periodic table that shows how more than 20 classical machine-learning algorithms are connected. The new framework sheds light on how scientists could fuse strategies from different methods to improve existing AI models or come up with new ones.
For instance, the researchers used their framework to combine elements of two different algorithms to create a new image-classification algorithm that performed 8 percent better than current state-of-the-art approaches.
The periodic table stems from one key idea: All these algorithms learn a specific kind of relationship between data points. While each algorithm may accomplish that in a slightly different way, the core mathematics behind each approach is the same.
Building on these insights, the researchers identified a unifying equation that underlies many classical AI algorithms. They used that equation to reframe popular methods and arrange them into a table, categorizing each based on the approximate relationships it learns.
Just like the periodic table of chemical elements, which initially contained blank squares that were later filled in by scientists, the periodic table of machine learning also has empty spaces. These spaces predict where algorithms should exist, but which haven’t been discovered yet.
The table gives researchers a toolkit to design new algorithms without the need to rediscover ideas from prior approaches, says Shaden Alshammari, an MIT graduate student and lead author of a paper on this new framework.
“It’s not just a metaphor,” adds Alshammari. “We’re starting to see machine learning as a system with structure that is a space we can explore rather than just guess our way through.”
She is joined on the paper by John Hershey, a researcher at Google AI Perception; Axel Feldmann, an MIT graduate student; William Freeman, the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and senior author Mark Hamilton, an MIT graduate student and senior engineering manager at Microsoft. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
An accidental equation
The researchers didn’t set out to create a periodic table of machine learning.
After joining the Freeman Lab, Alshammari began studying clustering, a machine-learning technique that classifies images by learning to organize similar images into nearby clusters.
She realized the clustering algorithm she was studying was similar to another classical machine-learning algorithm, called contrastive learning, and began digging deeper into the mathematics. Alshammari found that these two disparate algorithms could be reframed using the same underlying equation.
“We almost got to this unifying equation by accident. Once Shaden discovered that it connects two methods, we just started dreaming up new methods to bring into this framework. Almost every single one we tried could be added in,” Hamilton says.
The framework they created, information contrastive learning (I-Con), shows how a variety of algorithms can be viewed through the lens of this unifying equation. It includes everything from classification algorithms that can detect spam to the deep learning algorithms that power LLMs.
The equation describes how such algorithms find connections between real data points and then approximate those connections internally.
Each algorithm aims to minimize the amount of deviation between the connections it learns to approximate and the real connections in its training data.
They decided to organize I-Con into a periodic table to categorize algorithms based on how points are connected in real datasets and the primary ways algorithms can approximate those connections.
“The work went gradually, but once we had identified the general structure of this equation, it was easier to add more methods to our framework,” Alshammari says.
A tool for discovery
As they arranged the table, the researchers began to see gaps where algorithms could exist, but which hadn’t been invented yet.
The researchers filled in one gap by borrowing ideas from a machine-learning technique called contrastive learning and applying them to image clustering. This resulted in a new algorithm that could classify unlabeled images 8 percent better than another state-of-the-art approach.
They also used I-Con to show how a data debiasing technique developed for contrastive learning could be used to boost the accuracy of clustering algorithms.
In addition, the flexible periodic table allows researchers to add new rows and columns to represent additional types of datapoint connections.
Ultimately, having I-Con as a guide could help machine learning scientists think outside the box, encouraging them to combine ideas in ways they wouldn’t necessarily have thought of otherwise, says Hamilton.
“We’ve shown that just one very elegant equation, rooted in the science of information, gives you rich algorithms spanning 100 years of research in machine learning. This opens up many new avenues for discovery,” he adds.
“Perhaps the most challenging aspect of being a machine-learning researcher these days is the seemingly unlimited number of papers that appear each year. In this context, papers that unify and connect existing algorithms are of great importance, yet they are extremely rare. I-Con provides an excellent example of such a unifying approach and will hopefully inspire others to apply a similar approach to other domains of machine learning,” says Yair Weiss, a professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who was not involved in this research.
This research was funded, in part, by the Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator, the National Science Foundation AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions, and Quanta Computer.
MIT researchers created a periodic table of machine learning that shows how more than 20 classical algorithms are connected. The new framework sheds light on how scientists could fuse strategies from different methods to improve existing AI models or come up with new ones.
By Dr Chew Han Ei, Senior Research Fellow from the Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, and Assoc Prof Carol Soon, from the Dept of Communications and New Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS CNA Online, 15 April 2025
By Dr Chew Han Ei, Senior Research Fellow from the Institute of Policy Studies, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, and Assoc Prof Carol Soon, from the Dept of Communications and New Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS
Gary Ruvkun in the 1990s.Harvard file photo
Science & Tech
Long trail from 1992 discovery to 2024 Nobel
Gary Ruvkun recounts years of research, which gradually drew interest, mostly fueled by NIH grants
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
April 22, 2025
4 min read
Part of the
Profiles of Progress
series
Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros were not k
Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros were not known as superstars in their field back in 1992 when they discovered microRNA, a feat that would earn them the 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
“We were fine. We weren’t terrible,” said Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “But there was nothing about it that made it seem like, ‘Oh, these guys are walking on water!’”
Even after the former Harvard collaborators published their findings in the journal Cell in 1993, revealing a new level of gene regulation in the C. elegans roundworm, the evolutionary biology community was not overly impressed. It wasn’t clear that the genes Ruvkun and Ambros, now a professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, discovered mattered to other species, including humans.
Instead, their work, mostly funded by the National Institutes of Health, drew interest from a smaller group of RNA researchers and what Ruvkun calls the “worm community” — those interested in the same model organism.
Ruvkun speaks at the Medical School after winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his role in the discovery of microRNA.
Harvard file photo
But the interest in the RNA field kept growing. Meetings that formerly would have drawn 100 attendees doubled in size within a few years. It became clear that the same tiny RNAs had the same role in plants and in worms, and scientists in all different fields were interested in the same questions.
Ruvkun started to realize, “This was some revolutionary stuff, and we were the only people thinking about tiny RNAs in the world.”
Decades of federally funded breakthroughs later, microRNAs are considered fundamental to how organisms develop, mature, and function — playing a key role in translating genes into proteins.
Studies have discovered that the human genome contains about 1,000 microRNAs that control most human protein-producing genes. Therapies based on microRNAs to treat heart disease, cancer, Crohn’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, and several other diseases are in clinical trials.
Ruvkun says about three-quarters of his lab research has been funded by the federal government for the past 40 years, at about $150,000 a year. The money provides enough support for about four people. “It’s not like I had a lab of 50,” he said.
He expresses puzzlement at calls to cut federal funding, emphasizing that spending on scientific work is far from wasteful. “The average pay of the people in my lab has always been about three times the minimum wage,” he said. “These are scientists, and they’re super educated. They have Ph.D.s or are getting Ph.D.s, but they’re paid a little better than working at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
Ruvkun is proud that basic research from his field has led to major pharmaceutical companies like Alnylam, which focuses on the discovery, development, and commercialization of RNA interference therapeutics for genetic diseases.
“It’s one of the 10 biggest companies in Massachusetts,” he said, “and it didn’t even exist 20 years ago.” He’s also glad that his research had enough of an impact that he can continue doing basic science while others worry about the business implications.
Of the top 500 companies in the country, Ruvkun emphasizes, well over half are driven by technology — much of the foundational research behind them driven by federal grants. He credits federal funding with turning the U.S. into a scientific and economic superpower during and after World War II.
He worries that a lack of investment could push members of his laboratory away from science research.
“I have all of these people who are 25, 30 years old, and they’re like, ‘What career do I have? What am I going to do?’” The answer, he said, might be the reverse of the post-war trend: They’ll leave the U.S. for more stable positions in Europe.
Kripa Varanasi, professor of mechanical engineering, was named faculty director of the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, effective March 1.“Kripa is widely recognized for his significant contributions in the field of interfacial science, thermal fluids, electrochemical systems, and advanced materials. It’s remarkable to see the tangible impact Kripa’s ventures have made across such a wide range of fields,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, chief in
Kripa Varanasi, professor of mechanical engineering, was named faculty director of the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, effective March 1.
“Kripa is widely recognized for his significant contributions in the field of interfacial science, thermal fluids, electrochemical systems, and advanced materials. It’s remarkable to see the tangible impact Kripa’s ventures have made across such a wide range of fields,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, chief innovation and strategy officer, and Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “From energy and water conservation to consumer products and agriculture, his solutions are making a real difference. The Deshpande Center will benefit greatly from both his entrepreneurial expertise and deep technical insight.”
The MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation is an interdepartmental center that empowers MIT students and faculty to make a difference in the world by helping them bring their innovative technologies from the lab to the marketplace in the form of breakthrough products and new companies. The center was established through a gift from philanthropist Guruaj “Desh” Deshpande and his wife, Jaishree.
“Kripa brings an entrepreneurial spirit, innovative thinking, and commitment to mentorship that has always been central to the Deshpande Center’s mission,” says Deshpande. “He is exceptionally well-positioned to help the next generation of MIT innovators turn bold ideas into real-world solutions that make a difference.”
Varanasi has seen the Deshpande Center’s influence on the MIT community since its founding in 2002, when he was a graduate student.
“The Deshpande Center was founded when I was a graduate student, and it truly inspired many of us to think about entrepreneurship and commercialization — with Desh himself being an incredible role model,” says Varanasi. “Over the years, the center has built a storied legacy as a one-of-a-kind institution for propelling university-invented technologies to commercialization. Many amazing companies have come out of this program, shaping industries and making a real impact.”
A member of the MIT faculty since 2009, Varanasi leads the interdisciplinary Varanasi Research Group, which focuses on understanding physico-chemical and biological phenomena at the interfaces of matter. His group develops novel surfaces, materials, and technologies that improve efficiency and performance across industries, including energy, decarbonization, life sciences, water, agriculture, transportation, and consumer products.
In addition to his academic work, Varanasi is a prolific entrepreneur who has co-founded six companies, including AgZen, Alsym Energy, CoFlo Medical, Dropwise, Infinite Cooling, and LiquiGlide, which was a Deshpande Center grantee in 2009. These ventures aim to translate research breakthroughs into products with global reach.
His companies have been widely recognized for driving innovation across a range of industries. LiquiGlide, which produces frictionless liquid coatings, was named one of Time and Forbes’ “Best Inventions of the Year” in 2012. Infinite Cooling, which offers a technology to capture and recycle power plant water vapor, has won the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Cleantech University Prize and top prizes at MassChallenge and the MIT $100K competition. It is also a participating company at this year’s IdeaStream: Next Gen event, hosted by the Deshpande Center.
Another company that Varanasi co-founded, AgZen, is pioneering feedback optimization for agrochemical application that allows farmers to use 30-90 percent less pesticides and fertilizers while achieving 1-10 percent more yield. Meanwhile, Alsym Energy is advancing nonflammable, high-performance batteries for energy storage solutions that are lithium-free and capable of a wide range of storage durations.
Throughout his career, Varanasi has been recognized for both research excellence and mentorship. His honors include the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, ASME’s Bergles-Rohsenow Heat Transfer Award and Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award, Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, and MIT’s Frank E. Perkins Award for Excellence in Graduate Advising.
Varanasi earned his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and his master’s degree and PhD from MIT. Prior to joining the Institute’s faculty, he served as lead researcher and project leader at the GE Global Research Center, where he received multiple internal awards for innovation and technical excellence.
"It’s an honor to lead the Deshpande Center, and in collaboration with the MIT community, I look forward to building on its incredible foundation — fostering bold ideas, driving real-world impact from cutting-edge innovations, and making it a powerhouse for commercialization,” adds Varanasi.
As faculty director, Varanasi will work closely with Deshpande Center executive director Rana Gupta to guide the center’s support of MIT faculty and students developing technology-based ventures.
“With Kripa’s depth and background, we will capitalize on the initiatives started with Angela Koehler. Kripa shares our vision to grow and expand the center’s capabilities to serve more of MIT,” adds Gupta.
Varanasi succeeds Angela Koehler, associate professor of biological engineering, who served as faculty director from July 2023 through March 2025.
“Angela brought fresh vision and energy to the center,” he says. “She expanded its reach, introduced new funding priorities in climate and life sciences, and re-imagined the annual IdeaStream event as a more robust launchpad for innovation. We’re deeply grateful for her leadership.”
Koehler, who was recently appointed faculty lead of the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative, will continue to play a key role in the Institute’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Essential for many industries ranging from Hollywood computer-generated imagery to product design, 3D modeling tools often use text or image prompts to dictate different aspects of visual appearance, like color and form. As much as this makes sense as a first point of contact, these systems are still limited in their realism due to their neglect of something central to the human experience: touch.Fundamental to the uniqueness of physical objects are their tactile properties, such as roughness, b
Essential for many industries ranging from Hollywood computer-generated imagery to product design, 3D modeling tools often use text or image prompts to dictate different aspects of visual appearance, like color and form. As much as this makes sense as a first point of contact, these systems are still limited in their realism due to their neglect of something central to the human experience: touch.
Fundamental to the uniqueness of physical objects are their tactile properties, such as roughness, bumpiness, or the feel of materials like wood or stone. Existing modeling methods often require advanced computer-aided design expertise and rarely support tactile feedback that can be crucial for how we perceive and interact with the physical world.
With that in mind, researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a new system for stylizing 3D models using image prompts, effectively replicating both visual appearance and tactile properties.
The CSAIL team’s “TactStyle” tool allows creators to stylize 3D models based on images while also incorporating the expected tactile properties of the textures. TactStyle separates visual and geometric stylization, enabling the replication of both visual and tactile properties from a single image input.
PhD student Faraz Faruqi, lead author of a new paper on the project, says that TactStyle could have far-reaching applications, extending from home decor and personal accessories to tactile learning tools. TactStyle enables users to download a base design — such as a headphone stand from Thingiverse — and customize it with the styles and textures they desire. In education, learners can explore diverse textures from around the world without leaving the classroom, while in product design, rapid prototyping becomes easier as designers quickly print multiple iterations to refine tactile qualities.
“You could imagine using this sort of system for common objects, such as phone stands and earbud cases, to enable more complex textures and enhance tactile feedback in a variety of ways,” says Faruqi, who co-wrote the paper alongside MIT Associate Professor Stefanie Mueller, leader of the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Engineering Group at CSAIL. “You can create tactile educational tools to demonstrate a range of different concepts in fields such as biology, geometry, and topography.”
Traditional methods for replicating textures involve using specialized tactile sensors — such as GelSight, developed at MIT — that physically touch an object to capture its surface microgeometry as a “heightfield.” But this requires having a physical object or its recorded surface for replication. TactStyle allows users to replicate the surface microgeometry by leveraging generative AI to generate a heightfield directly from an image of the texture.
On top of that, for platforms like the 3D printing repository Thingiverse, it’s difficult to take individual designs and customize them. Indeed, if a user lacks sufficient technical background, changing a design manually runs the risk of actually “breaking” it so that it can’t be printed anymore. All of these factors spurred Faruqi to wonder about building a tool that enables customization of downloadable models on a high level, but that also preserves functionality.
In experiments, TactStyle showed significant improvements over traditional stylization methods by generating accurate correlations between a texture’s visual image and its heightfield. This enables the replication of tactile properties directly from an image. One psychophysical experiment showed that users perceive TactStyle’s generated textures as similar to both the expected tactile properties from visual input and the tactile features of the original texture, leading to a unified tactile and visual experience.
TactStyle leverages a preexisting method, called “Style2Fab,” to modify the model’s color channels to match the input image’s visual style. Users first provide an image of the desired texture, and then a fine-tuned variational autoencoder is used to translate the input image into a corresponding heightfield. This heightfield is then applied to modify the model’s geometry to create the tactile properties.
The color and geometry stylization modules work in tandem, stylizing both the visual and tactile properties of the 3D model from a single image input. Faruqi says that the core innovation lies in the geometry stylization module, which uses a fine-tuned diffusion model to generate heightfields from texture images — something previous stylization frameworks do not accurately replicate.
Looking ahead, Faruqi says the team aims to extend TactStyle to generate novel 3D models using generative AI with embedded textures. This requires exploring exactly the sort of pipeline needed to replicate both the form and function of the 3D models being fabricated. They also plan to investigate “visuo-haptic mismatches” to create novel experiences with materials that defy conventional expectations, like something that appears to be made of marble but feels like it’s made of wood.
Faruqi and Mueller co-authored the new paper alongside PhD students Maxine Perroni-Scharf and Yunyi Zhu, visiting undergraduate student Jaskaran Singh Walia, visiting masters student Shuyue Feng, and assistant professor Donald Degraen of the Human Interface Technology (HIT) Lab NZ in New Zealand.
PhD student Faraz Faruqi, lead author of a new paper on the project, says that TactStyle could have far-reaching applications extending from home decor and personal accessories to tactile learning tools.
Campus & Community
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar named Class Day speaker
Kareem Abdul-JabbarPhoto by Dan Winters
Laura Speers
Harvard Correspondent
April 22, 2025
4 min read
NBA icon, award-winning author, and humanitarian chosen for ‘his lasting efforts to build a more just and compassionate world’
Part of the
Commencement 2025
series
A collection
A collection of stories covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Legendary basketball player, writer, and activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will address the Harvard College Class of 2025 during the annual Class Day celebration on May 28, the day before Harvard’s 374th Commencement.
“We are so excited to welcome Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the featured Class Day speaker,” said Uzma Issa ’25, first marshal of the 2025 Class Committee. “He’s a champion in every sense of the word — celebrated both for his extraordinary achievements on the court and his lasting efforts to build a more just and compassionate world. He has shown that true leadership is measured by the difference we make in people’s lives.”
“It’s a privilege to share this moment with the Class of 2025 and to celebrate all that lies ahead,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “The world needs their ideas, their energy, and their heart. I hope my words will encourage them to keep learning, keep growing, and keep showing up — for themselves and for others.”
Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Abdul-Jabbar is also an award-winning author, cultural icon, and tireless advocate for social justice. In 2016, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — in recognition of his contributions on and off the court.
The 7-foot-2 basketball Hall of Famer dominated the NBA for two decades with his trademark skyhook, becoming the league’s all-time leading scorer — a title he held for 39 years. A 19-time NBA All-Star and six-time NBA champion, he remains the only player in NBA history to win six Most Valuable Player awards. Time magazine once dubbed him “History’s Greatest Player.”
Since retiring in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar has continued to use his platform to challenge public thinking on a wide range of issues. An influential columnist, he has written for major media outlets worldwide and now publishes regularly on his Substack newsletter. A nine-time Southern California Journalism Awards Columnist of the Year, he is known for incisive commentary on sports, politics, and popular culture. Today, he remains one of the most outspoken and respected voices confronting racism and inequality in America.
Abdul-Jabbar traces his activism back to his high school years in Harlem, when he had the chance to ask Martin Luther King Jr. a question at a news conference. The brief exchange sparked a lifelong commitment to fighting injustice like systemic racism and inequality in education, health, and employment.
Appointed in 2012 as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador by the State Department, he was tasked with promoting education, racial tolerance, and cross-cultural understanding among young people around the world. In 2021, the NBA established the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award to honor the next generation of athletes working to lift up their communities. His public service efforts have earned him numerous honors, including Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal in 2022.
Abdul-Jabbar is the founder and chair of The Skyhook Foundation, which brings science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education to underserved communities in Los Angeles.
An award-winning documentary producer and two-time Emmy-nominated narrator, Abdul-Jabbar is the subject one of HBO’s most-watched sports documentary of all time, “Kareem: Minority of One.” His on-screen appearances span hundreds of iconic film and television roles.
“Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has spent a lifetime speaking out against injustice and using his platform to educate and inspire,” said Srija Vem ’25, second marshal of the 2025 Class Committee. “As we prepare to take our next steps in life, his legacy reminds us that we all have the opportunity — and the responsibility — to use our voices, our intellect, and our talents in service of something greater.”
In addition to Abdul-Jabbar’s address, Class Day includes award presentations and student orations. The event will begin at 2 p.m. on May 28 in Tercentenary Theatre and will be livestreamed.
What happens when a fashion legend taps into the transformative power of artificial intelligence? For more than five decades, fashion designer and entrepreneur Norma Kamali has pioneered bold industry shifts, creating iconic silhouettes worn by celebrities including Whitney Houston and Jessica Biel. Now, she is embracing a new frontier — one that merges creativity with algorithms and AI to redefine the future of her industry.Through MIT Professional Education’s online “Applied Generative AI for
What happens when a fashion legend taps into the transformative power of artificial intelligence? For more than five decades, fashion designer and entrepreneur Norma Kamali has pioneered bold industry shifts, creating iconic silhouettes worn by celebrities including Whitney Houston and Jessica Biel. Now, she is embracing a new frontier — one that merges creativity with algorithms and AI to redefine the future of her industry.
Through MIT Professional Education’s online “Applied Generative AI for Digital Transformation” course, which she completed in 2023, Kamali explored AI’s potential to serve as creative partner and ensure the longevity and evolution of her brand.
Kamali’s introduction to AI began with a meeting in Abu Dhabi, where industry experts, inspired by her Walmart collection, suggested developing an AI-driven fashion platform. Intrigued by the idea, but wary of the concept of “downloading her brain,” Kamali instead envisioned a system that could expand upon her 57-year archive — a closed-loop AI tool trained solely on her work. “I thought, AI could be my Karl Lagerfeld,” she says, referencing the designer’s reverence for archival inspiration.
To bring this vision to life, Kamali sought a deeper understanding of generative AI — so she headed to MIT Professional Education, an arm of MIT that has taught and inspired global professionals for more than 75 years. “I wasn’t sure how much I could actually do,” she recalls. “I had all these preconceived notions, but the more I learned, the more ideas I had.” Initially intimidated by the technical aspects of AI, she persevered, diving into prompts and training data, and exploring its creative potential. “I was determined,” she says. “And then suddenly, I was playing.”
Experimenting with her proprietary AI model, created by Maison Meta, Kamali used AI to reinterpret one of her signature styles — black garments adorned with silver studs. By prompting AI with iterations of her existing silhouettes, she witnessed unexpected and thrilling results. “It was magic,” she says. “Art, technology, and fashion colliding in ways I never imagined.” Even AI’s so-called “hallucinations” — distortions often seen as errors — became a source of inspiration. “Some of the best editorial fashion is absurd,” she notes. “AI-generated anomalies created entirely new forms of art.”
Kamali’s approach to AI reflects a broader shift across industries, where technology is not just a tool but a catalyst for reinvention. Bhaskar Pant, executive director of MIT Professional Education, underscores this transformation. “While everyone is speculating about the impact of AI, we are committed to advancing AI’s role in helping industries and leaders achieve breakthroughs, higher levels of productivity, and, as in this case, unleash creativity. Professionals must be empowered to harness AI’s potential in ways that not only enhance their work, but redefine what’s possible. Norma’s journey is a testament to the power of lifelong learning — demonstrating that innovation is ageless, fueled by curiosity and ambition.”
The experience also deepened Kamali’s perspective on AI’s role in the creative process. “AI doesn’t have a heartbeat,” she asserts. “It can’t replace human passion. But it can enhance creativity in ways we’re only beginning to understand.” Kamali also addressed industry fears about job displacement, arguing that the technology is already reshaping fashion’s labor landscape. “Sewing talent is harder to find. Designers need new tools to adapt.”
Beyond its creative applications, Kamali sees AI as a vehicle for sustainability. A longtime advocate for reducing dry cleaning — a practice linked to chemical exposure — she envisions AI streamlining fabric selection, minimizing waste, and enabling on-demand production. “Imagine a system where you design your wedding dress online, and a robot constructs it, one garment at a time,” she says. “The possibilities are endless.”
Abel Sanchez, MIT research scientist and lead instructor for MIT Professional Education’s Applied Generative AI for Digital Transformation course, emphasizes the transformative potential of AI across industries. “AI is a force reshaping the foundations of every sector, including fashion. Generative AI is unlocking unprecedented digital transformation opportunities, enabling organizations to rethink processes, design, and customer engagement. Norma is at the forefront of this shift, exploring how AI can propel the fashion industry forward, spark new creative frontiers, and redefine how designers interact with technology.”
Kamali’s experience in the course sparked an ongoing exchange of ideas with Sanchez, further fueling her curiosity. “AI is evolving so fast, I know I’ll need to go back,” she says. “MIT gave me the foundation, but this is just the beginning.” For those hesitant to embrace AI, she offers a striking analogy: “Imagine landing in a small town, in a foreign country, where you don’t speak the language, don’t recognize the food, and feel completely lost. That’s what it will be like if you don’t learn AI. The train has left the station — it’s time to get on board.”
With her AI-generated designs now featured on her website alongside her traditional collections, Kamali is proving that technology and creativity aren’t at odds — they’re collaborators. And as she continues to push the boundaries of both, she remains steadfast in her belief: “Learning is the adventure of life. Why stop now?”
Globally, and especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a significant portion of the population lacks access to essential health-care services. Although there are many contributing factors that create barriers to access, in many LMICs failing or obsolete equipment plays a significant role.“Those of us who have investigated health-care systems in LMICs are familiar with so-called ‘equipment graveyards,’” says Nevan Hanumara SM ’06, PhD ’12, a research scientist in MIT’s Department o
Globally, and especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), a significant portion of the populationlacks access to essential health-care services. Although there are many contributing factors that create barriers to access, in many LMICs failing or obsolete equipment plays a significant role.
“Those of us who have investigated health-care systems in LMICs are familiar with so-called ‘equipment graveyards,’” says Nevan Hanumara SM ’06, PhD ’12, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, describing piles of broken, imported equipment, often bearing stickers indicating their origins from donor organizations.
“Looking at the root causes of medical equipment failing and falling out of service in LMICs, we find that the local biomedical engineers truly can’t do the maintenance, due to a cascade of challenges,” he says.
Among these challenges are: design weaknesses — systems designed for temperate, air-conditioned hospitals and stabilized power don’t fare well in areas with inconsistent power supply, dust, high heat and humidity, and continuous utilization; lack of supply chain — parts ordered in the U.S. can arrive in days, where parts ordered to East Africa may take months; and limited access to knowledgeable professionals — outside of major metropolitan areas, biomedical engineers are scarce.
Hanumara, Leroy Sibanda SM ’24, a recent graduate with a dual degree in management and electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), and Anthony Pennes ’16, a technical instructor in EECS, began to ponder what could be changed if local biomedical engineers were actually involved with the design of the equipment that they’re charged with maintaining.
Pennes, who staffs class 2.75/6.4861 (Medical Device Design), among other courses, developed hands-on biosensing and mechatronics exercises as class activities several years ago. Hanumara became interested in expanding that curriculum to produce something that could have a larger impact.
Working as a team, and with support from MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI), the MIT Jameel World Education Lab, and the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center, the trio created a hands-on course, exercises, and curriculum, supported by what they’ve now dubbed a “Biomed Lab in a Box” kit.
Sibanda, who hails from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, brings additional lived experience to the project. He says friends up and down the continent speak about great practical primary and secondary education, and a tertiary education that provides a heavy emphasis on theory. The consequence, he says, is a plethora of graduates who are absolutely brilliant at the theory, but less experienced in advanced practical concepts.
“Anyone who has ever had to build systems that need to stand up to real-world conditions understands the chasm between knowing how to calculate the theoretically perfect ‘x’ and being capable of implementing a real-world solution with the materials available,” says Sibanda.
Hanumara and Sibanda traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, and Mbarara, Uganda, in late 2024 to test their kit and their theory, teaching three-day long biomedical innovation mini-courses at both Kenyatta University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), with Pennes providing remote support from MIT’s campus.
With a curriculum based off of 2.75, labs were designed to connect the theoretical to the physical, increasing in complexity and confronting students with the real challenges of biomedical hardware and sensing, such as weak signals, ambient noise, motion artifacts, debugging, and precision assembly.
Pennes says the goal for the mini-courses was to shape the project around the real-world experiences of the region’s biomedical engineering students. “One of the problems that they experience in this region is not simply a lack of equipment, but the lack of ability to maintain it,” he says. “Some organization will come in and donate thousands of dollars of surgical lighting; then a power supply will burn out, and the organization will never come back to fix it.”
But that’s just the beginning of the problem, he adds. Engineers often find that the design isn’t open, and there’s no manual, making it impossible to find a circuit design for what’s inside the donated, proprietary system. “You have to poke and prod around the disassembled gear to see if you can discern the makers’ original goals in wiring it, and figure out a fix,” says Pennes.
In one example, he recalls seeing a donated screen for viewing X-rays — the lightbox kind, used to backlight film so that technicians can read the image — with a burned-out bulb. “The screen is lit by a proprietary bulb, so when it burned out, they could not replace it,” he recounts.
Local biomedical engineers ultimately realized that they could take a number of off-the-shelf fluorescent bulbs and angle them to fit inside the box. “Then they sort of MacGyver’d the wiring to make them all work. You get the medical technology to work however you can.”
It’s this hands-on, imaginative approach to problem-solving that the team hopes to promote — and it’s one that’s very familiar at MIT. “We’re not just ideas people, where we write a paper and we’re done with it — we want to see it applied,” says Hanumara. “It’s why so many startups come out of MIT.”
Course modules presented at Kenyatta and MUST included “Breadboarding an optical LED – photodetector pulse detector,” “Soldering a PCB and testing a 3-lead EKG,” and “Assembling and programming a syringe pump.” Each module is designed to be a self-contained learning experience, and the kit is accompanied by a USB flash drive with a 96-page lab manual written by Sibanda, and all the needed software, which is important to have when internet access is unreliable. The third exercise, relating to the syringe pump, is available via open access from the journal Biomedical Engineering Education.
“Our mission was to expose eager, young biomedical engineers to the hands-on, ‘mens-et-manus’ (‘mind-and-hand’) culture which is the cornerstone of MIT, and encourage them to develop their talents and aspirations as engineers and innovators,” says Hanumara. “We wanted to help empower them to participate in developing high-quality, contextually appropriate, technologies that improve health-care delivery in their own region.”
A LinkedIn post written by Hanumara shared reflections from students on their experiences with the material. “Every lab — from pulse oximetry and EKGs to syringe pump prototyping — brought classroom concepts to life, showing me the real-world applications of what we study,” wrote Muthoni Muriithi, a student at Kenyatta University. “Using breadboards, coding microcontrollers, soldering components, and analyzing biological data in real time helped me grasp how much careful design and precision go into creating reliable health-care tools.”
Feedback provided by students at both institutions is already helping to inform updates to the materials and future pilot programs.
Sibanda says another key thing the team is tracking what happens beyond the sessions, after the instructors leave. “It’s not just about offering the resource,” he says. “It’s important to understand what students find to be the most valuable, especially on their own.”
Hanumara concurs. “[Pennes] designed the core board that we’re using to be multifunctional. We didn’t touch any of the functions he built in — we want to see what the students will do with them. We also want to see what they can do with the mental framework,” he says, adding that this approach is important to empower students to explore, invent, and eventually scale up their own ideas.
Further, the project addresses another challenge the team identified early on: supply chain issues. In keeping with the mission of local capacity building, the entire kit was assembled in Nairobi by Gearbox Europlacer, which operates the only automated circuit board line in East Africa and is licensed to produce Raspberry Pi’s microcontrollers. “We did not tell the students anything,” says Hanumara, “but left it to them to notice that their circuit boards and microcontrollers said ‘Made in Kenya.’”
“The insistence on local manufacturing keeps us from falling into the trap that so much equipment donated into East Africa creates — you have one of these items, and if some part of it breaks you can never replace it,” says Pennes. “Having locally sourced items instead means that if you need another component, or devise an interesting side project, you have a shopping list and you can go get whatever you need.”
“Building off our ‘Biomed Lab in a Box’ experiment,” says Hanumara, “we aim to work with our colleagues in East Africa to further explore what can be designed and built with the eager, young talent and capabilities in the region.”
Hanumara’s LinkedIn post also thanked collaborating professors June Madete and Dean Johnes Obungoloch, from Kenyatta and MUST, respectively, and Latiff Cherono, managing director of Gearbox. The team hopes to eventually release the whole course in open-source format.
Students at Kenyatta University and Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) participated in a three-day long biomedical innovation mini-courses.
But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group.
Sleep plays an important role in helping our bodies function. It is thought that while we are asleep, toxins that have built up in our brains are cleared out, and brain connections are consolidated and pruned, enhancing memory, learning, and problem-solving skills. Sleep has also been shown to boost our immune systems and improve o
But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group.
Sleep plays an important role in helping our bodies function. It is thought that while we are asleep, toxins that have built up in our brains are cleared out, and brain connections are consolidated and pruned, enhancing memory, learning, and problem-solving skills. Sleep has also been shown to boost our immune systems and improve our mental health.
During adolescence, our sleep patterns change. We tend to start going to bed later and sleeping less, which affects our body clocks. All of this coincides with a period of important development in our brain function and cognitive development. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that the ideal amount of sleep during this period is between eight- and 10-hours’ sleep.
Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge said: “Regularly getting a good night’s sleep is important in helping us function properly, but while we know a lot about sleep in adulthood and later life, we know surprisingly little about sleep in adolescence, even though this is a crucial time in our development. How long do young people sleep for, for example, and what impact does this have on their brain function and cognitive performance?”
Studies looking at how much sleep adolescents get usually rely on self-reporting, which can be inaccurate. To get around this, a team led by researchers at Fudan University, Shanghai, and the University of Cambridge turned to data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States.
As part of the ABCD Study, more than 3,200 adolescents aged 11-12 years old had been given FitBits, allowing the researchers to look at objective data on their sleep patterns and to compare it against brain scans and results from cognitive tests. The team double-checked their results against two additional groups of 13-14 years old, totalling around 1,190 participants. The results are published today in Cell Reports.
The team found that the adolescents could be divided broadly into one of three groups:
Group One, accounting for around 39% of participants, slept an average (mean) of 7 hours 10 mins. They tended to go to bed and fall asleep the latest and wake up the earliest.
Group Two, accounting for 24% of participants, slept an average of 7 hours 21 mins. They had average levels across all sleep characteristics.
Group Three, accounting for 37% of participants, slept an average of 7 hours 25 mins. They tended to go to bed and fall asleep the earliest and had lower heart rates during sleep.
Although the researchers found no significant differences in school achievement between the groups, when it came to cognitive tests looking at aspects such as vocabulary, reading, problem solving and focus, Group Three performed better than Group Two, which in turn performed better than Group One.
Group Three also had the largest brain volume and best brain functions, with Group One the smallest volume and poorest brain functions.
Professor Sahakian said: “Even though the differences in the amount of sleep that each group got was relatively small, at just over a quarter-of-an-hour between the best and worst sleepers, we could still see differences in brain structure and activity and in how well they did at tasks. This drives home to us just how important it is to have a good night’s sleep at this important time in life.”
First author Dr Qing Ma from Fudan University said: “Although our study can’t answer conclusively whether young people have better brain function and perform better at tests because they sleep better, there are a number of studies that would support this idea. For example, research has shown the benefits of sleep on memory, especially on memory consolidation, which is important for learning.”
The researchers also assessed the participants’ heart rates, finding that Group Three had the lowest heart rates across the sleep states and Group One the highest. Lower heart rates are usually a sign of better health, whereas higher rates often accompany poor sleep quality like restless sleep, frequent awakenings and excessive daytime sleepiness.
Because the ABCD Study is a longitudinal study – that is, one that follows its participants over time – the team was able to show that the differences in sleep patterns, brain structure and function, and cognitive performance, tended be present two years before and two years after the snapshot that they looked at.
Senior author Dr Wei Cheng from Fudan University added: “Given the importance of sleep, we now need to look at why some children go to bed later and sleep less than others. Is it because of playing videogames or smartphones, for example, or is it just that their body clocks do not tell them it’s time to sleep until later?”
The research was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Postdoctoral Foundation of China and Shanghai Postdoctoral Excellence Program. The ABCD Study is supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Adolescents who sleep for longer – and from an earlier bedtime – than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers from the UK and China have shown.
Even though the differences in the amount of sleep that each group got was relatively small, we could still see differences in brain structure and activity and in how well they did at tasks
MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that is rapidly crumbling to pieces.The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to the sun, completing an orbit every 30.5 hours. At such close proximity to its star, the planet is likely covered in magma that is boiling off into space. As the roasting planet whizzes around its star, it is shedding an enormous amount of surface minerals and e
MIT astronomers have discovered a planet some 140 light-years from Earth that is rapidly crumbling to pieces.
The disintegrating world is about the mass of Mercury, although it circles about 20 times closer to its star than Mercury does to the sun, completing an orbit every 30.5 hours. At such close proximity to its star, the planet is likely covered in magma that is boiling off into space. As the roasting planet whizzes around its star, it is shedding an enormous amount of surface minerals and effectively evaporating away.
The astronomers spotted the planet using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led mission that monitors the nearest stars for transits, or periodic dips in starlight that could be signs of orbiting exoplanets. The signal that tipped the astronomers off was a peculiar transit, with a dip that fluctuated in depth every orbit.
The scientists confirmed that the signal is of a tightly orbiting rocky planet that is trailing a long, comet-like tail of debris.
“The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to 9 million kilometers long, or roughly half of the planet’s entire orbit,” says Marc Hon, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
It appears that the planet is disintegrating at a dramatic rate, shedding an amount of material equivalent to one Mount Everest each time it orbits its star. At this pace, given its small mass, the researchers predict that the planet may completely disintegrate in about 1 million to 2 million years.
“We got lucky with catching it exactly when it’s really going away,” says Avi Shporer, a collaborator on the discovery who is also at the TESS Science Office. “It’s like on its last breath.”
Hon and Shporer, along with their colleagues, have published their results today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Their MIT co-authors include Saul Rappaport, Andrew Vanderburg, Jeroen Audenaert, William Fong, Jack Haviland, Katharine Hesse, Daniel Muthukrishna, Glen Petitpas, Ellie Schmelzer, Sara Seager, and George Ricker, along with collaborators from multiple other institutions.
Roasting away
The new planet, which scientists have tagged as BD+05 4868 Ab, was detected almost by happenstance.
“We weren’t looking for this kind of planet,” Hon says. “We were doing the typical planet vetting, and I happened to spot this signal that appeared very unusual.”
The typical signal of an orbiting exoplanet looks like a brief dip in a light curve, which repeats regularly, indicating that a compact body such as a planet is briefly passing in front of, and temporarily blocking, the light from its host star.
This typical pattern was unlike what Hon and his colleagues detected from the host star BD+05 4868 A, located in the constellation of Pegasus. Though a transit appeared every 30.5 hours, the brightness took much longer to return to normal, suggesting a long trailing structure still blocking starlight. Even more intriguing, the depth of the dip changed with each orbit, suggesting that whatever was passing in front of the star wasn’t always the same shape or blocking the same amount of light.
“The shape of the transit is typical of a comet with a long tail,” Hon explains. “Except that it’s unlikely that this tail contains volatile gases and ice as expected from a real comet — these would not survive long at such close proximity to the host star. Mineral grains evaporated from the planetary surface, however, can linger long enough to present such a distinctive tail.”
Given its proximity to its star, the team estimates that the planet is roasting at around 1,600 degrees Celsius, or close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the star roasts the planet, any minerals on its surface are likely boiling away and escaping into space, where they cool into a long and dusty tail.
The dramatic demise of this planet is a consequence of its low mass, which is between that of Mercury and the moon. More massive terrestrial planets like the Earth have a stronger gravitational pull and therefore can hold onto their atmospheres. For BD+05 4868 Ab, the researchers suspect there is very little gravity to hold the planet together.
“This is a very tiny object, with very weak gravity, so it easily loses a lot of mass, which then further weakens its gravity, so it loses even more mass,” Shporer explains. “It’s a runaway process, and it’s only getting worse and worse for the planet.”
Mineral trail
Of the nearly 6,000 planets that astronomers have discovered to date, scientists know of only three other disintegrating planets beyond our solar system. Each of these crumbling worlds were spotted over 10 years ago using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. All three planets were spotted with similar comet-like tails. BD+05 4868 Ab has the longest tail and the deepest transits out of the four known disintegrating planets to date.
“That implies that its evaporation is the most catastrophic, and it will disappear much faster than the other planets,” Hon explains.
The planet’s host star is relatively close, and thus brighter than the stars hosting the other three disintegrating planets, making this system ideal for further observations using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which can help determine the mineral makeup of the dust tail by identifying which colors of infrared light it absorbs.
This summer, Hon and graduate student Nicholas Tusay from Penn State University will lead observations of BD+05 4868 Ab using JWST. “This will be a unique opportunity to directly measure the interior composition of a rocky planet, which may tell us a lot about the diversity and potential habitability of terrestrial planets outside our solar system,” Hon says.
The researchers also will look through TESS data for signs of other disintegrating worlds.
“Sometimes with the food comes the appetite, and we are now trying to initiate the search for exactly these kinds of objects,” Shporer says. “These are weird objects, and the shape of the signal changes over time, which is something that’s difficult for us to find. But it’s something we’re actively working on.”
A disintegrating planet orbits a giant star. “The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to 9 million kilometers long,” says Marc Hon, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme serves as the documentary heritage equivalent of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, protecting invaluable records that tell the story of human civilisation.
A collaboration between Cambridge University Library, the Natural History Museum, the Linnean Society of London, English Heritage’s Down House, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the National Library of Scotland, the Charles Darwin documentary heritage archive provides a unique window into the life and wor
The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme serves as the documentary heritage equivalent of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, protecting invaluable records that tell the story of human civilisation.
A collaboration between Cambridge University Library, the Natural History Museum, the Linnean Society of London, English Heritage’s Down House, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the National Library of Scotland, the Charles Darwin documentary heritage archive provides a unique window into the life and work of one of the world’s most influential natural scientists.
The complete archive, comprising over 20,000 items across the six major institutions, includes Darwin’s records illustrating the development of his ground-breaking theory of evolution and extensive global travels.
At Cambridge University Library, the Darwin Archive is a significant collection of Darwin’s books, experimental notes, correspondence, and photographs, representing his scientific and personal activities throughout his life.
The collection in Cambridge includes Darwin’s pocket notebooks recording early statements of key ideas contributing to his theory of evolution, notably that species are not stable. These provide important insights into the development of his thought and feature the iconic ‘Tree of Life’ diagram which he drew on his return from the voyage of the HMS Beagle.
The Linnean Society of London holds several of Darwin's letters, manuscripts and books. Here is also home to John Collier’s original iconic portrait of Charles Darwin, commissioned by the Society and painted in 1883 to commemorate the first reading of the theory of evolution by natural selection at a Linnean Society meeting in 1858.
At the Natural History Museum, a letter written to his wife Emma in 1844, provides insight into Darwin’s perceived significance of his species theory research and holds instructions on what she should do in the case of his sudden death. This is alongside other letters to Museum staff and other family members which demonstrate the broad scope of his scientific thinking, research and communication ranging from caterpillars to volcanoes, dahlias to ants and the taking of photographs for his third publication Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Correspondence with Darwin’s publisher John Murray, held at the National Library of Scotland document the transformation of his research into print, including the ground-breaking On the Origin of Species publication.
At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, documents include a highly significant collection of 44 letters sent around the HMS Beagle expedition from Darwin to Professor John Stevens Henslow, detailing his travels and the genesis of his theory of evolution as he comes in contact with new plants, wildlife and fossils; as well as a rare sketch of the orchid Gavilea patagonica made by Darwin. Other items include a letter from Darwin to his dear friend Joseph Hooker, Director of Kew in which he requests cotton seeds from Kew's collections for his research.
Down House (English Heritage) in Kent was both a family home and a place of work where Darwin pursued his scientific interests, carried out experiments, and researched and wrote his many ground-breaking publications until his death in 1882.
The extensive collection amassed by Darwin during his 40 years at Down paint a picture of Darwin’s professional and personal life and the intersection of the two. The archive here includes over 200 books from Darwin’s personal collection, account books, diaries, the Journal of the Voyage of the Beagle MSS, and Beagle notebooks and letters. More personal items include scrapbooks, Emma Darwin’s photograph album and Charles Darwin’s will. The collection at Down House has been mainly assembled through the generous donations of Darwin’s descendants.
This inscription marks a significant milestone in recognising Darwin’s legacy, as it brings together materials held by multiple institutions across the UK for the first time, ensuring that his work's scientific, cultural, and historical value is preserved for future generations.
In line with the ideals of the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, much of the Darwin archive can be viewed by the public at the partner institutions and locations.
The UNESCO International Memory of the World Register includes some of the UK’s most treasured documentary heritage, such as the Domesday Book, the Shakespeare Documents, alongside more contemporary materials, including the personal archive of Sir Winston Churchill. The Charles Darwin archive now joins this esteemed list, underscoring its historical, scientific, and cultural significance.
The inscription of the Charles Darwin archive comes as part of UNESCO’s latest recognition of 75 archives worldwide onto the International Memory of the World Register.
These newly inscribed collections include a diverse range of documents, such as the Draft of the International Bill of Human Rights, the papers of Friedrich Nietzche, and the Steles of Shaolin Temple (566-1990) in China.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Minister of State for International Development, Latin America and Caribbean, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said: "The recognition of the Charles Darwin archive on UNESCO's International Memory of the World Register is a proud moment for British science and heritage.
"Darwin's work fundamentally changed our understanding of the natural world and continues to inspire scientific exploration to this day. By bringing together extraordinary material from our world class British institutions, this archive ensures that Darwin's groundbreaking work remains accessible to researchers, students, and curious minds across the globe."
Ruth Padel, FRSL, FZS, poet, conservationist, great-great-grand-daughter of Charles Darwin and King’s College London Professor of Poetry Emerita, said: "How wonderful to see Darwin’s connections to so many outstanding scientific and cultural institutions in the UK reflected in the recognition of his archive on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register. All these institutions are open to the public so everyone will have access to his documentary heritage."
Dr Jessica Gardner, University Librarian and Director of Library Services at Cambridge University Libraries (CUL) said: "For all Charles Darwin gave the world, we are delighted by the UNESCO recognition in the Memory of the World of the exceptional scientific and heritage significance of his remarkable archive held within eminent UK institutions.
"Cambridge University Library is home to over 9,000 letters to and from Darwin, as well as his handwritten experimental notebooks, publications, and photographs which have together fostered decades of scholarship and public enjoyment through exhibition, education for schools, and online access.
"We could not be prouder of UNESCO’s recognition of this remarkable documentary heritage at the University of Cambridge, where Darwin was a student at Christ’s College and where his family connections run deep across the city, and are reflected in his namesake, Darwin College."
Documentary heritage relating to the life and work of Charles Darwin has been recognised on the prestigious UNESCO International Memory of the World Register, highlighting its critical importance to global science and the necessity of its long-term preservation and accessibility.
We could not be prouder of UNESCO’s recognition of this remarkable documentary heritage
Campus & Community
Harvard files lawsuit against Trump administration
Photo by Grace DuVal
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 21, 2025
5 min read
Filing argues freeze of research funding violates First Amendment, laws, procedures
Harvard filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, arguing its freeze on research funding is unconstitutional and “flatly unlawful” and c
Harvard files lawsuit against Trump administration
Photo by Grace DuVal
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Filing argues freeze of research funding violates First Amendment, laws, procedures
Harvard filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, arguing its freeze on research funding is unconstitutional and “flatly unlawful” and calling on the court to restore more than $2.2 billion in research dollars.
The filing, in U.S. District Court in Boston, requests that the court vacate and set aside the funding freeze to allow previously approved funding to flow and halt administration efforts to freeze current or deny future funding without engaging in procedures contained in federal law.
In a message to the community Monday, President Alan Garber said the suit was prompted by steps the government took over the last week, after the University rejected administration demands for changes to Harvard’s governance, hiring, and admissions policies, and to ensure “viewpoint diversity” in part through audits of viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff.
Garber described those changes — contained in an April 11 letter from the government — as intrusive and said they’d impose “unprecedented and improper control over the University.”
Garber noted some Trump administration representatives have said since April 11 that the letter was sent by mistake. But he said other statements and the administration’s actions since don’t bear that out.
Within hours of Harvard’s rejection of White House demands, the administration doubled down by announcing a freeze of $2.2 billion in funding and has since said it is considering revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status and threatening the education of international students. In addition, Garber said, the administration is considering freezing an additional $1 billion in funding.
“Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority,” Garber said. “Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism. Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach.”
Harvard’s complaint says the First Amendment protects free speech against government interference intended to enforce ideological balance and bars the government from using legal sanctions or other coercion to suppress speech it doesn’t like.
The complaint also describes the government’s freeze-first strategy as violating laws that lay out procedures for research fund recipients suspected of civil rights violations. Prescribed steps progress from voluntary negotiations to an official hearing followed by findings. Then, only 30 days after the findings are released can funding be terminated.
“These fatal procedural shortcomings are compounded by the arbitrary and capricious nature of Defendants’ abrupt and indiscriminate decision,” the lawsuit said.
The filing describes a rapid escalation on the part of the government. After initial inquiries in February from the administration’s multi-agency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, administration and University officials scheduled an official visit to campus in late April.
In late March, however, Harvard received a letter announcing a review of research grants totaling $8.7 billion to the University and its hospital affiliates. On April 3, Harvard received a list of conditions under which it might ensure continued funding and, finally, on April 11, a letter fleshed out those conditions.
Those details, which included overreaching and broad-ranging demands, prompted the University’s rejection and Garber’s statement that Harvard would not negotiate over either its independence or its constitutional rights.
Garber said the administration’s actions have jeopardized critical research being conducted on cancer, infectious disease, and battlefield injuries.
With funding in flux, the lawsuit says, hard decisions about things like living cell lines being used to investigate disease and the jobs of researchers whose positions are tied to federal grants will have to be made. Unless funding is restored, Harvard’s research programs will be considerably curtailed.
“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Garber said. “Indiscriminately slashing medical, scientific, and technological research undermines the nation’s ability to save American lives, foster American success, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation.”
Garber acknowledged that work to fight antisemitism remains to be done on campus. “We need to ensure that the University lives up to its ideals,” he said.
Though Harvard has already taken several steps in that direction, Garber said the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias will soon release full reports.
He described them as “hard-hitting and painful” and said they include recommendations that have concrete plans for implementation.
“As a Jew and an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism. To address it effectively requires understanding, intention, and vigilance,” Garber said. “Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility, it is our moral imperative.”
Nation & World
Freezing funding halts medical, engineering, and scientific research
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
April 21, 2025
7 min read
Projects focus on issues from TB and chemotherapy to prolonged space travel, pandemic preparedness
The Trump administration’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in long-term research grants to Harvard has put a halt to work across a wide r
Freezing funding halts medical, engineering, and scientific research
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
7 min read
Projects focus on issues from TB and chemotherapy to prolonged space travel, pandemic preparedness
The Trump administration’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in long-term research grants to Harvard has put a halt to work across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. The action came in response to the rejection of White House demands for changes that the University argues infringes on its independence and constitutional rights and exceeds the administration’s lawful authority.
The NIH had earlier halted an estimated $110 million in grants to Harvard and its associated hospitals since late February.
We interviewed some of the researchers whose projects have been halted or face an uncertain future.
John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Research interrupted: A $60 million seven-year, multi-institutional consortium to study how the immune system controls tuberculosis.
“About a third of the world is thought to be infected with TB and carry TB, and most of those people will not get sick. But every year, 10 million people get sick, and 1 million people die, which makes TB the world’s leading infectious cause of death. We’re trying to understand the difference between protective and failed immunity to TB to better identify people with TB and then prevent TB, ideally with an effective vaccine.
“This consortium was conceived of at the National Institutes of Health as their moonshot effort to move the needle on TB. The goal was to bring together the very best researchers from around the country and around the world to bring the very best cutting-edge technology, the very best science to understand TB immunity. And if it stops, the whole thing is gone.
“I’ve been building this consortium since about 2014. For me, this is over a decade of work. Scientific knowledge, scientific expertise is a craft. And if you blow it up, you can’t just rehire people and recreate it and then start again. It’s gone.”
[Open Philanthropy, a California-based philanthropic group, has authorized a $500,000 grant to allow researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to complete an ongoing tuberculosis vaccine study, The Boston Globe reported Monday. That study is a single piece of the broader project Fortune is working on as a principal investigator.]
Founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical Schooland the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Research interrupted: Two contracts worth under $20 million: one to test and develop drugs to treat long-term radiation exposure, including chemotherapy, and the other to study the effects of microgravity and radiation in space on human cells to help astronauts travel to Mars.
“Both projects were contracts administered by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is responsible for developing countermeasures for biological, radiation, and chemical threats for the U.S.
“The larger BARDA contract focuses on development of human organ-on-a-chip microfluidic culture models of human lung, intestine, bone marrow, and lymph to model the human response to exposure to gamma radiation, and to identify potent radiation countermeasure drugs. We have made great progress on this project.
“The BARDA project supported by NASA is to use human organ-on-a-chip technology to create living ‘avatars’ of astronauts by lining the chips with cells from astronauts and then flying the chips alongside them on space missions. The goal is to use these to understand the effects of microgravity and radiation (which currently makes it impossible for man to go on long space flights, to Mars, for example) and again, develop countermeasures. This initial project is to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.
“Radiation countermeasure drugs we are developing would be valuable for cancer patients, many of whom receive radiation therapy and experience side effects (higher and more effective therapeutic doses could be administered with less toxicity) as well as be stockpiled to protect against a nuclear disaster or attack; and they could enable long term spaceflight, and hence, exploration of Mars, which is not possible now.
“As for what the repercussions are, it means that this type of work would stop but more importantly that the salaries of almost 20 students, fellows, and staff are at risk if this stop order is not reversed soon.”
Associate professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School
Research in peril: A $10 million project grant to fund a large consortium of laboratories to study the immune system and its ability to respond to different coronaviruses as preparation for future possible pandemics. That grant was halted before the most recent freezes and later temporarily reinstated by a court order pending appeal.
“What we learn from coronaviruses is relevant to other infections because we’re trying to understand how the immune system operates.
“We were finishing up our third year of a five-year plan. The termination was a surprise.
“There are multiple levels of loss. On one level, these grants from the NIH are vetted very heavily by independent scientific review, and there’s only a small percentage of grants that end up getting funded because of the review process. Grants like this and others that are terminated, which have been vetted, scored, and deemed important, rigorous, and worthy to happen, represent a loss of all the effort that went into the process.
“For our lab, it is a huge loss of opportunity. We have been collecting longitudinal blood samples from several individuals over many years to try to understand the long-term effects of immunity to the virus, infection, as well as vaccination, to study how long-lasting things are, and what regulates the longevity of the immune response.
“We may have to cancel collecting blood from this cohort. To see this happen to our lab and to see it happen to other labs across the country is devastating.”
Assistant professor of medicine, Harvard Medical School
Research facing uncertainty: A $3.5 million neuroscience research project that studies how the neurons in the gut change with aging and conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
“My research project has not been stopped yet. Whether it will be stopped or not is something that I don’t know.
“My project is based at my research lab, which is a neuroscience lab that studies the gut. We study the neurons that reside in the gut and regulate the human functions related to eating, digesting, and defecation.
“It is important to understand how these neurons change with aging or with conditions such as Parkinson disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or irritable bowel syndrome. What our lab does is try to understand how the neurons in our gut age, and what can we do to make them young again.
“This is an ongoing project. Our ability to keep on going depends upon our ability to keep putting in grants and getting in the money because we are at the end of our grant cycle. If our grants don’t get funded, all that research stops, and the years of work will go wasted. We are in the last year of a five-year grant. If the grant is curtailed even before the time ends, then the work will stop immediately.
“One of the main things to remember is that when we get funding, part of that goes toward salaries, but a significant part goes towards buying reagents and chemicals from American manufacturers and buying mice from American companies. Every single dollar of federal funding is spent toward people’s salaries and reagent materials that are here in the U.S.
“Our ability to train undergraduates, who are American, all stops immediately if our funding gets stopped.”
“There is uncertainty right now. We don’t know how it’s going to go.
“We hope that crucial research is not stopped because every research that we do at HMS and elsewhere is a result of a highly competitive process. This is not funding that we get because of the largess of the federal government. We have to compete with every single lab around the entire country and it’s a function of that competitive process that we get grants to do the work that we do.”
Campus & Community
Garber message: ‘Upholding Our Values, Defending Our University’
Photo by Grace DuVal
April 21, 2025
1 min read
President announces suit against Trump administration over funding freeze
President Alan Garber on Monday sent a letter to the community announcing Harvard had filed a lawsuit in federal court to halt the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar freeze on the Universit
President announces suit against Trump administration over funding freeze
President Alan Garber on Monday sent a letter to the community announcing Harvard had filed a lawsuit in federal court to halt the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar freeze on the University’s research funding. Read his message, titled “Upholding Our Values, Defending Our University,” here.
Photo by Clayton Cubitt
Arts & Culture
What really scares Katie Kitamura
Ahead of Harvard visit, author talks performance, privacy, and horror inspiration for latest novel
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
April 21, 2025
7 min read
On Tuesday, the Mahindra Humanities Center will host the novelist Katie Kitamura, in conversation with Claire Messud, the Joseph Y. Bae and Janice Lee Senior
Ahead of Harvard visit, author talks performance, privacy, and horror inspiration for latest novel
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
7 min read
On Tuesday, the Mahindra Humanities Center will host the novelist Katie Kitamura, in conversation with Claire Messud, the Joseph Y. Bae and Janice Lee Senior Lecturer on Fiction in Harvard’s English department.
Kitamura published her fifth novel, “Audition,” earlier this month. Like several of her past books, including 2021’s acclaimed “Intimacies,” it’s taut, engrossing, and occasionally eerie — this time revealing the uncanny underside to life in middle age, inside and out of a family’s New York City apartment.
Kitamura was recently named a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in fiction. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the novelist Hari Kunzru. The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
This latest book takes place under a cloud of uncertainty. In midlife, the central character may be very successful, or headed for a fall. She may be a mother, or not. She may be keeping secrets; her husband may be, too. It’s unsettling — is there any chance you’re becoming a horror novelist?
I love this question. With my last three novels, I’ve always thought of a genre as I was writing them. I wrote a novel called “A Separation,” and I thought of it as a missing-persons novel, a kind of mystery. And then I wrote a book called “Intimacies,” which is set in a war-crimes tribunal; I thought of that as a courtroom drama.
With this one, when I started writing it, I thought I’d like to be in conversation with horror, as a genre. The book that I had front of mind was “Rosemary’s Baby,” by Ira Levin — another book about troubled motherhood and New York real estate. These characters, this family: They’re trapped inside this apartment, and things grow increasingly frenetic.
There are also these uncanny moments — is this really my son? Is my husband all that he appears?
I think the really frightening moments in horror are when you look at something that you believe you understand, and you see something that is strange. In Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” one of the characters looks out the window and sees a part of the house she shouldn’t be able to see. Something about the entire geography and architecture of this home has changed.
I wanted to try to create that kind of feeling here: The central character is looking at people she believes she knows, and they seem like strangers to her. That, to me, is a very horror-adjacent feeling.
“The central character is looking at people she believes she knows, and they seem like strangers to her. That, to me, is a very horror-adjacent feeling.”
It’s been remarked that this novel has a pandemic feel to it. Was that conscious on your part?
Well, there’s not a single mask, or vaccine, or virus in the book. But it was written during the pandemic, and it was only really in the last couple of weeks that I realized in some ways it is very much a pandemic novel: a small apartment with family members coming home, not having enough space and really driving each other up the wall, on some level.
That was not my intention at all. But my feeling is that as a writer, you can’t help but breathe the air you breathe; all of it, everything in the sociopolitical atmosphere, it ends up on the page in some way.
The title is “Audition.” Your central character is an actor — very attuned to other people’s performances, altogether off-stage. And performance has been a theme of yours for a while — the essential malleability, or adaptability, of who we are, how we are with each other.
Yes. And I think people might read my work and think I’m writing a critique of that — that I’m pointing to those performances to say that they’re artificial in some way.
But it’s almost really the opposite: I think we learn how to be through performance, in a fundamental way. When I look at my children, I know they’re learning what it means to exist in the world in part by mimicking things they’ve seen around them. That’s very natural: to play different parts in different situations.
I just think as a novelist, I’m interested in those moments when the crack between parts starts to show, or the script wears thin. And for a brief moment you see something that is not as contained or controlled — and that can be frightening.
We might live with a spouse, a child, a parent for years and years — and never see some whole parts of them. It feels like you ask here how well we can really know each other.
To me, a successful relationship is one that allows the other person a certain degree of privacy.
I think this idea of full disclosure between two people is a kind of myth, and I’m not sure it’s a particularly healthy one. There are parts of myself that I want to have only to myself, that I don’t feel a profound need to share with my partner. And similarly, I believe there are parts of himself he should be able to keep for himself.
Your novels tend to reveal a real love of language and performance, of literature and visual art. And not only are you writing, but you teach writing at New York University. In the AI moment, in a time of ecological crisis, why does it seem so important to you?
The day after the election, my students came into my workshop and they said, “What is the point of writing fiction in times like this?” And I thought, there’s never been a moment when it feels more crucial to me to write fiction.
The way I put it to them is if books were not powerful, then why would they be being banned all across the country? If they don’t pose some kind of threat to power, why would they be continually under attack? To use language with precision and care, to have control of language, that’s going to be tremendously important over the coming years.
One purpose of fiction is, of course, to observe reality as it exists and as we see it. But part of it is also to imagine a different kind of reality. And if we can’t imagine a different kind of reality, there’s no way that we can bring it into being.
So you’d stick up for the English major.
I would! I was an English major, and I felt like I was able to go lots of different places with that. But also, when I think about my day, I think, the most optimistic thing I do every single day is to read a book.
When you read a book, you open up your mind to another person, and that’s actually quite profound. We are easier to subjugate when we’re divided, when we’re atomized. And books are actually a tremendous force of connection. If you are one of the people who is tending the fire, keeping that connection alive, that is really not nothing at all.
A new study from Weill Cornell Medicine provides insights into how cells maintain the tiny end caps of chromosomes as they divide, a key process in keeping cells healthy.
A new study from Weill Cornell Medicine provides insights into how cells maintain the tiny end caps of chromosomes as they divide, a key process in keeping cells healthy.
Campus & Community
Endowment offers Harvard flexibility but also risks
Harvard University. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
April 19, 2025
6 min read
Economist speaks of balancing act between immediate needs and long-term planning
After years of careful stewardship, the University began this fiscal year with its endowment worth a record-se
Endowment offers Harvard flexibility but also risks
Harvard University.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
Economist speaks of balancing act between immediate needs and long-term planning
After years of careful stewardship, the University began this fiscal year with its endowment worth a record-setting $53 billion.
But that overall number can conceal several important details. Most of the endowment is not only restricted by donors and held in separate funds, but the majority of those funds belong to one of the University’s 12 Schools. Less than 5 percent of the overall value is unrestricted and directly under the discretion of University leadership.
After the conflict that erupted last week between the University and the White House, the Trump administration moved to freeze billions in long-term research grants, with many more “under review.” The president has also argued that Harvard should lose its status as a tax-exempt institution.
To some degree, endowments can be used to allay financial uncertainty and cover unexpected costs. But those decisions come with costs of their own.
In this edited conversation, John Y. Campbell, who has served as the Morton L. and Carole S. Olshan Professor of Economics at Harvard since 1994, talked about how the endowment actually works.
Campbell’s research focuses on long-term investing, asset pricing, and personal finance. He served on the board of the Harvard Management Company, which oversees the endowment, from 2004 to 2011. And in 2021, he was a member of a working group that helped reimagine endowment management for Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, or FAS.
In 2024, you co-wrote a paper on endowment management, using Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences as a kind of case study. What generally did you find?
That paper sought to give a framework for helping the FAS think about its long-run budget situation. I, along with my co-authors Jeremy Stein and Alex Wu, were motivated by a frustration with the usual accounting approach, which is all about managing this year’s cash flows so things add up.
So, for example, if you’re short of money and you can spend a little more from the endowment, that fixes the problem this year. But of course, it takes away resources that you would otherwise have in the future. It doesn’t help you in the long run.
This is an economist’s perspective on what can seem like a very large amount of money. You found that — in the case of FAS — the endowment is already being used to cover what would otherwise be a large budget deficit.
That’s right: When people in the Harvard community or the public at large look at the endowment, they look at those billions of dollars, and they think that that’s money that can just be spent on anything that the University wishes at any time.
There are two separate problems with that. Yes, much of the endowment is restricted — there are severe limitations on what the money can be spent on. But there’s another problem we identify: That in a certain sense, the endowment revenues have already been spent — to fund the ongoing existing operations of the University.
Those operations funded out of the endowment vary widely: professorships, research, construction among them. And then about a fifth of the annual distribution allows Harvard to offer really generous financial aid, just increased once more this spring.
Absolutely — and I’m all for that policy. But it does reduce the revenue that the School could otherwise collect, and thus it puts more burden on the endowment to cover expenses each year.
Then there are the exogenous shocks: financial crisis, recession, the COVID-19 pandemic. In those cases, a university can — and Harvard has — stepped up distributions to cover shortfalls elsewhere.
That’s right. You can do it in different ways. You can do a “decap” — using endowment funds for current expenses; you can adjust the payout rate; you can borrow against the endowment.
In a short-term emergency, like the pandemic or what may develop in today’s political environment, it may be entirely appropriate to do so. But the thing you need to be aware of is that, when you do that, you are easing your budget problems this year in return for a tighter budget in future.
Harvard’s approach to endowment management, like many others’, relies on targets and projections: It assumes 8 percent returns on investments, 3 percent inflation, and a payout of roughly 5 percent each year. But if the last 20 years have taught us anything, it’s that reality can be a great deal more volatile than that.
That’s right. Our way of looking at volatility — long adopted by Harvard financial administrators — is, in any one year, to find ways to smooth out its effects.
If the endowment does super-well one year — goes up by 25 percent — now you have a lot of new resources. But you don’t need to spend them all at once; in fact, it would be very imprudent to do so. Instead, you smooth it out, gradually increasing your spending in a cautious, well-planned way.
Meanwhile, there are also downside risks, too: In the wake of the financial crisis, in 2009, the endowment lost 27 percent of its value. And as of this week billions of federal dollars may be at risk of being frozen or revoked. What are the options now?
University leaders now need to sit down with the sort of spreadsheet framework that’s in our paper, and they need to do a scenario analysis: “How bad could this get?”
If there’s an endowment tax, if we lose “x” million dollars in sponsored research funding. You could even look at what might happen if Harvard lost its tax-exempt status.
What they are going to see is — if this a prolonged or permanent change — it’s going to have very meaningful implications for Harvard’s long-term future. And you’ll have to do some radical things: There will have to be a major change in spending or a major change in revenue — where you find it somewhere else.
You don’t have to do everything at once. That would be foolish. The luxury that Harvard’s endowment gives us is time — you have time to make change in an orderly fashion. But our framework says that if circumstances change so that you have less money coming in on a permanent basis, you are eventually going to have to fully adjust.
Health
Why bother?
Omar Rawlings/Getty Images
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
April 18, 2025
5 min read
What makes someone run 26.2 miles? Boston Marathon’s lead psychologist has heard it all.
Some runners cross the Boston Marathon’s finish line with hands held high, a look of elation on their faces. Others find themselves slumped in a medical tent with Jeff Brown, lead psychologist for
What makes someone run 26.2 miles? Boston Marathon’s lead psychologist has heard it all.
Some runners cross the Boston Marathon’s finish line with hands held high, a look of elation on their faces. Others find themselves slumped in a medical tent with Jeff Brown, lead psychologist for the Boston Marathon medical team.
“We’re not talking about, ‘Oh, I need ice for an ankle,’” Brown said about these finishers. “Someone is significantly overheated or underheated. They’re having terrible cramps. They’re disoriented. They might not know exactly where they are.” Laid out on cots are people with extremely low levels of salt in the blood, and others who are sad, fearful, and agitated for reasons they can’t explain. Brown’s role, along with his team of mental health clinicians, is to help perform psychological evaluations and recognize symptoms of a wide range of medical conditions.
Seeing these high levels of acute distress mere meters from the finish line, some might ask, “Why bother?” There are other ways to stay in shape or raise money that don’t require an extreme feat of cardiovascular and muscular endurance over multiple hours in unpredictable weather conditions.
It’s a question that Brown, a Harvard Medical School lecturer, McLean Hospital psychologist, and author of “The Runner’s Brain,” ponders each year as thousands of runners funnel past him. It will no doubt be on his mind Monday during the 129th edition of the Boston Marathon.
The reasons, Brown said, are inexhaustible, but what they have in common is that they’re “very, very personal, and really it is that personal energy and commitment that keeps people going, regardless of where they are in their lives.”
“In our world that’s rather cluttered with a lot of criticism, it’s a really nice way of getting affirmations in a healthy way,” psychologist Jeff Brown says about running the Boston Marathon.
Over the years, he’s met hundreds of people who are running for a recently deceased loved one, contending with a cancer diagnosis, and fundraising for a beloved charity. He’s met women who — monitored by medical staff — finished the marathon while far along in their pregnancies and other athletes who explicitly ignored their doctors’ instructions and ran with cracked femurs, torn muscles, recent sprains, and diabetic complications. “Perhaps it’s not a surprise,” said Brown, “that they meet us in the medical tent at some point.”
A marathon channels people’s energy into a methodical, focused pursuit, and, especially at Boston, one that provides some bragging rights. “It allows people to come to terms with themselves,” Brown said. “When it comes to self-concept and belief about one’s capabilities, we always do better when we have some sort of objective measure.”
That objective nature is crucial, Brown says. Not only do you complete a race, but when you finish, you get a medal placed around your neck. “I think of that as kind of this transformational moment,” he said, “because it’s something that was a hope that is now realized as a wish fulfilled. It’s the mind-body thing happening.”
He loves seeing people he’s treated gather enough mental and physical strength to leave the medical tent and finally collect their medals. “It’s almost like they had a chance to review their whole experience one more time,” he said, “and it might mean a little more to them.” He’s seen huge smiles, tears, and quiet reflection. “I think that’s just a reflection of the vast continuum of emotion and purpose and goals that people bring to running the Boston Marathon.”
“For a while there after you complete a marathon, you’re kind of a hero.”
Marathon runners invest enormously varying amounts of time and energy preparing for the race. Some are young, single people who sacrificed late nights out and lazy weekend mornings to set a personal record. Others are older, first-time runners who might be taking time away from their kids and spouses to complete a bucket-list item. A few are looking to advance professional running careers, and others show up having done barely any training at all.
A medal — and some bragging rights — are far from the only reward that motivates some people to invest thousands of hours into race-specific training and for others to ignore the sound medical advice of their doctors.
“In our world that’s rather cluttered with a lot of criticism, it’s a really nice way of getting affirmations in a healthy way,” Brown said. “And people, in our heart of hearts, we just want to be treated civilly.”
Running is also an opportunity to change your own conception of yourself and, at least for a few hours, how others view you. “For a while there after you complete a marathon, you’re kind of a hero,” Brown said. “You’ve done something that a lot of other people would never set out to do or think about doing, which is pretty darn cool.”
The mental side of running still fascinates Brown and has kept him on the Boston Marathon’s medical staff for more than 20 years.
“That one day, with 30,000 runners, there are 30,000 different ways of completing that marathon,” Brown said. “Imagine all the thinking and psychological experiences and reflections and motivations and negative thoughts and positive thoughts that went all those 30,000 different ways.”
Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nation & World
‘If you’re boring, you’re not going to educate.’
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
April 18, 2025
long read
Randall Kennedy has blazed a path as an open-minded, nuanced, and independent thinker
Part of the
Experience
series
Scholars at Harvard tell their stories in the Ex
Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, has also been unafraid to engage with the right. In 2020, the conservative Manhattan Institute invited Kennedy, a longtime questioner of critical race theory, to participate in a discussion on the topic. He eventually took other CRT critics on the panel to task for being too categorically dismissive.
“The great thing about his work is that you can never predict where he will end up — on racial justice, he sometimes seems conservative, sometimes liberal,” said then-Law School Dean Martha Minow in a 2013 profile of Kennedy. “In his field of race and the law, he is unique in the legal academy. I don’t know anyone else who has his commitment to pursuing the truth about controversial issues to wherever it goes.”
Kennedy, 70, was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and raised in Washington, D.C. His family’s move north from the Jim Crow South, along with his father’s pessimism about prospects for lasting racial justice in the U.S., left a deep imprint on Kennedy’s intellectual life.
The son of a postal worker and a schoolteacher, Kennedy attended the prestigious St. Albans School, did his undergraduate studies at Princeton, and was a Rhodes Scholar. He attended Yale Law School and has taught at Harvard since 1984. The author of seven books, Kennedy recently spoke with the Gazette about his life, career, and views on racial equality in the U.S. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Why did your father decide to move the family from Columbia to D.C.?
My parents were refugees from the Jim Crow South. My father was from Louisiana. My mother was from South Carolina. My father was a postal clerk and my mother a schoolteacher. They met at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, during World War II.
In the mid-’50s, soon after my birth, they left. An incident precipitated their move. It involved my father. He carried a gun as part of his employment driving a truck with the postal service. In some little town in South Carolina a white policeman stopped him. The policeman said, “We don’t allow negroes to have guns. Surrender yours.”
My father refused, and they had a standoff. My father got out of there fast, made it to Washington, D.C., got on the telephone, and said to my mother, “We’re moving.” Years later, I asked my father why he had left inasmuch as he and my mother had just built a house outside of Columbia. He said to me the following: “I thought that if we did not move, I was going to kill a white man, or a white man was going to kill me.”
Kennedy in his Harvard Law School office alongside a portrait of his father, Henry.
Did you experience discrimination while you were growing up?
Yes. The most memorable episodes transpired during trips from D.C. to South Carolina for holidays. Even as a kid, I sensed how the atmosphere changed as soon as we went over the 14th Street Bridge from D.C. into Virginia.
I remember a couple of times when my father was stopped by the police as we were driving in Jim Crow territory. The scenario was the same. A policeman would pull our car over. My father would ask, “Is there a problem, officer?” and the officer would say, “No, there’s no problem. I pulled you over because I noticed you have Washington, D.C., license plates, and I wanted you to know that we do things differently down here.”
The policeman was testing my father, and my father played along. He did what the police officer wanted, and what the cop wanted was for my father to call him “sir,” and be deferential, show that my father knew to stay in his place.
My father performed as required, and we went on our way. God bless my father for that! He put as his highest priority the well-being of his family. If he had to swallow his pride to accomplish that aim, so be it. What commitment. What poise. What discipline. What love. Yes, God bless my father for that.
How did your parents’ views on race influence you?
They influenced me greatly in all sorts of ways, some of which undoubtedly are beyond my conscious awareness. One was my father’s bone-deep pessimism about the possibility for lasting racial justice in America. He believed that the United States of America was created to be a white man’s country and would always be a white man’s country, and he never forgave the United States for its mistreatment of African Americans.
At his burial, because he was a veteran, a representative of the U.S. military was on hand to deliver an American flag, nicely folded, to my mother. I remember looking at my brother and smiling amidst the tears. We both knew that our father would have found this scene uproariously funny because my dad was not a patriot. He was an anti-patriot. The effort to understand the sense of aggrievement that he felt has been a big part of my intellectual life.
Soon after Kennedy’s birth in the mid-1950s, his parents, Henry and Rachel (pictured right), moved the family from South Carolina to Washington, D.C.
What memories do you have of your childhood?
I had a wonderful childhood! I spent several summers in Columbia, South Carolina, where I would stay with my Aunt Lillian. I had a great time even though during some of those summers no public parks were open. Why? Because South Carolina preferred to close the public parks rather than see them desegregated. But I had lots of friends, and we had lots of fun.
I also recall my childhood in D.C. with fondness. My parents bought a house two blocks from the Takoma public park. It was at that park that I learned to play football, baseball, and, most importantly, tennis. The tennis courts at Takoma public park are named after my father, Henry Kennedy Sr. He was known as “Mr. Tennis.”
To support his tennis-playing children, he learned everything that he could about the game and became quite proficient as a teacher and organizer of tennis tournaments. When he passed away, people in the neighborhood successfully petitioned the city government to name the tennis courts in his honor.
Is it true that you were a very good tennis player in your teens and that you played against Robert McNamara, who was then secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson?
I was a very good junior tournament player, as was my brother. He and I took care of the tennis courts at the St. Albans Tennis Club in Washington, D.C., on the grounds of the National Cathedral.
On Sunday mornings we were supposed to close the courts down during the Cathedral service. Usually, we did. But occasionally Defense Department Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser Walt Rostow would show up and beseech us to allow them to play. We even played doubles with them from time to time.
On one occasion, a chauffeur came to the courts and announced that the president was on the phone and wanted to speak with McNamara right away. The secretary left for a few minutes, returned, and play continued.
McNamara and Rostow were both quite competitive, but Rostow was the better of the two.
I read that tennis allowed you to attend the prestigious St. Albans School.
When my brother began taking care of the tennis courts at St. Albans, I would help him. When courts were open, and few people were around, I would practice with him.
The head pro at the club, who was also the tennis coach at the St. Albans School, saw me play and contacted my parents about applying to the school. They told him right off that we didn’t have St. Albans-level money. He told them that he could get me a scholarship if I could gain admission.
I ended up applying, gaining admission, and playing No. 1 on the school varsity from the eighth grade to the 12th.
I’ve gone to very fine schools, but the most transformative was St. Albans, where I fell under the sway of my favorite teacher, John F. McCune, known to generation of boys as Gentleman Jack McCune. He was my American history teacher and introduced me to the work of Richard Hofstadter at Columbia University and C. Vann Woodward at Yale University.
Reading their books changed my life. It was Mr. McCune who got me interested in the politics of historiography. He was a thoroughly inspirational figure. We shared a birthday and became close friends. I was with him the day before he died and was honored to speak at his memorial service at the National Cathedral.
“I have been surrounded for nearly 40 years by wonderful colleagues and students. Working here has been a blessing.”
How did you become interested in law?
Lawyering as an idea was an active presence in my household. My father spoke often about the time that he saw Thurgood Marshall argue the South Carolina whites-only primary case, Rice v. Elmore, in 1947.
The plaintiff was a Black business owner by the name of George A. Elmore, who challenged the exclusion of Black voters from the South Carolina Democratic primary. The judge ruled that the Democratic Party of South Carolina could no longer exclude qualified negroes from participating in primary elections.
And my parents were very proud of their friendship with the leading Civil Rights attorney in South Carolina, Matthew J. Perry. Most influential, however, was the example set by my brother, a 1973 graduate of HLS, who became a prosecutor, a Washington, D.C., judge, and then a judge on the United States District Court in the District of Columbia. (When he retired, he was replaced by Ketanji Brown Jackson, who now sits on the Supreme Court.)
You seem to have great admiration for your brother Henry.
Yes. He was a conscientious jurist and is a remarkably encouraging and loving big brother. He has been a wonderful cheerleader for me and our younger sister, Angela, who is also an attorney. He has been especially important to me since my wife passed away.
Kennedy with his oldest son, Henry, and late wife, Yvedt L. Matory.
Could you tell me how you met your wife?
My romance with Yvedt L. Matory began when I was a first-year student at Yale Law School, and she was a second-year student at Yale Medical School. We had met previously when she attended Sidwell Friends School, which was a 15-minute walk from St. Albans.
We married in June 1985 and had three children. She was a surgical oncologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She died of melanoma when she was only 48 years old. She passed away two months shy of what would have been our 20th wedding anniversary. I have lived a charmed life. The great tragedy that befell it was the death of my wife of blessed memory.
You served as a clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1983-1984. Can you talk about that experience?
It was thrilling to be able to work with and for “Mr. Civil Rights.” (Two of my co-clerks, by the way, are esteemed colleagues here: Terry Fisher and Howell Jackson.)
A strong argument can be made that Marshall was the greatest lawyer in American history. Think about the variety of posts he held — counsel for the NAACP, court of appeals judge, solicitor general, and Supreme Court justice — and the difficulties he had to overcome to make such positive contributions to American life and law!
I learned a lot working in the Marshall chambers. Seeing him up close was an inspiration that has deepened over time as I’ve gained a better sense of what he was up against and the patience, tenacity, poise, and grit that he displayed over a long period of time.
Did your father get a chance to meet Marshall?
My father met Justice Marshall on the next to last day of my clerkship. My father told “Mr. Civil Rights” how inspiring it had been to see him in that courthouse fighting for Black folks’ rights in a fashion that elicited grudging respect even from racist enemies.
Kennedy keeps this portrait of himself with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in his office.
How did you come to Harvard Law School?
When I left Yale Law School, I was all set to go work for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund after my clerkships with Judge J. Skelly Wright and Justice Marshall.
But near the end of my third year of law school, I got a telephone call from HLS Dean James Vorenberg, who invited me to the Law School to talk with him and other members of the faculty about a career in legal academia. I shall always be grateful for his solicitude.
When I talk about my fondness for HLS, some friends tease me, calling me a Pollyanna. Too bad! It’s hard for me to imagine a better setting for a professor than Harvard Law School. I have been surrounded for nearly 40 years by wonderful colleagues and students. Working here has been a blessing.
What role does teaching play in your career compared to research and writing?
I thoroughly enjoy research and teaching and am engaged in writing all the time. The course that I’ve taught the most is contracts. For a long time, I felt considerable anxiety before every class. Over the past decade, though, that anxiety has steadily dissipated. Now teaching contracts is wholly fun. One of my upcoming books will be about contracts in the context of intimate associations — friendship, dating, marriage, surrogacy, adoption, etc.
Much of my teaching and almost all of my writing thus far has been about the regulation of race relations. I am about to complete a book on which I have been working for nearly a decade. It responds to the following question: How did protests over racial injustice in the mid-20th century change American law? I seek to answer that question in 800-plus pages.
“I am deeply alarmed by the effective mobilization of racial resentment that has gripped American politics.”
You wrote a book that examines the historical, cultural, and social significance of one of the most offensive words in the English language. Can you talk about it?
It is my only best-seller and has generated considerable controversy. It provoked an attempted assault at a bookstore reading and has triggered walkouts. It has also prompted lawyers to seek my assistance as an expert witness in employment discrimination suits, union grievance actions, and prosecutions for murders and assaults in which I have testified for the defense in some cases and for the state in others. By the way, the full title of my book is “Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word.”
There were many people who said, “Well, you could have titled your book something else,” and there were people who would say, “You’re just trying to be sensationalistic.” My main goal was to educate, but how do you educate? If you’re boring, you’re not going to educate. You have to do something to get people’s attention and keep people’s attention. Do I try to do that? Sure, I try to do that. But I don’t view it as a bad thing.
Some in the media have, at times, labeled you a conservative. How do you respond to that?
Anybody who labels me conservative has not paid attention to what I have written over the course of my life. I believe that the United States is afflicted by unjustifiable hierarchies and inequalities that generate avoidable social misery. I think that it is scandalous that in a country this wealthy, there are so many people who are insecure regarding nutrition, shelter, healthcare, employment, and personal security due to crime and poor policing. I am in favor of reforms that aggressively address these problems.
The intellectual and ideological communities I find most attractive find voice in magazines such as The American Prospect, Dissent, The Nation, and The London Review of Books. If that makes me conservative, so be it.
I think that some observers have erroneously pegged me as conservative because I savor the company of intelligent conservatives such as my recently departed friend and colleague Charles Fried, because I participate enthusiastically in programming sponsored by conservative organizations such as the Federalist Society, because I strongly criticize certain policies such as mandatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements for university hiring and promotion, and because I indulge in certain rhetorical gestures that raise eyebrows — such as my use of the word “negro,” a term that I began using in 1984 at the insistence of my boss Thurgood Marshall and continue to use in homage to him and A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, W.E.B. Du Bois, my grandmother Lillian Spann, “Big Momma,” and countless other admirable souls.
Kennedy credits his grandmother Lillian Spann as a major influence.
You said that your father was pessimistic about the possibility of achieving lasting racial justice in America. What is your view?
Yes, my father was a pessimist on the race question. He did not believe that we shall overcome. The tradition he voiced is a strong tradition that includes the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Derrick Bell. Tragically, there is much to which proponents of this tradition can point to substantiate their view that racial justice in America is doomed.
I place myself, however, in a different tradition, the tradition expounded by Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr., the tradition that embraces the possibility, indeed the likelihood, that racial decency will become an increasingly large and influential feature of American life.
I am deeply alarmed by the effective mobilization of racial resentment that has gripped American politics. But I take solace ironically in recognizing that a substantial part of that menacing reaction stems from remarkable successes in racial reform.
When I was born on Sept. 10, 1954, my home state of South Carolina explicitly subjected African Americans to a degraded, stigmatized status. It was not alone. Pigmentocracy was pervasive.
Yet, within a lifetime, by dint of remarkable struggles undertaken by Americans of all complexions, things changed sufficiently to enable a Black man to be president of the United States — a Harvard Law School alumnus who comported himself with consummate intelligence, grace, and honor.
Finally, what advice do you have for young lawyers?
Keep the fun quotient high by finding work that you love.
Indian economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, talks about his life as the son of distinguished Hindu academics and how the inequities all around him in colonial India of the 1930s would shape his intellectual destiny.
Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this machine and shown how it operates like the lock on a canal to transport pyruvate – a molecule generated in the body from the breakdown of sugars – into our mitochondria.
Known as the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, this molecular machine was first proposed to exist in 1971, but it has taken until now for scientists to visualise its structure at the atomic s
Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this machine and shown how it operates like the lock on a canal to transport pyruvate – a molecule generated in the body from the breakdown of sugars – into our mitochondria.
Known as the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, this molecular machine was first proposed to exist in 1971, but it has taken until now for scientists to visualise its structure at the atomic scale using cryo-electron microscopy, a technique used to magnify an image of an object to around 165,000 times its real size. Details are published today in Science Advances.
Dr Sotiria Tavoulari, a Senior Research Associate from the University of Cambridge, who first determined the composition of this molecular machine, said: “Sugars in our diet provide energy for our bodies to function. When they are broken down inside our cells they produce pyruvate, but to get the most out of this molecule it needs to be transferred inside the cell’s powerhouses, the mitochondria. There, it helps increase 15-fold the energy produced in the form of the cellular fuel ATP.”
Maximilian Sichrovsky, a PhD student at Hughes Hall and joint first author of the study, said: “Getting pyruvate into our mitochondria sounds straightforward, but until now we haven’t been able to understand the mechanism of how this process occurs. Using state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy, we’ve been able to show not only what this transporter looks like, but exactly how it works. It’s an extremely important process, and understanding it could lead to new treatments for a range of different conditions.”
Mitochondria are surrounded by two membranes. The outer one is porous, and pyruvate can easily pass through, but the inner membrane is impermeable to pyruvate. To transport pyruvate into the mitochondrion, first an outer ‘gate’ of the carrier opens, allowing pyruvate to enter the carrier. This gate then closes, and the inner gate opens, allowing the molecule to pass through into the mitochondrion.
“It works like the locks on a canal but on the molecular scale,” said Professor Edmund Kunji from the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, and a Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. “There, a gate opens at one end, allowing the boat to enter. It then closes and the gate at the opposite end opens to allow the boat smooth transit through.”
Because of its central role in controlling the way mitochondria operate to produce energy, this carrier is now recognised as a promising drug target for a range of conditions, including diabetes, fatty liver disease, Parkinson’s disease, specific cancers, and even hair loss.
Pyruvate is not the only energy source available to us. Our cells can also take their energy from fats stored in the body or from amino acids in proteins. Blocking the pyruvate carrier would force the body to look elsewhere for its fuel – creating opportunities to treat a number of diseases. In fatty liver disease, for example, blocking access to pyruvate entry into mitochondria could encourage the body to use potentially dangerous fat that has been stored in liver cells.
Likewise, there are certain tumour cells that rely on pyruvate metabolism, such as in some types of prostate cancer. These cancers tend to be very ‘hungry’, producing excess pyruvate transport carriers to ensure they can feed more. Blocking the carrier could then starve these cancer cells of the energy they need to survive, killing them.
Previous studies have also suggested that inhibiting the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier may reverse hair loss. Activation of human follicle cells, which are responsible for hair growth, relies on metabolism and, in particular, the generation of lactate. When the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier is blocked from entering the mitochondria in these cells, it is instead converted to lactate.
Professor Kunji said: “Drugs inhibiting the function of the carrier can remodel how mitochondria work, which can be beneficial in certain conditions. Electron microscopy allows us to visualise exactly how these drugs bind inside the carrier to jam it – a spanner in the works, you could say. This creates new opportunities for structure-based drug design in order to develop better, more targeted drugs. This will be a real game changer.”
The research was supported by the Medical Research Council and was a collaboration with the groups of Professors Vanessa Leone at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Lucy Forrest at the National Institutes of Health, and Jan Steyaert at the Free University of Brussels.
Fifty years since its discovery, scientists have finally worked out how a molecular machine found in mitochondria, the ‘powerhouses’ of our cells, allows us to make the fuel we need from sugars, a process vital to all life on Earth.
Drugs inhibiting the function of the carrier can remodel how mitochondria work, which can be beneficial in certain conditions
Bacteria naturally present in the human intestine can transform cholesterol-derived bile acids into powerful metabolites that strengthen anticancer immunity by blocking androgen signaling, according to a preclinical study.
Bacteria naturally present in the human intestine can transform cholesterol-derived bile acids into powerful metabolites that strengthen anticancer immunity by blocking androgen signaling, according to a preclinical study.
In 2000, Patrick J. McGovern ’59 and Lore Harp McGovern made an extraordinary gift to establish the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, driven by their deep curiosity about the human mind and their belief in the power of science to change lives. Their $350 million pledge began with a simple yet audacious vision: to understand the human brain in all its complexity, and to leverage that understanding for the betterment of humanity. Twenty-five years later, the McGovern Institute stands a
In 2000, Patrick J. McGovern ’59 and Lore Harp McGovern made an extraordinary gift to establish the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, driven by their deep curiosity about the human mind and their belief in the power of science to change lives. Their $350 million pledge began with a simple yet audacious vision: to understand the human brain in all its complexity, and to leverage that understanding for the betterment of humanity.
Twenty-five years later, the McGovern Institute stands as a testament to the power of interdisciplinary collaboration, continuing to shape our understanding of the brain and improve the quality of life for people worldwide.
In the beginning
“This is, by any measure, a truly historic moment for MIT,” said MIT’s 15th president, Charles M. Vest, during his opening remarks at an event in 2000 to celebrate the McGovern gift agreement. “The creation of the McGovern Institute will launch one of the most profound and important scientific ventures of this century in what surely will be a cornerstone of MIT scientific contributions from the decades ahead.”
Robert Desimone, the Doris and Don Berkey Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, succeeded Sharp as director of the McGovern Institute in 2005, and assembled a distinguished roster of 22 faculty members, including a Nobel laureate, a Breakthrough Prize winner, two National Medal of Science/Technology awardees, and 15 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
A quarter century of innovation
On April 11, 2025, the McGovern Institute celebrated its 25th anniversary with a half-day symposium featuring presentations by MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer, alumni speakers from various McGovern labs, and Desimone, who is in his 20th year as director of the institute.
Desimone highlighted the institute’s recent discoveries, including the development of the CRISPR genome-editing system, which has culminated in the world’s first CRISPR gene therapy approved for humans — a remarkable achievement that is ushering in a new era of transformative medicine. In other milestones, McGovern researchers developed the first prosthetic limb fully controlled by the body’s nervous system; a flexible probe that taps into gut-brain communication; an expansion microscopy technique that paves the way for biology labs around the world to perform nanoscale imaging; and advanced computational models that demonstrate how we see, hear, use language, and even think about what others are thinking. Equally transformative has been the McGovern Institute’s work in neuroimaging, uncovering the architecture of human thought and establishing markers that signal the early emergence of mental illness, before symptoms even appear.
Synergy and open science
“I am often asked what makes us different from other neuroscience institutes and programs around the world,” says Desimone. “My answer is simple. At the McGovern Institute, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Many discoveries at the McGovern Institute have depended on collaborations across multiple labs, ranging from biological engineering to human brain imaging and artificial intelligence. In modern brain research, significant advances often require the joint expertise of people working in neurophysiology, behavior, computational analysis, neuroanatomy, and molecular biology. More than a dozen different MIT departments are represented by McGovern faculty and graduate students, and this synergy has led to insights and innovations that are far greater than what any single discipline could achieve alone.
Also baked into the McGovern ethos is a spirit of open science, where newly developed technologies are shared with colleagues around the world. Through hospital partnerships for example, McGovern researchers are testing their tools and therapeutic interventions in clinical settings, accelerating their discoveries into real-world solutions.
The McGovern legacy
Hundreds of scientific papers have emerged from McGovern labs over the past 25 years, but most faculty would argue that it’s the people — the young researchers — that truly define the McGovern Institute. Award-winning faculty often attract the brightest young minds, but many McGovern faculty also serve as mentors, creating a diverse and vibrant scientific community that is setting the global standard for brain research and its applications. Kanwisher, for example, has guided more than 70 doctoral students and postdocs who have gone on to become leading scientists around the world. Three of her former students, Evelina Fedorenko PhD ’07, Josh McDermott PhD ’06, and Rebecca Saxe PhD ’03, the John W. Jarve (1978) Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, are now her colleagues at the McGovern Institute. Other McGovern alumni shared stories of mentorship, science, and real-world impact at the 25th anniversary symposium.
Looking to the future, the McGovern community is more committed than ever to unraveling the mysteries of the brain and making a meaningful difference in lives of individuals at a global scale.
“By promoting team science, open communication, and cross-discipline partnerships,” says institute co-founder Lore Harp McGovern, “our culture demonstrates how individual expertise can be amplified through collective effort. I am honored to be the co-founder of this incredible institution — onward to the next 25 years!”
A structural MRI scan of MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe and her infant, overlaid with activity (orange) measured while viewing movies of faces. This image, which is a piece of art, is intended to evoke ideas about the brain activity involved in the social relationship between mother and child. It is not a scientific measurement of activity actually evoked by that interaction.
Health
Stopping the bleeding
Terence Blue has spent his life managing hemophilia. A new gene therapy offers relief from constant worry and daily needles — ‘I am actually healing faster than I ever have.’
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 18, 2025
long read
In early February, Terence Blue became the first patient in New England to receive a new gene therapy for hemophilia B, at Harvard-affil
Terence Blue has spent his life managing hemophilia. A new gene therapy offers relief from constant worry and daily needles — ‘I am actually healing faster than I ever have.’
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
long read
In early February, Terence Blue became the first patient in New England to receive a new gene therapy for hemophilia B, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The first time Terence Blue understood he was different was during a kindergarten kickball game.
The other team fielded his kick and threw the big rubber ball at him to get him out. Blue tripped over the ball and hit his head on the ground, which didn’t rattle him much. What did was the reaction of the adults watching, who gasped and rushed over. Luckily, the 5-year-old had recently received clotting factor as part of his regular treatment for hemophilia. The factor did its job, stopping any bleeding from the tumble’s cuts and scrapes.
“I’d seen other kids take falls and remember thinking, ‘What’s all the fuss?’ Then I realized I really do need to be extremely careful about those things,” Blue said. “I realized then that I had to pay attention.”
For the next 27 years, Blue paid attention. Diagnosed at just months old, for years he visited the hospital two to three times a week for shots of the clotting factor missing from his blood. Eventually his mother learned to give him the shots and, when he was 8, a nurse taught him to do the task himself.
Over time, medical technology made living with hemophilia easier. Synthetic factors eliminated the risk of HIV, hepatitis C, and other pathogens that might lurk in donated blood. New factors last longer, allowing Blue to stretch the interval between shots to two weeks. Still, the idea he might go two months without a shot was more dream than reality.
“I remember being told ‘Within your lifetime, there may be a cure,’” Blue said. “It always seemed like a magic bullet or wishful thinking, a genie-in-a-bottle situation. But it’s starting to prove true. This is one step closer. So science, let’s keep making it happen.”
“I remember being told ‘Within your lifetime, there may be a cure.’ It always seemed like a magic bullet or wishful thinking.”
Terence Blue
In early February, Blue was the first patient in New England to receive a relatively new gene therapy for hemophilia B, at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Called Hemgenix, it was developed by drug maker CSL Behring and granted FDA approval in November 2022. It is part of surge of gene and cell therapies finally emerging from the long discovery pipeline that leads from the lab to patients’ hospital rooms.
Market reality vs. scientist and patient dreams
While that surge promises an expanding menu of gene and cell therapies — which are targeting more common conditions, have improved safety profiles, and improved vectors to carry them into the body — it also means the new treatments must face another force: the market. An implacable attention to balance sheets can negate both scientists’ long labors and patients’ fervent dreams.
“We’re seeing many more gene therapies coming into the clinic but the field is adjusting to the fact that not only does it matter that you can bring the gene therapies to the clinic and get them approved by the FDA, but there are market pressures and patient acceptance that has to be put into the equation,” said Roger Hajjar, head of Mass General Brigham’s Gene and Cell Therapy Institute. “So if the pricing is too high and too few patients actually benefit from the therapies, certain approved drugs in gene therapy are actually being withdrawn because there’s not enough payers to pay for them and not enough patients to benefit.”
Part of gene therapies’ difficulty is that they offer fewer opportunities to recoup research and development costs. Unlike medications for chronic diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, which are taken regularly over a lifetime, gene therapies are typically given in a single dose that aims to correct disease-causing mutations and provide long-lasting benefits. That means eye-watering prices. Blue’s treatment, for example, lists for $3.5 million, though insurance companies typically negotiate lower rates, said his physician, Nathan Connell, associate director of the Boston Bleeding Disorders Center and vice chair of the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Blue’s doctor Nathan Connell.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
That can mean little room for a market to grow and mature as patients and physicians learn about a treatment, according to Nathan Yozwiak, head of research for Mass General Brigham’s Gene and Cell Therapy Institute. The learning curve is often gradual, he said, and patients sometimes aren’t as enthusiastic as expected. Drugmaker Pfizer is already pulling its own hemophilia B gene therapy, Beqvez, from the market less than a year after its FDA approval, citing limited interest among patients and their doctors. In 2021, Bluebird Bio withdrew its beta thalassemia therapy Zynteglo from the market after a dispute with German regulators over its $1.8 million price. Even a groundbreaking treatment like Glybera, a treatment for a rare dysfunction in fat digestion and the world’s first gene therapy, was withdrawn in 2017 after treating just a single patient in five years.
But enthusiasm for gene therapy’s potential to transform patients’ lives, perhaps permanently, ensures that work continues. Today, the field is gathering additional steam as new treatments emerge from the pipeline connecting basic research to the hospital clinic, according to Hajjar, a pioneer in cardiac gene therapy for heart failure. An FDA tally of gene and cell therapies — in which healthy cells or those altered in the lab are given to the patient — shows 44 therapies have been approved in the U.S. Two were approved in 2022, five in 2023, and 18 in 2024 for conditions including multiple myeloma, invasive bladder cancer, sickle cell disease — which employed CRISPR gene editing technology for the first time — and cartilage defects in the knee, among others.
“Within the research side of things, there’s enormous, enormous optimism that’s reflected in the fact that the catalog of diseases for which researchers are pursuing a gene or cell therapy is growing every year,” Yozwiak said. “At the end of the day, I think we’re going to have a number of therapies that are actually very effective. Aligning that with the economic realities can be frustrating for researchers sometimes.”
‘I’m tired of needles’
Blue began talking about gene therapy with Connell two years ago after Hemgenix was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Blue said it took several months to examine study data on his own, get used to the idea of introducing foreign genes into his body, and decide to move ahead. The idea that he might be able to unhitch his life from the needles that have been a daily reality, that he might be able to travel without needing an emergency supply of factor IX — just in case — and that he might escape the very real social pressures that have cost him friends grew on him.
“I’m tired of needles. They’ve been a part of my life forever,” Blue said. “It’s a small thing but it gets to you.”
After he decided to move forward, it took months more for the hospital to develop its own scientific review, internal approvals, and protocols before, finally, ordering the drug and administering the treatment.
The therapy takes advantage of viruses’ natural ability to home in on a particular organ and insert viral DNA into cells’ genetic code. In this case, bioengineers picked a virus that targets the liver — where the body makes clotting factor — and replaced the virus’ DNA with a corrected copy of the mutated gene that causes hemophilia B. Once in the liver, the virus inserts its payload into liver cells, jump-starting production of clotting factor IX, which is deficient or missing in hemophilia B, the rarer of hemophilia’s two forms and affecting about 15 percent of patients.
“You basically have a bit of a Trojan horse,” Connell said. “You want to get it into the liver and you use this mechanism to get it there. Patients come into the infusion center and it’s all done as an outpatient.”
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Because the genes causing hemophilia reside on the X chromosome, the condition is more common among men than women. Women have two copies of the X chromosome and even one normal gene usually allows their blood to clot normally. Men, with XY chromosomes, have only one chance: If their single X chromosome contains the mutation, they develop hemophilia. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says exact figures for those living with hemophilia are unknown, but a recent survey showed about 33,000 American males living with the condition.
Hemophilia care has come a long way, greatly aided by recent decades’ standardization of prophylactic injection of clotting factor for severe cases like Blue’s. Life expectancy was under 30 before the advent of modern hemophilia care but today approaches that of the average male population, according to a recent study by Canadian researchers.
“I called him and I think he was in a meeting at work. He didn’t know what to expect. I was really excited to tell him that it’s working.”
Nathan Connell
Though better, care remains imperfect, Connell said. Spontaneous bleeds are part of life, can be difficult to predict or control, and are often internal, affecting different parts of the body, including the brain. It’s not unusual for patients to experience spontaneous bleeds and wake up with a stiff elbow, knee, or other joint, a sign that blood has pooled within. The situation can be managed with an extra dose of clotting factor, but over time the bleeds damage the joints’ smooth, slippery cartilage, causing pain as well as making them prone to additional bleeding. Blue, today 33, has an ankle with an arthritis-like condition called hemophilic arthropathy because of trauma that began with an injury when he was young.
“Before we used prophylaxis, many people with severe hemophilia wound up in wheelchairs or using crutches because they would have frequent bleeds and then lose their ability to walk,” Connell said.
After decades managing the condition, Blue said the physical aspects of living with hemophilia have become routine, though never far from his consciousness. The social aspects are still difficult, however, and can be disheartening. He regularly must explain to companions why he can’t do certain activities and says that revealing his condition has cost him friends. Today, unless he’s engaged in an activity for which he believes companions need to know, he keeps silent.
Even with its limitations, Blue’s been able to live an active life. He got his black belt in tae kwon do when he was 14 — wearing extra pads when sparring — and outside of his work as an IT security engineer, enjoys bachata, a type of Latin social dancing, several times a week.
For something so cutting-edge and potentially impactful, receiving the therapy was fairly routine, if not dull. Blue’s infusion occurred on Feb. 6 and took about two hours. Watched closely by Connell and other members of his care team, Blue reported few side effects. After another four hours of observation, he was able to go home after reporting nothing amiss. In the weeks that followed, he began steroid treatment after enzymes in his liver became elevated. On. Feb. 20, he received his last injection of clotting factor IX, and as of mid-March, was tapering off steroids as liver function improved. By then, his factor IX levels, which had been less than 1 percent, had risen to 32 percent, in the mild hemophilia to low normal range.
“We hope it works. We have data that it works, but until you see it start to do something, you always have a little fear that maybe it’s not going to work out right,” Connell said. “I called him and I think he was in a meeting at work and he stepped out when he saw the number. He didn’t know what to expect. I said, ‘It’s working.’ And I was really excited to tell him that it’s working.”
Though physicians are hesitant to describe these therapies as “cures,” there is the prospect of yearslong or decadeslong effects. Ninety-four percent — 51 of 54 — of those treated with Hemgenix during the clinical trial still do not require factor IX prophylaxis three years later, according to the drugmaker’s website. Blue, who got a painful cut under his thumbnail in March, is still getting used to the healing journey he’s embarked on.
“I’ve had this happen many times before, so after I freaked out for a moment, I went to treat it,” Blue said. “My wife was sitting there looking at me, watching, and within seconds I realized that it was starting to resolve. This is abnormal for me. I’m ‘severe’ and am used to seeing bleeding happen for longer. In that moment I thought, ‘Wow, this is real. This is working. I haven’t had factor in ages, but here I am actually healing faster than I ever have in my life.’”
Vijay Kuchroo.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Health
Immune-system strategy used to treat cancer may help with Alzheimer’s
Turning off checkpoint molecules freed microglia to attack plaques in brain, improved memory in mice
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 18, 2025
7 min read
A new study raises the odds that a strategy already successful against some cancers may be deploye
Immune-system strategy used to treat cancer may help with Alzheimer’s
Turning off checkpoint molecules freed microglia to attack plaques in brain, improved memory in mice
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
7 min read
A new study raises the odds that a strategy already successful against some cancers may be deployed against Alzheimer’s. The research, which highlights the role of an immune system “checkpoint” molecule, showed improved cognition in tests with mice. It was published earlier this month in Nature.
In this edited conversation, the Gazette spoke with Vijay Kuchroo, the Samuel L. Wasserstrom Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and director of the Gene Lay Institute of Immunology and Inflammation of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School.
Kuchroo, who was a senior author on the paper, outlined work that deleted the expression of a molecule called TIM-3, which blocks brain immune cells called microglia from attacking Alzheimer’s plaques, freeing the cells to clear plaques and restoring memory.
Your work was done in a model of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. What proportion of cases is it?
Most cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 90 percent to 95 percent, are late-onset. The molecule that we studied, called TIM-3, was linked by a genome-wide association study to late-onset Alzheimer’s and was found to be a genetic risk factor for the disease. There’s a polymorphism in the TIM-3 gene, HAVCR2, in patients with AD. TIM-3 is an inhibitory molecule utilized by the immune system to turn off the immune cells once activated. TIM-3 belongs to a group of inhibitory molecules called checkpoint molecules, which have been exploited for treatment of cancer.
Checkpoint molecules stop the body from attacking itself?
That’s one way to put it. If your immune system gets activated, the checkpoint molecules restrain the immune system from getting out of hand.
The best example is that every time you get an infection like the common cold, your lymph nodes get swollen because you make millions and millions of T cells to fight the virus. Once the infection goes away, checkpoint molecules come in to reduce the number of T cells to a normal level.
Cancers have exploited these checkpoint molecules for their own survival, and every time a T cell goes to attack a tumor cell, the tumor cell induces expression of checkpoint molecules so the T cells don’t attack the tumor cells. The T cells become dysfunctional or exhausted, and the tumor survives.
The new twist is that in Alzheimer’s disease, there is the accumulation of plaque in the brain that doesn’t get cleared by macrophage-like cells called microglia. The microglia show an increased expression of the checkpoint molecule TIM-3.
They’re basically the immune cells of the brain?
Microglia are the immune cells of the brain and have other important functions. During development, synapses are being formed, and synapses are how memory is stored. The problem is that even transient experiences make memories, so you want to get rid of some memories that are not being used again. So, the major job of microglia cells during development is to prune synapses that have not been used often enough in order to sharpen and sustain your memory.
After you’re born and have developed memories, you don’t want to lose them, so at about 28 to 40 days after birth in the mouse and a few months to few years in a human, there is a developmental mechanism by which microglia stop pruning to keep the memories that are made.
To stop the microglia from pruning, they increase expression of the checkpoint molecule TIM-3, and these microglia cells become homeostatic, they do not phagocytose anymore.
That’s good because you don’t want to prune your own memory, but it’s bad as you get older and accumulate gunk in the brain, which can’t be cleared. Who’s going to clean it up? Microglia cells have become homeostatic, and TIM-3 keeps them from engulfing the accumulated gunk, which results in the formation of plaques.
What’s the difference in TIM-3 in an older person who has Alzheimer’s disease, versus not?
There’s a polymorphism in the gene, and in Alzheimer’s patients with the polymorphism, TIM-3 is highly expressed on microglia, significantly more than those that don’t have the disease.
So that all that TIM-3 keeps the microglial cells at homeostasis and not attacking amyloid beta plaques even though they’re harming the brain?
Yes, microglia cells should be clearing amyloid plaque, but they don’t. We discovered this molecule on T cells in the immune system, but it is 100 times — in some cases 1,000 times — more expressed on microglia when they get activated.
So, the same molecule that’s shrinking the T cell population to normal size after infection is being used by microglia cells to stop them from excess pruning. But it’s also a liability, because it inhibits them from attacking plaques that accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease.
You tested this with lab mice who have the HAVCR2 gene — which makes TIM-3 — deleted?
Yes, these mice were made to test the role of TIM-3 in immune system autoimmunity and cancer.
We used the same mice. We genetically deleted the gene, and in these mice the microglia don’t express TIM-3 when the microglia get activated. That enhances clearance of the plaques and changes plaque behavior.
Toxic plaque has fingerlike projections that enter into the brain, but with the microglia nibbling on them, the plaques become compact. So, the deletion of TIM-3 in microglia not only reduces the number of plaques, it also changes the quality of the plaque. These mice actually get the cognition back. Not completely, but the cognitive behavior of these mice improves.
And when we talk about measuring cognitive behavior for mice, we’re talking about their ability to remember and navigate mazes?
That’s correct. When they have plaque burden in their brains, they don’t remember as much. They also have less fear. If you put them in an open space, normal mice will go to a corner, so they don’t wind up as prey. But if they have plaques, they sit there in the center of the maze and don’t hide. When you get rid of the plaques, memory comes back, and that response comes back, because an appropriate level of fear is important for survival.
What would a TIM-3 therapy for Alzheimer’s disease in humans look like?
Therapy would use an anti-TIM-3 antibody or a small molecule that can block the inhibitory function of TIM-3.
What’s the potential of this to make a difference against Alzheimer’s disease? After several failures of major drug trials, recently there have been some successes, though those showed just minor improvement.
Because amyloid beta is also in the endothelium in the blood vessels, a lot of antibody doesn’t go to the brain, it attacks the blood vessels, leading to strokes due to vascular damage, limiting the use of anti-amyloid antibodies in AD. Since TIM-3 has selective expression, existing anti-TIM-3 antibodies can be repurposed for treatment of AD.
How long did this work take?
Five years; each experiment takes about eight, nine months. I want to emphasize that this was in collaboration with a colleague here, Oleg Butovsky at the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Disease. There were about six people, three from my lab and three from his lab, who worked tirelessly to do these experiments.
What happens next?
We are trying to see whether human anti-TIM-3 can halt development of plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease mouse models. We have a mouse model in which the human TIM-3 gene has been inserted, which will be very suitable for testing various candidate antibodies for human disease.
This research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
One of the most exciting developments in cancer treatment is a wave of new cell therapies that train a patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells. Such therapies have saved the lives of patients with certain aggressive cancers and few other options. Most of these therapies work by teaching immune cells to recognize and attack specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells.Unfortunately, most proteins found on cancer cells aren’t unique to tumors. They’re also often present on healthy cells
One of the most exciting developments in cancer treatment is a wave of new cell therapies that train a patient’s immune system to attack cancer cells. Such therapies have saved the lives of patients with certain aggressive cancers and few other options. Most of these therapies work by teaching immune cells to recognize and attack specific proteins on the surface of cancer cells.
Unfortunately, most proteins found on cancer cells aren’t unique to tumors. They’re also often present on healthy cells, making it difficult to target cancer aggressively without triggering dangerous attacks on other tissue. The problem has limited the application of cell therapies to a small subset of cancers.
Now Senti Bio is working to create smarter cell therapies using synthetic biology. The company, which was founded by former MIT faculty member and current MIT Research Associate Tim Lu ’03, MEng ’03, PhD ’08 and Professor James Collins, is equipping cells with gene circuits that allow the cells to sense and respond to their environments.
Lu, who studied computer science as an undergraduate at MIT, describes Senti’s approach as programming living cells to behave more like computers — responding to specific biological cues with “if/then” logic, just like computer code.
“We have innovated a cell therapy that says, ‘Kill anything displaying the cancer target, but spare anything that has this healthy target,’” Lu explains. “Despite the promise of certain cancer targets, problems can arise when they are expressed on healthy cells that we want to protect. Our logic gating technology was designed to recognize and avoid killing those healthy cells, which introduces a whole spectrum of additional cancers that don’t have a single clean target that we can now potentially address. That’s the power of embedding these cells with logic.”
The company’s lead drug candidate aims to help patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who have experienced a relapse or are unresponsive to other therapies. The prognosis for such patients is poor, but early data from the company’s first clinical trial showed that two of the first three patients Senti treated experienced complete remission, where subsequent bone marrow tests couldn’t detect a single cancer cell.
“It’s essentially one of the best responses you can get in this disease, so we were really excited to see that,” says Lu, who served on MIT’s faculty until leaving to lead Senti in 2022.
Senti is expecting to release more patient data at the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting at the end of April.
“Our groundbreaking work at Senti is showing that one can harness synthetic biology technologies to create programmable, smart medicines for treating patients with cancer,” says Collins, who is currently MIT’s Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science. “This is tremendously exciting and demonstrates how one can utilize synthetic biological circuits, in this case logic gates, to design highly effective, next-generation living therapeutics.”
From computer science to cancer care
Lu was inspired as an undergraduate studying electrical engineering and computer science by the Human Genome Project, an international race to sequence the human genome. Later, he entered the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program, through which he earned a PhD from MIT in electrical and biomedical imaging and an MD from Harvard. During that time, he worked in the lab of his eventual Senti co-founder James Collins, a synthetic biology pioneer.
In 2010, Lu joined MIT as an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the departments of Biological Engineering and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Over the course of the next 14 years, Lu led the Synthetic Biology Group at MIT and started several biotech companies, including Engine Biosciences and Tango Therapeutics, which are also developing precision cancer treatments.
In 2015, a group of researchers including Lu and MIT Institute Professor Phillip Sharp published research showing they could use gene circuits to get immune cells to selectively respond to tumor cells in their environment.
“One of the first things we published focused on the idea of logic gates in living cells,” Lu says. “A computer has ‘and’ gates, ‘or’ gates, and ‘not’ gates that allow it to perform computations, and we started publishing gene circuits that implement logic into living cells. These allow cells to detect signals and then make logical decisions like, ‘Should we switch on or off?’”
Around that time, the first cell therapies and cancer immunotherapies began to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and the founders saw their technology as a way to take those approaches to the next level. They officially founded Senti Bio in 2016, with Lu taking a sabbatical from MIT to serve as CEO.
The company licensed technology from MIT and subsequently advanced the cellular logic gates so they could work with multiple types of engineered immune cells, including T cells and “natural killer” cells. Senti’s cells can respond to specific proteins that exist on the surface of both cancer and healthy cells to increase selectivity.
“We can now create a cell therapy where the cell makes a decision as to whether to kill a cancer cell or spare a healthy cell even when those cells are right next to each other,” Lu says. “If you can’t distinguish between cancerous and healthy cells, you get unwanted side effects, or you may not be able to hit the cancer as hard as you’d like. But once you can do that, there’s a lot of ways to maximize your firepower against the cancer cells.”
Hope for patients
Senti’s lead clinical trial is focusing on patients with relapsed or refractory blood cancers, including AML.
“Obviously the most important thing is getting a good response for patients,” Lu says. “But we’re also doing additional scientific work to confirm that the logic gates are working the way we expect them to in humans. Based on that information, we can then deploy logic gates into additional therapeutic indications such as solid tumors, where you have a lot of the same problems with finding a target.”
Another company that has partnered with Senti to use some of Senti’s technology also has an early clinical trial underway in liver cancer. Senti is also partnering with other companies to apply its gene circuit technology in areas like regenerative medicine and neuroscience.
“I think this is broader than just cell therapies,” Lu says. “We believe if we can prove this out in AML, it will lead to a fundamentally new way of diagnosing and treating cancer, where we’re able to definitively identify and target cancer cells and spare healthy cells. We hope it will become a whole new class of medicines moving forward.”
Senti Bio is engineering immune cells like the ones in red to be able to differentiate between cancer cells and healthy cells in patients. The approach could lead to more potent cancer treatments with less side effects.
Programmers can now use large language models (LLMs) to generate computer code more quickly. However, this only makes programmers’ lives easier if that code follows the rules of the programming language and doesn’t cause a computer to crash.Some methods exist for ensuring LLMs conform to the rules of whatever language they are generating text in, but many of these methods either distort the model’s intended meaning or are too time-consuming to be feasible for complex tasks.A new approach develop
Programmers can now use large language models (LLMs) to generate computer code more quickly. However, this only makes programmers’ lives easier if that code follows the rules of the programming language and doesn’t cause a computer to crash.
Some methods exist for ensuring LLMs conform to the rules of whatever language they are generating text in, but many of these methods either distort the model’s intended meaning or are too time-consuming to be feasible for complex tasks.
A new approach developed by researchers at MIT and elsewhere automatically guides an LLM to generate text that adheres to the rules of the relevant language, such as a particular programming language, and is also error-free. Their method allows an LLM to allocate efforts toward outputs that are most likely to be valid and accurate, while discarding unpromising outputs early in the process. This probabilistic approach boosts computational efficiency.
Due to these efficiency gains, the researchers’ architecture enabled small LLMs to outperform much larger models in generating accurate, properly structured outputs for several real-world use cases, including molecular biology and robotics.
In the long run, this new architecture could help nonexperts control AI-generated content. For instance, it could allow businesspeople to write complex queries in SQL, a language for database manipulation, using only natural language prompts.
“This work has implications beyond research. It could improve programming assistants, AI-powered data analysis, and scientific discovery tools by ensuring that AI-generated outputs remain both useful and correct,” says João Loula, an MIT graduate student and co-lead author of a paper on this framework.
Loula is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Benjamin LeBrun, a research assistant at the Mila-Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and Li Du, a graduate student at John Hopkins University; co-senior authors Vikash Mansinghka ’05, MEng ’09, PhD ’09, a principal research scientist and leader of the Probabilistic Computing Project in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Alexander K. Lew SM ’20, an assistant professor at Yale University; Tim Vieira, a postdoc at ETH Zurich; and Timothy J. O’Donnell, an associate professor at McGill University and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Mila, who led the international team; as well as several others. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Enforcing structure and meaning
One common approach for controlling the structured text generated by LLMs involves checking an entire output, like a block of computer code, to make sure it is valid and will run error-free. If not, the user must start again, racking up computational resources.
On the other hand, a programmer could stop to check the output along the way. While this can ensure the code adheres to the programming language and is structurally valid, incrementally correcting the code may cause it to drift from the meaning the user intended, hurting its accuracy in the long run.
“It is much easier to enforce structure than meaning. We can quickly check whether something is in the right programming language, but to check its meaning you have to execute the code. Our work is also about dealing with these different types of information,” Loula says.
The researchers’ approach involves engineering knowledge into the LLM to steer it toward the most promising outputs. These outputs are more likely to follow the structural constraints defined by a user, and to have the meaning the user intends.
“We are not trying to train an LLM to do this. Instead, we are engineering some knowledge that an expert would have and combining it with the LLM’s knowledge, which offers a very different approach to scaling than you see in deep learning,” Mansinghka adds.
They accomplish this using a technique called sequential Monte Carlo, which enables parallel generation from an LLM to compete with each other. The model dynamically allocates resources to different threads of parallel computation based on how promising their output appears.
Each output is given a weight that represents how likely it is to be structurally valid and semantically accurate. At each step in the computation, the model focuses on those with higher weights and throws out the rest.
In a sense, it is like the LLM has an expert looking over its shoulder to ensure it makes the right choices at each step, while keeping it focused on the overall goal. The user specifies their desired structure and meaning, as well as how to check the output, then the researchers’ architecture guides the LLM to do the rest.
“We’ve worked out the hard math so that, for any kinds of constraints you’d like to incorporate, you are going to get the proper weights. In the end, you get the right answer,” Loula says.
Boosting small models
To test their approach, they applied the framework to LLMs tasked with generating four types of outputs: Python code, SQL database queries, molecular structures, and plans for a robot to follow.
When compared to existing approaches, the researchers’ method performed more accurately while requiring less computation.
In Python code generation, for instance, the researchers’ architecture enabled a small, open-source model to outperform a specialized, commercial closed-source model that is more than double its size.
“We are very excited that we can allow these small models to punch way above their weight,” Loula says.
Moving forward, the researchers want to use their technique to control larger chunks of generated text, rather than working one small piece at a time. They also want to combine their method with learning, so that as they control the outputs a model generates, it learns to be more accurate.
The approach could also enable machine-assisted data analysis systems, where the user can converse with software that accurately models the meaning of the data and the questions asked by the user, adds Mansinghka.
“One of the fundamental questions of linguistics is how the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences can be grounded in models of the world, accounting for uncertainty and vagueness in meaning and reference. LLMs, predicting likely token sequences, don’t address this problem. Our paper shows that, in narrow symbolic domains, it is technically possible to map from words to distributions on grounded meanings. It’s a small step towards deeper questions in cognitive science, linguistics, and artificial intelligence needed to understand how machines can communicate about the world like we do,” says O’Donnell.
This research is funded and supported, in part, by the Canada CIFAR AI Chairs Program, the MIT Quest for Intelligence, and Convergent Research.
Researchers developed a more efficient way to control the outputs of a large language model, guiding it to generate text that adheres to a certain structure, like a programming language, and remains error free.
Campus & Community
Slave trade database moving to Harvard
Henry Louis Gates Jr. (left) talks with David Eltis.Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
April 17, 2025
4 min read
Publicly accessible digital tool compiles four decades of scholarship on more than 30,000 voyages and 200,000 people
SlaveVoyages, a groundbreaking tool for data
Henry Louis Gates Jr. (left) talks with David Eltis.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Publicly accessible digital tool compiles four decades of scholarship on more than 30,000 voyages and 200,000 people
SlaveVoyages, a groundbreaking tool for data on history’s largest slave trades, is getting a new home.
Word of the project’s upcoming move was shared recently by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. “I’m pleased to tell you today that the SlaveVoyages site, with all of its databases, will live in perpetuity here at Harvard University,” Gates announced at a conference dedicated to celebrating the open-access resource.
SlaveVoyages was the result of nearly four decades of scholarly contributions, with researchers from multiple institutions working painstakingly to digitize handwritten records from archives worldwide.
Today, its multisource dataset, currently housed at Rice University, features information on more than 30,000 slaving vessels that traversed the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries. Also documented are details on nearly 221,000 individuals involved with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, including ship captains and the humans they trafficked.
The project’s website, launched in 2008 at Emory University, brings data to life with rich visualizations. A time-lapse animationtracks each of the individual voyages on a map of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A pair of 18th-century French slaving ships, both bound for present-day Haiti, have been recreated in 3D video based on surviving drawings.
As SlaveVoyages expanded, the Hutchins Center provided key funding along with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emory University. Stepping up to help support the project in its new home is the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative (H&LS).
“Education is central to the mission of the initiative.”
Sara Bleich
“Education is central to the mission of the initiative,” said Sara Bleich, vice provost for special projects and the leader of H&LS. “SlaveVoyages’ databases build on the curiosity of Harvard students who catalyzed the University’s ongoing reckoning with its ties to slavery. By cofunding the project with the Hutchins Center, the initiative can help amplify knowledge-sharing and visibility, empower scholars and students worldwide, while also reaffirming our commitment to truth.”
The April 3-5 conference, hosted by the Hutchins Center, attracted researchers associated with the project as well as those it has inspired.
“This conference brings together generations of scholars who dedicated their lives to unearthing centuries of data to help us understand in detail and with nuance the contours of the slave trade — a quantifiably brutal trade in human beings that spanned oceans and continents while devastating millions of lives,” said Gates, who is also a member of the initiative’s Advisory Council.
Over three days, sessions covered a wide range of topics suggesting the global scope of the slave trade. The conference kicked off with a panel on the genetic impacts of the slave trade featuring David Reich of Harvard Medical School, Kasia Bryc of the Broad Institute, as well as scholars from Johns Hopkins University and the National Center of Medical Genetics of Cuba.
Rice University associate professor of history Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, who currently serves as host of the SlaveVoyages project, unpacked his findings on Brazil’s 19th-century slave trade. Jorge Felipe-Gonzalez, an assistant professor of history at University of Texas at San Antonio, discussed the potential integration of AI into the database. Jane Hooper, a professor of history at George Mason University, explored shipboard uprisings on Indian Ocean voyages.
A final panel addressed the South West Pacific trade, with Francis Bobongie-Harris, Queensland University of Technology educator and researcher emphasizing the human cost.
David Eltis is awarded the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal.
Gates opened one of the afternoon sessions with a surprise for SlaveVoyages originator David Eltis, an emeritus professor of history at Emory University and the University of British Columbia, bestowing on him the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal “in recognition of his unyielding vision that brought to life a resource that has transformed our understanding of one of the most cataclysmic and consequential economic, social, and cultural forces unleashed in the history of humanity.”
The medal is “especially fitting” for Eltis, Gates added, given the fact that Du Bois, the first Black American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, wrote his 1895 dissertation on efforts to suppress the trade of enslaved Africans in the U.S.
The following is part of a series of short interviews from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Each spotlight features a student answering questions about themselves and life at MIT. Today’s interviewee, YongYan (Crystal) Liang, is a senior majoring in EECS with a particular interest in bioengineering and medical devices — which led her to join the Living Machines track as part of New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) at MIT. An Advanced Undergraduate
The following is part of a series of short interviews from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Each spotlight features a student answering questions about themselves and life at MIT. Today’s interviewee, YongYan (Crystal) Liang, is a senior majoring in EECS with a particular interest in bioengineering and medical devices — which led her to join the Living Machines track as part of New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) at MIT. An Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (SuperUROP) scholar, Liang was supported by the Nadar Foundation Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scholar award for her project, which focused on steering systems for intravascular drug delivery devices. A world traveler, Liang has also taught robotics to students in MISTI Global Teaching Labs (GTL) programs in Korea and Germany — and is involved with the Terrascope and MedLinks communities.
Q: Do you have a bucket list? If so, share one or two of the items on it.
A: I’d like to be proficient in at least five languages in a conversational sense (though probably not at a working proficiency level). Currently, I’m fluent in English, and can speak Cantonese and Mandarin. I also have a 1,600-plus day Duolingo streak where I’m trying to learn the foundations of a few languages, including German, Korean, Japanese, and Russian.
Another bucket list item I have is to try every martial art/combat sport there is, even if it’s just an introduction class. So far, I’ve practiced taekwondo for a few years, taken a few lessons in boxing/kickboxing, and dabbled in beginners’ classes for karate, Krav Maga, and Brazilian jiujitsu. I’ll probably try to take judo, aikido, and other classes this upcoming year! It would also be pretty epic to be a fourth dan black belt one day, though that may take a decade or two.
Q: If you had to teach a really in-depth class about one niche topic, what would you pick?
A: Personally, I think artificial organs are pretty awesome! I would probably talk about the fusion of engineering with our bodies, and organ enhancement. This might include adding functionalities and possible organ regeneration, so that those waiting for organ donations can be helped without being morally conflicted by waiting for another person’s downfall. I’ve previously done research in several BioEECS-related labs that I’d love to talk about as well. This includes the Traverso Lab at Pappalardo, briefly in the Edelman Lab at the [Institute for Medical Engineering and Science], the Langer Lab at the Koch Institute of Integrative Cancer Research, as well as in the MIT Media Lab with the Conformable Decoders and BioMechatronics group. I also contributed to a recently published paper related to gastrointestinal devices: OSIRIS.
Q: If you suddenly won the lottery, what would you spend some of the money on?
A: I would make sure my mom got most of the money. The first thing we’d do is probably go house shopping around the world and buy properties in great travel destinations — then go around and live in said properties. We would do this on rotation with our friends until we ran out of money, then put the properties up for rent and use the money to open a restaurant with my mom’s recipes as the menu. Then I’d get to eat her food forever.
Q: What do you believe is an underrated invention or technology?
A: I feel like many people wear glasses or put on contacts nowadays and don’t really think twice about it, glossing over how cool it is that we can fix bad sight and how critical sight is for our survival. If a zombie apocalypse happened and my glasses broke, it would be over for me. And don’t get me started about the invention of the indoor toilet and plumbing systems!
Q: Are you a re-reader or a re-watcher? If so, what are your comfort books, shows, or movies?
A: I’m both a re-reader and a re-watcher! I have a lot of fun binging webtoons and dramas. I’m also a huge Marvel fan, although recently, it’s been a hit or miss. Action and romcoms are my kinda vibes, and occasionally I do watch some anime. If I’m bored I usually re-watch some [Marvel Cinematic Universe] movies, or Fairy Tail, or read some Isekai genre stories.
Q: It’s time to get on the shuttle to the first Mars colony, and you can only bring one personal item. What are you going to bring along with you?
A: My first thought was my phone, but I feel like that may be too standard of an answer. If we were talking about the fantasy realm, I might ask Stephen Strange to borrow his sling ring to open more portals to link the Earth and Mars. As to why he wouldn’t have just come with us in the first place, I don’t know; maybe he’s too busy fighting aliens, or something?
Q: What are you looking forward to about life after graduation? What do you think you’ll miss about MIT?
A: I won’t be missing dining hall food very much, that’s for sure — except for the amazing oatmeal from one of the Maseeh dining hall chefs, Sum! I am, however, excited to live the nine-to-five life for a few years and have my weekends back. I’ll miss my friends dearly, since everyone will be so spread out across the States and abroad. I’ll miss the nights we spent watching movies, playing games, cooking, eating, and yapping away. I’m excited to see everyone grow and take another step closer to their dreams. It will be fun visiting them and being able to explore the world at the same time! For more immediate plans, I’ll be going back to Apple this summer to intern again, and will finish my MEng with the 6A program at Cadence. Afterwards, I shall see where life takes me!
It is clear that humankind needs increasingly more resources, from computing power to steel and concrete, to meet the growing demands associated with data centers, infrastructure, and other mainstays of society. New, cost-effective approaches for producing the advanced materials key to that growth were the focus of a two-day workshop at MIT on March 11 and 12.A theme throughout the event was the importance of collaboration between and within universities and industries. The goal is to “develop c
It is clear that humankind needs increasingly more resources, from computing power to steel and concrete, to meet the growing demands associated with data centers, infrastructure, and other mainstays of society. New, cost-effective approaches for producing the advanced materials key to that growth were the focus of a two-day workshop at MIT on March 11 and 12.
A theme throughout the event was the importance of collaboration between and within universities and industries. The goal is to “develop concepts that everybody can use together, instead of everybody doing something different and then trying to sort it out later at great cost,” said Lionel Kimerling, the Thomas Lord Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.
The workshop was produced by MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), which has an industry collegium, and MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program.
The program included an address by Javier Sanfelix, lead of the Advanced Materials Team for the European Union. Sanfelix gave an overview of the EU’s strategy to developing advanced materials, which he said are “key enablers of the green and digital transition for European industry.”
That strategy has already led to several initiatives. These include a material commons, or shared digital infrastructure for the design and development of advanced materials, and an advanced materials academy for educating new innovators and designers. Sanfelix also described an Advanced Materials Act for 2026 that aims to put in place a legislative framework that supports the entire innovation cycle.
Sanfelix was visiting MIT to learn more about how the Institute is approaching the future of advanced materials. “We see MIT as a leader worldwide in technology, especially on materials, and there is a lot to learn about [your] industry collaborations and technology transfer with industry,” he said.
Innovations in steel and concrete
The workshop began with talks about innovations involving two of the most common human-made materials in the world: steel and cement. We’ll need more of both but must reckon with the huge amounts of energy required to produce them and their impact on the environment due to greenhouse-gas emissions during that production.
One way to address our need for more steel is to reuse what we have, said C. Cem Tasan, the POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and director of the Materials Research Laboratory.
But most of the existing approaches to recycling scrap steel involve melting the metal. “And whenever you are dealing with molten metal, everything goes up, from energy use to carbon-dioxide emissions. Life is more difficult,” Tasan said.
The question he and his team asked is whether they could reuse scrap steel without melting it. Could they consolidate solid scraps, then roll them together using existing equipment to create new sheet metal? From the materials-science perspective, Tasan said, that shouldn’t work, for several reasons.
But it does. “We’ve demonstrated the potential in two papers and two patent applications already,” he said. Tasan noted that the approach focuses on high-quality manufacturing scrap. “This is not junkyard scrap,” he said.
Tasan went on to explain how and why the new process works from a materials-science perspective, then gave examples of how the recycled steel could be used. “My favorite example is the stainless-steel countertops in restaurants. Do you really need the mechanical performance of stainless steel there?” You could use the recycled steel instead.
Hessam Azarijafari addressed another common, indispensable material: concrete. This year marks the 16th anniversary of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub), which began when a set of industry leaders and politicians reached out to MIT to learn more about the benefits and environmental impacts of concrete.
The hub’s work now centers around three main themes: working toward a carbon-neutral concrete industry; the development of a sustainable infrastructure, with a focus on pavement; and how to make our cities more resilient to natural hazards through investment in stronger, cooler construction.
Azarijafari, the deputy director of the CSHub, went on to give several examples of research results that have come out of the CSHub. These include many models to identify different pathways to decarbonize the cement and concrete sector. Other work involves pavements, which the general public thinks of as inert, Azarijafari said. “But we have [created] a state-of-the-art model that can assess interactions between pavement and vehicles.” It turns out that pavement surface characteristics and structural performance “can influence excess fuel consumption by inducing an additional rolling resistance.”
Azarijafari emphasized the importance of working closely with policymakers and industry. That engagement is key “to sharing the lessons that we have learned so far.”
Toward a resource-efficient microchip industry
Consider the following: In 2020 the number of cell phones, GPS units, and other devices connected to the “cloud,” or large data centers, exceeded 50 billion. And data-center traffic in turn is scaling by 1,000 times every 10 years.
But all of that computation takes energy. And “all of it has to happen at a constant cost of energy, because the gross domestic product isn’t changing at that rate,” said Kimerling. The solution is to either produce much more energy, or make information technology much more energy-efficient. Several speakers at the workshop focused on the materials and components behind the latter.
Key to everything they discussed: adding photonics, or using light to carry information, to the well-established electronics behind today’s microchips. “The bottom line is that integrating photonics with electronics in the same package is the transistor for the 21st century. If we can’t figure out how to do that, then we’re not going to be able to scale forward,” said Kimerling, who is director of the MIT Microphotonics Center.
MIT has long been a leader in the integration of photonics with electronics. For example, Kimerling described the Integrated Photonics System Roadmap – International (IPSR-I), a global network of more than 400 industrial and R&D partners working together to define and create photonic integrated circuit technology. IPSR-I is led by the MIT Microphotonics Center and PhotonDelta. Kimerling began the organization in 1997.
Last year IPSR-I released its latest roadmap for photonics-electronics integration, “which outlines a clear way forward and specifies an innovative learning curve for scaling performance and applications for the next 15 years,” Kimerling said.
Another major MIT program focused on the future of the microchip industry is FUTUR-IC, a new global alliance for sustainable microchip manufacturing. Begun last year, FUTUR-IC is funded by the National Science Foundation.
“Our goal is to build a resource-efficient microchip industry value chain,” said Anuradha Murthy Agarwal, a principal research scientist at the MRL and leader of FUTUR-IC. That includes all of the elements that go into manufacturing future microchips, including workforce education and techniques to mitigate potential environmental effects.
FUTUR-IC is also focused on electronic-photonic integration. “My mantra is to use electronics for computation, [and] shift to photonics for communication to bring this energy crisis in control,” Agarwal said.
But integrating electronic chips with photonic chips is not easy. To that end, Agarwal described some of the challenges involved. For example, currently it is difficult to connect the optical fibers carrying communications to a microchip. That’s because the alignment between the two must be almost perfect or the light will disperse. And the dimensions involved are minuscule. An optical fiber has a diameter of only millionths of a meter. As a result, today each connection must be actively tested with a laser to ensure that the light will come through.
That said, Agarwal went on to describe a new coupler between the fiber and chip that could solve the problem and allow robots to passively assemble the chips (no laser needed). The work, which was conducted by researchers including MIT graduate student Drew Wenninger, Agarwal, and Kimerling, has been patented, and is reported in two papers. A second recent breakthrough in this area involving a printed micro-reflector was described by Juejun “JJ” Hu, John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
FUTUR-IC is also leading educational efforts for training a future workforce, as well as techniques for detecting — and potentially destroying — the perfluroalkyls (PFAS, or “forever chemicals”) released during microchip manufacturing. FUTUR-IC educational efforts, including virtual reality and game-based learning, were described by Sajan Saini, education director for FUTUR-IC. PFAS detection and remediation were discussed by Aristide Gumyusenge, an assistant professor in DMSE, and Jesus Castro Esteban, a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry.
Other presenters at the workshop included Antoine Allanore, the Heather N. Lechtman Professor of Materials Science and Engineering; Katrin Daehn, a postdoc in the Allanore lab; Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas (1923) and Helen Whitaker Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Richard Otte, CEO of Promex; and Carl Thompson, the Stavros V. Salapatas Professor in Materials Science and Engineering.
C. Cem Tasan, an MIT professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Materials Research Laboratory, discusses his work on recycling steel.
As technology rapidly propels society forward, MIT is rethinking how it prepares students to face the world and its greatest challenges. Generations of educators have shared knowledge at MIT by connecting lessons to practical applications, but what does the Institute’s motto “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), referring to hands-on learning, look like in the future?This was the guiding question of the annual Festival of Learning, co-hosted by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancello
As technology rapidly propels society forward, MIT is rethinking how it prepares students to face the world and its greatest challenges. Generations of educators have shared knowledge at MIT by connecting lessons to practical applications, but what does the Institute’s motto “mens et manus” (“mind and hand”), referring to hands-on learning, look like in the future?
This was the guiding question of the annual Festival of Learning, co-hosted by MIT Open Learning and the Office of the Vice Chancellor. MIT faculty, instructors, students, and staff engaged in meaningful discussions about teaching and learning as the Institute critically revisits its undergraduate academic program.
“Because the world is changing, we owe it to our students to reflect these realities in our academic experiences,” said Daniel E. Hastings, Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and then-interim vice chancellor. “It’s in our DNA to try new things at MIT.”
Fostering a greater sense of purpose
MIT emphasizes hands-on learning much like many engineering schools. What deeply concerned panelists like Susan Silbey, the Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology, and Anthropology, is that students are not engaging in enough intellectual thinking via significant reading, textual interpretation, or involvement with uncertain questions.
Christopher Capozzola, senior associate dean for open learning, echoed this, saying, “We have designed a world in which [students] feel enormous pressure to maximize their career outcomes at the end” of their undergraduate education.
Students move in systems of explicit incentives, he said, such as grades and the General Institute Requirements, but also respond to unwritten incentives, like extracurriculars, internships, and prestige. “That’s our fault, not theirs,” Capozzola said, and identified this as an opportunity to improve the MIT curriculum.
How can educators encourage students to connect more with course material, instead of treating it as a means to an end? Adam Martin, professor of biology, always asks his students to challenge the status quo by incorporating test questions with data arguing against the models from the textbook.
“I want them to think,” Martin said. “I want them to challenge what we think is the frontier of the field.”
Considering context
One of the most significant topics of discussion was the importance of context in education. For example, class 7.102 (Introduction to Molecular Biology Techniques) uses story-based problem-solving to show students how the curriculum fits into real-world contexts.
The fictional premise driving 7.102 is that a child fell into the Charles River and caught an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection. To save the child, students must characterize the bacteria and identify phages that could kill it.
“It really shows the students not only basic techniques, but what it’s like to be in a team and in a discovery situation,” said Martin.
This hands-on approach — collecting water, isolating the phages within, and comparing to more reliable sources — unlocks students’ imaginations, Martin said. In an environment intentionally designed to give students room to fail, the narrative incentivizes students to persist with repeated experimentation.
But Silbey, who is also a professor of behavioral and policy sciences at MIT Sloan School of Management, has noticed the reluctance of students to engage with nontechnical contexts. Students, she concluded, “have minimal understanding of how the action of any individual becomes part of something larger, durable, consequential through invisible but powerful mechanisms of aggregation.”
Educators agreed that contextual understanding was equally important to a STEM curriculum as technical instruction. “Teaching and thinking at that interface between technology and society is really crucial for making technologists feel responsible for the things that they create and the things that they use,” added Capozzola.
Amitava Mitra, founding executive director of MIT New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), highlighted an example where students developed an effective technical solution to decarbonize homes in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Or so they thought.
“Once we saw what was on the ground and understood the context — the social model, the social processes — we realized we had no clue,” the students told Mitra.
One way MIT is trying to bridge these gaps is through the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing program. This curriculum integrates ethical considerations alongside computing courses to help students envision the social and moral consequences of their actions.
In one technical machinery lecture, Silbey’s students had trouble envisioning the negative impacts of autonomous vehicles. But after she shared the history of the regulation of dangerous products, she said many students became more open to examining potential ripple effects.
Creating interdisciplinary opportunities
The panelists viewed interdisciplinary education as critical preparation for the complexities of the real world.
“Whether it’s tackling climate change, creating sustainable infrastructure, creating cutting-edge technologies in life sciences or robotics, we need our engineers, social scientists, and scientists to work in teams cutting across disciplines to create solutions today,” said Mitra.
To expand opportunities for undergraduates to collaborate across academic departments and other campus units, NEET was launched in 2017. NEET is a project-based experiential learning curriculum that requires technical and social expertise. One student group, for example, is designing, building, and installing a solar-powered charging station at MIT Open Space. To introduce a project like this into MIT’s infrastructure, the project team must coordinate with a variety of Institute offices — such as Campus Planning, Engineering & Energy Management, and Insurance — in addition to a range of local stakeholders.
“Students put in enormous amounts of time and effort for things that shape them, that speak to their passion and this deep engagement,” Capozzola said. “This is a special area where I think MIT particularly excels.”
Moving forward together
In a panel featuring both MIT instructors and students, educators recognized that designing an effective curriculum requires balancing content across subjects or core topics while organizing materials on Canvas — MIT’s learning management system — in a way that’s intuitive for students. Instructors collaborated directly with students and staff via MIT’s Canvas Innovation Fund to make these improvements.
“There are things that the novice students see in what I’m teaching that I don’t see,” said Sean Robinson, lecturer in physics and associate director of the Helena Foundation Junior Laboratory. “Our class is aimed at taking people who think of themselves as physics students and getting them to think of themselves as physicists. I want junior colleagues.”
The biggest takeaway from student panelists was the importance of minimizing logistical struggles by structuring Canvas to guide students toward learning objectives. Cory Romanov ’24, technical instructor of physics, and McKenzie Dinesen, a senior in aerospace engineering and Russian and Eurasian studies, emphasized that explaining learning goals and organizing course content with clear deadlines were simple improvements that went a long way to enhance the student experience.
Emphasizing the benefit of feedback like this, Capozzola said, “It’s important to give people at MIT — students, staff, and others who are often closed out of conversations — a more democratic voice so that we can be a model for the university that we want to be in 25 years.”
As MIT continues to enhance its educational approach, the insights from the Festival of Learning highlight a crucial evolution in how students engage with knowledge. From rethinking course structures to integrating interdisciplinary and experiential learning, the panelists underscored the need for a curriculum that balances technical expertise with a deep understanding of social and ethical contexts.
“It’s important to equip students on the ‘mens’ side with the kinds of civic knowledge that they need to go out into the world,” said Capozzola, “but also the ‘manus,’ to be able to do the everyday work of getting your hands dirty and building democratic institutions.”
From left to right, MIT panelists Susan Silbey, Amitava "Babi" Mitra, Adam Martin, and Chris Capozzola share their perspectives of the strengths and challenges of an MIT education.
MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky has been named to the 2025 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, a high-profile honor for scholars pursuing research in the social sciences and humanities.The fellowship is provided by The Carnegie Corp. of New York. Berinsky, the Mitsui Professor of Political Science, and 25 other fellows were selected from more than 300 applicants. They will each receive stipends of $200,000 for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized,
MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky has been named to the 2025 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, a high-profile honor for scholars pursuing research in the social sciences and humanities.
The fellowship is provided by The Carnegie Corp. of New York.Berinsky, the Mitsui Professor of Political Science, and 25 other fellows were selected from more than 300 applicants. They will each receive stipends of $200,000 for research that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized, and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy.
“Through these fellowships Carnegie is harnessing the unrivaled brainpower of our universities to help us to understand how our society has become so polarized,” says Carnegie President Louise Richardson. “Our future grant-making will be informed by what we learn from these scholars as we seek to mitigate the pernicious effects of political polarization.”
Berinsky said he is “incredibly honored to be named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for the coming year. This fellowship will allow me to work on critical issues in the current political moment.”
During his year as a Carnegie Fellow, Berinsky will be working on a project, “Fostering an Accurate Information Ecosystem to Mitigate Polarization in the United States.”
“For a functioning democracy, it is essential that citizens share a baseline of common facts,” says Berinsky. “However, in today’s politically polarized climate, ‘alternative facts,’ and other forms of misinformation — from political rumors to conspiracy theories — distort how people see reality, and damage our social fabric.”
“I’ve spent the last 15 years investigating why individuals accept misinformation and how to counter misperceptions. But there is still a lot of work to be done. My project aims to tackle the serious problem of misinformation in the United States by bringing together existing approaches in new, more powerful combinations. I’m hoping that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts.”
Berinsky has been a member of the MIT faculty since 2003. He is the author of “Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It” (Princeton University Press, 2023).
Other MIT faculty who have received the Carnegie Fellowship in recent years include economists David Autor and Daron Acemoglu and political scientists Fotini Christia, Taylor Fravel, Richard Nielsen, and Charles Stewart.
Briger Hall will house the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Department of Geosciences.
Briger Hall will house the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Department of Geosciences.
Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth do not join completely, are believed to be caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors.In a new study, MIT biologists have discovered how a genetic variant often found in people with these facial malformations leads to the development of cleft lip and cleft palate.Their fin
Cleft lip and cleft palate are among the most common birth defects, occurring in about one in 1,050 births in the United States. These defects, which appear when the tissues that form the lip or the roof of the mouth do not join completely, are believed to be caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors.
In a new study, MIT biologists have discovered how a genetic variant often found in people with these facial malformations leads to the development of cleft lip and cleft palate.
Their findings suggest that the variant diminishes cells’ supply of transfer RNA, a molecule that is critical for assembling proteins. When this happens, embryonic face cells are unable to fuse to form the lip and roof of the mouth.
“Until now, no one had made the connection that we made. This particular gene was known to be part of the complex involved in the splicing of transfer RNA, but it wasn’t clear that it played such a crucial role for this process and for facial development. Without the gene, known as DDX1, certain transfer RNA can no longer bring amino acids to the ribosome to make new proteins. If the cells can’t process these tRNAs properly, then the ribosomes can’t make protein anymore,” says Michaela Bartusel, an MIT research scientist and the lead author of the study.
Cleft lip and cleft palate, also known as orofacial clefts, can be caused by genetic mutations, but in many cases, there is no known genetic cause.
“The mechanism for the development of these orofacial clefts is unclear, mostly because they are known to be impacted by both genetic and environmental factors,” Calo says. “Trying to pinpoint what might be affected has been very challenging in this context.”
To discover genetic factors that influence a particular disease, scientists often perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which can reveal variants that are found more often in people who have a particular disease than in people who don’t.
For orofacial clefts, some of the genetic variants that have regularly turned up in GWAS appeared to be in a region of DNA that doesn’t code for proteins. In this study, the MIT team set out to figure out how variants in this region might influence the development of facial malformations.
Their studies revealed that these variants are located in an enhancer region called e2p24.2. Enhancers are segments of DNA that interact with protein-coding genes, helping to activate them by binding to transcription factors that turn on gene expression.
The researchers found that this region is in close proximity to three genes, suggesting that it may control the expression of those genes. One of those genes had already been ruled out as contributing to facial malformations, and another had already been shown to have a connection. In this study, the researchers focused on the third gene, which is known as DDX1.
DDX1, it turned out, is necessary for splicing transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules, which play a critical role in protein synthesis. Each transfer RNA molecule transports a specific amino acid to the ribosome — a cell structure that strings amino acids together to form proteins, based on the instructions carried by messenger RNA.
While there are about 400 different tRNAs found in the human genome, only a fraction of those tRNAs require splicing, and those are the tRNAs most affected by the loss of DDX1. These tRNAs transport four different amino acids, and the researchers hypothesize that these four amino acids may be particularly abundant in proteins that embryonic cells that form the face need to develop properly.
When the ribosomes need one of those four amino acids, but none of them are available, the ribosome can stall, and the protein doesn’t get made.
The researchers are now exploring which proteins might be most affected by the loss of those amino acids. They also plan to investigate what happens inside cells when the ribosomes stall, in hopes of identifying a stress signal that could potentially be blocked and help cells survive.
Malfunctioning tRNA
While this is the first study to link tRNA to craniofacial malformations, previous studies have shown that mutations that impair ribosome formation can also lead to similar defects. Studies have also shown that disruptions of tRNA synthesis — caused by mutations in the enzymes that attach amino acids to tRNA, or in proteins involved in an earlier step in tRNA splicing — can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders.
“Defects in other components of the tRNA pathway have been shown to be associated with neurodevelopmental disease,” Calo says. “One interesting parallel between these two is that the cells that form the face are coming from the same place as the cells that form the neurons, so it seems that these particular cells are very susceptible to tRNA defects.”
The researchers now hope to explore whether environmental factors linked to orofacial birth defects also influence tRNA function. Some of their preliminary work has found that oxidative stress — a buildup of harmful free radicals — can lead to fragmentation of tRNA molecules. Oxidative stress can occur in embryonic cells upon exposure to ethanol, as in fetal alcohol syndrome, or if the mother develops gestational diabetes.
“I think it is worth looking for mutations that might be causing this on the genetic side of things, but then also in the future, we would expand this into which environmental factors have the same effects on tRNA function, and then see which precautions might be able to prevent any effects on tRNAs,” Bartusel says.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Anders Sejr Hansen, Class of 1943 Career Development Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, has been named as the recipient of the 2024-25 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.The annual award was established in fall 1982 as a permanent tribute to Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his great and enduring support for younger faculty members over the years. The purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional distinction in teaching, in research, and in ser
Anders Sejr Hansen, Class of 1943 Career Development Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, has been named as the recipient of the 2024-25 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.
The annual award was established in fall 1982 as a permanent tribute to Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his great and enduring support for younger faculty members over the years. The purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional distinction in teaching, in research, and in service.
Hansen is the principal investigator of the Hansen Lab, which develops new methods to resolve 3D genome structure at high spatiotemporal resolution to understand how DNA looping and 3D folding regulates gene expression in health and disease. His areas of research include cancer biology, computational systems biology, instrumentation and measurement, and synthetic biology.
“My research focuses on how the expression of our genes is regulated,” says Hansen. “All the cells in our body have the same DNA and the same genes. Thus, the software or applications to each cell are the same. What’s different between a neuron and a blood cell is what genes they choose to express. My research focuses on understanding how this regulation takes place.”
Those who nominated Anders for the award emphasized his remarkable productivity, mentioning his two “highly cited, paradigm-shifting research articles in Science and Nature Genetics,” and his research presentations at 50 invited talks, including two keynotes, at universities and conferences worldwide. They also highlighted his passion for mentorship and career development for the 20 current members of his laboratory.
“Anders is an outstanding role model and ambassador of biological engineering, combining a powerful research program, run as a caring mentor, and innovative undergraduate education,” says Christopher Voigt, the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor in Biological Engineering and head of the Department of Biological Engineering.
Adds Laurie Boyer, a professor of biology and biological engineering, “His work reveals new insights into how we think about the dynamics of gene regulation that would not otherwise be possible. The Hansen Lab’s work provides a unified framework rapidly adopted by the field to learn how conserved regulators provide exquisite spatial and temporal control of gene expression in the context of 3D genome architecture.”
During the nomination process, students praised Hansen’s passion for his work, along with his ability to prepare them to apply their education outside the classroom.
“He always strives to guide each lab member towards both short-term scientific success and long-term career planning through regular one-on-one meetings, facilitating collaborations and access to scientific resources, and sharing his own experiences,” says Jin Yang, a graduate student in biological engineering and member of the Hansen Lab.
“Dr. Hansen's infectious excitement for the course material made it very enjoyable to come to class and envision potential applications of the fundamental topics he taught,” adds another one of his students. “Excellent lecturer!”
Hansen obtained his undergraduate and master’s degree in chemistry at Oxford University. He received his PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University, where he applied systems biology approaches to understand how cells can encode and transmit information in the dynamics of transcription factor activation. For his postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley, Hansen developed new imaging approaches for dissecting the dynamics of architectural proteins with single-molecule resolution in living cells. Hansen joined MIT as an assistant professor of biological engineering in early 2020.
His recognitions include an NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Award (2019), NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2020), a Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research Award (2021), an NSF CAREER Award (2024), and an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (2024).
Hansen has served on several committees at MIT, including the MIT Biological Engineering Graduate Program Admissions Committee, the MIT Computational and Systems Biology Graduate Admissions Committee, and the MIT Biological Engineering Graduate Recruiting Committee, of which he has been chair since 2023.
“I have known about the Edgerton Award since I started at MIT, and I think the broad focus on both research, teaching, and service really captures what makes MIT such a unique and wonderful place,” says Hansen. “I was therefore absolutely thrilled to receive the news that I would receive the Edgerton Award this year, and I am very grateful to all the wonderful colleagues here at MIT who have supported me over the years, and all the exceptional people in my lab whose work is being recognized.”
Around 3,100 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) each year in the UK. It is an aggressive form of blood cancer that is very difficult to treat. Thanks to recent advances, individuals at high risk of AML can be identified years in advance using blood tests and blood DNA analysis, but there’s no suitable treatment that can prevent them from developing the disease.
In this study, Professor George Vassiliou and colleagues at the University of Cambridge investigated how to preven
Around 3,100 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) each year in the UK. It is an aggressive form of blood cancer that is very difficult to treat. Thanks to recent advances, individuals at high risk of AML can be identified years in advance using blood tests and blood DNA analysis, but there’s no suitable treatment that can prevent them from developing the disease.
In this study, Professor George Vassiliou and colleagues at the University of Cambridge investigated how to prevent abnormal blood stem cells with genetic changes from progressing to become AML. The work focused on the most common genetic change, which affects a gene called DNMT3A and is responsible for starting 10-15% of AML cases.
Professor Vassiliou, from the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Haematologist at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) co-led the study. He said: “Blood cancer poses unique challenges compared to solid cancers like breast or prostate, which can be surgically removed if identified early. With blood cancers, we need to identify people at risk and then use medical treatments to stop cancer progression throughout the body.”
The research team examined blood stem cells from mice with the same changes in DNMT3A as seen in the pre-cancerous cells in humans. Using a genome-wide screening technique, they showed that these cells depend more on mitochondrial metabolism than healthy cells, making this a potential weak spot. The researchers went on to confirm that metformin, and other mitochondria-targeting drugs, substantially slowed the growth of mutation-bearing blood cells in mice. Further experiments also showed that metformin could have the same effect on human blood cells with the DNMT3A mutation.
Dr Malgorzata Gozdecka, Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and first author of the research said: “Metformin is a drug that impacts mitochondrial metabolism, and these pre-cancerous cells need this energy to keep growing. By blocking this process, we stop the cells from expanding and progressing towards AML, whilst also reversing other effects of the mutated DNMT3A gene.”
In addition, the study looked at data from over 412,000 UK Biobank volunteers and found that people taking metformin were less likely to have changes in the DNMT3A gene. This link remained even after accounting for factors that could have confounded the results such as diabetes status and BMI.
Professor Brian Huntly, Head of the Department of Haematology at the University of Cambridge, Honorary Consultant Haematologist at CUH, and joint lead author of the research, added: “Metformin appears highly specific to this mutation rather than being a generic treatment. That specificity makes it especially compelling as a targeted prevention strategy.
“We’ve done the extensive research all the way from cell-based studies to human data, so we’re now at the point where we have a made a strong case for moving ahead with clinical trials. Importantly, metformin’s lack of toxicity will be a major advantage as it is already used by millions of people worldwide with a well-established safety profile.”
The results of the study, funded by Blood Cancer UK with additional support from Cancer Research UK, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (USA) and the Wellcome Trust, are published in Nature.
Dr Rubina Ahmed, Director of Research at Blood Cancer UK, said: “Blood cancer is the third biggest cancer killer in the UK, with over 280,000 people currently living with the disease. Our Blood Cancer Action plan shed light on the shockingly low survival for acute myeloid leukaemia, with only around 2 in 10 surviving for 5 years, and we urgently need better strategies to save lives. Repurposing safe, widely available drugs like metformin means we could potentially get new treatments to people faster, without the need for lengthy drug development pipelines.”
The next phase of this research will focus on clinical trials to test metformin’s effectiveness in people with changes in DNMT3A at increased risk of developing AML. With metformin already approved and widely used for diabetes, this repurposing strategy could dramatically reduce the time it takes to bring a new preventive therapy to patients.
Tanya Hollands, Research Information Manager at Cancer Research UK, who contributed funding for the lab-based screening in mice, said: “It's important that we work to find new ways to slow down or prevent AML in people at high risk. Therefore, it’s positive that the findings of this study suggest a possible link between a commonly-used diabetes drug and prevention of AML progression in some people. While this early-stage research is promising, clinical trials are now needed to find out if this drug could benefit people. We look forward to seeing how this work progresses.”
Metformin, a widely used and affordable diabetes drug, could prevent a form of acute myeloid leukaemia in people at high risk of the disease, a study in mice has suggested. Further research in clinical trials will be needed to confirm this works for patients.
We’ve done the extensive research all the way from cell-based studies to human data, so we’re now at the point where we have a made a strong case for moving ahead with clinical trials
The ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ of 367 CE was one of the most severe threats to Rome’s hold on Britain since the Boudiccan revolt three centuries earlier. Contemporary sources indicate that components of the garrison on Hadrian’s wall rebelled and allowed the Picts to attack the Roman province by land and sea. Simultaneously, the Scotti from modern-day Ireland invaded broadly in the west, and Saxons from the continent landed in the south.
Senior Roman commanders were captured or killed, and some sol
The ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ of 367 CE was one of the most severe threats to Rome’s hold on Britain since the Boudiccan revolt three centuries earlier. Contemporary sources indicate that components of the garrison on Hadrian’s wall rebelled and allowed the Picts to attack the Roman province by land and sea. Simultaneously, the Scotti from modern-day Ireland invaded broadly in the west, and Saxons from the continent landed in the south.
Senior Roman commanders were captured or killed, and some soldiers reportedly deserted and joined the invaders. Throughout the spring and summer, small groups roamed and plundered the countryside. Britain’s descent into anarchy was disastrous for Rome and it took two years for generals dispatched by Valentian I, Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, to restore order. The final remnants of official Roman administration left Britain some 40 years later around 410 CE.
The University of Cambridge-led study, published today in Climatic Change, used oak tree-ring records to reconstruct temperature and precipitation levels in southern Britain during and after the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ in 367 CE. Combining this data with surviving Roman accounts, the researchers argue that severe summer droughts in 364, 365 and 366 CE were a driving force in these pivotal events.
First author Charles Norman, from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, said: “We don’t have much archaeological evidence for the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’. Written accounts from the period give some background, but our findings provide an explanation for the catalyst of this major event.”
The researchers found that southern Britain experienced an exceptional sequence of remarkably dry summers from 364 to 366 CE. In the period 350 to 500 CE, average monthly reconstructed rainfall in the main growing season (April–July) was 51 mm. But in 364 CE, it fell to just 29mm. 365 CE was even worse with 28mm, and 37mm the following year kept the area in crisis.
Professor Ulf Büntgen, from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, said: “Three consecutive droughts would have had a devastating impact on the productivity of Roman Britain’s most important agricultural region. As Roman writers tell us, this resulted in food shortages with all of the destabilising societal effects this brings.”
Between 1836 and 2024 CE, southern Britain only experienced droughts of a similar magnitude seven times – mostly in recent decades, and none of these were consecutive, emphasising how exceptional these droughts were in Roman times. The researchers identified no other major droughts in southern Britain in the period 350–500 CE and found that other parts of northwestern Europe escaped these conditions.
Roman Britain’s main produce were crops like spelt wheat and six-row barley. Because the province had a wet climate, sowing these crops in spring was more viable than in winter, but this made them vulnerable to late spring and early summer moisture deficits, and early summer droughts could lead to total crop failure.
The researchers point to surviving accounts written by Roman chroniclers to corroborate these drought-driven grain deficits. By 367 CE, Ammianus Marcellinus described the population of Britain as in the ‘utmost conditions of famine’.
“Drought from 364 to 366 CE would have impacted spring-sown crop growth substantially, triggering poor harvests,” Charles Norman said. “This would have reduced the grain supply to Hadrian’s Wall, providing a plausible motive for the rebellion there which allowed the Picts into northern Britain.”
The study suggests that given the crucial role of grain in the contract between soldiers and the army, grain deficits may have contributed to other desertions in this period, and therefore a general weakening of the Roman army in Britain. In addition, the geographic isolation of Roman Britain likely combined with the severity of the prolonged drought to reduce the ability of Rome to alleviate the deficits.
Ultimately the researchers argue that military and societal breakdown in Roman Britain provided an ideal opportunity for peripheral tribes, including the Picts, Scotti and Saxons, to invade the province en masse with the intention of raiding rather than conquest. Their finding that the most severe conditions were restricted to southern Britain undermines the idea that famines in other provinces might have forced these tribes to invade.
Andreas Rzepecki, from the Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz, said: “Our findings align with the accounts of Roman chroniclers and the seemingly coordinated nature of the ‘Conspiracy’ suggests an organised movement of strong onto weak, rather than a more chaotic assault had the invaders been in a state of desperation.”
“The prolonged and extreme drought seems to have occurred during a particularly poor period for Roman Britain, in which food and military resources were being stripped for the Rhine frontier, while immigratory pressures increased.”
“These factors limited resilience, and meant a drought induced, partial-military rebellion and subsequent external invasion were able to overwhelm the weakened defences.”
The researchers expanded their climate-conflict analysis to the entire Roman Empire for the period 350–476 CE. They reconstructed the climate conditions immediately before and after 106 battles and found that a statistically significant number of battles were fought following dry years.
Tatiana Bebchuk, from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, said: “The relationship between climate and conflict is becoming increasingly clear in our own time so these findings aren’t just important for historians. Extreme climate conditions lead to hunger, which can lead to societal challenges, which eventually lead to outright conflict.”
Charles Norman, Ulf Büntgen, Paul Krusic and Tatiana Bebchuk are based at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge; Lothar Schwinden and Andreas Rzepecki are from the Generaldirektion Kulturelles Erbe Rheinland-Pfalz in Trier. Ulf Büntgen is also affiliated with the Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences and the Department of Geography, Masaryk University in Brno.
Charles Norman was supported by Wolfson College, University of Cambridge (John Hughes PhD Studentship). Ulf Büntgen received funding from the Czech Science Foundation (# 23-08049S; Hydro8), the ERC Advanced Grant (# 882727; Monostar), and the ERC Synergy Grant (# 101118880; Synergy-Plague).
Three consecutive years of drought contributed to the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’, a pivotal moment in the history of Roman Britain, a new Cambridge-led study reveals. Researchers argue that Picts, Scotti and Saxons took advantage of famine and societal breakdown caused by an extreme period of drought to inflict crushing blows on weakened Roman defences in 367 CE. While Rome eventually restored order, some historians argue that the province never fully recovered.
Our findings provide an explanation for the catalyst of this major event.
A new website led by University of Melbourne academics and designed for peopleundergoing IVF treatment will help them navigate and decide on optional extras or so-called add-ons during their treatment.
A new website led by University of Melbourne academics and designed for peopleundergoing IVF treatment will help them navigate and decide on optional extras or so-called add-ons during their treatment.
At Tembusu College, students are not just learning about society—they are learning with it. Through carefully designed, socially responsive learning experiences, the College’s Communities and Engagement (C&E) Senior Seminars invite students to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries and confront real-world complexity head-on.Engaging directly with community partners, students co-create knowledge and build mutual understanding with individuals such as elderly residents, migrant workers and
At Tembusu College, students are not just learning about society—they are learning with it. Through carefully designed, socially responsive learning experiences, the College’s Communities and Engagement (C&E) Senior Seminars invite students to step beyond their disciplinary boundaries and confront real-world complexity head-on.
Engaging directly with community partners, students co-create knowledge and build mutual understanding with individuals such as elderly residents, migrant workers and public health officers. For these students, such conversations become the curriculum—they are not only taught to think critically, but also to act meaningfully.
Each Academic Year, over 220 students from diverse academic backgrounds participate in small, interdisciplinary seminars that extend beyond classroom walls. Rather than relying solely on textbooks, they immerse themselves in complex social environments, engaging in participatory research and reflection to cultivate both intellectual rigour and emotional intelligence.
“As part of our diverse, humanistic, interdisciplinary, inquiry-oriented programmes that broadens students’ perspectives, we connect theory with practice, and transform ideas into impact,” explained Dr Connor Graham, Director of Studies at Tembusu College. “People-centred learning allows students to develop an awareness of others and their worldviews, reflexivity and adaptability in addition to the more academic outcomes of thinking critically and questioning with relevance”.
Building empathy through action
Tembusu College’s people-centred pedagogical model fosters openness across disciplines—from sociology and biomedical science to engineering and the arts—while uniting students under a shared ethos: Helping People and Species in Need, Engaging the World, Developing Creativity, and Promoting Interdisciplinarity.
In small-class settings and interdisciplinary teams, students apply methods such as ethnographic field notes, interviews, and participatory observation to tackle pressing social issues. These are not short-term projects. Many are rooted in longstanding partnerships with community organisations, allowing successive cohorts to build on previous work and deepen engagement over time.
One such course, Health and the Community in Singapore, is part of an ongoing partnership with the Health Promotion Board. It aims to bridge the STEM–non-STEM divide and understand gaps in public health literacy.
In April 2024, students conducted research into the health needs of youths using community-based participatory methods. One group designed a low-sodium dietary intervention tailored for NUS undergraduates, featuring a visually intuitive labelling system to nudge the making of healthier food choices. Their project received a grant from NUS Health & Wellbeing and is under plans for a collaborative pilot study with Associate Professor Alberto Salvo from the NUS Department of Economics.
In another course, Technologies and Ageing in Singapore, students explored the ageing process and the lived experiences of elderly citizens through interviews, fieldwork, and person-centred therapy frameworks. Between February and April 2024, one group developed an assistive tool to facilitate end-of-life planning conversations with seniors, which was piloted at the Evergreen Circle Active Ageing Centre and later adapted for use at St Luke’s Eldercare (Ayer Rajah).
Another group created Dig Deeper, a reflective card game designed to prompt family conversations about end-of-life matters. One parent who participated in the exercise said, “As a family, we’ve never really talked about end-of-life topics. We’re not that old yet, but this game really made us reflect on our beliefs and values, and the legacy we want to leave behind.” The student participant added, “It’s funny how I haven’t felt this close to my parents in such a long time. Sometimes we’re so busy doing our own things that we forget how important it is to connect.”
Understanding happiness through dialogue
The Happiness by Design course also exemplifies Tembusu College’s people-centred approach. Partnering with social enterprises such as Happiness Initiative Singapore, students explore the multifaceted nature of well-being and life satisfaction through interviews, focus groups, and thematic analysis.
Over the semester, students develop the interpersonal and professional competencies needed for working in real-world contexts. Their conversations with members of the public helped to ground abstract academic concepts in lived realities, often challenging assumptions and leaving a lasting emotional impact. Through these interactions, students expand their conceptual vocabulary and come to understand well-being as a dynamic, deeply personal process that includes resilience, self-transcendence and growth.
Vu Bao Lien Hoa, a Year 2 student from the NUS Business School, who read the course, said, “The class discussions not only deepened my intellectual curiosity but also motivated me to communicate effectively, helping me express ideas more clearly while actively listening to others’ insights. I also became more open-minded, learning to navigate differing viewpoints with empathy and respect.”
Mr Sherman Ho, the co-founder of Happiness Initiative noted that the students’ project findings, which were shared at the course’s community engagement event, helped to illuminate the different well-being needs of various age groups in Singapore to the community participants. He appreciated how the dialogues opened up space for honest conversations about what it means to thrive today. Beyond surfacing key themes and generational shifts, many felt reassured knowing they were not alone in their challenges and aspirations—and were part of a larger, caring community.
Growing a community of learners and changemakers
With momentum building, Tembusu College is expanding its course offerings. A new seminar, Migrant Workers, Rhetoric, and Performance, marks the first NUS course centred on migrant workers. Students collaborate with Kaugnay, a migrant worker group under the auspices of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics, also known as HOME, to co-create inclusive and empowering activities and performances to engage migrant workers.
Associate Professor Ho Chee Kong, Tembusu College Master said, “Tembusu College’s C&E courses offer a diverse variety of channels for dialogue between the students and the communities they engage with. Arising from these dialogues are meaningful constructs for deeper understanding, compassion and gratitude towards one another in a more responsive societal development.”
By connecting classrooms with communities, Tembusu College is redefining what it means to teach and learn—where critical thinking meets meaningful action, and conversation becomes the heart of the curriculum.
Traditional large-scale power generators ensure a stable frequency of alternating current in the European power grid. Now, researchers from ETH Zurich have found a solution so that wind and solar power plants can take over – paving the way for the energy transition.
Traditional large-scale power generators ensure a stable frequency of alternating current in the European power grid. Now, researchers from ETH Zurich have found a solution so that wind and solar power plants can take over – paving the way for the energy transition.
At any given time, about 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting to become kidney transplant recipients. Roughly one-fifth of those get a new kidney each year, but others die while waiting. In short, the demand for kidneys makes it important to think about how we use the limited supply.A study co-authored by an MIT economist brings new data to this issue, providing nuanced estimates of the lifespan-lengthening effect of kidney transplants. That can be hard to measure well, but the study is the fi
At any given time, about 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting to become kidney transplant recipients. Roughly one-fifth of those get a new kidney each year, but others die while waiting. In short, the demand for kidneys makes it important to think about how we use the limited supply.
A study co-authored by an MIT economist brings new data to this issue, providing nuanced estimates of the lifespan-lengthening effect of kidney transplants. That can be hard to measure well, but the study is the first to account for some of the complexities involved, including the decisions patients make when accepting kidney transplants, and some of their pre-existing health factors.
The research concludes the system in use produces an additional 9.29 life-years from transplantation (LYFT) for kidney recipients. (LYFT is the difference in median survival for those with and without transplants.) If the organs were assigned randomly to patients, the study finds, that LYFT average would only be 7.54 overall. From that perspective, the current transplant system is a net positive for patients. However, the study also finds that the LYFT figure could potentially be raised as high as 14.08, depending on how the matching system is structured.
In any case, more precise estimates about the benefits of kidney transplants can help inform policymakers about the dynamics of the matching system in use.
“There’s always this question about how to take the scarce number of organs being donated and place them efficiently, and place them well,” says MIT economist Nikhil Agarwal, co-author of a newly published paper detailing the study’s results. As he emphasizes, the point of the paper is to inform the ongoing refinement of the matching system, rather than advocate one viewpoint or another.
The paper, “Choices and Outcomes in Assignment Mechanisms: The Allocation of Deceased Donor Kidneys,” is published in the latest issue of Econometrica. The authors are Agarwal, who is a professor in MIT’s Department of Economics; Charles Hodgson, an assistant professor of economics at Yale University; and Paulo Somaini, an associate professor of economics in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
After people die, there is a period lasting up to 48 hours when they could be viable organ donors. Potential kidney recipients are prioritized by time spent on wait-lists as well as tissue-type similarity, and can accept or reject any given transplant offer.
Over the last decade-plus, Agarwal has conducted significant empirical research on matching systems for organ donations, especially kidney transplants. To conduct this study, the researchers used comprehensive data about patients on the kidney wait-list from 2000-2010, made available by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, the national U.S. registry. This allowed the scholars to analyze both the matching system and the health effects of transplants; they track patient survival until February 2020.
The work is the first quasiexperimental study of kidney transplants; by carefully examining the decision-making tendencies of kidney recipients, along with many other health factors, the scholars are able to evaluate the effects of a transplant, other things being equal. Recipients are more likely to select kidney offers from donors who are younger, lacked hypertension, died of head trauma (suggesting their internal organs were healthy), and with whom they have perfect tissue-type matches.
“The [previous] methodology of estimating what are the life-years benefits was not incorporating this selection issue,” Agarwal says.
Additionally, overall, a key empirical feature of kidney transplants is that recipients who are healthier overall tend to have the largest realized life-years benefits from a transplant, meaning that the greatest increase in LYFT is not found in the set of patients with the worst health.
“You might think people who are the sickest and who are most likely to die without an organ are going to benefit the most from it [in added life-years],” Agarwal says. “But there might be some other comorbidity or factor that made them sick, and their body’s going to take a toll on the new organ, so the benefits might not be as large.”
With this in mind, the maximal LYFT number of 14.08 in the study comes from, broadly, a hypothetical scenario in which an increased number of otherwise healthy people receive transplants. Again, the current system tends to prioritize time spent on a wait-list. And some observers might advocate for a system that prioritizes those who are sickest. With all that in mind, the policymaking process for kidney transplants may still involve recognition that the biggest gains in patient life-years are not necessarily aligned with other prioritization factors.
“Our results indicate … a dilemma rooted in the tension between these two goals,” the authors write in the paper.
To be clear, Agarwal is not advocating for any one system over another, but conducting data-driven research so that policy officials can make more fully informed decisions in the ongoing, long-term process of trying to refine valuable transplant networks.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s my comparative advantage to make the ethical decisions, but we can at least think about and quantify what some of the tradeoffs are,” Agarwal adds.
Support for the research was provided in part by the National Science Foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
In a newly-published study, MIT economist Nikhil Agarwal and co-authors evaluate different potential approaches to matching systems for kidney transplants in the U.S.
By Prof Johan Sulaeman, Director of the Sustainable and Green Finance Institute (SGFIN) at NUS, and Dean’s Chair and Professor at the Dept of Finance, NUS Business School; with Mr Desmond Tay, Research Associate, and Mr Michael Alexander, Research Analyst, at SGFINThe Business Times, 14 April 2025, p44
By Prof Johan Sulaeman, Director of the Sustainable and Green Finance Institute (SGFIN) at NUS, and Dean’s Chair and Professor at the Dept of Finance, NUS Business School; with Mr Desmond Tay, Research Associate, and Mr Michael Alexander, Research Analyst, at SGFIN
By Dr Azhar Ibrahim Alwee, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Malay Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUSSuria News Online, 13 April 2025
Nation & World
What we still need to learn from pandemic
Princeton University professors Frances Lee (left) and Stephen Macedo share their findings.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
April 16, 2025
6 min read
School closures, shutdowns caused lasting damage, and debate was shut down in favor of groupthink, public policy experts say
Social di
Princeton University professors Frances Lee (left) and Stephen Macedo share their findings.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
School closures, shutdowns caused lasting damage, and debate was shut down in favor of groupthink, public policy experts say
Social distancing, school closures, and stay-at-home orders became hotly disputed during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. How should these protocols be viewed today?
The new book “In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us” by a pair of Princeton University professors finds no evidence these “non-pharmaceutical interventions” actually reduced mortality rates. What the co-authors do find is that the measures did significant damage to U.S. society — with many mainstream scientists, journalists, and scholars reluctant to make a frank appraisal.
“We argue that, in the pandemic, disagreement was moralized prematurely, and dissent was treated intolerantly,” said co-author Stephen Macedo, the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics at the University Center for Human Values. “We see these as failures of educated elites to live up to some of our own deepest values of being open to criticism and divergent points of view.”
In a talk last week hosted by the Department of Government, Macedo and co-author Frances Lee, a professor of politics and public affairs, outlined the book’s thesis and took tough audience questions.
Macedo kicked things off with a survey of pandemic planning documents that predate COVID-19. Reading John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza” (2004) had piqued the interest of former President George W. Bush. His administration advanced a strategy of containment, influenced by mathematical modelers who said children would likely be primary carriers.
A National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan, released by the Centers for Disease Control in 2006, emphasized the promise of school closures. “They predicted that school closures, by themselves, could secure a 50 percent reduction in peak death rates,” Macedo said.
Over the next 13 years, severalexperts cautioned against what the American Civil Liberties Union characterized as “aggressive, coercive actions” in its own 2008 pandemic preparedness report. Frequently emphasized was the danger of disproportionately harming vulnerable populations, including kids from low-income families.
“But the policy flipped on a dime in March 2020,” Macedo said, citing a February 2020 World Health Organization-China report from Wuhan. “The joint mission report unequivocally urged every country in the world to embrace what was, in effect, a zero-COVID policy by the severe implementation of lockdown policies.”
There was some pushback from infectious disease experts in the early days of the pandemic. But, the authors say, the marketplace of ideas was experiencing its own lockdown by the October 2020 release of the Great Barrington Declaration, with its urgent call to relax restrictions for those at minimal risk. The statement, written by three epidemiologists with distinguished credentials, drew thousands of signatories. But it was quickly branded by critics in public health and government as “dangerous” and “fringe.”
“Part of it was that people settled on a wartime framing,” Macedo offered, citing the titles of two early pandemic memoirs — Deborah Birx’s “Silent Invasion” and Sanjay Gupta’s “World War C.”
Co-author Lee picked up the thread by examining pandemic outcomes across 50 states. At first, blue and red states implemented similar measures, she recalled. But the policymaking appeared deeply polarized by Labor Day.
“Across the South, the Plains, and the Mountain West, schools reopened in the fall of 2020,” Lee said. “But nearly half of public schools around the country were still closed in March 2021.”
By January 2023, states led by Republicans had suffered mortality rates nearly 30 percent higher than their Democratic-led counterparts, according to the co-authors’ assessment of CDC data. But they found no evidence that blue states benefited from longer school closures and stay-at-home orders.
“If you examine COVID mortality across the period before vaccines became available,” Lee said, “there’s not a statistically significant difference.” This was true even when controlling for the percentage of elderly, uninsured, or obese residents. A separate analysis, published in the Lancet in 2023, surfaced similar conclusions.
Yet these non-pharmaceutical measures came at a steep cost, with Lee quickly rattling off more than a dozen examples — from a spike in alcohol-related deaths to emptied downtown business districts and learning losses for schoolchildren.
The injury was also fiscal. Congress authorized more than $5 trillion in COVID relief spending, aimed mostly at helping Americans stay financially afloat during the shutdowns.
“In the first quarter of 2020, total debt held by the public leapt from 80 percent of gross GDP to more than 100 percent,” Lee explained. “This higher plateau persists post-pandemic — and that higher level of indebtedness also entails a higher cost for debt service that puts constraints on our ability to respond to the next economic crisis or address other priorities.”
Are educated elites, largely aligned with the Democratic Party, finally ready for an honest reckoning with the COVID era’s groupthink? Macedo has his doubts. He pointed to an August 2023 JAMA Network Open article outlining varieties of misinformation shared by physicians on social media, with the aim of helping governments and professional societies censor bad actors.
Included were the Wuhan lab leak theory, concerns about the harms of masking children, and suggestions that natural infection can contribute to herd immunity. “All of these matters, as of August 2023, were either true or at least arguable,” Macedo said.
In a lightning-round review of the book’s lessons, Macedo emphasized the need for open debate and viewpoint diversity in navigating future crises.
“We also need greater honesty on the part of public officials — especially in public health,” he concluded, noting the resulting hit to the field’s credibility. “There’s too much of a tendency to not tell the whole truth, because they see their role partly as messaging and trying to nudge people’s behavior. But I think we are owed honesty about the limits of their knowledge.”
During the Q&A session, one attendee pushed back on the authors’ call for prioritizing honesty in a public health emergency. Given the pandemic’s devastating loss of life, the comparison to wartime governments protecting national security was made.
In response, Macedo referred to previous scholarship on the Vietnam War, including Barbara W. Tuchman’s “The March of Folly” (1984). “We think this is another case where people are engaging in wishful thinking — trying to get the public to go along and not being transparent about the cost of these measures and the likelihood of success,” he said.
Anders Serj Hansen, Class of 1943 Career Development Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, has been named as the recipient of the 2024-25 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.The annual award was established in fall 1982 as a permanent tribute to Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his great and enduring support for younger faculty members over the years. The purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional distinction in teaching, in research, and in ser
Anders Serj Hansen, Class of 1943 Career Development Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering, has been named as the recipient of the 2024-25 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.
The annual award was established in fall 1982 as a permanent tribute to Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his great and enduring support for younger faculty members over the years. The purpose of the award is to recognize exceptional distinction in teaching, in research, and in service.
Hansen is the principal investigator of the Hansen Lab, which develops new methods to resolve 3D genome structure at high spatiotemporal resolution to understand how DNA looping and 3D folding regulates gene expression in health and disease. His areas of research include cancer biology, computational systems biology, instrumentation and measurement, and synthetic biology.
“My research focuses on how the expression of our genes is regulated,” says Hansen. “All the cells in our body have the same DNA and the same genes. Thus, the software or applications to each cell are the same. What’s different between a neuron and a blood cell is what genes they choose to express. My research focuses on understanding how this regulation takes place.”
Those who nominated Anders for the award emphasized his remarkable productivity, mentioning his two “highly cited, paradigm-shifting research articles in Science and Nature Genetics,” and his research presentations at 50 invited talks, including two keynotes, at universities and conferences worldwide. They also highlighted his passion for mentorship and career development for the 20 current members of his laboratory.
“Anders is an outstanding role model and ambassador of biological engineering, combining a powerful research program, run as a caring mentor, and innovative undergraduate education,” says Christopher Voigt, the Daniel I.C. Wang Professor in Biological Engineering and head of the Department of Biological Engineering.
Adds Laurie Boyer, a professor of biology and biological engineering, “His work reveals new insights into how we think about the dynamics of gene regulation that would not otherwise be possible. The Hansen Lab’s work provides a unified framework rapidly adopted by the field to learn how conserved regulators provide exquisite spatial and temporal control of gene expression in the context of 3D genome architecture.”
During the nomination process, students praised Hansen’s passion for his work, along with his ability to prepare them to apply their education outside the classroom.
“He always strives to guide each lab member towards both short-term scientific success and long-term career planning through regular one-on-one meetings, facilitating collaborations and access to scientific resources, and sharing his own experiences,” says Jin Yang, a graduate student in biological engineering and member of the Hansen Lab.
“Dr. Hansen's infectious excitement for the course material made it very enjoyable to come to class and envision potential applications of the fundamental topics he taught,” adds another one of his students. “Excellent lecturer!”
Hansen obtained his undergraduate and master’s degree in chemistry at Oxford University. He received his PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Harvard University, where he applied systems biology approaches to understand how cells can encode and transmit information in the dynamics of transcription factor activation. For his postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley, Hansen developed new imaging approaches for dissecting the dynamics of architectural proteins with single-molecule resolution in living cells. Hansen joined MIT as an assistant professor of biological engineering in early 2020.
His recognitions include an NIH K99 Pathway to Independence Award (2019), NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2020), a Pew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Research Award (2021), an NSF CAREER Award (2024), and an NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (2024).
Hansen has served on several committees at MIT, including the MIT Biological Engineering Graduate Program Admissions Committee, the MIT Computational and Systems Biology Graduate Admissions Committee, and the MIT Biological Engineering Graduate Recruiting Committee, of which he has been chair since 2023.
“I have known about the Edgerton Award since I started at MIT, and I think the broad focus on both research, teaching, and service really captures what makes MIT such a unique and wonderful place,” says Hansen. “I was therefore absolutely thrilled to receive the news that I would receive the Edgerton Award this year, and I am very grateful to all the wonderful colleagues here at MIT who have supported me over the years, and all the exceptional people in my lab whose work is being recognized.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German polymath whose life and work embodied the connections between the arts and sciences, is said to have described architecture as “frozen music.” When the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT had its public opening earlier this year, the temperature outside may have been below freezing but the performances inside were a warm-up for the inaugural concert that took place in the evening. During the afternoon, visitors were invited to works
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German polymath whose life and work embodied the connections between the arts and sciences, is said to have described architecture as “frozen music.”
When the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT had its public opening earlier this year, the temperature outside may have been below freezing but the performances inside were a warm-up for the inaugural concert that took place in the evening. During the afternoon, visitors were invited to workshops in Balinese gamelan and Senegalese drumming, alongside performances by the MIT Chamber Music Society, MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, and the MIT Laptop Ensemble (FaMLE), demonstrating the synergy between global music traditions and contemporary innovation in music technology. The building was filled with visitors from the MIT community and the Boston area, keen to be among the first to enter the new building and discover what MIT Music had planned for the opening occasion.
The evening’s landmark concert, Sonic Jubilance, celebrated the building’s completion and the pivotal role of MIT Music and Theater Arts (MTA) at the center of life on campus. The program was distinguished by five world premieres by MIT composers: “Summit and Mates,” by assistant professor in jazz Miguel Zenón; “Grace,” by senior lecturer in music Charles Shadle; “Two Noble Kinsmen,” by professor emeritus in music John Harbison; and “Madrigal,” by Keeril Makan, the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor.
The premieres were interwoven through the program with performances by MIT ensembles demonstrating the breadth and depth of the conservatory-level music program — from the European classical tradition to Brazilian beats to Boston jazz (the full list of participating ensembles can be found below).
Each performance demonstrated the different ways the space could be used to create new relationships between musicians and audiences. Designed in the round by the architecture firm SANAA, the Thomas Tull Concert Hall allows sound to resonate from the circular stage or from the aisles above the tiered seating; performers might be positioned below, above, or even in the midst of the audience.
“Music has been a part of MIT's curriculum and culture from the beginning,” said Chancellor Melissa Nobles in her opening address. “Arriving at this magnificent space has taken the collective efforts of past presidents, provosts, deans, faculty, alumni, and students, all working to get us here this evening.”
Jay Scheib, the Class of 1949 Professor and MIT MTA section head, emphasized the vital role of Music at MIT as a source of cohesion and creativity for students, faculty, and the wider MIT community.
“The new building is an extraordinary home for us. As a destination to convene communities around world musics and cultures, to engage in emerging music technologies, and to experience concerts and premieres featuring our extraordinary students and our internationally renowned faculty — the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building is truly a transformational thing."
The concert was also the launch event of Artfinity, MIT’s largest public festival of the arts since 2011, featuring more than 80 free performing and visual arts events. The concert hall will host performances throughout the spring, ranging from classical to jazz to rap, and more.
Institute Professor Marcus Thompson — the faculty co-lead for Artfinity alongside Azra Akšamija, director and associate professor of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program (ACT) at MIT — shared thoughts on the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building as a point of orientation for the festival.
“Our building offers the opportunity to point to the presence and importance of other art forms, media, practices, and experiences that can bring us together as practitioners and audiences, lifting our spirits and our sights,” Thompson reflected. “An ensemble of any kind is a community as well as a metaphor for what connects us, applying different talents to create more than we can do alone.”
The new compositions by the four faculty members were a case in point. The program opened with “Summit,” a brass fanfare projected from the top of the hall with ceremonial zeal. “The piece was specifically written as an opener for the concert,” Zenón explained. “My aim was to compose something that would make a statement straight away, while also using the idea of the ‘groove’ as a driving force. The title has two meanings. The first is a mountaintop, or the top of a structure — which is where the ensemble will be placed for the performance. The second is a gathering of great minds and great leaders, which is what MIT feels like for me.” Later in the program, Zenón premiered a jazz contrafact, “Mates,” playing on Benny Golson’s Stablemates, a tribute to Herb Pomeroy, founder of MIT’s jazz program. “The idea here is to use something connected to the jazz tradition — and to Boston’s history — and approach it from a more personal perspective,” said Zenón.
“Two Noble Kinsmen,” by Harbison, was composed as a benediction for the new home of MIT Music. “In choosing to set Shakespeare’s final words in this new piece for choir and strings, I wanted to convey the sense of an invocation, an introduction, an address to unseen forces,” said Harbison. “In this case, I wanted to leave the musical structure as plain as possible so that we understand why these words are chosen. I hoped to capture the stoic balance of these lines — they are in themselves a kind of verbal music.”
In setting the words of the poem “Grace,” by the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, Shadle — a composer of Choctaw heritage — envisioned a “sonic extension” of the MIT Land Acknowledgement. “‘Grace’ intended to speak to the Indigenous presence at the Institute and to open the new building with a reminder of the balm music that can bring to a troubled world,” said Shadle. “I hope that I have composed music that links Indigenous and Western traditions in ways that are compelling and thoughtful and that, while recognizing the ‘pieces of hurt,’ still makes a place for grace.”
Before the concert’s euphoric finale — a performance by Rambax Senegalese Drum Ensemble directed by Lamine Touré — “Madrigal” (the evening’s fourth world premiere) served to demonstrate the spatial dimensions of sound made possible by the design of the concert hall.
Makan’s composition was performed by four student violinists positioned at the top of each aisle and a fifth, Professor Natalie Lin Douglas, at the center of the stage, simultaneously showcasing the geometry of the hall and referencing the ever-shifting perspectives of the sculpture that stands at the north entrance of the building — “Madrigal (2024),” by Sanford Biggers.
“My piece aims to capture the multifaceted quality of Sanford Biggers’ sculpture. From whichever vantage point we might look at it, we see the same patterns in new relationships with one another. In other words, there is no one point of view that is privileged over another.”
As faculty lead for the building project, Makan developed a friendship with Joyce Linde, who provided the principal gift that led to the building. “Joyce and I were on the selection committee to choose an artist to create a site-specific sculpture outside the building. She was very excited about the process, and very engaged with Sanford,” said Makan. “Joyce passed away before she was able to see the building’s completion, and I wanted to honor her legacy by writing an original piece of music in her memory.”
That sense of relationship, pattern-making, and new beginnings was articulated by Frederick Harris, director and senior lecturer in music and the co-producer of the concert, alongside Andy Wilds, program manager in music. “The hall is an instrument; we’re communing with this incredible space and getting to know it,” said Harris. “It’s a relationship. The circular form of the hall is very welcoming, not only to immersive experiences but also to shared experiences.”
The role of music in cultivating community will ensure that the building will become an integral part of MIT life. The work taking place in rehearsal rooms matches the innovation of the Institute’s labs — proving that the arts are a necessary counterpart to science and technology, continuous with the human instinct to express and invent. Sonic Jubilance sets the tone of what’s to come.
MIT Music ensembles (in order of concert appearance):
Performance in the new Thomas Tull Hall in the Edward and Joyce Linde Music building by Assistant Professor of MIT Music and Theater Arts and violinist Natalie Lin Douglas and four students. The musicians performed the new piece Madrigal composed by Keeril Makan, SHASS Associate Dean and Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor.
Jian-Xiang Qiu (left) and Suyang Xu adjust the lasers Photo by Dylan Goodman
Science & Tech
Hunting a basic building block of the universe
Researchers find way to confirm existence of axions, a leading dark matter candidate
Yahya Chaudry
Harvard Correspondent
April 16, 2025
5 min read
No one has ever seen axions. But scientists have theorized their existence as a way to explain some o
Researchers find way to confirm existence of axions, a leading dark matter candidate
Yahya Chaudry
Harvard Correspondent
5 min read
No one has ever seen axions. But scientists have theorized their existence as a way to explain some of the biggest questions in particle physics, including the nature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that constitutes most the mass of the cosmos. Confirming the existence of axions could lead to insights into the history and composition of the universe itself.
Now, in a groundbreaking experiment, a team of scientists led by Harvard and King’s College London have made a significant step toward using quasiparticles to hunt for axions, which are hypothesized to actually make up dark matter. The findings, recently published in Nature, open new realms for harnessing quasiparticles to search for dark matter and develop new quantum technologies.
“Axion quasiparticles are simulations of axion particles, which can be further used as a detector of actual particles,” said senior co-author Suyang Xu, assistant professor of chemistry. “If a dark matter axion hits our material, it excites the quasiparticle, and, by detecting this reaction, we can confirm the presence of the dark matter axion.”
Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who first proposed axions, credits these findings as a major breakthrough in the study of these particles.
“The jury is still out on the existence of axions as fundamental particles that beautify the basic equations of physics and provide the cosmological dark matter,” Wilczek said. “But now, thanks to these ingenious new experiments, we know for sure that the Nature makes use of the underlying ideas. Axions now join holes, phonons, plasmons, and a handful of other ‘quasiparticles’ we find emerging as ingredients of matter, available for new scientific and technological creations.”
The experimental work was led by Jian-Xiang Qiu, a Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student in the Xu lab. Researchers who assisted in the study include Yu-Fei Liu, Anyuan Gao, Christian Tzschaschel, Houchen Li, Damien Berube, Thao Dinh, Tianye Huang, as well as an international team of researchers from King’s College, UC Berkeley, Northeastern University, and several other institutions.
The researchers utilized manganese bismuth telluride, a material renowned for its unique electronic and magnetic properties. By crafting this material into a 2D crystal structure, they established a platform ideal for nurturing axion quasiparticles. This process involved precision nano-fabrication engineering, in which the material was meticulously layered to enhance its quantum characteristics.
“Our lab has been working on this kind of interesting material for almost five to six years, and it is both a very rich material platform and also it is very difficult to work with,” said first author Qiu. “Because it’s air-sensitive, we needed to exfoliate down to a few atomic layers to be able to tune its property properly.”
Operating in a highly controlled environment, the team coaxed the axion quasiparticles into revealing their dynamic nature in manganese bismuth telluride. To accomplish this delicate feat, the team utilized a series of sophisticated techniques including ultrafast laser optics. Innovative measurement tools allowed them to capture movements of axion quasiparticles with precision, turning an abstract theory into a clearly visible phenomenon.
By demonstrating the coherent behavior and intricate dynamics of axion quasiparticles, the researchers not only affirmed long-held theoretical ideas in the field of condensed-matter physics but also laid the groundwork for future technological developments. For example, the axion polariton is a new form of light-matter interaction that could lead to novel optical applications.
In the field of particle physics and cosmology, this new observation of the axion quasiparticle can be used as a dark-matter detector, which the researchers have described as a “cosmic car radio” that could become the most accurate dark-matter detector yet.
Dark matter remains one of the most profound mysteries in physics, constituting about 85 percent of the universe’s mass without detection. By tuning into specific radio frequencies emitted by axion particles, the team aims to capture dark-matter signals that have eluded previous technology. The researchers believe it could help discover dark matter in 15 years.
“This is a really exciting time to be a dark-matter researcher. There are as many papers being published now about axions as there were about the Higgs-Boson a year before it was found,” said senior co-author David Marsh, a lecturer at King’s College London. “Experiments proposed that axions emitted a frequency in 1983, and we now know we can tune in to it — we’re closing in on the axion and fast.”
Xu is confident that the team’s multifaceted approach enabled their pioneering success.
“Our work is made possible by a highly interdisciplinary approach involving condensed-matter physics, material chemistry, as well as high-energy physics,” Xu said. “It showcased the potential of quantum materials in the realm of particle physics and cosmology.”
Moving forward, the researchers plan to deepen their exploration of axion quasiparticles’ properties, while refining experimental conditions for greater precision.
“The goal for the future is obviously to have an experiment that probes axion dark matter, which would definitely be super beneficial for the whole-particle physics community that is interested in axions,” said senior co-author Jan Schütte Engel, a physicist at UC Berkeley.
This research was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Science Foundation.
When Michael Benjamin, principal research scientist in the MIT Center for Ocean Engineering, arrived at MIT 25 years ago, only professors and postdocs were allowed to touch the department’s underwater vehicles. The vehicles were expensive, he explains, and required extensive training to operate.“People were scared to death about losing or damaging them, [and] there was no education pipeline to teach students,” he says, adding that the introduction of class 2.680 (Marine Autonomy, Sensing, and Co
When Michael Benjamin, principal research scientist in the MIT Center for Ocean Engineering, arrived at MIT 25 years ago, only professors and postdocs were allowed to touch the department’s underwater vehicles. The vehicles were expensive, he explains, and required extensive training to operate.
“People were scared to death about losing or damaging them, [and] there was no education pipeline to teach students,” he says, adding that the introduction of class 2.680 (Marine Autonomy, Sensing, and Communication) changed this a lot, by creating a class where undergraduate and graduate students could learn to write autonomy code, and run their software on robots on the Charles River. The addition of class 2.S01 (Introduction to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) last year took the hands-on learning opportunities even further.
“2.S01 is a return to our roots: underwater vehicles. We wanted to create a learning environment where every student handles a robot, and no one is afraid about losing one,” he says. Each student is sent home with an electronics kit, which Benjamin calls the heart of the robot. “They can experiment all they want in their dorm room, and we’ll give them another kit if they break it.”
The AUVs and student test kits in 2.S01 were designed and built by Supun Randeni, a research scientist in mechanical engineering and the primary lecturer and content creator of 2.S01, and Captain Michael Sacarny from MIT Sea Grant. “Dr. Randeni and Captain Sacarny are the geniuses behind the class,” says Benjamin. Together, Randeni and Sacarny run the hands-on lab instruction.
The goal is to expand education and research opportunities to include a larger and younger group of students. “It’s the exact opposite of 25 years ago, when only a privileged few people were allowed to get inside the robot,” says Benjamin. “Student growth and interest is directly related to the degree they have ‘ownership’ of their robot. Physical possession, but also responsibility for its safe operation and return.”
2.S01 provides students with an in-depth insight into autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), by introducing theoretical and practical aspects of the AUV design process. This includes fundamentals of naval architecture, electrical systems design, mechanical design, and software design. Students assemble their own AUVs by using a kit of parts and guidance from instructors, beginning with core electronics and building out a full vehicle for deployment in the Charles River on the MIT campus in the final weeks.
Among the activities, students engage in waterproofing vacuum tests, pre-launch sub-system tests, and dockside tests for ballasting, all followed by in-water low-level control tuning runs. Students also construct autonomy missions — first in simulation, followed by in-water autonomous missions to conduct an environmental survey in the Charles River. The course’s final labs include group competitions involving in-water challenges. For the second iteration of the course, which starts in late March, the instructors plan to add more labs that allow the students to explore the intricacies of the electronic, more simulations options, and more water time.
Adowyn Bryne, a second-year mechanical engineering (MechE) student, took the course last year as a member of the first cohort, but this wasn’t her first experience with underwater vehicles. She’d participated in a SeaPerch program in high school. “I chose 2.S01 because I wanted to learn about more complex underwater vehicles,” says Bryne. “I didn’t find out until later in the semester that SeaPerch was actually started at MIT Sea Grant!”
Benjamin says he hopes there are a few things that first-year students take away from participating in 2.S01: first, an understanding that marine robotics is a very cross-disciplinary effort, involving mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control theory, computer science and ocean science; and, second, the opportunity to view the effort as a gateway to exploring and understanding the ocean. Students says it’s that, and so much more.
Isabella Yeung, a third-year Course 12 student, took the class during her sophomore year after participating in an MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) in the MIT Sea Grant Bio Lab with Carolina Bastidas. Bastidas is a research scientist in MIT Sea Grant's Marine Advisory Services group.
“While UROP-ing, I’d seen many AUVs and other projects being developed at MIT Sea Grant,” Yeung says. “I was curious to learn more and have a deeper insight into what they were doing. This class was a prime opportunity to jump into the world of marine robotics without having any background in Course 2.”
She called the course “easily one of the most hands-on (and downright fun) classes” she’s ever taken, adding that she appreciated having the opportunity to assemble and deploy the AUV.
“As someone who enjoys tinkering, I appreciated the opportunity to get my hands dirty — quite literally, with grease and Charles [River] water,” says Yeung. “I looked forward to all of the classes, especially the deployment sessions. Nothing quite matched the sheer rush of launching our program, rushing to drop the AUV into the Charles, and engaging in a boat chase, hoping it hadn’t gone rogue.”
Bryne advises students considering the course to not worry too much if the class lines up with a particular career path they’re considering. “Your first year is about exploring. If you’re interested in the class, take it! You might find a new area of interest. Regardless of whether you want to keep learning about AUVs, you’ll get valuable transferable skills and have a lot of fun.”
Bryne, herself, says the experience is helping to set the stage for exploring future interests and opportunities. “Every time I’ve gotten to do something with robots, I’ve loved it,” she says, “but I’m also very passionate about women’s health. I want to design medical technology specifically for women, but I definitely think there’s room to incorporate robotics into that. It’s great that MechE is such a broad field, and that the curriculum at MIT allows me to explore so many potential areas of study.”
Isabella Yeung (left), a third-year student in earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, and Adowyn Byrne, a second-year student in mechanical engineering, hold the AUV they constructed in Course 2.S01.
“A person of big ideas and an even bigger humanistic imagination," Obeyesekere joined Princeton’s faculty in 1980 and transferred to emeritus status in 2000. He chaired the anthropology department from 1983 to 1988.
“A person of big ideas and an even bigger humanistic imagination," Obeyesekere joined Princeton’s faculty in 1980 and transferred to emeritus status in 2000. He chaired the anthropology department from 1983 to 1988.
Assistant Professor Wang Xinchao from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering at NUS has been named one of the 2024 recipients of the prestigious IEEE AI’s 10 to Watch. As an NUS Presidential Young Professor and the only award recipient from Singapore, Asst Prof Wang is recognised for his impactful research in Efficient Machine Learning. His work focuses on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that are more compact, faster, and
As an NUS Presidential Young Professor and the only award recipient from Singapore, Asst Prof Wang is recognised for his impactful research in Efficient Machine Learning. His work focuses on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that are more compact, faster, and less dependent on large datasets — a direction that promises to make AI more accessible, environmentally friendly, and widely applicable across industries.
Presented every two years by the IEEE Computer Society, the award honours rising stars who are making significant contributions to the field of AI. In addition to celebrating exceptional talent, it also highlights pioneering innovation and visionary thinking that are shaping the future of AI.
Like a job interview, the university admissions process is a two-way street. While the university is processing documents from prospective students and assessing them through interviews and auditions, applicants are also gathering information, often from their school seniors and the Internet, to make their final decisions.Applicants to the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YST) who are shortlisted for admission will now add first-hand experience to their considerations, after the school revam
Like a job interview, the university admissions process is a two-way street. While the university is processing documents from prospective students and assessing them through interviews and auditions, applicants are also gathering information, often from their school seniors and the Internet, to make their final decisions.
Applicants to the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music (YST) who are shortlisted for admission will now add first-hand experience to their considerations, after the school revamped its admissions process in 2024. Moving away from traditional auditions as the primary means of assessment, YST has created a full-day immersion experience to give prospective students a taste of life in NUS and YST while enabling faculty members to assess them holistically as they participate in lessons and collaborative sessions.
Candidates must first undergo a pre-screening process, with specific requirements varying based on the programme they are applying for. Screened candidates are then invited to take part in the immersion experience, where they will be further assessed before they are considered for an admissions offer.
“As our reputation climbs, so does our competition with top conservatories in the world to recruit the best music students internationally,” said Mr Tan Wei Boon, Deputy Director of Student Life at YST. The new immersion experience is designed to evaluate candidates more effectively and encourage higher acceptance of admissions offers so as to ensure a high-quality student cohort each year, he added.
Early results since the revamped process was implemented are promising. Students who were admitted through the first edition in 2024 thrived in their first semester of studies, achieving an unprecedented 100% pass rate in all their courses.
Said Professor Peter Tornquist, Dean of YST: “YST Immersion has truly been a game-changing initiative, energising and modernising our admissions process. It gives applicants a fuller reflection of our pedagogical approach, allows us to achieve a better student fit, and resonates with the multi-faceted capacities that young music professionals need in today’s industry.”
The second edition of the immersion experience was conducted from January to March this year and hosted 89 prospective students hailing from 12 countries including Singapore, China, Uzbekistan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia. Since applicants may now need to travel farther than before to complete the in-person admissions process, financial aid is offered in special cases to ensure that deserving students are not excluded due to financial difficulties.
Enhanced interactions for better assessments
The old admissions process followed the approach used by most music schools, which assesses applicants primarily through auditions before a faculty panel. These auditions would take place at YST for applicants based in Singapore or at one of YST’s regional audition centres, usually in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or South Korea, for applicants based elsewhere.
This approach was not ideal as it did not leave much time for the students and the panel to interact on a deeper level beyond a 20 to 30-minute audition performance, said Mr Tan.
The new immersive experience enhances the assessment process by giving candidates a glimpse into a day in the life of a YST undergraduate. While the candidates learn about YST’s pedagogical approach and interact with their potential future classmates through various activities, the faculty members teaching and observing the sessions get to conduct a more holistic assessment of each prospective student across various areas and competencies.
Typical activities include individual and chamber music lessons with a faculty member from the relevant major, as well as a collaborative music-making session with peers. Activities are also tailored for the various majors. Applicants for performance majors such as strings, winds, and brass are given the opportunity to rehearse in groups with a chamber coach, while applicants for the Audio Arts & Sciences major complete a hands-on practicum where they learn the basics of setting up a recording session. Meanwhile, Composition applicants attend a seminar where they take part in discussions and debates on contemporary composers in the field.
Additional information sessions are incorporated throughout, such as a tour of YST’s state-of-the-art facilities and the NUS campus led by student ambassadors, and a dialogue with the YST Student Life Office where students can ask questions about topics ranging from scholarships and bursaries to campus housing and educational opportunities, such as pursuing minors or second majors in other NUS schools and faculties.
Sneak peek into YST life
Current YST students who were admitted through the revamped admissions process said it gave them an accurate preview of what YST classes would be like and enabled them to evaluate whether the school culture and teaching style would suit them.
First-year student Lucius Quek, who is majoring in Audio Arts & Sciences, said that going through the immersion experience and getting to engage in conversation with YST faculty and staff helped him to feel confident in his decision to accept YST’s offer when it was extended. The teaching methodology and materials used in the immersion matched his actual student experience, enabling him to quickly find his footing in YST.
Christian Daniel Ragay Borres, a first-year Percussion student from the Philippines, was pleased to learn that YST would not be putting him through the traditional audition process used by most conservatories, including the Australian music schools he applied to.
He appreciated the two-way exchange of information facilitated by the lesson format, noting: “It wasn’t just my skills being presented to them, but also their teaching styles and plans being experienced by me.”
The collaborative music-making session in the immersion experience for Music & Society / Music, Collaboration & Production (MS/MCP) candidates was especially memorable for first-year student Cervone Seah, who recalls working with musicians from diverse backgrounds to create a new piece based on improvisation. The exercise highlighted the importance of teamwork and creativity, both of which she has found to be integral to her MS/MCP studies.
“The immersion was an excellent preview of the dynamic and interdisciplinary approach that defines the MS/MCP programme,” Cervone said. “Experiencing YST’s culture first-hand reassured me that this was the right place for my musical and academic growth.”
The planned space missions to search for remote life will provide valuable insights even if they do not find any evidence of life, says astrophysicist Daniel Angerhausen.
The planned space missions to search for remote life will provide valuable insights even if they do not find any evidence of life, says astrophysicist Daniel Angerhausen.
By Assoc Prof Thang Leng Leng, Deputy Head of the Dept of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUSzbSunday, 13 April 2025, Views, p17
When some commuter trains arrive at the end of the line, they must travel to a switching platform to be turned around so they can depart the station later, often from a different platform than the one at which they arrived.Engineers use software programs called algorithmic solvers to plan these movements, but at a station with thousands of weekly arrivals and departures, the problem becomes too complex for a traditional solver to unravel all at once.Using machine learning, MIT researchers have d
When some commuter trains arrive at the end of the line, they must travel to a switching platform to be turned around so they can depart the station later, often from a different platform than the one at which they arrived.
Engineers use software programs called algorithmic solvers to plan these movements, but at a station with thousands of weekly arrivals and departures, the problem becomes too complex for a traditional solver to unravel all at once.
Using machine learning, MIT researchers have developed an improved planning system that reduces the solve time by up to 50 percent and produces a solution that better meets a user’s objective, such as on-time train departures. The new method could also be used for efficiently solving other complex logistical problems, such as scheduling hospital staff, assigning airline crews, or allotting tasks to factory machines.
Engineers often break these kinds of problems down into a sequence of overlapping subproblems that can each be solved in a feasible amount of time. But the overlaps cause many decisions to be needlessly recomputed, so it takes the solver much longer to reach an optimal solution.
The new, artificial intelligence-enhanced approach learns which parts of each subproblem should remain unchanged, freezing those variables to avoid redundant computations. Then a traditional algorithmic solver tackles the remaining variables.
“Often, a dedicated team could spend months or even years designing an algorithm to solve just one of these combinatorial problems. Modern deep learning gives us an opportunity to use new advances to help streamline the design of these algorithms. We can take what we know works well, and use AI to accelerate it,” says Cathy Wu, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at MIT, and a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).
She is joined on the paper by lead author Sirui Li, an IDSS graduate student; Wenbin Ouyang, a CEE graduate student; and Yining Ma, a LIDS postdoc. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Eliminating redundance
One motivation for this research is a practical problem identified by a master’s student Devin Camille Wilkins in Wu’s entry-level transportation course. The student wanted to apply reinforcement learning to a real train-dispatch problem at Boston’s North Station. The transit organization needs to assign many trains to a limited number of platforms where they can be turned around well in advance of their arrival at the station.
This turns out to be a very complex combinatorial scheduling problem — the exact type of problem Wu’s lab has spent the past few years working on.
When faced with a long-term problem that involves assigning a limited set of resources, like factory tasks, to a group of machines, planners often frame the problem as Flexible Job Shop Scheduling.
In Flexible Job Shop Scheduling, each task needs a different amount of time to complete, but tasks can be assigned to any machine. At the same time, each task is composed of operations that must be performed in the correct order.
Such problems quickly become too large and unwieldy for traditional solvers, so users can employ rolling horizon optimization (RHO) to break the problem into manageable chunks that can be solved faster.
With RHO, a user assigns an initial few tasks to machines in a fixed planning horizon, perhaps a four-hour time window. Then, they execute the first task in that sequence and shift the four-hour planning horizon forward to add the next task, repeating the process until the entire problem is solved and the final schedule of task-machine assignments is created.
A planning horizon should be longer than any one task’s duration, since the solution will be better if the algorithm also considers tasks that will be coming up.
But when the planning horizon advances, this creates some overlap with operations in the previous planning horizon. The algorithm already came up with preliminary solutions to these overlapping operations.
“Maybe these preliminary solutions are good and don’t need to be computed again, but maybe they aren’t good. This is where machine learning comes in,” Wu explains.
For their technique, which they call learning-guided rolling horizon optimization (L-RHO), the researchers teach a machine-learning model to predict which operations, or variables, should be recomputed when the planning horizon rolls forward.
L-RHO requires data to train the model, so the researchers solve a set of subproblems using a classical algorithmic solver. They took the best solutions — the ones with the most operations that don’t need to be recomputed — and used these as training data.
Once trained, the machine-learning model receives a new subproblem it hasn’t seen before and predicts which operations should not be recomputed. The remaining operations are fed back into the algorithmic solver, which executes the task, recomputes these operations, and moves the planning horizon forward. Then the loop starts all over again.
“If, in hindsight, we didn’t need to reoptimize them, then we can remove those variables from the problem. Because these problems grow exponentially in size, it can be quite advantageous if we can drop some of those variables,” she adds.
An adaptable, scalable approach
To test their approach, the researchers compared L-RHO to several base algorithmic solvers, specialized solvers, and approaches that only use machine learning. It outperformed them all, reducing solve time by 54 percent and improving solution quality by up to 21 percent.
In addition, their method continued to outperform all baselines when they tested it on more complex variants of the problem, such as when factory machines break down or when there is extra train congestion. It even outperformed additional baselines the researchers created to challenge their solver.
“Our approach can be applied without modification to all these different variants, which is really what we set out to do with this line of research,” she says.
L-RHO can also adapt if the objectives change, automatically generating a new algorithm to solve the problem — all it needs is a new training dataset.
In the future, the researchers want to better understand the logic behind their model’s decision to freeze some variables, but not others. They also want to integrate their approach into other types of complex optimization problems like inventory management or vehicle routing.
This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, MIT’s Research Support Committee, an Amazon Robotics PhD Fellowship, and MathWorks.
MIT researchers developed a machine-learning-guided technique to solve complex, long-horizon planning problems more efficiently than some traditional approaches.
The metals have previously been shown to damage the health of pollinators, which ingest them in nectar as they feed, leading to reduced population sizes and death. Even low nectar metal levels can have long-term effects, by affecting bees’ learning and memory - which impacts their foraging ability.
Researchers have found that common plants including white clover and bindweed, which are vital forage for pollinators in cities, can accumulate arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from contaminated s
The metals have previously been shown to damage the health of pollinators, which ingest them in nectar as they feed, leading to reduced population sizes and death. Even low nectar metal levels can have long-term effects, by affecting bees’ learning and memory - which impacts their foraging ability.
Researchers have found that common plants including white clover and bindweed, which are vital forage for pollinators in cities, can accumulate arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from contaminated soils.
Metal contamination is an issue in the soils of cities worldwide, with the level of contamination usually increasing with the age of a city. The metals come from a huge range of sources including cement dust and mining.
The researchers say soils in cities should be tested for metals before sowing wildflowers and if necessary, polluted areas should be cleaned up before new wildflower habitats are established.
The study highlights the importance of growing the right species of wildflowers to suit the soil conditions.
Reducing the risk of metal exposure is critical for the success of urban pollinator conservation schemes. The researchers say it is important to manage wildflower species that self-seed on contaminated urban land, for example by frequent mowing to limit flowering - which reduces the transfer of metals from the soil to the bees.
Dr Sarah Scott in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the report, said: “It’s really important to have wildflowers as a food source for the bees, and our results should not discourage people from planting wildflowers in towns and cities.
“We hope this study will raise awareness that soil health is also important for bee health. Before planting wildflowers in urban areas to attract bees and other pollinators, it’s important to consider the history of the land and what might be in the soil – and if necessary find out whether there’s a local soil testing and cleanup service available first.”
The study was carried out in the post-industrial US city of Cleveland, Ohio, which has over 33,700 vacant lots left as people have moved away from the area. In the past, iron and steel production, oil refining and car manufacturing went on there. But any land that was previously the site of human activity may be contaminated with traces of metals.
To get their results, the researchers extracted nectar from a range of self-seeded flowering plants that commonly attract pollinating insects, found growing on disused land across the city. They tested this for the presence of arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead. Lead was consistently found at the highest concentrations, reflecting the state of the soils in the city.
The researchers found that different species of plant accumulate different amounts, and types, of the metals. Overall, the bright blue-flowered chicory plant (Cichorium intybus) accumulated the largest total metal concentration, followed by white clover (Trifolium repens), wild carrot (Daucus carota) and bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis). These plants are all vital forage for pollinators in cities - including cities in the UK - providing a consistent supply of nectar across locations and seasons.
There is growing evidence that wild pollinator populations have dropped by over 50% in the last 50 years, caused primarily by changes in land use and management across the globe. Climate change and pesticide use also play a role; overall the primary cause of decline is the loss of flower-rich habitat.
Pollinators play a vital role in food production: many plants, including apple and tomato, require pollination in order to develop fruit. Natural ‘pollination services’ are estimated to add billions of dollars to global crop productivity.
Scott said: “Climate change feels so overwhelming, but simply planting flowers in certain areas can help towards conserving pollinators, which is a realistic way for people to make a positive impact on the environment.”
The research was funded primarily by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Wildflowers growing on land previously used for buildings and factories can accumulate lead, arsenic and other metal contaminants from the soil, which are consumed by pollinators as they feed, a new study has found.
Our results should not discourage people from planting wildflowers in towns and cities. But.. it’s important to consider the history of the land and what might be in the soil."
Campus & Community
‘This is weakening the United States.’
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
April 15, 2025
4 min read
Scholars react to Trump administration actions against Harvard and other institutions
Harvard on Monday rejected demands by the Trump administration that link $9 billion
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Scholars react to Trump administration actions against Harvard and other institutions
Harvard on Monday rejected demands by the Trump administration that link $9 billion in federal funding to compliance with changes to University governance and hiring practices, viewpoint “audits” of academic departments, students, and faculty, and other measures.
The funding, more than $2 billion of which was frozen hours after Harvard responded to the demands, supports research that “has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields,” according to a message President Alan Garber sent to the Harvard community Monday afternoon.
The government has cited concerns about campus antisemitism in explaining its decision to halt funding at Harvard and several other institutions of higher education.
On Tuesday, we sought reactions to the funding cuts in conversations across campus.
Amberly Xie
Third-year Ph.D. student in applied physics
“I feel like at some core level, it violates our rights as people and researchers and scientists — and as a university as well,” said Xie, whose research focuses in part on quantum computing.
Like many students and scholars, she worries that major funding cuts at institutions such as Harvard will slow or in some cases halt scientific progress.
“Universities play a major role because it’s where a lot of research takes place,” she said. “There are companies and startups that do this kind of work, but I feel like it’s truly in universities where a lot of the fundamental work is done, and a lot of the pioneering work in terms of allowing us to not only better understand the platforms like the ones I work with, but also help put them into real-world applications.”
Andrew Tyrie
Senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School; former member of the House of Commons in the British Parliament; current member of the House of Lords
“I think there’s a much bigger job to be done, and that is for all those who disagree with the dramatic and, in my view, dangerous decisions being taken by the new administration to speak up,” said Tyrie, who is studying regulatory reforms in advanced Western economies in his time at the Kennedy School.
Everyone engaged in academia and politics should be outraged by the Trump administration’s stance, he said.
“And of course, as a non-U.S. citizen, I am concerned about the wider effects on the world — both the prospects for growth and prosperity, but also for its security and stability,” he said. “What I’m not asking is for people to speak up in the interests of the world, but to speak up in the interests of the United States of America. This is weakening the United States and imperiling the prosperity and the security of millions of Americans.”
Joshua Cherniss
Visiting fellow at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics; associate professor of government at Georgetown University
“I study, to some extent, authoritarian regimes, and I think that some of what we’re seeing — while it’s not equivalent to fully formed authoritarianism — is starting to approach it in terms of trying to have the government dictate the ideas that are taught, that can be expressed and that can’t be expressed,” said Cherniss. “I think that it’s important that Harvard and other universities not buckle under what I think is pretty clearly an assault on academic freedom and university self-governance.”
Cherniss studies political theory, particularly defenses and critiques of liberalism. He said he worries about the impact of funding freezes on fellow scholars inside and outside his field.
“We may have to cut a lot of the most socially useful work that we do in medical sciences and technology — things that have really benefited America and benefit the world in very practical ways,” he said.
Campus & Community
The food was good. The conversation was better.
Professor Michael Sandel (right) led a conversation for the “Food For Thought” event.Photos by Grace DuVal
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
April 15, 2025
5 min read
‘Our Harvard’ brings students together to tackle tough issues
First they met for coffee. This month they came together for a full meal.
Spurred by the
Professor Michael Sandel (right) led a conversation for the “Food For Thought” event.
Photos by Grace DuVal
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
‘Our Harvard’ brings students together to tackle tough issues
First they met for coffee. This month they came together for a full meal.
Spurred by the Gaza conflict, Nim Ravid ’25, an economics concentrator from Israel, wanted to find new ways to connect students across the College. Last summer, he co-founded “Our Harvard” with five of his peers, and one of their first efforts was pairing students for coffee chats meant to encourage conversations across differences.
On April 1 at Smith Campus Center, the group hosted a larger gathering: “Food For Thought: Our Harvard College,” an evening of conversation during which students offered their perspectives on a range of issues.
Following the event, students gathered in the lobby of the Smith Campus Center to share a meal.
Ravid was heartened by the results.
“It was the most vulnerable and honest I’ve ever heard Harvard students communicating with each other, which I think reflects our efforts to bring students from across campus together to this event and create an environment where students assume best intentions and say what they actually think,” he said.
The conversation, which was followed by a meal provided by Harvard University Dining Services, was moderated by Michael Sandel, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government.
“There’s a risk with conversations like this, that everyone will think it’s much safer to just celebrate diversity, eat some food, and go home, but that would miss the learning and the struggling and the wrestling with the questions out of which friendships and genuine dialogue can be forged,” Sandel told the crowd.
One by one, members of Our Harvard and those in the audience spoke about feeling ostracized for their identity, national origin, or beliefs, and finding it difficult to establish friendships across differences. Frederico Araujo ’25, an Our Harvard founder from Portugal, discussed his struggles connecting with students from Brazil.
“Sometimes when I came to Annenberg and I initiated a conversation that I hoped would be about our shared language, our shared food, our shared music, and our many shared traditions between Brazilian and Portuguese culture, I would actually get the cold shoulder,” he said. “I don’t need to give a history lesson about the historical background between Portugal and Brazil, but I wasn’t aware that those historical ties would be sufficient for someone to ignore my friendship.”
In response, Sandel said, “Sometimes seeming similarities can be startling for their distance.”
The conversation covered the Israel-Palestine conflict, with Ravid and others expressing their fears about sharing personal experiences. Several participants with no direct connections to the war said they have found themselves uncomfortably in the middle of friends with different views.
Angie Gabeau ’25, another founding member of Our Harvard and a sociology concentrator, acknowledged being apprehensive when the conversation turned to the Middle East, but said that it was beneficial in the end.
“I’m actually glad that it was brought up,” she said. “If you are talking about the hottest topic on the market right now and are still able to make yourself vulnerable to discussing with people who might not agree with you, then other cases will be a lot less daunting.”
Angie Gabeau ’25 is a founding member of Our Harvard.
Gabeau, a Boston native, told the audience that she arrived at Harvard hoping to connect with other Black students after coming from a predominantly white high school. The Winthrop House resident joined the Black Students Association, the Kuumba Singers, and Omo Naija x The Wahala Boys, an African dance troupe.
“I was so happy to be able to find a community here,” she said. While emphasizing the importance of these groups, Gabeau also said that she believes it’s important to build relationships across differences. “This conversation wasn’t to shadow the importance of affinity organizations but seeing how we can both share our cultures, ideas, values, and morals with each other, while being able to feel safe here at Harvard,” she said after the event.
Harvard College Dean of Students Tom Dunne found it meaningful “that the core group of students who are organizing this are seniors in their last weeks on campus.”
Ravid expressed his hope that Food for Thought will help spark similar movements at Harvard. “I also hope this event will encourage others to not treat other students differently based on their identity, but rather for who they are,” he said. “I hope students will really take time to get to know each other before they judge.”
Gabeau noted that Our Harvard has set goals that do not ask too much of students.
“I don’t want this to come off as, ‘We can all be friends and everything’s going to be perfect,’ because that’s not really what we’re trying to do,” she said. “There’ll be people who have disagreements that won’t foster friendship. I wouldn’t want people walking around campus pretending to be friends.”
She continued: “It’s not supposed to be creating a perfect utopian universe but rather pushing people to go the extra mile in terms of seizing all the opportunity in the different pockets of joy and growth that there is on campus.”
In a 2014 essay on mentorship in The Chronicle of Higher Education, American scholar Leonard Cassuto wrote: “In Greek myth, Mentor was a wise man who earned the trust of Odysseus, who selected him to educate his son, Telemachus. The word has a legacy: ‘Mentor’ is a title that should be earned.” Earlier this year, it was announced that two MIT affiliates — Kimberly “Kim” Benard, associate dean and director of distinguished fellowships and academic excellence at MIT Career Advising and Professiona
In a 2014 essay on mentorship in The Chronicle of Higher Education, American scholar Leonard Cassuto wrote: “In Greek myth, Mentor was a wise man who earned the trust of Odysseus, who selected him to educate his son, Telemachus. The word has a legacy: ‘Mentor’ is a title that should be earned.”
Earlier this year, it was announced that two MIT affiliates — Kimberly “Kim” Benard, associate dean and director of distinguished fellowships and academic excellence at MIT Career Advising and Professional Development (CAPD), and Leigh Estabrooks, longtime invention education officer with the Lemelson-MIT Program — had been honored by the Joe Biden administration with the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). The award, administered by the National Science Foundation on behalf of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, celebrates those who’ve made “significant contributions to mentoring and thereby support the future productivity” of the nation’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics workforce.
While this award marks Benard’s and Estabrooks’ decades of service and leadership at the Institute, it also spotlights the ways MIT staff and other community members provide essential mentorship.
“Too often, notions of good mentorship focus on faculty advisors and overlook the vital work done by others,” notes Anjali Tripathi ’09, one of Benard’s nominators. To her, the PAESMEM awards recognize the dedicated effort behind cultivating effective mentoring relationships across higher education, which can inspire other unsung heroes as they show up for their mentees.
Kim Benard: Growing a garden
When Tripathi, now a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, established a mentoring program while earning her advanced degrees at Harvard University, she took inspiration from a transformative mentoring experience from her senior year at MIT: working on graduate fellowship applications with Benard. Throughout the process, Benard’s power to motivate, listen, and give to her students left a mark on Tripathi, who later wrote, “I have had many ‘mentors’ in the form of advisers, but in my life only two mentors, as Cassuto would have it. Kim is one of them.”
In Benard’s 18 years at MIT, she has personally mentored over 2,000 students from all backgrounds as they tackle the question of what comes next after MIT and explore post-graduate opportunities such as the Rhodes, Marshall, and Fulbright scholarships. To help students through the competitive application process, Benard established MIT’s Distinguished Fellowships program, which sits within CAPD.
“Someone once said to me that mentoring is like growing a garden. You plant a seed and hope that it grows and bears fruit,” Benard notes. “Some produce fruit quickly, and others take a long time to finally see the result. Being nominated by a former student for this award, and seeing so many others celebrate it, means that I have hopefully allowed these students to bear fruit.”
As Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, sees it, “Kim is remarkable in so many ways.” Alongside one-on-one consultations and mock interviews, Benard gets to know dozens of applicants individually, then synthesizes their information into recommendation letters each summer. “She works extremely hard, accomplishing with her small team a job done by much larger teams at our competitor institutions.”
While her work has left a remarkable impact on students exploring fellowships, much of that garden-tending happens in the tasks described above — the quiet consistency that doesn’t regularly make the news. Thomas Levenson, professor of science writing and co-chair of the Distinguished Fellowships Committee, describes Benard as “one of the hidden heroes who sustain MIT.” He adds: “Every university needs someone like Kim. We’re very lucky to have the original.”
Benard sees this recognition as an opportunity to illuminate the tangible ways MIT community members can — and do — make an impact on the next generation. “Mentoring and advising is valuable work, but often unseen,” she explains. “This recognition demonstrates the effort MIT mentors and advisors put into budding scientists and demonstrates that these are important and vital tasks for the success of research.”
She designs her work around two main tenets of good mentoring: adaptive practices and deep, or active, listening. As Benard has noticed in her countless sessions, each person’s unique needs require a different kind of guided self-reflection. Throughout the process, she employs active listening. It’s not always an easy conversation, so a caring approach is essential.
“She has guided 20 years’ worth of students through an intense process of self-examination and reflection with her extraordinarily successful combination of tough, often existential questioning and unconditionally caring moral support every step of the way,” Will Broadhead, associate professor of history and MacVicar Faculty Fellow, says. “Her students love her, and it’s easy to see why!”
In fact, the cohort of Benard’s advisees — both fellowship winners and non-winners — who proudly call themselves “Kim’s kids” can speak to all the large and small ways that mentorship plays out. Years after they graduate, “Kim’s kids” are still in touch with her, and many volunteer their time to help current fellowship applicants. Keen to emulate Bernard’s mentorship and pay it forward, alumni such as Tripathi become a part of the MIT community “of people eager to help, support, and lift each other up.”
After all, Tripathi observes, “Kim is the human heart of MIT.”
Leigh Estabrooks: Inspiring mentees to pay it forward
As the Invention Education Officer for the Lemelson-MIT (LMIT) program for 18 years until her retirement from MIT last December, Leigh Estabrooks played a pivotal role in mentoring thousands of students and educators through LMIT’s High School InvenTeam grant initiative and other programs.
Stephanie Couch, LMIT’s executive director, notes, “Leigh created a network of exceptional educators devoted to helping students discover their full potential. Her research led to the development of new curriculum and program offerings for all ages and grade levels, fueling the growth of invention education across the U.S. We are so grateful for her time with the Lemelson-MIT program.”
“Receiving this award has been a humbling and emotional experience,” Estabrooks shares. “I never set out to be an honored mentor; I simply set out to help others build confidence in and understanding of what it means to invent technological solutions to improve the world. I will be forever grateful for the sustained mentoring opportunities with K-14 students and teachers while at LMIT.”
Michael Cima, MIT faculty director for LMIT, underscores the depth of Estabrooks’ impact: “Leigh is a tireless champion of the value of invention education. Her efforts have helped untold numbers of students and teachers over the years. We still cross paths with students from decades ago who tell us about the difference Dr. Estabrooks made in their lives.”
Estabrooks emphasizes that mentoring is a long-term commitment rather than a one-time event. For students, it can begin in middle or high school and continue into college and professional careers. For teachers, mentoring starts even before they apply for grants and remains integral throughout their careers and educational advancements. “[Mentoring] doesn’t take place within one school year; it is informal with no end date,” Estabrooks says. “The ongoing act of mentoring forges strong bonds and builds relationships that endure for decades.”
“Leigh has been able to alter the trajectory of students’ lives through invention education,” Cima adds. “Many students who had never even considered college, let alone engineering or science as a career path, ended up attending college — some even at MIT.”
Believing that every student and teacher deserves a caring mentor, Estabrooks encourages others to take on mentorship roles, noting how vital mentors were in shaping her own personal and professional journey. “Students and teachers may not directly ask, ‘Will you be my mentor?’ However, you can become a mentor simply by being available,” She says.
One former student shared that Estabrooks naturally assumed a mentor role during their time working together. As a 10th grader, this student wouldn’t have thought to ask, yet Estabrooks became a mentor and has remained one for over half of the student’s life.
One of the most remarkable aspects of mentorship, according to Estabrooks, is its ripple effect. Many of Estabrooks’ mentees have gone on to become mentors themselves, fostering a culture of support and guidance that spans generations. As one mentee put it, “One hallmark of a great mentor is their ability to inspire their mentees to pay it forward, increasing their impact exponentially.” Katelyn Sweeney ’18, for example, whom Estabrooks has mentored since Sweeney was in 10th grade, now mentors middle and high school inventors and roboticists and serves as an educational counselor for MIT.
Doug Scott, an LMIT Invention Education Fellow who nominated Estabrooks for the PAESMEM award, affirms her influence: “Leigh is the genuine article and a mentor in every sense of the word. She has developed inventors both young and old through her knowledge and kindness. Over the years, I have seen her help every person she has encountered.”
Instilling the importance of mentorship in her mentees, Estabrooks encourages them to reflect on how guidance has helped them navigate key decision points in their schooling and careers. She hopes they will extend this generosity of spirit to others who may not initially see themselves in STEM or know how to pursue college and career opportunities.
Today, Estabrooks continues to collaborate with LMIT. “Mentoring, to me, includes the gift of time to listen, provide opportunities, make connections, and offer gentle guidance — all while genuinely caring about mentees,” she says.
The legacies of both Estabrooks and Benard will continue to shape future generations of scientists, engineers, inventors, educators, and more, ensuring that the cycle of mentorship remains unbroken.
This year’s faculty and arts fellow recipients are Maria Chudnovsky, Thomas Conlan, yuniya edi kwon, Rhodri Lewis, Carolyn Rouse, and Peter S. Shin. Five graduate and four undergraduate alumni received Guggenheims.
This year’s faculty and arts fellow recipients are Maria Chudnovsky, Thomas Conlan, yuniya edi kwon, Rhodri Lewis, Carolyn Rouse, and Peter S. Shin. Five graduate and four undergraduate alumni received Guggenheims.
Gina Raimondo.Photo by Martha Stewart
Work & Economy
When making positive change, sometimes you ‘break things’
Key is to avoid hurting people in process, Gina Raimondo says
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 15, 2025
5 min read
If you want to make things better, says Gina Raimondo, that means things are going to have to change — and sometimes that means you “break things.”
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When making positive change, sometimes you ‘break things’
Key is to avoid hurting people in process, Gina Raimondo says
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
5 min read
If you want to make things better, says Gina Raimondo, that means things are going to have to change — and sometimes that means you “break things.”
For example, the former U.S. Commerce secretary and Rhode Island governor said that when she was leading the Ocean State, she cut taxes every year, raised the state minimum wage, and made community college tuition free. She also cut 30 percent of the state’s regulations.
“I don’t think we should just accept things because they’re the way things have been done,” Raimondo ’93 said last week during an Institute of Politics forum on “The Future of U.S. Competitiveness.”
This willingness to make changes, she acknowledged, may sound similar to the tactics of Elon Musk’s DOGE. The difference? “Execution matters,” she said. “You can’t hurt people in the process.”
That focus on ensuring fairness and opportunity for regular Americans came early and has remained with her throughout her political career.
The granddaughter of immigrants who stressed hard work, Raimondo, who was instrumental in shaping the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, credited her large Italian family with getting her into politics. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, she recalled, “My dad kept saying ‘What about the little guy who gets up in the morning and goes to work? Who’s sticking up for us?’
“As I got older and I saw that American Dream being out of reach,” she said. “It motivated me to get involved in politics.”
The IOP discussion with Jeff Liebman, director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Social Policy, turned to Raimondo’s tenure as Commerce secretary. The two first focused on the early days when supply chains slowed as COVID raged. “The first thing we had to do was understand the complexity of supply chains,” she said.
In response to endless calls about various essentials that were suddenly not available, “We built spreadsheets for critical supply chains, like pharmaceuticals — and then, under President Biden’s leadership, we got to work making friends with other countries,” she said.
Citing Biden’s belief, she said, “America can’t and shouldn’t go it alone. America is best when we make friends; he sent us to Southeast Asia to build relationships with Indonesia, with the Philippines,” and beyond.
In addition to forging or strengthening those relationships, the Biden administration responded with the CHIPs and Science Act, aimed at making scientific essentials domestically. Liebman asked her how that played out.
“Most semiconductors are a commodity, and many of them are made overseas — a lot in China,” Raimondo responded. “It wouldn’t be a national security disaster if there was a backlog of iPhones. But artificial intelligence — all AI — runs on leading-edge chips. So much of our intelligence-gathering capacity depends on leading-edge chips. That directly affects our national security, and we make zero” of the chips in question.
“By 2030, we’ll be making a quarter of those chips. That’s a success,” she said.
She also defended the legislation’s fiscal responsibility. “We insisted that for every dollar we put out there, $10 of private-sector dollars come in,” she said. “When we left, we had about 13 private-sector dollars for every dollar that we put in.”
Such self-reliance is essential, she said. Citing China’s BYD electric cars, which are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government and then sold inexpensively around the world, she said, “Free trade is great if everyone plays by the rules. China does not play by the rules. I think having more reciprocity is reasonable.”
Looking back on her time with the Biden administration, she acknowledged mistakes, including — perhaps — too many compromises.
“Politics is not perfect,” she acknowledged. “We did get a lot done, though. People who make those critiques may not know how hard it is to get things done in a 50-50 Senate and a tiny margin in the House.”
Raimondo also defended Biden’s stimulus act, which some blame for inflation. “I was the governor of Rhode Island during COVID,” she said. “In the couple of months after COVID broke out, in a state of about a million people, I had 110,000 file for unemployment insurance.”
Recalling the “pit in my stomach,” she worried, “How am I going to get these people back to work?
“It was really scary,” she said. “It’s easy to say the stimulus shouldn’t have been so big it led to inflation. But nobody says if it wasn’t big enough that unemployment would have continued.”
She also defending tacking so-called social programs onto economic ones. “Companies that wanted our money needed to find workers,” she said. “They’re not going to have enough workers without women, and they’re not going to get women without a childcare plan.
“They weren’t social programs. They were labor market programs designed to be a steward of taxpayer money.”
On board Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft, which made a moon landing on March 6, were cutting-edge MIT payloads: a depth-mapping camera and a mini-rover called “AstroAnt.” Also on that craft were the words and voices of people from around the world speaking in dozens of languages. These were etched on a 2-inch silicon wafer computationally designed by Professor Craig Carter of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering and mounted on the mission’s Lunar Outpost MAPP Rover.Dubbe
On board Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft, which made a moon landing on March 6, were cutting-edge MIT payloads: a depth-mapping camera and a mini-rover called “AstroAnt.” Also on that craft were the words and voices of people from around the world speaking in dozens of languages. These were etched on a 2-inch silicon wafer computationally designed by Professor Craig Carter of the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering and mounted on the mission’s Lunar Outpost MAPP Rover.
Dubbed the Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space (HUMANS), the project is a collaboration of art and science, bringing together experts from across MIT — with technical expertise from the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; nano-etching and testing from MIT.nano; audio processing from the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future and the Music and Theater Arts Section; and lunar mission support from the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative.
While a 6-inch HUMANS wafer flew on the Axiom-2 mission to the International Space Station in 2023, the 2-inch wafer was a part of the IM-2 mission to the lunar south polar region, linked to the MIT Media Lab’s To the Moon to Stay program, which reimagines humankind’s return to the moon. IM-2 ended prematurely after the Athena spacecraft tipped onto its side shortly after landing in March, but the HUMANS wafer fulfilled its mission by successfully reaching the lunar surface.
“If you ask a person on the street: ‘What does MIT do?’ Well, that person might say they’re a bunch of STEM nerds who make devices and create apps. But that’s not the entire MIT. It’s more multifaceted than that,” Carter says. “This project embodies that. It says, ‘We’re not just one-trick ponies.’”
A message etched in silicon
The HUMANS project, initially conceived of by MIT students, was inspired by the Golden Record, a pair of gold-plated phonograph records launched in 1977 aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, with human voices, music, and images. Designed to explore the outer solar system, the Voyagers have since traveled into interstellar space, beyond the sun’s heliosphere. But while the earlier project was intended to introduce humanity to an extraterrestrial audience, the HUMANS message is directed at fellow human beings — reminding us that space belongs to all.
Maya Nasr PhD ’23, now a researcher at Harvard University, has led the project since 2020, when she was a graduate student in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. She co-founded it with Lihui Zhang SM ’21, from the MIT Technology and Policy Program. The team invited people to share what space means to them, in writing or audio, to create a “symbol of unity that promotes global representation in space.”
When Nasr and Zhang sought an expert to translate their vision into a physical artifact, they turned to Carter, who had previously created the designs and algorithms for many art projects and, most recently, for One.MIT, a series of mosaics composed of the names of MIT faculty, students, and staff. Carter quickly agreed.
“I love figuring out how to turn equations into code, into artifacts,” Carter says. “Whether they’re art or not is a difficult question. They’re definitely artful. They’re definitely artisanal.”
Carter played a pivotal role in the computational design and fabrication of the silicon wafer now on the surface of the moon. He first translated the submitted phrases, in 64 languages, into numerical representations that could be turned into fonts. He also reverse-engineered a typesetting language to “kern” the text — adjusting the spacing between letters for visual clarity.
“Kerning is important for the aesthetics of written text. You’d want a Y to be not-too-close to a neighboring T, but farther from a W,” Carter said. “All of the phrases were sequences of words like D-O-G, and it’s not as simple as, put a D, put an O, put a G. It’s put a D, figure out where the O should be, put the O, figure out where the G should be, put the G.”
After refining the text placement, Carter designed an algorithm that geometrically transformed both the text and the audio messages’ digital waveforms — graphical representations of sound — into spirals on the wafer. The design pays homage to the Voyagers’ Golden Records, which featured spiral grooves, much like a vinyl record.
In the center of the disc is an image of a globe, or map projection — Carter found publicly available geospatial coordinates and mapped them into the design.
“I took those coordinates and then created something like an image from the coordinates. It had to be geometry, not pixels,” he says.
Once the spirals and globe imagery were in place, Carter handed the data for the design to MIT.nano, which has specialized instruments for high-precision etching and fabrication.
Human voices, lunar surface
“I hope people on Earth feel a deep sense of connection and belonging — that their voices, stories, and dreams are now part of this new chapter in lunar exploration,” Nasr says. “When we look at the moon, we can feel an even deeper connection, knowing that our words — in all their diversity — are now part of its surface, carrying the spirit of humanity forward.”
For Carter, the project conveys the human capacity for wonder and a shared sense of what’s possible. “In many cases, looking outward forces you to look inward at the same time to put the wonder in some kind of personal context,” Carter says. “So if this project somehow conveys that we are all wondering about this marvelous universe together in all of our languages, I would consider that a victory.”
The project’s link to the Golden Record — an artifact launched nearly 50 years ago and now traveling beyond the solar system — strikes another chord with Carter.
“It’s unimaginably far away, and so the notion that we can connect to something in time and space, to something that’s out there, I think it is just a wonderful connection.”
The 2-inch Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space (HUMANS) wafer (left) landed on the moon March 6 aboard the Athena spacecraft. It is seen alongside its 6-inch counterpart, which flew to the International Space Station in 2023.
At the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, students try their hand at Boston Line Type, developed in 1835. Braille didn’t make its way to the U.S. until almost 20 years later.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Campus & Community
New experiences at their fingertips
Course on tactile reading shows students ‘Why Braille Matters’
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
April 15, 2025
6 min re
At the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, students try their hand at Boston Line Type, developed in 1835. Braille didn’t make its way to the U.S. until almost 20 years later.
Course on tactile reading shows students ‘Why Braille Matters’
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
In his “Literature and Disability” course taught last spring, Professor Marc Shell noticed Katie Sevier ’25 taking notes on her HIMS QBraille XL display, a device that connects to her laptop and allows her to type in braille.
A discussion between Shell and Sevier on the importance of the history, theory, and practice of tactile writing systems used by the visually impaired led the pair to create a course not seen at peer institutions. Now the professor and the student are both the teachers. Their class is called “Why Braille Matters.”
“For me, braille is a sign of access, of freedom, of independence,” Sevier said. “Having this course come to life means so much. It is a course affirming a component of the blind experience — braille — which is so integral to many blind people’s experiences.”
On Thursday afternoons, Sevier can be found preparing for a class as fellow students and two trained guide dogs fill a small room at Dana Palmer House on Harvard’s campus. Throughout the semester, Sevier and Shell have prioritized highlighting different experiences by inviting guest speakers from the blind community or those who work with the blind community.
“This is and is not a course about disability,” Shell said. “It is really a course about reading and writing systems, and that is the main linkage with Comparative Literature.
Katie Sevier ’25 (left) and Marc Shell brought students to Perkins School for the Blind as part of their class, “Why Braille Matters.”
“The history of reading and writing goes back thousands of years to tactile forms. These forms might be called ‘pre-braille.’ As our research is now revealing, blind people had many methods of reading and writing,” he added.
Sevier and Shell take an integrative dual approach to teaching “Why Braille Matters.” She instructs students on braille code and blindness education, while he leads discussions on the literary, philosophical, and neurological aspects of the raised-dots writing system. For Sevier, the course is deeply personal. The 23-year-old lost her vision at 6 years old due to intracranial hypertension and began learning braille the summer after kindergarten.
During a recent class, students — who come from across the University — discussed the 1980 film “To Race the Wind,” the story of blind lawyer, activist, and author Harold Krents ’67, J.D. ’70. The film documents Krents’ experience navigating Harvard’s complex campus as an undergraduate. Sevier and other visually impaired students also shared their own stories about learning to move through the Yard.
Amy Ojeaburu ’25 examines a large tactile globe that was once used by Helen Keller.
A student looks at a braille bingo card.
The first brailler was produced at Perkins in 1951. The braille typewriter has changed little over the years.
“What was really validating and empowering to see was the way Katie had written out the directions that she used to teach another blind student how to navigate a specific route to the Yard,” said Emma Vrabel ’25, a former white-cane user who now has a guide dog. From this, she said, sighted students were better able to understand “how exhausting” it can be to have to memorize various routes across campus.
“Harvard is a hard place to navigate,” said Vrabel, who is still able to see faces, gestures, and large print. “At the beginning of every semester, I teach my guide dog, Holly, how to find our different class buildings and landmarks. Holly has been super helpful in making that a faster, more efficient process, but it’s still a lot of labor.”
Following class discussion, students break into small groups to attempt to decode different film and literature titles in braille.
“The course started out with tactile sensitivity training, where you’re building up your ability to tactilely distinguish between small differences,” said Sevier, who went on to explain that braille characters include six dots placed in two columns of three dots. Letters of the alphabet, known as “Grade One Braille,” are determined by the number and arrangement of dots. “Grade Two Braille,” or contractions, are characters that stand for parts of words or even whole words.
Alex Waysand ’27, an international student from France with an interest in languages, noted the challenge of learning to read braille.
“This is a commonly shared experience among students in the class, but I was struck to discover how insensitive the tips of my fingers were and how hard it was to decipher braille characters,” he said.
Beyond animated, philosophical classroom examination on the writing system and Sevier’s lessons on reading braille, students visited Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown. There they were given a tour of the library and museum and had the opportunity to use a giant tactile globe that was favored by Helen Keller, Radcliffe College Class of 1904. The globe, which was built in 1837 and stands 13 feet in circumference, was the first thing that Keller touched when she arrived at Perkins as a student at the age of 8.
Vrabel, who is writing her thesis on Perkins’ outreach program and lived there last summer, was glad her Harvard classmates had the chance to acquaint themselves with the extraordinary world at Perkins. “It was really cool to come back with the class and experience all the exhibits and see people who probably would not have been in the space otherwise,” she said.
Now, more than halfway through the semester, Sevier said she’s happy with how the course has manifested. “I am very impressed with everyone’s ability to put themselves out of their comfort zones to learn more about the braille code,” she said, adding that she hopes students will take with them “the pride and joy blind people have within their community … and that students will be able to see this in other spaces.”
Shell and Sevier plan to teach another iteration of this course next academic year.
In 1949, the U.S. Air Force called upon MIT with an urgent need. Soviet aircraft carrying atomic bombs were capable of reaching the U.S. homeland, and the nation was defenseless. A dedicated center — MIT Lincoln Laboratory — was established. The brightest minds from MIT came together in service to the nation, making scientific and engineering leaps to prototype the first real-time air defense system. The commercial sector and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) then produced and deployed the sy
In 1949, the U.S. Air Force called upon MIT with an urgent need. Soviet aircraft carrying atomic bombs were capable of reaching the U.S. homeland, and the nation was defenseless. A dedicated center — MIT Lincoln Laboratory — was established. The brightest minds from MIT came together in service to the nation, making scientific and engineering leaps to prototype the first real-time air defense system. The commercial sector and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) then produced and deployed the system, called SAGE, continent-wide.
The SAGE story still describes MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s approach to national security innovation today. The laboratory works with DoD agencies to identify challenging national security gaps, determines if technology can contribute to a solution, and then executes an R&D program to advance critical technologies. The principal products of these programs are advanced technology prototypes, which are often rapidly fabricated and demonstrated through test and evaluation.
Throughout this process, the laboratory closely coordinates with the DoD and other federal agency sponsors, and then transfers the technology in many forms to industry for manufacturing at scale to meet national needs. For nearly 75 years, these technologies have saved lives, responded to emergencies, fueled the nation’s economy, and impacted the daily life of Americans and our allies.
"Lincoln Laboratory accelerates the pace of national security technology development, in partnership with the government, private industry, and the broader national security ecosystem," says Melissa Choi, director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory. "We integrate high-performance teams with advanced facilities and the best technology available to bring novel prototypes to life, providing lasting benefits to the United States."
The Air Force and MIT recently renewed their contract for the continued operation of Lincoln Laboratory. The contract was awarded by the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center Strategic Services Division on Hanscom Air Force Base for a term of five years, with an option for an additional five years. Since Lincoln Laboratory’s founding, MIT has operated the laboratory in the national interest for no fee and strictly on a cost-reimbursement basis. The contract award is indicative of the DoD’s continuing recognition of the long-term value of, and necessity for, cutting-edge R&D in service of national security.
Critical contributions to national security
MIT Lincoln Laboratory is the DoD’s largest federally funded research and development center R&D laboratory. Sponsored by the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, it contributes to a broad range of national security missions and domains.
Among the most critical domains are air and missile defense. Laboratory researchers pioneer advanced radar systems and algorithms crucial for detecting, tracking, and targeting ballistic missiles and aircraft, and serve as scientific advisors to the Reagan Test Site. They also conduct comprehensive studies on missile defense needs, such as the recent National Defense Authorization Act–directed study on the defense of Guam, and provide actionable insights to Congress.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory is also at the forefront of space systems and technologies, enabling the military to monitor space activities and communicate at very high bandwidths. Laboratory engineers developed the innovatively curved detector within the Space Surveillance Telescope that allows the U.S. Space Force to track tiny space objects. It also operates the world's highest-resolution long-range radar for imaging satellites. Recently, the laboratory worked closely with NASA to demonstrate laser communications systems in space, setting a record for the fastest satellite downlink and farthest lasercom link ever achieved. These breakthroughs are heralding a new era in satellite communications for defense and civil missions.
Perhaps most importantly, MIT Lincoln Laboratory is asked to rapidly prototype solutions to urgent and emerging threats. These solutions are both transferred to industry for production and fielded directly to war-fighters, saving lives. To combat improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, the laboratory quickly and iteratively developed several novel systems to detect and defeat explosive devices and insurgent networks. When insurgents were attacking forward-operating bases at night, the laboratory developed an advanced infrared camera system to prevent the attacks. Like other multi-use technologies developed at the laboratory, that system led to a successful commercial startup, which was recently acquired by Anduril.
Responding to domestic crises is also a key part of the laboratory’s mission. After the attacks of 9/11/2001, the laboratory quickly integrated a system to defend the airspace around critical locations in the capital region. More recently, the laboratory’s application of AI to video forensics and physical screening has resulted in commercialized systems deployed in airports and mass transit settings. Over the last decade, the laboratory has adapted its technology for many other homeland security needs, including responses to natural disasters. As one example, researchers repurposed a world-class lidar system first used by the military for terrain mapping to quickly quantify damage after hurricanes.
For all of these efforts, the laboratory exercises responsible stewardship of taxpayer funds, identifying multiple uses for the technologies it develops and introducing disruptive approaches to reduce costs for the government. Sometimes, the system architecture or design results in cost savings, as is the case with the U.S. Air Force's SensorSat; the laboratory’s unique sensor design enabled a satellite 10 times smaller and cheaper than those typically used for space surveillance. Another approach is by creating novel systems from low-cost components. For instance, laboratory researchers discovered a way to make phased-array radars using cell phone electronics instead of traditional expensive components, greatly reducing the cost of deploying the radars for weather and aircraft surveillance.
The laboratory also pursues emerging technology to bring about transformative solutions. In the 1960s, such vision brought semiconductor lasers into the world, and in the 1990s shrunk transistors more than industry imagined possible. Today, laboratory staff are pursuing other new realms: making imagers reconfigurable at the pixel level, designing quantum sensors to transform navigation technology, and developing superconducting electronics to improve computing efficiency.
A long, beneficial relationship between MIT and the DoD
"Lincoln Laboratory has created a deep understanding and knowledge base in core national security missions and associated technologies. We look forward to continuing to work closely with government sponsors, industry, and academia through our trusted, collaborative relationships to address current and future national security challenges and ensure technological superiority," says Scott Anderson, assistant director for operations at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
"MIT has always been proud to support the nation through its operation of Lincoln Laboratory. The long-standing relationship between MIT and the Department of Defense through this storied laboratory has been a difference-maker for the safety, economy, and industrial power of the United States, and we look forward to seeing the innovations ahead of us," notes Ian Waitz, MIT vice president for research.
Under the terms of the renewed contract, MIT will ensure that Lincoln Laboratory remains ready to meet R&D challenges that are critical to national security.
The Air Force and MIT recently renewed their contract for the continued operation of Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded Department of Defense research and development center.
The book uses history and philosophy to explore how to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Members of the incoming Class of 2029 will read it this summer as part of their introduction to the liberal arts tradition that awaits them.
The book uses history and philosophy to explore how to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Members of the incoming Class of 2029 will read it this summer as part of their introduction to the liberal arts tradition that awaits them.
ETH Zurich is expanding its activities in the field of artificial intelligence, boosting Switzerland’s status as an AI hub. The university is also addressing the country’s skilled labour shortage through its education and training programmes. However, ETH Zurich fears that an impending paradigm shift in tuition fees could pose a challenge to its model of success.
ETH Zurich is expanding its activities in the field of artificial intelligence, boosting Switzerland’s status as an AI hub. The university is also addressing the country’s skilled labour shortage through its education and training programmes. However, ETH Zurich fears that an impending paradigm shift in tuition fees could pose a challenge to its model of success.
When visual information enters the brain, it travels through two pathways that process different aspects of the input. For decades, scientists have hypothesized that one of these pathways, the ventral visual stream, is responsible for recognizing objects, and that it might have been optimized by evolution to do just that.Consistent with this, in the past decade, MIT scientists have found that when computational models of the anatomy of the ventral stream are optimized to solve the task of object
When visual information enters the brain, it travels through two pathways that process different aspects of the input. For decades, scientists have hypothesized that one of these pathways, the ventral visual stream, is responsible for recognizing objects, and that it might have been optimized by evolution to do just that.
Consistent with this, in the past decade, MIT scientists have found that when computational models of the anatomy of the ventral stream are optimized to solve the task of object recognition, they are remarkably good predictors of the neural activities in the ventral stream.
However, in a new study, MIT researchers have shown that when they train these types of models on spatial tasks instead, the resulting models are also quite good predictors of the ventral stream’s neural activities. This suggests that the ventral stream may not be exclusively optimized for object recognition.
“This leaves wide open the question about what the ventral stream is being optimized for. I think the dominant perspective a lot of people in our field believe is that the ventral stream is optimized for object recognition, but this study provides a new perspective that the ventral stream could be optimized for spatial tasks as well,” says MIT graduate student Yudi Xie.
Xie is the lead author of the study, which will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations. Other authors of the paper include Weichen Huang, a visiting student through MIT’s Research Science Institute program; Esther Alter, a software engineer at the MIT Quest for Intelligence; Jeremy Schwartz, a sponsored research technical staff member; Joshua Tenenbaum, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences; and James DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, director of the Quest for Intelligence, and a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.
Beyond object recognition
When we look at an object, our visual system can not only identify the object, but also determine other features such as its location, its distance from us, and its orientation in space. Since the early 1980s, neuroscientists have hypothesized that the primate visual system is divided into two pathways: the ventral stream, which performs object-recognition tasks, and the dorsal stream, which processes features related to spatial location.
Over the past decade, researchers have worked to model the ventral stream using a type of deep-learning model known as a convolutional neural network (CNN). Researchers can train these models to perform object-recognition tasks by feeding them datasets containing thousands of images along with category labels describing the images.
The state-of-the-art versions of these CNNs have high success rates at categorizing images. Additionally, researchers have found that the internal activations of the models are very similar to the activities of neurons that process visual information in the ventral stream. Furthermore, the more similar these models are to the ventral stream, the better they perform at object-recognition tasks. This has led many researchers to hypothesize that the dominant function of the ventral stream is recognizing objects.
However, experimental studies, especially a study from the DiCarlo lab in 2016, have found that the ventral stream appears to encode spatial features as well. These features include the object’s size, its orientation (how much it is rotated), and its location within the field of view. Based on these studies, the MIT team aimed to investigate whether the ventral stream might serve additional functions beyond object recognition.
“Our central question in this project was, is it possible that we can think about the ventral stream as being optimized for doing these spatial tasks instead of just categorization tasks?” Xie says.
To test this hypothesis, the researchers set out to train a CNN to identify one or more spatial features of an object, including rotation, location, and distance. To train the models, they created a new dataset of synthetic images. These images show objects such as tea kettles or calculators superimposed on different backgrounds, in locations and orientations that are labeled to help the model learn them.
The researchers found that CNNs that were trained on just one of these spatial tasks showed a high level of “neuro-alignment” with the ventral stream — very similar to the levels seen in CNN models trained on object recognition.
The researchers measure neuro-alignment using a technique that DiCarlo’s lab has developed, which involves asking the models, once trained, to predict the neural activity that a particular image would generate in the brain. The researchers found that the better the models performed on the spatial task they had been trained on, the more neuro-alignment they showed.
“I think we cannot assume that the ventral stream is just doing object categorization, because many of these other functions, such as spatial tasks, also can lead to this strong correlation between models’ neuro-alignment and their performance,” Xie says. “Our conclusion is that you can optimize either through categorization or doing these spatial tasks, and they both give you a ventral-stream-like model, based on our current metrics to evaluate neuro-alignment.”
Comparing models
The researchers then investigated why these two approaches — training for object recognition and training for spatial features — led to similar degrees of neuro-alignment. To do that, they performed an analysis known as centered kernel alignment (CKA), which allows them to measure the degree of similarity between representations in different CNNs. This analysis showed that in the early to middle layers of the models, the representations that the models learn are nearly indistinguishable.
“In these early layers, essentially you cannot tell these models apart by just looking at their representations,” Xie says. “It seems like they learn some very similar or unified representation in the early to middle layers, and in the later stages they diverge to support different tasks.”
The researchers hypothesize that even when models are trained to analyze just one feature, they also take into account “non-target” features — those that they are not trained on. When objects have greater variability in non-target features, the models tend to learn representations more similar to those learned by models trained on other tasks. This suggests that the models are using all of the information available to them, which may result in different models coming up with similar representations, the researchers say.
“More non-target variability actually helps the model learn a better representation, instead of learning a representation that’s ignorant of them,” Xie says. “It’s possible that the models, although they’re trained on one target, are simultaneously learning other things due to the variability of these non-target features.”
In future work, the researchers hope to develop new ways to compare different models, in hopes of learning more about how each one develops internal representations of objects based on differences in training tasks and training data.
“There could be still slight differences between these models, even though our current way of measuring how similar these models are to the brain tells us they’re on a very similar level. That suggests maybe there’s still some work to be done to improve upon how we can compare the model to the brain, so that we can better understand what exactly the ventral stream is optimized for,” Xie says.
The research was funded by the Semiconductor Research Corporation and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The models were trained on a dataset of synthetic images like the ones pictured, with objects such as tea kettles or calculators superimposed on different backgrounds. Researchers trained the model to identify one or more spatial features of an object, including rotation, location, and distance.
By Prof Lawrence Loh, Director and Ms Ang Hui Min, Senior Manager; both from the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at NUS Business SchoolThe Straits Times, 11 April 2025, Opinion, pB4
Campus & Community
Harvard won’t comply with demands from Trump administration
Harvard University.Photo by Grace DuVal
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 14, 2025
5 min read
Changes pushed by government ‘unmoored from the law,’ Garber says. ‘The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.’
Harvard on Monday rejected demands from the Tr
Harvard won’t comply with demands from Trump administration
Harvard University.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Changes pushed by government ‘unmoored from the law,’ Garber says. ‘The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.’
Harvard on Monday rejected demands from the Trump administration that threaten $9 billion in research funding, arguing that the changes pushed by the government exceed its lawful authority and infringe on both the University’s independence and its constitutional rights.
“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message to the community. He added: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Garber’s message was a response to a letter sent late Friday by the Trump administration outlining demands that Harvard would have to satisfy to maintain its funding relationship with the federal government. These demands include “audits” of academic programs and departments, along with the viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff, and changes to the University’s governance structure and hiring practices.
The $9 billion under review by the government includes $256 million in research support for Harvard plus $8.7 billion in future commitments to the University and several renowned hospitals, among them Mass General, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Boston Children’s. Late Monday, the Trump administration announced that it was moving to freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard.
The Trump administration has been critical of Harvard’s handling of student protests related to the Gaza war. It has accused the University of failing to adequately protect Jewish students on campus from antisemitic discrimination and harassment, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Garber emphasized that Harvard remains committed to fighting antisemitism, including through a series of campus measures implemented over the past 15 months. In addition, he said, the University has complied with the Supreme Court decision that ended race-conscious admissions and has worked to broaden intellectual and viewpoint diversity at Harvard.
The University’s objectives in fighting antisemitism will “not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate,” Garber said. “The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community.”
Harvard is just one of dozens of schools targeted by the Trump administration in recent weeks. Last month, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities, including Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and Tufts, threatening enforcement actions for noncompliance with anti-discrimination provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The administration has taken the additional step of freezing research funding at several institutions.
Robust research and innovation partnerships among universities, the federal government, and private industry date to World War II. Government-backed research conducted at schools across the nation has led to countless discoveries, devices, treatments, and other advances that have helped shape the modern world. Computers, robotics, artificial intelligence, vaccines, and treatments for devastating diseases have all stemmed from government-financed research that crosses from labs and libraries into industry, creating new products, companies, and jobs.
In March, a report from the nonprofit United for Medical Research showed that every dollar of research funded by the National Institutes of Health — the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research — generates $2.56 in economic activity. In 2024 alone, the NIH awarded $36.9 billion in research grants, generating $94.5 billion in economic activity and supporting 408,000 jobs, according to the report.
In an interview on Monday, Daniel P. Gross, an associate professor of business administration at Duke University and co-author of a recent NBER working paper on the decades-long partnership between the U.S. government and higher ed, said the withdrawal of research funding from universities would be “catastrophic” to American innovation.
“Universities are such an integral part of the modern U.S. innovation system that it wouldn’t stand without them,” said Gross, who taught at Harvard Business School before moving to Duke.
George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, said that biomedicine has long depended on a strong partnership with the federal government, one that has paid off for Americans in life-saving advances. Just this month, he noted, the Medical School’s Joel Habener was recognized with a Breakthrough Prize for his work on GLP-1, which has led to diabetes and anti-obesity drugs. Daley also cited transformative work in cardiovascular health, cancer immunotherapy, and a host of other conditions.
“As we look back over the 70 years of that partnership, it has returned brilliantly on the investments the government has made,” he said. “The fact that we have Harvard, MIT, and all these extraordinary hospitals, that has been a magnet for venture capital investment and now we have the pharmaceutical research infrastructure being brought into our community. All of this is a jewel in the crown of American bioscience.”
The threat to that science is an even bigger issue in an era of stepped-up competition with China, he added.
“It seems self-defeating and injurious to the economy and to U.S. leadership in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals,” Daley said. “It feels like the hammer has come down in a way that threatens something that is intrinsic to U.S. leadership and ultimately to our economic competitiveness with places like China, which are investing very, very heavily in biotechnology.”
In his message to the community, Garber stressed the contributions of university research to scientific and medical progress while underlining the importance of independent thought and scholarship.
“Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere,” he said. “All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom.”
As we mature from childhood, our vocabulary — as well as the ways we use it — grows, and our experiences become richer, allowing us to think, reason, and interact with others with specificity and intention. Accordingly, our word choices evolve to align with our personal values, ethics, cultural norms, and views. Over time, most of us develop an internal “guide” that enables us to learn context behind conversation; it also frequently directs us away from sharing information and sentiments that ar
As we mature from childhood, our vocabulary — as well as the ways we use it — grows, and our experiences become richer, allowing us to think, reason, and interact with others with specificity and intention. Accordingly, our word choices evolve to align with our personal values, ethics, cultural norms, and views. Over time, most of us develop an internal “guide” that enables us to learn context behind conversation; it also frequently directs us away from sharing information and sentiments that are, or could be, harmful or inappropriate. As it turns out, large language models (LLMs) — which are trained on extensive, public datasets and therefore often have biases and toxic language baked in — can gain a similar capacity to moderate their own language.
A new method from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and IBM Research, called self-disciplined autoregressive sampling (SASA), allows LLMs to detoxify their own outputs, without sacrificing fluency.
Unlike other detoxifying methods, this decoding algorithm learns a boundary between toxic/nontoxic subspaces within the LLM’s own internal representation, without altering the parameters of the model, the need for retraining, or an external reward model. Then, during inference, the algorithm assesses the toxicity value of the partially generated phrase: tokens (words) already generated and accepted, along with each potential new token that could reasonably be chosen for proximity to the classifier boundary. Next, it selects a word option that places the phrase in the nontoxic space, ultimately offering a fast and efficient way to generate less-toxic language.
“We wanted to find out a way with any existing language model [that], during the generation process, the decoding can be subject to some human values; the example here we are taking is toxicity,” says the study’s lead author Ching-Yun “Irene” Ko PhD ’24, a former graduate intern with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and a current research scientist at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York.
Ko’s co-authors include Luca Daniel, professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and Ko’s graduate advisor; and several members of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and/or IBM Research — Pin-Yu Chen, Payel Das, Youssef Mroueh, Soham Dan, Georgios Kollias, Subhajit Chaudhury, and Tejaswini Pedapati. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Finding the “guardrails”
The training resources behind LLMs almost always include content collected from public spaces like the internet and other readily available datasets. As such, curse words and bullying/unpalatable language is a component, although some of it is in the context of literary works. It then follows that LLMs can innately produce — or be tricked into generating — dangerous and/or biased content, which often contains disagreeable words or hateful language, even from innocuous prompts. Further, it’s been found that they can learn and amplify language that’s not preferred or even detrimental for many applications and downstream tasks — leading to the need for mitigation or correction strategies.
There are many ways to achieve robust language generation that’s fair and value-aligned. Some methods use LLM retraining with a sanitized dataset, which is costly, takes time, and may alter the LLM’s performance; others employ decoding external reward models, like sampling or beam search, which take longer to run and require more memory. In the case of SASA, Ko, Daniel, and the IBM Research team developed a method that leverages the autoregressive nature of LLMs, and using a decoding-based strategy during the LLM’s inference, gradually steers the generation — one token at a time — away from unsavory or undesired outputs and toward better language.
The research group achieved this by building a linear classifier that operates on the learned subspace from the LLM’s embedding. When LLMs are trained, words with similar meanings are placed closely together in vector space and further away from dissimilar words; the researchers hypothesized that an LLM’s embedding would therefore also capture contextual information, which could be used for detoxification. The researchers used datasets that contained sets of a prompt (first half of a sentence or thought), a response (the completion of that sentence), and human-attributed annotation, like toxic or nontoxic, preferred or not preferred, with continuous labels from 0-1, denoting increasing toxicity. A Bayes-optimal classifier was then applied to learn and figuratively draw a line between the binary subspaces within the sentence embeddings, represented by positive values (nontoxic space) and negative numbers (toxic space).
The SASA system then works by re-weighting the sampling probabilities of newest potential token based on the value of it and the generated phrase’s distance to the classifier, with the goal of remaining close to the original sampling distribution.
To illustrate, if a user is generating a potential token #12 in a sentence, the LLM will look over its full vocabulary for a reasonable word, based on the 11 words that came before it, and using top-k, top-p, it will filter and produce roughly 10 tokens to select from. SASA then evaluates each of those tokens in the partially completed sentence for its proximity to the classifier (i.e., the value of tokens 1-11, plus each potential token 12). Tokens that produce sentences in the positive space are encouraged, while those in the negative space are penalized. Additionally, the further away from the classifier, the stronger the impact.
“The goal is to change the autoregressive sampling process by re-weighting the probability of good tokens. If the next token is likely to be toxic given the context, then we are going to reduce the sampling probability for those prone to be toxic tokens,” says Ko. The researchers chose to do it this way “because the things we say, whether it’s benign or not, is subject to the context.”
Tamping down toxicity for value matching
The researchers evaluated their method against several baseline interventions with three LLMs of increasing size; all were transformers and autoregressive-based: GPT2-Large, Llama2-7b, and Llama 3.1-8b-Instruct, with 762 million, 7 billion, and 8 billion parameters respectively. For each prompt, the LLM was tasked with completing the sentence/phrase 25 times, and PerspectiveAPI scored them from 0 to 1, with anything over 0.5 being toxic. The team looked at two metrics: the average maximum toxicity score over the 25 generations for all the prompts, and the toxic rate, which was the probability of producing at least one toxic phrase over 25 generations. Reduced fluency (and therefore increased perplexity) were also analyzed. SASA was tested to complete RealToxicityPrompts (RPT), BOLD, and AttaQ datasets, which contained naturally occurring, English sentence prompts.
The researchers ramped up the complexity of their trials for detoxification by SASA, beginning with nontoxic prompts from the RPT dataset, looking for harmful sentence completions. Then, they escalated it to more challenging prompts from RPT that were more likely to produce concerning results, and as well applied SASA to the instruction-tuned model to assess if their technique could further reduce unwanted ouputs. They also used the BOLD and AttaQ benchmarks to examine the general applicability of SASA in detoxification. With the BOLD dataset, the researchers further looked for gender bias in language generations and tried to achieve a balanced toxic rate between the genders. Lastly, the team looked at runtime, memory usage, and how SASA could be combined with word filtering to achieve healthy and/or helpful language generation.
“If we think about how human beings think and react in the world, we do see bad things, so it’s not about allowing the language model to see only the good things. It’s about understanding the full spectrum — both good and bad,” says Ko, “and choosing to uphold our values when we speak and act.”
Overall, SASA achieved significant toxic language generation reductions, performing on par with RAD, a state-of-the-art external reward model technique. However, it was universally observed that stronger detoxification accompanied a decrease in fluency. Before intervention, the LLMs produced more toxic responses for female labeled prompts than male; however, SASA was able to also significantly cut down harmful responses, making them more equalized. Similarly, word filtering on top of SASA did markedly lower toxicity levels, but it also hindered the ability of the LLM to respond coherently.
A great aspect of this work is that it’s a well-defined, constrained optimization problem, says Ko, meaning that balance between open language generation that sounds natural and the need to reduce unwanted language can be achieved and tuned.
Further, Ko says, SASA could work well for multiple attributes in the future: “For human beings, we have multiple human values. We don’t want to say toxic things, but we also want to be truthful, helpful, and loyal … If you were to fine-tune a model for all of these values, it would require more computational resources and, of course, additional training.” On account of the lightweight manner of SASA, it could easily be applied in these circumstances: “If you want to work with multiple values, it’s simply checking the generation’s position in multiple subspaces. It only adds marginal overhead in terms of the compute and parameters,” says Ko, leading to more positive, fair, and principle-aligned language.
This work was supported, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the National Science Foundation.
Large language models naturally contain biases and can generate toxic language, but a new technique from MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers helps them to produce less-harmful outputs while retaining fluency.
As we mature from childhood, our vocabulary — as well as the ways we use it — grows, and our experiences become richer, allowing us to think, reason, and interact with others with specificity and intention. Accordingly, our word choices evolve to align with our personal values, ethics, cultural norms, and views. Over time, most of us develop an internal “guide” that enables us to learn context behind conversation; it also frequently directs us away from sharing information and sentiments that ar
As we mature from childhood, our vocabulary — as well as the ways we use it — grows, and our experiences become richer, allowing us to think, reason, and interact with others with specificity and intention. Accordingly, our word choices evolve to align with our personal values, ethics, cultural norms, and views. Over time, most of us develop an internal “guide” that enables us to learn context behind conversation; it also frequently directs us away from sharing information and sentiments that are, or could be, harmful or inappropriate. As it turns out, large language models (LLMs) — which are trained on extensive, public datasets and therefore often have biases and toxic language baked in — can gain a similar capacity to moderate their own language.
A new method from MIT, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and IBM Research, called self-disciplined autoregressive sampling (SASA), allows LLMs to detoxify their own outputs, without sacrificing fluency.
Unlike other detoxifying methods, this decoding algorithm learns a boundary between toxic/nontoxic subspaces within the LLM’s own internal representation, without altering the parameters of the model, the need for retraining, or an external reward model. Then, during inference, the algorithm assesses the toxicity value of the partially generated phrase: tokens (words) already generated and accepted, along with each potential new token that could reasonably be chosen for proximity to the classifier boundary. Next, it selects a word option that places the phrase in the nontoxic space, ultimately offering a fast and efficient way to generate less-toxic language.
“We wanted to find out a way with any existing language model [that], during the generation process, the decoding can be subject to some human values; the example here we are taking is toxicity,” says the study’s lead author Ching-Yun “Irene” Ko PhD ’24, a former graduate intern with the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and a current research scientist at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York.
Ko’s co-authors include Luca Daniel, professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and Ko’s graduate advisor; and several members of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and/or IBM Research — Pin-Yu Chen, Payel Das, Youssef Mroueh, Soham Dan, Georgios Kollias, Subhajit Chaudhury, and Tejaswini Pedapati. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Finding the “guardrails”
The training resources behind LLMs almost always include content collected from public spaces like the internet and other readily available datasets. As such, curse words and bullying/unpalatable language is a component, although some of it is in the context of literary works. It then follows that LLMs can innately produce — or be tricked into generating — dangerous and/or biased content, which often contains disagreeable words or hateful language, even from innocuous prompts. Further, it’s been found that they can learn and amplify language that’s not preferred or even detrimental for many applications and downstream tasks — leading to the need for mitigation or correction strategies.
There are many ways to achieve robust language generation that’s fair and value-aligned. Some methods use LLM retraining with a sanitized dataset, which is costly, takes time, and may alter the LLM’s performance; others employ decoding external reward models, like sampling or beam search, which take longer to run and require more memory. In the case of SASA, Ko, Daniel, and the IBM Research team developed a method that leverages the autoregressive nature of LLMs, and using a decoding-based strategy during the LLM’s inference, gradually steers the generation — one token at a time — away from unsavory or undesired outputs and toward better language.
The research group achieved this by building a linear classifier that operates on the learned subspace from the LLM’s embedding. When LLMs are trained, words with similar meanings are placed closely together in vector space and further away from dissimilar words; the researchers hypothesized that an LLM’s embedding would therefore also capture contextual information, which could be used for detoxification. The researchers used datasets that contained sets of a prompt (first half of a sentence or thought), a response (the completion of that sentence), and human-attributed annotation, like toxic or nontoxic, preferred or not preferred, with continuous labels from 0-1, denoting increasing toxicity. A Bayes-optimal classifier was then applied to learn and figuratively draw a line between the binary subspaces within the sentence embeddings, represented by positive values (nontoxic space) and negative numbers (toxic space).
The SASA system then works by re-weighting the sampling probabilities of newest potential token based on the value of it and the generated phrase’s distance to the classifier, with the goal of remaining close to the original sampling distribution.
To illustrate, if a user is generating a potential token #12 in a sentence, the LLM will look over its full vocabulary for a reasonable word, based on the 11 words that came before it, and using top-k, top-p, it will filter and produce roughly 10 tokens to select from. SASA then evaluates each of those tokens in the partially completed sentence for its proximity to the classifier (i.e., the value of tokens 1-11, plus each potential token 12). Tokens that produce sentences in the positive space are encouraged, while those in the negative space are penalized. Additionally, the further away from the classifier, the stronger the impact.
“The goal is to change the autoregressive sampling process by re-weighting the probability of good tokens. If the next token is likely to be toxic given the context, then we are going to reduce the sampling probability for those prone to be toxic tokens,” says Ko. The researchers chose to do it this way “because the things we say, whether it’s benign or not, is subject to the context.”
Tamping down toxicity for value matching
The researchers evaluated their method against several baseline interventions with three LLMs of increasing size; all were transformers and autoregressive-based: GPT2-Large, Llama2-7b, and Llama 3.1-8b-Instruct, with 762 million, 7 billion, and 8 billion parameters respectively. For each prompt, the LLM was tasked with completing the sentence/phrase 25 times, and PerspectiveAPI scored them from 0 to 1, with anything over 0.5 being toxic. The team looked at two metrics: the average maximum toxicity score over the 25 generations for all the prompts, and the toxic rate, which was the probability of producing at least one toxic phrase over 25 generations. Reduced fluency (and therefore increased perplexity) were also analyzed. SASA was tested to complete RealToxicityPrompts (RPT), BOLD, and AttaQ datasets, which contained naturally occurring, English sentence prompts.
The researchers ramped up the complexity of their trials for detoxification by SASA, beginning with nontoxic prompts from the RPT dataset, looking for harmful sentence completions. Then, they escalated it to more challenging prompts from RPT that were more likely to produce concerning results, and as well applied SASA to the instruction-tuned model to assess if their technique could further reduce unwanted ouputs. They also used the BOLD and AttaQ benchmarks to examine the general applicability of SASA in detoxification. With the BOLD dataset, the researchers further looked for gender bias in language generations and tried to achieve a balanced toxic rate between the genders. Lastly, the team looked at runtime, memory usage, and how SASA could be combined with word filtering to achieve healthy and/or helpful language generation.
“If we think about how human beings think and react in the world, we do see bad things, so it’s not about allowing the language model to see only the good things. It’s about understanding the full spectrum — both good and bad,” says Ko, “and choosing to uphold our values when we speak and act.”
Overall, SASA achieved significant toxic language generation reductions, performing on par with RAD, a state-of-the-art external reward model technique. However, it was universally observed that stronger detoxification accompanied a decrease in fluency. Before intervention, the LLMs produced more toxic responses for female labeled prompts than male; however, SASA was able to also significantly cut down harmful responses, making them more equalized. Similarly, word filtering on top of SASA did markedly lower toxicity levels, but it also hindered the ability of the LLM to respond coherently.
A great aspect of this work is that it’s a well-defined, constrained optimization problem, says Ko, meaning that balance between open language generation that sounds natural and the need to reduce unwanted language can be achieved and tuned.
Further, Ko says, SASA could work well for multiple attributes in the future: “For human beings, we have multiple human values. We don’t want to say toxic things, but we also want to be truthful, helpful, and loyal … If you were to fine-tune a model for all of these values, it would require more computational resources and, of course, additional training.” On account of the lightweight manner of SASA, it could easily be applied in these circumstances: “If you want to work with multiple values, it’s simply checking the generation’s position in multiple subspaces. It only adds marginal overhead in terms of the compute and parameters,” says Ko, leading to more positive, fair, and principle-aligned language.
This work was supported, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and the National Science Foundation.
Large language models naturally contain biases and can generate toxic language, but a new technique from MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab researchers helps them to produce less-harmful outputs while retaining fluency.
Arts & Culture
Becky G gets real at Cultural Rhythms
RAZA Ballet Folklórico performs at Sanders Theatre.Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
April 14, 2025
4 min read
Artist of the Year applauds student performers for ‘leaning into authenticity’
Dance dominated the 39th annual Cultural Rhythms festival as students showcased impressive f
RAZA Ballet Folklórico performs at Sanders Theatre.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Artist of the Year applauds student performers for ‘leaning into authenticity’
Dance dominated the 39th annual Cultural Rhythms festival as students showcased impressive footwork from around the world.
“It just feels right to be surrounded by so many young individuals who are dedicating themselves to representation and to leaning into authenticity,” said five-time Latin Grammy nominee Becky G, honored as Artist of the Year at the April 5 production.
Since 1986, Cultural Rhythms has united the Harvard community for a celebration of the cultural and ethnic diversity of its student body. The tradition has grown into a weeklong series, including a fashion show and food fair. The grand finale, hosted by the Harvard Foundation, is a student-led performing arts showcase and Artist of the Year ceremony at Sanders Theatre.
Becky G acknowledges the audience after receiving her award.
Harvard University
The award’s past recipients include musical performers Lady Gaga and Rubén Blades as well as actors Courtney B. Vance, Angela Bassett, Eva Longoria, and Viola Davis.
“It’s a heavy-hitting list of incredible individuals who’ve accomplished so many things,” Becky G, 28, told the Gazette. “I feel like I’m just getting started.”
This year’s around-the-world tour featured Harvard Dankira Dance Troupe, with its Ethiopian- and Eritrean-inspired folk dances, and Bhangra, which pumped up the crowd with electric Punjabi moves. Audience members were pulled to their feet by Omo Naija x The Wahala Boys, who put on a Vegas-worthy dance skit. Becky G was seen cheering from her seat as Bryant Valenzuela ’25 and Mariachi Veritas x RAZA Ballet Folklórico performed Mexico’s varied movement and musical traditions.
The 2½-hour program, titled “Global Encounters,” included musical performances by 10 student groups. A highlight came when the Kuumba Singers of Harvard College offered their powerful rendition of “Can’t Give Up Now” by the duo Mary Mary. The song includes an adapted chorus from the Black gospel classic “I Don’t Feel Noways Tired.”
The Harvard Asian American Dance Troupe.
Harvard University
Omo Naija x The Wahala Boys.
Harvard University
Sebastian Feune (center right) rehearses with other members of Mariachi Véritas.
Harvard University
Habiba Braimah, senior director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, offered her thoughts on the impact of these sets. “We are reminded that art is powerful,” she told the audience. “Dance, storytelling and music is healing, and culture — all cultures, your culture — matters in a world that makes you feel divided, where our identities might be misunderstood or even challenged.”
Becky G was honored for artistic excellence and other positive contributions. At the end of the evening, the singer, songwriter, actress, and activist took the stage with festival co-directors Anapaula Barba ’25 and Hayat Hassan ’25 for a conversation covering everything from career to mental health and philanthropy.
Becky G, whose real name is Rebecca Marie Gomez, has been open in the past about her anxiety. At Sanders, she encouraged those in the midst of mental health struggles to ask for help, no matter what cultural taboos they face.
“I realized as I got older that my responsibility isn’t necessarily to be a role model but to be a real model,” Becky G said in an interview. “That means speaking to the fact that I am imperfect and that I make mistakes.”
With more than 28 billion career streams and high-profile roles in the films “Power Rangers” (2017) and DC’s “Blue Beetle” (2023), along with her hit songs “Shower” and “Mayores,” performed with Bad Bunny, Becky G uses her position to raise awareness for vulnerable communities.
“One thing that comes to mind is that there’s no lack of talent and there’s no lack of passionate individuals who are willing to do what it takes to do the work, but there is a lack of opportunity,” she said.
She is active with Altadena Girls, an organization supporting girls who lost their homes in this year’s Eaton Canyon fire.
A big fan of the late Selena Quintanilla — aka the Queen of Tejano Music — as well as contemporary reggaeton artists, she celebrated the fact that Latinx artists no longer need to “cross over.” Breaking into the U.S. market may have required performing in English for past generations. But Spanish-speaking singers today can stick to their roots.
“When we open the door for ourselves, we’re holding it open for the next generations and we’re making things better brick by brick,” said Becky G, the first Latina to receive Artist of the Year in a decade.
Campus & Community
Helping the U.S. fight addiction, cancer, other afflictions
April 14, 2025
4 min read
A snapshot of research backed by partnership between government agencies and higher ed
Examples of how Harvard scholars are tackling real-world problems — through critical research supported by federal funding — appear daily in the Gazette. The following is a snapshot of recent coverage.
Helping the U.S. fight addiction, cancer, other afflictions
4 min read
A snapshot of research backed by partnership between government agencies and higher ed
Examples of how Harvard scholars are tackling real-world problems — through critical research supported by federal funding — appear daily in the Gazette. The following is a snapshot of recent coverage.
The fentanyl crisis hits close to home for Harvard-trained researcher Travis Donahoe, whose research probes the forces driving opioid deaths and the best ways to intervene. “Ending this epidemic is one of the most important changes we can make to improve the health — and dignity — of all Americans.”
A stem cell therapy developed at Mass Eye and Ear safely restored the cornea’s surface for 14 patients in a clinical trial. When a person suffers a cornea injury, it can deplete the limbal epithelial cells, which can never regenerate. People with these injuries often experience persistent pain and visual difficulties.
Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham developed olfactory tests — in which participants sniff odor labels that have been placed on a card — to assess people’s ability to discriminate, identify, and remember odors.
“We saw a critical gap in prenatal care and an opportunity to define the genetic disorders that are treatable during this time,” said the study’s senior author. “These conditions are actionable — meaning that, empowered with diagnostic information, we can intervene early and improve outcomes.”
Chemist and Ph.D. candidate Brandon Campbell sees in silver an opportunity to lower the cost of medicine in the U.S., where consumers pay nearly three times more than 33 other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
A Harvard startup has developed a “third way” of pulling moisture from the air that works like a coffee filter. It uses much less energy than traditional air conditioners and dehumidifiers and is more stable than desiccant systems.
The fate of the universe hinges on the balance between matter and dark energy, which is the force thought to be driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. New research suggesting that dark energy, widely thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be weakening suggests the standard model of how the universe works may need an update.
New insights on how inflammation sparked by the body’s immune response alters mood and behavior could lead to alternatives to traditional psychiatric drugs that act directly on the brain. These treatments would work indirectly by altering immune chemicals outside the brain.
“Studies have previously investigated dietary patterns in the context of specific diseases or how long people live,” said one of the researchers. “Ours takes a multifaceted view, asking, how does diet impact people’s ability to live independently and enjoy a good quality of life as they age?”
Over the course of his Harvard doctoral studies, Rob Devlin must have made 100 of a new kind of mini-lens, experimenting with materials and prototyping new designs to bend light like a traditional camera only using a series of tiny pillars on a millimeter-thin wafer.
For the first time, scientists succeeded in trapping molecules to perform quantum operations. The technology promises speeds exponentially faster than classical computers, which could enable game-changing advances in fields including medicine, science, and finance.
Campus & Community
Garber message: ‘The Promise of American Higher Education’
Photo by Grace DuVal
April 14, 2025
1 min read
President shares University’s response to Trump administration's demands
President Alan Garber on Monday sent a letter to the Harvard community with an update on the University’s response to recent demands by the Trump administration tied to federal support for research. Read
Garber message: ‘The Promise of American Higher Education’
Photo by Grace DuVal
1 min read
President shares University’s response to Trump administration's demands
President Alan Garber on Monday sent a letter to the Harvard community with an update on the University’s response to recent demands by the Trump administration tied to federal support for research. Read his message, titled “The Promise of American Higher Education,” here.
Ostriker is responsible for groundbreaking discoveries that forever changed the way astronomers think about what the universe is made of, including the existence of dark matter.
Ostriker is responsible for groundbreaking discoveries that forever changed the way astronomers think about what the universe is made of, including the existence of dark matter.
Teams from eLab, the Runway Startup Postdocs Program and BioVenture eLab pitched their business ideas at the annual Cornell Silicon Valley: Student Startup Showcase at San Francisco’s Autodesk Gallery on March 27.
Teams from eLab, the Runway Startup Postdocs Program and BioVenture eLab pitched their business ideas at the annual Cornell Silicon Valley: Student Startup Showcase at San Francisco’s Autodesk Gallery on March 27.
Nation & World
Leveraging social capital to defend worthy causes, people in need of representation
Legal scholar and Law School grad returns for student panel
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
April 14, 2025
3 min read
Margaret Montoya, J.D. ’78.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Law school provides job security with high earning potential, legal scholar Margaret Montoya, J.D. ’78,
Leveraging social capital to defend worthy causes, people in need of representation
Legal scholar and Law School grad returns for student panel
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
3 min read
Margaret Montoya, J.D. ’78.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Law school provides job security with high earning potential, legal scholar Margaret Montoya, J.D. ’78, said during a March 27 student panel at Harvard Law School. But it also gives students cross-functional skills, social capital, and the chance to work for the greater good.
Montoya, the first Latina to be accepted to Harvard Law School, urged the students to give back by engaging with communities in need of legal representation, finding worthy causes to defend, and advocating for democracy.
“I was asked a question just a moment ago, ‘Why would you return to Harvard?’” said Montoya. “I return for you … I would hope that you go out and change the world. You can use the social capital offered by a Harvard degree … It is a certificate that’s worth a lot. Use it. Come back here. And help others.”
“You can use the social capital offered by a Harvard degree … It is a certificate that’s worth a lot. Use it. Come back here. And help others.”
Margaret Montoya, J.D. ’78,
A native New Mexican, Montoya, now professor emerita, has been at the University of New Mexico Law School since 1992. She has taught courses in constitutional rights, torts, contracts, clinical law, and employment law, and has written about race, ethnicity, gender, culture, and language.
After graduating from HLS, Montoya was awarded Harvard University’s Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, which allowed her to travel through Europe and Asia. Over the years, she has often returned to campus to meet and talk with students about how to make the most of their legal educations.
During her talk, Montoya compared her experience as a law student in the 1970s, when she was the only Latina student in the HLS classrooms, to that of students today.
“When I look at you, the demography, the social geography is very different,” said Montoya. “I arrived as a child from a low-income family … This is a place that teaches you about power. That is something that is worth experiencing because in order to change the society we have to understand power.”
Montoya asked student panelists what they felt were the biggest gaps in their legal education. Many responded that their courses sometimes lacked perspective on how the law affects the lives of average Americans, skipping over issues of race, social class, politics, and history.
“There’s a lot missing in the education of law students. First and foremost, it’s how the law impacts real people,” said Liz Ross, J.D. ’21 and a Ph.D. candidate in history. “That was probably the biggest gap that I saw when I was here … I think empathy is missing in legal education.”
When asked by Montoya how they enhanced their legal education, panelists underscored the importance of working with like-minded people by forming study or reading groups, getting involved with student organizations, and bringing new voices and perspectives to classrooms.
Montoya asked students to use their law degrees to help vulnerable communities, defend social and racial progress, and protect democracy when it’s threatened by authoritarian forces. A law degree offers tools to become guardians of democracy, she said.
“Harvard transfers social capital to those of us who are here and who graduate,” Montoya said during an interview after her talk. “We can turn that social capital to become stewards of democracy. We can name ourselves as being on the side of justice. Harvard Law School gives us the social capital to be able use different tools to change the status quo.”
Nation & World
EPA plans target climate change initiatives
The Salata Institute series, “Harvard Voices on Climate Change,” featured Harvard Law School’s Carrie Jenks and Richard Lazarus with Salata Director Jim Stock moderating.Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 14, 2025
6 min read
Environmental law experts say rollbacks will reverse advances in r
The Salata Institute series, “Harvard Voices on Climate Change,” featured Harvard Law School’s Carrie Jenks and Richard Lazarus with Salata Director Jim Stock moderating.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
6 min read
Environmental law experts say rollbacks will reverse advances in recent decades
A Harvard expert in environmental law said a recent set of Trump administration regulatory changes targeting initiatives in the climate change battle will reverse progress made over decades.
Richard Lazarus, Harvard Law School’s Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law, said the late U.S. Sen. John McCain described the first Trump administration’s approach to cutting government programs as using a “meat cleaver” rather than a scalpel.
“I would say that Trump 2.0 in the first 71 days has been more akin to a nuclear explosion, with a bull’s eye on programs related to climate change,” Lazarus said on April 1, during an online discussion of the administration’s new goals for the Environmental Protection Agency disclosed last month.
Regulatory whipsawing is common, Lazarus said, as administrations undo what they see as predecessors’ harmful actions and overreach. Efforts in Washington D.C. today, however, go far beyond disagreement over how to regulate, questioning whether to regulate at all.
Carrie Jenks, executive director of HLS’ Environmental and Energy Law Program, agreed, saying that in mid-March the EPA laid out a roadmap of 31 steps it would take, targeting issues including climate change-related regulation, power plant and greenhouse gas reporting requirements, and support for electric vehicles. The steps also included reconsidering restrictions on the oil and gas industry, mercury standards that affect coal power plants, wastewater regulations for oil and gas development, air quality standards, and others.
Lazarus and Jenks’ assessments were part of a conversation hosted by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. The hourlong event, part of its “Harvard Voices on Climate Change” series, was moderated by Salata Institute Director James Stock, Harvard’s vice provost for climate and sustainability and the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy.
A key administration initiative, they said, is the launch of a formal reconsideration of the 2009 “endangerment finding.”
That finding, ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007, concluded that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers human health. It provided the legal foundation under the Clean Air Act for government regulation of climate warming gases like carbon dioxide and methane.
Jenks described the finding as “a trigger” for subsequent regulation, so an attractive target for those seeking to undermine federal action on climate change. Attacking the decision on the basis of scientific fact, however, may be difficult, since the science is well-established.
Instead, Jenks said the administration might try to argue that the EPA doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases or has the discretion to choose not to.
“I think they’re going for more legally risky strategies that have more damaging outcomes if they’re successful,” Jenks said. “Each action taken by the EPA under [Barack] Obama, [Joe] Biden, and even in some cases, the first Trump administration, recognized climate change, and the debate was about how to regulate, not whether to regulate. Now, I think, it’s very different from what we’ve seen in the past.”
Whatever approach they take, Jenks said, they will have to go through a process of proposing regulatory change, taking public comments, and finalizing the rule, which takes time and allows environmental groups and others who disagree to voice their opinions.
“I’m sure those actions will then be litigated, and any regulatory action should need to be grounded in the statutory criteria that Congress has required EPA to consider, which generally has at least one component connected to emissions or pollution reduction,” Jenks said.
Jenks said she expects the EPA to move quickly, but that could become difficult if staff cuts deplete the agency’s expertise on these matters, as the underlying rationale for regulatory change has to have supporting data.
Another option, Lazarus said, is the GOP-dominated Congress could decide to use the Congressional Review Act as a weapon against environmental regulation. The law would allow the House and Senate, by majority vote, to overturn a rule by any federal agency and then prohibit that agency from reissuing the rule or creating a similar rule unless authorized by Congress.
That strategy was in full view in February when Congress overturned EPA’s rule implementing the “waste emissions charge” on methane emissions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. The result, Lazarus said, is that though the IRA requires companies emitting methane to pay the charge, there are no regulations in place for that to happen, leaving the companies and the fee in limbo.
Congress might employ the same strategy to remove California’s ability to exceed federal regulations on vehicle emissions standards, which has not only allowed California to create the strictest standards in the country, but, once set, can be followed by other states.
The IRA itself is under attack as the administration tries to claw back funding in an array of programs intended to provide incentives for climate-friendly action. Like the moves that gutted USAID, choosing not to spend funds on congressionally approved IRA programs on climate change is illegal, Lazarus said. But the administration appears to be unconcerned with running afoul of the law and is pushing hard to bring change quickly.
“They don’t mind forcing the courts to act and litigation takes time,” Lazarus said. “The practical effect of a freeze and a contract violation is it takes time to undo it. In the meantime, money isn’t being spent. The contractors aren’t getting it. People’s salaries aren’t being paid. People have leases that aren’t being paid. Right now, it’s chaos among all those recipients around the country. And the Trump administration will keep changing the legal rationale, making it very elusive and just saying, ‘We’re pausing it,’ or ‘We have to study it more carefully.’ The practical effect is quite serious.”
In the end, Jenks and Lazarus agreed, it may be the effect on individual lives that does the greatest harm. Regulatory changes can be undone or rewritten and new regulations passed, but layoffs, reassignments, and hostile working conditions threaten to rob the agency of the scientific and legal expertise that has ensured continuity from administration to administration.
While some of the firings and other personnel steps undertaken by the new administration may be halted or reversed by the courts, people are leaving voluntarily because they are demoralized and have bills to pay.
“Many are leaving,” Lazarus said. “To lose not just the regulations, but potentially lose that career expertise, and the funding of the IRA, is potentially devastating.”
A new, error-corrected method for detecting cancer from blood samples is much more sensitive and accurate than prior methods and may be useful for monitoring disease status in patients following treatment.
A new, error-corrected method for detecting cancer from blood samples is much more sensitive and accurate than prior methods and may be useful for monitoring disease status in patients following treatment.
Thousands of spectators lined the banks of the River Thames on 13 April to witness a dramatic afternoon of action, with millions more following live on the BBC.
Cambridge Women secured their eighth consecutive win in the 79th Women’s Boat Race, extending their overall record to 49 victories to Oxford’s 30. The Men’s crew, too, were victorious in defending their title in the 170th edition of the event, notching up their 88th win, with Oxford sitting on 81.
Goldie, the Cambridge Men’s Reserve Cr
Thousands of spectators lined the banks of the River Thames on 13 April to witness a dramatic afternoon of action, with millions more following live on the BBC.
Cambridge Women secured their eighth consecutive win in the 79th Women’s Boat Race, extending their overall record to 49 victories to Oxford’s 30. The Men’s crew, too, were victorious in defending their title in the 170th edition of the event, notching up their 88th win, with Oxford sitting on 81.
Goldie, the Cambridge Men’s Reserve Crew, won the Men’s Reserve Race, while Blondie, the Cambridge Women’s Reserve Crew, won the Women’s Reserve Race. And the day before, the 2025 Lightweight Boat Race also saw two wins for Cambridge.
Cambridge’s Claire Collins said it was an incredible feeling to win the race.
“This is so cool, it’s really an incredible honour to share this with the whole club,” she said.
The Women’s Race was stopped initially after an oar clash, but Umpire Sir Matthew Pinsent allowed the race to resume after a restart. Claire said that the crew had prepared for eventualities such as a restart and so were able to lean on their training when it happened.
“I had total confidence in the crew to regroup. Our focus was to get back on pace and get going as soon as possible and that’s what we did.”
For Cambridge Men’s President Luca Ferraro, it was his final Boat Roat campaign, having raced in the Blue Boat for the last three years, winning the last two.
He said: “It was a great race. The guys really stepped up. That’s something that our Coach Rob Baker said to us before we went out there, that each of us had to step up individually and come together and play our part in what we were about to do. I couldn’t be prouder of the guys, they really delivered today.”
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, congratulated all the crews following the wins.
“I am in awe of these students and what they have achieved, and what Cambridge University Boat Club has been able to create,” she said.
“These students are out in the early hours of the morning training and then trying to make it to 9am lectures. It’s so inspiring. And a complete clean sweep – this was an incredibly impressive showing by Cambridge, I am so proud of them.”
The Cambridge Blue Boats featured student athletes drawn from Christ’s College, Downing College, Emmanuel College, Gonville & Caius, Hughes Hall, Jesus College, Pembroke College, Peterhouse, St Edmund’s, and St John’s.
Cambridge is celebrating a complete clean sweep at The Boat Race 2025, with victories in all 4 openweight races and also both lightweight races.
MIT Professors Andrew Vanderburg and Ariel White have been honored as Committed to Caring for their attentiveness to student needs and for creating a welcoming and inclusive culture. For MIT graduate students, the Committed to Caring program recognizes those who go above and beyond.Professor Vanderburg “is incredibly generous with his time, resources, and passion for mentoring the next generation of astronomers,” praised one of his students. “Professor Ariel White has made my experience at MIT i
MIT Professors Andrew Vanderburg and Ariel White have been honored as Committed to Caring for their attentiveness to student needs and for creating a welcoming and inclusive culture. For MIT graduate students, the Committed to Caring program recognizes those who go above and beyond.
Professor Vanderburg “is incredibly generous with his time, resources, and passion for mentoring the next generation of astronomers,” praised one of his students.
“Professor Ariel White has made my experience at MIT immeasurably better and I hope that one day I will be in a position to pay her kindness forward,” another student credited.
Andrew Vanderburg: Investing in student growth and development
Vanderburg is the Bruno B. Rossi Career Development Assistant Professor of Physics and is affiliated with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. His research focuses on studying exoplanets. Vanderburg is interested in developing cutting-edge techniques and methods to discover new planets outside of our solar system, and studying these planets to learn their detailed properties.
Ever respectful of students’ boundaries between their research and personal life, Vanderburg leads by example in striking a healthy balance. A nominator commented that he has recently been working on his wildlife photography skills, and has even shared some of his photos at the group’s meetings.
Balancing personal and work life is something that almost everyone Vanderburg knows struggles with, from undergraduate students to faculty. “I encourage my group members to spend free time doing things they enjoy outside of work,” Vanderburg says, “and I try to model that balanced behavior myself.”
Vanderburg also understands and accepts that sometimes personal lives can completely overwhelm everything else and affect work and studies. He offers, “when times like these inevitably happen, I just have to acknowledge that life is unpredictable, family comes first, and that the astronomy can wait.”
In addition, Vanderburg organizes group outings, such as hiking, apple picking, and Red Sox games, and occasionally hosts group gatherings at his home. An advisee noted that “these efforts make our group feel incredibly welcoming, and fosters friendship between all our team members.”
Vanderburg has provided individualized guidance and support to over a dozen students in his first two years as faculty at MIT. His students credit him with “meeting them where they are,” and say that he candidly addresses themes like imposter syndrome and student feelings of belonging in astronomy. Vanderburg is always ready to offer his fresh perspective and unwavering support to his students.
“I try to treat everyone in my group with kindness and support,” Vanderburg says, allowing his students to trust that he has their best interest at heart. Students feel this way as well; another nominator exclaimed that Vanderburg “genuinely and truly is one of the kindest humans I know.”
Vanderburg went above and beyond in offering his students support and insisting that his advisees will accomplish their goals. One nominator said, “his support meant the world to me at a time where I doubted my own abilities and potential.”
The Committed to Caring honor recognizes Vanderburg’s seemingly endless capacity to share his knowledge, support his students through difficult times, and invest in his mentees’ personal growth and development.
Ariel White: Student well-being and advocacy
White is an associate professor of political science who studies voting and voting rights, race, the criminal legal system, and bureaucratic behavior. Her research uses large datasets to measure individual-level experiences, and to shed light on people's everyday interactions with government. Her recent work investigates how potential voters react to experiences with punitive government policies, such as incarceration and immigration enforcement, and how people can make their way back into political life after these experiences.
She cares deeply about student well-being and departmental culture. One of her nominators shared a personal story describing that they were frequently belittled and insulted early in their graduate school journey. They had battled with whether this hurtful treatment was part of a typical grad school journey. The experience was negatively impacting their academic performance and feeling of belonging in the department.
When she learned of it, White immediately expressed concern and reinforced that the student deserved an environment that was conducive to learning and well-being, and then quickly took steps to talk to the peer to ensure their interactions improved.
“She wants me to feel valued, and is dedicated to both my growth as a scholar and my well-being as a person,” the nominator expressed. “This has been especially valuable as I found the adjustment to the department difficult and isolating.”
Another student commended, “I am constantly in awe of the time and effort that Ariel puts into leading by example, actively fostering an inclusive learning environment, and ensuring students feel heard and empowered.”
White is a radiant example of a professor who can have an outstanding publishing record while still treating graduate students with kindness and respect. She shows compassion and support to students, even those she does not advise. In the words of one nominator, “Ariel is the most caring person in this department.”
White has consistently expressed her desire to support her students and advocate for them. “I think one of the hardest transitions to make is the one from being a consumer of research to a producer of it.” Students work on the rather daunting prospect of developing an idea on their own for a solo project, and it can be hard to know where to start or how to keep going.
To address this, White says that she talks with advisees about what she’s seen work for her and for other students. She also encourages them to talk with their peers for advice and try out different ways of structuring their time or plan out goals.
“I try to help by explicitly highlighting these challenges and validating them: These are difficult things for nearly everyone who goes through the PhD program,” White adds.
One student reflected, “Ariel is the type of advisor that everyone should aspire to be, and that anyone would be lucky to have.”
Fiona Hill and Lucian Kim.Photo by Grace DuVal
Nation & World
No quick end to Russia-Ukraine war, analysts say
Former national security official Fiona Hill says that much will depend on whether other European nations step up
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 11, 2025
5 min read
Don’t expect U.S.-brokered talks that began last month to end the war between Russia and Ukrain
Former national security official Fiona Hill says that much will depend on whether other European nations step up
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Don’t expect U.S.-brokered talks that began last month to end the war between Russia and Ukraine soon, analysts said during a discussion Tuesday hosted by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard.
Though Ukraine agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, Russia ramped up missile and drone attacks on Kyiv this week.
“We’re so far from a peace plan or a peace process,” said Fiona Hill, A.M. ’91, Ph.D. ’98.
Hill served from 2017 to 2019 as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs at the National Security Council during President Trump’s first term. And she testified before Congress during Trump’s impeachment trial in 2019.
Russia President Vladimir Putin has no incentives to end the war, but plenty to engage in talks in hopes of normalizing relations with the U.S., agreed Hill and panelist Lucian Kim, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. The conversation was moderated by Evgenia Albats, Ph.D. ’04, a Russian political scientist and journalist who is currently a visiting scholar at the Davis Center.
Putin’s vision for a Russia reunited in some form with Ukraine and his willingness to let casualties mount make getting a lasting deal very limited, she said, as does a relatively inexperienced U.S. negotiating team.
Both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky know that Trump’s primary goal is to broker a peace deal, even if it doesn’t last or harms Ukraine, said Hill, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe and a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.
“Trump is trying to force a peace deal [that] seems to be on Putin’s terms,” so that he can reset U.S.-Russia relations, something he tried to accomplish in his first term, she added.
Without intelligence and military support from the U.S., the “most likely” outcome for Ukraine is that it will have to cede territory to Russia. At this juncture, the notion that Ukraine could somehow retake Crimea and Donetsk is “almost hard to imagine,” said Kim, a former Moscow-based correspondent for NPR and Bloomberg.
But even a negotiated shift of territorial borders won’t be enough to satisfy Russia, he added. “Putin is not going to rest until Ukraine is subordinated to the Kremlin.”
The conflict in Ukraine has long been seen by Russia and its allies, China, Iran, and North Korea, as a proxy war with the U.S. How they react if the U.S. walks away from the conflict entirely is now the most important question, particularly for Europe, Hill said.
“This is now a European war, very clearly,” one that will test the region’s security and unity, she said.
Analysts agreed that Europe has more defensive capacity than it gets credit for. Many countries understand Russia poses a threat to their own individual security and have upped defense spending in recent years.
Others have been newly energized to beef up their fighting forces since Trump returned to office. But getting a coalition of individual European armies coordinated, trained, and fully prepared to step in to assist Ukraine if necessary will take time, perhaps more than the besieged nation has.
“The only hope that the Ukrainians have now is the Europeans somehow getting their act together,” said Kim.
Ukraine had the firm backing of President Joe Biden, Kim said, but even then the relationship between the two nations was far from perfect.
The Ukrainians had a very “high level of frustration” with the limits the administration put on what weaponry it shared and how it was to be used and the slow pace of deliveries. It was an overly cautious approach, they felt, driven by the fact that Biden and his team did not see the war as an existential threat to the U.S.
Also shaping the U.S. approach to military assistance in Ukraine, Hill said, was that the Biden administration’s first priority from the war’s earliest days was avoiding a nuclear World War III rather than doing whatever necessary to ensure that Ukraine defeated Russia.
During a recent trip to Ukraine, Kim said he never once heard Biden’s name mentioned and got the sense that few missed his administration. As early as last summer, there were signs Ukraine held out “a naive hope” about what might be possible in a second Trump term.
“People thought Trump, despite his record already in Ukraine during his first term, would somehow be able to rattle up the situation enough that there would be a better outcome than if the war simply continued in its present direction,” said Kim. But, he said, the Ukrainians have since been “disabused of those illusions.”
Bridget Kondrat (from left), Maggie Chiappetta-Uberti, Brooke Stanford, and Andrew Athanasian train along the Charles River for the 2025 Boston Marathon.Photos by Dylan Goodman
Campus & Community
Heartbreak Hill? These marathoners have seen worse.
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
April 11, 2025
9 min read
Loved ones inspire College runners to go the distance against disease
For t
Bridget Kondrat (from left), Maggie Chiappetta-Uberti, Brooke Stanford, and Andrew Athanasian train along the Charles River for the 2025 Boston Marathon.
Heartbreak Hill? These marathoners have seen worse.
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
9 min read
Loved ones inspire College runners to go the distance against disease
For two years, grief left her body feeling like a pressure-cooker.
“It wasn’t until my junior year that I discovered something that really helped with the release of my emotions,” said Brooke Stanford ’25, who lost her mother, Andrea, to pancreatic cancer two weeks before arriving on campus as a first-year in 2021.
“The one thing that really helped was running.”
Now Stanford is using the sport to honor her mother and lift other families facing the disease. She’s been training for this year’s Boston Marathon while soliciting donations for Project Purple, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer and supporting patients. Every year, the Boston Athletic Association partners with a set of charities, which in turn recruit marathoners to raise money ahead of race day.
Stanford won’t be the only College runner hitting the 26.2-mile course for a loved one on April 21. Each of these students is vying for a strong finish — and a fundraising haul for a cause close to the heart.
‘I was just so excited I got to do this’
Stanford with her mother, Andrea.
Stanford discovered Project Purple last summer while browsing a list of approved charities for the marathon.
“I knew I would want to run for some sort of cancer research organization, but I didn’t think that there would be one so fitting to what I had been through,” she said. “After that, I made it my No. 1 mission to get a spot on the Project Purple team.”
The trouble was, the odds were on par with getting into Harvard.
“I had just under 150 applications for five spots,” said Project Purple program director Vin Kampf.
Stanford, a Dunster House resident and applied math concentrator, soon found herself swept into phone calls and interviews with Kampf and the nonprofit’s other top brass.
“You would think I was applying for a job at an investment bank,” she said. “A lot of people think the hardest part about running for a charity is raising the money. But the hardest part is 100 percent getting a spot on the team.”
The final step was a formal presentation of her fundraising plans to Project Purple last fall. “I spent a full week putting together this very detailed PowerPoint and Excel,” recalled Stanford, who vowed to raise $50,000 by soliciting individual donations and hosting special events. “I spent way longer doing that than on any assignment Harvard has ever given me.”
A week later, she received the good news in a tearful call with Kampf. “I was just so excited that I got to do this — and do it for my mom,” she said.
The first-time marathoner, who dons purple leggings for every training run, has continued giving it her all. She surpassed her $50,000 pledge nearly two months ago and currently ranks in the Top 10 of Boston Marathon fundraisers this year. According to Kampf, she also ranks among Project Purple’s most successful charity runners ever.
“In some ways, I feel like I found my life’s purpose,” Stanford said. “I want to work more with Project Purple. I want to do more to make a difference. I want to help end pancreatic cancer.”
‘Just imagine if this was the Boston Marathon’
Athanasian with friends including Grace Taylor (right).
At first, Grace Taylor ’25 didn’t tell her friends about her cancer diagnosis. She was too busy working as a peer adviser for incoming first-years.
“I wanted to be the best peer adviser I could be,” said Taylor, a rising sophomore at the time. “I knew that if I let my own stuff in, I wouldn’t be able to serve the entryway very well.”
When she texted her pal Andrew Athanasian ’25 a few days later, he too was a bit occupied.
“I was walking across the river to go work out when Grace texted, ‘Hey, can we talk?’” Athanasian recalled. “I was like, ‘Is it important?’ And she replied, ‘No, not really.’”
Taylor broke the news later that day. Athanasian immediately stepped up, becoming a pillar during his friend’s treatment for an aggressive form of thyroid cancer. Not least, he and Taylor’s Quincy House roommate, Amy Wotovich, made countless runs to BerryLine for (among other things) throat-soothing ice cream. With the help of them and her parents, Taylor said, she persevered without dropping out for the semester.
Athanasian, an econ concentrator who lives in Lowell House, joined Taylor and her family last fall at the Mass General Brigham Eversource Cancer 5k, a benefit for the oncology practice that saw Taylor through two surgeries and radioactive iodine treatment.
“Seeing how Grace and her family responded to that 5k,” Athanasian recalled, “I found myself saying: ‘Just imagine if this was the Boston Marathon.’”
After nabbing a spot on the Mass General Marathon Team, the first-time marathoner has made that vision a reality. Athanasian aims to raise $10,000 for the hospital’s pediatric oncology unit, with part of the proceeds earmarked for the adolescents and young adults cancer program that saw Taylor through treatment into remission.
“I’m running for Grace but I’m also running for everyone who didn’t make it,” emphasized Athanasian, remembering a friend from his Long Island hometown killed by brain cancer at age 17. Athanasian, a committed Catholic, has inscribed his Asics with references to scripture as a reminder of his inspiration. (Hebrews 12:1, on his right, feels tailor-made for the modern charity runner.)
On race day, Taylor hopes to glimpse her friend from the celebration hosted by Mass General, a long-standing fixture at Mile 20 — just before the course crests Heartbreak Hill.
“That’s the darkest part of the course,” Athanasian said. “But they’re bringing out all the pediatric oncology patients to cheer us on. How can you not become Usain Bolt after seeing those kids?”
‘The opportunity to call upon her strength’
Kondrat with her grandmother Cleida Buckley.
Every Sunday, Cohasset, Mass., native Bridget Kondrat ’26 would attend Mass with her large extended family. Then everyone would head over to her grandparents’ place and spend the day together.
“We have always been so close,” said Kondrat, who counts three siblings and 18 cousins. “And my Nana was really the heart of that.”
For 14 years, Kondrat’s maternal grandmother, Cleida Buckley, fought multiple myeloma with the help of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Through it all, the 5-foot-2 powerhouse maintained her status as the family’s hostess and connector.
“She just kept showing up for us,” Kondrat said.
Watching the marathon became another family tradition after Kondrat’s mom, Liz, ran in 2000, and Buckley proved a memorable presence from her perch on Heartbreak Hill.
“She was so freaking cute, just sitting there in Newton Centre with her little beach chair,” Liz said.
That’s why training for the 2025 event with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team struck Kondrat as the perfect way to honor her grandmother, who died in 2022.
“Running with Dana-Farber gives me the opportunity to call upon her strength,” said Kondrat, who hopes to raise $10,000.
The Harvard-Radcliffe rower and Eliot House resident has ambitious goals for her second marathon. Charity runners can run Boston without meeting the race’s strict qualifying times. But the economics concentrator hopes to best the event’s official 3 hour and 25-minute cutoff (with an average pace of 7:49 per mile) for women ages 34 and younger.
Kondrat, who started running with her mom in fourth grade, has been following an ambitious training program complete with speed workouts, intervals, and long runs at her target marathon pace.
“I biked next to her last week when she ran 12 miles,” Liz said. “She was doing 7:30s the whole time!”
Keeping up the regimen has been a challenge for a full-time student-athlete and part-time fundraiser, Kondrat said. But it’s nothing compared with the marathon battle Buckley endured.
“Whenever I start to complain or lose motivation,” Kondrat said, “I just think about everything I watched my Nana go through.”
‘She started showing me her medals’
Chiappetta-Uberti with her mother, Lainee.
In seventh grade, Maggie Chiappetta-Uberti ’26 came home feeling discouraged after her first track practice. She was exhausted. She was sore. All she wanted to do was quit.
“My mom Lainee sat me down and right away started instilling me with confidence,” Chiappetta-Uberti recalled. “She started telling me about the records she set in middle school and high school. She started showing me her medals.”
That inspired Chiapetta-Uberti to stick with it. “I’m so grateful to her for pushing me to continue,” said the Kirkland House resident, who competed in cross-country and track through high school.
Her mom, Lainee Uberti, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at 58. “She immediately started walking four miles every day,” recalled Chiappetta-Uberti, who was in ninth grade at the time.
More than six years later, Uberti is still religious about her daily jaunt. “Getting out there and running or walking,” she said in an interview, “that’s what keeps us going.”
Once again, that strength has inspired her daughter to tackle a big challenge. Chiappetta-Uberti is training for her first marathon while raising funds for the Alzheimer’s Association. Each member of Team End ALZ is supposed to bring in a minimum of $10,000. But the neuroscience concentrator set the loftier goal of $26,200 — or $1,000 per mile.
As part of her efforts, she’s also populating a TikTok feed with training videos, Alzheimer’s awareness, and tributes to Uberti.
“It’s so special that Maggie is going the extra mile — no pun intended — to raise awareness, raise money, and put her heart into representing our family,” said Chiappetta-Uberti’s other mom, Laura Chiappetta. Both parents will travel from their home in Los Angeles to cheer their daughter’s 26.2-mile debut.
The punishing race feels like an appropriate gesture when her mom is dealing with an incurable disease like Alzheimer’s, Chiappetta-Uberti said. “I want her to know there’s support for her — she’s not facing this alone.”
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Campus & Community
Cutting drug costs, embracing aging, demystifying AI — and more research ideas
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
April 11, 2025
7 min read
8 graduate students pitch their work in Harvard Horizons talks
At Harvard, thousands of scholars are working to advance knowledge on a wide array of topics. Eight students are sele
Cutting drug costs, embracing aging, demystifying AI — and more research ideas
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
7 min read
8 graduate students pitch their work in Harvard Horizons talks
At Harvard, thousands of scholars are working to advance knowledge on a wide array of topics. Eight students are selected each year to workshop ways to bring that knowledge from the University to the wider world through Harvard Horizons.
Now in its 12th year, the program invites doctoral candidates to share their work in a one-night academic symposium. Students receive one-on-one mentoring to hone their presentation skills and research ideas.
“It is crucial that both faculty and students are able to communicate and connect with the broader world,” said Karen Thornber, the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. “These multimodal skills are foundational, both for engaging students in the classroom and for ensuring that research which has the potential to contribute significantly to the well-being of all is both accessible and impactful to a wider audience.”
Ancient structures are not as set in stone as we once thought. Alarcón Robledo is trying to better understand the histories of tombs in North Saqqara, Egypt, using 3D modeling and a process called photogrammetry — mapping structures onto archaeological sites with archival photography and software. He’s found that tombs changed over time, with additions and reconstructions, from places purely for funeral services to sites of ritual practices and community gatherings.
“Buildings are like people, and writing about their history is very much like writing their biography,” he said. “In our lives, there may be many moments which are representative of our identities … but even freezing one moment of everyday of our lives would not be representative.”
Getting older can be beautiful, says Braslavsky. Her talk centered around what scholars can learn from older female poets, including how to embrace aging instead of succumbing to the narrative of decay and decline.
“While the cultural zeitgeist tells us to fear aging, aging is more a part of the human experience than ever before,” she said.
Her work in particular focuses on three Slavic poets — Elizabeta Mnatsakanova, Bohumila Grögerová, and Krystyna Miłobędzka — who wrote and created into their later years.
“These women show us through their work that time can be filtered through our perceptions, that time can be measured as much emotionally as it can be empirically,” Braslavsky said.
Silver, according to Campbell, may be good for more than jewelry. His work is attempting to use silver in a chemical process that would make the production of pharmaceuticals a fraction of the current cost. The trifluoromethyl group is essential to many modern drugs, but it can be hard to synthesize. Using photochemistry, Campbell has been working to utilize trifluoroacetate as a trifluoromethyl source — a notoriously hard process.
To do this, he’s utilizing a special type of silver (Ag²⁺) — a highly reactive form of the metal that can be recycled and reused to not only cut costs but potentially also make strides in sustainability.
“At the outset of my Ph.D., very few Ag²⁺ compounds had ever been made before. But in this absence of knowledge, in this lack of precedence, I saw opportunity, and I seized it by devising a new synthetic strategy toward isolating large quantities of silver compounds,” Campbell said.
Before there were spreadsheets, there were khipus. Twisted twine with series of knots, khipus were the ancient Inca’s alternative to written script. They were used to record data, including census counts, taxes, and maybe intricate narratives and songs.
FitzPatrick has been studying a collection of 33 khipus from cliffside tombs at Laguna de los Cóndores in Peru to better understand the people who made them.
“I decided to put the process on its head, working backwards to understand how khipus were made, who made them, and what this can tell us about their use,” FitzPatrick said.
Part of this process, he said, has been to become a khipu-maker himself. During his presentation, FitzPatrick distributed a homemade khipu to each member of the audience.
The ancient Greek poet Sappho has long been considered by scholars to have been lost to time, only to be rediscovered in the late 19th century when fragments of papyrus containing her poetry were unearthed in Egypt. But Horgan says she was never really lost.
“She has been continually present in poems and plays, in sculptures and statues, and in the minds of the readers who have imagined her again and again and again, regardless of the presence or absence of her poetry,” Horgan said.
Horgan’s work is focused on dispelling the myth that the work of Sappho — a famously queer poet — was purposely oppressed. In reality, she said, Sappho and her queerness have been present in countless works of scholarship and art since her life in the time before Christ.
“My hope is that this work provides not only narratives of queer suppression, but queer survival. Sappho did not survive in spite of her queerness, but in fact, because of queerness,” she said.
Courts, key institutions in democratic societies, can both help and hurt democracy, according to O’Donohue. The Ph.D. candidate, who witnessed a military coup attempt while working for the U.S. State Department in Istanbul, said in his talk that this is particularly apparent in places like Turkey, as well as Israel and even the U.S. Israel and Turkey, according to O’Donohue, exemplify opposite ends of the “judicial power-sharing” spectrum — or the need for cross-partisan compromise to appoint judges to the country’s highest courts.
“I came to Harvard because I had this problem I needed to solve,” he said. “Why do courts defend or undermine democracy in particular by upholding legal constraints of powerful political leaders?”
Are we using AI wrong? Raux says we are. According to his research, humans project their own thinking onto artificial intelligence, leading us to miss out on what the tech can really do for us.
“We need to make sure that as humans, we can fully harness the potential of AI,” Raux said.
Conducting experiments using chatbots, Raux had the AI answer questions about parenting advice. His aim was to show that human intelligence is vastly different than artificial intelligence, and that what makes something difficult for humans may be different from AI and vice versa.
“But do people realize this when interacting with AI?” he asked.
Ultimately, Raux hopes that his work will help both researchers and users better harness the technology’s power.
Venturo-Conerly has a lofty goal: to bring mental healthcare to every young person across the world. She’s starting in Kenya. Building on work she started as an undergrad with fellow Harvard alumni Tom Osborn, Venturo-Conerly has been programming mental health services for Kenyan youth through the Shamiri Institute. Named for the Kiswahili word meaning “thrive,” Shamiri uses a tiered system of laypeople, supervised by mental health professionals and experts, to deliver counseling and academic support to Kenyan students. Along with mental health, their work focuses on academic, financial, and social well-being.
“Instead of focusing on psychopathology, it circumvents stigma by focusing on positive concepts, growth mindset, gratitude and values, affirmations, all of which are research-backed interventions theorized to produce an upward spiral of change in beliefs and behaviors,” Venturo-Conerly said.
Shamiri is in its sixth year of operation, and Venturo-Conerly and Osborn continue to study its impacts.
Tropical cyclones are hurricanes that brew over the tropical ocean and can travel over land, inundating coastal regions. The most extreme cyclones can generate devastating storm tides — seawater that is heightened by the tides and swells onto land, causing catastrophic flood events in coastal regions. A new study by MIT scientists finds that, as the planet warms, the recurrence of destructive storm tides will increase tenfold for one of the hardest-hit regions of the world.In a study appearing t
Tropical cyclones are hurricanes that brew over the tropical ocean and can travel over land, inundating coastal regions. The most extreme cyclones can generate devastating storm tides — seawater that is heightened by the tides and swells onto land, causing catastrophic flood events in coastal regions. A new study by MIT scientists finds that, as the planet warms, the recurrence of destructive storm tides will increase tenfold for one of the hardest-hit regions of the world.
In a study appearing today in One Earth, the scientists report that, for the highly populated coastal country of Bangladesh, what was once a 100-year event could now strike every 10 years — or more often — by the end of the century.
In a future where fossil fuels continue to burn as they do today, what was once considered a catastrophic, once-in-a-century storm tide will hit Bangladesh, on average, once per decade. And the kind of storm tides that have occurred every decade or so will likely batter the country’s coast more frequently, every few years.
Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with more than 171 million people living in a region roughly the size of New York state. The country has been historically vulnerable to tropical cyclones, as it is a low-lying delta that is easily flooded by storms and experiences a seasonal monsoon. Some of the most destructive floods in the world have occurred in Bangladesh, where it’s been increasingly difficult for agricultural economies to recover.
The study also finds that Bangladesh will likely experience tropical cyclones that overlap with the months-long monsoon season. Until now, cyclones and the monsoon have occurred at separate times during the year. But as the planet warms, the scientists’ modeling shows that cyclones will push into the monsoon season, causing back-to-back flooding events across the country.
“Bangladesh is very active in preparing for climate hazards and risks, but the problem is, everything they’re doing is more or less based on what they’re seeing in the present climate,” says study co-author Sai Ravela, principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “We are now seeing an almost tenfold rise in the recurrence of destructive storm tides almost anywhere you look in Bangladesh. This cannot be ignored. So, we think this is timely, to say they have to pause and revisit how they protect against these storms.”
Ravela’s co-authors are Jiangchao Qiu, a postdoc in EAPS, and Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at MIT.
Height of tides
In recent years, Bangladesh has invested significantly in storm preparedness, for instance in improving its early-warning system, fortifying village embankments, and increasing access to community shelters. But such preparations have generally been based on the current frequency of storms.
In this new study, the MIT team aimed to provide detailed projections of extreme storm tide hazards, which are flooding events where tidal effects amplify cyclone-induced storm surge, in Bangladesh under various climate-warming scenarios and sea-level rise projections.
“A lot of these events happen at night, so tides play a really strong role in how much additional water you might get, depending on what the tide is,” Ravela explains.
To evaluate the risk of storm tide, the team first applied a method of physics-based downscaling, which Emanuel’s group first developed over 20 years ago and has been using since to study hurricane activity in different parts of the world. The technique involves a low-resolution model of the global ocean and atmosphere that is embedded with a finer-resolution model that simulates weather patterns as detailed as a single hurricane. The researchers then scatter hurricane “seeds” in a region of interest and run the model forward to observe which seeds grow and make landfall over time.
To the downscaled model, the researchers incorporated a hydrodynamical model, which simulates the height of a storm surge, given the pattern and strength of winds at the time of a given storm. For any given simulated storm, the team also tracked the tides, as well as effects of sea level rise, and incorporated this information into a numerical model that calculated the storm tide, or the height of the water, with tidal effects as a storm makes landfall.
Extreme overlap
With this framework, the scientists simulated tens of thousands of potential tropical cyclones near Bangladesh, under several future climate scenarios, ranging from one that resembles the current day to one in which the world experiences further warming as a result of continued fossil fuel burning. For each simulation, they recorded the maximum storm tides along the coast of Bangladesh and noted the frequency of storm tides of various heights in a given climate scenario.
“We can look at the entire bucket of simulations and see, for this storm tide of say, 3 meters, we saw this many storms, and from that you can figure out the relative frequency of that kind of storm,” Qiu says. “You can then invert that number to a return period.”
A return period is the time it takes for a storm of a particular type to make landfall again. A storm that is considered a “100-year event” is typically more powerful and destructive, and in this case, creates more extreme storm tides, and therefore more catastrophic flooding, compared to a 10-year event.
From their modeling, Ravela and his colleagues found that under a scenario of increased global warming, the storms that previously were considered 100-year events, producing the highest storm tide values, can recur every decade or less by late-century. They also observed that, toward the end of this century, tropical cyclones in Bangladesh will occur across a broader seasonal window, potentially overlapping in certain years with the seasonal monsoon season.
“If the monsoon rain has come in and saturated the soil, a cyclone then comes in and it makes the problem much worse,” Ravela says. “People won’t have any reprieve between the extreme storm and the monsoon. There are so many compound and cascading effects between the two. And this only emerges because warming happens.”
Ravela and his colleagues are using their modeling to help experts in Bangladesh better evaluate and prepare for a future of increasing storm risk. And he says that the climate future for Bangladesh is in some ways not unique to this part of the world.
“This climate change story that is playing out in Bangladesh in a certain way will be playing out in a different way elsewhere,” Ravela notes. “Maybe where you are, the story is about heat stress, or amplifying droughts, or wildfires. The peril is different. But the underlying catastrophe story is not that different.”
This research is supported in part by the MIT Climate Resilience Early Warning Systems Climate Grand Challenges project, the Jameel Observatory JO-CREWSNet project; MIT Weather and Climate Extremes Climate Grand Challenges project; and Schmidt Sciences, LLC.
For the coastal country of Bangladesh, once-in-a-century storm tides could strike every 10 years — or more often — by the end of the century, scientists report. In this photo, a Bangladeshi woman and child walk over the top of a sandbag embankment in Khulna on May 4, 2019.
The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an ambitious effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in children’s health care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the hub will focus on addressing unmet needs in pediatric medicine by developing technologies and treatments tailored specifically for children.Leveraging the Institute’s strengths in the life sciences, the hub will pro
The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an ambitious effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in children’s health care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the hub will focus on addressing unmet needs in pediatric medicine by developing technologies and treatments tailored specifically for children.
Leveraging the Institute’s strengths in the life sciences, the hub will provide seed funding and strategic support for bold, high-impact research projects with the potential to transform health care for children. It will also act as a springboard for emerging scientific leaders, empowering them to help shape the future of pediatric health.
“The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub represents an extraordinary opportunity to create meaningful and lasting change in the lives of children,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, and head of MIT HEALS. “By collaborating with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, we’re harnessing MIT’s interdisciplinary strengths to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in pediatric health care.”
Addressing critical gaps in pediatric health care
Despite making up a significant portion of the global population, children have been largely underserved when it comes to medical innovation, leaving immense gaps in care. Pediatric conditions that shape a lifetime of health and well-being often lack dedicated solutions — forcing reliance on repurposed adult treatments or no solution at all. From 2008 to 2018, only 10 percent of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals were designated for individuals under the age of 18.
There is a massive opportunity to prioritize innovation for people during their formative years and drive breakthroughs that not only improve individual lives but also elevate health outcomes for generations to come. The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub seeks to lead this transformation by creating a dedicated community for advancing technologies and research.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with MIT to launch the hub, a bold initiative that will drive groundbreaking science and technology for children. MIT’s unparalleled expertise in engineering and life sciences, combined with our deep commitment to pediatric innovation, creates a powerful force for change,” says Hood Foundation President Neil Smiley, on behalf of the foundation’s board of trustees. “We look forward to this catalytic gift igniting transformative programs that will shape the future of children’s health and well-being for generations to come.”
The Hood Foundation, based in Massachusetts, has committed $15 million over five years to support the creation and development of the hub, reinforcing its long-standing dedication to advancing groundbreaking pediatric research. Since its establishment in 1942, the Charles H. Hood Foundation has sought to fill gaps in the pediatric health care system by awarding research grants and supporting the development of pediatric related tools and treatments.
In addition to its established grant programs, over the course of the past decade the Hood Foundation has served as a pioneer in supporting young companies trying to bring pediatric innovations to the patients who need them, by way of program-related investments made via its venture arm, CH Innovations LLC.
“The Hood Foundation’s longstanding dedication to improving child health has led to the formation of an extensive and robust network of researchers, clinician-scientists, entrepreneurs, and other leaders in science and business who stand well-positioned to engage with and contribute to the hub’s efforts,” adds Smiley.
A central role in the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative
The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, which will be administered in the MIT School of Engineering, will serve as a cornerstone of MIT HEALS, an Institute-wide initiative to address society’s most urgent health challenges. The hub’s cross-disciplinary approach underscores MIT’s commitment to inspiring, accelerating, and delivering solutions at scale to some of society’s most urgent and intractable health challenges.
Elazer R. Edelman will serve as faculty lead, with Joseph J. Frassica as the executive director of the hub. Edelman is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and director of MIT’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research. He also serves as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit in Boston. Frassica serves as professor of the practice in IMES at MIT. He is also a member of the teaching and research staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital (pediatric critical care) and serves as pediatric editor for the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine.
“As scientists, engineers, and clinicians, we are obliged to ensure that what we learn and what we invent is available to all. Ironically, those most in need of innovation are least able to access and benefit from it — children especially. The support of the Hood Foundation and collaboration with our MIT and extended community can help address this gap and fill this vital void,” says Edelman.
"The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub will serve as a catalyst, mentor, and advocate for pediatric innovation, harnessing MIT’s world-class expertise and Hood’s extensive network of pediatric innovators to tackle the most pressing challenges in pediatric care. Thanks to the generous support of the Hood Foundation, we plan to build the infrastructure and programs needed to transform groundbreaking ideas into real-world solutions that improve the lives of children and the providers who care for them," Frassica adds.
Driving research, advocacy, and education
Beyond supporting research, the hub seeks to bolster the broader pediatric research community through outreach, education, and advocacy. By working closely with key collaborators and leveraging relationships with other stakeholders such as hospitals, industry, patient advocates, and funders, the hub will identify, develop, and advance efforts to find economically viable pathways to bring treatments to young patients.
The hub will also create the infrastructure to seamlessly share deep organizational understanding of the regulatory processes governing innovation for children with researchers and innovators in the hub community.
The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an ambitious effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in children’s health care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the hub will focus on addressing unmet needs in pediatric medicine by developing technologies and treatments tailored specifically for children.Leveraging the Institute’s strengths in the life sciences, the hub will pro
The MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS) has announced the establishment of the Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, an ambitious effort designed to drive cutting-edge innovation in children’s health care. Launched in collaboration with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, the hub will focus on addressing unmet needs in pediatric medicine by developing technologies and treatments tailored specifically for children.
Leveraging the Institute’s strengths in the life sciences, the hub will provide seed funding and strategic support for bold, high-impact research projects with the potential to transform health care for children. It will also act as a springboard for emerging scientific leaders, empowering them to help shape the future of pediatric health.
“The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub represents an extraordinary opportunity to create meaningful and lasting change in the lives of children,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer, and head of MIT HEALS. “By collaborating with the Charles H. Hood Foundation, we’re harnessing MIT’s interdisciplinary strengths to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in pediatric health care.”
Addressing critical gaps in pediatric health care
Despite making up a significant portion of the global population, children have been largely underserved when it comes to medical innovation, leaving immense gaps in care. Pediatric conditions that shape a lifetime of health and well-being often lack dedicated solutions — forcing reliance on repurposed adult treatments or no solution at all. From 2008 to 2018, only 10 percent of U.S. Food and Drug Administration approvals were designated for individuals under the age of 18.
There is a massive opportunity to prioritize innovation for people during their formative years and drive breakthroughs that not only improve individual lives but also elevate health outcomes for generations to come. The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub seeks to lead this transformation by creating a dedicated community for advancing technologies and research.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with MIT to launch the hub, a bold initiative that will drive groundbreaking science and technology for children. MIT’s unparalleled expertise in engineering and life sciences, combined with our deep commitment to pediatric innovation, creates a powerful force for change,” says Hood Foundation President Neil Smiley, on behalf of the foundation’s board of trustees. “We look forward to this catalytic gift igniting transformative programs that will shape the future of children’s health and well-being for generations to come.”
The Hood Foundation, based in Massachusetts, has committed $15 million over five years to support the creation and development of the hub, reinforcing its long-standing dedication to advancing groundbreaking pediatric research. Since its establishment in 1942, the Charles H. Hood Foundation has sought to fill gaps in the pediatric health care system by awarding research grants and supporting the development of pediatric related tools and treatments.
In addition to its established grant programs, over the course of the past decade the Hood Foundation has served as a pioneer in supporting young companies trying to bring pediatric innovations to the patients who need them, by way of program-related investments made via its venture arm, CH Innovations LLC.
“The Hood Foundation’s longstanding dedication to improving child health has led to the formation of an extensive and robust network of researchers, clinician-scientists, entrepreneurs, and other leaders in science and business who stand well-positioned to engage with and contribute to the hub’s efforts,” adds Smiley.
A central role in the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative
The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub, which will be administered in the MIT School of Engineering, will serve as a cornerstone of MIT HEALS, an Institute-wide initiative to address society’s most urgent health challenges. The hub’s cross-disciplinary approach underscores MIT’s commitment to inspiring, accelerating, and delivering solutions at scale to some of society’s most urgent and intractable health challenges.
Elazer R. Edelman will serve as faculty lead, with Joseph J. Frassica as the executive director of the hub. Edelman is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and director of MIT’s Center for Clinical and Translational Research. He also serves as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit in Boston. Frassica serves as professor of the practice in IMES at MIT. He is also a member of the teaching and research staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital (pediatric critical care) and serves as pediatric editor for the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine.
“As scientists, engineers, and clinicians, we are obliged to ensure that what we learn and what we invent is available to all. Ironically, those most in need of innovation are least able to access and benefit from it — children especially. The support of the Hood Foundation and collaboration with our MIT and extended community can help address this gap and fill this vital void,” says Edelman.
"The Hood Pediatric Innovation Hub will serve as a catalyst, mentor, and advocate for pediatric innovation, harnessing MIT’s world-class expertise and Hood’s extensive network of pediatric innovators to tackle the most pressing challenges in pediatric care. Thanks to the generous support of the Hood Foundation, we plan to build the infrastructure and programs needed to transform groundbreaking ideas into real-world solutions that improve the lives of children and the providers who care for them," Frassica adds.
Driving research, advocacy, and education
Beyond supporting research, the hub seeks to bolster the broader pediatric research community through outreach, education, and advocacy. By working closely with key collaborators and leveraging relationships with other stakeholders such as hospitals, industry, patient advocates, and funders, the hub will identify, develop, and advance efforts to find economically viable pathways to bring treatments to young patients.
The hub will also create the infrastructure to seamlessly share deep organizational understanding of the regulatory processes governing innovation for children with researchers and innovators in the hub community.
This is a critical – and hugely challenging – moment for climate action. Legal and political pressures have paralysed asset managers and other financial service providers, leading to a recent wave of actors leaving investor climate coalitions. However, asset owners are increasingly seeing the need to take a leadership role in addressing climate change, which threatens the long-term future of their portfolios and the wider economy.
That’s why we are delighted to announce that Cambridge researche
This is a critical – and hugely challenging – moment for climate action. Legal and political pressures have paralysed asset managers and other financial service providers, leading to a recent wave of actors leaving investor climate coalitions. However, asset owners are increasingly seeing the need to take a leadership role in addressing climate change, which threatens the long-term future of their portfolios and the wider economy.
That’s why we are delighted to announce that Cambridge researchers based at the Department for Land Economy have selected index provider Bloomberg Index Services Limited to launch the first global corporate bond index to cover fossil fuel producers, utilities, insurance, and financing, with the aim of driving investment to reduce real-economy emissions.
“We are delighted that this project has reached such a key milestone," said Professor Martin Dixon, Head of the Department of Land Economy. "As a multidisciplinary department with a focus on outstanding academic publication and teaching, this project has the potential to serve as a ‘systems demonstrator’ for ongoing research in this important area.”
Why a bond index?
The launch of the bond index by an 816-year-old institution is an unusual process and a tale worth telling. It began with a peer-reviewed paper by Dr Ellen Quigley, Principal Research Associate at Land Economy, exploring the case for evidence-based climate impact by institutional investors. This was followed by an internal feasibility study based at Jesus College, Cambridge (which continues to co-host the project), and supported by several other parts of the University.
With feasibility assessed, the team went out to global index providers to explore their interest. All of the leading players were interested in building this index, yet all grappled with a lack of access to data and the complexity of assessing companies based on their activities (e.g., whether they were building new fossil fuel infrastructure), not their business classification. An extensive Request for Proposals process resulted in naming Bloomberg Index Services Limited as our provider. The project aims to provide a genuine solution for asset owners looking to align their corporate debt instruments with their climate targets and to avoid both ineffective blanket interventions and greenwashing.
The central problem, on which the industry has faltered for decades, is how to manage the risk presented by a fossil fuel industry that continues to grow. Leading climate scenarios such as the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario are clear that fossil fuel expansion is inconsistent with the transition to a decarbonised economy. With approximately 90% of new financing for fossil fuel expansion coming from bonds and bank loans, debt markets must be the focus of investor efforts to transition away from fossil fuel expansionism. Bonds offer a larger pool of capital than equities, and a greater proportion are purchased in the primary market, where companies gain access to new capital.
The past decade has seen a significant rise in passive investment strategies and therefore an increase in financial flows into index funds, which have as a consequence become significant ‘auto-allocators’ of capital. This research project aims to study the extent to which the new bond index influences cost, volume, and access to capital among companies who are seeking to build new fossil fuel infrastructure and delaying the phase-down of their operations. Bond markets are not just a key part of investor action on climate change: they are the very coalface of fossil fuel expansion, i.e. new gas, oil, and coal extraction and infrastructure.
“This is an enormously impactful project which showcases the high-quality research undertaken at Cambridge," University of Cambridge Chief Financial Officer Anthony Odgers said. "The index is a game-changer for the growing number of asset owners who invest in corporate debt and understand its impact on fossil fuel expansion, particularly the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure such as coal- and gas-fired power plants which risk locking in fossil fuel usage for decades."
“Once the index launches, Cambridge expects to invest some of its own money against financial products referencing it. This will enable us to align our fixed income holdings with our institution-wide objectives,” Odgers said.
There are currently no off-the-shelf products that allow for passive investments in global corporate bond markets without financing fossil fuel expansion, through fossil fuel production, utilities building new coal- and gas-fired power plants, and through the banks and insurers that continue to finance and underwrite these activities. By supporting the development of this ‘systems demonstrator’, we will be able to conduct essential research on the efficacy of such a lever.
“Instead of linear year-on-year reductions or blanket bans by business classification, the index methodology identifies companies that present the greatest systemic risks to investors, while ensuring that those companies that meet the criteria can rejoin the bond index,” said project leader Lily Tomson, a Senior Research Associate at Jesus College, Cambridge.
Several years of close collaboration with leading global asset owners such as California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), Swiss Federal Pension Fund PUBLICA and the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) provided input and technical market expertise that underpins the index. Alongside the University of Cambridge, the index will be used at launch by investments from the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund.
“Finally, large asset owners around the world have an index for this market that aims to discourage the expansion of fossil fuels,” said Pedro Guazo, Representative of the Secretary-General (RSG) for the investment of the UNJSPF assets.
Rules-based engagement: a lever for behaviour change
Debt benchmarks have a key role to play in any real efforts to tackle the expansion of fossil fuels. This project is innovative because it focuses on exclusions and weightings of companies based on their current corporate activity, instead of using an approach that relies on blanket exclusions by business classification (which does not generate incentives to change behaviour). For example, a company might be classed as a fossil fuel company, but if it stops expanding new fossil fuel operations and aligns to an appropriate phase-down pathway, the company has an opportunity to be included in the index and gain access to capital via funds which use the index, as a result.
Across the project, we are using data sources that have never previously been used to build an index – for example, the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL) and Global Oil and Gas Exit List (GOGEL) from Urgewald. We are taking a novel approach that focuses investor attention on those actors that our framework considers ‘edge cases’: companies close to reaching, or moving away from, alignment with the index. Companies have the option of being (re-)included in the index if they change their behaviour to align with the rules of the index. Academic literature suggests this is a lever for behaviour change in equities, but as an approach it is new to debt market indices. This is one of many key hypotheses that this project tests. We are convening a community of leading global academics who will support the creation of this new form of rules-based bondholder engagement.
This bond index project is one of a suite of actions rooted in academic research and collaboration that have been developed by the collegiate University. Alongside 74 other higher education institutions, Cambridge is delivering a parallel project focused on cash deposits and money market funds. We will continue to conduct research as the associated new products begin to operate through 2025.
At a time when climate damage is growing rapidly and is visible in news stories around the world, many actors across investment markets are looking for a clear path to take necessary action. As an academic institution and a long-term investor, the University of Cambridge is committed to supporting evidence-based research and action on climate change.
The bond index will be launched later this year. If you are interested in finding out more about the project or the team’s research, contact us here: bondindex@landecon.cam.ac.uk.
University of Cambridge researchers based at the Department for Land Economy have selected index provider Bloomberg Index Services Limited to launch the first global corporate bond index to cover fossil fuel producers, utilities, insurance, and financing, with the aim of driving investment to reduce real-economy emissions.
This is an enormously impactful project which showcases the high-quality research undertaken at Cambridge
Anthony Odgers, University of Cambridge Chief Financial Officer
Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients. In most cases, however, these signals can only be detected by looking at the cells under a microscope, making them impractical for large-scale use.Using a new method that triggers cells to produce molecules that generate unique combinations of color, MIT engineers have shown that they can read out these bacterial signals from as far as 90 meters away. Their work could lead to the development of bact
Bacteria can be engineered to sense a variety of molecules, such as pollutants or soil nutrients. In most cases, however, these signals can only be detected by looking at the cells under a microscope, making them impractical for large-scale use.
Using a new method that triggers cells to produce molecules that generate unique combinations of color, MIT engineers have shown that they can read out these bacterial signals from as far as 90 meters away. Their work could lead to the development of bacterial sensors for agricultural and other applications, which could be monitored by drones or satellites.
“It’s a new way of getting information out of the cell. If you’re standing next to it, you can’t see anything by eye, but from hundreds of meters away, using specific cameras, you can get the information when it turns on,” says Christopher Voigt, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the new study.
In a paper appearing today in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers showed that they could engineer two different types of bacteria to produce molecules that give off distinctive wavelengths of light across the visible and infrared spectra of light, which can be imaged with hyperspectral cameras. These reporting molecules were linked to genetic circuits that detect nearby bacteria, but this approach could also be combined with any existing sensor, such as those for arsenic or other contaminants, the researchers say.
“The nice thing about this technology is that you can plug and play whichever sensor you want,” says Yonatan Chemla, an MIT postdoc who is one of the lead authors of the paper. “There is no reason that any sensor would not be compatible with this technology.”
Itai Levin PhD ’24 is also a lead author of the paper. Other authors include former undergraduate students Yueyang Fan ’23 and Anna Johnson ’22, and Connor Coley, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT.
Hyperspectral imaging
There are many ways to engineer bacterial cells so that they can sense a particular chemical. Most of these work by connecting detection of a molecule to an output such as green fluorescent protein (GFP). These work well for lab studies, but such sensors can’t be measured from long distances.
For long-distance sensing, the MIT team came up with the idea to engineer cells to produce hyperspectral reporter molecules, which can be detected using hyperspectral cameras. These cameras, which were first invented in the 1970s, can determine how much of each color wavelength is present in any given pixel. Instead of showing up as simply red or green, each pixel contains information on hundreds different wavelengths of light.
Currently, hyperspectral cameras are used for applications such as detecting the presence of radiation. In the areas around Chernobyl, these cameras have been used to measure slight color changes that radioactive metals produce in the chlorophyll of plant cells. Hyperspectral cameras are also used to look for signs of malnutrition or pathogen invasion in plants.
That work inspired the MIT team to explore whether they could engineer bacterial cells to produce hyperspectral reporters when they detect a target molecule.
For a hyperspectral reporter to be most useful, it should have a spectral signature with peaks in multiple wavelengths of light, making it easier to detect. The researchers performed quantum calculations to predict the hyperspectral signatures of about 20,000 naturally occurring cell molecules, allowing them to identify those with the most unique patterns of light emission. Another key feature is the number of enzymes that would need to be engineered into a cell to get it to produce the reporter — a trait that will vary for different types of cells.
“The ideal molecule is one that’s really different from everything else, making it detectable, and requires the fewest number of enzymes to produce it in the cell,” Voigt says.
In this study, the researchers identified two different molecules that were best suited for two types of bacteria. For a soil bacterium called Pseudomonas putida, they used a reporter called biliverdin — a pigment that results from the breakdown of heme. For an aquatic bacterium called Rubrivivax gelatinosus, they used a type of bacteriochlorophyll. For each bacterium, the researchers engineered the enzymes necessary to produce the reporter into the host cell, then linked them to genetically engineered sensor circuits.
“You could add one of these reporters to a bacterium or any cell that has a genetically encoded sensor in its genome. So, it might respond to metals or radiation or toxins in the soil, or nutrients in the soil, or whatever it is you want it to respond to. Then the output of that would be the production of this molecule that can then be sensed from far away,” Voigt says.
Long-distance sensing
In this study, the researchers linked the hyperspectral reporters to circuits designed for quorum sensing, which allow cells to detect other nearby bacteria. They have also shown, in work done after this paper, that these reporting molecules can be linked to sensors for chemicals including arsenic.
When testing their sensors, the researchers deployed them in boxes so they would remain contained. The boxes were placed in fields, deserts, or on the roofs of buildings, and the cells produced signals that could be detected using hyperspectral cameras mounted on drones. The cameras take about 20 to 30 seconds to scan the field of view, and computer algorithms then analyze the signals to reveal whether the hyperspectral reporters are present.
In this paper, the researchers reported imaging from a maximum distance of 90 meters, but they are now working on extending those distances.
They envision that these sensors could be deployed for agricultural purposes such as sensing nitrogen or nutrient levels in soil. For those applications, the sensors could also be designed to work in plant cells. Detecting landmines is another potential application for this type of sensing.
Before being deployed, the sensors would need to undergo regulatory approval by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture if used for agriculture. Voigt and Chemla have been working with both agencies, the scientific community, and other stakeholders to determine what kinds of questions need to be answered before these technologies could be approved.
“We’ve been very busy in the past three years working to understand what are the regulatory landscapes and what are the safety concerns, what are the risks, what are the benefits of this kind of technology?” Chemla says.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense; the Army Research Office, a directorate of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (the funding supported engineering of environmental strains and optimization of genetically-encoded sensors and hyperspectral reporter biosynthetic pathways); and the Ministry of Defense of Israel.
MIT engineers engineered bacteria to produce hyperspectral signals that can be detected as far as 90 meters away. Their work could lead to the development of bacterial sensors for agricultural to monitor crop health, for example.
A book titled “The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia” by historian Dr Faizah Zakaria has claimed the prestigious annual “Harry J. Benda Prize (First book on Southeast Asian Studies)” by the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. Established in 1977, the Prize honours books that make exceptional contributions to the understanding of Southeast Asia, specifically to authors publishing their first major work on the topic. O
A book titled “The Camphor Tree and the Elephant: Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia” by historian Dr Faizah Zakaria has claimed the prestigious annual “Harry J. Benda Prize (First book on Southeast Asian Studies)” by the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. Established in 1977, the Prize honours books that make exceptional contributions to the understanding of Southeast Asia, specifically to authors publishing their first major work on the topic. One of the most esteemed awards in the field, receiving this prize is considered a major milestone for early-career scholars.
Published in February 2023 by University of Washington Press, Dr Zakaria’s book explores how religious beliefs and practices have influenced the way people in the region interact with their environment, specifically with respect to the natural world. She traces the conversion of the Batak people in upland Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula to Islam and Christianity during the 19th century, and finds that the process helped shape social structures that voided the natural world of enchantment, ushered in a cash economy, and placed the power to remake local landscapes into the hands of elites.
Dr Zakaria shared how she felt honoured to receive the distinction in the company of many wonderful scholars whose field-shaping books in Southeast Asian studies have been recognised through this award.
She added, “More importantly, I hope that my book will spark new conversations about environmental history and ethics as well as the role of religious communities in co-creating a sustainable world. Area studies, with its phenomenological approaches to understanding the region's communities, continues to offer grounded views to the pressing issues of our time and I hope that more students will be interested to explore the region on their own terms."
Dr Zakaria holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Southeast Asian Studies and Malay Studies at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Her research interests focus on religion and ecology, environmental justice and indigenous movements in Southeast Asia. She is currently working on a research project on the role of religion and science in disaster responses, focusing on volcanic eruptions, and she also co-coordinates a digital humanities project comparing Malay and Chinese heritage medicine.
Duke-NUS Medical School has appointed Professor Patrick Tan as its next and fourth Dean, effective 1 January 2026, marking a new chapter for the School as it builds on its legacy of medical education, research and innovation. Prof Tan will serve as Dean-designate from 1 July 2025, succeeding Professor Thomas Coffman, the School’s longest-serving Dean since 2015. This leadership transition coincides with the School’s 20th anniversary, underscoring Duke-NUS’ commitment to advancing the future of h
Duke-NUSMedical School has appointed Professor Patrick Tan as its next and fourth Dean, effective 1 January 2026, marking a new chapter for the School as it builds on its legacy of medical education, research and innovation. Prof Tan will serve as Dean-designate from 1 July 2025, succeeding Professor Thomas Coffman, the School’s longest-serving Dean since 2015. This leadership transition coincides with the School’s 20th anniversary, underscoring Duke-NUS’ commitment to advancing the future of healthcare in Singapore and the region.
An internationally recognised cancer geneticist and clinician-scientist, Prof Tan is currently Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, where he leads transformative research initiatives in genomics, precision medicine and biomedical innovation. He was one of the School’s pioneer faculty members and has been involved in advancing its research strategy.
Prof Tan has also been an active contributor in Singapore’s research landscape, taking on roles including Executive Director of Precision Health Research Singapore (PRECISE), Senior Scientific Advisor at SingHealth, and former Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore. His leadership in integrating cutting-edge science with clinical applications has placed him at the forefront of Singapore’s biomedical ecosystem.
A firm believer in team science, Prof Tan is passionate about fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to solve Singapore’s most pressing healthcare challenges. His ability to drive impactful change was recognised with the Exemplary Leader Award at the 2023 Public Sector Transformation Award Ceremony. Other awards include the President’s Science Award (Team), American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Team Science Award, and election to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians.
A strong endorsement from Duke and NUS leadership
Professor Tan Eng Chye, President of the National University of Singapore (NUS), said:
“After a rigorous search within the University and globally, Patrick has been identified as the best candidate to lead Duke-NUS into its next chapter of growth as a key pillar in Singapore’s healthcare and biomedical ecosystem. Patrick brings remarkable visionary leadership and profound expertise through years of dedicated service and contributions as researcher, scientist and educator. I am confident that his leadership and wealth of knowledge will bring the School towards higher levels of excellence, ensuring that our next generation of doctors, researchers and healthcare leaders are well-prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow.”
Mr Goh Yew Lin, Chairman of the Duke-NUS Governing Board, said:
“Patrick is first and foremost a world-class researcher, but what sets him apart is his deep understanding of how discovery and education must go hand in hand. As a graduate-entry medical school, Duke-NUS trains future clinicians who are not only skilled in patient care but also capable of asking bold questions and driving innovation. As Dean, he will ensure that the School’s research priorities remain aligned with our national Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) strategy, while strengthening translation and partnerships that attract industry collaborators and nurture a culture of innovation among our students.”
Professor Mary Klotman, MD, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at Duke University, Dean of Duke University School of Medicine, and Chief Academic Officer of Duke Health, welcomed Prof Tan’s appointment:
“We are excited to work with Patrick as he takes on the mantle of the next Dean of Duke-NUS. A distinguished scientist and strategic leader, he brings a clear vision for how cutting-edge research and meaningful education can converge to improve lives. His commitment to collaboration and academic excellence makes him well-positioned to lead Duke-NUS into its next phase—strengthening our global partnership and expanding the School’s contributions to advance health for all.”
The joint search committee to identify the successor for the role of Dean was chaired by Professor Aaron Thean, Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost of the National University of Singapore, as well as Deputy Chairman of Duke-NUS Governing Board; and included faculty members from Duke-NUS, NUS, Duke University, SingHealth and the Duke-NUS Governing Board.
“The healthcare landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by shifting demographics, intensifying demands on healthcare, and technological innovations. These are major challenges, but they also create huge opportunities. As Dean, I look forward to enhancing our long-standing Academic Medicine partnership with SingHealth and harnessing the collective strengths of Duke University and NUS, our parent institutions, to deepen our understanding of diseases and advancing medical solutions that will make a real difference to patients.
“By combining the power of cutting-edge research, medical education and translational innovation, Duke-NUS is uniquely positioned to shape the future of medicine. Together with our valued partners, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to work with our faculty, students, alumni and stakeholders to build on this strong foundation and drive the School’s next stage of development in Singapore and the world.”
Duke-NUS also expresses deep gratitude to Professor Thomas Coffman for his exceptional leadership over the past decade.
A renowned physician-scientist in nephrology and cardiovascular research, Prof Coffman strengthened Duke-NUS’ education and research landscape, ensuring that its training programmes remain rigorous and responsive to Singapore’s evolving healthcare needs. He founded and built up the School’s Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders Signature Research Programme as Director. Under his leadership, Duke-NUS also secured strategic funding to advance key research initiatives and played a critical role in Singapore’s COVID-19 response, contributing to innovations such as rapid immune response testing.
Prof Klotman expressed her appreciation for outgoing Dean, Prof Coffman, adding:
“Tom has been an extraordinary bridge between Duke and Duke-NUS, deepening the ties between our institutions and reinforcing the values we share—academic excellence, collaboration and impact. Under his steady and visionary leadership, Duke-NUS has flourished as a beacon of innovation in education, research and clinical care. His legacy is not only reflected in the School’s achievements but in the strength of our transcontinental partnership and global contributions to biomedical science.”
Mr Goh also expressed appreciation to outgoing Dean, Prof Coffman, saying:
“Tom has led Duke-NUS through a defining decade with wisdom, vigour and steady resolve. He has not only guided the School’s academic and research growth, but also shaped a culture that prizes excellence, collaboration and innovation. We are deeply grateful for his contributions and leadership, which have laid a strong foundation for the next chapter.”
Even as he steps down from his role as Dean, Prof Coffman will continue to lead key research initiatives, including DYNAMO, a multi-institutional study focussed on reducing the prevalence of diabetic kidney disease in Singapore and around the world.
Note: For detailed biographies of Professor Patrick Tan and Professor Thomas Coffman, please refer to the Annexe.
Data privacy comes with a cost. There are security techniques that protect sensitive user data, like customer addresses, from attackers who may attempt to extract them from AI models — but they often make those models less accurate.MIT researchers recently developed a framework, based on a new privacy metric called PAC Privacy, that could maintain the performance of an AI model while ensuring sensitive data, such as medical images or financial records, remain safe from attackers. Now, they’ve ta
Data privacy comes with a cost. There are security techniques that protect sensitive user data, like customer addresses, from attackers who may attempt to extract them from AI models — but they often make those models less accurate.
MIT researchers recently developed a framework, based on a new privacy metric called PAC Privacy, that could maintain the performance of an AI model while ensuring sensitive data, such as medical images or financial records, remain safe from attackers. Now, they’ve taken this work a step further by making their technique more computationally efficient, improving the tradeoff between accuracy and privacy, and creating a formal template that can be used to privatize virtually any algorithm without needing access to that algorithm’s inner workings.
The team utilized their new version of PAC Privacy to privatize several classic algorithms for data analysis and machine-learning tasks.
They also demonstrated that more “stable” algorithms are easier to privatize with their method. A stable algorithm’s predictions remain consistent even when its training data are slightly modified. Greater stability helps an algorithm make more accurate predictions on previously unseen data.
The researchers say the increased efficiency of the new PAC Privacy framework, and the four-step template one can follow to implement it, would make the technique easier to deploy in real-world situations.
“We tend to consider robustness and privacy as unrelated to, or perhaps even in conflict with, constructing a high-performance algorithm. First, we make a working algorithm, then we make it robust, and then private. We’ve shown that is not always the right framing. If you make your algorithm perform better in a variety of settings, you can essentially get privacy for free,” says Mayuri Sridhar, an MIT graduate student and lead author of a paper on this privacy framework.
She is joined in the paper by Hanshen Xiao PhD ’24, who will start as an assistant professor at Purdue University in the fall; and senior author Srini Devadas, the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. The research will be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
Estimating noise
To protect sensitive data that were used to train an AI model, engineers often add noise, or generic randomness, to the model so it becomes harder for an adversary to guess the original training data. This noise reduces a model’s accuracy, so the less noise one can add, the better.
PAC Privacy automatically estimates the smallest amount of noise one needs to add to an algorithm to achieve a desired level of privacy.
The original PAC Privacy algorithm runs a user’s AI model many times on different samples of a dataset. It measures the variance as well as correlations among these many outputs and uses this information to estimate how much noise needs to be added to protect the data.
This new variant of PAC Privacy works the same way but does not need to represent the entire matrix of data correlations across the outputs; it just needs the output variances.
“Because the thing you are estimating is much, much smaller than the entire covariance matrix, you can do it much, much faster,” Sridhar explains. This means that one can scale up to much larger datasets.
Adding noise can hurt the utility of the results, and it is important to minimize utility loss. Due to computational cost, the original PAC Privacy algorithm was limited to adding isotropic noise, which is added uniformly in all directions. Because the new variant estimates anisotropic noise, which is tailored to specific characteristics of the training data, a user could add less overall noise to achieve the same level of privacy, boosting the accuracy of the privatized algorithm.
Privacy and stability
As she studied PAC Privacy, Sridhar hypothesized that more stable algorithms would be easier to privatize with this technique. She used the more efficient variant of PAC Privacy to test this theory on several classical algorithms.
Algorithms that are more stable have less variance in their outputs when their training data change slightly. PAC Privacy breaks a dataset into chunks, runs the algorithm on each chunk of data, and measures the variance among outputs. The greater the variance, the more noise must be added to privatize the algorithm.
Employing stability techniques to decrease the variance in an algorithm’s outputs would also reduce the amount of noise that needs to be added to privatize it, she explains.
“In the best cases, we can get these win-win scenarios,” she says.
The team showed that these privacy guarantees remained strong despite the algorithm they tested, and that the new variant of PAC Privacy required an order of magnitude fewer trials to estimate the noise. They also tested the method in attack simulations, demonstrating that its privacy guarantees could withstand state-of-the-art attacks.
“We want to explore how algorithms could be co-designed with PAC Privacy, so the algorithm is more stable, secure, and robust from the beginning,” Devadas says. The researchers also want to test their method with more complex algorithms and further explore the privacy-utility tradeoff.
“The question now is: When do these win-win situations happen, and how can we make them happen more often?” Sridhar says.
“I think the key advantage PAC Privacy has in this setting over other privacy definitions is that it is a black box — you don’t need to manually analyze each individual query to privatize the results. It can be done completely automatically. We are actively building a PAC-enabled database by extending existing SQL engines to support practical, automated, and efficient private data analytics,” says Xiangyao Yu, an assistant professor in the computer sciences department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not involved with this study.
This research is supported, in part, by Cisco Systems, Capital One, the U.S. Department of Defense, and a MathWorks Fellowship.
MIT researchers enhanced a data privacy technique so it is more computationally efficient and increases the accuracy of the AI algorithms to which it is applied.
“No cash prizes. But our friends in Kyiv are calling in, and they’ll probably say thanks,” was the the tagline that drew students and tech professionals to join MIT-Ukraine’s first-ever hackathon this past January.The hackathon was co-sponsored by MIT-Ukraine and Mission Innovation X and was shaped by the efforts of MIT alumni from across the world. It was led by Hosea Siu ’14, SM ’15, PhD ’18, a seasoned hackathon organizer and AI researcher, in collaboration with Phil Tinn MCP ’16, a research
“No cash prizes. But our friends in Kyiv are calling in, and they’ll probably say thanks,” was the the tagline that drew students and tech professionals to join MIT-Ukraine’s first-ever hackathon this past January.
The hackathon was co-sponsored by MIT-Ukraine and Mission Innovation X and was shaped by the efforts of MIT alumni from across the world. It was led by Hosea Siu ’14, SM ’15, PhD ’18, a seasoned hackathon organizer and AI researcher, in collaboration with Phil Tinn MCP ’16, a research engineer now based at SINTEF [Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research] in Norway. The program was designed to prioritize tangible impact:
“In a typical hackathon, you might get a weekend of sleepless nights and some flashy but mostly useless prototypes. Here, we stretched it out over four weeks, and we’re expecting real, meaningful outcomes,” says Siu, the hackathon director.
One week of training, three weeks of project development
In the first week, participants attended lectures with leading experts on key challenges Ukraine currently faces, from a talk on mine contamination with Andrew Heafitz PhD ’05 to a briefing on disinformation with Nina Lutz SM ’21, William Brannon SM ’20, and Yara Kyrychenko (Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab). Then, participants formed teams to develop projects addressing these challenges, with mentorship from top MIT specialists including Phil Tinn (AI & defense), Svetlana Boriskina (energy resilience), and Gene Keselman (defense innovation and dual-use technology).
“I really liked the solid structure they gave us — walking us through exactly what’s happening in Ukraine, and potential solutions,” says Timur Gray, a first-year in engineering at Olin College.
The five final projects spanned demining, drone technology, AI and disinformation, education for Ukraine, and energy resilience.
Supporting demining efforts
With current levels of technology, it is estimated that it will take 757 years to fully de-mine Ukraine. Students Timur Gray and Misha Donchenko, who is a sophomore mathematics major at MIT, came together to research the latest developments in demining technology and strategize how students could most effectively support innovations.
The team has made connections with the Ukrainian Association of Humanitarian Demining and the HALO Trust to explore opportunities for MIT students to directly support demining efforts in Ukraine. They also explored project ideas to work on tools for civilians to report on mine locations, and the team created a demo web page рішучість757, which includes an interactive database mapping mine locations.
“Being able to apply my skills to something that has a real-world impact — that’s been the best part of this hackathon,” says Donchenko.
Innovating drone production
Drone technology has been one of Ukraine’s most critical advantages on the battlefield — but government bureaucracy threatens to slow innovation, according to Oleh Deineka, who made this challenge the focus of his hackathon project.
Joining remotely from Ukraine, where he studies post-war recovery at the Kyiv School of Economics, Deineka brought invaluable firsthand insight from living and working on the ground, enriching the experience for all participants. Prior to the hackathon, he had already begun developing UxS.AGENCY, a secure digital platform to connect drone developers with independent funders, with the aim of ensuring that the speed of innovations in drone technology is not curbed.
He notes that Ukrainian arms manufacturers have the capacity to produce three times more weapons and military equipment than the Ukrainian government can afford to purchase. Promoting private sector development of drone production could help solve this. The platform Deineka is working on also aims to reduce the risk of corruption, allowing developers to work directly with funders, bypassing any bureaucratic interference.
Deineka is also working with MIT’s Keselman, who gave a talk during the hackathon on dual-use technology — the idea that military innovations should also have civilian applications. Deineka emphasized that developing such dual-use technology in Ukraine could help not only to win the war, but also to create sustainable civilian applications, ensuring that Ukraine’s 10,000 trained drone operators have jobs after it ends. He pointed to future applications such as drone-based urban infrastructure monitoring, precision agriculture, and even personal security — like a small drone following a child with asthma, allowing parents to monitor their well-being in real time.
“This hackathon has connected me with MIT’s top minds in innovation and security. Being invited to collaborate with Gene Keselman and others has been an incredible opportunity," says Deineka.
Disinformation dynamics on Wikipedia
Wikipedia has long been a battleground for Russian disinformation, from the profiling of artists like Kazimir Malevich to the framing of historical events. The hackathon’s disinformation team worked together on a machine learning-based tool to detect biased edits.
They found that Wikipedia’s moderation system is susceptible to reinforcing systemic bias, particularly when it comes to history. Their project laid the groundwork for a potential student-led initiative to track disinformation, propose corrections, and develop tools to improve fact-checking on Wikipedia.
Education for Ukraine’s future
Russia’s war against Ukraine is having a detrimental impact on education, with constant air raid sirens disrupting classes, and over 2,000 Ukrainian schools damaged or destroyed. The STEM education team focused on what they could do to support Ukrainian students. They developed a plan for adapting MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute in STEM for students still living in Ukraine, or potentially for Ukrainians currently displaced to neighboring countries.
“I didn’t realize how many schools had been destroyed and how deeply that could impact kids’ futures. You hear about the war, but the hackathon made it real in a way I hadn’t thought about before,” says Catherine Tang, a senior in electrical engineering and computer science.
Vlad Duda, founder of Nomad AI, also contributed to the education track of the hackathon with a focus on language accessibility and learning support. One of the prototypes he presented, MOVA, is a Chrome extension that uses AI to translate online resources into Ukrainian — an especially valuable tool for high school students in Ukraine, who often lack the English proficiency needed to engage with complex academic content. Duda also developed OpenBookLM, an AI-powered tool that helps students turn notes into audio and personalized study guides, similar in concept to Google’s NotebookLM but designed to be open-source and adaptable to different languages and educational contexts.
Energy resilience
The energy resilience team worked on exploring cheaper, more reliable heating and cooling technologies so Ukrainian homes can be less dependent on traditional energy grids that are susceptible to Russian attacks.
The team tested polymer filaments that generate heat when stretched and cool when released, which could potentially offer low-cost, durable home heating solutions in Ukraine. Their work focused on finding the most effective braid structure to enhance durability and efficiency.
From hackathon to reality
Unlike most hackathons, where projects end when the event does, MIT-Ukraine’s goal is to ensure these ideas don’t stop here. All the projects developed during the hackathon will be considered as potential avenues for MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and MISTI Ukraine summer internship programs. Last year, 15 students worked on UROP and MISTI projects for Ukraine, contributing in areas such as STEM education and reconstruction in Ukraine. With the many ideas generated during the hackathon, MIT-Ukraine is committed to expanding opportunities for student-led projects and collaborations in the coming year.
"The MIT-Ukraine program is about learning by doing, and making an impact beyond MIT’s campus. This hackathon proved that students, researchers, and professionals can work together to develop solutions that matter — and Ukraine’s urgent challenges demand nothing less," says Elizabeth Wood, Ford International Professor of History at MIT and the faculty director of the MIT-Ukraine Program at the Center for International Studies.
"The MIT-Ukraine program is about learning by doing, and making an impact beyond MIT’s campus. This hackathon proved that students, researchers, and professionals can work together to develop solutions that matter — and Ukraine’s urgent challenges demand nothing less," said Elizabeth Wood, Ford International Professor of History at MIT and the faculty director of the MIT-Ukraine Program at the Center for International Studies.
As the world moves to reduce carbon emissions, solar and wind power will play an increasing role on electricity grids. But those renewable sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy. So to ensure a reliable power grid — one that can deliver electricity 24/7 — it’s crucial to have a means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later, when they’re not. And sometimes large amounts of electricity will need to be stored not just for hours, but for days, or
As the world moves to reduce carbon emissions, solar and wind power will play an increasing role on electricity grids. But those renewable sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy. So to ensure a reliable power grid — one that can deliver electricity 24/7 — it’s crucial to have a means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later, when they’re not. And sometimes large amounts of electricity will need to be stored not just for hours, but for days, or even longer.
Some methods of achieving “long-duration energy storage” are promising. For example, with pumped hydro energy storage, water is pumped from a lake to another, higher lake when there’s extra electricity and released back down through power-generating turbines when more electricity is needed. But that approach is limited by geography, and most potential sites in the United States have already been used. Lithium-ion batteries could provide grid-scale storage, but only for about four hours. Longer than that and battery systems get prohibitively expensive.
A team of researchers from MIT and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has been investigating a less-familiar option based on an unlikely-sounding concept: liquid air, or air that is drawn in from the surroundings, cleaned and dried, and then cooled to the point that it liquefies.
“Liquid air energy storage” (LAES) systems have been built, so the technology is technically feasible. Moreover, LAES systems are totally clean and can be sited nearly anywhere, storing vast amounts of electricity for days or longer and delivering it when it’s needed. But there haven’t been conclusive studies of its economic viability. Would the income over time warrant the initial investment and ongoing costs? With funding from the MIT Energy Initiative’s Future Energy Systems Center, the researchers developed a model that takes detailed information on LAES systems and calculates when and where those systems would be economically viable, assuming future scenarios in line with selected decarbonization targets as well as other conditions that may prevail on future energy grids.
They found that under some of the scenarios they modeled, LAES could be economically viable in certain locations. Sensitivity analyses showed that policies providing a subsidy on capital expenses could make LAES systems economically viable in many locations. Further calculations showed that the cost of storing a given amount of electricity with LAES would be lower than with more familiar systems such as pumped hydro and lithium-ion batteries. They conclude that LAES holds promise as a means of providing critically needed long-duration storage when future power grids are decarbonized and dominated by intermittent renewable sources of electricity.
The researchers — Shaylin A. Cetegen, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE); Professor Emeritus Truls Gundersen of the NTNU Department of Energy and Process Engineering; and MIT Professor Emeritus Paul I. Barton of ChemE — describe their model and their findings in a new paper published in the journal Energy.
The LAES technology and its benefits
LAES systems consists of three steps: charging, storing, and discharging. When supply on the grid exceeds demand and prices are low, the LAES system is charged. Air is then drawn in and liquefied. A large amount of electricity is consumed to cool and liquefy the air in the LAES process. The liquid air is then sent to highly insulated storage tanks, where it’s held at a very low temperature and atmospheric pressure. When the power grid needs added electricity to meet demand, the liquid air is first pumped to a higher pressure and then heated, and it turns back into a gas. This high-pressure, high-temperature, vapor-phase air expands in a turbine that generates electricity to be sent back to the grid.
According to Cetegen, a primary advantage of LAES is that it’s clean. “There are no contaminants involved,” she says. “It takes in and releases only ambient air and electricity, so it’s as clean as the electricity that’s used to run it.” In addition, a LAES system can be built largely from commercially available components and does not rely on expensive or rare materials. And the system can be sited almost anywhere, including near other industrial processes that produce waste heat or cold that can be used by the LAES system to increase its energy efficiency.
Economic viability
In considering the potential role of LAES on future power grids, the first question is: Will LAES systems be attractive to investors? Answering that question requires calculating the technology’s net present value (NPV), which represents the sum of all discounted cash flows — including revenues, capital expenditures, operating costs, and other financial factors — over the project's lifetime. (The study assumed a cash flow discount rate of 7 percent.)
To calculate the NPV, the researchers needed to determine how LAES systems will perform in future energy markets. In those markets, various sources of electricity are brought online to meet the current demand, typically following a process called “economic dispatch:” The lowest-cost source that’s available is always deployed next. Determining the NPV of liquid air storage therefore requires predicting how that technology will fare in future markets competing with other sources of electricity when demand exceeds supply — and also accounting for prices when supply exceeds demand, so excess electricity is available to recharge the LAES systems.
For their study, the MIT and NTNU researchers designed a model that starts with a description of an LAES system, including details such as the sizes of the units where the air is liquefied and the power is recovered, and also capital expenses based on estimates reported in the literature. The model then draws on state-of-the-art pricing data that’s released every year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is widely used by energy modelers worldwide. The NREL dataset forecasts prices, construction and retirement of specific types of electricity generation and storage facilities, and more, assuming eight decarbonization scenarios for 18 regions of the United States out to 2050.
The new model then tracks buying and selling in energy markets for every hour of every day in a year, repeating the same schedule for five-year intervals. Based on the NREL dataset and details of the LAES system — plus constraints such as the system’s physical storage capacity and how often it can switch between charging and discharging — the model calculates how much money LAES operators would make selling power to the grid when it’s needed and how much they would spend buying electricity when it’s available to recharge their LAES system. In line with the NREL dataset, the model generates results for 18 U.S. regions and eight decarbonization scenarios, including 100 percent decarbonization by 2035 and 95 percent decarbonization by 2050, and other assumptions about future energy grids, including high-demand growth plus high and low costs for renewable energy and for natural gas.
Cetegen describes some of their results: “Assuming a 100-megawatt (MW) system — a standard sort of size — we saw economic viability pop up under the decarbonization scenario calling for 100 percent decarbonization by 2035.” So, positive NPVs (indicating economic viability) occurred only under the most aggressive — therefore the least realistic — scenario, and they occurred in only a few southern states, including Texas and Florida, likely because of how those energy markets are structured and operate.
The researchers also tested the sensitivity of NPVs to different storage capacities, that is, how long the system could continuously deliver power to the grid. They calculated the NPVs of a 100 MW system that could provide electricity supply for one day, one week, and one month. “That analysis showed that under aggressive decarbonization, weekly storage is more economically viable than monthly storage, because [in the latter case] we’re paying for more storage capacity than we need,” explains Cetegen.
Improving the NPV of the LAES system
The researchers next analyzed two possible ways to improve the NPV of liquid air storage: by increasing the system’s energy efficiency and by providing financial incentives. Their analyses showed that increasing the energy efficiency, even up to the theoretical limit of the process, would not change the economic viability of LAES under the most realistic decarbonization scenarios. On the other hand, a major improvement resulted when they assumed policies providing subsidies on capital expenditures on new installations. Indeed, assuming subsidies of between 40 percent and 60 percent made the NPVs for a 100 MW system become positive under all the realistic scenarios.
Thus, their analysis showed that financial incentives could be far more effective than technical improvements in making LAES economically viable. While engineers may find that outcome disappointing, Cetegen notes that from a broader perspective, it’s good news. “You could spend your whole life trying to optimize the efficiency of this process, and it wouldn’t translate to securing the investment needed to scale the technology,” she says. “Policies can take a long time to implement as well. But theoretically you could do it overnight. So if storage is needed [on a future decarbonized grid], then this is one way to encourage adoption of LAES right away.”
Cost comparison with other energy storage technologies
Calculating the economic viability of a storage technology is highly dependent on the assumptions used. As a result, a different measure — the “levelized cost of storage” (LCOS) — is typically used to compare the costs of different storage technologies. In simple terms, the LCOS is the cost of storing each unit of energy over the lifetime of a project, not accounting for any income that results.
On that measure, the LAES technology excels. The researchers’ model yielded an LCOS for liquid air storage of about $60 per megawatt-hour, regardless of the decarbonization scenario. That LCOS is about a third that of lithium-ion battery storage and half that of pumped hydro. Cetegen cites another interesting finding: the LCOS of their assumed LAES system varied depending on where it’s being used. The standard practice of reporting a single LCOS for a given energy storage technology may not provide the full picture.
Cetegen has adapted the model and is now calculating the NPV and LCOS for energy storage using lithium-ion batteries. But she’s already encouraged by the LCOS of liquid air storage. “While LAES systems may not be economically viable from an investment perspective today, that doesn’t mean they won’t be implemented in the future,” she concludes. “With limited options for grid-scale storage expansion and the growing need for storage technologies to ensure energy security, if we can't find economically viable alternatives, we’ll likely have to turn to least-cost solutions to meet storage needs. This is why the story of liquid air storage is far from over. We believe our findings justify the continued exploration of LAES as a key energy storage solution for the future.”
MIT PhD candidate Shaylin Cetegen (pictured) and her colleagues, Professor Emeritus Truls Gundersen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Professor Emeritus Paul Barton of MIT, have developed a comprehensive assessment of the potential role of “liquid air energy storage” for large-scale, long-duration storage on electric power grids of the future.
As the world moves to reduce carbon emissions, solar and wind power will play an increasing role on electricity grids. But those renewable sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy. So to ensure a reliable power grid — one that can deliver electricity 24/7 — it’s crucial to have a means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later, when they’re not. And sometimes large amounts of electricity will need to be stored not just for hours, but for days, or
As the world moves to reduce carbon emissions, solar and wind power will play an increasing role on electricity grids. But those renewable sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy. So to ensure a reliable power grid — one that can deliver electricity 24/7 — it’s crucial to have a means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later, when they’re not. And sometimes large amounts of electricity will need to be stored not just for hours, but for days, or even longer.
Some methods of achieving “long-duration energy storage” are promising. For example, with pumped hydro energy storage, water is pumped from a lake to another, higher lake when there’s extra electricity and released back down through power-generating turbines when more electricity is needed. But that approach is limited by geography, and most potential sites in the United States have already been used. Lithium-ion batteries could provide grid-scale storage, but only for about four hours. Longer than that and battery systems get prohibitively expensive.
A team of researchers from MIT and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has been investigating a less-familiar option based on an unlikely-sounding concept: liquid air, or air that is drawn in from the surroundings, cleaned and dried, and then cooled to the point that it liquefies.
“Liquid air energy storage” (LAES) systems have been built, so the technology is technically feasible. Moreover, LAES systems are totally clean and can be sited nearly anywhere, storing vast amounts of electricity for days or longer and delivering it when it’s needed. But there haven’t been conclusive studies of its economic viability. Would the income over time warrant the initial investment and ongoing costs? With funding from the MIT Energy Initiative’s Future Energy Systems Center, the researchers developed a model that takes detailed information on LAES systems and calculates when and where those systems would be economically viable, assuming future scenarios in line with selected decarbonization targets as well as other conditions that may prevail on future energy grids.
They found that under some of the scenarios they modeled, LAES could be economically viable in certain locations. Sensitivity analyses showed that policies providing a subsidy on capital expenses could make LAES systems economically viable in many locations. Further calculations showed that the cost of storing a given amount of electricity with LAES would be lower than with more familiar systems such as pumped hydro and lithium-ion batteries. They conclude that LAES holds promise as a means of providing critically needed long-duration storage when future power grids are decarbonized and dominated by intermittent renewable sources of electricity.
The researchers — Shaylin A. Cetegen, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE); Professor Emeritus Truls Gundersen of the NTNU Department of Energy and Process Engineering; and MIT Professor Emeritus Paul I. Barton of ChemE — describe their model and their findings in a new paper published in the journal Energy.
The LAES technology and its benefits
LAES systems consists of three steps: charging, storing, and discharging. When supply on the grid exceeds demand and prices are low, the LAES system is charged. Air is then drawn in and liquefied. A large amount of electricity is consumed to cool and liquefy the air in the LAES process. The liquid air is then sent to highly insulated storage tanks, where it’s held at a very low temperature and atmospheric pressure. When the power grid needs added electricity to meet demand, the liquid air is first pumped to a higher pressure and then heated, and it turns back into a gas. This high-pressure, high-temperature, vapor-phase air expands in a turbine that generates electricity to be sent back to the grid.
According to Cetegen, a primary advantage of LAES is that it’s clean. “There are no contaminants involved,” she says. “It takes in and releases only ambient air and electricity, so it’s as clean as the electricity that’s used to run it.” In addition, a LAES system can be built largely from commercially available components and does not rely on expensive or rare materials. And the system can be sited almost anywhere, including near other industrial processes that produce waste heat or cold that can be used by the LAES system to increase its energy efficiency.
Economic viability
In considering the potential role of LAES on future power grids, the first question is: Will LAES systems be attractive to investors? Answering that question requires calculating the technology’s net present value (NPV), which represents the sum of all discounted cash flows — including revenues, capital expenditures, operating costs, and other financial factors — over the project's lifetime. (The study assumed a cash flow discount rate of 7 percent.)
To calculate the NPV, the researchers needed to determine how LAES systems will perform in future energy markets. In those markets, various sources of electricity are brought online to meet the current demand, typically following a process called “economic dispatch:” The lowest-cost source that’s available is always deployed next. Determining the NPV of liquid air storage therefore requires predicting how that technology will fare in future markets competing with other sources of electricity when demand exceeds supply — and also accounting for prices when supply exceeds demand, so excess electricity is available to recharge the LAES systems.
For their study, the MIT and NTNU researchers designed a model that starts with a description of an LAES system, including details such as the sizes of the units where the air is liquefied and the power is recovered, and also capital expenses based on estimates reported in the literature. The model then draws on state-of-the-art pricing data that’s released every year by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and is widely used by energy modelers worldwide. The NREL dataset forecasts prices, construction and retirement of specific types of electricity generation and storage facilities, and more, assuming eight decarbonization scenarios for 18 regions of the United States out to 2050.
The new model then tracks buying and selling in energy markets for every hour of every day in a year, repeating the same schedule for five-year intervals. Based on the NREL dataset and details of the LAES system — plus constraints such as the system’s physical storage capacity and how often it can switch between charging and discharging — the model calculates how much money LAES operators would make selling power to the grid when it’s needed and how much they would spend buying electricity when it’s available to recharge their LAES system. In line with the NREL dataset, the model generates results for 18 U.S. regions and eight decarbonization scenarios, including 100 percent decarbonization by 2035 and 95 percent decarbonization by 2050, and other assumptions about future energy grids, including high-demand growth plus high and low costs for renewable energy and for natural gas.
Cetegen describes some of their results: “Assuming a 100-megawatt (MW) system — a standard sort of size — we saw economic viability pop up under the decarbonization scenario calling for 100 percent decarbonization by 2035.” So, positive NPVs (indicating economic viability) occurred only under the most aggressive — therefore the least realistic — scenario, and they occurred in only a few southern states, including Texas and Florida, likely because of how those energy markets are structured and operate.
The researchers also tested the sensitivity of NPVs to different storage capacities, that is, how long the system could continuously deliver power to the grid. They calculated the NPVs of a 100 MW system that could provide electricity supply for one day, one week, and one month. “That analysis showed that under aggressive decarbonization, weekly storage is more economically viable than monthly storage, because [in the latter case] we’re paying for more storage capacity than we need,” explains Cetegen.
Improving the NPV of the LAES system
The researchers next analyzed two possible ways to improve the NPV of liquid air storage: by increasing the system’s energy efficiency and by providing financial incentives. Their analyses showed that increasing the energy efficiency, even up to the theoretical limit of the process, would not change the economic viability of LAES under the most realistic decarbonization scenarios. On the other hand, a major improvement resulted when they assumed policies providing subsidies on capital expenditures on new installations. Indeed, assuming subsidies of between 40 percent and 60 percent made the NPVs for a 100 MW system become positive under all the realistic scenarios.
Thus, their analysis showed that financial incentives could be far more effective than technical improvements in making LAES economically viable. While engineers may find that outcome disappointing, Cetegen notes that from a broader perspective, it’s good news. “You could spend your whole life trying to optimize the efficiency of this process, and it wouldn’t translate to securing the investment needed to scale the technology,” she says. “Policies can take a long time to implement as well. But theoretically you could do it overnight. So if storage is needed [on a future decarbonized grid], then this is one way to encourage adoption of LAES right away.”
Cost comparison with other energy storage technologies
Calculating the economic viability of a storage technology is highly dependent on the assumptions used. As a result, a different measure — the “levelized cost of storage” (LCOS) — is typically used to compare the costs of different storage technologies. In simple terms, the LCOS is the cost of storing each unit of energy over the lifetime of a project, not accounting for any income that results.
On that measure, the LAES technology excels. The researchers’ model yielded an LCOS for liquid air storage of about $60 per megawatt-hour, regardless of the decarbonization scenario. That LCOS is about a third that of lithium-ion battery storage and half that of pumped hydro. Cetegen cites another interesting finding: the LCOS of their assumed LAES system varied depending on where it’s being used. The standard practice of reporting a single LCOS for a given energy storage technology may not provide the full picture.
Cetegen has adapted the model and is now calculating the NPV and LCOS for energy storage using lithium-ion batteries. But she’s already encouraged by the LCOS of liquid air storage. “While LAES systems may not be economically viable from an investment perspective today, that doesn’t mean they won’t be implemented in the future,” she concludes. “With limited options for grid-scale storage expansion and the growing need for storage technologies to ensure energy security, if we can't find economically viable alternatives, we’ll likely have to turn to least-cost solutions to meet storage needs. This is why the story of liquid air storage is far from over. We believe our findings justify the continued exploration of LAES as a key energy storage solution for the future.”
MIT PhD candidate Shaylin Cetegen (pictured) and her colleagues, Professor Emeritus Truls Gundersen of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Professor Emeritus Paul Barton of MIT, have developed a comprehensive assessment of the potential role of “liquid air energy storage” for large-scale, long-duration storage on electric power grids of the future.
For the past decade, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has been instrumental in promoting student engagement across the Institute to help solve the world’s most pressing water and food system challenges. As part of J-WAFS’ central mission of securing the world’s water and food supply, J-WAFS aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the water and food sectors by encouraging MIT student involvement through a variety of programs and mechanisms that provide resear
For the past decade, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) has been instrumental in promoting student engagement across the Institute to help solve the world’s most pressing water and food system challenges. As part of J-WAFS’ central mission of securing the world’s water and food supply, J-WAFS aims to cultivate the next generation of leaders in the water and food sectors by encouraging MIT student involvement through a variety of programs and mechanisms that provide research funding, mentorship, and other types of support.
J-WAFS offers a range of opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students to engage in the advancement of water and food systems research. These include graduate student fellowships, travel grants for participation in conferences, funding for research projects in India, video competitions highlighting students’ water and food research, and support for student-led organizations and initiatives focused on critical areas in water and food.
As J-WAFS enters its second decade, it continues to expose students across the Institute to experiential hands-on water and food research, career and other networking opportunities, and a platform to develop their innovative and collaborative solutions.
Graduate student fellowships
In 2017, J-WAFS inaugurated two graduate student fellowships: the Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions and the J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellowship Program. The Rasikbhai L. Meswani Fellowship for Water Solutions is a doctoral fellowship for students pursuing research related to water for human need at MIT. The fellowship is made possible by Elina and Nikhil Meswani and family. Each year, up to two outstanding students are selected to receive fellowship support for one academic semester. Through it, J-WAFS seeks to support distinguished MIT students who are pursuing solutions to the pressing global water supply challenges of our time. The J-WAFS Fellowship for Water and Food Solutions is funded by the J-WAFS Research Affiliate Program, which offers companies the opportunity to collaborate with MIT on water and food research. A portion of each research affiliate’s fees supports this fellowship.
Aditya Avinash Ghodgaonkar, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE), reflects on how receiving a J-WAFS graduate student fellowship positively impacted his research on the design of low-cost emitters for affordable, resilient drip irrigation for farmers: “My J-WAFS fellowship gave me the flexibility and financial support needed to explore new directions in the area of clog-resistant drip irrigation that had a higher risk element that might not have been feasible to manage on an industrially sponsored project,” Ghodgaonkar explains. Emitters, which control the volume and flow rate of water used during irrigation, often clog due to small particles like sand. Ghodgaonkar worked with Professor Amos Winter, and with farmers in resource-constrained communities in countries like Jordan and Morocco, to develop an emitter that is mechanically more resistant to clogging. Ghodgaonkar reports that their energy-efficient, compact, clog-resistant drip emitters are being commercialized by Toro and may be available for retail in the next few years. The opportunities and funding support Ghodgaonkar has received from J-WAFS contributed greatly to his entrepreneurial success and the advancement of the water and agricultural sectors.
Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang, a PhD student advised by Professor Robert Langer and Principal Research Scientist Ana Jaklenec of the Department of Chemical Engineering, was a 2022 J-WAFS Graduate Student Fellow. With the fellowship, Zhang was able to focus on her innovative research on a novel micronutrient delivery platform that fortifies food with essential vitamins and nutrients. “We intake micronutrients from basically all the healthy food that we eat; however, around the world there are about 2 billion people currently suffering from micronutrient deficiency because they do not have access to very healthy, very fresh food,” Zhang says. Her research involves the development of biodegradable polymers that can deliver these micronutrients in harsh environments in underserved regions of the world. “Vitamin A is not very stable, for example; we have vitamin A in different vegetables but when we cook them, the vitamin can easily degrade,” Zhang explains. However, when vitamin A is encapsulated in the microparticle platform, simulation of boiling and of the stomach environment shows that vitamin A was stabilized. “The meaningful factors behind this experiment are real,” says Zhang. The J-WAFS Fellowship helped position Zhang to win the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition for this work.
J-WAFS grant for water and food projects in India
J-WAFS India Grants are intended to further the work being pursued by MIT individuals as a part of their research, innovation, entrepreneurship, coursework, or related activities. Faculty, research staff, and undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to apply. The program aims to support projects that will benefit low-income communities in India, and facilitates travel and other expenses related to directly engaging with those communities.
Gokul Sampath, a PhD student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Jonathan Bessette, a PhD student in MechE, initially met through J-WAFS-sponsored conference travel, and discovered their mutual interest in the problem of arsenic in water in India. Together, they developed a cross-disciplinary proposal that received a J-WAFS India Grant. Their project is studying how women in rural India make decisions about where they fetch water for their families, and how these decisions impact exposure to groundwater contaminants like naturally-occurring arsenic. Specifically, they are developing low-cost remote sensors to better understand water-fetching practices. The grant is enabling Sampath and Bessette to equip Indian households with sensor-enabled water collection devices (“smart buckets”) that will provide them data about fetching practices in arsenic-affected villages. By demonstrating the efficacy of a sensor-based approach, the team hopes to address a major data gap in international development. “It is due to programs like the Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab that I was able to obtain the support for interdisciplinary work on connecting water security, public health, and regional planning in India,” says Sampath.
J-WAFS travel grants for water conferences
In addition to funding graduate student research, J-WAFS also provides grants for graduate students to attend water conferences worldwide. Typically, students will only receive travel funding to attend conferences where they are presenting their research. However, the J-WAFS travel grants support learning, networking, and career exploration opportunities for exceptional MIT graduate students who are interested in a career in the water sector, whether in academia, nonprofits, government, or industry.
Catherine Lu ’23, MNG ’24 was awarded a 2023 Travel Grant to attend the UNC Water and Health Conference in North Carolina. The conference serves as a curated space for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to convene and assess data, scrutinize scientific findings, and enhance new and existing strategies for expanding access to and provision of services for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). Lu, who studied civil and environmental engineering, worked with Professor Dara Entekhabi on modeling and predicting droughts in Africa using satellite Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data. As she evaluated her research trajectory and career options in the water sector, Lu found the conference to be informative and enlightening. “I was able to expand my knowledge on all the sectors and issues that are related to water and the implications they have on my research topic.” Furthermore, she notes: “I was really impressed by the diverse range of people that were able to attend the conference. The global perspective offered at the conference provided a valuable context for understanding the challenges and successes of different regions around the world — from WASH education in schools in Zimbabwe and India to rural water access disparities in the United States … Being able to engage with such passionate and dedicated people has motivated me to continue progress in this sector.” Following graduation, Lu secured a position as a water resources engineer at CDM Smith, an engineering and construction firm.
Daniela Morales, a master’s student in city planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, was a 2024 J-WAFS Travel Grant recipient who attended World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden. The annual global conference is organized by the Stockholm International Water Institute and convenes leading experts, decision-makers, and professionals in the water sector to actively engage in discussions and developments addressing critical water-related challenges. Morales’ research interests involve drinking water quality and access in rural and peri-urban areas affected by climate change impacts, the effects of municipal water shutoffs on marginalized communities, and the relationship between regional water management and public health outcomes. When reflecting on her experience at the conference, Morales writes: “Being part of this event has given me so much motivation to continue my professional and academic journey in water management as it relates to public health and city planning … There was so much energy that was collectively generated in the conference, and so many new ideas that I was able to process around my own career interests and my role as a future planner in water management, that the last day of the conference felt less like an ending and more of the beginning of a new chapter. I am excited to take all the information I learned to work towards my own research, and continue to build relationships with all the new contacts I made.” Morales also notes that without the support of the J-WAFS grant, “I would not have had the opportunity to make it to Stockholm and participate in such a unique week of water wisdom.”
Seed grants and Solutions grants
J-WAFS offers seed grants for early-stage research and Solutions Grants for later-stage research that is ready to move from the lab to the commercial world. Proposals for both types of grants must be submitted and led by an MIT principal investigator, but graduate students, and sometimes undergraduates, are often supported by these grants.
Arjav Shah, a PhD-MBA student in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and the MIT Sloan School of Management, is currently pursuing the commercialization of a water treatment technology that was first supported through a 2019 J-WAFS seed grant and then a 2022 J-WAFS Solutions Grant with Professor Patrick Doyle. The technology uses hydrogels to remove a broad range of micropollutants from water. The Solutions funding enables entrepreneurial students and postdocs to lay the groundwork to commercialize a technology by assessing use scenarios and exploring business needs with actual potential customers. “With J-WAFS’ support, we were not only able to scale up the technology, but also gain a deeper understanding of market needs and develop a strong business case,” says Shah. Shah and the Solutions team have discovered that the hydrogels could be used in several real-world contexts, ranging from large-scale industrial use to small-scale, portable, off-grid applications. “We are incredibly grateful to J-WAFS for their support, particularly in fostering industry connections and facilitating introductions to investors, potential customers, and experts,” Shah adds.
Shah was also a 2023 J-WAFS Travel Grant awardee who attended Stockholm World Water Week that year. He says, “J-WAFS has played a pivotal role in both my academic journey at MIT and my entrepreneurial pursuits. J-WAFS support has helped me grow both as a scientist and an aspiring entrepreneur. The exposure and opportunities provided have allowed me to develop critical skills such as customer discovery, financial modeling, business development, fundraising, and storytelling — all essential for translating technology into real-world impact. These experiences provided invaluable insights into what it takes to bring a technology from the lab to market.”
Shah is currently leading efforts to spin out a company to commercialize the hydrogel research. Since receiving J-WAFS support, the team has made major strides toward launching a startup company, including winning the Pillar VC Moonshot Prize, Cleantech Open National Grand Prize, MassCEC Catalyst Award, and participation in the NSF I-Corps National Program.
J-WAFS student video competitions
J-WAFS has hosted two video competitions: MIT Research for a Water Secure Future and MIT Research for a Food Secure Future, in honor of World Water Day and Word Food Day, respectively. In these competitions, students are tasked with creating original videos showcasing their innovative water and food research conducted at MIT. The opportunity is open to MIT students, postdocs, and recent alumni.
Following a review by a distinguished panel of judges, Vishnu Jayaprakash SM ’19, PhD ’22 won first place in the 2022 J-WAFS World Food Day Student Video Competition for his video focused on eliminating pesticide pollution and waste. Jayaprakash delved into the science behind AgZen-Cloak, a new generation of agricultural sprays that prevents pesticides from bouncing off of plants and seeping into the ground, thus causing harmful runoff. The J-WAFS competition provided Jayaprakash with a platform to highlight the universal, low-cost, and environmentally sustainable benefits of AgZen-Cloak. Jayaprakash worked on similar technology as a funded student on a J-WAFS Solutions grant with Professor Kripa Varanasi. The Solutions grant, in fact, helped Jayaprakash and Varanasi to launch AgZen, a company that deploys AgZen-Cloak and other products and technologies to control the interactions of droplets and sprays with crop surfaces. AgZen is currently helping farmers sustainably tend to their agricultural plots while also protecting the environment.
In 2021, Hilary Johnson SM ’18, PhD ’22, won first place in the J-WAFS World Water Day video competition. Her video highlighted her work on a novel pump that uses adaptive hydraulics for improved pump efficiency. The pump was part of a sponsored research project with Xylem Inc., a J-WAFS Research Affiliate company, and Professor Alex Slocum of MechE. At the time, Johnson was a PhD student in Slocum’s lab. She was instrumental in the development of the pump by engineering the volute to expand and contract to meet changing system flow rates. Johnson went on to later become a 2021-22 J-WAFS Fellow, and is now a full-time mechanical engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
J-WAFS-supported student clubs
J-WAFS-supported student clubs provide members of the MIT student community the opportunity for networking and professional advancement through events focused on water and food systems topics.
J-WAFS is a sponsor of the MIT Water Club, a student-led group that supports and promotes the engagement of the MIT community in water-sector-related activism, dissemination of information, and research innovation. The club allows students to spearhead the organization of conferences, lectures, outreach events, research showcases, and entrepreneurship competitions including the former MIT Water Innovation Prize and MIT Water Summit. J-WAFS not only sponsors the MIT Water Club financially, but offers mentorship and guidance to the leadership team.
The MIT Food and Agriculture Club is also supported by J-WAFS. The club’s mission is to promote the engagement of the MIT community in food and agriculture-related topics. In doing so, the students lead initiatives to share the innovative technology and business solutions researchers are developing in food and agriculture systems. J-WAFS assists in the connection of passionate MIT students with those who are actively working in the food and agriculture industry beyond the Institute. From 2015 to 2022, J-WAFS also helped the club co-produce the Rabobank-MIT Food and Agribusiness Innovation Prize — a student business plan competition for food and agricultural startups.
From 2023 onward, the MIT Water Club and the MIT Food and Ag Club have been joining forces to organize a combined prize competition: The MIT Water, Food and Agriculture (WFA) Innovation Prize. The WFA Innovation Prize is a business plan competition for student-led startups focused on any region or market. The teams present business plans involving a technology, product, service, or process that is aimed at solving a problem related to water, food, or agriculture. The competition encourages all approaches to innovation, from engineering and product design to policy and data analytics. The goal of the competition is to help emerging entrepreneurs translate research and ideas into businesses, access mentors and resources, and build networks in the water, food, and agriculture industries. J-WAFS offers financial and in-kind support, working with student leaders to plan, organize, and implement the stages of the competition through to the final pitch event. This year, J-WAFS is continuing to support the WFA team, which is led by Ali Decker, an MBA student at MIT Sloan, and Sam Jakshtis, a master’s student in MIT’s science in real estate development program. The final pitch event will take place on April 30 in the MIT Media Lab.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with Renee Robins, executive director of J-WAFS, on MIT’s Water, Food and Agriculture Innovation Prize for the past two years, and it has been both immensely valuable and a delight to have her support,” says Decker. “Renee has helped us in all areas of prize planning: brainstorming new ideas, thinking through startup finalist selection, connecting to potential sponsors and partners, and more. Above all, she supports us with passion and joy; each time we meet, I look forward to our discussion,” Decker adds.
J-WAFS events
Throughout the year, J-WAFS aims to offer events that will engage any in the MIT student community who are working in water or food systems. For example, on April 19, 2023, J-WAFS teamed up with the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) to co-host an MIT student poster session for Earth Month. The theme of the poster session was “MIT research for a changing planet,” and it featured work from 11 MIT students with projects in water, food, energy, and the environment. The students, who represented a range of MIT departments, labs, and centers, were on hand to discuss their projects and engage with those attending the event. Attendees could vote for their favorite poster after being asked to consider which poster most clearly communicated the research problem and the potential solution. At the end of the night, votes were tallied and the winner of the “People’s Choice Award” for best poster was Elaine Liu ’24, an undergraduate in mathematics at the time of the event. Liu’s poster featured her work on managing failure cascades in systems with wind power.
J-WAFS also hosts less-structured student networking events. For instance, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) in January 2024, J-WAFS hosted an ice cream social for student networking. The informal event was an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students from across the Institute to meet and mingle with like-minded peers working in, or interested in, water and food systems. Students were able to explain their current and future research, interests, and projects and ask questions while exchanging ideas, engaging with one another, and potentially forming collaborations, or at the very least sharing insights.
Looking ahead to 10 more years of student impact
Over the past decade, J-WAFS has demonstrated a strong commitment to empowering students in the water and food sectors, fostering an environment where they can confidently drive meaningful change and innovation. PhD student Jonathan Bessette sums up the J-WAFS community as a “one-of-a-kind community that enables essential research in water and food that otherwise would not be pursued. It’s this type of research that is not often the focus of major funding, yet has such a strong impact in sustainable development.”
J-WAFS aims to provide students with the support and tools they need to conduct authentic and meaningful water and food-related research that will benefit communities around the world. This support, coupled with an MIT education, enables students to become leaders in sustainable water and food systems. As the second decade of J-WAFS programming begins, the J-WAFS team remains committed to fostering student collaboration across the Institute, driving innovative solutions to revitalize the world’s water and food systems while empowering the next generation of pioneers in these critical fields.
The MIT Press announced today the inception of its new Faculty and Alumni Book Awards program, along with the inaugural winners. The new awards are made possible by an anonymous donor and are intended to honor the enduring importance of books and their authors within the MIT community.“We are deeply grateful to have the opportunity to publish so many distinguished MIT faculty and alumni voices — books that enrich our collective understanding and inspire new perspectives,” says Amy Brand, directo
The MIT Press announced today the inception of its new Faculty and Alumni Book Awards program, along with the inaugural winners.The new awards are made possible by an anonymous donor and are intended to honor the enduring importance of books and their authors within the MIT community.
“We are deeply grateful to have the opportunity to publish so many distinguished MIT faculty and alumni voices — books that enrich our collective understanding and inspire new perspectives,” says Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “In establishing the MIT Press Faculty and Alumni Book Awards program, we aim to acknowledge these scholars and the incredible contributions they make towards the progress of knowledge within the MIT community and beyond.”
Awards in the two author categories (faculty and alumni) will be selected each year from a shortlist of nominated MIT Press titles published in the three preceding years. The winning books, selected by a dedicated committee, will be those that most successfully provide a clear cultural, professional, and publishing contribution to the academic community or reading public; advance scholarship in their disciplines, pioneer a new field of inquiry, or effectively engage the public; and represent the prestige and quality for which the MIT Press is widely recognized.
The winner of the 2025 MIT Press Faculty Book Award is “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines” (2023), by David Autor, the Ford Professor of Economics and Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow; David Mindell, professor of aerospace engineering and the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing; and Elisabeth Reynolds, professor of the practice in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. In an era of rapid technological advancement and shifting labor markets, “The Work of the Future” stands as an essential, insightful, and profoundly timely contribution to one of the most pressing issues of our time.
The winner of the 2025 MIT Press Alumni Book Award is “The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World”(2023), by Michael D. Smith PhD ’99, who earned his MIT doctorate in management science and is now the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University. “The Abundant University” is a wake-up call for elite institutions and a visionary roadmap for the future of higher education.
MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart will present the awards at a campus celebration on April 17.
Established in 1962, the MIT Press’ mission is to lead by pushing the boundaries of scholarly publishing in active partnership with the MIT community and aligned with MIT’s mission to advance knowledge in science, technology, the arts, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
The new Faculty and Alumni Book Awards are made possible by an anonymous donor and are intended to honor the enduring importance of books and their authors within the MIT community.
Scientific research on the harms of digital technology is stuck in a ‘failing cycle’ that moves too slowly to allow governments and society to hold tech companies to account, according to two leading researchers in a new report published in the journal Science.
Dr Amy Orben from the University of Cambridge and Dr J Nathan Matias from Cornell University say the pace at which new technology is deployed to billions of people has put unbearable strain on the scientific systems trying to evaluate it
Scientific research on the harms of digital technology is stuck in a ‘failing cycle’ that moves too slowly to allow governments and society to hold tech companies to account, according to two leading researchers in a new report published in the journal Science.
Dr Amy Orben from the University of Cambridge and Dr J Nathan Matias from Cornell University say the pace at which new technology is deployed to billions of people has put unbearable strain on the scientific systems trying to evaluate its effects.
They argue that big tech companies effectively outsource research on the safety of their products to independent scientists at universities and charities who work with a fraction of the resources – while firms also obstruct access to essential data and information. This is in contrast to other industries where safety testing is largely done ‘in house’.
Orben and Matias call for an overhaul of ‘evidence production’ assessing the impact of technology on everything from mental health to discrimination.
Their recommendations include accelerating the research process, so that policy interventions and safer designs are tested in parallel with initial evidence gathering, and creating registries of tech-related harms informed by the public.
“Big technology companies increasingly act with perceived impunity, while trust in their regard for public safety is fading,” said Orben, of Cambridge’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. “Policymakers and the public are turning to independent scientists as arbiters of technology safety.”
“Scientists like ourselves are committed to the public good, but we are asked to hold to account a billion-dollar industry without appropriate support for our research or the basic tools to produce good quality evidence quickly.”
“We must urgently fix this science and policy ecosystem so we can better understand and manage the potential risks posed by our evolving digital society,” said Orben.
'Negative feedback cycle'
In the latest Science paper, the researchers point out that technology companies often follow policies of rapidly deploying products first and then looking to ‘debug’ potential harms afterwards. This includes distributing generative AI products to millions before completing basic safety tests, for example.
When tasked with understanding potential harms of new technologies, researchers rely on ‘routine science’ which – having driven societal progress for decades – now lags the rate of technological change to the extent that it is becoming at times ‘unusable’.
With many citizens pressuring politicians to act on digital safety, Orben and Matias argue that technology companies use the slow pace of science and lack of hard evidence to resist policy interventions and “minimize their own responsibility”.
Even if research gets appropriately resourced, they note that researchers will be faced with understanding products that evolve at an unprecedented rate.
“Technology products change on a daily or weekly basis, and adapt to individuals. Even company staff may not fully understand the product at any one time, and scientific research can be out of date by the time it is completed, let alone published,” said Matias, who leads Cornell’s Citizens and Technology (CAT) Lab.
“At the same time, claims about the inadequacy of science can become a source of delay in technology safety when science plays the role of gatekeeper to policy interventions,” Matias said.
“Just as oil and chemical industries have leveraged the slow pace of science to deflect the evidence that informs responsibility, executives in technology companies have followed a similar pattern. Some have even allegedly refused to commit substantial resources to safety research without certain kinds of causal evidence, which they also decline to fund.”
The researchers lay out the current ‘negative feedback cycle’:
Tech companies do not adequately resource safety research, shifting the burden to independent scientists who lack data and funding. This means high-quality causal evidence is not produced in required timeframes, which weakens government’s ability to regulate – further disincentivising safety research, as companies are let off the hook.
Orben and Matias argue that this cycle must be redesigned, and offer ways to do it.
Reporting digital harms
To speed up the identification of harms caused by online technologies, policymakers or civil society could construct registries for incident reporting, and encourage the public to contribute evidence when they experience harms.
Similar methods are already used in fields such as environmental toxicology where the public reports on polluted waterways, or vehicle crash reporting programs that inform automotive safety, for example.
“We gain nothing when people are told to mistrust their lived experience due to an absence of evidence when that evidence is not being compiled,” said Matias.
Existing registries, from mortality records to domestic violence databases, could also be augmented to include information on the involvement of digital technologies such as AI.
The paper’s authors also outline a ‘minimum viable evidence’ system, in which policymakers and researchers adjust the ‘evidence threshold’ required to show potential technological harms before starting to test interventions.
These evidence thresholds could be set by panels made up of affected communities, the public, or ‘science courts’: expert groups assembled to make rapid assessments.
“Causal evidence of technological harms is often required before designers and scientists are allowed to test interventions to build a safer digital society,” said Orben.
“Yet intervention testing can be used to scope ways to help individuals and society, and pinpoint potential harms in the process. We need to move from a sequential system to an agile, parallelised one.”
Under a minimum viable evidence system, if a company obstructs or fails to support independent research, and is not transparent about their own internal safety testing, the amount of evidence needed to start testing potential interventions would be decreased.
Orben and Matias also suggest learning from the success of ‘Green Chemistry’, which sees an independent body hold lists of chemical products ranked by potential for harm, to help incentivise markets to develop safer alternatives.
“The scientific methods and resources we have for evidence creation at the moment simply cannot deal with the pace of digital technology development,” Orben said.
“Scientists and policymakers must acknowledge the failures of this system and help craft a better one before the age of AI further exposes society to the risks of unchecked technological change.”
Added Matias: “When science about the impacts of new technologies is too slow, everyone loses.”
From social media to AI, online technologies are changing too fast for the scientific infrastructure used to gauge their public health harms, say two leaders in the field.
The scientific methods and resources we have for evidence creation at the moment simply cannot deal with the pace of digital technology development
Mayors of Brownsville, Texas, John Cowen (left) and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar (right), join moderator Diane Davis. Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nation & World
Separated by a border, but with fates entwined
Mayors from U.S., Mexican cities flanking divide compare notes on immigration, national leadership, tariffs
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
April 10, 2025
5 min read
Mayors from U.S., Mexican cities flanking divide compare notes on immigration, national leadership, tariffs
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
From afar, the 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico appears as a hard economic, political, and cultural boundary. But mayors of cities that flank the divide have a different view.
“We’re a binational community,” said Mayor Carlos Peña Ortiz, HKS ’20 of Reynosa, Mexico, which mirrors McAllen, Texas, across the Rio Grande. “We share values; we share businesses; we share religion; we share families; and we’re basically just divided by a river.”
Three borderland mayors appeared at a recent symposium on U.S./Mexico relations, hosted by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. These leaders, currently focused on protecting their local economies, spoke to issues related to immigration, tariffs, and recent presidential transitions in both countries. They also testified to their interconnected fortunes.
“Historically, Brownsville has been very affected by the Mexican peso,” said Mayor John Cowen Jr., who leads the city of 190,000 at Texas’ southernmost tip. “If there’s a big devaluation, our local economy just crashes.”
Moderator Diane Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, kicked off the event by asking how things have changed in light of federal transitions of power. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in October, just three months before President Trump returned to the White House in the U.S.
All three mayors described dramatic decreases in migrant flows, with those from Mexico also noting reduced crime. Peña Ortiz estimated a “95 percent” decrease in migrant traffic over the past two months. The second-term mayor couldn’t be physically present at the session as he had to rush home due to flash flooding in the area. Instead he sent a video of himself answering Davis’ questions.
“We’ve seen a very significant drop in most migrant groups,” said Peña Ortiz, who highlighted the appearance of Russian and Ukrainian passports until recently. “Our migrant camps were full for the last eight, nine years. We usually had around 16,000 to 20,000 migrants in our community, and nowadays we have close to 700. … And for the last month, we have not seen a lot of gunfights. Violent crime has dropped significantly.”
“We share values; we share businesses; we share religion; we share families; and we’re basically just divided by a river.”
Mayor Cruz Pérez Cuéllar of Ciudad Juárez, across the river from El Paso, Texas, praised the Sheinbaum administration for helping his city of 1.6 million bolster shelter capacity ahead of promised deportations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“For the first time since I was born in Juárez,” he said, “I see a federal government that is concerned about what is going to happen.”
Cowen, elected in 2023 for the nonpartisan position, observed the very opposite. More than 50,000 migrants from 31 different countries passed through the city’s port of entry during his first month in office, he said. “We were able to manage that through a combination of relationships with our federal government, with our NGOs.”
But now he worries about a future influx given the currently shifting state of federal funding. He voiced particular concern over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program, which helps support local efforts to house migrants.
“But other than that type of funding, we’re looking at cuts to our health programs, our ability to respond to infectious disease,” he added, noting that Brownsville has dealt in the past with Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Also key to the city’s budget, he said, is federal transit funding.
Tariffs proved a top concern, with the Mexican mayors braced for negative impacts. Peña Ortiz worried what border taxes portend for the future of cross-border cooperation on everything from workforce training to preserving water quality.
“Historically, we’ve been working together with programs like NADBank,” he said, referring to a program established by the U.S. and Mexican governments in 1994 to finance critical environmental infrastructure. “But if there’s no collaboration from the U.S., what will happen long-term with water resources here in the border communities?”
Ciudad Juárez investors are waiting for U.S. tariff policy to stabilize, said Pérez Cuéllar, who just visited Taiwan to bolster relations with business leaders there. “The big problem is that huge companies are waiting,” he said. “I talk to them a lot, and they say, ‘Well, we want to keep investing but we have to wait.’”
On the U.S. side, Cowen acknowledged tariffs as a “headwind” for new business ventures. But the city is still benefiting from initiatives launched in recent years. Currently underway at the Port of Brownsville is a massive gas liquification and export terminal, due for completion by decade’s end. New SpaceX facilities are also under construction in the area.
“That’s $40 billion in investments” for a city currently worth $10 billion, emphasized Cowen, a sixth-generation resident intent on lowering the city’s historically high rates of poverty. He was proud to cite a recent Harvard study ranking Brownsville as the top U.S. city for improving intergenerational mobility.
Arts & Culture
How to dance like somebody’s watching
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
April 10, 2025
3 min read
Choreographer offers tips on finding release: ‘Ain’t nobody concerned if you look good’
Part of the
Wondering
series
A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.
Jeffrey L. Page is an opera and theater dir
A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.
Jeffrey L. Page is an opera and theater director of both classical and contemporary works and a lecturer in Harvard’s Theater, Dance & Media program. He was the co-director of the revival of the musical “1776” and has won an MTV Video Music Award for his work with Beyoncé.
We all want to be seen.
Ralph Ellison wrote this book, “Invisible Man,” which was essentially about Black people. As I walk through my life, many a time, if I’m not already invisible, I have to make myself invisible so that I’m not disrupting a process or shaking the boat. I have to become invisible in order to adhere to respectability politics. But dance is all about being seen. How can the narrative that I’m putting into space, with my body, be read like a book? I believe dancing can do that. Dance as if we’re all watching. What do you want us to see?
It’s as if I’m accessing a reservoir of information that has been locked away.
Imagine you’re writing an essay. You’re working on this sentence for maybe eight hours. You’re trying to put the words together. The moment you find that sentence, it’s like, ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s the sentence. That’s the paragraph. That’s the story.’ That’s what it feels like to go from a non-dancing body to a dancing body. It’s cathartic. It’s as if I’m accessing a reservoir of information that has been locked away.
In Mali in West Africa, they have a practice known as djine foly. I’m sure people have heard of djinn, the Islamic mystic or spiritual guides; we might also know them as genies. Those djinn exist in Malian culture, too. Djine foly means the dancing space of the djinn. The dancers dance themselves into a trance-like state. When they have achieved this trance-like state, they become happy. An explosion of feeling comes upon them. In the Black community, we call it catching the holy ghost. It’s a spiritual thing. The way we unabashedly dance with abandonment and intention, it’s a spiritual phenomenon.
Students who take my class enjoy the class because I scream and I holler and I get them to release all of the stuff that’s sitting on their shoulders and sitting on their heads. Sometimes you just gotta shout to get the thing off of you in order to relax! Ain’t nobody concerned if you look good! Just dance!
Sometimes our logical mind is so strict and unmoving that, baby, it just needs to be a shout to get the logical mind to release itself so I can find that trance and attain my djinn.
Arts & Culture
Harvard archivists’ favorite finds
Illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Tenzin Dickie
Harvard Library Communications
April 10, 2025
8 min read
Library staff pick objects that tell story of both University, America for ‘Inside Out’ exhibit
A handwritten note from former President John F. Kennedy to his Harvard College classmates. A 1905 letter from W.E.B. Du Bois
Library staff pick objects that tell story of both University, America for ‘Inside Out’ exhibit
A handwritten note from former President John F. Kennedy to his Harvard College classmates. A 1905 letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to his mentor, Albert Bushnell Hart, discussing race relations in America. A screen capture of The Harvard Crimson from March 2020 with the headline: Harvard President Bacow Tests Positive for Coronavirus.
Drawn from the Harvard University Archives, these items — on display through April 30 in the “Archives Inside Out” exhibit — tell a story of Harvard that is also a story of America. They also showhow items enter the archival record and become part of Harvard, and American, history.
“We wanted to demystify the work that we do and make it more accessible to the public,” University Archivist Virginia Hunt said of the goal of the exhibit. “The items on display celebrate Harvard’s institutional and community history while showcasing the unique expertise of our dedicated staff.”
Exhibit curators invited their colleagues to submit their favorite items, with an eye to surfacing pieces of history that shed a light on the nature of archival work. Staff were asked: What stands out to you and why? When you go home to your family and you talk about your day, what are you excited to talk about? What is your special find from the collections?
“This was a unique exhibition model and we wanted to get input from all our staff,” said Sarah Martin, Associate University Archivist for Community Engagement. “From the submissions, we selected items that not only tell compelling stories but also best represent the form and function of the University Archives.”
Below are select items from the exhibit, with accompanying text from the archivist who chose it. The full exhibit is open to the public and on display in Pusey Library’s Lammot du Pont Copeland Gallery through the end of the month.
In fall 2013, I was an enthusiastic and fresh-faced new archivist on the hunt to answer a reference question about a member of the Harvard College Class of 1940. Coming up short, I cast my net wider and reviewed materials related to the class’s “correspondence, photographs, questionnaires.” While this broader search did not answer the question, I found instead a previously unknown letter — a draft, really — from John F. Kennedy to his class on this colorful letterhead.
It was my first professional “find” but more than that — it offers a light-hearted, warm, and amusing insider’s view on a complex historical figure.
— Pam Hopkins, Head of University Archives Reference Services
This image depicts “women astronomical computers” who were tasked with cataloging stars, studying stellar spectra, and counting galaxies, among other responsibilities, using the observatory’s glass plate negative collection. I find it compelling as it illustrates the invisible labor that continues to be done by women in the workplace. The description of the women as “computers” is both accurate in this context and foretelling of the invisible labor that supports much online content and activity today.
My own work takes place mainly in the faceless digital environment of email, databases, and spreadsheets, and I sometimes think of how close the “women computers” are to our world in both time and practice.
This letter comes from the personal archive of Albert Bushnell Hart, professor of history and government at Harvard from 1886 to 1924. This collection was recently fully digitized, and it was my responsibility to prepare it for digitization.
The first folder in the first box I opened when I began this work contained letters Hart received in reaction to his study of race relations in the U.S. South, including this letter. These letters provide an example of the wide range of individuals who interacted with Hart’s ideas, and the diversity of ideas among them. It contains correspondence from prominent figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, as well as members of the public who wanted to share with Hart their thoughts on his work.
Thomas Hill (1818-1891) was president of Harvard University from 1862 to 1868. He was also a Unitarian minister, mathematician, scientist, educator, and Harvard lecturer. Throughout his life, Hill retained an interest in discovery and improvement. Hill’s perpetual calendar, a paper instrument with a rotating wheel chart, features calculations to look up any New Year’s Day from 1583 to 1996, illustrating his talents as an inventor and a devisor of scientific instruments.
I chose this item because it illustrates a Harvard president delving deeper into scientific pursuits rather than just education. When processing this collection, I was fascinated by its intricate design and historical significance. I often encounter materials outside of traditional paper records in my work, such as 3D artifacts, which provide unique storage and description challenges.
Here is a screen capture of one of our online collections documenting Harvard’s initial responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. I used digital tools to capture (or “crawl”) this online issue of the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson in March 2020 as part of my regular support of the Harvard University Archives’ robust web archiving program. It provides a snapshot of an uncertain and unprecedented time for the Harvard community and the world.
— Sean Crawford, Collection Development and Records Management Coordinator
Sketches from the Harvard Lampoonwas the first donation that I personally accepted into the Harvard University Archives. As the Collection Development Archivist, part of my role is to recommend what donations should be accepted into the Archives, especially when it comes to Harvard student groups. The other part of my role is to prepare accepted donations to be added to our collection. The Harvard Lampoon is one of the oldest student groups and student publications in Harvard’s history. This special edition of the publication perfectly represents the intersection of the different parts of my role at the Archives.
I happen upon wonderful things as I go through newly acquired collections — such as this letter from the poet Seamus Heaney to Harvard English Professor Helen Vendler (who recently died just before her 91st birthday), part of a recent accession of Vendler’s personal archive in fall 2023. As a collection development archivist, I prepare new collections for research use, inventorying the contents and housing materials safely for long-term storage.
This letter was tucked inside a folder of “first day handouts” for Vendler’s freshman poetry seminar on Walt Whitman. In it, Heaney lightheartedly describes a medical emergency he experienced while visiting the Irish playwright Brian Friel, ending with reassurance to his friend, and frustration at being told not to “do” anything.
— Heidi Horner, Collection Development & Records Management Services Assistant
I became an archivist to ensure that archives are reflective of the world’s diverse history, people, and cultures. To that end, I primarily process collections related to under-represented or marginalized communities for Harvard Library’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Antiracism Digitization Program. The resulting digitized collections are made publicly available online.
My favorite collections are the mundane ones. Personal letter collections, like the one this letter comes from, offer a little window into someone’s life at a certain time. This letter was written by African American Harvard student Ragan Henry ’56 to his Jewish friend and roommate, Joseph Levow Steinberg ’56, during summer break. The letter touches on racial discrimination at work, dating, and the difficulties of living in a “hick town.” But really, this letter between friends in the 1950s is not so different from text messages you’d see between college friends today.
This volume contains personal accounts of nearly 20 Harvard students circa 1942 who wanted to document the reasoning behind their opposition to military service in World War II. Working with then-University Archivist Clifford K. Shipton, they deliberately and permanently placed this volume within the Harvard University Archives’ collections. They wanted their experiences, which ran counter to many of their peers’, not to be forgotten.
My daily work is to connect researchers to primary sources vital for their academic pursuits. This manuscript came to my attention as pacifism during World War II has been a longtime personal interest. It is also a vivid reminder that archives act as a place of memory.
“Archives Inside Out” was curated by Emily Atkins, Ed Copenhagen, Hannah Hack, Virginia Hunt, Juliana Kuipers, Sarah Martin, Jehan Sinclair, and Caroline Tanski of the Harvard University Archives.
Health
Is dining with others a sign of happiness?
Getty Images
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
April 10, 2025
4 min read
Shared meals may be a more reliable indicator of well-being than income, Kennedy School researcher says
People who eat more meals with others tend to be more satisfied with their lives and are more likely to express positive emotions, according to a study published in
Shared meals may be a more reliable indicator of well-being than income, Kennedy School researcher says
People who eat more meals with others tend to be more satisfied with their lives and are more likely to express positive emotions, according to a study published in the annual World Happiness Report. According to the finding’s authors, sharing meals is as predictive of happiness as income or employment status — across ages, genders, countries, cultures, and religions.
It may be a problem, then, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey found that Americans are spending more and more time dining apart, numbers the authors cite in their study. “In 2023, roughly 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day,” the study said, “an average increase of 53 percent since 2003.” This trend holds across all age groups, with the most dramatic drop among young people.
“It’s just surprising to me that this increase would be so clear and so severe,” said Micah Kaats, a doctoral student in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School who co-wrote the report.
While the study shows a strong correlation between the number of shared meals and happiness, it does not state whether sharing meals causes happiness or whether happy people tend to share more meals. “In all likelihood, I would be willing to put money on both being true,” Kaats said, “but which of those factors is stronger is definitely a task for future research.”
The correlation itself is an important development for the field, according to Kaats, in part because happiness is hard to measure. When researchers ask someone to rate themselves from one to 10 on a happiness scale, Kaats says, it’s hard to pinpoint what a one or 10 might mean for any given person on a single day.
Though these subjective measures can be valuable to social scientists and policymakers, researchers often use income, insurance rates, and other factors that have shown strong correlational links to well-being as proxies. But these factors themselves are often hard to measure. “A lot of people don’t want to report their income,” Kaats said. “Those who do want to report their income are a select group.” From there, it’s difficult to tell the accuracy of what’s being reported, the exact type of income one might report (Pretax? Household? Posttax?), and how incomes can be compared between countries and over time.
Compared to these often-used variables, the number of shared meals is relatively clear-cut: “Yesterday, did you eat lunch or dinner with someone you know?” Kaats hopes that the question will find a use among other objective indicators linked to social connection — such as density of civic organizations or the number of political groups per county — that are used to gauge amorphous concepts like happiness and social trust.
In future research, Kaats hopes to tease out whether people become happier when they share more meals. But regardless, Kaats believes that the correlation between shared meals and happiness is important on its own. “If I want to know about your well-being, it’s much more informative for me to know how many meals you ate with other people in the last week than how much money you make,” he said, “so whatever the causal dynamics are, that seems important and interesting and worth further study.”
As researchers and policymakers contend with worsening mental health and increasing social isolation, shared meals could be both an important indicator of well-being and a source of policy intervention.
“We can’t solve every problem at once,” Kaats said, “but if we can get people to share more meals with each other, and that would improve people’s well-being, it’s a good place to start.”
MIT graduate students Sreekar Mantena and Arjun Ramani, and recent MIT alumni Rupert Li ’24 and Jupneet Singh ’23, have been named 2025 P.D. Soros Fellows. In addition, Soros Fellow Andre Ye will begin a PhD in computer science at MIT this fall.Each year, the P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans awards 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants $90,000 in graduate school financial support over a two-year period. The merit-based program selects fellows based on their achievements, po
MIT graduate students Sreekar Mantena and Arjun Ramani, and recent MIT alumni Rupert Li ’24 and Jupneet Singh ’23, have been named 2025 P.D. Soros Fellows. In addition, Soros Fellow Andre Ye will begin a PhD in computer science at MIT this fall.
Each year, the P.D. Soros Fellowship for New Americans awards 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants $90,000 in graduate school financial support over a two-year period. The merit-based program selects fellows based on their achievements, potential to make meaningful contributions to their fields and communities, and dedication to the ideals of the United States represented in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. This year’s fellows were selected from a competitive pool of more than 2,600 applicants nationwide.
Rupert Li ’24
The son of Chinese immigrants, Rupert Li was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from MIT in 2024 with a double major in mathematics and computer science, economics, and data science, and earned an MEng in the latter subject.
Li was named a Marshall Scholar in 2023 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the Part III mathematics program at Cambridge University. His P.D. Soros Fellowship will support his pursuit of a PhD in mathematics at Stanford University.
Li’s first experience with mathematics research was as a high school student participant in the MIT PRIMES-USA program. He continued research in mathematics as an undergraduate at MIT, where he worked with professors Henry Cohn, Nike Sun, and Elchanan Mossel in the Department of Mathematics. Li also spent two summers at the Duluth REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program with Professor Joe Gallian.
Li’s research in probability, discrete geometry, and combinatorics culminated in him receiving the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, an honorable mention for the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize for Outstanding Research in Mathematics by an Undergraduate Student, the Marshall Scholarship, and the Hertz Fellowship.
Beyond research, Li finds fulfillment in opportunities to give back to the math community that has supported him throughout his mathematical journey. This year marks the second time he has served as a graduate student mentor for the PRIMES-USA program, which sparked his mathematical career, and his first year as an advisor for the Duluth REU program.
Sreekar Mantena
Sreekar Mantena graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with a degree in statistics and molecular biology. He is currently an MD student in biomedical informatics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), where he works under Professor Soumya Raychaudhuri of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is also pursuing a PhD in bioinformatics and integrative genomics at Harvard Medical School. In the future, Mantena hopes to blend compassion with computation as a physician-scientist who harnesses the power of machine learning and statistics to advance equitable health care delivery.
The son of Indian-American immigrants, Mantena was raised in North Carolina, where he grew up as fond of cheese grits as of his mother’s chana masala. Every summer of his childhood, he lived with his grandparents in Southern India, who instilled in him the importance of investing in one’s community and a love of learning.
As an undergraduate at Harvard, Mantena was inspired by the potential of statistics and data science to address gaps in health-care delivery. He founded the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with physicians in six countries to develop data-driven medical technologies for underserved communities, including devices to detect corneal disease.
Mantena also pursued research in Professor Pardis Sabeti’s lab at the Broad Institute, where he built new algorithms to design diagnostic assays that improve the detection of infectious pathogens in resource-limited settings. He has co-authored over 20 scientific publications, and his lead-author work has been published in many journals, including Nature Biotechnology, The Lancet Digital Health, and the Journal of Pediatrics.
Arjun Ramani
Arjun Ramani, from West Lafayette, Indiana, is the son of immigrants from Tamil Nadu, India. He is currently pursuing a PhD in economics at MIT, where he studies technological change and innovation. Also the Carl Shapiro (1976) Fellow in the Department of Economics, Ramani hopes his research can inform policies and business practices that generate broadly shared economic growth.
Ramani’s dual interests in technology and the world led him to Stanford University, where he studied economics as an undergraduate and pursued a master’s in computer science, specializing in artificial intelligence. As data editor of the university’s newspaper, he started the Stanford Open Data Project to improve campus data transparency. During college, Ramani also spent time at the White House working on economic policy, in Ghana helping startups scale, and at Citadel in financial markets — all of which cultivated a broad interest in the economic world.
After graduating from Stanford, Ramani became TheEconomist’s global business and economics correspondent. He first covered technology and finance and later shifted to covering artificial intelligence after the technology took the world by storm in 2022.
In 2023, Ramani moved to India to cover the Indian economy in the lead-up to its election. There, he gained a much deeper appreciation for the social and institutional barriers that slowed technology adoption and catch-up growth. Ramani wrote or co-wrote six cover stories, was shortlisted for U.K. financial journalist of the year in 2024 for his AI and economics reporting, and co-authored a six-part special report on India’s economy.
Jupneet Singh ’23
Jupneet Singh, the daughter of Indian immigrants, is a Sikh-American who grew up deeply connected to her Punjabi and Sikh heritage in Somis, California. The Soros Fellowship will support her MD studies at Harvard Medical School’s HST program under the U.S. Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program.
Singh plans to complete her medical residency as an active-duty U.S. Air Force captain, and after serving as a surgeon in the USAF she hopes to enter the United States Public Health Commissioned Corps. While Singh is the first in her family to serve in the U.S. armed services, she is proud to be carrying on a long Sikh military legacy.
Singh graduated from MIT in 2023 with a degree in chemistry and a concentration in history and won a Rhodes Scholarship to pursue two degrees at the University of Oxford: a master’s in public policy and a master’s in translational health sciences. At MIT, she served as the commander (highest-ranked cadet) of the Air Force ROTC Detachment and is now commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. She is the first woman Air Force ROTC Rhodes Scholar.
Singh has worked in de-addiction centers in Punjab, India. She also worked at the Ventura County Family Justice Center and Ventura County Medical Center Trauma Center, and published a first-author paper in The American Surgeon. She founded Pathways to Promise, a program to support the health of children affected by domestic violence. She has conducted research on fatty liver disease under Professor Alex Shalek at MIT and on maternal health inequalities at the National Perinatal Epidemiological Unit at Oxford.
New research from Weill Cornell Medicine has uncovered a surprising culprit underlying cardiovascular diseases in obesity and diabetes – not the presence of certain fats, but their suppression.
New research from Weill Cornell Medicine has uncovered a surprising culprit underlying cardiovascular diseases in obesity and diabetes – not the presence of certain fats, but their suppression.
In a paper published today in Nature Genetics, scientists at the University of Cambridge and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre analysed the full DNA sequence of 4,775 tumours from seven types of cancer. They used that data from Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes Project to create an algorithm capable of identifying tumours with faults in their DNA that makes them easier to treat.
The algorithm, called PRRDetect, could one day help doctors work out which patients are more likely to have
In a paper published today in Nature Genetics, scientists at the University of Cambridge and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre analysed the full DNA sequence of 4,775 tumours from seven types of cancer. They used that data from Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes Project to create an algorithm capable of identifying tumours with faults in their DNA that makes them easier to treat.
The algorithm, called PRRDetect, could one day help doctors work out which patients are more likely to have successful treatment. That could pave the way for more personalised treatment plans that increase people’s chances of survival.
The research was funded by Cancer Research UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Professor Serena Nik-Zainal from the Early Cancer Institute at the University of Cambridge, lead author of the study, said: “Genomic sequencing is now far faster and cheaper than ever before. We are getting closer to the point where getting your tumour sequenced will be as routine as a scan or blood test.
“To use genomics most effectively in the clinic, we need tools which give us meaningful information about how a person’s tumour might respond to treatment. This is especially important in cancers where survival is poorer, like lung cancer and brain tumours.
“Cancers with faulty DNA repair are more likely to be treated successfully. PRRDetect helps us better identify those cancers and, as we sequence more and more cancers routinely in the clinic, it could ultimately help doctors better tailor treatments to individual patients.”
The research team looked for patterns in DNA created by so-called ‘indel’ mutations, in which letters are inserted or deleted from the normal DNA sequence.
They found unusual patterns of indel mutations in cancers that had faulty DNA repair mechanisms – known as ‘post-replicative repair dysfunction’ or PRRd. Using this information, the scientists developed PRRDetect to allow them to identify tumours with this fault from a full DNA sequence.
PRRd tumours are more sensitive to immunotherapy, a type of cancer treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to attack cancer cells. The scientists hope that the PRRd algorithm could act like a ‘metal detector’ to allow them to identify patients who are more likely to have successful treatment with immunotherapy.
The study follows from a previous ‘archaeological dig’ of cancer genomes carried out by Professor Nik-Zainal, which examined the genomes of tens of thousands of people and revealed previously unseen patterns of mutations which are linked to cancer.
This time, Professor Nik-Zainal and her team looked at cancers which have a higher proportion of tumours with PRRd. These include bowel, brain, endometrial, skin, lung, bladder and stomach cancers. Whole genome sequences of these cancers were provided by the 100,000 Genomes Project - a pioneering study led by Genomics England and NHS England which sequenced 100,000 genomes from around 85,000 NHS patients affected by rare diseases or cancer.
The study identified 37 different patterns of indel mutations across the seven cancer types included in this study. Ten of these patterns were already linked to known causes of cancer, such as smoking and exposure to UV light. Eight of these patterns were linked to PRRd. The remaining 19 patterns were new and could be linked to causes of cancer that are not fully understood yet or mechanisms within cells that can go wrong when a cell becomes cancerous.
Executive Director of Research and Innovation at Cancer Research UK, Dr Iain Foulkes, said: “Genomic medicine will revolutionise how we approach cancer treatment. We can now get full readouts of tumour DNA much more easily, and with that comes a wealth of information about how an individual’s cancer can start, grow and spread.
“Tools like PRRDetect are going to make personalised treatment for cancer a reality for many more patients in the future. Personalising treatment is much more likely to be successful, ensuring more people can live longer, better lives free from the fear of cancer.”
NIHR Scientific Director, Mike Lewis, said: “Cancer is a leading cause of death in the UK so it's impressive to see our research lead to the creation of a tool to determine which therapy will lead to a higher likelihood of successful cancer treatment.”
Chief Scientific Officer at Genomics England, Professor Matt Brown, said: “Genomics is playing an increasingly important role in healthcare and these findings show how genomic data can be used to drive more predictive, preventative care leading to better outcomes for patients with cancer.
“The creation of this algorithm showcases the immense value of whole genome sequencing not only in research but also in the clinic across multiple diverse cancer types in advancing cancer care.”
The University of Cambridge is fundraising for a new hospital that will transform how we diagnose and treat cancer. Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, a partnership with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will treat patients across the East of England, but the research that takes place there promises to change the lives of cancer patients across the UK and beyond. Find out more here.
Adapted from a press release from Cancer Research UK
Cambridge researchers have created a ‘metal detector’ algorithm that can hunt down vulnerable tumours, in a development that could one day revolutionise the treatment of cancer.
Genomic sequencing is now far faster and cheaper than ever before. We are getting closer to the point where getting your tumour sequenced will be as routine as a scan or blood test
By Dr Ong Xin Rui from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at NUS and the Tropical Ecology and Entomology Lab (TEE Lab) at NTU’s Asian School of the Environment, and Assoc Prof Eleanor Slade, Principal Investigator at the TEE LabThe Straits Times, 31 March 2025, Science, pA16
By Dr Ong Xin Rui from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at NUS and the Tropical Ecology and Entomology Lab (TEE Lab) at NTU’s Asian School of the Environment, and Assoc Prof Eleanor Slade, Principal Investigator at the TEE Lab
In celebration of its 45th anniversary, Kent Ridge Hall (KRH) hosted a gala dinner on 28 March 2025, recognising the achievements of its student community in sports, culture and service, and featuring a vibrant line-up of alumni performances.Held at the Gardens by the Bay’s Flower Field Hall, the dinner was attended by more than 300 residents, alumni and guests, including the Guest of Honour, Deputy Dean of Students and Associate Professor Adeline Seow.A total of 28 awards in eight categories ce
In celebration of its 45th anniversary, Kent Ridge Hall (KRH) hosted a gala dinner on 28 March 2025, recognising the achievements of its student community in sports, culture and service, and featuring a vibrant line-up of alumni performances.
Held at the Gardens by the Bay’s Flower Field Hall, the dinner was attended by more than 300 residents, alumni and guests, including the Guest of Honour, Deputy Dean of Students and Associate Professor Adeline Seow.
A total of 28 awards in eight categories celebrating sports, culture and service were presented to honour the outstanding residents and interest groups within the community.
Individuals who exceeded expectations in their respective fields were recognised, with the Excellence, Sportsman / Cultural Artist of the Year and Service Champion Awards presented to those who demonstrated exceptional dedication to Kent Ridge Hall and excelled in their respective areas of specialisation.
The most prestigious accolade, the Outstanding Resident of the Year Award, honoured outstanding residents who have made significant contributions to the Hall in three key areas – culture, community, and sports – with notable accomplishments in at least two of these areas.
The winner of this year’s Outstanding Resident Award was Phua Zhuo Jun, a final-year student from the College of Design and Engineering, who was recognised for cultural and service excellence.
“Kent Ridge Hall has been a huge part of my university life. It’s where I continued to grow my passion for dance, while also stepping out of my comfort zone to explore new experiences through committees and sports. Along the way, I met some of the most genuine, inspiring friends who’ve walked alongside me through it all,” said Zhao Jun.
“As I prepare to graduate, I know I’ll deeply miss the little things like the late-night suppers, spontaneous block chats, the energy of practices and meetings, and the warmth of this community I’ve called home.”
Guests were treated to a lively line-up of musical acts, including the four-piece band KR Rockers – comprising Reynold Pereira (Law, ‘89), Nizam Ismail (Law, ‘91), Jasmine Liew and Eel Keat Chiew (Arts and Social Sciences, ‘90) – who performed a set of songs from the 80s and beyond.
Mr Vincent Gan (Engineering, ’05), a KRH non-Resident Fellow for the past seven years, said both the Hall and the University have been pivotal in shaping his leadership skills, teamwork, and resilience. “[KRH]’s dynamic environment, filled with passionate individuals from diverse backgrounds, challenged me to grow beyond academics,” said Mr Gan, who is also Senior Executive Director of Financial Services at Great Eastern Financial Advisers. “Whether it was taking on leadership roles, participating in hall events, or engaging in late-night discussions, I developed the ability to connect with people, navigate challenges, and lead with purpose—skills that continue to serve me well in my career and personal endeavours.”
Meanwhile, Mr Goh Wee Ping (Engineering, ‘11), Chief Executive Officer of Wee Hur Capital Pte Ltd and Chief Investment Officer of Wee Hur Holdings Ltd, shared that his time in KRH fostered in him a strong commitment to giving back to the community. “I made lots of lifelong friends in KRH and am grateful for the experiences that have made me the person I am today. I have learnt the importance of having a good network, and that humility is a virtue that everyone appreciates, no matter where someone comes from or who they interact with.”
KRH’s legacy extends beyond its alumni and the roles they played while in the Hall. In Dr Ivan Low’s case (Science, ’08), he met his wife Ms Hui Ting Chng (Science, ‘08) at the Hall and the couple welcomed their daughter, Fennalyn, during his term as the Hall’s Residential Fellow. Dr Low joined KRH as a Residential Fellow in 2012, spending more than eight years in the role.
Dr Low will soon be the founding Master of Valour House, NUS’ first sports-themed hostel. Having juggled seven sports as an undergraduate, his first four years at KRH enabled him to learn how to manage residential life and academic pursuits, navigate challenges, and lead by example. Even as he embarks on his next chapter leading a new hostel, KRH will remain deeply ingrained in his identity. “Valour House’s colour is purple – and that’s because my blood is a mixture of blue and red. Part of me still bleeds blue!” he said, referencing the blue of Kent Ridge Hall’s colours.
A new study conducted by researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore has uncovered a key mechanism behind lenalidomide resistance in multiple myeloma (MM), offering new insights into potential strategies for improving treatment outcomes and overcoming drug resistance.The team, led by Dr Teoh Phaik Ju and Dr Koh Mun Yee, together with Professor Chng Wee Joo and Associate Professor Polly Chen, identified a gene called ADAR1, wh
A new study conducted by researchers from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore has uncovered a key mechanism behind lenalidomide resistance in multiple myeloma (MM), offering new insights into potential strategies for improving treatment outcomes and overcoming drug resistance.
The team, led by Dr Teoh Phaik Ju and Dr Koh Mun Yee, together with Professor Chng Wee Joo and Associate Professor Polly Chen, identified a gene called ADAR1, which encodes an RNA editing enzyme, as a key factor in suppressing the immune response triggered by lenalidomide—an immune-stimulating drug, essential to kill MM cells. The findings were published in the high-impact scientific journal Blood on 13 March 2025.
ADAR1’s role in lenalidomide resistance in MM
MM is a type of cancer that affects plasma cells in the bone marrow. While standard-of-care treatments like lenalidomide, an immunomodulatory drug (IMiD), have improved survival rates for many MM patients, a significant number still experience relapse due to the development of drug resistance.
Lenalidomide works by binding to a protein called cereblon (CRBN), which breaks down several proteins that are essential for MM cell survival and growth. However, many patients eventually stop responding to the drug, leading to disease relapse. While 20 to 30 per cent of the resistance cases have been linked to defects in CRBN and its associated factors, the underlying mechanisms in most resistance cases have remained poorly understood. This study reports new findings demonstrating that ADAR1 abnormalities lead to a suppressed immune system in IMiD-resistant MM cases.
Overcoming drug resistance
ADAR1 inhibits lenalidomide’s activity by editing double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), thus hindering the immune response and reducing the effectiveness of the drug in combating MM growth and proliferation. The researchers discovered that by reducing the levels of ADAR1 and increasing dsRNA accumulation in MM cells, they could increase the sensitivity of the cells to lenalidomide. This would, in turn, lead to the activation of the immune responses and kill the MM cells. The discovery adds a new layer to the understanding of how MM patients may become resistant to IMiD, highlighting the role of dsRNA pathways beyond the previously understood CRBN pathway.
The findings also suggest that targeting ADAR1 and the dsRNA pathway could offer promising strategies to overcome resistance to lenalidomide in MM. As clinical trials continue to explore the potential of new IMiD analogues, such as CRBN-E3 ligase modulators (CELMoDs) and other drugs with similar pharmacological profile, combining these treatments with ADAR1 inhibitors may provide a more effective approach to tackle drug resistance and improve patient outcomes.
With ADAR1 inhibitors currently in preclinical development, this strategy holds great promise for advancing treatment options for MM. In addition, the research team plans to further investigate ADAR1’s role in alternative splicing, a post-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanism, in MM, which could uncover even more opportunities for treatments.
Health
Researchers ID genetic disorders that can be treated before birth
Timely detection could reduce morbidity, offers opportunities for early intervention
Mass General Brigham Communications
April 9, 2025
3 min read
A new study identifies nearly 300 genetic disorders that can be treated during pregnancy or in the first week of life, forming the basis for a “treatable fetal findings list” that c
Researchers ID genetic disorders that can be treated before birth
Timely detection could reduce morbidity, offers opportunities for early intervention
Mass General Brigham Communications
3 min read
A new study identifies nearly 300 genetic disorders that can be treated during pregnancy or in the first week of life, forming the basis for a “treatable fetal findings list” that could be offered to pregnant patients.
The findings could improve the diagnosis of genetic conditions in pregnancy and enhance the treatment options available for fetuses that have these conditions, according to researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham, and Duke University School of Medicine. The study’s results are published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
“These conditions are actionable — meaning that, empowered with diagnostic information, we can intervene early and improve outcomes.”
Nina Gold, Harvard Medical School
“We saw a critical gap in prenatal care and an opportunity to define the genetic disorders that are treatable during this time,” said senior author Nina Gold, director of Prenatal Medical Genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of pediatrics at HMS. “These conditions are actionable — meaning that, empowered with diagnostic information, we can intervene early and improve outcomes.”
Over the past decade, genomic sequencing has become a vital tool to help inform prenatal diagnoses. Genomic sequencing tests, combined with family history, can help identify genes responsible for ultrasound abnormalities. They can also uncover incidental findings that may predispose a fetus or newborn to serious but treatable conditions, such as a heart condition that can be treated with medications or a gastrointestinal disorder that can be managed with fluid and electrolyte therapies. The research team set out to develop a list of these treatable conditions so that patients can be offered the choice of receiving this kind of information.
Through a literature review, the authors identified a total of 296 genetic conditions, ranging from disorders with emerging fetal therapies to those where immediate postnatal treatment can prevent irreversible harm. The authors emphasize that timely detection of these conditions could reduce morbidity and mortality, offering families unprecedented opportunities for early intervention.
“One of our goals is to expand the options that a family has during pregnancy,” said Jennifer Cohen, the lead author on the study and a medical geneticist at Duke University Hospital. “These lists of genes are meant to provide the possibility of early intervention, which in some cases may change the natural history of the disease.”
Despite its potential, this initiative comes with challenges. The researchers outline ethical considerations and acknowledge that patients may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they are offered. They also highlight the importance of engaging medical geneticists, obstetricians, and ethicists to address these complexities.
“Our goal in creating this targeted list of treatable fetal findings is to improve care, but we are sensitive to the challenges for physicians, genetic counselors, and patients when it comes to navigating new health information during pregnancy or immediately after the birth of a child. This is why it’s so important to work as a care team to empower our patients and provide them with the clearest information possible,” said Gold.
The research described in this story received funding from the National Institutes of Health.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently elected Schiffer, the dean for research at Princeton University, to be one of its 471 new lifetime fellows. Also elected were 17 undergraduate and graduate Princeton alumni.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently elected Schiffer, the dean for research at Princeton University, to be one of its 471 new lifetime fellows. Also elected were 17 undergraduate and graduate Princeton alumni.
Soros fellows receive funding to support their graduate studies and are recognized for their achievements and their potential to make meaningful contributions to the United States across many disciplines.
Soros fellows receive funding to support their graduate studies and are recognized for their achievements and their potential to make meaningful contributions to the United States across many disciplines.
Insect-scale robots can squeeze into places their larger counterparts can’t, like deep into a collapsed building to search for survivors after an earthquake.However, as they move through the rubble, tiny crawling robots might encounter tall obstacles they can’t climb over or slanted surfaces they will slide down. While aerial robots could avoid these hazards, the amount of energy required for flight would severely limit how far the robot can travel into the wreckage before it needs to return to
Insect-scale robots can squeeze into places their larger counterparts can’t, like deep into a collapsed building to search for survivors after an earthquake.
However, as they move through the rubble, tiny crawling robots might encounter tall obstacles they can’t climb over or slanted surfaces they will slide down. While aerial robots could avoid these hazards, the amount of energy required for flight would severely limit how far the robot can travel into the wreckage before it needs to return to base and recharge.
To get the best of both locomotion methods, MIT researchers developed a hopping robot that can leap over tall obstacles and jump across slanted or uneven surfaces, while using far less energy than an aerial robot.
The hopping robot, which is smaller than a human thumb and weighs less than a paperclip, has a springy leg that propels it off the ground, and four flapping-wing modules that give it lift and control its orientation.
The robot can jump about 20 centimeters into the air, or four times its height, at a lateral speed of about 30 centimeters per second, and has no trouble hopping across ice, wet surfaces, and uneven soil, or even onto a hovering drone. All the while, the hopping robot consumes about 60 percent less energy than its flying cousin.
Due to its light weight and durability, and the energy efficiency of the hopping process, the robot could carry about 10 times more payload than a similar-sized aerial robot, opening the door to many new applications.
“Being able to put batteries, circuits, and sensors on board has become much more feasible with a hopping robot than a flying one. Our hope is that one day this robot could go out of the lab and be useful in real-world scenarios,” says Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao, an MIT graduate student and co-lead author of a paper on the hopping robot.
Hsiao is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Songnan Bai, a research assistant professor at The University of Hong Kong; and Zhongtao Guan, an incoming MIT graduate student who completed this work as a visiting undergraduate; as well as Suhan Kim and Zhijian Ren of MIT; and senior authors Pakpong Chirarattananon, an associate professor of the City University of Hong Kong; and Kevin Chen, an associate professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory within the Research Laboratory of Electronics. The research appears today in Science Advances.
Maximizing efficiency
Jumping is common among insects, from fleas that leap onto new hosts to grasshoppers that bound around a meadow. While jumping is less common among insect-scale robots, which usually fly or crawl, hopping affords many advantages for energy efficiency.
When a robot hops, it transforms potential energy, which comes from its height off the ground, into kinetic energy as it falls. This kinetic energy transforms back to potential energy when it hits the ground, then back to kinetic as it rises, and so on.
To maximize efficiency of this process, the MIT robot is fitted with an elastic leg made from a compression spring, which is akin to the spring on a click-top pen. This spring converts the robot’s downward velocity to upward velocity when it strikes the ground.
“If you have an ideal spring, your robot can just hop along without losing any energy. But since our spring is not quite ideal, we use the flapping modules to compensate for the small amount of energy it loses when it makes contact with the ground,” Hsiao explains.
As the robot bounces back up into the air, the flapping wings provide lift, while ensuring the robot remains upright and has the correct orientation for its next jump. Its four flapping-wing mechanisms are powered by soft actuators, or artificial muscles, that are durable enough to endure repeated impacts with the ground without being damaged.
“We have been using the same robot for this entire series of experiments, and we never needed to stop and fix it,” Hsiao adds.
Key to the robot’s performance is a fast control mechanism that determines how the robot should be oriented for its next jump. Sensing is performed using an external motion-tracking system, and an observer algorithm computes the necessary control information using sensor measurements.
As the robot hops, it follows a ballistic trajectory, arcing through the air. At the peak of that trajectory, it estimates its landing position. Then, based on its target landing point, the controller calculates the desired takeoff velocity for the next jump. While airborne, the robot flaps its wings to adjust its orientation so it strikes the ground with the correct angle and axis to move in the proper direction and at the right speed.
Durability and flexibility
The researchers put the hopping robot, and its control mechanism, to the test on a variety of surfaces, including grass, ice, wet glass, and uneven soil — it successfully traversed all surfaces. The robot could even hop on a surface that was dynamically tilting.
“The robot doesn’t really care about the angle of the surface it is landing on. As long as it doesn’t slip when it strikes the ground, it will be fine,” Hsiao says.
Since the controller can handle multiple terrains, the robot can easily transition from one surface to another without missing a beat.
For instance, hopping across grass requires more thrust than hopping across glass, since blades of grass cause a damping effect that reduces its jump height. The controller can pump more energy to the robot’s wings during its aerial phase to compensate.
Due to its small size and light weight, the robot has an even smaller moment of inertia, which makes it more agile than a larger robot and better able to withstand collisions.
The researchers showcased its agility by demonstrating acrobatic flips. The featherweight robot could also hop onto an airborne drone without damaging either device, which could be useful in collaborative tasks.
In addition, while the team demonstrated a hopping robot that carried twice its weight, the maximum payload may be much higher. Adding more weight doesn’t hurt the robot’s efficiency. Rather, the efficiency of the spring is the most significant factor that limits how much the robot can carry.
Moving forward, the researchers plan to leverage its ability to carry heavy loads by installing batteries, sensors, and other circuits onto the robot, in the hopes of enabling it to hop autonomously outside the lab.
“Multimodal robots (those combining multiple movement strategies) are generally challenging and particularly impressive at such a tiny scale. The versatility of this tiny multimodal robot — flipping, jumping on rough or moving terrain, and even another robot — makes it even more impressive,” says Justin Yim, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, who was not involved with this work. “Continuous hopping shown in this research enables agile and efficient locomotion in environments with many large obstacles.”
This research is funded, in part, by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the MIT MISTI program. Chirarattananon was supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China. Hsiao is supported by a MathWorks Fellowship, and Kim is supported by a Zakhartchenko Fellowship.
MIT researchers developed a hopping robot that can leap over tall obstacles and jump across slanted or uneven surfaces, while using far less energy than an aerial robot.
Susan Murphy (left) and Ziping Xu. Photo by Grace DuVal
Science & Tech
Like having a personal healthcare coach in your pocket
New apps for cancer patients, cannabis users, others make use of algorithms that continually customize support
Anne J. Manning
SEAS Communications
April 9, 2025
5 min read
Cancer patients who undergo stem cell transplantation face a long recovery, requiring m
Like having a personal healthcare coach in your pocket
New apps for cancer patients, cannabis users, others make use of algorithms that continually customize support
Anne J. Manning
SEAS Communications
5 min read
Cancer patients who undergo stem cell transplantation face a long recovery, requiring medications with debilitating side effects and support around the clock. It’s a difficult experience, with studies showing that more than 70 percent of patients don’t adhere to drug regimens.
Statistician Susan Murphy spends her days trying to help people suffering from such challenging maladies. The Mallinckrodt Professor of Statistics and Computer Science and associate faculty at the Kempner Institute and her team address healthcare needs not through medicine, but by mobile apps.
Murphy’s lab specializes in creating sophisticated computational instructions known as reinforcement learning algorithms, which form the technical backbone of next-generation programs to help people stick to a medication protocol, for instance, or regular tooth brushing, or reducing cannabis use.
And if this sounds like one of those ubiquitous apps that tracks steps or counts calories, think again.
“If you’ve ever downloaded a health app, those tend to be pretty dumb,” Murphy said. “For example, you’ll get a physical activity app, you’ll sprain your ankle, and it’ll continue to tell you to go for a walk.”
“If you’ve ever downloaded a health app, those tend to be pretty dumb.”
Susan Murphy
Using advancements in artificial intelligence and sensing technologies to move beyond one-size-fits-all interventions, the lab’s apps are capable of real-time personalization, meting out psychological rewards, and in some cases, leveraging social networks to help users stick to goals.
This approach is called “just-in-time adaptive intervention” because it aims to provide support at just the right time by registering changing needs and contexts.
Currently the Murphy lab is working with software engineers, cancer clinicians, and behavioral scientists to develop an app for stem-cell transplant patients and their primary caregivers, usually parents.
Health management, especially for the sickest, typically requires involvement of others. For instance, up to 73 percent of family-care partners have primary responsibility for managing cancer-related medications.
The researchers are in the early stages of developing the algorithm, to be deployed in a first-round clinical trial this year by collaborators at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University. The trial, called ADAPTS HCT, will focus on adolescent and young adult patients who’ve had stem-cell transplants in the 14 weeks post-surgery.
The algorithm will inform sequential decisions, including when and whether to send motivational prompts to the patient, and whether to send messages and reminders to both patient and caregiver. The application includes a word-guessing game that fosters social support and collaboration between patient and caregiver.
“We hypothesize that in improving the relationship between patients and their caregivers, patients can function and manage their medications better,” said Harvard postdoctoral fellow Ziping Xu, who is leading the ADAPTS HCT algorithm development.
The app will employ reinforcement machine learning, in which the software will “learn” from previous interactions. For example, rather than simply sending preset reminders about medications, the algorithm will tailor timing and content according to when they have been most useful to patients. That way there is less chance the notifications will be deemed irrelevant or ill-timed and eventually habitually ignored.
“We use the algorithm to learn what is the best way to interact with each patient,” Xu said.
“We use the algorithm to learn what is the best way to interact with each patient.”
Ziping Xu
The Murphy lab is deploying its algorithmic expertise across other domains. With their University of Michigan collaborators, they’ve recently pilot-tested a program called MiWaves aimed at young adults who are abusing cannabis.
Like the ADAPTS HCT app, MiWaves continually learns and adapts from interactions with each patient to improve its decision rules, with the goal of helping them reduce their daily intake.
The lab is also several years into a project called Oralytics, which recently wrapped up a 10-week randomized trial to help refine the delivery of push notifications to help patients adhere to a tooth-brushing protocol: two sessions of two-minute duration daily, covering all four mouth quadrants.
The first Oralytics clinical trial included some 70 participants who all received the mobile app with a wireless-enabled toothbrush that sent data to the team’s collaborators at Proctor and Gamble.
Graduate student Anna Li Trella, who led the Oralytics project through the first trial, said the recently collected data will help the team develop methods to better handle messy problems like missing data and software errors.
“There are many constraints to running an algorithm in real life,” Trella said. “Now that we’ve conducted the first trial, we can make improvements to help the algorithm collect better data and learn better.”
Murphy thinks of her lab as creating practical pocket coacheswho can help people get where they want to go.
“Very, very few people can afford a human coach. And in fact, some people may not want such intensive human interaction,” Murphy said. “That’s where the idea for these digital supports comes in.”
Gibbs is a sixth-year graduate student in Princeton's Program in Quantitative and Computational Biology. His interdisciplinary research explores biological pathogens that affect human health and agricultural production, among other critical concerns.
Gibbs is a sixth-year graduate student in Princeton's Program in Quantitative and Computational Biology. His interdisciplinary research explores biological pathogens that affect human health and agricultural production, among other critical concerns.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have unravelled the complex network that cells use to repair their genetic material. By examining thousands upon thousands of genetic interactions, the team has discovered new vulnerabilities in cancer cells that could be exploited therapeutically in the future.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have unravelled the complex network that cells use to repair their genetic material. By examining thousands upon thousands of genetic interactions, the team has discovered new vulnerabilities in cancer cells that could be exploited therapeutically in the future.
At a ceremony in Los Angeles on 5 April, the four major experimental collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – were awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
At a ceremony in Los Angeles on 5 April, the four major experimental collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – were awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
ETH Zurich and Zühlke have conducted a study on how companies use AI technologies. A total of 633 companies from the fields of production, technology, healthcare and finance from the DACH region, the UK and the US were surveyed. Stefano Brusoni, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management, explains in an interview where the greatest potential lies and where Europe needs to catch up.
ETH Zurich and Zühlke have conducted a study on how companies use AI technologies. A total of 633 companies from the fields of production, technology, healthcare and finance from the DACH region, the UK and the US were surveyed. Stefano Brusoni, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management, explains in an interview where the greatest potential lies and where Europe needs to catch up.
Named the world’s sixth Blue Zone 2.0 in August 2023, Singapore has been cited as one of the globe’s healthiest, happiest, and longest-living populations. Blue Zones are places where people live longer and enjoy better health well into old age.Indeed, with Singapore set to attain “super-aged” status in 2026 – when one in five citizens will be aged 65 and above – the question of how people can thrive in a 100-year life with longer health spans while leading purposeful lives has become more urgent
Named the world’s sixth Blue Zone 2.0 in August 2023, Singapore has been cited as one of the globe’s healthiest, happiest, and longest-living populations. Blue Zones are places where people live longer and enjoy better health well into old age.
Indeed, with Singapore set to attain “super-aged” status in 2026 – when one in five citizens will be aged 65 and above – the question of how people can thrive in a 100-year life with longer health spans while leading purposeful lives has become more urgent. This concept stems from a 2016 book by two London Business School professors who challenged people to rethink the traditional life stages of study, work, and retirement. The Distinguished Senior Fellowship Programme (DSFP) offered by the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education (SCALE), is a newly launched programme designed specifically to address this question. The programme will welcome its first cohort in August 2025.
Recognising that senior leaders seek purposeful engagement beyond their career pinnacle, the DSFP ― billed as the first of its kind in Asia ― provides a platform for interdisciplinary learning, personal reflection, and societal contribution, demonstrating how universities such as NUS can innovate to serve learners across the life spectrum.
“In Singapore, longevity is no longer a question but an expectation. People are living well into their 80s. Yet, socially and economically, we are still expected to retire in our mid-60s,” said Professor Virginia Cha, DSFP’s Academic Director. “In fact, we should avoid using the label ‘seniors’, and address this emergent, dominant force as ‘thrivers’.”
“More has to be done to engage this growing group of ‘thrivers’ who have accumulated a lifetime of experiences, wisdom, resources, connections; and deploy this hard-earned equity in new, meaningful ways so that our communities can benefit from this longevity dividend,” she added.
Built on the idea of “Thriving in the 100-Year Life”, which reframes ageing as a period of growth rather than decline, DSFP’s focus is not on chalking up credentials for career advancement. Instead, it seeks to help participants (known as Fellows) build a post-professional identity and make a meaningful impact on the community through group work.
“When we think of retirement, we think of people diminishing or slowing down. With the DSFP, we want to change that narrative to one of high growth and learning,” said Prof Cha. “The programme is a call for ‘thrivers’ to ‘come back to school’ and connect with their peers, forge a new identity, and gain new knowledge together.”
Rethinking the role of universities
With its focus on enriching senior leaders, the DSFP also highlights the evolving role of universities.
"Universities push the boundaries of knowledge for society and are a beacon for the love of learning," said Professor Susanna Leong, Vice Provost (Masters' Programmes & Lifelong Education) and Dean of SCALE. "As our societies grow healthier and live longer, it is befitting for universities to welcome older learners back to our campus. In an institute of learning, we are all students; it is the spirit of open-minded learning and curiosity that keeps us forever young.”
The DSFP aims to achieve this through a series of modules structured around five pillars – Purpose, Exploration, Action, Community, and Health.
The Core course focuses on developing a purpose project, where Fellows work in teams to make meaningful contributions in areas such as youth development, sustainability, longevity, healthcare, the arts, and entrepreneurship. These are complemented by a Signature course comprising eight seminars that expound on various dimensions of thriving in the “100-Year Life”.
One of the Signature course seminars, titled “Elixir of Life: Manufacturing Cells as Medicine”, will teach Fellows the science behind immune cell therapy.
“It’s a privilege to engage Fellows who are experienced in their respective fields and share with them recent developments in cell therapy and the impact it can make on healthcare,” saidDr Andy Tay Kah Ping from the NUS College of Design and Engineering, who will be conducting the seminar.
“The use of immune cells is one of the most effective treatments for cancer and I am excited to share with the Fellows about my research and inspire them to use their respective expertise and networks to grow this sector,” added Dr Tay, who is also the Assistant Professor and Presidential Young Professor at the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering.
There are also Elective seminars, which consist of Master’s-level seminars in history, culture, religion, philosophy, and contemporary affairs. Executive seminars on such subjects are not common, said Prof Cha. “But we want to give our Fellows a wider range of topics in areas they might not have been able to study before.”
Building people to build a better world
While the DSFP is new to Asia, top universities in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been running similar courses. Harvard University launched the Advanced Leadership Initiative in 2008, while Stanford University unveiled its Distinguished Careers Institute in 2015.
Prof Cha has a grand vision for DSFP. “In five to 10 years, when the world thinks about a best-in-class programme for ‘thrivers’ in their Third Transition, NUS and the DSFP should be top of mind, along with Harvard and Stanford.”
Universities have established degree programmes to help with the first transition (workforce entry) and second transition (career advancement). The Third Transition refers to the life stage after a successful career.
What sets DSFP apart is how it measures value – by the impact its Fellows create. “While other education programmes use conventional measures of value, such as how much salary is earned after programme completion, or how much funding is raised through a project, we want to go one step further,” Prof Cha said. “We want to measure how many people are impacted by our Fellows after they complete the programme.”
DSFP includes a week-long experiential learning trip to a Southeast Asian country. The first cohort will travel to Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, where Fellows will visit Smiling Gecko, a non-profit which runs a sustainable resort that funds a farm and a 500-student school for underprivileged children.
“The trip will forge a strong community and encourage deep reflection as the Fellows eat, converse, and explore purpose projects together,” Prof Cha said. “This trip will bring the concepts of Problem, People, and Place to a concrete form, so they can visualise, and by extension, be inspired on the impact they want to make with their purpose project.”
For Ms Vicky Lim-Tan, an Independent Director of Maya Bank Philippines and Fellow from the programme’s inaugural cohort, the trip will be a special one. “I find it extra meaningful that the Programme’s impact experience trip will take place in Cambodia, a country I had helped support with the Asian Development Bank’s Commune Council Development Project some 20 years ago,” she said. “Life indeed comes full circle.”
The programme’s emphasis on meaningful impact is rooted in its five pillars, which emerged from interviews and surveys with NUS alumni who fit its target audience.
“We asked what they were looking for post-retirement, and most said things like taking care of grandchildren or playing golf,” Prof Cha said. “Most people don’t realise that continual education and meaningful purpose project activities are options. We want to give ‘thrivers’ these options.”
She added: “We do not want to be just another executive programme. Our greater vision is to build deep humans to benefit society.”
The process of discovering molecules that have the properties needed to create new medicines and materials is cumbersome and expensive, consuming vast computational resources and months of human labor to narrow down the enormous space of potential candidates.Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT could streamline this process, but enabling an LLM to understand and reason about the atoms and bonds that form a molecule, the same way it does with words that form sentences, has presented a scient
The process of discovering molecules that have the properties needed to create new medicines and materials is cumbersome and expensive, consuming vast computational resources and months of human labor to narrow down the enormous space of potential candidates.
Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT could streamline this process, but enabling an LLM to understand and reason about the atoms and bonds that form a molecule, the same way it does with words that form sentences, has presented a scientific stumbling block.
Researchers from MIT and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab created a promising approach that augments an LLM with other machine-learning models known as graph-based models, which are specifically designed for generating and predicting molecular structures.
Their method employs a base LLM to interpret natural language queries specifying desired molecular properties. It automatically switches between the base LLM and graph-based AI modules to design the molecule, explain the rationale, and generate a step-by-step plan to synthesize it. It interleaves text, graph, and synthesis step generation, combining words, graphs, and reactions into a common vocabulary for the LLM to consume.
When compared to existing LLM-based approaches, this multimodal technique generated molecules that better matched user specifications and were more likely to have a valid synthesis plan, improving the success ratio from 5 percent to 35 percent.
It also outperformed LLMs that are more than 10 times its size and that design molecules and synthesis routes only with text-based representations, suggesting multimodality is key to the new system’s success.
“This could hopefully be an end-to-end solution where, from start to finish, we would automate the entire process of designing and making a molecule. If an LLM could just give you the answer in a few seconds, it would be a huge time-saver for pharmaceutical companies,” says Michael Sun, an MIT graduate student and co-author of a paper on this technique.
Sun’s co-authors include lead author Gang Liu, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame; Wojciech Matusik, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT who leads the Computational Design and Fabrication Group within the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Meng Jiang, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame; and senior author Jie Chen, a senior research scientist and manager in the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Best of both worlds
Large language models aren’t built to understand the nuances of chemistry, which is one reason they struggle with inverse molecular design, a process of identifying molecular structures that have certain functions or properties.
LLMs convert text into representations called tokens, which they use to sequentially predict the next word in a sentence. But molecules are “graph structures,” composed of atoms and bonds with no particular ordering, making them difficult to encode as sequential text.
On the other hand, powerful graph-based AI models represent atoms and molecular bonds as interconnected nodes and edges in a graph. While these models are popular for inverse molecular design, they require complex inputs, can’t understand natural language, and yield results that can be difficult to interpret.
The MIT researchers combined an LLM with graph-based AI models into a unified framework that gets the best of both worlds.
Llamole, which stands for large language model for molecular discovery, uses a base LLM as a gatekeeper to understand a user’s query — a plain-language request for a molecule with certain properties.
For instance, perhaps a user seeks a molecule that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier and inhibit HIV, given that it has a molecular weight of 209 and certain bond characteristics.
As the LLM predicts text in response to the query, it switches between graph modules.
One module uses a graph diffusion model to generate the molecular structure conditioned on input requirements. A second module uses a graph neural network to encode the generated molecular structure back into tokens for the LLMs to consume. The final graph module is a graph reaction predictor which takes as input an intermediate molecular structure and predicts a reaction step, searching for the exact set of steps to make the molecule from basic building blocks.
The researchers created a new type of trigger token that tells the LLM when to activate each module. When the LLM predicts a “design” trigger token, it switches to the module that sketches a molecular structure, and when it predicts a “retro” trigger token, it switches to the retrosynthetic planning module that predicts the next reaction step.
“The beauty of this is that everything the LLM generates before activating a particular module gets fed into that module itself. The module is learning to operate in a way that is consistent with what came before,” Sun says.
In the same manner, the output of each module is encoded and fed back into the generation process of the LLM, so it understands what each module did and will continue predicting tokens based on those data.
Better, simpler molecular structures
In the end, Llamole outputs an image of the molecular structure, a textual description of the molecule, and a step-by-step synthesis plan that provides the details of how to make it, down to individual chemical reactions.
In experiments involving designing molecules that matched user specifications, Llamole outperformed 10 standard LLMs, four fine-tuned LLMs, and a state-of-the-art domain-specific method. At the same time, it boosted the retrosynthetic planning success rate from 5 percent to 35 percent by generating molecules that are higher-quality, which means they had simpler structures and lower-cost building blocks.
“On their own, LLMs struggle to figure out how to synthesize molecules because it requires a lot of multistep planning. Our method can generate better molecular structures that are also easier to synthesize,” Liu says.
To train and evaluate Llamole, the researchers built two datasets from scratch since existing datasets of molecular structures didn’t contain enough details. They augmented hundreds of thousands of patented molecules with AI-generated natural language descriptions and customized description templates.
The dataset they built to fine-tune the LLM includes templates related to 10 molecular properties, so one limitation of Llamole is that it is trained to design molecules considering only those 10 numerical properties.
In future work, the researchers want to generalize Llamole so it can incorporate any molecular property. In addition, they plan to improve the graph modules to boost Llamole’s retrosynthesis success rate.
And in the long run, they hope to use this approach to go beyond molecules, creating multimodal LLMs that can handle other types of graph-based data, such as interconnected sensors in a power grid or transactions in a financial market.
“Llamole demonstrates the feasibility of using large language models as an interface to complex data beyond textual description, and we anticipate them to be a foundation that interacts with other AI algorithms to solve any graph problems,” says Chen.
This research is funded, in part, by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research.
Researchers developed a multimodal tool that combines a large language model with powerful graph-based AI models to efficiently find new, synthesizable molecules with desired properties based on a user’s queries in plain language.
A team of researchers has demonstrated possibly the first practical application of quantum computing using commercially available hardware — a milestone that unlocks the long-term promise and potential of quantum technologies. The major breakthrough, published in Nature on 25 March 2025, shows that quantum computers could be used to generate certified random numbers that are mathematically proven to be unpredictable — a foundational capability for secure banking, cryptography and digital service
A team of researchers has demonstrated possibly the first practical application of quantum computing using commercially available hardware — a milestone that unlocks the long-term promise and potential of quantum technologies. The major breakthrough, published in Nature on 25 March 2025, shows that quantum computers could be used to generate certified random numbers that are mathematically proven to be unpredictable — a foundational capability for secure banking, cryptography and digital services.
Associate Professor Charles Lim, who is on leave from the National University of Singapore (NUS), introduced the idea of certified quantum randomness to the bank, where a research team collaborated with US national laboratories and universities to bring the idea to reality. A quantum cryptography expert from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) at NUS, Assoc Prof Lim is currently leading networking and security research at JPMorganChase.
Two other NUS-affiliated researchers also made significant contributions to the paper: Dr. Kon Wen Yu, a PhD graduate from NUS CDE, and Enrique Cervero-Martín, a PhD student at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at NUS, both of whom were mentored by Assoc Prof Lim at JPMorgan.
Realising certified randomness
The research addresses a long-standing challenge in quantum computing: demonstrating a useful task that near-term quantum computers can perform beyond the reach of even the most powerful classical supercomputers. Random number generation — essential for encryption, secure authentication, digital lotteries and e-games — has long been seen as a promising application. However, proving the quality and freshness of such randomness has remained difficult to achieve.
To solve this, the team implemented a protocol known as certified randomness, based on a method called random circuit sampling. The protocol involves sending quantum “challenge” circuits to a remote quantum computer, analysing its responses and then using classical supercomputers to certify that the results could not have been feasibly simulated by any classical means. The experiment was performed using the 56-qubit Quantinuum H2-1 trapped-ion quantum processor, accessed remotely over the internet.
In addition to verifying the authenticity of the output, the researchers also demonstrated randomness expansion, in which more certified random bits than the initial randomness used to initiate the process are produced. Combining quantum processing with exascale classical computing, the researchers successfully certified over 71,000 bits of entropy, producing what is known to be the first experimental realisation of certified randomness using existing quantum hardware.
The breakthrough comes at a time when expectations around, and investments in, quantum computing are high. While a fully functional general-purpose quantum computer is only expected in five to seven years, this study provides a proof point for what today’s intermediate-scale quantum devices can achieve — with immediate relevance to secure key generation and cryptographic protocols that require trusted randomness.
From academia to industry and back
Assoc Prof Lim’s key involvement in the project reflects the practicality of close academia-industry collaboration in advancing critical areas of research. In 2022, Assoc Prof Lim took no-pay leave from NUS to lead JPMorgan’s global quantum research team, which enables him to apply his research in real-world contexts while maintaining his academic roots and contributing to national and international initiatives to forge new frontiers in quantum computing.
At NUS, Assoc Prof Lim has built a strong research portfolio in quantum cybersecurity and quantum integrated photonics, particular in quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum random number generation (QRNG). His work includes landmark demonstrations such as one of the world’s first device-independent QKD systems (Nature, 2022) and a proposal for chip-based QRNG with certified randomness (Nature Communications, 2023). He is also a National Research Foundation Fellow, a recipient of Singapore’s Young Scientist Award (2019) and an active contributor to international standardisation efforts for quantum cryptography.
Nation & World
When arguing cases before Supreme Court is your job
Elizabeth Prelogar (from left), Noel Francisco, and Neal Katyal offered an insider’s look at the job.Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 8, 2025
4 min read
Former solicitors general recall what it’s like representing U.S. government amid shifts on bench
When arguing cases before Supreme Court is your job
Elizabeth Prelogar (from left), Noel Francisco, and Neal Katyal offered an insider’s look at the job.
Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Former solicitors general recall what it’s like representing U.S. government amid shifts on bench
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made the bench “hot.”
Noel Francisco said lawyers used to be able to present arguments at their own pace before facing justices’ questions. But “Scalia changed that dynamic because he was the first one who was an active questioner.” Since then, other justices have taken up Scalia’s style, leaving lawyers less opportunity to shape the exchange.
Francisco should know, having worked on both sides of the bench. He clerked for Scalia from 1997 to 1998 and later served as U.S. solicitor general during the first Trump administration, arguing cases before the Supreme Court on the government’s behalf.
Last Friday, Francisco was joined by Elizabeth Prelogar, J.D. ’08, and Neal Katyal, who served as solicitors general during the Biden and Obama administrations, respectively. During a conversation with Richard Lazarus, the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law, the three offered an insider’s look at the job and how it has changed since 2017 with the addition of four new justices.
Katyal credited Harvard Law School Professor Richard Lazarus’ counsel to get past his anxiety early in the job.
Changes to the court’s composition over the last two decades have affected the tone and the dynamic between the justices and advocates, and between the justices themselves, the trio noted.
There can be a “learning curve” for everyone, even the other justices, whenever a new justice gets seated, they noted. Sometimes, even a single justice, like the influential conservative Scalia or centrist Anthony Kennedy, often a “swing” vote, can have an impact on how lawyers argue cases.
Recalling one of his first appearances before the court, Katyal said Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “cared a lot about the facts of the case.” But after she stepped down, factual questions became “just one part” of the court dynamic at oral argument until Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s arrival in 2009.
The justices typically “didn’t have their minds made up as often as I feel like they do now,” Katyal said. Kennedy, in particular, “really didn’t know what he was going to do at the time of oral arguments in a lot of the big cases,” which gave the lawyers on both sides a greater opportunity to persuade the court.
Prelogar credits Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a former law school professor, with asking some of the toughest questions.
“She has this incredible ability to go multiple layers deep in unpacking an issue, always in a very fair way, a way that’s totally within bounds, and a way that’s very driven by a genuine desire to fully understand the ramifications of the government’s position in a particular case,” said Prelogar.
Kagan, the former HLS dean, is by far the toughest, say Francisco and Katyal, because she “dissects your case” and tests the very outer limits of one’s argument.
No question, they said, it can be terrifying, especially the first few cases before the court.
Francisco recalled referring to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Justice O’Connor, to gales of laughter from the gallery. They each sought advice from experienced colleagues or trusted law professors on how to manage their nerves and use their time at the podium wisely.
Katyal credited Lazarus’ counsel to get past his anxiety early in the job by viewing the back-and-forth with the justices at oral argument not as a battle to be won, but as a collaboration of ideas.
Win or lose, whatever you do, remember who the client is and don’t say something you later have to walk back.
“When you represent the United States and you’re standing at the podium in the Supreme Court, you’re committing the United States to a particular view of the law. You’re speaking this with the authority of the federal government, and you have to take some care, not ad hoc, making determination about what the positions of the United States will be,” Prelogar said.
To Vanessa Chan PhD ’00, effective engineers don’t just solve technical problems. To make an impact with a new product or technology, they need to bring it to market, deploy it, and make it mainstream. Yet this is precisely what they aren’t trained to do.In fact, 97 percent of patents fail to make it over the “commercialization wall.”“Only 3 percent of patents succeed, and one of the biggest challenges is we are not training our PhDs, our undergrads, our faculty, to commercialize technologies,”
To Vanessa Chan PhD ’00, effective engineers don’t just solve technical problems. To make an impact with a new product or technology, they need to bring it to market, deploy it, and make it mainstream. Yet this is precisely what they aren’t trained to do.
In fact, 97 percent of patents fail to make it over the “commercialization wall.”
“Only 3 percent of patents succeed, and one of the biggest challenges is we are not training our PhDs, our undergrads, our faculty, to commercialize technologies,” said Chan, vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. She delivered the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)’s spring 2025 Wulff Lecture at MIT on March 10. “Instead, we’re focused on the really hard technical issues that we have to overcome, versus everything that needs to be addressed for something to make it to market.”
Chan spoke from deep experience, having led McKinsey & Co.’s innovation practice, helping Fortune 100 companies commercialize technologies. She also invented the tangle-free headphones Loopit at re.design, the firm she founded, and served as the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE)’s chief commercialization officer and director of the Office of Technology Transitions during the Biden administration.
From invention to impact
A DMSE alumna, Chan addressed a near-capacity crowd about the importance of materials innovation. She highlighted how new materials — or existing materials used in new ways — could solve key challenges, from energy sustainability to health care delivery. For example, carbon fiber composites have replaced aluminum in the airline industry, leading to reduced fuel consumption, lower emissions, and enhanced safety. Modern lithium-ion and solid-state batteries use optimized electrode materials for higher efficiency and faster charging. And biodegradable polymer stents, which dissolve over time, have replaced traditional metallic stents that remain in arteries and can cause complications.
The Wulff Lecture is a twice-yearly talk aimed at educating students, especially first-years, about materials science and engineering and its impact on society.
Inventing a groundbreaking technology is just the beginning, Chan said. She gave the example of Thomas Edison, often thought of as the father of the electric light bulb. But Edison didn’t invent the carbonized filament — that was Joseph Swan.
“Thomas Edison was the father of the deployed light bulb,” Chan said. “He took Swan’s patents and figured out, how do we actually pull a vacuum on this? How do we manufacture this at scale?”
For an invention to make an impact, it needs to successfully traverse the commercialization journey from research to development, demonstration, and deployment in the market. “An invention without deployment is a tragedy, because you’ve invented something where you may have a lot of paper publications, but it is not making a difference at all in the real world.”
Materials commercialization is difficult, Chan explained, because new materials are at the very beginning of a value chain — the full range of activities in producing a product or service. To make it to market, the materials invention must be adopted by others along the chain, and in some cases, companies must navigate how each part of the chain gets paid. A new material for hip replacements, for example, designed to reduce the risk of infection and rehospitalization, might be a materials breakthrough, but getting it to market is complicated by the way insurance works.
“They will not pay more to avoid hospitalization,” Chan said. “If your material is more expensive than what is currently being used today, the providers will not reimburse for that.”
Beyond technology
But engineers can increase their odds in commercialization if they know the right language. “Adoption readiness levels” (ARLs), developed in Chan’s Office of Technology Transitions, help assess the nontechnical risks technologies face on their journey to commercialization. These risks cover value proposition — whether a technology can perform at a price customers will pay — market acceptance, and other potential barriers, such as infrastructure and regulations.
In 2022, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act allocated $370 billion toward clean energy deployment — 10 times the Department of Energy’s annual budget — to advance clean energy technologies such as carbon management, clean hydrogen, and geothermal heating and cooling. But Chan emphasized that the real prize was unlocking an estimated $23 trillion from private-sector investors.
“Those are the ones who are going to bring the technologies to market. So, how do we do that? How do we convince them to actually commercialize these technologies which aren’t quite there?” Chan asked.
Chan’s team spearheaded “Pathways to Commercial Liftoff,” a roadmap to bridge the gap between innovation and commercial adoption, helping identify scaling requirements, key players, and the acceptable risk levels for early adoption.
She shared an example from the DoE initiative, which received $8 billion from Congress to create a market for clean hydrogen technologies. She tied the money to specific pathways, explaining, “the private sector will start listening because they want the money.”
Her team also gathered data on where the industry was headed, identifying sectors that would likely adopt hydrogen, the infrastructure needed to support it, and what policies or funding could accelerate commercialization.
“There’s also community perception, because when we talk to people about hydrogen, what's the first thing people think about? The Hindenburg,” Chan said, referencing the 1937 dirigible explosion. “So these are the kinds of things that we had to grapple with if we’re actually going to create a hydrogen economy.”
“What do you love?”
Chan concluded her talk by offering students professional advice. She encouraged them to do what they love. On a slide, she shared a Venn diagram of her passions for technology, business, and making things — she recently started a pottery studio called Rebel Potters — illustrating the motivations behind her career journey.
“So I need you to ask yourself, What is your Venn diagram? What is it that you love?” Chan asked. “And you may say, ‘I don’t know. I’m 18 right now, and I just need to figure out what classes I want to take.’ Well, guess what? Get outside your comfort zone. Go do something new. Go try new things.”
Attendee Delia Harms, a DMSE junior, found the exercise particularly useful. “I think I’m definitely lacking a little bit of direction in where I want to go after undergrad and what I want my career path to look like,” Harms said. “So I’ll definitely try that exercise later — thinking about what my circles are, and how they come together.”
Jeannie She, a junior majoring in artificial intelligence and bioengineering, found inspiration in Chan’s public sector experience.
“I have always seen government as bureaucracy, red tape, slow — but I’m also really interested in policy and policy change,” She said. “So learning from her and the things that she’s accomplished during her time as an appointee has been really inspiring, and makes me see that there are careers in policy where things can actually get done.”
Vanessa Chan PhD ’00, vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, delivered the spring 2025 Wulff Lecture on March 10. Chan discussed the critical role of materials in modern industries and the challenges of bringing new materials to market.
Enabling and sustaining a clean energy transition depends not only on groundbreaking technology to redefine the world’s energy systems, but also on that innovation happening at scale. As a part of an ongoing speaker series, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) hosted Emily Knight, the president and CEO of The Engine, a nonprofit incubator and accelerator dedicated to nurturing technology solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. She explained how her organization is bridging the gap between
Enabling and sustaining a clean energy transition depends not only on groundbreaking technology to redefine the world’s energy systems, but also on that innovation happening at scale. As a part of an ongoing speaker series, the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) hosted Emily Knight, the president and CEO of The Engine, a nonprofit incubator and accelerator dedicated to nurturing technology solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. She explained how her organization is bridging the gap between research breakthroughs and scalable commercial impact.
“Our mission from the very beginning was to support and accelerate what we call ‘tough tech’ companies — [companies] who had this vision to solve some of the world’s biggest problems,” Knight said.
The Engine, a spinout of MIT, coined the term “tough tech” to represent not only the durability of the technology, but also the complexity and scale of the problems it will solve. “We are an incubator and accelerator focused on building a platform and creating what I believe is an open community for people who want to build tough tech, who want to fund tough tech, who want to work in a tough tech company, and ultimately be a part of this community,” said Knight.
According to Knight, The Engine creates “an innovation orchard” where early-stage research teams have access to the infrastructure and resources needed to take their ideas from lab to market while maximizing impact. “We use this pathway — from idea to investment, then investment to impact — in a lot of the work that we do,” explained Knight.
She said that tough tech exists at the intersection of several risk factors: technology, market and customer, regulatory, and scaling. Knight highlighted MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) — one of many MIT spinouts within The Engine’s ecosystem that focus on energy — as an example of how The Engine encourages teams to work through these risks.
In the early days, the CFS team was told to assume their novel fusion technology would work. “If you’re only ever worried that your technology won’t work, you won’t pick your head up and have the right people on your team who are building the public affairs relationships so that, when you need it, you can get your first fusion reactor sited and done,” explained Knight. “You don’t know where to go for the next round of funding, and you don’t know who in government is going to be your advocates when you need them to be.”
“I think [CFS’s] eighth employee was a public affairs person,” Knight said. With the significant regulatory, scaling, and customer risks associated with fusion energy, building their team wisely was essential. Bringing on a public affairs person helped CFS build awareness and excitement around fusion energy in the local community and build the community programs necessary for grant funding.
The Engine’s growing ecosystem of entrepreneurs, researchers, institutions, and government agencies is a key component of the support offered to early-stage researchers. The ecosystem creates a space for sharing knowledge and resources, which Knight believes is critical for navigating the unique challenges associated with Tough Tech.
This support can be especially important for new entrepreneurs: “This leader that is going from PhD student to CEO — that is a really, really big journey that happens the minute you get funding,” said Knight. “Knowing that you’re in a community of people who are on that same journey is really important.”
The Engine also extends this support to the broader community through educational programs that walk participants through the process of translating their research from lab to market. Knight highlighted two climate and energy startups that joined The Engine through one such program geared toward graduate students and postdocs: Lithios, which is producing sustainable, low-cost lithium, and Lydian, which is developing sustainable aviation fuels.
The Engine also offers access to capital from investors with an intimate understanding of tough tech ventures. She said that government agency partners can offer additional support through public funding opportunities and highlighted that grants from the U.S. Department of Energy were key in the early funding of another MIT spinout within their ecosystem, Sublime Systems.
In response to the current political shift away from climate investments, as well as uncertainty surrounding government funding, Knight believes that the connections within their ecosystem are more important than ever as startups explore alternative funding. “We’re out there thinking about funding mechanisms that could be more reliable. That’s our role as an incubator.”
Being able to convene the right people to address a problem is something that Knight attributes to her education at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. “My ethos across all of this is about service,” stated Knight. “We’re constantly evolving our resources and how we help our teams based on the gaps they’re facing.”
MITEI Presents: Advancing the Energy Transition is an MIT Energy Initiative speaker series highlighting energy experts and leaders at the forefront of the scientific, technological, and policy solutions needed to transform our energy systems. The next seminar in this series will be April 30 with Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Visit MITEI’s Events page for more information on this and additional events.
The Class Day speaker is selected by members of the senior class. This year's event will be held on May 26, which is the day before the University's Commencement.
The Class Day speaker is selected by members of the senior class. This year's event will be held on May 26, which is the day before the University's Commencement.
Nation & World
Meacham sees a stark choice for America
Drew Faust (left) and historian Jon Meacham.Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 8, 2025
3 min read
Pulitzer-winning historian speaks to country’s past and future in conversation with Faust
The nation faces “a moral crisis” over whether we allow our best or worst impulses to preva
Pulitzer-winning historian speaks to country’s past and future in conversation with Faust
The nation faces “a moral crisis” over whether we allow our best or worst impulses to prevail in a battle for the soul of America, historian Jon Meacham told Harvard President Emerita Drew Faust during a conversation about history and U.S. democracy Wednesday at the Kennedy School.
Author of the 2018 book, “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels,” Meacham said, “We either will decide that we can live in a country where we defer our immediate gratification in order to enter into a covenant where the rule of law prevails” — or we won’t.
Meacham believes an important political shift has taken place in recent years. In past presidential elections, like Richard Nixon’s narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960, Americans could count on candidates to accept defeat regardless of how close or controversial the contest. That is no longer the case, he said.
“My central worry at the moment is that there’s an autocratic trend in the country that will be deepened and accelerated,” said Meacham, who teaches history at Vanderbilt University and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book on Andrew Jackson, “American Lion.”
His fascination with presidents is not to build up Great Man-style mythology, but to reveal their inherent humanity, Meacham said.
“If history has any moral utility — and I think it does — I hope it is not to intimidate people with the grandeur and glory of someone’s life, but to show that flawed and broken people can do great things.”
Meacham served as an informal adviser and speechwriter to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and was sometimes called Biden’s “muse” for their closely shared views of American democracy. When Faust, a Civil War historian, asked how he was able to go from writing about history to becoming part of that history, Meacham answered with a vivid memory.
“It was the moment I had been waiting for since I was 6 years old,” Meacham said. “It’s the Oval Office. The president of the United States is sitting behind the Resolute Desk, the sunlight streaming in. I can smell FDR’s cigarette smoke; I can see RFK reaching out to the Soviets. And I sit down next to the president’s desk, and the president of the United States asked me a question, and I start talking, and I didn’t make a goddamn bit of sense,” he said. “It was horrible.”
Meacham said that if he were president, he would not hold a serious meeting in the Oval Office because of how the past can overwhelm the present.
“I think it distorts things, and I think it’s really hard for presidents to get honest advice, particularly in that room,” he said.
Asked by a student how the legacy of slavery informs the current political climate, Meacham answered: “I think that we have not dealt with it, and we live in the extraordinarily long shadow not just of Appomattox, but of Reconstruction.”
Referencing Edward Alfred Pollard, the Richmond newspaper editor who coined the term “The Lost Cause” in his 1866 history of the war, Meacham noted, “He says explicitly that ‘Though we have lost the war, we have not lost the fight for the principle, which was the principle of white supremacy.’ And I think we live with that tension now.”
Conversations with palliative care specialist Susan Block (second from left) were instrumental to the development of “Night Side Songs” by Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour (far left and far right), seen here with Amanda Moment, a social worker from Dana-Farber and BWH. Courtesy of Susan Block
Arts & Culture
‘Singin’ in the Rain’ this isn’t
But palliative care specialist who advised on ‘Night Side Songs’ says new musical about cancer patient is rich, moving
Conversations with palliative care specialist Susan Block (second from left) were instrumental to the development of “Night Side Songs” by Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour (far left and far right), seen here with Amanda Moment, a social worker from Dana-Farber and BWH.
But palliative care specialist who advised on ‘Night Side Songs’ says new musical about cancer patient is rich, moving
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Susan Block, founding chair of the department of psychosocial oncology and palliative care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, has been seeing dying patients for more than three decades. She had trouble imagining how Daniel and Patrick Lazour, who approached her for advice, were going to be able to build a musical around her sobering area of specialty.
“I had some skepticism about the idea of a musical about death and dying,” said Block, who is also founding director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Palliative Care. “And I mean, I love any kind of theatrical performance. And I like musicals. But I just couldn’t quite juxtapose this.”
But, she said, her doubts dissipated after seeing the first run-through of “Night Side Songs.”
“There was a feeling by the end, that we had all been through something together,” Block said.
“When I was a medical student and an intern, I didn’t like the way people who were dying were treated in the hospital. I thought that they were infantilized …”
Susan Block
“Night Side Songs,” inspired by writer and cultural critic Susan Sontag’s observation that “illness is the night side of life,” is told through the voices of doctors, patients, researchers, and caregivers. It was commissioned by Harvard’s American Repertory Theater and is being staged at the Cambridge Masonic Temple through Sunday and Hibernian Hall in Roxbury April 9-20.
The story revolves around Yasmine, a young cancer patient played by Brooke Ishibashi. The Lazour brothers conducted years of research into end-of-life care and experiences, and they asked Block to review drafts and attend read-throughs to give notes on accuracy.
“I felt that they captured essential elements of the experience from the point of view of patients, of caregivers, of other family members going through it, and of the clinicians in a really very emotionally evocative, intense, beautiful way,” said Block, who has seen the show multiple times since its inception.
Block went to medical school in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She said back then there was no such thing as palliative care. She has been a pioneer in studying the psychology of dying and getting palliative care into hospitals across the country. Now, a musical is inviting people to think and speak candidly about the end of life.
“When I was a medical student and an intern, I didn’t like the way people who were dying were treated in the hospital,” she said. “I thought that they were infantilized in ways — that was a period where people weren’t told the truth about their illness, where pain was not well treated, where there was not good recognition of people’s emotional suffering about and grief about the idea of leaving, that families were kind of left to figure it out on their own.”
Since then, palliative care has become a recognized area of specialization involving thousands of doctors across the country. Still, Block said, we don’t talk enough about death and dying.
“I think giving people the opportunity to speak about this lets people play around with it, because most of us do a lot of our deeper understanding and processing by talking with somebody else in community,” she said. “And for people who are seriously ill and dying, there’s this feeling that if I tell my wife how upset I am about my illness, it’s going to make her sad and make things worse for her. And then the wife is saying, ‘Well, I want to protect my husband from knowing how sad I am.’ There’s this conspiracy of silence about it, and it also creates enormous isolation for both people.”
Jonathan Raviv in A.R.T.’s world premiere production of “Night Side Songs.”
Credit: Nile Scott Studios
Notably, “Night Side Songs” is not being performed at the A.R.T.’s Loeb Theater, which accommodates audiences more than twice the size of either Masonic Temple or Hibernian Hall. Both venues also allow for theater in the round, with audience members seated in a circle around the performers.
According to A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus, the show is being performed in these more intimate venues to inspire audiences to connect with both the actors and each other.
“Getting out of the proscenium arch, the strict auditorium, breaking that into a circle, reducing the audience to make it intimate, and audience size really matters,” she said. “And our mission is to expand the boundaries of theater. So we are always looking for shows like ‘Night Side Songs’ that are pushing the boundaries of what we think the form of theater is.”
The other unifying element, Paulus said, is the invitation for the audience to sing along.
“The way they do it is so inviting and graceful. And you can sing along, and you can listen … It’s really an invitation for the audience to experience the material in a very deep way,” she said.
Block says “Night Side Songs” will resonate with anyone who’s been touched by serious illness.
“When you’re sick, you want to believe that science and medicine know what to do, and everything is going to work out OK,” she said. “But then unexpected things happen, and I thought that the play dealt with the uncertainty and expectation of unexpected outcomes in a very real, very poignant way.”
Mikhail Zygar, exiled founder of Russias only independent television news channel, and winner of the CPJ International Press Freedom Award, spoke about the evolution of his career and his hopes for generational change in Russia at last nights annual University of Melbourne A N Smith Lecture.
Mikhail Zygar, exiled founder of Russias only independent television news channel, and winner of the CPJ International Press Freedom Award, spoke about the evolution of his career and his hopes for generational change in Russia at last nights annual University of Melbourne A N Smith Lecture.
The NUS Asia Research Institute (ARI) announced today the establishment of the Nalanda Endowed Professorship in India-China Studies. The Professorship seeks to promote research and education on India-China relations – specifically, the political, economic, historical and cultural interactions between India and China – with the overarching goal to shape policy and deepen societal understanding in the interdisciplinary field.The Professorship is made possible through a generous S$3 million gift fr
The NUS Asia Research Institute (ARI) announced today the establishment of the Nalanda Endowed Professorship in India-China Studies. The Professorship seeks to promote research and education on India-China relations – specifically, the political, economic, historical and cultural interactions between India and China – with the overarching goal to shape policy and deepen societal understanding in the interdisciplinary field.
The Professorship is made possible through a generous S$3 million gift from the Nalanda Library Fund Limited (NLFL) which was presented by Former Minister Mr George Yeo as NLFL Trustee to Director of ARI, Professor Tim Bunnell in a ceremony witnessed by NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye at NUS this afternoon.
The NLFL was established to collect donations for the Nalanda University Library in India, providing facilities for study, research, and teaching. Its trustees includeMr Yeo, Ho Bee Land Executive Chairman Mr Chua Thian Poh and NUS University Professor Wang Gungwu. Donors from Singapore had agreed to gift up to S$10 million for the construction of the library to be designed by Singapore architects. After plans were shelved, the Trustees decided, with the approval of all donors, that the remaining amount of S$3 million be donated to NUS for the establishment of the Nalanda Endowed Professorship in India-China Studies.
Prof Tan said, “NUS is delighted to be partnering with the Nalanda Library Fund Limited to establish the Nalanda Endowed Professorship in India-China Studies at ARI. This collaboration underscores our shared commitment to illuminating the deep history and contemporary significance of India-China relations and advancing this field of research.”
He added, “By promoting study of the many ways in which India and China have influenced each other over long centuries, this Nalanda Endowed Professorship will contribute to advancing understanding between the two countries in ways that serve as ballast for regional stability and prosperity today and into the future.”
The Professorship will be awarded to leading scholars in the domain for a fixed term. The appointed professor (otherwise known as the Chair) will spearhead original research through a long-term project on India-China relations, lead archival initiatives to collect, digitise and preserve original materials related to historical research on India-China ties and their regional influence, mentor graduate students, as well as contribute to the broader discourse in the field through engagements with the academic and policymaking communities and the public in the form of workshops, public lectures and an annual conference. The global search for the first Chair has already begun.
Prof Bunnell said, “Trans-Asian research has been part of ARI’s DNA for some time, the Nalanda Endowed Professorship in India-China Studies builds on this legacy of trans-regional research. We look forward to the new professorship complimenting the important work provided by ARI’s Asian Peace Programme on India and China by situating contemporary geo-politics as one form among many forms of relations between these two historically consequential Asian countries.”
Mr Yeo, who is also a current visiting scholar at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS added, “The prospect for peace and development in our region this century depends much on good relations between China and India. I hope the professorship can, in a small way, contribute to greater understanding between these two great civilizations. Southeast Asia is where the mandalas of India and China overlap. We provide a natural platform for the convening of discussions on their contact with each other over the centuries in different domains and their contribution to Southeast Asia.”
About ARI
ARI was established in 2001 to provide a focal point and resource for world-class research on the Asian region at NUS. ARI engages the humanities and social sciences broadly defined, and especially interdisciplinary frontiers between and beyond disciplines. As a university-level institute, ARI brings together scholars from different departments, faculties and colleges across campus for seminars, conferences and collaborative research projects. Located at one of Asia’s communication hubs, the Institute is also an important place for scholarly encounters between Singapore, the region and wider worlds.
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a device that makes it easy for people with or without medical training to record heart sounds accurately. Unlike a stethoscope, the device works well even if it’s not placed precisely on the chest: its larger, flexible sensing area helps capture clearer heart sounds than traditional stethoscopes.
The device can also be used over clothing, making it more comfortable for patients – especially women – during routine check-ups or communi
The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a device that makes it easy for people with or without medical training to record heart sounds accurately. Unlike a stethoscope, the device works well even if it’s not placed precisely on the chest: its larger, flexible sensing area helps capture clearer heart sounds than traditional stethoscopes.
The device can also be used over clothing, making it more comfortable for patients – especially women – during routine check-ups or community heart health screening programmes.
The heart sound recordings can be saved on the device, which can then be used to detect signs of heart valve disease. The researchers are also developing a machine learning algorithm which can detect signs of valve disease automatically. The results are reported in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.
Heart valve disease (valvular heart disease or VHD) has been called the ‘next cardiac epidemic,’ with a prognosis worse than many forms of cancer. Up to 50% of patients with significant VHD remain undiagnosed, and many patients only see their doctor when the disease has advanced and they are experiencing significant complications.
In the UK, the NHS and NICE have identified early detection of heart valve disease as a key goal, both to improve quality of life for patients, and to decrease costs.
An examination with a stethoscope, or auscultation, is the way that most diagnoses of heart valve disease are made. However, just 38% of patients who present to their GP with symptoms of valve disease receive an examination with a stethoscope.
“The symptoms of VHD can be easily confused with certain respiratory conditions, which is why so many patients don’t receive a stethoscope examination,” said Professor Anurag Agarwal from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research. “However, the accuracy of stethoscope examination for diagnosing heart valve disease is fairly poor, and it requires a GP to conduct the examination.”
In addition, a stethoscope examination requires patients to partially undress, which is both time consuming in short GP appointments, and can be uncomfortable for patients, particularly for female patients in routine screening programmes.
The ‘gold standard’ for diagnosing heart valve disease is an echocardiogram, but this can only be done in a hospital and NHS waiting lists are extremely long – between six to nine months at many hospitals.
“To help get waiting lists down, and to make sure we’re diagnosing heart valve disease early enough that simple interventions can improve quality of life, we wanted to develop an alternative to a stethoscope that is easy to use as a screening tool,” said Agarwal.
Agarwal and his colleagues have developed a handheld device, about the diameter of a drinks coaster, that could be a solution. Their device can be used by any health professional to accurately record heart sounds, and can be used over clothes.
While a regular or electronic stethoscope has a single sensor, the Cambridge-developed device has six, meaning it is easier for the doctor or nurse – or even someone without any medical training – to get an accurate reading, simply because the surface area is so much bigger.
The device contains materials that can transmit vibration so that it can be used over clothes, which is particularly important when conducting community screening programmes to protect patient privacy. Between each of the six sensors is a gel that absorbs vibration, so the sensors don’t interfere with each other.
The researchers tested the device on healthy participants with different body shapes and sizes and recorded their heart sounds. Their next steps will be to test the device in a clinical setting on a variety of patients, against results from an echocardiogram.
In parallel with the development of the device, the researchers have developed a machine learning algorithm that can use the recorded heart sounds to detect signs of valve disease automatically. Early tests of the algorithm suggest that it outperforms GPs in detecting heart valve disease.
“If successful, this device could become an affordable and scalable solution for heart health screening, especially in areas with limited medical resources,” said Agarwal.
The researchers say that the device could be a useful tool to triage patients who are waiting for an echocardiogram, so that those with signs of valve disease can be seen in a hospital sooner.
A patent has been filed on the device by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm. Anurag Agarwal is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Well into the late 19th century, the U.S. retail sector was overwhelmingly local, consisting of small, independent merchants throughout the country. That started changing after Sears and Roebuck’s famous catalog became popular, allowing the firm to grow, while a rival, Montgomery Ward, also expanded. By the 1930s, the U.S. had 130,000 chain stores, topped by Atlantic and Pacific supermarkets (the A&P), with over 15,000 stores.A century onward, the U.S. retail landscape is dominated by retail
Well into the late 19th century, the U.S. retail sector was overwhelmingly local, consisting of small, independent merchants throughout the country. That started changing after Sears and Roebuck’s famous catalog became popular, allowing the firm to grow, while a rival, Montgomery Ward, also expanded. By the 1930s, the U.S. had 130,000 chain stores, topped by Atlantic and Pacific supermarkets (the A&P), with over 15,000 stores.
A century onward, the U.S. retail landscape is dominated by retail giants. Today, 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart, while five of the country’s 10 biggest employers — Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, Kroger, and Target— are retailers. Two others in the top 10, UPS and FedEx, are a major part of the retail economy.
The ubiquity of these big retailers, and the sheer extent of the U.S. shopping economy as a whole, is unusual compared to the country’s European counterparts. Domestic consumption plays an outsized role in driving growth in the United States, and credit plays a much larger role in supporting that consumption than in Europe. The U.S. has five times as much retail space per capita as Japan and the U.K., and 10 times as much as Germany. Unlike in Europe, shopping hours are largely unregulated.
How did this happen? To be sure, Walmart, Amazon, Target, and other massive chains have plenty of business acumen. But the full story involves a century or more of political tectonics and legal debates, which helped shape the size of U.S. retailing and the prominence of its large discount chains.
“The markets that we take as given, that we think of as the natural outcome of supply and demand, are heavily shaped by policy and by politics,” says MIT political scientist Kathleen Thelen.
While a great deal has been written about specific American companies, Thelen’s book has some distinctive features. One is a comparison to the economies of Europe, where she has focused much of her scholarship. Another is her historical lens, extending back to the start of chain retailing.
“It seems like every time I set out to explain something in the present, I’m thrown back to the 19th century,” Thelen says.
For instance, as both Sears and Montgomery Ward grew, producers and consumers were still experimenting with alternate commercial arrangements, like cooperatives, which pooled suppliers together, but they ultimately ran into economic and legal headwinds. Especially, at the time, legal headwinds.
“Antitrust laws in the United States were very forbearing toward big multidivisional corporations and very punitive toward alternative types of arrangements like cooperatives, so big retailers got a real boost in that period,” Thelen says. Separately, the U.S. Postal Service was also crucial, since big mail order houses like Sears relied on not just on its delivery services but also its money order system, to sell goods to the company’s many customers who lacked bank accounts.
Smaller retailers fought large chains during the Depression, especially in the South and the West, which forms another phase of the story. But low-cost discounters worked around some laws through regulatory arbitrage, finding friendlier regulations in some states — and sometimes though outright rule-breaking. Ultimately, larger retailers have thrived again in the last half century, especially as antitrust law increasingly prioritized consumer prices as its leading measuring stick.
Most antitrust theorizing since the 1960s “valorizes consumer welfare, which is basically defined as price, so anything that delivers the lowest price to consumers is A-OK,” Thelen says. “We’re in this world where the large, low-cost retailers are delivering consumer welfare in the way the courts are defining it.”
That emphasis on prices, she notes, then spills over into other areas of the economy, especially wages and labor relations.
“If you prioritize prices, one of the main ways to reduce prices is to reduce labor costs,” Thelen says. “It’s no coincidence that low-cost discounters are often low-wage employers. Indeed, they often squeeze their vendors to deliver goods at ever-lower prices, and by extension they’re pressing down on wages in their supplier networks as well.”
As Thelen’s book explains, legal views supporting large chains were also common during the first U.S. wave of chain-retail growth. She writes, “large, low-cost retailers have almost always enjoyed a privileged position in the American antitrust regime.”
In the “deep equilibrium”
“Attention, Shoppers!” makes clear that this tendency toward lower prices, lower employee pay, and high consumer convenience is particularly pronounced in the U.S., where 22.6 percent of employees count as low-wage workers (making two-thirds or less of the country’s median wage). In the other countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 13.9 percent of workers fit that description. About three-quarters of U.S. retail workers are in the low-wage category.
In other OECD countries, on aggregate, manufacturers and producers make up bigger chunks of the economy and, correspondingly, often have legal frameworks more friendly to manufacturers and to labor. But in the U.S., large retailers have gained more leverage, if anything, in the last half-century, Thelen notes.
“You might think mass retailers and manufacturers would have a symbiotic relationship, but historically there has been great tension between them, especially on price,” Thelen says. “In the postwar period, the balance of power became tilted toward retailers, and away from manufacturers and labor. Retailers also had consumers on their side, and had more power over data to dictate the terms on which their vendors would supply goods to them.”
Currently, as Thelen writes in the book, the U.S. is in a “deep equilibrium” on this front, in that many low-wage workers now rely on these low-cost retailers to make ends meet — and because Americans as a whole now find it normal to have their purchases delivered at lightning speed. Things might be different, Thelen suggests, if there are changes to U.S. antitrust enforcement, or, especially, major reforms to labor law, such as allowing workers to organize for higher wages across companies, not just at individual stores. Short of that, the equilibrium is likely to hold.
“Attention, Shoppers!” has received praise from other scholars. Louis Hyman, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, has called it a “pathbreaking study that provides insight into not only the past but also the future of online retail.”
For her part, Thelen hopes readers will learn more about an economic landscape we might take for granted, even while we shop at big chains, around us and online.
“The triumph of these types of retailers was not inevitable,” Thelen says. “It was a function of politics and political choice.”
By Prof Teo Yik Ying, Vice President (Global Health), and Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUSThe Straits Times, 3 April 2025, Opinion, pB1 and pB2
The team, from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, created the network, which uses standard fibreoptic infrastructure, but relies on a variety of quantum phenomena to enable ultra-secure data transfer.
The network uses two types of quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes: ‘unhackable’ encryption keys hidden inside particles of light; and distributed entanglement: a phenomenon that causes quantum particles to be intrinsically linked.
The researchers demonstrated the capabilities of the ne
The team, from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, created the network, which uses standard fibreoptic infrastructure, but relies on a variety of quantum phenomena to enable ultra-secure data transfer.
The network uses two types of quantum key distribution (QKD) schemes: ‘unhackable’ encryption keys hidden inside particles of light; and distributed entanglement: a phenomenon that causes quantum particles to be intrinsically linked.
The researchers demonstrated the capabilities of the network via a live, quantum-secure video conference link, the transfer of encrypted medical data, and secure remote access to a distributed data centre. The data was successfully transmitted between Bristol and Cambridge – a fibre distance of over 410 kilometres.
This is the first time that a long-distance network, encompassing different quantum-secure technologies such as entanglement distribution, has been successfully demonstrated. The researchers presented their results at the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC) in San Francisco.
Quantum communications offer unparalleled security advantages compared to classical telecommunications solutions. These technologies are immune against future cyber-attacks, even with quantum computers, which – once fully developed – will have the potential to break through even the strongest cryptographic methods currently in use.
In the past few years, researchers have been working to build and use quantum communication networks. China recently set up a massive network that covers 4,600 kilometres by connecting five cities using both fibreoptics and satellites. In Madrid, researchers created a smaller network with nine connection points that use different types of QKD to securely share information.
In 2019, researchers at Cambridge and Toshiba demonstrated a metro-scale quantum network operating at record key rates of millions of key bits per second. And in 2020, researchers in Bristol built a network that could share entanglement between multiple users. Similar quantum network trials have been demonstrated in Singapore, Italy and the USA.
Despite this progress, no one has built a large, long-distance network that can handle both types of QKD, entanglement distribution, and regular data transmission all at once, until now.
The experiment demonstrates the potential of quantum networks to accommodate different quantum-secure approaches simultaneously with classical communications infrastructure. It was carried out using the UK’s Quantum Network (UKQN), established over the last decade by the same team, supported by funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and as part of the Quantum Communications Hub project.
“This is a crucial step toward building a quantum-secured future for our communities and society,” said co-author Dr Rui Wang, Lecturer for Future Optical Networks in the Smart Internet Lab's High Performance Network Research Group at the University of Bristol. “More importantly, it lays the foundation for a large-scale quantum internet—connecting quantum nodes and devices through entanglement and teleportation on a global scale.”
“This marks the culmination of more than ten years of work to design and build the UK Quantum Network,” said co-author Adrian Wonfor from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “Not only does it demonstrate the use of multiple quantum communications technologies, but also the secure key management systems required to allow seamless end-to-end encryption between us.”
“This is a significant step in delivering quantum security for the communications we all rely upon in our daily lives at a national scale,” said co-author Professor Richard Penty, also from Cambridge and who headed the Quantum Networks work package in the Quantum Communications Hub. “It would not have been possible without the close collaboration of the two teams at Cambridge and Bristol, the support of our industrial partners Toshiba, BT, Adtran and Cisco, and our funders at UKRI.”
“This is an extraordinary achievement which highlights the UK’s world-class strengths in quantum networking technology,” said Gerald Buller, Director of the IQN Hub, based at Heriot-Watt University. “This exciting demonstration is precisely the kind of work the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub will support over the coming years, developing the technologies, protocols and standards which will establish a resilient, future-proof, national quantum communications infrastructure.”
The current UKQN covers two metropolitan quantum networks around Bristol and Cambridge, which are connected via a ‘backbone’ of four long-distance optical fibre links spanning 410 kilometres with three intermediate nodes.
The network uses single-mode fibre over the EPSRC National Dark Fibre Facility (which provides dedicated fibre for research purposes), and low-loss optical switches allowing network reconfiguration of both classical and quantum signal traffic.
The team will pursue this work further through a newly funded EPSRC project, the Integrated Quantum Networks Hub, whose vision is to establish quantum networks at all distance scales, from local networking of quantum processors to national-scale entanglement networks for quantum-safe communication, distributed computing and sensing, all the way to intercontinental networking via low-earth orbit satellites.
Reference:
R. Yang et al. ‘A UK Nationwide Heterogeneous Quantum Network.’ Paper presented at the 2025 Optical Fiber Communications Conference and Exhibition (OFC): https://www.ofcconference.org/en-us/home/schedule/
Researchers have successfully demonstrated the UK’s first long-distance ultra-secure transfer of data over a quantum communications network, including the UK’s first long-distance quantum-secured video call.
The gene in question, FLCN, is linked to a condition known as Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, symptoms of which include benign skin tumours, lung cysts, and an increased risk of kidney cancer.
In a study published today in the journal Thorax, a team from the University of Cambridge examined data from UK Biobank, the 100,000 Genomes Project, and East London Genes & Health – three large genomic datasets encompassing more than 550,000 people.
They discovered that between one in 2,710 and one in 4,19
The gene in question, FLCN, is linked to a condition known as Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, symptoms of which include benign skin tumours, lung cysts, and an increased risk of kidney cancer.
In a study published today in the journal Thorax, a team from the University of Cambridge examined data from UK Biobank, the 100,000 Genomes Project, and East London Genes & Health – three large genomic datasets encompassing more than 550,000 people.
They discovered that between one in 2,710 and one in 4,190 individuals carries the particular variant of FLCN that underlies Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome. But curiously, whereas patients with a diagnosis of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome have a lifetime risk of punctured lung of 37%, in the wider cohort of carriers of the genetic mutation this was lower at 28%. Even more striking, while patients with Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome have a 32% of developing kidney cancer, in the wider cohort this was only 1%.
Punctured lung – known as pneumothorax – is caused by an air leak in the lung, resulting in painful lung deflation and shortness of breath. Not every case of punctured lung is caused by a fault in the FLCN gene, however. Around one in 200 tall, thin young men in their teens or early twenties will experience a punctured lung, and for many of them the condition will resolve itself, or doctors will remove air or fluid from their lungs while treating the individual as an outpatient; many will not even know they have the condition.
If an individual experiences a punctured lung and doesn’t fit the common characteristics – for example, if they are in their forties – doctors will look for tell-tale cysts in the lower lungs, visible on an MRI scan. If these are present, then the individual is likely to have Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome.
Professor Marciniak is a researcher at the University of Cambridge and an honorary consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He co-leads the UK’s first Familial Pneumothorax Rare Disease Collaborative Network, together with Professor Kevin Blyth at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and University of Glasgow. The aim of the Network is to optimise the care and treatment of patients with rare, inherited forms of familial pneumothorax, and to support research into this condition.
Professor Marciniak said: “If an individual has Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, then it’s very important that we’re able to diagnose it, because they and their family members may also be at risk of kidney cancer.
“The good news is that the punctured lung usually happens 10 to 20 years before the individual shows symptoms of kidney cancer, so we can keep an eye on them, screen them every year, and if we see the tumour it should still be early enough to cure it.”
Professor Marciniak says he was surprised to discover that the risk of kidney cancer was so much lower in carriers of the faulty FLCN gene who have not been diagnosed with Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome.
“Even though we’ve always thought of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome as being caused by a single faulty gene, there’s clearly something else going on,” Professor Marciniak said. “The Birt-Hogg-Dubé patients that we've been caring for and studying for the past couple of decades are not representative of when this gene is broken in the wider population. There must be something else about their genetic background that’s interacting with the gene to cause the additional symptoms.”
The finding raises the question of whether, if an individual is found to have a fault FLCN gene, they should be offered screening for kidney cancer. However, Professor Marciniak does not believe this will be necessary.
“With increasing use of genetic testing, we will undoubtedly find more people with these mutations,” he said, “but unless we see the other tell-tale signs of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, our study shows there's no reason to believe they’ll have the same elevated cancer risk.”
The research was funded by the Myrovlytis Trust, with additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
Katie Honeywood, CEO of the Myrovlytis Trust, said: "The Myrovlytis Trust are delighted to have funded such an important project. We have long believed that the prevalence of Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome is far higher than previously reported. It highlights the importance of genetic testing for anyone who has any of the main symptoms associated with BHD including a collapsed lung. And even more so the importance of the medical world being aware of this condition for anyone who presents at an emergency department or clinic with these symptoms. We look forward to seeing the impact this projects outcome has on the Birt-Hogg-Dubé and wider community."
As many as one in 3,000 people could be carrying a faulty gene that significantly increases their risk of a punctured lung, according to new estimates from Cambridge researchers. Previous estimates had put this risk closer to one in 200,000 people.
If an individual has Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome, then it’s very important that we’re able to diagnose it, because they and their family members may also be at risk of kidney cancer
Think of your most prized belongings. In an increasingly virtual world, wouldn’t it be great to save a copy of that precious item and all the memories it holds?In mixed-reality settings, you can create a digital twin of a physical item, such as an old doll. But it’s hard to replicate interactive elements, like the way it moves or the sounds it makes — the sorts of unique interactive features that made the toy distinct in the first place.Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Inte
Think of your most prized belongings. In an increasingly virtual world, wouldn’t it be great to save a copy of that precious item and all the memories it holds?
In mixed-reality settings, you can create a digital twin of a physical item, such as an old doll. But it’s hard to replicate interactive elements, like the way it moves or the sounds it makes — the sorts of unique interactive features that made the toy distinct in the first place.
Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) sought to change that, and they have a potential solution. Their “InteRecon” program enables users to recapture real-world objects in a mobile app, and then animate them in mixed-reality environments.
This prototype could recreate the interaction functions in the physical world, such as the head motions of your favorite bobblehead, or playing a classic video on a digital version of your vintage TV. It creates more lifelike and personal digital surroundings while preserving a memory.
InteRecon’s ability to reconstruct the interactive experience of different items could make it a useful tool for teachers explaining important concepts, like demonstrating how gravity pulls an object down. It could also add a new visual component to museum exhibits, such as animating a painting or bringing a historical mannequin to life (without the scares of characters from “Night at the Museum”). Eventually, InteRecon may be able to teach a doctor’s apprentice organ surgery or a cosmetic procedure by visualizing each motion needed to complete the task.
The exciting potential of InteRecon comes from its ability to add motions or interactive functions to many different objects, according to CSAIL visiting researcher Zisu Li, lead author of a paper introducing the tool.
“While taking a picture or video is a great way to preserve a memory, those digital copies are static,” says Li, who is also a PhD student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “We found that users wanted to reconstruct personal items while preserving their interactivity to enrich their memories. With the power of mixed reality, InteRecon can make these memories live longer in virtual settings as interactive digital items.”
Li and her colleagues will present InteRecon at the 2025 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Making a virtual world more realistic
To make digital interactivity possible, the team first developed an iPhone app. Using your camera, you scan the item all the way around three times to ensure it’s fully captured. The 3D model can then be imported into the InteRecon mixed reality interface, where you can mark (“segment”) individual areas to select which parts of the model will be interactive (like a doll’s arms, head, torso, and legs). Alternatively, you can use the function provided by InteRecon for automatic segmentation.
The InteRecon interface can be accessed via the mixed reality headset (such as Hololens 2 and Quest). It allows you to choose a programmable motion for the part of the item you want to animate after your model is segmented.
Movement options are presented as motion demonstrations, allowing you to play around with them before deciding on one — say, a flopping motion that emulates how a bunny doll’s ears move. You can even pinch a specific part and explore different ways to animate it, like sliding, dangling, and pendulum-like turns.
Your old iPod, digitized
The team showed that InteRecon can also recapture the interface of physical electronic devices, like a vintage TV. After making a digital copy of the item, you can customize the 3D model with different interfaces.
Users can play with example widgets from different interfaces before choosing a motion: a screen (either a TV display or camera’s viewfinder), a rotating knob (for, say, adjusting the volume), an “on/off”-style button, and a slider (for changing settings on something like a DJ booth).
Li and colleagues presented an application that recreates the interactivity of a vintage TV by incorporating virtual widgets such as an “on/off” button, a screen, and a channel switch on a TV model, along with embedding old videos into it. This makes the TV model come to life. You could also upload MP3 files and add a “play button” to a 3D model of an iPod to listen to your favorite songs in mixed reality.
The researchers believe InteRecon opens up intriguing new avenues in designing lifelike virtual environments. A user study confirmed that people from different fields share this enthusiasm, viewing it as easy to learn and diverse in its ability to express the richness of users’ memories.
“One thing I really appreciate is that the items that users remember are imperfect,” says Faraz Faruqi SM ’22, another author on the paper who is also a CSAIL affiliate and MIT PhD student in electrical engineering and computer science. “InteRecon brings those imperfections into mixed reality, accurately recreating what made a personal item like a teddy bear missing a few buttons so special.”
In a related study, users imagined how this technology could be applied to professional scenarios, from teaching medical students how to perform surgeries to helping travelers and researchers log their trips, and even assisting fashion designers in experimenting with materials.
Before InteRecon is used in more advanced settings, though, the team would like to upgrade their physical simulation engine to something more precise. This would enable applications such as helping a doctor’s apprentice to learn the pinpoint accuracy needed to do certain surgical maneuvers.
Li and Faruqi may also incorporate large language models and generative models that can recreate lost personal items into 3D models via language descriptions, as well as explain the interface’s features.
As for the researchers’ next steps, Li is working toward a more automatic and powerful pipeline that can make interactivity-preserved digital twins of larger physical environments in mixed reality for end users, such as a virtual office space. Faruqi is looking to build an approach that can physically recreate lost items via 3D printers.
“InteRecon represents an exciting new frontier in the field of mixed reality, going beyond mere visual replication to capture the unique interactivity of physical objects,” says Hanwang Zhang, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University's College of Computing and Data Science, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This technology has the potential to revolutionize education, health care, and cultural exhibitions by bringing a new level of immersion and personal connection to virtual environments.”
Li and Faruqi wrote the paper with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) master’s student Jiawei Li, PhD student Shumeng Zhang, Associate Professor Xiaojuan Ma, and assistant professors Mingming Fan and Chen Liang from HKUST; ETH Zurich PhD student Zeyu Xiong; and Stefanie Mueller, the TIBCO Career Development Associate Professor in the MIT departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, and leader of the HCI Engineering Group. Their work was supported by the APEX Lab of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) in collaboration with the HCI Engineering Group.
InteRecon can recreate the interaction functions in the physical world, such as the head motions of your favorite bobblehead, the music on your old iPod, and the way your doll moves.
Watching and listening to a pianist’s performance is an immersive and enjoyable experience. The pianist and the instrument, with a blend of skill, training, and presence, create a series of memorable moments for themselves and the audience. But is there a way to improve the performance and our understanding of how the performer and their instrument work together to create this magic, while also minimizing performance-related injuries?Mi-Eun Kim, director of keyboard studies in MIT’s Music and Th
Watching and listening to a pianist’s performance is an immersive and enjoyable experience. The pianist and the instrument, with a blend of skill, training, and presence, create a series of memorable moments for themselves and the audience. But is there a way to improve the performance and our understanding of how the performer and their instrument work together to create this magic, while also minimizing performance-related injuries?
Mi-Eun Kim, director of keyboard studies in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Section, and Praneeth Namburi PhD ’16, a research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, are investigating how the body works when pianists play. Their joint project, The Biomechanics of Assimilating a New Piano Skill, aims to develop mechanistic insights that could transform how we understand and teach piano technique, reduce performance-related injuries, and bridge the gap between artistic expression and biomechanical efficiency.
Their project is among those recently selected for a SHASS+ Connectivity Fund grant through the MIT Human Insight Collaborative.
“The project emerged from a convergence of interests and personal experiences,” Namburi says. “Mi-Eun witnessed widespread injuries among fellow pianists and saw how these injuries could derail careers.”
Kim is a renowned pianist who has performed on stages throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Asia. She earned the Liszt-Garrison Competition’s Liszt Award and the Corpus Christi solo prize, among other honors. She teaches piano and chamber music through MIT Music’s Emerson/Harris Program and chamber music through MIT’s Chamber Music Society. She earned advanced degrees from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor of arts degree in history from Columbia University.
Namburi’s work focuses on the biomechanics of efficient, expressive, and coordinated movement. He draws inspiration from artists and athletes in specialized movement disciplines, such as dancing and fencing, to investigate skilled movement. He earned a PhD in experimental neuroscience from MIT and a bachelor of engineering degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
Pursuing the project
Kim and Namburi arrived at their project by taking different roads into the arts. While Kim was completing her studies at the University of Michigan, Namburi was taking dance lessons as a hobby in Boston. He learned that both expressive and sustainable movements might share a common denominator. “A key insight was that elastic tissues play a crucial role in coordinated, expressive, and sustainable movements in dance — a principle that could extend beyond dancing,” he notes.
“We recognized that studying elastic tissues could shed light on reducing injury risk, as well as understanding musical expression and embodiment in the context of piano playing,” Kim says.
Kim and Namburi began collaborating on what would become their project in October 2023, though the groundwork was in place months before. “A visiting student working with me on a research project studying pianists in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab reached out to Mi-Eun in summer 2023,” Namburi recalls. A shared Instagram video showing their setup with motion capture sensors and a pianist playing Chopin on a digital keyboard sparked Kim’s interest. The Immersion Lab is an open-access, shared facility for MIT and beyond dedicated to visualizing, understanding, and interacting with large, multidimensional data.
“I couldn't make sense of all the sensors, but immediately noticed they were using a digital keyboard,” she says.
Kim wanted to elevate these studies’ quality by pairing the musicians with the proper equipment and instrument. While the digital pianos they’d previously used are portable and provide musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) data, they don’t offer the same experience as a real piano. “Pianists dream of playing on an ideal instrument — a 9-foot concert grand with perfectly regulated 24-inch keys that responds to every musical intention without resistance,” Kim says.
The researchers brought both Steinway Spirio D|r and Yamaha DCFX grand pianos to the Immersion Lab and observed that the instruments player piano technology could both capture pianists’ hammer strike velocities and reproduce them to play back the performance. Monitoring Kim’s performance on the concert grand piano, for example, both noted marked differences in her playing style.
“Despite all the sensors, lighting, and observers, playing felt so natural that I forgot I was in a lab,” she says. “I could focus purely on the music, without worrying about adapting to a smaller keyboard or digital sound.”
This setup allowed them to observe pianists’ natural movements, which was exactly what Kim wanted to study.
During Independent Activities Period 2025, Kim and Namburi hosted a new course, Biomechanics of Piano Playing, in the Immersion Lab. Students and faculty from MIT, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto, and the University of Hartford took part. Participants learned how to use motion capture, accelerometers, and ultrasound imaging to visualize signals from the body during piano playing.
Observations and outcomes
If the efficiency and perceived fluency of an expert pianist’s movements comes from harnessing the body’s inherent elastic mechanisms, Kim and Namburi believe, it’s possible to redesign how piano playing is taught. Each wants to reduce occurrences of playing-related injuries and improve how musicians learn their craft.
“I want us to bridge the gap between artistic expression and biomechanical efficiency,” Namburi says.
Through their exploratory sessions at the Immersion Lab, Kim and Namburi found common ground, gathering information about their observations of and experiences in piano and dance through sensor technology, including ultrasound.
Beyond these, Kim saw potential for transforming piano pedagogy. “Traditional teaching relies heavily on subjective descriptions and metaphors passed down through generations,” she says. “While valuable, these approaches could be enhanced with objective, scientific understanding of the physical mechanisms behind skilled piano performance — evidence-driven piano pedagogy, if you will.”
Professor Jose Ramos Santana, chair of keyboard at the University of Hartford Hartt School of Music, performs an excerpt from Enrique Granados Goyescas' "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor," while wearing motion capture, ultrasound, and accelerometers.
Watching and listening to a pianist’s performance is an immersive and enjoyable experience. The pianist and the instrument, with a blend of skill, training, and presence, create a series of memorable moments for themselves and the audience. But is there a way to improve the performance and our understanding of how the performer and their instrument work together to create this magic, while also minimizing performance-related injuries?Mi-Eun Kim, director of keyboard studies in MIT’s Music and Th
Watching and listening to a pianist’s performance is an immersive and enjoyable experience. The pianist and the instrument, with a blend of skill, training, and presence, create a series of memorable moments for themselves and the audience. But is there a way to improve the performance and our understanding of how the performer and their instrument work together to create this magic, while also minimizing performance-related injuries?
Mi-Eun Kim, director of keyboard studies in MIT’s Music and Theater Arts Section, and Praneeth Namburi PhD ’16, a research scientist in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, are investigating how the body works when pianists play. Their joint project, The Biomechanics of Assimilating a New Piano Skill, aims to develop mechanistic insights that could transform how we understand and teach piano technique, reduce performance-related injuries, and bridge the gap between artistic expression and biomechanical efficiency.
Their project is among those recently selected for a SHASS+ Connectivity Fund grant through the MIT Human Insight Collaborative.
“The project emerged from a convergence of interests and personal experiences,” Namburi says. “Mi-Eun witnessed widespread injuries among fellow pianists and saw how these injuries could derail careers.”
Kim is a renowned pianist who has performed on stages throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Asia. She earned the Liszt-Garrison Competition’s Liszt Award and the Corpus Christi solo prize, among other honors. She teaches piano and chamber music through MIT Music’s Emerson/Harris Program and chamber music through MIT’s Chamber Music Society. She earned advanced degrees from the University of Michigan and holds a bachelor of arts degree in history from Columbia University.
Namburi’s work focuses on the biomechanics of efficient, expressive, and coordinated movement. He draws inspiration from artists and athletes in specialized movement disciplines, such as dancing and fencing, to investigate skilled movement. He earned a PhD in experimental neuroscience from MIT and a bachelor of engineering degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
Pursuing the project
Kim and Namburi arrived at their project by taking different roads into the arts. While Kim was completing her studies at the University of Michigan, Namburi was taking dance lessons as a hobby in Boston. He learned that both expressive and sustainable movements might share a common denominator. “A key insight was that elastic tissues play a crucial role in coordinated, expressive, and sustainable movements in dance — a principle that could extend beyond dancing,” he notes.
“We recognized that studying elastic tissues could shed light on reducing injury risk, as well as understanding musical expression and embodiment in the context of piano playing,” Kim says.
Kim and Namburi began collaborating on what would become their project in October 2023, though the groundwork was in place months before. “A visiting student working with me on a research project studying pianists in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab reached out to Mi-Eun in summer 2023,” Namburi recalls. A shared Instagram video showing their setup with motion capture sensors and a pianist playing Chopin on a digital keyboard sparked Kim’s interest. The Immersion Lab is an open-access, shared facility for MIT and beyond dedicated to visualizing, understanding, and interacting with large, multidimensional data.
“I couldn't make sense of all the sensors, but immediately noticed they were using a digital keyboard,” she says.
Kim wanted to elevate these studies’ quality by pairing the musicians with the proper equipment and instrument. While the digital pianos they’d previously used are portable and provide musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) data, they don’t offer the same experience as a real piano. “Pianists dream of playing on an ideal instrument — a 9-foot concert grand with perfectly regulated 24-inch keys that responds to every musical intention without resistance,” Kim says.
The researchers brought both Steinway Spirio D|r and Yamaha DCFX grand pianos to the Immersion Lab and observed that the instruments player piano technology could both capture pianists’ hammer strike velocities and reproduce them to play back the performance. Monitoring Kim’s performance on the concert grand piano, for example, both noted marked differences in her playing style.
“Despite all the sensors, lighting, and observers, playing felt so natural that I forgot I was in a lab,” she says. “I could focus purely on the music, without worrying about adapting to a smaller keyboard or digital sound.”
This setup allowed them to observe pianists’ natural movements, which was exactly what Kim wanted to study.
During Independent Activities Period 2025, Kim and Namburi hosted a new course, Biomechanics of Piano Playing, in the Immersion Lab. Students and faculty from MIT, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of Toronto, and the University of Hartford took part. Participants learned how to use motion capture, accelerometers, and ultrasound imaging to visualize signals from the body during piano playing.
Observations and outcomes
If the efficiency and perceived fluency of an expert pianist’s movements comes from harnessing the body’s inherent elastic mechanisms, Kim and Namburi believe, it’s possible to redesign how piano playing is taught. Each wants to reduce occurrences of playing-related injuries and improve how musicians learn their craft.
“I want us to bridge the gap between artistic expression and biomechanical efficiency,” Namburi says.
Through their exploratory sessions at the Immersion Lab, Kim and Namburi found common ground, gathering information about their observations of and experiences in piano and dance through sensor technology, including ultrasound.
Beyond these, Kim saw potential for transforming piano pedagogy. “Traditional teaching relies heavily on subjective descriptions and metaphors passed down through generations,” she says. “While valuable, these approaches could be enhanced with objective, scientific understanding of the physical mechanisms behind skilled piano performance — evidence-driven piano pedagogy, if you will.”
Professor Jose Ramos Santana, chair of keyboard at the University of Hartford Hartt School of Music, performs an excerpt from Enrique Granados Goyescas' "Quejas, o la Maja y el Ruiseñor," while wearing motion capture, ultrasound, and accelerometers.
Health
How to manage stress during an apocalypse
Psychology professor Athena Aktipis (right) brought a lighter note to her lecture, “A Field Guide to the Apocalypse,” when she was joined by guitarist Forest Thurman. Audience members raise their hands in response to a survey about bluegrass music. Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 7, 2025
5 min read
Psychology professor Athena Aktipis (right) brought a lighter note to her lecture, “A Field Guide to the Apocalypse,” when she was joined by guitarist Forest Thurman. Audience members raise their hands in response to a survey about bluegrass music.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
5 min read
Psychologist says scrutinizing risk factors, embracing community, adventure are key in age of angst over climate, AI, pandemics
Cooperation, community, and a sense of adventure may be the keys to our survival, even in these violently divided times.
We seem to be living in an extraordinarily tumultuous moment of global outbreaks of deadly viruses, a dangerously warming planet, and coming economic and social displacement of technologies, including AI. But, Akiptis said, crises are nothing new to the human race. In fact, we are constantly managing risk. The dilemma is that often the solution isn’t clear-cut.
Akiptis presented the hypothetical case of the “goosile.” A suspicious blob appears on the radar of a mission control professional assessing attack threats. It could be a missile, which should be shot down. Or it could be a harmless goose (hence the mash-up neologism). What do you do?
“The problem is that the world is filled with ambiguity,” explained Aktipis. “Either you correctly identify more missiles but have more goose false alarms, or you correctly reject more geese, but miss some missiles.”
“The bottom line in managing our stress in these apocalyptic times … is gathering information so you can figure out what you actually do and don’t need to be stressed about,” said Aktipis.
In other words, there may be no “right” answer, and that means more stress.
“The bottom line in managing our stress in these apocalyptic times … is gathering information so you can figure out what you actually do and don’t need to be stressed about,” said Aktipis, co-director of the Human Generosity Project and the Cooperation Science Network.
Taking principles from psychology and evolutionary biology, Aktipis has created an accessible and actionable framework. The first step is to look “at a potential threat from multiple perspectives.” Then, “attend to all of your senses when assessing a threat.” Third, reach outside yourself: “Find as many dimensions of information as you can.” That leads to her next suggested action: “Talk to people who have different knowledge than you do.” And finally, “Know when to stop gathering information.” You may need to move on — or take action. “Don’t get stuck in a risk-assessment loop,” she said.
Instead, she stressed, we must learn to live with risk.
“Thanks to the recent pandemic, many of us are likely accustomed to being miserable a considerable amount of time, even when we’re not facing the red-hot heat of an active apocalypse,” said Aktipis. “We put up with having a life that is often painful, boring, or some combination of the two.”
Changing this mindset can actually make us better prepared, letting us build up “apocalyptic sustenance.”
It may help to change priorities.
“I’m not saying that we shouldn’t work hard, just that we should work hard on things that we’re actively deciding to do because they are important. And ideally also what would be kind of fun,” she continued. “We should reawaken that childlike part of us that is curious and likes amusement and then work hard on something that feeds that inner child with something delightfully playful.”
“A Field Guide to the Apocalypse” contains multiple outlines and suggestions for how to make this possible. One example is CHESS, an acronym for incorporating “Curiosity, Humor, Entertaining, Storytelling, and Socializing” into our lives.
Emphasizing the last S, Aktipis said: “The connections that we’ve forged through these social events can form the basis of mutual aid relationships that can come in handy during real catastrophes.”
Apocalypses come in many forms. Drawing on the original Greek definition, an apocalypse was “revelation of the underlying risk in the world and in our lives,” she said: “Rather than thinking of it as the end of the world, it’s an opportunity for us to learn and understand what the world really is like, and that can help us be better prepared and adapt as things are changing.”
Another key is not seeing survival or success as a zero-sum game. That thinking leads to the belief that “we all have to fight over the pie.” Instead, she suggested, “We can work together to make a bigger pie and share it.”
Utilizing game and cooperation theories, she laid out the work of the transdisciplinary Human Generosity Project, beginning with the Maasai people in Kenya, who have a traditional system called Osotua.
Literally translating to “invisible umbilical cord” (according to the Osotua Foundation),this social system assumes members of a group will give when asked, as long as long as they can help “without going below what they themselves need,” with no expectation of return, Aktipis explained.
“The only expectation is that they would be recipients of the same kind of help if they needed it in the future.”
This, she said, is similar to many of our own friendship and family bonds. Indeed, research in Fiji, Mongolia, and ranchers in the Southwest confirmed the universality of such “social insurance” bonds.
“Across all of these societies, people are managing risk through their social interactions, often through these need-based transfers.
“There is a lot of potential to change the way we handle risk collectively,” said Aktipis.
To drive home her points — and, perhaps, to build a little community among the crowd in Science Center A — she invited bluegrass guitarist Forest Thurman to join her as she brought out her ukelele to lead the audience in simple, tuneful singalongs with lines like “Life ain’t a prison/it’s a pie.”
Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel.Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Health
Team hits milestone toward prion disease treatment. For them, it’s personal.
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
April 7, 2025
5 min read
Patient-scientist, husband among researchers who developed promising gene-editing therapy for rare, fatal condition
New research provides hope that prion disease — a
Team hits milestone toward prion disease treatment. For them, it’s personal.
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Patient-scientist, husband among researchers who developed promising gene-editing therapy for rare, fatal condition
New research provides hope that prion disease — a handful of rare, invariably fatal disorders caused by misfolded proteins in the brain — may, in the not-too-distant future, have a treatment if not a cure.
The work, published early this year in the journal Nature Medicine, showed that altering a single base in the gene that produces the killer proteins can reduce by half the amount of that protein in the brains of laboratory mice, a step that extended their lifespans 52 percent.
Authors of the work, at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, caution that several potentially lengthy steps remain before human trials of the technique can be undertaken. Still, they agreed that the results indicate the pathway that they embarked upon nine years ago toward effective treatment in humans appears promising.
“I think it’s a milestone for sure,” said David Liu, senior author of the paper, in whose lab the base editing technology was developed. “One has to be careful to recognize that the path to an actual clinical trial has many such milestones that have to be traversed.”
Prion disease includes several conditions that lead to brain damage and dementia, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease, and fatal familial insomnia. About 15 percent of cases are due to an inherited mutation in the prion protein gene, while 85 percent are “sporadic,” occurring when these proteins spontaneously fold into abnormal, toxic shapes.
‘Personal’ mission for scientist who is also a patient
While laboratory work is often remote from the patients it is intended to help, these experiments are part of a personal mission for several of the papers’ authors. That’s because one of them, HMS Assistant Professor of Neurology Sonia Vallabh, has tested positive for an inherited form of prion disease called fatal familial insomnia.
In late 2010, Vallabh’s mother died of a mysterious, degenerative condition that subsequent tests would confirm as fatal familial insomnia. Not long after, Vallabh herself tested positive for the disease-causing mutation. That prompted Vallabh, who had graduated from Harvard Law School, and her husband, Eric Minikel, who holds a planning degree from MIT, to retrain for careers centered on understanding and developing a treatment for prion disease. Today, the pair run their own lab at the Broad, employing 14 researchers. In a relatively short time, Liu said, they have become experts on the therapeutically relevant aspects of the condition.
“It’s an incredible privilege to be able to work with them,” said Liu, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a core institute member at the Broad. “Their personal connection to the disease provides extraordinary motivation for everybody to try to make as much progress as we can — carefully, but as efficiently as possible.”
David Liu.
The encouraging results build on discoveries in Liu’s lab, which pioneered the single base editing technique used in the experiments. That technique has been used in 13 clinical trials, Liu said, and has benefited patients suffering from hypercholesterolemia, sickle cell disease, T-cell leukemia, and beta thalassemia.
“David took us seriously long before anyone had much reason to, so we’ve had a collaboration with him for a good while,” said Minikel, who is also assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. “It’s been a perfect collaboration in the sense that Sonia and I have always felt like we care a lot about this disease, but we’re not technology development people. We’ll say, ‘Here’s the models and assays and the tools needed to develop a drug for this disease,’ but we’re probably not the ones who are going to make the drug.”
In the current work, researchers used a mouse model of human prion disease, which increases the chance the work will successfully translate to humans. The research — funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Broad, the Prion Alliance, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute — involved inserting a genetic base editor developed in Liu’s lab into adeno-associated virus, which acts as a vector that homes in on cells and inserts its DNA cargo into their genomes. That rewrites the cellular instructions for producing the protein, in this case halting production.
“Having a friend, a collaborator, who could benefit from this treatment really does a lot on the personal motivation side.”
Meirui An
Meirui An, a graduate student in Liu’s lab and one of the paper’s first authors, said that sometimes the vector itself can cause illness, so to improve safety researchers tweaked that part of the process, ultimately seeing a 63 percent reduction in prion protein production despite using a significantly lower dose of the vector virus.
The prion’s dangerous, infectious nature may make this research among the last conducted with human prion protein, Liu said. Such research was restricted after an accidental exposure in a French lab led to a researchers’ death from prion disease.
Human trials of any therapy that might emerge from the work remain several years away, Liu said. Whatever the needed intervening steps turn out to be, researchers said they will likely include refinement of the base editor — which is so large that it has to be transported into cells in two separate viral capsules — improved targeting to reduce its integration into the cells of other tissue types, and improved efficiency in reducing production of prion protein.
An and others praised the collaborative process between the labs involved, which included that of the Broad’s Benjamin Deverman, who specializes in vector engineering.
“Our exchanges have been really frequent and to me, personally, it’s extremely inspiring to work with patient-scientists,” An said. “I don’t need to find any external source of motivation to work on this project because just having a friend, a collaborator, who could benefit from this treatment really does a lot on the personal motivation side.”
Jeannie T. Lee.Courtesy of Harvard Medical School
Science & Tech
Decades later, a chromosomal breakthrough
Jell-O-like substance could be key to treating Fragile X and Rett syndromes
Saima Sidik
Harvard Correspondent
April 7, 2025
4 min read
The X chromosome creates a challenge for human cells. Unlike most chromosomes, which are present in duplicate regardless of a person’s sex, femal
Jell-O-like substance could be key to treating Fragile X and Rett syndromes
Saima Sidik
Harvard Correspondent
4 min read
The X chromosome creates a challenge for human cells. Unlike most chromosomes, which are present in duplicate regardless of a person’s sex, females have two copies of X while males have only one. Females don’t need twice as many of the genes encoded on the X chromosome as males, however, so they must inactivate one of their two copies.
How this inactivation occurs has been a long-standing question in cell biology — one Jeannie Lee’s lab at Mass General has been central to answering. In a study published last month, Lee and her colleagues describe how cells orchestrate this chromosomal silencing. The findings could lead to relief for the many thousands of people living with diseases caused by mutations on the X chromosome.
Inactivation depends on a gelatinous substance that coats all chromosomes, creating discrete bubbles that work as separators. “It’s like Jell-O. And if chromosomes weren’t surrounded by this Jell-O, they’d get tangled up like spaghetti,” says Lee, who is vice chair of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.
At the X chromosome, things get a bit more complicated. A gene on this chromosome instructs cells to make an RNA molecule called Xist (pronounced “exist”) that changes the material properties of the “Jell-O” around the X chromosome. When Xist first comes into contact with the Jell-O, the two engage in a tug-of-war, each pulling on the other. But Xist is no match for the Jell-O, and so it gets engulfed. Once inside, Xist changes the biophysical properties of the Jell-O, making it more flexible and closer to a liquid.
Other molecules important for X-chromosome inactivation also infiltrate the Jell-O. Together with Xist, these molecules work their way into nooks and crannies along the chromosome that would not be so accessible if the Jell-O were stiffer and thicker. By coating the X chromosome, they render it inactive. “It’s that simple!” Lee says.
But as simple as it sounds, figuring out how X-inactivation works has taken decades. At the end of this long journey lies a tantalizing possibility: Freeing inactivated X chromosomes could cure certain genetic disorders. That’s because mutations are often present on only one of two X chromosomes, but the healthy version of the gene is bound up in the inactivated chromosome, making it unavailable for cells to use.
The Lee lab has developed a number of approaches to unsilence X-linked genes in isolated cells, making them potential treatments for two such diseases: the intellectual disability Fragile X Syndrome and the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett Syndrome. “We’ll be further optimizing the approaches and doing safety studies over the next couple of years, and then we hope to move these compounds into clinical trials,” Lee says.
These treatments could also benefit males, even though their cells don’t use X-inactivation. A similar process silences individual genes on the X chromosome if they carry certain mutations, such as a mutation that causes Fragile X Syndrome.
Mysteries remain, however. For example, freeing inactivated X chromosomes seems to restore the function of mutated genes without having much impact on healthy genes carried by the chromosome. That’s encouraging because it suggests that this strategy can cure diseases with minimal side effects, but it’s not clear why other X chromosome genes remain largely unaffected. Lee thinks cells may have a limited capacity to use each gene, and that capacity is already maxed out by a single copy of a healthy gene. With mutated genes, on the other hand, the cell still has the capacity to use the healthy version when it becomes available.
Today, the clinical potential of Lee’s work is obvious, but that hasn’t always been the case. “We were supported by the National Institutes of Health for 25 years to answer a really basic question: How is the X-chromosome inactivated? And it’s only recently that we had this ‘Aha’ moment and realized we could get to a therapeutic,” she says.
The research described in this story received funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Campus & Community
Richard P. Lifton to join Harvard Corporation
Scientist to start with governing board on July 1, succeeding Shirley Tilghman
April 7, 2025
5 min read
Richard P. Lifton, a prominent leader in biomedical research and higher education, will join the Harvard Corporation this summer, the University announced Monday. A scientist and physician who is a pioneer in using genetics and genom
Scientist to start with governing board on July 1, succeeding Shirley Tilghman
5 min read
Richard P. Lifton, a prominent leader in biomedical research and higher education, will join the Harvard Corporation this summer, the University announced Monday. A scientist and physician who is a pioneer in using genetics and genomics in understanding human disease, Lifton has served as the 11th president of The Rockefeller University since 2016 and also leads that institution’s Laboratory of Human Genetics and Genomics.
“Rick is known to colleagues as a person of deep integrity, extraordinary intellectual curiosity and creativity, exceptional incisiveness, and sound judgment,” said President Alan M. Garber and Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker in a message to the Harvard community. “He has dedicated his life’s work to the advancement of higher education and the progress and promise of science, embracing and embodying the pursuit of academic excellence. We look forward to welcoming Rick Lifton to the Corporation this summer, as we navigate these consequential and challenging times for our own university and others.”
“Harvard is a national treasure for its leadership in education, scholarship, and research. Its generation of new knowledge advances the betterment of humanity with global impact.”
Richard P. Lifton
Under Lifton’s leadership, Rockefeller has strengthened its position as one of the world’s preeminent research institutions, including by fostering support for new programs in basic, translational, and clinical research, constructing a new campus in Manhattan, and collaborating in the creation of Chan Zuckerberg Biohub New York. Lifton is also a champion for Rockefeller’s multidisciplinary faculty, whose members have received two Nobel Prizes, three Lasker Awards, and two Breakthrough Prizes in life sciences during his tenure.
“Harvard is a national treasure for its leadership in education, scholarship, and research. Its generation of new knowledge advances the betterment of humanity with global impact,” Lifton said. “I’m honored to join President Garber and the other distinguished members of the Corporation, and I look forward to working with them and other colleagues to ensure that Harvard sustains and enhances its exceptional contributions to society.”
Lifton’s pathbreaking research has centered around genetic material that underlies common problems in human health, including cardiovascular disease, neoplasia, kidney disease, and osteoporosis. He is especially known for his discovery of mutations in 20 genes that drive blood pressure to high or low extremes by altering renal salt reabsorption, work that has informed public health efforts and therapeutic strategies worldwide.
Lifton joined the faculty of Yale University in 1993. Over nearly a quarter-century, he served as chair of the Department of Genetics at Yale Medical School, a Howard Hughes Medical Institution Investigator, and as director of two research centers. He rose to become a Sterling Professor, Yale’s highest academic rank, and was a member of Yale’s presidential search committee.
Before being recruited to Yale, Lifton served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School from 1986 to 1993. He did his medical residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he became chief medical resident. A summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, he earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University.
Across his career, Lifton has served on many boards, committees, and councils related to scientific discovery and science policy, including scientific advisory boards for the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital. His many roles have included chairing the White House’s Precision Medicine Initiative, co-chairing the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing, and serving as a member of both the governing council of the National Academies and the advisory committee for the director of the National Institutes of Health. He has served on fiduciary boards and scientific advisory boards for various biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and he was a member of the presidential search committee for the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine).
“Richard Lifton is a thoughtful and highly respected leader with a profound commitment to advancing education, science, and human health,” said Vivian Hunt, president of the Board of Overseers. “His expertise in guiding a renowned research university and his extensive engagement as an admired leader and sought-after adviser within the broader biomedical field will strengthen Harvard’s governing boards. I know my colleagues are excited to work with him.”
In line with Harvard’s charter, Lifton was elected by the Corporation with the consent of the Board of Overseers. He will become a fellow of Harvard College on July 1, filling the vacancy created by the planned departure of Shirley Tilghman, an eminent life scientist and president emerita of Princeton University.
Garber and Pritzker thanked Tilghman for “having brought to the Corporation an extraordinary combination of university leadership experience, academic stature and scientific accomplishment, engagement with a wide array of other institutions, and constant devotion to higher education’s highest ideals.” They expressed their profound gratitude to Tilghman for “continuing exemplary service” that “sets a standard for us all.”
Known formally as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Harvard Corporation is the oldest corporation in the Western Hemisphere. Chartered in 1650, the Corporation exercises fiduciary responsibility with regard to the University’s academic, financial, and physical resources and overall well-being. With 13 members, the Corporation is one of Harvard’s two governing boards. Members of Harvard’s other governing board, the Board of Overseers, are elected by holders of Harvard degrees.
MIT Health Student Health Plan Research and Resolution Specialist Juanita Battle passed away on Jan. 14. She was 70.Battle was best known throughout the MIT community as one of the friendly faces and voices that students encountered whenever they had a question about their health insurance. For more than 17 years, Juanita was there to help students navigate the complexities of the U.S. health-care system.“Juanita really cared about the students,” remembers Affiliate Health Plan Representative La
MIT Health Student Health Plan Research and Resolution Specialist Juanita Battle passed away on Jan. 14. She was 70.
Battle was best known throughout the MIT community as one of the friendly faces and voices that students encountered whenever they had a question about their health insurance. For more than 17 years, Juanita was there to help students navigate the complexities of the U.S. health-care system.
“Juanita really cared about the students,” remembers Affiliate Health Plan Representative Lawanda Santiago. Whenever Battle was on a call with a student, you knew that call could take 20 minutes. “She would always go above and beyond.”
Sheila Sanchez, lead student health plan research and resolution specialist, agrees. “There was nothing she wouldn’t do to make sure that the student had a good experience when it came to some insurance question. She made sure that the student was always heard, always happy.”
“At the end of any conversation, she knew the student’s name, where they were from, what their mother’s name was, and even their favorite color,” says Sanchez.
“Juanita was the outward face of the MIT Student Health Insurance Plan,” adds David Tytell, MIT Health’s director of marketing and communications. “Whenever there was a call for volunteers to help promote student insurance, like Campus Preview Weekend, Juanita was always the first to raise her hand.” Her detailed, clear explanations of difficult insurance concepts were featured in multiple MIT Health videos.
“She also had a ‘crush’ on Tim the Beaver,” says Tytell. “She would instantly become a kid again whenever Tim entered the room, and she never missed an opportunity to take a selfie with him.”
Battle’s friends also recall her passion for dining out. “Juanita loved food! When we would go out to eat, Juanita would have the menu memorized before we even got there,” says Sanchez. "She had already done her research, read Yelp reviews, looked at pictures, figured out her top three favorite things, and even had recommendations for everybody else!”
“She especially loved tiramisu,” says Santiago.
Battle’s laugh was infectious. She was known for always looking at the bright side of things and had the uncanny ability to make a joke out of just about anything. Halloween was her favorite holiday, and she would always dress up and pose for pictures. “One of my last encounters with Juanita was last Halloween,” says Tytell. “I came back from a meeting to find a trick-or-treat bag filled with candy and a note from Juanita on my desk.”
“She didn’t let anything affect her attitude,” says Sanchez. “Everything about her was just happy.”
Immune molecules called cytokines play important roles in the body’s defense against infection, helping to control inflammation and coordinating the responses of other immune cells. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of these molecules also influence the brain, leading to behavioral changes during illness.Two new studies from MIT and Harvard Medical School, focused on a cytokine called IL-17, now add to that evidence. The researchers found that IL-17 acts on two distinct brain regions
Immune molecules called cytokines play important roles in the body’s defense against infection, helping to control inflammation and coordinating the responses of other immune cells. A growing body of evidence suggests that some of these molecules also influence the brain, leading to behavioral changes during illness.
Two new studies from MIT and Harvard Medical School, focused on a cytokine called IL-17, now add to that evidence. The researchers found that IL-17 acts on two distinct brain regions — the amygdala and the somatosensory cortex — to exert two divergent effects. In the amygdala, IL-17 can elicit feelings of anxiety, while in the cortex it promotes sociable behavior.
These findings suggest that the immune and nervous systems are tightly interconnected, says Gloria Choi, an associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and one of the senior authors of the studies.
“If you’re sick, there’s so many more things that are happening to your internal states, your mood, and your behavioral states, and that’s not simply you being fatigued physically. It has something to do with the brain,” she says.
Jun Huh, an associate professor of immunology at Harvard Medical School, is also a senior author of both studies, which appear today in Cell. One of the papers was led by Picower Institute Research Scientist Byeongjun Lee and former Picower Institute research scientist Jeong-Tae Kwon, and the other was led by Harvard Medical School postdoc Yunjin Lee and Picower Institute postdoc Tomoe Ishikawa.
Behavioral effects
Choi and Huh became interested in IL-17 several years ago, when they found it was involved in a phenomenon known as the fever effect. Large-scale studies of autistic children have found that for many of them, their behavioral symptoms temporarily diminish when they have a fever.
In a 2019 study in mice, Choi and Huh showed that in some cases of infection, IL-17 is released and suppresses a small region of the brain’s cortex known as S1DZ. Overactivation of neurons in this region can lead to autism-like behavioral symptoms in mice, including repetitive behaviors and reduced sociability.
“This molecule became a link that connects immune system activation, manifested as a fever, to changes in brain function and changes in the animals’ behavior,” Choi says.
IL-17 comes in six different forms, and there are five different receptors that can bind to it. In their two new papers, the researchers set out to map which of these receptors are expressed in different parts of the brain. This mapping revealed that a pair of receptors known as IL-17RA and IL-17RB is found in the cortex, including in the S1DZ region that the researchers had previously identified. The receptors are located in a population of neurons that receive proprioceptive input and are involved in controlling behavior.
When a type of IL-17 known as IL-17E binds to these receptors, the neurons become less excitable, which leads to the behavioral effects seen in the 2019 study.
“IL-17E, which we’ve shown to be necessary for behavioral mitigation, actually does act almost exactly like a neuromodulator in that it will immediately reduce these neurons’ excitability,” Choi says. “So, there is an immune molecule that’s acting as a neuromodulator in the brain, and its main function is to regulate excitability of neurons.”
Choi hypothesizes that IL-17 may have originally evolved as a neuromodulator, and later on was appropriated by the immune system to play a role in promoting inflammation. That idea is consistent with previous work showing that in the worm C. elegans, IL-17 has no role in the immune system but instead acts on neurons. Among its effects in worms, IL-17 promotes aggregation, a form of social behavior. Additionally, in mammals, IL-17E is actually made by neurons in the cortex, including S1DZ.
“There’s a possibility that a couple of forms of IL-17 perhaps evolved first and foremost to act as a neuromodulator in the brain, and maybe later were hijacked by the immune system also to act as immune modulators,” Choi says.
Provoking anxiety
In the other Cell paper, the researchers explored another brain location where they found IL-17 receptors — the amygdala. This almond-shaped structure plays an important role in processing emotions, including fear and anxiety.
That study revealed that in a region known as the basolateral amygdala (BLA), the IL-17RA and IL-17RE receptors, which work as a pair, are expressed in a discrete population of neurons. When these receptors bind to IL-17A and IL-17C, the neurons become more excitable, leading to an increase in anxiety.
The researchers also found that, counterintuitively, if animals are treated with antibodies that block IL-17 receptors, it actually increases the amount of IL-17C circulating in the body. This finding may help to explain unexpected outcomes observed in a clinical trial of a drug targeting the IL-17-RA receptor for psoriasis treatment, particularly regarding its potential adverse effects on mental health.
“We hypothesize that there’s a possibility that the IL-17 ligand that is upregulated in this patient cohort might act on the brain to induce suicide ideation, while in animals there is an anxiogenic phenotype,” Choi says.
During infections, this anxiety may be a beneficial response, keeping the sick individual away from others to whom the infection could spread, Choi hypothesizes.
“Other than its main function of fighting pathogens, one of the ways that the immune system works is to control the host behavior, to protect the host itself and also protect the community the host belongs to,” she says. “One of the ways the immune system is doing that is to use cytokines, secreted factors, to go to the brain as communication tools.”
The researchers found that the same BLA neurons that have receptors for IL-17 also have receptors for IL-10, a cytokine that suppresses inflammation. This molecule counteracts the excitability generated by IL-17, giving the body a way to shut off anxiety once it’s no longer useful.
Distinctive behaviors
Together, the two studies suggest that the immune system, and even a single family of cytokines, can exert a variety of effects in the brain.
“We have now different combinations of IL-17 receptors being expressed in different populations of neurons, in two different brain regions, that regulate very distinct behaviors. One is actually somewhat positive and enhances social behaviors, and another is somewhat negative and induces anxiogenic phenotypes,” Choi says.
Her lab is now working on additional mapping of IL-17 receptor locations, as well as the IL-17 molecules that bind to them, focusing on the S1DZ region. Eventually, a better understanding of these neuro-immune interactions may help researchers develop new treatments for neurological conditions such as autism or depression.
“The fact that these molecules are made by the immune system gives us a novel approach to influence brain function as means of therapeutics,” Choi says. “Instead of thinking about directly going for the brain, can we think about doing something to the immune system?”
The research was funded, in part, by Jeongho Kim and the Brain Impact Foundation Neuro-Immune Fund, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, the Marcus Foundation, the N of One: Autism Research Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Picower Institute Innovation Fund, the MIT John W. Jarve Seed Fund for Science Innovation, Young Soo Perry and Karen Ha, and the National Institutes of Health.
MIT scientists find the protein IL-17 that fights infection also acts on two distinct brain regions — the amygdala and the somatosensory cortex — inducing anxiety or sociability.
Science & Tech
Lower canopies show struggle for tropical forests
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 7, 2025
4 min read
NASA technology guides scientists as they track health of ‘Earth’s lungs’
With their ability to store carbon, forests are often considered the lungs of the Earth, but they are vulnerable to the world’s ills, too. A new study, using NASA laser technology from the
NASA technology guides scientists as they track health of ‘Earth’s lungs’
With their ability to store carbon, forests are often considered the lungs of the Earth, but they are vulnerable to the world’s ills, too. A new study, using NASA laser technology from the International Space Station, reveals the impact of climate change on global tropical forests with greater depth and breadth than ever before.
The forest canopy, the upper layer of mature trees, “is a very critical indicator of forest health and ecosystem productivity,” explained Shaoqing Liu, a postdoctoral fellow in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) and the first author on the paper.
Shaoqing Liu.
Courtesy photo
“In general, taller canopies are associated with high carbon storage and greater above-ground biomass. Tall canopies can buffer the microclimate,” Liu said, even helping reduce the temperature during heat waves. The study looked at tropical forests in Asia, Africa, and South America — lands with minimal disturbances or human activities such as logging.
To measure changes in such forests, his group used laser measurements from GEDI, which allowed the group to study a wide swath of forests globally, whereas earlier studies had been limited to small areas.
“Over the past decade, NASA has been using the International Space Station as a convenient platform for evaluating new forms of space-based remote sensing measurements,” said Paul Moorcroft, professor of OEB and senior author of the study. “The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation waveform LiDAR is a prime example of this approach.”
GEDI — pronounced “Jedi” — “can tell us the vertical structure of the forest canopy” such as leaf density, said Liu. “Our study demonstrates that climate, topography, and soil properties account for almost three-quarters of the variation in tropical forest canopy height. We also found the elevation, dry season, and solar radiation are the most important variants to determine the canopy height.”
The researchers discovered that “tropical forests in the southern Amazon area are vulnerable to climate change” because of increasingly prolonged dry seasons. “The dry season is the dominant driver determining forest canopy height in this area,” said Liu.
Because global climate model projections show that this area will have longer dry seasons, “We may see significant reductions in canopy height,” he added.
“Understanding the environmental controls of tropical forest height is important for assessing the carbon sequestration and conservation value of different tropical forest areas,” said Moorcroft. “Understanding the environmental drivers of forest canopy height variation is also crucial for understanding how tropical forests will respond to climate change.”
The impact of climate change is not uniform, however. Thanks to GEDI, the researchers were able to view differences in its manifestation and effect on the canopy. “In the central Amazon, because it is relatively moist, the first important driver is actually elevation,” said Liu. This was also true in Africa, the researchers found.
Looking ahead, Liu would like to move beyond studying the primary forest to examine more of the globe’s forest and woodland areas. He said he hopes these studies will influence policy.
“In terms of climate-change policies, we see the tropical forests are not only biodiversity hotspots, they are critical for carbon storage. Protecting them is essential for mitigating climate change,” he said. “We hope to help policymakers help identify areas that are vulnerable to climate change and prioritize them.”
Funding for this study was provided, in part, by a NASA grant.
Now in its eighth year, the Fellowship provides financial support for a postdoctoral placement of one to two years at a world-class research institution.
The funding equips scientists to apply their knowledge to a new field of study with the goal of accelerating discoveries, and to develop their leadership potential.
Dr Poppy Oldroyd, a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow from the Department of Engineering, plans to pioneer a new frontier in understanding brain communication through optical measuremen
Now in its eighth year, the Fellowship provides financial support for a postdoctoral placement of one to two years at a world-class research institution.
The funding equips scientists to apply their knowledge to a new field of study with the goal of accelerating discoveries, and to develop their leadership potential.
Dr Poppy Oldroyd, a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow from the Department of Engineering, plans to pioneer a new frontier in understanding brain communication through optical measurements, ultimately advancing treatments for memory-related diseases.
The human brain communicates through intricate networks of neurons, crucial for learning and memory. However, how these neural conversations translate into memory formation remains a mystery in neuroscience. Oldroyd’s research aims to use light-based tools, like advanced optogenetics, to explore these pathways in detail. By uncovering how specific brain circuits contribute to learning and memory, this research could revolutionise our understanding of these essential brain functions.
Ultimately, this knowledge may enhance our comprehension of memory-related disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy.
Dr Matthew McLouglin, a 2025 Schmidt Science Fellow from the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, plans to develop tools to study how our cells age in real time. This will help us understand why we age and how we might promote healthy aging to improve quality of life in the elderly.
Our DNA is organised into structures called chromosomes. Each chromosome has a protective cap, the ‘telomere’, which is partially lost with each cell division. In old age, cells cannot function properly due to the loss of telomeres, increasing the risk of age-related diseases such as cancer and dementia. McLoughlin will use cutting-edge imaging technology to track the loss of telomeres over time, understanding how telomeres are lost and why this stops cells from functioning.
Oldroyd and McLoughlin join a community of 209 Schmidt Science Fellows from nearly 40 countries who are leaders in interdisciplinary science.
“Philanthropic funding of scientific research, and especially support of early-career researchers, has never been more important,” said Wendy Schmidt, who co-founded Schmidt Science Fellows with her husband, Eric.
“By providing Schmidt Science Fellows with support, community, and freedom to work across disciplines and gain new insights, we hope they’ll tackle some of the world’s most vexing challenges, achieve breakthroughs and help create a healthier, more resilient world for all.”
Established in 2017, Schmidt Science Fellows is a programme of Schmidt Sciences delivered in partnership with the Rhodes Trust.
The 2025 Fellows represent 15 nationalities, including researchers from Jordan and the United Arab Emirates for the first time in the programme’s history.
This year’s cohort will work on a range of problems from cancer treatment to quantum technologies to sustainability.
Alongside their research Placement, Fellows participate in a 12-month interdisciplinary Science Leadership Programme.
Each year, Schmidt Science Fellows works in partnership with more than 100 universities to identify candidates for the Fellowship.
Nominees are selected via an application process that includes an academic review with panels of experts in their original disciplines and final interviews with a multidisciplinary panel of scientists and private sector leaders.
“The Schmidt Science Fellows Program is cultivating a dynamic global community of remarkable scientists and champions of interdisciplinary research,” said Stu Feldman, Chief Scientist at Schmidt Sciences.
“Their work exemplifies Schmidt Sciences’ commitment to support pioneering approaches that will drive the next era of discovery and innovation.”
The 2025 Schmidt Science Fellows represent 27 nominating universities, including, for the first time, McGill University in Canada, RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, University of California, Los Angeles in the US, and University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Two University of Cambridge researchers are among the thirty-two early career researchers, tackling issues from improving food security to developing better medical implants, who have been announced as the 2025 Schmidt Science Fellows.
Professor Rajasekhar Balasubramanian from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering at NUS has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is recognised for his distinguished contributions to the field of air quality and international leadership in atmospheric research, particularly in establishing an understanding of tropical biomass burning, and its environmental and health impacts. AAAS
Professor Rajasekhar Balasubramanian from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering at NUS has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is recognised for his distinguished contributions to the field of air quality and international leadership in atmospheric research, particularly in establishing an understanding of tropical biomass burning, and its environmental and health impacts.
AAAS is one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals. Prof Balasubramanian joins an esteemed group of 471 scientists and engineers who have been elected as Fellows this year.
A pioneer in environmental sustainability, climate change and urban air quality, Prof Balasubramanian’s research in sustainability offers a thorough understanding of the intricate relationship between urbanisation, the environment and society. He is also a member of the Science Panel of the Asia Pacific Clean Air Partnership (APCAP), which was established to bring together scientific expertise from regional initiatives to offer policy recommendations guided by science, supporting efforts to address air pollution in the Asia Pacific region.
For the first time, ETH Zurich Materials Scientists are measuring the rolling friction of tiny, micrometre-sized particles. These measurements permit them to better understand everyday products such as concrete.
For the first time, ETH Zurich Materials Scientists are measuring the rolling friction of tiny, micrometre-sized particles. These measurements permit them to better understand everyday products such as concrete.
Alberto Ascherio, Joel Habener, and David Liu.Photos courtesy of Alberto Ascherio and Joel Habener, photo by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Health
Harvard researchers awarded Breakthrough Prizes
‘Oscars of Science’ recognize advances in gene editing and physics and against MS, obesity
April 6, 2025
5 min read
Three Harvard researchers received 2025 Breakthrough Prizes — the “Oscars of Science”
‘Oscars of Science’ recognize advances in gene editing and physics and against MS, obesity
5 min read
Three Harvard researchers received 2025 Breakthrough Prizes — the “Oscars of Science” — on Saturday. Also recognized was the ATLAS general-purpose particle physics experiment at CERN, to which Harvard faculty, researchers, and students have made significant contributions.
The Breakthrough Prize, founded in 2013 by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, honors achievements in life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics.
Six prizes were announced. The Harvard recipients are:
Alberto Ascherio, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was recognized for work establishing Epstein-Barr virus infection as leading cause of multiple sclerosis.
MS is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that affects about 2.9 million people worldwide and currently has no cure. Epstein-Barr is a herpes virus that can cause mononucleosis and establishes a lifelong latent infection.
Although there was no single eureka moment in Ascherio’s more than 25-year effort to identify the cause of multiple sclerosis, the results of his 2022 Science study were undoubtedly dramatic. Using data from more than 10 million U.S. soldiers monitored over a 20-year period, Ascherio and his colleagues found that infection with the Epstein-Barr virus significantly increased the risk of developing multiple sclerosis later in life — the first compelling evidence of a cause for this devastating disease.
The discovery revolutionized the field of MS research, and a vaccine and antibody drugs that target Epstein-Barr are now in development. “It’s virtually a consensus now that Epstein-Barr is the leading cause of MS,” Ascherio said. “I’m happy to say that finally, after 25 years, it’s been a big splash.”
Read more about Ascherio and the MS/Epstein-Barr research here.
Joel Habener, a professor at Harvard Medical School, was part of a group of scientists honored for contributions to the discovery and characterization of the hormone glucagon-like peptide-1, or GLP-1 — findings that subsequently led to the development of treatments based on GLP-1.
GLP-1 is a hormone produced by the small intestine that plays a key role in regulating blood sugar, controlling appetite, and modulating digestion. To coordinate these complicated tasks, the hormone must simultaneously communicate with other hormones and with multiple organs and systems, including the stomach, pancreas, liver, brain, heart, blood vessels, and immune system.
The body of research conducted by the five scientists, supported in part by federal funding, has dramatically advanced understanding of how GLP-1 functions in the body. Notably, their work contributed to the development of GLP-1 drugs, which have revolutionized treatment for Type 2 diabetes and obesity.
Read more about Habener and the GLP-1 research here.
David Liu — the Richard Merkin Professor at the Broad Institute, director of the institute’s Merkin Institute for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard — was honored for the development of the gene editing platforms base editing and prime editing, which can correct the vast majority of known disease-causing genetic variations and have already been used in at least 15 clinical trials, with life-saving results. Base editing was recently used to achieve the first-ever correction of a disease-causing mutation in patients.
Base editing, which Liu’s team developed in 2016, is a gene editing technique that directly converts an individual DNA base pair into a different base pair. Prime editing, which Liu’s group pioneered three years later, can make insertions, deletions, and substitutions up to hundreds of base pairs long in the genome.
Since their initial development, both base editing and prime editing have been used by thousands of laboratories around the world and have enabled the study and potential treatment of many genetic diseases.
“The real heroes behind our work are the incredibly talented graduate students, postdocs, and collaborators who worked tirelessly to develop these technologies in ways that would allow them to benefit society,” said Liu. “Without their dedication, this work would not be possible. The honor of my professional life is to be able to work with and support such a vibrant group of scientists.”
Read more about Liu and the gene editing research here.
Three Harvard faculty in the Physics Department as well as several students and researchers were recognized with the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their work on the ATLAS collaboration. The team of 13,000 physicists, engineers, and technicians conducts general-purpose particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Harvard members of ATLAS include Melissa Franklin, Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics; Masahiro Morii, Donner Professor of Science; John Huth, Donner Professor of Science; postdocs Rongkun Wang, Aaron White, Knut Koch, and Simone Francescato; and Harvard Griffin GSAS students Gustavo Kehris, Laura Bruce, Kees Bekendorfer, Jerry Ling, and Alexis Mulski.
Arts & Culture
‘Everybody feels like two people’
Apple TV+ Press
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
April 4, 2025
6 min read
Alum who co-produces ‘Severance’ says show speaks to real-life mysteries
The Apple TV+ show “Severance” wrapped up its second season last month, leaving fans with a lingering sense of unease about what just happened and what comes next.
“Severance” follows a grou
Alum who co-produces ‘Severance’ says show speaks to real-life mysteries
The Apple TV+ show “Severance” wrapped up its second season last month, leaving fans with a lingering sense of unease about what just happened and what comes next.
“Severance” follows a group of office workers who have chosen to undergo a procedure that separates their consciousnesses into an “innie” who only exists at the office and an “outie” who exists everywhere else, each with no memory of the other’s experiences. It’s about work-life balance, but it’s also about free will, identity, and the feeling of being at war with oneself.
Among the show’s producers is Nicky Weinstock, who graduated from Harvard College in 1991. In this edited conversation with the Gazette, he talks about “Severance” as a “willfully strange” provocation and a TV sensation, and recalls his transition from Cambridge to Hollywood.
What do you most remember about your time on campus?
At Harvard, I found a lot of friends and professors and inspirations from all over the planet. It was very energizing as a place.
Ironically, I spent a lot of time leaving it, because I was an anthropology major and did anthropology work in Kenya and went to the University of Nairobi for a while, and spent as much time as I could traveling. All of it was very much of a piece, I think, in terms of being free-range and talking about writing and creativity with all kinds of people in all kinds of places.
To be honest, when I got to Hollywood and started producing, I was shocked that Hollywood did not seem to have much interest in other places. I sucked it up and was able to do a lot of fun, Hollywood-based projects, but I always wanted to have a global sensibility. Finally, about three years ago, I was able to start my own company and draw stories from all over the world.
Nicky Weinstock.
Photo courtesy of Nicky Weinstock
How did you get involved with “Severance” and what did you first think of the concept?
“Severance” found me in a very lucky way. It was a script by Dan Erickson. Dan had never produced a television series before, and in fact he didn’t have an agent. The script started to be passed around and noticed and was generating excitement. I was running a company called Red Hour with Ben Stiller. I had never seen a concept like that. It’s what everyone hopes for in movies and television: something that A) hasn’t been done before and B) is perfectly rendered. This had both, all credit to Dan.
We began to develop it together and refine the pilot script. We managed to sell it to Apple and proceeded to package it with actors and with Ben directing it, and to make a reality of it in a way that doesn’t usually happen in Hollywood. Most of the time you start with a known writer; you start with massive actors. In this case it was literally the coolness of the idea that attracted everybody: John Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette. They all responded to the sheer originality and resonance of the idea.
Are you surprised that the show has taken on a life of its own?
Yes and no. It surprised me because it was always willfully strange. It was always committed to the specificity of that world. That can often lead to a very fringe-y phenomenon that doesn’t catch on with a wide audience.
But then again, I was not that surprised, because what I responded to when I first read it is what people respond to, which is that everybody feels like two people in their lives, at least. Everybody has a certain persona at their job and a different persona at home, and everyone is trying to reconcile different aspects of their lives into some coherent whole, and we spend all our lives doing it.
“Everybody has a certain persona at their job and a different persona at home, and everyone is trying to reconcile different aspects of their lives into some coherent whole, and we spend all our lives doing it.”
The trajectory of the show seems to mirror our experience during and after COVID. Season 1 came out in 2022, and it felt like a very closed world, and then Season 2 expands that world to ask bigger questions about what it means to be a person.
I very much agree. Season 1 was very much a result of how we were living at the time, and that claustrophobia and confusion and isolation was very much part of our culture. I think that’s why a lot of people responded to it the way they did. And the world has only gotten stranger since then. The unpredictability and the shakiness and the bottomlessness that we’re all going through right now is why people responded to the show, too.
For everyone, across the political spectrum, no matter where you live, there is a sense of “Where is the world going right now?” and “What do the people in power know and what is their intention?” That was not true when I was growing up. “Severance” has become a little bit of a vessel to demonstrate that mysteries abound and we don’t know who to trust.
The second season ended on a bit of cliff-hanger that I won’t spoil, but was essentially about an “innie” character making a dramatic choice that heightened the stakes and set up a lot of new questions for the third season. Is there anything you can say about where the show will go?
I can’t say much, but I can say that the concept of severance is so expansive. We wanted to do a first season that was claustrophobic. We wanted to do a second season that was out in the world. The idea of bifurcating your life and having different selves can go in so many directions. All I can say is Season 3 will not look anything like Season 2 or Season 1. It’s an expansive idea.
The MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering Breakerspace transformed into an art gallery on March 10, with six easels arranged in an arc to showcase arresting images — black-and-white scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of crumpled biological structures alongside the brilliant hues of digital optical microscopy.The images were the winning entries from the inaugural Breakerspace Microscope Image Contest, which opened in fall 2024. The contest invited all MIT undergraduates to tr
The MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering Breakerspace transformed into an art gallery on March 10, with six easels arranged in an arc to showcase arresting images — black-and-white scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of crumpled biological structures alongside the brilliant hues of digital optical microscopy.
The images were the winning entries from the inaugural Breakerspace Microscope Image Contest, which opened in fall 2024. The contest invited all MIT undergraduates to train on the Breakerspace’s microscopic instruments, explore material samples, and capture images that were artistic, instructive, or technically challenging.
“The goal of the contest is to inspire curiosity and creativity, encouraging students to explore the imaging tools in the Breakerspace,” says Professor Jeffrey Grossman of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). “We want students to see the beauty and complexity of materials at the microscopic level, to think critically about the images they capture, and to communicate what they mean to others.”
Grossman was a driving force behind the Breakerspace, a laboratory and lounge designed to encourage MIT undergraduates to explore the world of materials.
The contest drew about 50 entries across four categories:
Most Instructive, for images illustrating key concepts with documentation
Most Challenging, requiring significant sample preparation
Best Optical Microscope Image of a sample, rendered in color
Best Electron Microscope Image, magnified hundreds or even thousands of times
“By making this a competition with prizes, we hope to motivate more students to explore microscopy and develop a stronger connection to the materials science community at MIT,” Grossman says.
A window onto research
Amelia How, a DMSE sophomore and winner of the Most Instructive category, used an SEM to show how hydrogen atoms seep into titanium — a phenomenon called hydrogen embrittlement, which can weaken metals and lead to material failure in applications such as aerospace, energy, or construction. The image stemmed from How’s research in Associate Professor Cem Tasan’s research lab, through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). She trained on the SEM for the contest after seeing an email announcement.
“It helped me realize how to explain what I was actually doing,” How says, “because the work that I’m doing is something that’s going into a paper, but most people won’t end up reading that.”
Mishael Quraishi, a DMSE senior and winner of Best SEM Image, captured the flower Alstroemeria and its pollen-bearing structure, the anther. She entered the contest mainly to explore microscopy — but sharing that experience was just as rewarding.
“I really love how electron images look,” Quraishi says. “But as I was taking the images, I was also able to show people what pollen looked like at a really small scale — it’s kind of unrecognizable. That was the most fun part: sharing the image and then telling people about the technique.”
Quraishi, president of the Society of Undergraduate Materials Scientists, also organized the event, part of Materials Week, a student-run initiative that highlights the department’s people, research, and impact.
Persistence in practice
The winner of the Most Challenging category, DMSE sophomore Nelushi Vithanachchi gained not just microscopy experience, but also perseverance. The category called for significant effort put into the sample preparation — and Vithanachchi spent hours troubleshooting.
Her sample — a carving of MIT’s Great Dome in silicon carbide — was made using a focused ion beam, a tool that sculpts materials by bombarding them with ions, or charged atoms. The process requires precision, as even minor shifts can ruin a sample.
In her first attempt, while milling the dome’s façade, the sample shifted and broke. A second try with a different design also failed. She credits her UROP advisor, Aaditya Bhat from Associate Professor James LeBeau’s research group, for pushing her to keep going.
“It was four in the morning, and after failing for the third time, I said, ‘I’m not doing this,’” Vithanachchi recalls. “Then Aaditya said, ‘No, we’ve got to finish what we started.’” After a fourth attempt, using the lessons learned from the previous failures, they were finally able to create a structure that resembled the MIT dome.
Anna Beck, a DMSE sophomore and runner-up for Best Electron Microscope Image, had a much different experience. “It was very relaxed for me. I just sat down and took images,” she says. Her entry was an SEM image of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) fibers from an event wrist band. HDPE is a durable material used in packaging, plumbing, and consumer goods.
Through the process, Beck gained insight into composition and microscopy techniques — and she’s excited to apply what she’s learned in the next competition in fall 2025. “In hindsight, I look at mine now and I wish I turned the brightness up a little more.”
Although 35 percent of the entries came from DMSE students, a majority — 65 percent — came from other majors, or first-year students.
With the first contest showcasing both creativity and technical skill, organizers hope even more students will take on the challenge, bringing fresh perspectives and discoveries to the microscopic world. The contest will run again in fall 2025.
“The inaugural contest brought in an incredible range of submissions. It was exciting to see students engage with microscopy in new ways and share their discoveries,” Grossman says. “The Breakerspace was designed for all undergraduates, regardless of major or experience level — whether they’re conducting research, exploring new materials, or simply curious about what something is made of. We’re excited to expand participation and encourage even more entries in the next competition.”
Undergraduate winners and runners-up in the Breakerspace Microscope Image Contest are: (left to right) Amelia How, Mishael Quraishi, Syd Robinson, Anna Beck, and Robert Sansone.
The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) has awarded MIT Lincoln Laboratory a 2025 FLC Excellence in Technology Transfer Award. The award recognizes the laboratory's exceptional efforts in commercializing microwave sounders hosted on small satellites called CubeSats. The laboratory first developed the technology for NASA, demonstrating that such satellites could work in tandem to collect hurricane data more frequently than previously possible and significantly improve hurricane forecasts. The tec
The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) has awarded MIT Lincoln Laboratory a 2025 FLC Excellence in Technology Transfer Award. The award recognizes the laboratory's exceptional efforts in commercializing microwave sounders hosted on small satellites called CubeSats. The laboratory first developed the technology for NASA, demonstrating that such satellites could work in tandem to collect hurricane data more frequently than previously possible and significantly improve hurricane forecasts. The technology is now licensed to the company Tomorrow.io, which will launch a large constellation of the sounder-equipped satellites to enhance hurricane prediction and expand global weather coverage.
"This FLC award recognizes a technology with significant impact, one that could enhance hourly weather forecasting for aviation, logistics, agriculture, and emergency management, and highlights the laboratory's important role in bringing federally funded innovation to the commercial sector," says Asha Rajagopal, Lincoln Laboratory's chief technology transfer officer.
A nationwide network of more than 300 government laboratories, agencies, and research centers, the FLC helps facilitate the transfer of technologies out of federal labs and into the marketplace to benefit the U.S. economy, society, and national security.
Lincoln Laboratory originally proposed and demonstrated the technology for NASA's TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats) mission. For TROPICS, the laboratory put its microwave sounders on low-cost, commercially available CubeSats for the first time.
Of all the technology used for sensing hurricanes, microwave sounders provide the greatest improvement to forecasting models. From space, these instruments detect a range of microwave frequencies that penetrate clouds, allowing them to measure 3D temperature, humidity, and precipitation in a storm. State-of-the-art instruments are typically large (the size of a washing machine) and hosted aboard $2 billion polar-orbiting satellites, which collectively may revisit a storm every six hours. If sounders could be miniaturized, laboratory researchers imagined, then they could be put on small satellites and launched in large numbers, working together to revisit storms more often.
The TROPICS sounder is the size of a coffee cup. The laboratory team worked for several years to develop and demonstrate the technology that resulted in a miniaturized instrument, while maintaining performance on par with traditional sounders for the frequencies that provide the most useful tropical cyclone observations. By 2023, NASA launched a constellation of four TROPICS satellites, which have since collected rapidly refreshed data of many tropical storms.
Now, Tomorrow.io plans to increase that constellation to a global network of 18 satellites. The resulting high-rate observations — under an hour — are expected to improve weather forecasts, hurricane tracking, and early-warning systems.
"This partnership with Tomorrow.io expands the impact of the TROPICS mission. Tomorrow.io’s increased constellation size, software pipeline, and resilient business model enable it to support a number of commercial and government organizations. This transfer to industry has resulted in a self-sustaining national capability, one that is expected to help the economy and the government for years to come," says Tom Roy, who managed the transfer of the technology to Tomorrow.io.
The technology transfer spanned 18 months. Under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA), the laboratory team adapted the TROPICS payload to an updated satellite design and delivered to Tomorrow.io the first three units, two of which were launched in September 2024. The team also provided in-depth training to Tomorrow.io and seven industry partners who will build, test, launch, and operate the future full commercial constellation. The remaining satellites are expected to launch before the end of this year.
"With these microwave sounders, we can set a new standard in atmospheric data collection and prediction. This technology allows us to capture atmospheric data with exceptional accuracy, especially over oceans and remote areas where traditional observations are scarce," said Rei Goffer, co-founder of Tomorrow.io, in a press release announcing the September launches.
Tomorrow.io will use the sounder data as input into their weather forecasts, data products, and decision support tools available to their customers, who range from major airlines to governments. Tomorrow.io's nonprofit partner, TomorrowNow, also plans to use the data as input to its climate model for improving food security in Africa.
This technology is especially relevant as hurricanes and severe weather events continue to cause significant destruction. In 2024, the United States experienced a near-record 27 disaster events that each exceeded $1 billion in damage, resulting in a total cost of approximately $182.7 billion, and that caused the deaths of at least 568 people. Globally, these storm systems cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage each year.
“It has been great to see the Lincoln Laboratory, Tomorrow.io, and industry partner teams work together so effectively to rapidly incorporate the TROPICS technology and bring the new Tomorrow.io microwave sounder constellation online,” says Bill Blackwell, principal investigator of the NASA TROPICS mission and the CRADA with Tomorrow.io. “I expect that the improved revisit rate provided by the Tomorrow.io constellation will drive further improvements in hurricane forecasting performance over and above what has already been demonstrated by TROPICS.”
The team behind the transfer includes Tom Roy, Bill Blackwell, Steven Gillmer, Rebecca Keenan, Nick Zorn, and Mike DiLiberto of Lincoln Laboratory and Kai Lemay, Scott Williams, Emma Watson, and Jan Wicha of Tomorrow.io. Lincoln Laboratory will be honored among other winners of 2025 FLC Awards at the FLC National Meeting to be held virtually on May 13.
Lincoln Laboratory transferred its small microwave sounder technology to the weather company Tomorrow.io. The sounders are integrated on small satellites (roughly 20 x 10 x 30 cm in size), two of which are shown here.
LEGOs are no stranger to many members of the MIT community. Faculty, staff, and students, alike, have developed a love of building and mechanics while playing with the familiar plastic bricks. In just a few hours, a heap of bricks can become a house, a ship, an airplane, or a cat. The simplicity lends itself to creativity and ingenuity, and it has inspired many MIT faculty members to bring LEGOs into the classroom, including class 2.S00 (Introduction to Manufacturing), where students use LEGO br
LEGOs are no stranger to many members of the MIT community. Faculty, staff, and students, alike, have developed a love of building and mechanics while playing with the familiar plastic bricks. In just a few hours, a heap of bricks can become a house, a ship, an airplane, or a cat. The simplicity lends itself to creativity and ingenuity, and it has inspired many MIT faculty members to bring LEGOs into the classroom, including class 2.S00 (Introduction to Manufacturing), where students use LEGO bricks to learn about manufacturing processes and systems.
It was perhaps no surprise, then, that the lecture hall in the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing was packed with students, faculty, staff, and guests to hear Carsten Rasmussen, chief operating officer of the LEGO Group, speak as part of the Manufacturing@MIT Distinguished Speaker Series on March 20.
In his engaging and inspiring talk, Rasmussen asked one of the most important questions in manufacturing: How do you balance innovation with sustainability while keeping a complex global supply chain running smoothly? He emphasized that success in modern manufacturing isn’t just about cutting costs — it’s about creating value across the entire network, and integrating every aspect of the business.
Successful manufacturing is all about balance
The way the toy industry views success is evolving, Rasmussen said. In the past, focusing on “cost, quality, safety, delivery, and service” may have been enough, but today’s landscape is far more demanding. “Now, it’s about availability, customers’ happiness, and innovation,” he said.
Rasmussen, who has been with the LEGO Group since 2001, started as a buyer before moving to various leadership roles within the organization. Today, he oversees the LEGO Group’s operations strategy, including manufacturing and supply chain planning, quality, engineering, and sales and operations planning.
“The way we can inspire the builders of tomorrow is basically, whatever we develop, we are able to produce, and we are able to sell,” he said.
The LEGO Group’s operations are intricate. Focusing on areas such as capacity and infrastructure, network utilization, analysis and design, and sustainability, keeps the company true to its mission, “to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.” Within the organization, departments operate with a focus on how their decisions will impact the rest of the company. To do this, they need to communicate effectively.
Intuition and experience play a big role in effective decision-making
In a time where data analytics is a huge part of decision-making in manufacturing and supply-chain management, Rasmussen highlighted the importance of blending data with intuition and experience.
“Many of the decisions you have to make are very, very complex,” he explained. “A lot of the data you’re going to provide me is based on history. And what happened in history is not what you’re facing right now. So, you need to really be able to take great data and blend that with your intuition and your experience to make a decision.”
This shift reflects a broader trend in industries where leaders are beginning to see the benefits of looking beyond purely data-driven decision-making. With global supply chains disrupted by unforeseen events like the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s growing acknowledgement that historical data may not be the most effective way to predict the future. Rasmussen said that the audience should practice blending their own intuition and experience with data by asking themselves: “Does it make sense? Does it feel right?”
Prioritizing sustainability
Rasmussen also highlighted the LEGO Group’s ambitious sustainability goals, signaling that innovation cannot come at the expense of environmental responsibility. “There is no excuse for us to not leave a better planet for the next generation, for the next hundred years,” he said.
With an ambition to make its products from more renewable or recycled materials by 2032 and eliminate single-use packaging, the company aims to lead a shift in trends in manufacturing toward being more environmentally friendly, including an effort to turn waste into bricks.
Innovation doesn’t exist in a vacuum
Throughout his talk, Rasmussen underscored the importance of innovation. The only way to stay on top is to be constantly thinking of new ideas, he said.
“Are you daring to put new products into the market?” he asked, adding that it’s not enough to come up with a novel product or approach. How its implementation will work within the system is essential, too. “Our challenge that you need to help me with,” he said to the audience, “is how can we bring in innovation, because we can’t stand still either. We also need to be fit for the future … that is actually one of our bigger challenges.”
He reminded the audience that innovation is not a linear path. It involves risk, some failure, and continuous evolution. “Resilience is absolutely key,” he said.
Q&A
After his presentation, Rasmussen sat down with Professor John Hart for a brief Q&A, followed by audience questions. Among the questions that Hart asked Rasmussen was how he would respond to a designer who presented a model of MIT-themed LEGO set, assuring Rasmussen it would break sales records. “Oh, I’ve heard that so many times,” Rasmussen laughed.
Hart asked what it would take to turn an idea into reality. “How long does it take from bricks to having it on my doorstep?” he asked.
“Typically, a new product takes between 12 to 18 months from idea to when we put it out on the market,” said Rasmussen, explaining that the process requires a good deal of integration and that there is a lot of planning to make sure that new ideas can be implemented across the organization.
Then the microphone was opened up to the crowd. The first audience questions came from Emerson Linville-Engler, the youngest audience member at just 5 years old, who wanted to know what the most difficult LEGO set to make was (the Technic round connector pieces), as well as Rasmussen’s favorite LEGO set (complex builds, like buildings or Technic models).
Other questions showcased how much LEGO inspired the audience. One member asked Rasmussen if it ever got old being told that he worked for a company that inspires the inner child? “No. It motivates me every single day when you meet them,” he said.
Through the Q&A, the audience was also able to ask more about the manufacturing process from ideas to execution, as well as whether Rasmussen was threatened by imitators (he welcomes healthy competition, but not direct copycats), and whether the LEGO Group plans on bringing back some old favorites (they are discussing whether to bring back old sets, but there are no set plans to do so at this time).
For the aspiring manufacturing leaders and innovators in the room, the lesson of Rasmussen’s talk was clear: Success isn’t just about making the right decision, it’s about understanding the entire system, having the courage to innovate, and being resilient enough to navigate unexpected challenges.
The event was hosted by the Manufacturing@MIT Working Group as part of the Manufacturing@MIT Distinguished Speaker Series. Past speakers include the TSMC founder Morris Chang, Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu, and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf.
LEGO Group COO Carsten Rasmussen (right), shown here with Department of Mechanical Engineering head Professor John Hart, discussed the importance of balancing cost efficiency, innovation, and sustainability in manufacturing.
SGS co-founder Frank von Hippel returned to campus Tuesday for a 50th anniversary event and book discussion about his new memoir, “Ending the Nuclear Arms Race: A Physicist’s Quest.”
SGS co-founder Frank von Hippel returned to campus Tuesday for a 50th anniversary event and book discussion about his new memoir, “Ending the Nuclear Arms Race: A Physicist’s Quest.”
Nation & World
Former Greek PM outlines strategies to strengthen EU
Encourages European autonomy while retaining trans-Atlantic dialogue
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
April 4, 2025
5 min read
Alexis Tsipras.Photo by David Elmes
Stressing the need for European reform and unity in the face of multiple challenges, Alexis Tsipras, the former prime minister of Greece, addressed a standi
Former Greek PM outlines strategies to strengthen EU
Encourages European autonomy while retaining trans-Atlantic dialogue
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
5 min read
Alexis Tsipras.
Photo by David Elmes
Stressing the need for European reform and unity in the face of multiple challenges, Alexis Tsipras, the former prime minister of Greece, addressed a standing-room-only crowd at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies on March 25, which marked Independence Day in Greece.
Tsipras presented proposals for Europe to counter looming financial and trans-Atlantic turbulence, strengthen its cohesion, and elevate its geopolitical and economic position. The presentation was moderated by Peter A. Hall, Harvard’s Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies and a resident faculty member at CES, where Tsipras is a Policy Fellow this spring.
“We are seeing historical changes in the world that affect not only the geopolitical balance of power and the post-war liberal international order, but democracy itself,” said Tsipras, who currently serves as a member of the Hellenic Parliament for the SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance party.
He noted that the post-Cold War international order led not only to unfairly distributed growth but to the deregulation of financial markets, culminating in the global and European financial crises. He also said that the West had “underestimated the warnings that Russia would respond militarily if NATO insisted on adopting an open-door policy on Ukraine and Georgia in 2008.” U.S. engagement in the region has not allowed for the pivot to the Indo-Pacific to take place, leaving more space for China, “not only in the South China Sea but globally.”
These developments have heralded “a shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world in which the United States remains the most powerful force but has lost its dominance,” Tsipras said. To counter, the U.S. is “disengaging itself from any obligation toward Europe and promoting a logic of might makes right.”
“We are seeing historical changes in the world that affect not only the geopolitical balance of power and the post-war liberal international order, but democracy itself.”
Alexis Tsipras
Tsipras called for Europe to enhance its strategic autonomy while retaining trans-Atlantic dialogue regardless of NATO’s future. “I believe strongly that Europe can and should use its common foreign and security policy to play a role not only of deterrence, but also as a force for peace and stability particularly in regions where NATO should not or cannot be present,” he said.
Tsipras then named several strategic goals. These include an EU — not NATO — strategy for Ukraine that brings “peace with the best possible terms for Kyiv,” enforced by an international peacekeeping force, as well as a future that gives Ukraine the choice to “move toward the EU.” He also called for an end to Israel’s bombing in Gaza, as well as the resumption of talks for a two-state solution. He stressed the need for a clear message to Turkey, and said that the “unacceptable” recent arrest of opposition leader and mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, must have consequences. “We cannot convince anyone, particularly in the Global South, of our principles if we prove to have double standards,” he said.
For Europe’s economy, Tsipras outlined four policy proposals. First, he referred to Germany’s €900 billion fiscal package as a permanent break from Wolfgang Schäuble’s ordoliberal mindset, reflecting how much faster Europe would have exited the economic crisis if this mindset had been abandoned 15 years ago. He proposed “raising the debt threshold for all member states to around 100 percent.”
His second proposal called for Germany’s new fiscal approach to be leveraged “in a way that benefits Europe as a whole, rather than being used to subsidize domestic firms of bigger countries.”
His third proposal was for “the EU to supplement its common monetary policy with a federal fiscal instrument. A treasury department, just like the United States, as any other successful monetary union does.”
This federal treasury department could be empowered “to issue common European debt to finance the strategic autonomy of the EU on energy and defense, to facilitate the green transition, to promote research and innovation, to restore Europe’s crumbling network infrastructure, and, more importantly, to increase our cohesion funds and to reduce inequalities through investments in the welfare state and education.”
“The EU needs a deepening of its internal market, on the basis of the Draghi and Letta Reports,” he concluded.
Tsipras moved on to the challenges facing EU cohesion. In recent years, he said, political parties have facilitated the rise of nationalist and extreme far right parties. “Conservative parties have adopted the rhetoric and policies of the extreme right to keep their votes. Center-left parties are seen as elitist and disconnected from the middle and working class. And left parties have been absorbed by doctrine and petty politics.” He said the lack of a comprehensive European migration policy has also contributed to the rise of the extreme right.
Returning to the issue of debt, Tsipras reiterated that fiscal solidarity and rebuilding are more important than an imaginary bottom line. “If it is necessary to finance not only the rearming of Europe, but also innovation, growth, and cohesion, then this is something that we’ll have to do,” he said.
“Europe must be a force both for deterrence and for peace,” Tsipras concluded. “The best option is to stand on our feet. That means to strengthen our internal markets, to strengthen our cohesion and convergence, and, of course, to decide for strategic autonomy, which means a common external policy and policy of defense.”
Knocking out a single gene reprograms part of the large intestine to function like the nutrient-absorbing small intestine; Weill Cornell investigators showed that this reversed the malnutrition that results when most of the small intestine is removed.
Knocking out a single gene reprograms part of the large intestine to function like the nutrient-absorbing small intestine; Weill Cornell investigators showed that this reversed the malnutrition that results when most of the small intestine is removed.
Lowell House Opera performs “Postcard from Morocco” by Dominick Argento. Baritone Marcus Schenck (center) and cast share the stage in the Lowell House dining hall, which has been transformed into a train station.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Campus & Community
A ride on the Marrakesh Express
Niles Singer
Harvard Staff Photographer
April 4, 2025
2 min read
‘Postcard from Mor
Lowell House Opera performs “Postcard from Morocco” by Dominick Argento. Baritone Marcus Schenck (center) and cast share the stage in the Lowell House dining hall, which has been transformed into a train station.
‘Postcard from Morocco’ brings opera back to Lowell House
After an eight-year hiatus, Lowell House Opera returned to its historical performance space — the Lowell House dining hall — with a production of “Postcard from Morocco.” Set in a train station in 1914, the opera explores the human mind through seven travelers, each of whom is characterized by a possession.
The February performances marked the company’s homecoming after having moved their productions to other campus venues during the two-year renovation of Lowell House, with COVID-19 causing a further delay.
For its winter performance, set designers used stained glass film to cover the dining hall’s windows and had colored lights cast architectural shadows; together they transformed the space into a bustling train station.
“We really value an equal playing field for seasoned professionals and emerging artists,” said Benjamin Rossen ’23, the Lowell House Opera’s executive director, as well as “Postcard’s” music director and conductor.
Among the show’s cast, orchestra, and crew are Harvard students, alumni, a faculty member, professional opera singers, and students from several Boston-area schools.
Planning for the show started in the summer of 2024. Between mid-January and opening night on Feb. 21, performers rehearsed three to four hours a day to prepare for their roles.
“The performers inhabited their roles with astonishing ease,” said stage director Haley Stark ’25. “With minimal direction, they brought their characters to life in ways that felt deeply intuitive.”
The Lowell House Opera is already working on its next production, “Parade in Concert: The Trial Behind the Tragedy,” in collaboration with Harvard Hillel. Performances will be held at Harvard Hillel on April 26-27.
Conductor and music director Benjamin T. Rossen ’23 leads the orchestra.Coloratura soprano Chen Wine sings “A Lady With a Hand Mirror.”
Marcus Schenck (top) and tenor Leo Balkovetz perform a scene together.
Alicia Chu ’28 in her role as “a foreign singer.”
Leo Balkovetz (left) and Chen Wine embrace during their performance.A dramatic moment draws the audience’s full attention.
When the International Maritime Organization enacted a mandatory cap on the sulfur content of marine fuels in 2020, with an eye toward reducing harmful environmental and health impacts, it left shipping companies with three main options.They could burn low-sulfur fossil fuels, like marine gas oil, or install cleaning systems to remove sulfur from the exhaust gas produced by burning heavy fuel oil. Biofuels with lower sulfur content offer another alternative, though their limited availability mak
When the International Maritime Organization enacted a mandatory cap on the sulfur content of marine fuels in 2020, with an eye toward reducing harmful environmental and health impacts, it left shipping companies with three main options.
They could burn low-sulfur fossil fuels, like marine gas oil, or install cleaning systems to remove sulfur from the exhaust gas produced by burning heavy fuel oil. Biofuels with lower sulfur content offer another alternative, though their limited availability makes them a less feasible option.
While installing exhaust gas cleaning systems, known as scrubbers, is the most feasible and cost-effective option, there has been a great deal of uncertainty among firms, policymakers, and scientists as to how “green” these scrubbers are.
Through a novel lifecycle assessment, researchers from MIT, Georgia Tech, and elsewhere have now found that burning heavy fuel oil with scrubbers in the open ocean can match or surpass using low-sulfur fuels, when a wide variety of environmental factors is considered.
The scientists combined data on the production and operation of scrubbers and fuels with emissions measurements taken onboard an oceangoing cargo ship.
They found that, when the entire supply chain is considered, burning heavy fuel oil with scrubbers was the least harmful option in terms of nearly all 10 environmental impact factors they studied, such as greenhouse gas emissions, terrestrial acidification, and ozone formation.
“In our collaboration with Oldendorff Carriers to broadly explore reducing the environmental impact of shipping, this study of scrubbers turned out to be an unexpectedly deep and important transitional issue,” says Neil Gershenfeld, an MIT professor, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), and senior author of the study.
“Claims about environmental hazards and policies to mitigate them should be backed by science. You need to see the data, be objective, and design studies that take into account the full picture to be able to compare different options from an apples-to-apples perspective,” adds lead author Patricia Stathatou, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, who began this study as a postdoc in the CBA.
Stathatou is joined on the paper by Michael Triantafyllou, the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Professor in Ocean Science and Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and others at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece, Naias Laboratories, and the maritime shipping firm Oldendorff Carriers. The research appears today in Environmental Science and Technology.
Slashing sulfur emissions
Heavy fuel oil, traditionally burned by bulk carriers that make up about 30 percent of the global maritime fleet, usually has a sulfur content around 2 to 3 percent. This is far higher than the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 cap of 0.5 percent in most areas of the ocean and 0.1 percent in areas near population centers or environmentally sensitive regions.
Sulfur oxide emissions contribute to air pollution and acid rain, and can damage the human respiratory system.
In 2018, fewer than 1,000 vessels employed scrubbers. After the cap went into place, higher prices of low-sulfur fossil fuels and limited availability of alternative fuels led many firms to install scrubbers so they could keep burning heavy fuel oil.
Today, more than 5,800 vessels utilize scrubbers, the majority of which are wet, open-loop scrubbers.
“Scrubbers are a very mature technology. They have traditionally been used for decades in land-based applications like power plants to remove pollutants,” Stathatou says.
A wet, open-loop marine scrubber is a huge, metal, vertical tank installed in a ship’s exhaust stack, above the engines. Inside, seawater drawn from the ocean is sprayed through a series of nozzles downward to wash the hot exhaust gases as they exit the engines.
The seawater interacts with sulfur dioxide in the exhaust, converting it to sulfates — water-soluble, environmentally benign compounds that naturally occur in seawater. The washwater is released back into the ocean, while the cleaned exhaust escapes to the atmosphere with little to no sulfur dioxide emissions.
But the acidic washwater can contain other combustion byproducts like heavy metals, so scientists wondered if scrubbers were comparable, from a holistic environmental point of view, to burning low-sulfur fuels.
Several studies explored toxicity of washwater and fuel system pollution, but none painted a full picture.
The researchers set out to fill that scientific gap.
A “well-to-wake” analysis
The team conducted a lifecycle assessment using a global environmental database on production and transport of fossil fuels, such as heavy fuel oil, marine gas oil, and very-low sulfur fuel oil. Considering the entire lifecycle of each fuel is key, since producing low-sulfur fuel requires extra processing steps in the refinery, causing additional emissions of greenhouse gases and particulate matter.
“If we just look at everything that happens before the fuel is bunkered onboard the vessel, heavy fuel oil is significantly more low-impact, environmentally, than low-sulfur fuels,” she says.
The researchers also collaborated with a scrubber manufacturer to obtain detailed information on all materials, production processes, and transportation steps involved in marine scrubber fabrication and installation.
“If you consider that the scrubber has a lifetime of about 20 years, the environmental impacts of producing the scrubber over its lifetime are negligible compared to producing heavy fuel oil,” she adds.
For the final piece, Stathatou spent a week onboard a bulk carrier vessel in China to measure emissions and gather seawater and washwater samples. The ship burned heavy fuel oil with a scrubber and low-sulfur fuels under similar ocean conditions and engine settings.
Collecting these onboard data was the most challenging part of the study.
“All the safety gear, combined with the heat and the noise from the engines on a moving ship, was very overwhelming,” she says.
Their results showed that scrubbers reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 97 percent, putting heavy fuel oil on par with low-sulfur fuels according to that measure. The researchers saw similar trends for emissions of other pollutants like carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide.
In addition, they tested washwater samples for more than 60 chemical parameters, including nitrogen, phosphorus, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and 23 metals.
The concentrations of chemicals regulated by the IMO were far below the organization’s requirements. For unregulated chemicals, the researchers compared the concentrations to the strictest limits for industrial effluents from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and European Union.
Most chemical concentrations were at least an order of magnitude below these requirements.
In addition, since washwater is diluted thousands of times as it is dispersed by a moving vessel, the concentrations of such chemicals would be even lower in the open ocean.
These findings suggest that the use of scrubbers with heavy fuel oil can be considered as equal to or more environmentally friendly than low-sulfur fuels across many of the impact categories the researchers studied.
“This study demonstrates the scientific complexity of the waste stream of scrubbers. Having finally conducted a multiyear, comprehensive, and peer-reviewed study, commonly held fears and assumptions are now put to rest,” says Scott Bergeron, managing director at Oldendorff Carriers and co-author of the study.
“This first-of-its-kind study on a well-to-wake basis provides very valuable input to ongoing discussion at the IMO,” adds Thomas Klenum, executive vice president of innovation and regulatory affairs at the Liberian Registry, emphasizing the need “for regulatory decisions to be made based on scientific studies providing factual data and conclusions.”
Ultimately, this study shows the importance of incorporating lifecycle assessments into future environmental impact reduction policies, Stathatou says.
“There is all this discussion about switching to alternative fuels in the future, but how green are these fuels? We must do our due diligence to compare them equally with existing solutions to see the costs and benefits,” she adds.
This study was supported, in part, by Oldendorff Carriers.
Due to the inherent ambiguity in medical images like X-rays, radiologists often use words like “may” or “likely” when describing the presence of a certain pathology, such as pneumonia.But do the words radiologists use to express their confidence level accurately reflect how often a particular pathology occurs in patients? A new study shows that when radiologists express confidence about a certain pathology using a phrase like “very likely,” they tend to be overconfident, and vice-versa when they
Due to the inherent ambiguity in medical images like X-rays, radiologists often use words like “may” or “likely” when describing the presence of a certain pathology, such as pneumonia.
But do the words radiologists use to express their confidence level accurately reflect how often a particular pathology occurs in patients? A new study shows that when radiologists express confidence about a certain pathology using a phrase like “very likely,” they tend to be overconfident, and vice-versa when they express less confidence using a word like “possibly.”
Using clinical data, a multidisciplinary team of MIT researchers in collaboration with researchers and clinicians at hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School created a framework to quantify how reliable radiologists are when they express certainty using natural language terms.
They used this approach to provide clear suggestions that help radiologists choose certainty phrases that would improve the reliability of their clinical reporting. They also showed that the same technique can effectively measure and improve the calibration of large language models by better aligning the words models use to express confidence with the accuracy of their predictions.
By helping radiologists more accurately describe the likelihood of certain pathologies in medical images, this new framework could improve the reliability of critical clinical information.
“The words radiologists use are important. They affect how doctors intervene, in terms of their decision making for the patient. If these practitioners can be more reliable in their reporting, patients will be the ultimate beneficiaries,” says Peiqi Wang, an MIT graduate student and lead author of a paper on this research.
He is joined on the paper by senior author Polina Golland, a Sunlin and Priscilla Chou Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a principal investigator in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the leader of the Medical Vision Group; as well as Barbara D. Lam, a clinical fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Yingcheng Liu, at MIT graduate student; Ameneh Asgari-Targhi, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB); Rameswar Panda, a research staff member at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab; William M. Wells, a professor of radiology at MGB and a research scientist in CSAIL; and Tina Kapur, an assistant professor of radiology at MGB. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Decoding uncertainty in words
A radiologist writing a report about a chest X-ray might say the image shows a “possible” pneumonia, which is an infection that inflames the air sacs in the lungs. In that case, a doctor could order a follow-up CT scan to confirm the diagnosis.
However, if the radiologist writes that the X-ray shows a “likely” pneumonia, the doctor might begin treatment immediately, such as by prescribing antibiotics, while still ordering additional tests to assess severity.
Trying to measure the calibration, or reliability, of ambiguous natural language terms like “possibly” and “likely” presents many challenges, Wang says.
Existing calibration methods typically rely on the confidence score provided by an AI model, which represents the model’s estimated likelihood that its prediction is correct.
For instance, a weather app might predict an 83 percent chance of rain tomorrow. That model is well-calibrated if, across all instances where it predicts an 83 percent chance of rain, it rains approximately 83 percent of the time.
“But humans use natural language, and if we map these phrases to a single number, it is not an accurate description of the real world. If a person says an event is ‘likely,’ they aren’t necessarily thinking of the exact probability, such as 75 percent,” Wang says.
Rather than trying to map certainty phrases to a single percentage, the researchers’ approach treats them as probability distributions. A distribution describes the range of possible values and their likelihoods — think of the classic bell curve in statistics.
“This captures more nuances of what each word means,” Wang adds.
Assessing and improving calibration
The researchers leveraged prior work that surveyed radiologists to obtain probability distributions that correspond to each diagnostic certainty phrase, ranging from “very likely” to “consistent with.”
For instance, since more radiologists believe the phrase “consistent with” means a pathology is present in a medical image, its probability distribution climbs sharply to a high peak, with most values clustered around the 90 to 100 percent range.
In contrast the phrase “may represent” conveys greater uncertainty, leading to a broader, bell-shaped distribution centered around 50 percent.
Typical methods evaluate calibration by comparing how well a model’s predicted probability scores align with the actual number of positive results.
The researchers’ approach follows the same general framework but extends it to account for the fact that certainty phrases represent probability distributions rather than probabilities.
To improve calibration, the researchers formulated and solved an optimization problem that adjusts how often certain phrases are used, to better align confidence with reality.
They derived a calibration map that suggests certainty terms a radiologist should use to make the reports more accurate for a specific pathology.
“Perhaps, for this dataset, if every time the radiologist said pneumonia was ‘present,’ they changed the phrase to ‘likely present’ instead, then they would become better calibrated,” Wang explains.
When the researchers used their framework to evaluate clinical reports, they found that radiologists were generally underconfident when diagnosing common conditions like atelectasis, but overconfident with more ambiguous conditions like infection.
In addition, the researchers evaluated the reliability of language models using their method, providing a more nuanced representation of confidence than classical methods that rely on confidence scores.
“A lot of times, these models use phrases like ‘certainly.’ But because they are so confident in their answers, it does not encourage people to verify the correctness of the statements themselves,” Wang adds.
In the future, the researchers plan to continue collaborating with clinicians in the hopes of improving diagnoses and treatment. They are working to expand their study to include data from abdominal CT scans.
In addition, they are interested in studying how receptive radiologists are to calibration-improving suggestions and whether they can mentally adjust their use of certainty phrases effectively.
“Expression of diagnostic certainty is a crucial aspect of the radiology report, as it influences significant management decisions. This study takes a novel approach to analyzing and calibrating how radiologists express diagnostic certainty in chest X-ray reports, offering feedback on term usage and associated outcomes,” says Atul B. Shinagare, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved with this work. “This approach has the potential to improve radiologists’ accuracy and communication, which will help improve patient care.”
The work was funded, in part, by a Takeda Fellowship, the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, the MIT CSAIL Wistrom Program, and the MIT Jameel Clinic.
A new calibration method developed by MIT researchers can improve the accuracy of clinical reports written by radiologists by helping them express their confidence more reliably.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a method to fabricate personalised gingival (gum) tissue grafts using an innovative combination of 3D bioprinting and artificial intelligence (AI).Led by Assistant Professor Gopu Sriram from NUS Faculty of Dentistry, the team’s approach presents a more customisable and less invasive alternative to traditional grafting methods, which often involve harvesting tissue from the patient’s mouth — a process that can be
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a method to fabricate personalised gingival (gum) tissue grafts using an innovative combination of 3D bioprinting and artificial intelligence (AI).
Led by Assistant Professor Gopu Sriram from NUS Faculty of Dentistry, the team’s approach presents a more customisable and less invasive alternative to traditional grafting methods, which often involve harvesting tissue from the patient’s mouth — a process that can be both uncomfortable and constrained by the availability of suitable tissue.
The 3D bioprinting and AI-enabled technique has the potential to address key challenges in dental procedures more effectively, such as repairing gum defects caused by periodontal disease or complications from dental implants. For instance, by enabling the precise fabrication of tissue constructs tailored to individual patients, the method can significantly improve treatment outcomes, reduce patient discomfort, and minimise the risk of complications, such as infections, during recovery.
The team’s research was published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials on 17 December 2024, and was supported by grants from National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC) and National University Health System (NUHS).
Turbocharging the bioprinting process with AI
Gum tissue grafts are essential in dental care, particularly for addressing mucogingival defects such as gum recession, and complications arising from periodontal disease or dental implants. Typically, these grafts are harvested from the patient’s mouth. Though effective, these procedures come with significant drawbacks: patient discomfort, limited tissue availability, and a higher risk of postoperative complications.
To overcome these challenges, the researchers turned to 3D bioprinting, a technique that fabricates custom-made tissue grafts tailored to the specific dimensions of each patient’s defect. They developed a specialised bio-ink which supports the growth of healthy cells, while also ensuring the material can be printed accurately and holds its shape and structure.
However, the viability of 3D bioprinting is only as good as the parameters applied during the process. Factors such as extrusion pressure, print speed, nozzle dimensions, bio-ink viscosity and printhead temperature all play a crucial role in determining the final properties and performance of the printed component. Tuning these parameters has traditionally been done through tedious, manual trial-and-error experiments that are extremely time- and resource-consuming.
“To speed up the 3D bioprinting process, we integrated AI into our workflow to address this critical bottleneck,” said Professor Dean Ho, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, and co-corresponding author of the research paper. “This approach greatly streamlines the process by reducing the number of experiments needed to optimise the bioprinting parameters — from potentially thousands to just 25 combinations,” added Prof Ho, who is also Director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and N.1 Institute for Health (N.1) at NUS.
This tremendous efficiency boost afforded by the team’s AI-driven workflow saves time and resources while ensuring the creation of tissue constructs with precise dimensions and structural integrity.
“Our study is among the first to specifically integrate 3D bioprinting and AI technologies for the biofabrication of customised oral soft tissue constructs,” said Asst Prof Sriram, who is also the Thrust Co-Lead of Dental and Craniofacial 3DP Applications at NUS Centre for Additive Manufacturing (AM.NUS). “3D bioprinting is by far more challenging than conventional 3D printing because it involves living cells, which introduce a host of complexities to the printing process.”
The bioprinted gum tissue grafts exhibited strong biomimetic properties, maintaining over 90% cell viability immediately after printing and throughout an 18-day culture period. The grafts also retained their shape and structural integrity, while histological analyses confirmed the presence of key proteins and a multi-layered structure closely resembling natural gum tissue.
The future of dental care
In dentistry, the ability to produce personalised gum tissue grafts with improved efficiency, structural integrity, and biomimetic properties could address longstanding clinical challenges associated with periodontal diseases and dental implants. “This research demonstrates how AI and 3D bioprinting can converge to solve complex medical problems through precision medicine,” added Asst Prof Sriram. “By optimising tissue grafts for individual patients, we can reduce the invasiveness of dental procedures while ensuring better healing and recovery.”
Excitingly, the potential implications of this research extend beyond dentistry. “3D bioprinting allows us to create tissue grafts that precisely match the dimensions of a patient’s wounds, potentially reducing or eliminating the need to harvest tissue from the patient’s body,” said Asst Prof Sriram.
“This level of customisation minimises graft distortion and tension during wound closure, reducing the risk of complications, surgery time and discomfort to the patients.” said Dr Jacob Chew, a periodontist, co-investigator of the study, and Academic Fellow at NUS Faculty of Dentistry.
Furthermore, the scarless healing characteristics of oral tissue provide a unique advantage, as insights from this study could inform the fabrication of similar grafts for other barrier tissues, such as skin, potentially aiding in the scarless healing of skin wounds.
Future research will focus on translating these findings from bench to bedside. The team plans to conduct in vivo studies to assess the integration and stability of the grafts in oral environments. They also aim to explore the integration of blood vessels into the grafts through multi-material bioprinting to create more complex and functional constructs. With these developments, the researchers hope to advance the field of regenerative dentistry while paving the way for broader applications in tissue engineering.
MIT Solve has launched its 2025 Global Challenges, calling on innovators worldwide to submit transformative, tech-driven solutions to some of the planet's most pressing and persistent problems. With over $1 million in funding available, selected innovators have a unique opportunity to scale their solutions and gain an influential network."In an era where technology is transforming our world at breakneck speed, we're seeing a profound shift in how innovators approach global problems," says Hala H
MIT Solve has launched its 2025 Global Challenges, calling on innovators worldwide to submit transformative, tech-driven solutions to some of the planet's most pressing and persistent problems. With over $1 million in funding available, selected innovators have a unique opportunity to scale their solutions and gain an influential network.
"In an era where technology is transforming our world at breakneck speed, we're seeing a profound shift in how innovators approach global problems," says Hala Hanna, executive director of MIT Solve. "The unprecedented convergence of technological capabilities and social consciousness sets our current moment apart. Our Solver teams aren't just creating solutions — they're rewriting the rules of what's possible in social innovation. With their solutions now reaching over 280 million lives worldwide, they're demonstrating that human-centered technology can scale impact in ways we never imagined possible."
Thirty winning solutions will be announced at Solve Challenge Finals during Climate Week and the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. Selected innovators join the 2025 Solver Class, gaining access to a comprehensive nine-month support program that includes connections to MIT's innovation ecosystem, specialized mentorship, extensive pro-bono resources, and substantial funding from Solve's growing community of supporters.
2025 funding opportunities for selected Solvers exceed $1 million and include:
Health Innovation Award (supported by Johnson & Johnson Foundation):All Solver teams selected for Solve's Global Health Challenge will receive an additional prize from Global Health Anchor Supporter, Johnson & Johnson Foundation
The Seeding the Future Food Systems Prize (supported by the Seeding The Future Foundation)
The GM Prize (supported by General Motors)
The AI for Humanity Prize (supported by The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation)
The Crescent Enterprises "AI for Social Innovation" Prize(supported by Crescent Enterprises)
The Citizens Workforce Innovation Prize (supported by Citizens)
The E Ink Innovation Prize (supported by E Ink)
Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Ocean Innovation Prize (supported by Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation)
Schmidt Marine Wavemaker’s Prize (supported by Schmidt Marine Technology Partners)
Since 2015, supporters of MIT Solve have catalyzed more than 800 partnerships and deployed more than $70 million, touching the lives of 280 million people worldwide.
For over a decade, through a collaboration managed by MIT.nano, MIT and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec), one of the largest universities in Latin America, have worked together to develop innovative academic and research initiatives with a particular focus in nanoscience and nanotechnology and, more recently, an emphasis on design and smart manufacturing. Now, the collaboration has also expanded to include undergraduate education. Seven Tec undergrads are developing methods to manufacture low-cost
For over a decade, through a collaboration managed by MIT.nano, MIT and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Tec), one of the largest universities in Latin America, have worked together to develop innovative academic and research initiatives with a particular focus in nanoscience and nanotechnology and, more recently, an emphasis on design and smart manufacturing. Now, the collaboration has also expanded to include undergraduate education. Seven Tec undergrads are developing methods to manufacture low-cost, desktop fiber-extrusion devices, or FrEDs, alongside peers at MIT in an “in-the-lab” teaching and learning factory, the FrED Factory.
“The FrED Factory serves as a factory-like education platform for manufacturing scale-up, enabling students and researchers to engage firsthand in the transition from prototype development to small-scale production,” says Brian Anthony, MIT.nano associate director and principal research scientist in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE).
Through on-campus learning, participants observe, analyze, and actively contribute to this process, gaining critical insights into the complexities of scaling manufacturing operations. The product of the FrED Factory are FrED kits — tabletop manufacturing kits that themselves produce fiber and that are used to teach smart manufacturing principles. “We’re thrilled to have students from Monterrey Tec here at MIT, bringing new ideas and perspectives, and helping to develop these new ways to teach manufacturing at both MIT and Tec,” says Anthony.
The FrED factory was originally built by a group of MIT graduate students in 2022 as their thesis project in the Master of Engineering in Advanced Manufacturing and Design program. They adapted and scaled the original design of the device, built by Anthony’s student David Kim, into something that could be manufactured into multiple units at a substantially lower cost. The resulting computer-aided design files were shared with Tec de Monterrey for use by faculty and students. Since launching the FrED curriculum at Tec in 2022, MIT has co-hosted two courses led by Tec faculty: “Mechatronics Design: (Re) Design of FrED,” and “Automation of Manufacturing Systems: FrED Factory Challenge.”
New this academic year, undergraduate Tec students are participating in FrED Factory research immersions. The students engage in collaborative FrED projects at MIT and then return to Tec to implement their knowledge — particularly to help replicate and implement what they have learned, with the launch of a new FrED Factory at Tec de Monterrey this spring. The end goal is to fully integrate this project into Tec’s mechatronics engineering curriculum, in which students learn about automation and robotics firsthand through the devices.
Russel Bradley, a PhD student in MechE supervised by Anthony, is the project lead of FrED Factory and has been working closely with the undergraduate Tec students.
“The process of designing and manufacturing FrEDs is an educational experience in itself,” says Bradley. “Unlike a real factory, which likely wouldn’t welcome students to experiment with the machines, the FrED factory provides an environment where you can fail and learn.”
The Tec undergrads are divided into groups working on specific projects, including Development of an Education 4.0 Framework for FrED, Immersive Technology (AR) for Manufacturing Operations, Gamifying Advanced Manufacturing Education in FrED Factory, and Immersive Cognitive Factory Twins.
Sergio Siller Lobo is a Tec student who is working on the development of the education framework for FrED. He and other students are revising the code to make the interface more student-friendly and best enable the students to learn while working with the devices. They are focused particularly on helping students to engage with the topics of control systems, computer vision, and internet of things (IoT) in both a digital course that they are developing, and in directly working with the devices. The digital course can be presented by an instructor or done autonomously by students.
“Students can be learning the theory with the digital courses, as well as having access to hands-on, practical experience with the device,” says Siller Lobo. “You can have the best of both ways of learning, both the practical and the theoretical.”
Arik Gómez Horita, an undergrad from Tec who has also been working on the education framework, says that the technology that currently exists in terms of how to teach students about control systems, computer vision, and IoT is often very limited in either its capability or quantity.
“A key aspect of the value of the FrEDs is that we are integrating all these concepts and a module for education into a single device,” says Gómez Horita. “Bringing FrED into a classroom is a game-changer. Our main goal is trying to put FrED into the hands of the teacher, to use it for all its teaching capabilities.”
Once the students return to Tec de Monterrey with the educational modules they’ve developed, there will be workshops with the FrEDs and opportunities for Tec students to use their own creativity and iterate on the devices.
“The FrED is really a lab in a box, and one of the best things that FrEDs do is create data,” says Siller Lobo. “Finding new ways to get data from FrED gives it more value.”
Tec students Ángel Alarcón and André Mendoza are preparing to have MIT students test the FrED factory, running a simulation with the two main roles of engineer and operator. The operator role assembles the FrEDs within the workstations that simulate a factory. The engineer role analyzes the data created on the factory side by the operator and tries to find ways to improve production.
“This is a very immersive way to teach manufacturing systems,” says Alarcón. “Many students studying manufacturing, undergraduate and even graduate, finish their education never having even gone to an actual factory. The FrED Factory gives students the valuable opportunity to get to know what a factory is like and experience an industry environment without having to go off campus.”
The data gained from the workstations — including cycle time and defects in an operation — will be used to teach different topics about manufacturing. Ultimately, the FrED factory at Tec will be used to compare the benefits and drawbacks of automation versus manual labor.
Bradley says that the Tec students bring a strong mechatronics background that adds a lot of important insights to the project, and beyond the lab, it’s also a valuable multicultural exchange.
“It’s not just about what the students are learning from us,” says Bradley, “but it’s really a collaborative process in which we’re all complementing each other.”
Undergraduate students from Tecnológico de Monterrey have been learning how to build low-cost fiber-extrusion devices alongside their MIT peers at an in-lab assembly factory set up by MIT graduate students. Back row, l-r: Kayra Ilkbahar (MIT), Arman Shantayev (MIT), Arik Gómez Horita (Tec), Russel Bradley (MIT), Sergio Siller Lobo (Tec), Leonardo Elioenait Galán Cruz (Tec), Rohan Sanghai (MIT), and André Mauricio Mendoza Quevedo (Tec); Middle row, l-r: Adán Flores Ramírez (Tec) and Gilberto Ramírez Tamez (Tec); Front row, l-r: Pedro Ponce Cruz, visiting scientist from Tecnológico de Monterrey, and Brian Anthony, MIT.nano associate director and principal research scientist in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Renewable power sources have seen unprecedented levels of investment in recent years. But with political uncertainty clouding the future of subsidies for green energy, these technologies must begin to compete with fossil fuels on equal footing, said participants at the 2025 MIT Energy Conference.“What these technologies need less is training wheels, and more of a level playing field,” said Brian Deese, an MIT Institute Innovation Fellow, during a conference-opening keynote panel.The theme of the
Renewable power sources have seen unprecedented levels of investment in recent years. But with political uncertainty clouding the future of subsidies for green energy, these technologies must begin to compete with fossil fuels on equal footing, said participants at the 2025 MIT Energy Conference.
“What these technologies need less is training wheels, and more of a level playing field,” said Brian Deese, an MIT Institute Innovation Fellow, during a conference-opening keynote panel.
The theme of the two-day conference, which is organized each year by MIT students, was “Breakthrough to deployment: Driving climate innovation to market.” Speakers largely expressed optimism about advancements in green technology, balanced by occasional notes of alarm about a rapidly changing regulatory and political environment.
Deese defined what he called “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the current energy landscape. The good: Clean energy investment in the United States hit an all-time high of $272 billion in 2024. The bad: Announcements of future investments have tailed off. And the ugly: Macro conditions are making it more difficult for utilities and private enterprise to build out the clean energy infrastructure needed to meet growing energy demands.
“We need to build massive amounts of energy capacity in the United States,” Deese said. “And the three things that are the most allergic to building are high uncertainty, high interest rates, and high tariff rates. So that’s kind of ugly. But the question … is how, and in what ways, that underlying commercial momentum can drive through this period of uncertainty.”
A shifting clean energy landscape
During a panel on artificial intelligence and growth in electricity demand, speakers said that the technology may serve as a catalyst for green energy breakthroughs, in addition to putting strain on existing infrastructure. “Google is committed to building digital infrastructure responsibly, and part of that means catalyzing the development of clean energy infrastructure that is not only meeting the AI need, but also benefiting the grid as a whole,” said Lucia Tian, head of clean energy and decarbonization technologies at Google.
Across the two days, speakers emphasized that the cost-per-unit and scalability of clean energy technologies will ultimately determine their fate. But they also acknowledged the impact of public policy, as well as the need for government investment to tackle large-scale issues like grid modernization.
Vanessa Chan, a former U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) official and current vice dean of innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, warned of the “knock-on” effects of the move to slash National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for indirect research costs, for example. “In reality, what you’re doing is undercutting every single academic institution that does research across the nation,” she said.
During a panel titled “No clean energy transition without transmission,” Maria Robinson, former director of the DoE’s Grid Deployment Office, said that ratepayers alone will likely not be able to fund the grid upgrades needed to meet growing power demand. “The amount of investment we’re going to need over the next couple of years is going to be significant,” she said. “That’s where the federal government is going to have to play a role.”
David Cohen-Tanugi, a clean energy venture builder at MIT, noted that extreme weather events have changed the climate change conversation in recent years. “There was a narrative 10 years ago that said … if we start talking about resilience and adaptation to climate change, we’re kind of throwing in the towel or giving up,” he said. “I’ve noticed a very big shift in the investor narrative, the startup narrative, and more generally, the public consciousness. There’s a realization that the effects of climate change are already upon us.”
“Everything on the table”
The conference featured panels and keynote addresses on a range of emerging clean energy technologies, including hydrogen power, geothermal energy, and nuclear fusion, as well as a session on carbon capture.
Alex Creely, a chief engineer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, explained that fusion (the combining of small atoms into larger atoms, which is the same process that fuels stars) is safer and potentially more economical than traditional nuclear power. Fusion facilities, he said, can be powered down instantaneously, and companies like his are developing new, less-expensive magnet technology to contain the extreme heat produced by fusion reactors.
By the early 2030s, Creely said, his company hopes to be operating 400-megawatt power plants that use only 50 kilograms of fuel per year. “If you can get fusion working, it turns energy into a manufacturing product, not a natural resource,” he said.
Quinn Woodard Jr., senior director of power generation and surface facilities at geothermal energy supplier Fervo Energy, said his company is making the geothermal energy more economical through standardization, innovation, and economies of scale. Traditionally, he said, drilling is the largest cost in producing geothermal power. Fervo has “completely flipped the cost structure” with advances in drilling, Woodard said, and now the company is focused on bringing down its power plant costs.
“We have to continuously be focused on cost, and achieving that is paramount for the success of the geothermal industry,” he said.
One common theme across the conference: a number of approaches are making rapid advancements, but experts aren’t sure when — or, in some cases, if — each specific technology will reach a tipping point where it is capable of transforming energy markets.
“I don’t want to get caught in a place where we often descend in this climate solution situation, where it’s either-or,” said Peter Ellis, global director of nature climate solutions at The Nature Conservancy. “We’re talking about the greatest challenge civilization has ever faced. We need everything on the table.”
The road ahead
Several speakers stressed the need for academia, industry, and government to collaborate in pursuit of climate and energy goals. Amy Luers, senior global director of sustainability for Microsoft, compared the challenge to the Apollo spaceflight program, and she said that academic institutions need to focus more on how to scale and spur investments in green energy.
“The challenge is that academic institutions are not currently set up to be able to learn the how, in driving both bottom-up and top-down shifts over time,” Luers said. “If the world is going to succeed in our road to net zero, the mindset of academia needs to shift. And fortunately, it’s starting to.”
During a panel called “From lab to grid: Scaling first-of-a-kind energy technologies,” Hannan Happi, CEO of renewable energy company Exowatt, stressed that electricity is ultimately a commodity. “Electrons are all the same,” he said. “The only thing [customers] care about with regards to electrons is that they are available when they need them, and that they’re very cheap.”
Melissa Zhang, principal at Azimuth Capital Management, noted that energy infrastructure development cycles typically take at least five to 10 years — longer than a U.S. political cycle. However, she warned that green energy technologies are unlikely to receive significant support at the federal level in the near future. “If you’re in something that’s a little too dependent on subsidies … there is reason to be concerned over this administration,” she said.
World Energy CEO Gene Gebolys, the moderator of the lab-to-grid panel, listed off a number of companies founded at MIT. “They all have one thing in common,” he said. “They all went from somebody’s idea, to a lab, to proof-of-concept, to scale. It’s not like any of this stuff ever ends. It’s an ongoing process.”
During a panel at the 2025 MIT Energy Conference, Lucia Tian (center), head of clean energy and decarbonization technologies at Google, discusses the challenges and opportunities that AI and rapid electrification bring to electricity demand.
Health
How to take yourself less seriously
Illustration by Harry Haysom/Ikon Images
April 3, 2025
4 min read
Clinical psychologist draws line between self-deprecating humor (with its health, social benefits) and self-flagellation
Part of the
Wondering
series
A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.
Natalie Dattilo is an instructo
There are many categories of humor. Self-deprecating humor is its own category.
I use laughter and humor when treating people struggling with depression and anxiety. Self-deprecating humor can be useful in a clinical setting. I use it myself to show its power and invite connection. For example, I’m a mom and I’m constantly saying, “mom failing,” and things like that. I think that’s fine because to call yourself out like that provides a bit of the unexpected and sends the message that it’s OK not to take yourself so seriously. Bringing humor into that conversation is also beneficial because of the safety it signals. Humor lightens the load or defuses the intensity of that moment, and can help facilitate emotion regulation, which will help you re-establish some sense of clarity and perspective.
The term self-deprecating humor makes it sound much more negative than it is. For me, it is not making fun of yourself; it is taking yourself, or the situation that you’re in, less seriously. People who tend to use self-deprecating humor effectively are quite humble and self-aware. These are people who see themselves for who they are, for better or worse, and they have come to accept that. It signals some level of self-confidence. There is an openness and willingness to be vulnerable. It also highlights the likability of people who don’t take themselves very seriously.
Learning how to take yourself less seriously without putting yourself down is important.
What’s interesting about the use of self-deprecating humor is that it’s almost somewhat spontaneous, which can be very revealing. The language being used can sometimes be indicative of somebody who is coming from a place of hurt or low self-esteem. Extreme self-criticism and the use of very harsh language to talk about yourself, including the tone and the context, matter.
Sometimes, self-deprecation can be used as a bid for attention. Somebody might be using what sounds like humor, but what it’s drawing from us is sympathy. It may also be a little off-putting on the receivers. When you’re saying something that you think is funny, but other people are like, “Oh, that’s not funny,” then do a closer look within to see where some of that is originating from, and what’s the hope in expressing that. Also, when we take ourselves too seriously or take the situations that we find ourselves in too seriously, it can create a feedback loop, in which we are feeling negatively about ourselves and putting negativity out and having that also fed back to us.
Learning how to take yourself less seriously without putting yourself down is important. If you say something that comes into your mind, and you think it’s funny, when you say it, does it make you feel better, or does it make you feel worse? Or does it elicit the response that you were hoping for?
It’s interesting to note that self-deprecating humor tends to be more common in individualistic cultures, while collective cultures often make fun of others. Western cultures put more emphasis on relatability and approachability; being able to have people relate to you by signaling flaws and vulnerabilities sends the message that everybody has struggles and we are all in this together. Cultures that are more collective tend to poke fun at one another because there’s a different sense of community. It’s the same way in which you’d would poke fun at your sibling. It’s good-natured, and it’s not meant to cause ill or harm.
I see a lot of us taking things to an extreme in a way that’s not helpful and probably not healthy. Taking ourselves less seriously is a tool to bring us back into some better balance, either within ourselves or with other people. As an example, think about two people who disagree deeply about something and have trouble connecting with each other. In those situations, finding common ground through something that may be humorous could be a game-changer. That sounds like I’m exaggerating the power of humor, but when we take ourselves too seriously, we end up isolating ourselves and that prevents us from connecting with others.
Health
Researchers ID 17 risk factors shared by age-related brain disease
Liana Wait
Mass General Brigham Communications
April 3, 2025
4 min read
Study finds that modifying one factor can reduce risk of stroke, dementia, and late-life depression
Seventeen modifiable factors have been identified that can lower people’s risk of age-related brain diseases such as stroke, dementia, and late
Researchers ID 17 risk factors shared by age-related brain disease
Liana Wait
Mass General Brigham Communications
4 min read
Study finds that modifying one factor can reduce risk of stroke, dementia, and late-life depression
Seventeen modifiable factors have been identified that can lower people’s risk of age-related brain diseases such as stroke, dementia, and late-life depression, according to researchers at Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham.
The study found a reduced risk of all three conditions by modifying any one of the 17 factors. The results, which provide evidence to inform novel tools, such as the Brain Care Score, are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry.
The researchers systematically searched the scientific literature for previously published meta-analyses of risk factors associated with stroke, dementia, and late-life depression. Then, they combined these data to identify modifiable risk factors (i.e., those that can be altered through behavioral change) shared amongst at least two out of the three diseases. They also estimated the relative impact of each risk factor on measures of quality of life and early death.
Altogether, the researchers identified risk factors shared by at least two of the diseases, including blood pressure, kidney disease, fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol, alcohol use, diet, hearing loss, pain, physical activity, purpose in life, sleep, smoking, social engagement, and stress. Of these, high blood pressure and severe kidney disease had the biggest impact on the incidence and burden of stroke, dementia, and late-life depression.
Diabetes
Diabetes is a risk factor for stroke, dementia, and depression.
Blood Pressure
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for all three conditions.
Kidney Disease
Kidney disease can increase the risk of stroke, dementia, and depression.
Fasting Plasma Glucose
High blood sugar levels, as indicated by fasting plasma glucose, are a risk factor.
Total Cholesterol
High cholesterol levels can increase the risk of stroke and dementia.
Alcohol Use
Excessive alcohol consumption is linked to increased risk of stroke, dementia, and depression.
Diet
A poor diet can contribute to the development of all three conditions.
Hearing Loss
Hearing loss is a modifiable risk factor for dementia.
Pain
Chronic pain can increase the risk of depression and potentially other conditions.
Physical Activity
Lack of physical activity is a risk factor for all three conditions.
Purpose in Life
A lack of purpose in life can contribute to depression and potentially other conditions.
Sleep
Poor sleep quality and quantity can increase the risk of depression and potentially other conditions.
Smoking
Smoking is a major risk factor for stroke, dementia, and depression.
Social Engagement
Lack of social engagement can contribute to depression and potentially other conditions.
Stress
Chronic stress can increase the risk of depression and potentially other conditions.
Depression
Untreated depression can increase the risk of other conditions.
Obesity
Obesity is a risk factor for stroke, dementia, and depression.
In contrast, physical activity and engagement in leisure activities with a cognitive aspect (e.g., puzzles) were associated with a lower risk of disease, though the researchers suspect that these associations may be symptomatic rather than causal, since individuals with brain disease may be less capable of engaging in physical and cognitive leisure activities.
“Dementia, stroke, and late-life depression are connected and intertwined, so if you develop one of them, there’s a substantial chance you may develop another one in the future,” said first author Jasper Senff, postdoctoral fellow at the Singh Lab at the Brain Care Labs at Mass General Hospital and at Harvard Medical School. “And because they share these overlapping risk factors, preventive efforts could lead to a reduction in the incidence of more than one of these diseases, which provides an opportunity to simultaneously reduce the burden of age-related brain diseases.”
Mass General Brigham researchers developed and validated the Brain Care Score to measure efforts to protect brain health and offer guidance on how to improve it. The researchers have updated the Brain Care Score to reflect the latest scientific findings. They emphasize the need for more studies on modifiable risk factors of late-life depression and call for a randomized controlled trial to test an intervention using the Brain Care Score.
“Healthcare is increasingly complex. But these findings remind us that preventing disease can be very simple. Why? Because many of the most common diseases share the same risk factors,” said Jonathan Rosand, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, founder of the Global Brain Care Coalition, and the JP Kistler Endowed Chair in Neurology at MGH.
In the fight against bacterial pathogens, researchers are combining vaccination with targeted colonisation of the intestine by harmless microorganisms. This approach could potentially mark a turning point in the antibiotics crisis.
In the fight against bacterial pathogens, researchers are combining vaccination with targeted colonisation of the intestine by harmless microorganisms. This approach could potentially mark a turning point in the antibiotics crisis.
The process of catalysis — in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction — is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work.A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from on
The process of catalysis — in which a material speeds up a chemical reaction — is crucial to the production of many of the chemicals used in our everyday lives. But even though these catalytic processes are widespread, researchers often lack a clear understanding of exactly how they work.
A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds.
There are two broad classes of catalysts: homogeneous catalysts, which consist of dissolved molecules, and heterogeneous catalysts, which are solid materials whose surface provides the site for the chemical reaction. “For the longest time,” Surendranath says, “there’s been a general view that you either have catalysis happening on these surfaces, or you have them happening on these soluble molecules.” But the new research shows that in the case of vinyl acetate — an important material that goes into many polymer products such as the rubber in the soles of your shoes — there is an interplay between both classes of catalysis.
“What we discovered,” Surendranath explains, “is that you actually have these solid metal materials converting into molecules, and then converting back into materials, in a cyclic dance.”
He adds: “This work calls into question this paradigm where there’s either one flavor of catalysis or another. Really, there could be an interplay between both of them in certain cases, and that could be really advantageous for having a process that’s selective and efficient.”
The synthesis of vinyl acetate has been a large-scale industrial reaction since the 1960s, and it has been well-researched and refined over the years to improve efficiency. This has happened largely through a trial-and-error approach, without a precise understanding of the underlying mechanisms, the researchers say.
While chemists are often more familiar with homogeneous catalysis mechanisms, and chemical engineers are often more familiar with surface catalysis mechanisms, fewer researchers study both. This is perhaps part of the reason that the full complexity of this reaction was not previously captured. But Harraz says he and his colleagues are working at the interface between disciplines. “We’ve been able to appreciate both sides of this reaction and find that both types of catalysis are critical,” he says.
The reaction that produces vinyl acetate requires something to activate the oxygen molecules that are one of the constituents of the reaction, and something else to activate the other ingredients, acetic acid and ethylene. The researchers found that the form of the catalyst that worked best for one part of the process was not the best for the other. It turns out that the molecular form of the catalyst does the key chemistry with the ethylene and the acetic acid, while it’s the surface that ends up doing the activation of the oxygen.
They found that the underlying process involved in interconverting the two forms of the catalyst is actually corrosion, similar to the process of rusting. “It turns out that in rusting, you actually go through a soluble molecular species somewhere in the sequence,” Surendranath says.
The team borrowed techniques traditionally used in corrosion research to study the process. They used electrochemical tools to study the reaction, even though the overall reaction does not require a supply of electricity. By making potential measurements, the researchers determined that the corrosion of the palladium catalyst material to soluble palladium ions is driven by an electrochemical reaction with the oxygen, converting it to water. Corrosion is “one of the oldest topics in electrochemistry,” says Lodaya, “but applying the science of corrosion to understand catalysis is much newer, and was essential to our findings.”
By correlating measurements of catalyst corrosion with other measurements of the chemical reaction taking place, the researchers proposed that it was the corrosion rate that was limiting the overall reaction. “That’s the choke point that’s controlling the rate of the overall process,” Surendranath says.
The interplay between the two types of catalysis works efficiently and selectively “because it actually uses the synergy of a material surface doing what it’s good at and a molecule doing what it’s good at,” Surendranath says. The finding suggests that, when designing new catalysts, rather than focusing on either solid materials or soluble molecules alone, researchers should think about how the interplay of both may open up new approaches.
“Now, with an improved understanding of what makes this catalyst so effective, you can try to design specific materials or specific interfaces that promote the desired chemistry,” Harraz says. Since this process has been worked on for so long, these findings may not necessarily lead to improvements in this specific process of making vinyl acetate, but it does provide a better understanding of why the materials work as they do, and could lead to improvements in other catalytic processes.
Understanding that “catalysts can transit between molecule and material and back, and the role that electrochemistry plays in those transformations, is a concept that we are really excited to expand on,” Lodaya says.
Harraz adds: “With this new understanding that both types of catalysis could play a role, what other catalytic processes are out there that actually involve both? Maybe those have a lot of room for improvement that could benefit from this understanding.”
This work is “illuminating, something that will be worth teaching at the undergraduate level," says Christophe Coperet, a professor of inorganic chemistry at ETH Zurich, who was not associated with the research. “The work highlights new ways of thinking. ... [It] is notable in the sense that it not only reconciles homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis, but it describes these complex processes as half reactions, where electron transfers can cycle between distinct entities.”
The research was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation as a Phase I Center for Chemical Innovation; the Center for Interfacial Ionics; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
A new analysis by researchers at MIT has shown that an important industrial synthesis process, the production of vinyl acetate, requires a catalyst to take two different forms, which cycle back and forth from one to the other as the chemical process unfolds.
The Potter Museum of Art, the flagship art museum of the University of Melbourne, has announced the full list of artists and details of the six new commissions for the 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art exhibition.
The Potter Museum of Art, the flagship art museum of the University of Melbourne, has announced the full list of artists and details of the six new commissions for the 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art exhibition.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Arts & Culture
Patricia Lockwood wants you to admit the internet is real life
In Harvard talk, author riffs on ‘cloistered’ upbringing, crafting characters through dialogue, working in bed vs. on couch
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
April 3, 2025
5 min read
Patricia Lockwood thinks people are uncomfortable with the idea that the
Patricia Lockwood wants you to admit the internet is real life
In Harvard talk, author riffs on ‘cloistered’ upbringing, crafting characters through dialogue, working in bed vs. on couch
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
5 min read
Patricia Lockwood thinks people are uncomfortable with the idea that the internet is real life. It’s why she believes novels about the internet — including her 2021 book, “No One Is Talking About This,” about a social media star whose online life gets upended by a family emergency — are often dismissed as frivolous.
“Honestly, it made people malfunction, like they didn’t know what to do,” Lockwood said about her debut novel at a recent Writers Speak event hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center. “There was still this idea that the internet couldn’t be in a book, and that really fascinated me.”
The discomfort, she theorized, stems from people perceiving their own online lives as private and embarrassing. To admit that the internet is real life is to admit a person’s online self is their authentic self, Lockwood told the Fong Auditorium audience.
The poet, novelist, and author of the 2017 memoir “Priestdaddy,” who is known for her sharp literary voice and irreverent social media presence, spoke with FAS Assistant Professor of English Tara K. Menon about crafting characters, writing long-form in an era of micro-content, and the art of inhabiting another writer’s mind.
“I think it’s worthwhile to spend your life reading and writing, and I think it’s worthwhile studying the way other people did those things,” said Lockwood, adding that, given a free day, she would probably spend eight hours of it reading.
Patricia Lockwood (right) with moderator Tara K. Menon.
Lockwood’s characters are vivid and complex on the page and in real life — none more so than her father, a gun-loving Navy veteran who became a Catholic priest despite being married with five children. Whether writing about him, or fictional characters, she said capturing their dialogue was key.
“If I can reproduce the speech patterns of my parents, if I can write down those odd turns of phrase, you have them,” Lockwood said. “You don’t necessarily need their interiority — because I don’t have that, I don’t understand why they do anything — but I know how they sound, and I know how they interact with each other, and I know how they interact with me.”
Lockwood said her extremely “cloistered” upbringing in the rectory where her family lived after her father became a priest helped her to keenly observe the world.
“I didn’t get out into the world the way that people did, so my encounters with it felt rare or cherished,” she said. “Walking around Harvard Square becomes a very, very rare experience, and you notice all aspects of it. If you notice all aspects, you set them down. That’s how it works for me.”
“I do it [literary criticism] because it is some sort of celestial homework. I do feel like you are working through someone’s mind.”
Lockwood, who didn’t go to college, said that exploring literature on her own gave her a sense of freedom that has helped rather than hindered her as a writer. She could choose her own translations of Tolstoy and not read any ancillary material and biographies if they weren’t interesting to her.
“I didn’t have anxiety about interpretation, really,” Lockwood said. “I was experiencing them as production of a mind, and I was trying to project myself into that mind, into that capability, from a very young age.”
Her preference is to write propped up in bed, notebook on her knees and a cat by her side, but chronic migraines have forced her to adopt a more ergonomic setup. These days, Lockwood writes perched at the end of one couch, legs stretched onto another. She demonstrated her signature posture on a sofa that was hastily dragged onstage, to the delight of the audience.
Menon so admires Lockwood’s literary criticism, especially her searing review of John Updike in the London Review of Books, that she compiled a list of what makes Lockwood such a good critic.
“One thing that I feel has become more and more rare is that you’re not afraid to do two things: say something is good or bad or a failure, and say whether you liked it or didn’t like it,” Menon said. “Even more impressive if you didn’t.”
“I do it because it is some sort of celestial homework,” Lockwood said. “I do feel like you are working through someone’s mind. You’re entering those times, how they thought, and you’re entering their talent. If you feel your own talent to be limited, it’s like you take on their abilities for a time. It’s really this transmutation. It’s amazing. You go above your own height.”
During the Q&A session, an audience member asked Lockwood if the form of the novel can survive in an era of micro-content and shrinking attention spans. Lockwood answered that some people welcome long-form fiction even when surrounded by micro-content. She cautioned against trying to find a prescription for shrinking attention spans or adopting new literary forms to follow a perceived trend.
“I don’t think that because we write this way online, that this is the appetite,” Lockwood said. “I think that the novel creates appetites. If you like the ‘fat,’ stick with the fat, you don’t have to sear that away. People who need solace, people who need to flee from that fragmentation, go to people like you for that sort of thing.”
Polymer-coated nanoparticles loaded with therapeutic drugs show significant promise for cancer treatment, including ovarian cancer. These particles can be targeted directly to tumors, where they release their payload while avoiding many of the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.Over the past decade, MIT Institute Professor Paula Hammond and her students have created a variety of these particles using a technique known as layer-by-layer assembly. They’ve shown that the particles can effecti
Polymer-coated nanoparticles loaded with therapeutic drugs show significant promise for cancer treatment, including ovarian cancer. These particles can be targeted directly to tumors, where they release their payload while avoiding many of the side effects of traditional chemotherapy.
Over the past decade, MIT Institute Professor Paula Hammond and her students have created a variety of these particles using a technique known as layer-by-layer assembly. They’ve shown that the particles can effectively combat cancer in mouse studies.
To help move these nanoparticles closer to human use, the researchers have now come up with a manufacturing technique that allows them to generate larger quantities of the particles, in a fraction of the time.
“There’s a lot of promise with the nanoparticle systems we’ve been developing, and we’ve been really excited more recently with the successes that we’ve been seeing in animal models for our treatments for ovarian cancer in particular,” says Hammond, who is also MIT’s vice provost for faculty and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “Ultimately, we need to be able to bring this to a scale where a company is able to manufacture these on a large level.”
Hammond and Darrell Irvine, a professor of immunology and microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute, are the senior authors of the new study, which appears today in Advanced Functional Materials. Ivan Pires PhD ’24, now a postdoc at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a visiting scientist at the Koch Institute, and Ezra Gordon ’24 are the lead authors of paper. Heikyung Suh, an MIT research technician, is also an author.
A streamlined process
More than a decade ago, Hammond’s lab developed a novel technique for building nanoparticles with highly controlled architectures. This approach allows layers with different properties to be laid down on the surface of a nanoparticle by alternately exposing the surface to positively and negatively charged polymers.
Each layer can be embedded with drug molecules or other therapeutics. The layers can also carry targeting molecules that help the particles find and enter cancer cells.
Using the strategy that Hammond’s lab originally developed, one layer is applied at a time, and after each application, the particles go through a centrifugation step to remove any excess polymer. This is time-intensive and would be difficult to scale up to large-scale production, the researchers say.
More recently, a graduate student in Hammond’s lab developed an alternative approach to purifying the particles, known as tangential flow filtration. However, while this streamlined the process, it still was limited by its manufacturing complexity and maximum scale of production.
“Although the use of tangential flow filtration is helpful, it’s still a very small-batch process, and a clinical investigation requires that we would have many doses available for a significant number of patients,” Hammond says.
To create a larger-scale manufacturing method, the researchers used a microfluidic mixing device that allows them to sequentially add new polymer layers as the particles flow through a microchannel within the device. For each layer, the researchers can calculate exactly how much polymer is needed, which eliminates the need to purify the particles after each addition.
“That is really important because separations are the most costly and time-consuming steps in these kinds of systems,” Hammond says.
This strategy eliminates the need for manual polymer mixing, streamlines production, and integrates good manufacturing practice (GMP)-compliant processes. The FDA’s GMP requirements ensure that products meet safety standards and can be manufactured in a consistent fashion, which would be highly challenging and costly using the previous step-wise batch process. The microfluidic device that the researchers used in this study is already used for GMP manufacturing of other types of nanoparticles, including mRNA vaccines.
“With the new approach, there’s much less chance of any sort of operator mistake or mishaps,” Pires says. “This is a process that can be readily implemented in GMP, and that’s really the key step here. We can create an innovation within the layer-by-layer nanoparticles and quickly produce it in a manner that we could go into clinical trials with.”
Scaled-up production
Using this approach, the researchers can generate 15 milligrams of nanoparticles (enough for about 50 doses) in just a few minutes, while the original technique would take close to an hour to create the same amount. This could enable the production of more than enough particles for clinical trials and patient use, the researchers say.
“To scale up with this system, you just keep running the chip, and it is much easier to produce more of your material,” Pires says.
To demonstrate their new production technique, the researchers created nanoparticles coated with a cytokine called interleukin-12 (IL-12). Hammond’s lab has previously shown that IL-12 delivered by layer-by-layer nanoparticles can activate key immune cells and slow ovarian tumor growth in mice.
In this study, the researchers found that IL-12-loaded particles manufactured using the new technique showed similar performance as the original layer-by-layer nanoparticles. And, not only do these nanoparticles bind to cancer tissue, but they show a unique ability to not enter the cancer cells. This allows the nanoparticles to serve as markers on the cancer cells that activate the immune system locally in the tumor. In mouse models of ovarian cancer, this treatment can lead to both tumor growth delay and even cures.
The researchers have filed for a patent on the technology and are now working with MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation in hopes of potentially forming a company to commercialize the technology. While they are initially focusing on cancers of the abdominal cavity, such as ovarian cancer, the work could also be applied to other types of cancer, including glioblastoma, the researchers say.
The research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Marble Center for Nanomedicine, the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.
MIT researchers Paula Hammond, Ivan Pires, and Ezra Gordon have developed a way to rapidly manufacture specialized nanoparticles that can be used for targeted delivery of cancer drugs and other therapeutics.
The UK government is taking steps to research potential interventions that could reduce global warming by reflecting sunlight into space.
New research will model the risks and impacts of using solar radiation modification (SRM) to guide informed decision-making on climate interventions.
Read more at the Centre for Climate Repair
Cambridge is leading one of four projects receiving new funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to model the risks and impacts of solar radiati
Cambridge is leading one of four projects receiving new funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to model the risks and impacts of solar radiation modification (SRM).
Monuments tell stories, but not always the whole story. Professor of architecture Silke Langenberg on why we need to take a broader approach to heritage conservation and which sites also deserve protection, in this interview to mark the 50th anniversary of the European Architectural Heritage Year.
Monuments tell stories, but not always the whole story. Professor of architecture Silke Langenberg on why we need to take a broader approach to heritage conservation and which sites also deserve protection, in this interview to mark the 50th anniversary of the European Architectural Heritage Year.
NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of NUS, celebrated the opening of BLOCK71 Tokyo, its second office in Japan on 28 March 2025. The new Tokyo office strengthens NUS’ role in the global start-up ecosystem and opens new doors for entrepreneurs, made possible by strong collaborations with Japanese partners like JR East, its key partner for BLOCK71 Tokyo.The partnership between NUS and JR East began in September 2023 with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to promote entrepreneurial opportuni
NUS Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of NUS, celebrated the opening of BLOCK71 Tokyo, its second office in Japan on 28 March 2025. The new Tokyo office strengthens NUS’ role in the global start-up ecosystem and opens new doors for entrepreneurs, made possible by strong collaborations with Japanese partners like JR East, its key partner for BLOCK71 Tokyo.
The partnership between NUS and JR East began in September 2023 with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to promote entrepreneurial opportunities between Singapore and Japan. That same year, NUS launched the NUS Enterprise Market Immersion Programme in Japan, with JR East as one of its partners. This programme has enabled NUS start-ups like M.I. Cloud Technologies and Mycotech Lab to explore the Japanese market and connect with potential corporate partners.
Building on this momentum, NUS teamed up earlier this year with JR East and ICMG Group, a leading business co-creation partner for Japanese companies, to launch a programme aimed at advancing open innovation strategies in Southeast Asia. This initiative encourages Japanese companies to collaborate with start-ups to create new products and services, accelerate growth, and bring innovative solutions to market faster.
The opening of BLOCK71 Tokyo marks a significant milestone in the collaboration between NUS and its Japanese partners, reinforcing the shared commitment to developing robust start-up ecosystems in both countries. Located at TAKANAWA GATEWAY Link Scholars’ Hub, BLOCK71 Tokyo will support the growth of Southeast Asian technology-driven start-ups in Japan, contributing to an urban development focus on environmental sustainability, mobility and robotics, and smart health. It will also provide Japanese start-ups with the resources needed to expand into Southeast Asia and beyond.
"Japan’s strong foundation in technology and research makes it an ideal environment for start-up growth. It ranks among the world’s top three countries for patent applications and invests over 3 per cent of its GDP in R&D, one of the highest globally,” said NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye at the opening of BLOCK71 Tokyo.
“This creates immense potential for innovation. With BLOCK71 Tokyo located in the country’s latest innovation hub, we have a strategic platform to connect start-ups and drive cross-border collaboration. To amplify our impact, we are partnering one of Japan’s top universities, a major corporation, and a leading venture capital firm, all sharing our vision to foster deep tech innovation and build a robust global ecosystem,” he added.
The BLOCK71 Japan team has since supported over 15 start-ups following the successful launch of BLOCK71 Nagoya in November 2024. BLOCK71 is NUS Enterprise’s global network of physical accelerators, providing start-ups with resources, mentorship, and access to international markets across 11 cities.
NUS collaborates with Japanese partners, who will invest about S$10 million to spur global venture creation
To deepen its impact, NUS inked three new partnerships in the lead-up to the opening of BLOCK71 Tokyo. Through these strategic collaborations, NUS will reinforce its position as a leading start-up university in the global innovation landscape, nurturing entrepreneurial mindsets and empowering the next generation of technology entrepreneurs.
Central Japan Innovation Capital
The first partnership is with Central Japan Innovation Capital (CJIC), a subsidiary of the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System. CJIC will invest up to 5 per cent of its assets under management in NUS-affiliated deep tech start-ups, supporting their growth and expansion into the Japanese and Southeast Asian markets. The fund aims to raise over S$40 million by November 2025. This collaboration will also provide broader opportunities for knowledge exchange and cross-border innovation.
Kyoto University
Beyond funding, NUS is enhancing entrepreneurial support for deep tech start-ups through its partnership with Kyoto University. As a first step, Kyoto University will send start-ups to join the NUS Graduate Research Innovation Programme (NUS GRIP). They will also become the first overseas university partner to offer a localised version of the programme. This will empower Kyoto University’s graduate students, researchers, and alumni to transform research into impactful deep tech ventures, addressing some of the social challenges in Asia and seizing new opportunities.
Both universities will also offer exchange programmes to foster cross-border entrepreneurial experiences. Kyoto University students will have the opportunity to intern at NUS GRIP start-ups, while NUS GRIP start-ups can gain hands-on experience from Kyoto University Innovation Capital Co. Ltd, the university’s venture capital arm.
TIS Inc
NUS will expand its entrepreneurship efforts to build a globally connected start-up ecosystem through a partnership with TIS Inc, one of Japan's leading IT companies. Together, they will launch the Deep Tech Seed to A Growth Expansion Programme (Deep-SAGE), a tailored start-up acceleration initiative to help seed-stage start-ups worldwide scale towards pre-Series A and Series A funding.
Over the next three years, TIS Inc will invest a total of S$7.6 million in Deep-SAGE, supporting up to 30 start-ups. As part of this commitment, at least S$500,000 will be allocated annually to fund a minimum of two start-ups per cohort. The programme, delivered by BLOCK71, will provide structured support through virtual mentorship sessions and workshops. Additionally, start-ups will gain access to incubation opportunities at BLOCK71 offices in 11 cities, including Singapore, Silicon Valley, Saigon and Suzhou.
Deepening market immersion and cultural exchange in Tokyo
Building on the collaboration between NUS and JR East, and riding on the success of its second Japan Immersion Programme in Nagoya held in 2024, BLOCK71 Japan will launch the third edition in Tokyo in May 2025. Start-ups that participated in the 2024 programme have gained valuable insights into Japan’s manufacturing landscape and went on to build industry connections, secure customers, and develop proof-of-concept projects, all of which are crucial for breaking into Japan’s competitive market.
Robotics firm RoPlus had a fruitful experience participating in the Japan Immersion Programme organised by BLOCK71 Japan in 2024, said Mr Low Jin Huat, the start-up’s co-founder. “We had the opportunity to engage in individual meetings with stakeholders, including end-users and potential investors. Additionally, we showcased our products at Messe Nagoya, where we connected with various industry partners and increased market awareness.”
“Through this programme, we successfully secured a distributor for the Japanese market and engaged two potential end-users,” Mr Low added, as he thanked BLOCK71 Japan for “fostering a supportive ecosystem and providing a strategic platform for NUS spin-offs to enter the Japanese market.”
Another start-up said the programme enabled it to make valuable connections with Japanese companies. “We were able to secure a pilot project with one of the companies we met during this programme. It has helped us shape our strategy for entering the Japanese market,” said Mr Zaid Ahmed Khan, CEO of M.I. Cloud Technologies.
The 2025 edition will focus on the three key themes of TAKANAWA GATEWAY CITY, namely, environmental sustainability, mobility and robotics, and smart health. It will welcome five Southeast Asian start-ups, who will have the chance to showcase their solutions at the upcoming GATEWAY Tech TAKANAWA, an event for large corporations and start-ups to exchange innovative ideas and solutions. This immersive experience will further strengthen ties between Southeast Asia and Japan, equipping start-ups with the knowledge and networks they need to enter new markets and drive innovation.
Nation & World
Envisioning a country with no Dept. of Education
Panelist Neal McCluskey, who favors abolishing the Department of Education, expressed concern over the government’s “haphazard” methods.Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
April 2, 2025
4 min read
Panelists weigh potential consequences of Trump plan to eliminate agency, transfer authori
Panelist Neal McCluskey, who favors abolishing the Department of Education, expressed concern over the government’s “haphazard” methods.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
Panelists weigh potential consequences of Trump plan to eliminate agency, transfer authority to states
A panel of experts convened Tuesday at the Graduate School of Education to weigh the potential consequences of President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education.
A cabinet-level executive branch agency, the department oversees policy, administers federal funding for schools, and ensures equal access to education. It also manages federal student aid programs, including Pell grants, supports research, and collects data. The agency oversees a budget of nearly $80 billion, of which about $34 billion helps low-income students and students with disabilities. It also manages more than $1.6 trillion in student loans.
In the days since the president’s order to “facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states,” the agency, led by Linda McMahon, has canceled research contracts and cut staff by nearly half. Democratic attorneys general, teachers’ unions, and education organizations, among others, have filed 19 separate lawsuits challenging the administration’s education agenda, arguing that the move to close down the agency is an illegal overreach. The department was created by an act of Congress in 1979, and opponents of the Trump order say that shutting it down would also require congressional action.
Martin West (from left), Brian Gill, Catherine Lhamon, Neal McCluskey, and Andrew Rotherham.
Educators, students, and families find themselves in a confusing and unsettling environment, said Martin West, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education, who moderated the conversation.
Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, favors abolishing the agency and restoring control of public schools to the states, but was critical of the government’s methods.
“My biggest concern is that this is being done so haphazardly — like a bull in a china shop,” he said. “I want to see the Department of Education go away, but if it’s done without any planning, in a way that is haphazard, that is just chaos, I’m afraid that it’ll make it look like what I want is horrendous.”
Andrew Rotherham, co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether, a national educational nonprofit, highlighted the potential fallout of lost funds in high-poverty areas across the country. Through Title I, the department provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers of children from low-income families.
“You’re obviously going to see impacts in high-poverty school districts,” said Rotherham. “In terms of the politics of this, it’s important to remember that that money gets spent in red communities, blue communities, red states, blue states, purple states. Everyone’s affected.”
“It’s important to remember that that money gets spent in red communities, blue communities, red states, blue states, purple states. Everyone’s affected.”
Andrew Rotherham, Bellwether
Catherine Lhamon, a former Ed Department assistant secretary for civil rights, lamented the implications for regional civil rights offices, which are responsible for enforcing protections guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law. Seven of 12 offices have been shuttered, she said.
“That means that fewer than half of the investigators who are struggling to do the work already are now left to do the entire nation’s civil rights enforcement work, and to guarantee that no one experiences discrimination based on race, sex, and disability in schools,” said Lhamon. “When I left on Jan. 20, our staff were carrying on average 50 cases per person, which is an untenable caseload.”
She added: “What we know is that schools are incubators for how to be in the world, how to participate in democracy, and how to be effective in our communities. … We are walking away from six decades of commitments to core protections for who each of us is. I find that terrifying.”
The panelists also voiced concerns about cuts to research administered through the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences, which has seen more than 100 layoffs. Brian Gill, a senior fellow at Mathematica, noted that his organization last month saw the cancelation of several projects contracted by the institute. The long-term effects are a big worry, he said.
“Changes to research aren’t going to have immediate effects in schools,” Gill said. “In the research world, it’s been a big deal. If you care about developing research and new programs in education, and making the schools work better in the long term, this is likely to matter.”
The MIT School of Science welcomes Jess Speedie, one of eight recipients of the 2025 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 27 by the Heising-Simons Foundation.The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, named after the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a sun-like star, was established in 2017 to provide postdocs with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.Speedie, who expects to complete her PhD in astronomy at the University o
The MIT School of Science welcomes Jess Speedie, one of eight recipients of the 2025 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 27 by the Heising-Simons Foundation.
The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship, named after the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a sun-like star, was established in 2017 to provide postdocs with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.
Speedie, who expects to complete her PhD in astronomy at the University of Victoria, Canada, this summer, will be hosted by the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). She will be mentored by Kerr-McGee Career Development Professor Richard Teague as she uses a combination of observational data and simulations to study the birth of planets and the processes of planetary formation.
“The planetary environment is where all the good stuff collects … it has the greatest potential for the most interesting things in the universe to happen, such as the origin of life,” she says. “Planets, for me, are where the stories happen.”
Speedie’s work has focused on understanding “cosmic nurseries” and the detection and characterization of the youngest planets in the galaxy. A lot of this work has made use of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located in northern Chile. Made up of a collection of 66 parabolic dishes, ALMA studies the universe with radio wavelengths, and Speedie has developed a novel approach to find signals in the data of gravitational instability in protoplanetary disks, a method of planetary formation.
“One of the big, big questions right now in the community focused on planet formation is, where are the planets? It is that simple. We think they’re developing in these disks, but we’ve detected so few of them,” she says.
While working as a fellow, Speedie is aiming to develop an algorithm that carefully aligns and stacks a decade of ALMA observational data to correct for a blurring effect that happens when combining images captured at different times. Doing so should produce the sharpest, most sensitive images of early planetary systems to date.
She is also interested in studying infant planets, especially ones that may be forming in disks around protoplanets, rather than stars. Modeling how these ingredient materials in orbit behave could give astronomers a way to measure the mass of young planets.
“What’s exciting is the potential for discovery. I have this sense that the universe as a whole is infinitely more creative than human minds — the kinds of things that happen out there, you can’t make that up. It’s better than science fiction,” she says.
The other 51 Pegasi b Fellows and their host institutions this year are Nick Choksi (Caltech), Yan Liang (Yale University), Sagnick Mukherjee (Arizona State University), Matthew Nixon (Arizona State University), Julia Santos (Harvard University), Nour Skaf (University of Hawaii), and Jerry Xuan (University of California at Los Angeles).
The fellowship provides up to $450,000 of support over three years for independent research, a generous salary and discretionary fund, mentorship at host institutions, an annual summit to develop professional networks and foster collaboration, and an option to apply for another grant to support a future position in the United States.
MIT welcomes 51 Pegasi b Fellow Jess Speedie, who will combine observational data and simulations to trace the imprints of newborn worlds and reveal hidden processes of planet formation. “Planets, for me, are where the stories happen,” she says.
Arts & Culture
For 100 years, a top stop for the world’s medievalists
Sean Gilsdorf, administrative director of the Committee on Medieval Studies, delivers opening remarks in Sanders Theatre.Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
April 2, 2025
4 min read
800 academics convened in Harvard Yard for workshops, presentations, and discussion
For 100 years, a top stop for the world’s medievalists
Sean Gilsdorf, administrative director of the Committee on Medieval Studies, delivers opening remarks in Sanders Theatre.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
4 min read
800 academics convened in Harvard Yard for workshops, presentations, and discussion
The spread of misinformation online may feel like a modern problem. But more than 600 years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales,” worried about the same thing.
According to Fernanda García-Oteyza, a Ph.D. candidate in religion at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, echoes of Chaucer’s Middle-English poem “The House of Fame,” where rumor is depicted as an uncontrollable force of distortion, can be found in Patricia Lockwood’s “No One Is Talking About This” (2021), a contemporary novel about the internet’s ability to alter truth and destroy literary voice.
“Both Lockwood and Chaucer take up questions of poetic authority, creativity, and inspiration, poking at the troubled relationship between reality and fiction, between rumor and fame, diving headfirst into the cacophony of speech that produces them all,” García-Oteyza explained to an audience at Sever Hall.
“It’s very exciting to be bringing the Medieval Academy back to our home and to be able to demonstrate how medieval studies has changed and grown over the past hundred years.”
Sean Gilsdorf
García-Oteyza was one of nearly two dozen Harvard students who presented at the Medieval Academy of America’s 100th annual meeting in late March. The gathering is a top destination for medievalists worldwide. This time around, more than 800 academics representing 23 countries convened in Harvard Yard for a three-day conference featuring 500 speakers, plenary addresses, workshops, exhibits, and concerts.
“It’s been really fascinating to see how interdisciplinary the field is,” García-Oteyza said of her first medieval studies-focused conference. “It’s been really generative, I’ve been able to meet a lot of people, and recognize faces that I’ve seen on book jackets.”
Elena Shadrina lectured on medieval trade agreements.
The event was a homecoming, of sorts, for the Medieval Academy of America, established in Cambridge and Boston in the early 1920s. The conference was last held on Harvard’s campus for the 50th anniversary in 1975.
“It’s very exciting to be bringing the Medieval Academy back to our home and to be able to demonstrate how medieval studies has changed and grown over the past hundred years,” said Sean Gilsdorf, administrative director of the Committee on Medieval Studies at Harvard as well as a lecturer on medieval studies and co-chair of the conference’s program committee. “These historical moments offer a really great opportunity to think retrospectively but also to think prospectively. Where are we going as a field? What’s the scholarship that’s going to move us into the next century?”
This year’s conference reflected the field’s expanding global scope, with presentations of papers on the medieval worlds of the Mediterranean, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Africa, Central and East Asia, and Islamic regions. A daylong pedagogy workshop on teaching the Global Middle Ages, organized by Assistant Professor of English Anna Wilson, encouraged graduate students to think more globally as medievalists.
Elena Shadrina, Ph.D. candidate in the History Department, presented her research on medieval Venetian trade agreements, focusing on how verbal contracts, witnesses, and forms of written documentation were used by merchants before implementation of an official register system. Colin Brady, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, presented his work on the revival of the Óenach Tailteann (Tailteann Games) regional assembly and sporting festival in 10th-century Ireland.
Emily Sun, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, presented her research on Meghan Purvis’ 2013 translation of “Beowulf,” focusing on Purvis’ perspective as an American woman approaching the Old English poem from across geographical and cultural distance. After the COVID-19 lockdowns, Sun said, she has renewed appreciation for attending conferences such as this one. These events provide opportunities to bring her work beyond the computer screen and into real conversations with other academics.
“This is a big part of what scholarship actually is — meeting your bibliography and having colleagues and professors and scholars from all rungs of the ladder at panels with you, watching your papers, and giving you ideas,” Sun said. “Seeing the recurring cast of characters who also happen to be your scholarly heroes is amazing.”
The annual event honored 420 staff members who achieved service milestones, as well as the winners of the President's Achievement Award and the Donald Griffin '23 Management Award.
The annual event honored 420 staff members who achieved service milestones, as well as the winners of the President's Achievement Award and the Donald Griffin '23 Management Award.
The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of 12 faculty members, including three full professors and nine assistant professors.
The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of 12 faculty members, including three full professors and nine assistant professors.
When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, developed the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT). SPROUT is a vine robot — a soft robot that can grow and maneuver around obstacles and through small spaces.
When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, developed the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT). SPROUT is a vine robot — a soft robot that can grow and maneuver around obstacles and through small spaces. First responders can deploy SPROUT under collapsed structures to explore, map, and find optimum ingress routes through debris.
"The urban search-and-rescue environment can be brutal and unforgiving, where even the most hardened technology struggles to operate. The fundamental way a vine robot works mitigates a lot of the challenges that other platforms face," says Chad Council, a member of the SPROUT team, which is led by Nathaniel Hanson. The program is conducted out of the laboratory's Human Resilience Technology Group.
First responders regularly integrate technology, such as cameras and sensors, into their workflows to understand complex operating environments. However, many of these technologies have limitations. For example, cameras specially built for search-and-rescue operations can only probe on a straight path inside of a collapsed structure. If a team wants to search further into a pile, they need to cut an access hole to get to the next area of the space. Robots are good for exploring on top of rubble piles, but are ill-suited for searching in tight, unstable structures and costly to repair if damaged. The challenge that SPROUT addresses is how to get under collapsed structures using a low-cost, easy-to-operate robot that can carry cameras and sensors and traverse winding paths.
SPROUT is composed of an inflatable tube made of airtight fabric that unfurls from a fixed base. The tube inflates with air, and a motor controls its deployment. As the tube extends into rubble, it can flex around corners and squeeze through narrow passages. A camera and other sensors mounted to the tip of the tube image and map the environment the robot is navigating. An operator steers SPROUT with joysticks, watching a screen that displays the robot's camera feed. Currently, SPROUT can deploy up to 10 feet, and the team is working on expanding it to 25 feet.
When building SPROUT, the team overcame a number of challenges related to the robot's flexibility. Because the robot is made of a deformable material that bends at many points, determining and controlling the robot's shape as it unfurls through the environment is difficult — think of trying to control an expanding wiggly sprinkler toy. Pinpointing how to apply air pressure within the robot so that steering is as simple as pointing the joystick forward to make the robot move forward was essential for system adoption by emergency responders. In addition, the team had to design the tube to minimize friction while the robot grows and engineer the controls for steering.
While a teleoperated system is a good starting point for assessing the hazards of void spaces, the team is also finding new ways to apply robot technologies to the domain, such as using data captured by the robot to build maps of the subsurface voids. "Collapse events are rare but devastating events. In robotics, we would typically want ground truth measurements to validate our approaches, but those simply don't exist for collapsed structures," Hanson says. To solve this problem, Hanson and his team made a simulator that allows them to create realistic depictions of collapsed structures and develop algorithms that map void spaces.
SPROUT was developed in collaboration with Margaret Coad, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and an MIT graduate. When looking for collaborators, Hanson — a graduate of Notre Dame — was already aware of Coad's work on vine robots for industrial inspection. Coad's expertise, together with the laboratory's experience in engineering, strong partnership with urban search-and-rescue teams, and ability to develop fundamental technologies and prepare them for transition to industry, "made this a really natural pairing to join forces and work on research for a traditionally underserved community," Hanson says. "As one of the primary inventors of vine robots, Professor Coad brings invaluable expertise on the fabrication and modeling of these robots."
Lincoln Laboratory tested SPROUT with first responders at the Massachusetts Task Force 1 training site in Beverly, Massachusetts. The tests allowed the researchers to improve the durability and portability of the robot and learn how to grow and steer the robot more efficiently. The team is planning a larger field study this spring.
"Urban search-and-rescue teams and first responders serve critical roles in their communities but typically have little-to-no research and development budgets," Hanson says. "This program has enabled us to push the technology readiness level of vine robots to a point where responders can engage with a hands-on demonstration of the system."
Sensing in constrained spaces is not a problem unique to disaster response communities, Hanson adds. The team envisions the technology being used in the maintenance of military systems or critical infrastructure with difficult-to-access locations.
The initial program focused on mapping void spaces, but future work aims to localize hazards and assess the viability and safety of operations through rubble. "The mechanical performance of the robots has an immediate effect, but the real goal is to rethink the way sensors are used to enhance situational awareness for rescue teams," says Hanson. "Ultimately, we want SPROUT to provide a complete operating picture to teams before anyone enters a rubble pile."
Left to right: Summer research intern Ankush Dhawan and Lincoln Laboratory staff members Chad Council and Nathaniel Hanson test a vine robot in a laboratory setting.
When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, developed the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT). SPROUT is a vine robot — a soft robot that can grow and maneuver around obstacles and through small spaces.
When major disasters hit and structures collapse, people can become trapped under rubble. Extricating victims from these hazardous environments can be dangerous and physically exhausting. To help rescue teams navigate these structures, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Notre Dame, developed the Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit (SPROUT). SPROUT is a vine robot — a soft robot that can grow and maneuver around obstacles and through small spaces. First responders can deploy SPROUT under collapsed structures to explore, map, and find optimum ingress routes through debris.
"The urban search-and-rescue environment can be brutal and unforgiving, where even the most hardened technology struggles to operate. The fundamental way a vine robot works mitigates a lot of the challenges that other platforms face," says Chad Council, a member of the SPROUT team, which is led by Nathaniel Hanson. The program is conducted out of the laboratory's Human Resilience Technology Group.
First responders regularly integrate technology, such as cameras and sensors, into their workflows to understand complex operating environments. However, many of these technologies have limitations. For example, cameras specially built for search-and-rescue operations can only probe on a straight path inside of a collapsed structure. If a team wants to search further into a pile, they need to cut an access hole to get to the next area of the space. Robots are good for exploring on top of rubble piles, but are ill-suited for searching in tight, unstable structures and costly to repair if damaged. The challenge that SPROUT addresses is how to get under collapsed structures using a low-cost, easy-to-operate robot that can carry cameras and sensors and traverse winding paths.
SPROUT is composed of an inflatable tube made of airtight fabric that unfurls from a fixed base. The tube inflates with air, and a motor controls its deployment. As the tube extends into rubble, it can flex around corners and squeeze through narrow passages. A camera and other sensors mounted to the tip of the tube image and map the environment the robot is navigating. An operator steers SPROUT with joysticks, watching a screen that displays the robot's camera feed. Currently, SPROUT can deploy up to 10 feet, and the team is working on expanding it to 25 feet.
When building SPROUT, the team overcame a number of challenges related to the robot's flexibility. Because the robot is made of a deformable material that bends at many points, determining and controlling the robot's shape as it unfurls through the environment is difficult — think of trying to control an expanding wiggly sprinkler toy. Pinpointing how to apply air pressure within the robot so that steering is as simple as pointing the joystick forward to make the robot move forward was essential for system adoption by emergency responders. In addition, the team had to design the tube to minimize friction while the robot grows and engineer the controls for steering.
While a teleoperated system is a good starting point for assessing the hazards of void spaces, the team is also finding new ways to apply robot technologies to the domain, such as using data captured by the robot to build maps of the subsurface voids. "Collapse events are rare but devastating events. In robotics, we would typically want ground truth measurements to validate our approaches, but those simply don't exist for collapsed structures," Hanson says. To solve this problem, Hanson and his team made a simulator that allows them to create realistic depictions of collapsed structures and develop algorithms that map void spaces.
SPROUT was developed in collaboration with Margaret Coad, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and an MIT graduate. When looking for collaborators, Hanson — a graduate of Notre Dame — was already aware of Coad's work on vine robots for industrial inspection. Coad's expertise, together with the laboratory's experience in engineering, strong partnership with urban search-and-rescue teams, and ability to develop fundamental technologies and prepare them for transition to industry, "made this a really natural pairing to join forces and work on research for a traditionally underserved community," Hanson says. "As one of the primary inventors of vine robots, Professor Coad brings invaluable expertise on the fabrication and modeling of these robots."
Lincoln Laboratory tested SPROUT with first responders at the Massachusetts Task Force 1 training site in Beverly, Massachusetts. The tests allowed the researchers to improve the durability and portability of the robot and learn how to grow and steer the robot more efficiently. The team is planning a larger field study this spring.
"Urban search-and-rescue teams and first responders serve critical roles in their communities but typically have little-to-no research and development budgets," Hanson says. "This program has enabled us to push the technology readiness level of vine robots to a point where responders can engage with a hands-on demonstration of the system."
Sensing in constrained spaces is not a problem unique to disaster response communities, Hanson adds. The team envisions the technology being used in the maintenance of military systems or critical infrastructure with difficult-to-access locations.
The initial program focused on mapping void spaces, but future work aims to localize hazards and assess the viability and safety of operations through rubble. "The mechanical performance of the robots has an immediate effect, but the real goal is to rethink the way sensors are used to enhance situational awareness for rescue teams," says Hanson. "Ultimately, we want SPROUT to provide a complete operating picture to teams before anyone enters a rubble pile."
Left to right: Summer research intern Ankush Dhawan and Lincoln Laboratory staff members Chad Council and Nathaniel Hanson test a vine robot in a laboratory setting.
C. Cem Tasan has been appointed director of MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), effective March 15. The POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), Tasan succeeds Lionel “Kim” Kimerling, who has held the post of interim director since Carl Thompson stepped down in August 2023.“MRL is a strategic asset for MIT, and Cem has a clear vision to build upon the lab’s engagement with materials researchers across the breadth of the Institu
C. Cem Tasan has been appointed director of MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), effective March 15. The POSCO Associate Professor of Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), Tasan succeeds Lionel “Kim” Kimerling, who has held the post of interim director since Carl Thompson stepped down in August 2023.
“MRL is a strategic asset for MIT, and Cem has a clear vision to build upon the lab’s engagement with materials researchers across the breadth of the Institute as well as with external collaborators and sponsors,” wrote Vice President for Research Ian Waitz, in a letter announcing the appointment.
The MRL is a leading interdisciplinary center dedicated to materials science and engineering. As a hub for innovation, the MRL unites researchers across disciplines, fosters industry and government partnerships, and drives advancements that shape the future of technology. Through groundbreaking research, the MRL supports MIT’s mission to advance science and technology for the benefit of society, enabling discoveries that have a lasting impact across industries and everyday life.
“MRL has a position at the core of materials research activities across departments at MIT,” Tasan says. “It can only grow from where it is, right in the heart of the Institute’s innovative hub.”
As director, Tasan will lead MRL’s research mission, with a view to strengthening internal collaboration and building upon the interdisciplinary laboratory’s long history of industry engagement. He will also take on responsibility for the management of Building 13, the Vannevar Bush Building, which houses key research facilities and labs.
“MRL is in very good hands with Cem Tasan’s leadership,” says Kimerling, the outgoing interim director. “His vision for a united MIT materials community whose success is stimulated by the convergence of basic science and engineering solutions provides the nutrition for MIT’s creative relevance to society. His collegial nature, motivating energy, and patient approach will make it happen.”
Tasan is a metallurgist with expertise in the fracture in metals and the design of damage-resistant alloys. Among other advances, his lab has demonstrated a multiscale means of designing high-strength/high-ductility titanium alloys; and explained the stress intensification mechanism by which human hair damages hard steel razors, pointing the way to stronger and longer-lasting blades.
“We need better materials that operate in more and more extreme conditions, for almost all of our critical industries and applications,” says Tasan. “Materials research in MRL identifies interdisciplinary pathways to address this important challenge.”
He studied in Turkey and the Netherlands, earning his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology before spending several years leading a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials in Germany. He joined the MIT faculty in 2016 and earned tenure in 2022.
“Cem has led one of the major collaborative research teams at MRL, and he expects to continue developing a strong community among the MIT materials research faculty,” wrote Waitz in his letter on March 14.
The MRL was established in 2017 through the merger of the MIT Materials Processing Center (MPC) and the Center for Materials Science and Engineering. This unification aimed to strengthen MIT’s leadership in materials research by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing breakthroughs in areas such as energy conversion, quantum materials, and materials sustainability.
From 2008 to 2017, Thompson, the Stavros Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, served as director of the MPC. During his tenure, he played a crucial role in expanding materials research and building partnerships with industry, government agencies, and academic institutions. With the formation of the MRL in 2017, Thompson was appointed its inaugural director, guiding the new laboratory to prominence as a hub for cutting-edge materials science. He stepped down from this role in August 2023.
At that time, Kimerling stepped in to serve as interim director of MRL. He brought special knowledge of the lab’s history, having served as director of the MPC from 1993 to 2008, transforming it into a key industry-academic interface. Under his leadership, the MPC became a crucial gateway for industry partners to collaborate with MIT faculty across materials-related disciplines, bridging fundamental research with industrial applications. His vision helped drive technological innovation and economic development by aligning academic expertise with industry needs. As interim director of MRL these past 18 months, Kimerling has ensured continuity in leadership.
“I’m delighted that Cem will be the next MRL director,” says Thompson. “He’s a great fit. He has been affiliated with MPC, and then MRL, since the beginning of his faculty career at MIT. He’s also played a key role in leading a renaissance in physical metallurgy at MIT and has many close ties to industry.”
Nation & World
Lesson No. 1: It pays to be nice to your allies
Nicholas Burns.Photo by Grace DuVal
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
April 2, 2025
long read
Nicholas Burns on being U.S. envoy to China, returning to Harvard, lessons from long career in diplomacy
It was a challenging tour of duty.
Ambassador Nicholas Burns makes his return this week to teaching at Harvard Ken
Nicholas Burns on being U.S. envoy to China, returning to Harvard, lessons from long career in diplomacy
It was a challenging tour of duty.
Ambassador Nicholas Burns makes his return this week to teaching at Harvard Kennedy School after being tapped in 2021 to serve as the U.S. representative to China. Though U.S.-China relations historically are complicated, Burns’ tenure in Beijing came at a particularly difficult time.
Both countries were grappling with the pandemic, and while the U.S. economy slowly recovered, China’s faltered under its Zero COVID policy. The Biden administration imposed new, tougher sanctions on China over its human rights violations and limited exports of critical technology like semiconductors.
In this edited conversation, Burns, the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, spoke to the Gazette about his experience and about what gives the U.S. a strategic advantage over China.
Relations between China and the U.S. were particularly strained during your time as U.S. ambassador. What compelled you to leave Harvard to take on something this difficult?
I had been in the career Foreign Service for 27 years and then came to Harvard for 13 years. So public service was the main mission of my career, and it’s something that I found great value in and enjoyed.
When President Biden called me just after the 2020 election to ask me to go, how could I say no? First of all, I deeply believe in public service. Second, the U.S.-China relationship is one of the most important, if not the most important, relationship we have, and highly problematic, challenging, competitive, disputatious.
I felt it was a unique opportunity to get back into government, to go back into what Teddy Roosevelt called “the arena of public service.” I had been urging all of my students for many years to go into that arena, and I felt if I’m being asked, I’ve got to go, too. I’m very grateful for the opportunity. It was, in many ways, the most difficult job I’ve ever had, and in many ways, the most worthwhile, as well.
What made it worthwhile?
It’s a consequential relationship for both countries. China is our most important competitor in the world. It’s the second-largest economy; it’s the second-strongest military power next to us; it’s our strongest adversary and competitor in the world. A lot is riding on how we manage that relationship for the decades ahead.
In addition to the military and technology and trade competitions, we have competing ideas and opposite ideas about human freedom, about democracy, about human rights, and the ability of people to speak out. The lack of freedoms in China and increasingly repressive and fearful environment made the agenda between us extraordinarily difficult and contested.
How challenging was it to communicate U.S. policy and values to the Chinese people? Are they aware they have less freedom than others around the world?
They’re very much aware that they don’t have access to free information unless you have a virtual private network (VPN), which most Chinese don’t have.
They’re in a phase of Chinese history where a highly educated public does not have a complete view of its own history, and they’re not aware of dissenting views that might contradict and criticize Chinese Communist practices. That’s a major hill to climb if you’re a government like ours that is trying to both manage a difficult and competitive relationship with the government and have a relationship between our society and 1.4 billion Chinese.
So, we spent a lot of time trying to relate and connect with the Chinese people. The Chinese government puts enormous resources into its vast propaganda network to distort our history, to distort what our president or secretary of state was saying or doing, or what I was saying or doing, and we faced a high degree of censorship on Chinese social media. We were trying to get free and fair and factual information into the Chinese bloodstream, and the communist authorities were trying to keep it out.
I had a chance to visit many universities, to speak with many professors and many students. After a couple of minutes, people are frank. It was not that everybody agreed with us. Sometimes in those sessions with students or faculty, I would face a lot of criticism, but I thought that was fair. I came from a university environment here at Harvard. I’m used to the classroom. You want students to speak up, and I certainly felt that students in China had a right to speak up, and sometimes they were very grateful for the opportunity to talk to an American and were very admiring of many parts of the culture. Sometimes they were very critical. But just having the dialogue, I thought, was a step forward and having connection.
What was the most rewarding or the most difficult part of the job?
The most difficult was dealing with the Chinese authorities on issues where we have entirely opposite views, sometimes a different interpretation of the facts, sometimes a different set of facts. That made it hard to negotiate.
We brought speakers; we brought American artists, musicians, sports figures to China to show the Chinese people this side of American culture.
In 2024, my last full year there, on 98 separate occasions, the Chinese authorities interfered with those public diplomacy people-to-people efforts. They actually turned off the electricity in a hall where an American musical group was going to perform. They would actively warn Chinese students not to come to seminars or writers’ workshops.
So that set of problems — not agreeing on the same facts, having wildly different interpretation of facts, active measures taken by the Chinese government to disrupt normal programs that any two countries would want to have with each other — that was the most frustrating part of the job.
The most rewarding was to stand by the flag again, to be back in government, to represent the United States as ambassador in this extraordinarily important country to us and to work alongside the men and women of Mission China. That was the best part of the job, being part of that team, being the leader of that team, working alongside them, and being proud of what they represent for our country.
Is diplomacy any different today from when you first joined the State Department in 1980?
There’s an aspect of diplomacy that remains unchanged. Especially in a difficult relationship like the U.S. and China, you want to make sure that each capital has a very sophisticated and detailed understanding of the other’s position on issues and of their motivations, good or bad. That hasn’t changed.
What has changed is communications technology, and the news cycle now is 24 hours a day. It comes from a million different sources. There’s much more transparency. There’s a greater obligation, certainly in the United States and democratic countries, to be open with their publics and to describe exactly what we’re doing and not to hide as many things as were hidden in the past. That’s something that we should be very good at.
That’s why I think it’s been a major mistake to try to deconstruct the federal workforce over the last couple of months, to abolish USAID, a great organization doing necessary and very important things for the American people around the world, and to take away Radio Free Europe/Liberty Radio, Radio Free Asia. Millions of people listen to those in authoritarian countries. It’s information that tells the truth about our society and about events that are happening in the world. I’m really concerned that we’re giving China an enormous propaganda advantage here, because we’re creating a vacuum.
“NATO is one of the most important institutions in American history. The fact that we’ve been able to lead it allowed us to keep the peace in the Cold War for five and a half decades.”
You once served as U.S. ambassador to NATO. At HKS, you were faculty chair of the Project on the Transatlantic Relationship. Where is that relationship today?
One of the key lessons I learned in a long diplomatic career is: Be nice to your allies and be faithful to them because they’re multipliers of American power and influence in the world. I certainly saw that at NATO on Sept. 11, 2001, when I was a very new ambassador.
The Canadian ambassador, David Wright, came to me hours after the attack, and said, “We should invoke Article Five of the NATO Treaty.” And within 24 hours, the Europeans and Canadians came to our defense.
They are the best allies we could hope to have. They share our values, and they share our interests. My job in China was made easier by the fact that the NATO countries were acting with us to try to constrain and limit what the Chinese could do in their very aggressive expansion of their own power.
NATO is one of the most important institutions in American history. The fact that we’ve been able to lead it allowed us to keep the peace in the Cold War for five and a half decades. Putin is trying to divide Europe. There’s no question that Russia, if it gets away with its crimes in Ukraine, if it’s a lenient peace agreement that favors Russian interests, then that will simply encourage Putin to be aggressive against Ukraine again, against Moldova, against the Baltic countries (now members of NATO), Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
So, there are enormous stakes for the United States in being tough-minded with Russia. Everyone wants the war to end, and I agree that it should end. Let’s try to end the war but negotiate it in a way that makes it far more likely that Putin will be constrained and limited in the future and not emboldened.
How does our relationship with European and East Asian allies affect U.S.-China relations?
China has no real allies in the world. We have over 30 treaty allies in Europe and five treaty allies in the Indo Pacific. This is what gives the United States strategic advantage over China that will play out over the next 10 to 20 to 30 years. It will be one of the most important stories in American history if we are able to retain our strength and protect our democracy and protect democracy around the world, because we deter Chinese aggression.
It would be a mistake of historic proportions to forsake our Indo-Pacific allies and NATO and give up the leadership role that we’ve had. I don’t think the American people will support doing that, and certainly, I don’t think most of our elected politicians in Congress would support it.
“Our mission, particularly at the Kennedy School, is to encourage bright young women and men to go into public service. That mission is more important than ever right now given everything that’s happening in Washington.“
How does it feel to be back at Harvard?
I’m really grateful to return to Harvard. I loved teaching at the Kennedy School. We have a first-rate faculty; we have outstanding students from over 90 countries all around the world. I learned so much from them when I was a professor here, and I’m really pleased to come back.
I’m going to reconstitute the Future of Diplomacy Project to make sure that we’re bringing diplomacy into our studies about global affairs. I’m going to teach a joint course next year with Professor Jim Sebenius of Harvard Business School on negotiations and diplomacy.
It’s one of the greatest institutions I’ve been involved with, and it’s doing great good in the world. Our mission, particularly at the Kennedy School, is to encourage bright young women and men to go into public service. That mission is more important than ever right now given everything that’s happening in Washington.
It’s certainly understandable if students here and elsewhere would feel that a public service career is no longer available to them. Our job is to encourage students, to understand that at the municipal level, at the state level, at the national level, and at the global level, we need good people to go into public service. That is not going to change. The pendulum in the United States, at some point, will swing back to honor public service as we have always done in our history.
Researcher Peteris Lazovskis holds a Trellis Air membrane.
Science & Tech
AC use to surge as world gets hotter. Harvard startup has a solution.
Novel system works like a coffee filter to dry, cool air more efficiently
Harvard Office of Technology Development Communications
April 2, 2025
7 min read
Today, systems that cool buildings account for as much as 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emiss
AC use to surge as world gets hotter. Harvard startup has a solution.
Novel system works like a coffee filter to dry, cool air more efficiently
Harvard Office of Technology Development Communications
7 min read
Today, systems that cool buildings account for as much as 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. That may seem like a small fraction, but it’s significant: double the emissions associated with all air travel, for example.
As the world gets hotter due to climate change, the need for cooling is set to rise substantially. Air conditioning demand is expected to soar by up to 40 percent by 2030. Energy use, and the associated climate-warming emissions, will balloon along with it.
“There’s a climate-change solution here,” said Jonathan Grinham, assistant professor of architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. “The problem is big, and the market opportunity is big.”
Despite the revolution coming for demand, the technology used to cool spaces has remained relatively stagnant for more than a century. “We’ve lived in the status quo of the bigger industries delivering the same vapor-compression technology,” said Grinham.
Trellis Air, a Harvard startup, is set to disrupt that status quo. Thanks to collaborative efforts from across the University, the company recently launched with aims to drastically reduce the energy needed to run air conditioners with its novel approach to dehumidification.
‘Marriage of raw science and engineering breakthroughs’
Most air conditioners are not all that different from souped-up dehumidifiers. A cooling system pulls in room-temperature air and chills it using chemicals called refrigerants. Water vapor separated from the air is condensed — resulting in that “drip, drip, drip” that air conditioners are notorious for — while the cooler air is released into a room and heat is diverted outside.
Air-conditioning technology also makes air drier, and dehumidifiers use a similar process to condense water out of ambient air. The cool, dry air is then rewarmed and released back into the room.
“A dehumidifier burns a lot of energy,” said Russ Wilcox, Trellis Air CEO. “It’s like driving with one foot on the gas, the other foot on the brake: You’ve got one part making cold, the other part making heat.”
While refrigerants — which have significant planet-warming potential of their own — are at the core of most modern cooling systems, some industrial facilities that need incredibly dry air may also choose what’s called a desiccant air dryer, a system that uses a material like salt to absorb water.
Trellis Air, on the other hand, will rely on a “third way,” of pulling moisture from the air, said Wilcox. Harvard scientists developed a unique membrane capable of separating water vapor directly from the air — similar to a coffee filter. The system uses much less energy than traditional air conditioners and dehumidifiers and is more stable than desiccant systems.
A Trellis Air prototype, pictured alongside a traditional AC unit, is tested in Miami.
To develop the underlying tech, Grinham worked closely with staff scientist Jack Alvarenga and others in the lab of Joanna Aizenberg, the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. Leveraging his deep expertise in architecture and building science, Grinham collaborated with Alvarenga and other researchers in the Aizenberg Lab to prototype materials and conduct the foundational science needed to create Trellis Air’s product.
Membrane dehumidification systems have been attempted in the past, but struggled to achieve high-water selectivity with scalable and robust materials. In addition to developing a workable membrane, the Harvard team designed a novel, 3D-printed tile assembly that allows water to readily pass through while protecting the delicate membrane, which is just 15 microns thick — thinner than a human hair — for long periods of time.
“It was this really nice marriage of raw science and engineering breakthroughs,” said Christopher Petty, OTD’s director of business development for physical sciences.
‘If he says something is worth seeing, it’s usually worth seeing’
OTD protected the intellectual property of the innovations developed at Harvard and licensed it to Trellis Air for further development. Grinham and Alvarenga will stay involved as scientific advisers to the company, as will Aizenberg and Martin Bechthold from the School of Design.
Petty, a former entrepreneur himself, wasn’t initially familiar with the type of tech Grinham and the research team set out to develop. But what he learned about the scope of the air conditioning challenge stunned him, and convinced him of the business’s potential.
“Sometimes it’s enough that it’s a good business, it has to be,” says Petty. “But if you feel you can work on something that might have that kind of impact, then it helps you sleep at night too.”
He began networking to find an entrepreneur who could shepherd the idea from technological breakthrough to big-time business.
Wilcox, an entrepreneur turned venture capitalist who had previously popularized the electronic paper-display technology that’s today used in millions of Kindles, was among Petty’s early calls. And his interest was immediately piqued. “If he says something is worth seeing, it’s usually worth seeing,” says Wilcox.
Still, it took more than a dozen meetings before Wilcox decided to become the company’s CEO. Wilcox was convinced from the beginning that the opportunity was a huge one, due to the sheer size of the AC industry, but he decided to make the jump after learning that several past colleagues from his former company, E Ink, were willing to sign on with him.
Starting a company that he believed in with past coworkers “just seemed like the most joyful thing I could do,” he said. “Nothing could be more exciting.”
Wilcox sees three roads to commercialization for Trellis Air: replacing desiccant systems in industrial applications, swapping basement dehumidifiers for more efficient models, and the big-time bet: integrating Trellis Air’s technology with air conditioners across the world. Wilcox says the company will pitch the tech as a “pre-drying module” that will allow ACs to run much more efficiently, consuming much less energy.
The CEO has backed nearly two dozen companies as an investor, and sees big possibilities for Trellis Air, in part because of the huge potential reward. “In order for a deep-tech startup to work, you need a big, bold goal that everyone will decide is worth the risk,” he said. The scope of the air conditioning challenge fits the bill.
To de-risk the tech and show that it can work, Trellis Air has spent the past year prototyping. Before the company launched, a proof-of-concept prototype was piloted in Miami through the team’s Department of Energy Grant with Forrest Meggers at Princeton University and Les Norford at MIT. Next, the team tested a fully integrated system at Harvard’s HouseZero, the headquarters of the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, retrofitted as a “living lab” to test and collect data on the technology’s efficiency in a real-world setting. These demonstrations showed what Trellis Air’s tech can do in Boston’s hot, humid summers and the even more inhospitable Miami climate.
Those real-world examples should help give funders confidence in the system’s capabilities.
“It’s one thing to build energy models to say that this is possible, and it’s a whole other thing to actually deliver the physical prototype at scale,” said Alvarenga. “We were able to bring the idea into existence inside the lab and then move beyond the lab into pilot field studies. With Trellis Air we want to go further and scale up a commercial product that can meaningfully reduce the future massive energy and emissions needs of cooling.”
Harvard IP licensed to Trellis Air was funded in part by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.
The undergraduate financial aid budget is projected to increase 8%, to $306 million, and total graduate student support is projected to rise 7%, to $365 million, for 2025-26.
The undergraduate financial aid budget is projected to increase 8%, to $306 million, and total graduate student support is projected to rise 7%, to $365 million, for 2025-26.
Robert Brustein in 2004.Harvard file photo
Campus & Community
Robert Sanford Brustein, 96
Memorial Minute — Faculty of Arts and Sciences
April 2, 2025
6 min read
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 1, 2025, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Robert Sanford Brustein was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
The legacy and influence of Robert
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on April 1, 2025, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Robert Sanford Brustein was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
The legacy and influence of Robert Brustein, a major presence in American theater of the 20th century, live on in the 21st. As dean of the Yale School of Drama starting in 1966, Brustein founded the Yale Repertory Theatre, where he worked with playwrights such as Sam Shepherd and David Mamet and with players such as Meryl Streep. In 1980 at Harvard, he became director of the Loeb Drama Center and turned it into the home of the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.). He later founded the Institute for Advanced Theater Training. While at Harvard, Brustein also taught as a full professor of English. He retired in 2003, becoming a research professor of English and creative consultant to the A.R.T.
While Brustein’s command of drama, from ancient Greek plays to avant-garde theater, was legendary, he was always a theatrical innovator, seeking and creating genuinely new, profound productions. He was a leader in the regional theater movement, which emphasized serious, intelligent engagement with past great authors and newly rising ones. His founding of repertory companies at Yale and Harvard established fresh relationships between research universities and the performing arts, a model copied at other schools. In 1990 he told The New York Times, “The basic aim of the commercial theater is to make a profit” and “the basic aim of noncommercial theater, in its ideal form, is to create the condition whereby works of art can be known. And I don’t think these are compatible aims.”
Brustein believed deeply in textual criticism of plays and honored their interpretations both as literary works and as fluid dramas that demand different performances for different times. Coming to Harvard, he apparently worried that the institution might not always support theater of high quality. President Derek Bok was said to have given that guarantee. The joke was that if the box office did not provide enough for the A.R.T., then Bok’s Office would. Brustein’s concerns were not without merit. Two early A.R.T. productions witnessed audiences leave midway through performances, but he was willing to accept such risks to achieve unique qualities that a calculated, commercial theater could rarely equal.
At the A.R.T., Brustein succeeded in melding performance, scholarship, and dramaturgy, while bringing together professionals, amateurs, and students. Under his leadership, the A.R.T. championed directors such as Alvin Epstein, JoAnne Akalaitis, Peter Sellars, Julie Taymor, and Robert Wilson. Despite a demanding national and international schedule, Brustein regularly gave lecture courses on modern or post-modern drama from 1980 through 2001.
The current artistic director of the A.R.T., Diane Paulus, became acquainted with Brustein’s work when she was an undergraduate at Harvard. She thinks that his vision for theater remains bold and innovative. Sam Marks, a senior lecturer on playwriting in the Department of English, notes, “Not only does he leave an immense legacy in the theater, he changed the lives of so many of his students, whom he loved.”
Born in Brooklyn on April 21, 1927, the son of the businessman Max Brustein and the former Blanche Haft, Brustein grew up in Manhattan, attended the High School of Music and Art, then graduated from Amherst College. During college, he took time off to serve in the Merchant Marine. After receiving an M.A. in dramatic literature from Columbia University and two years at the University of Nottingham on a Fulbright fellowship, he pursued the Ph.D. at Columbia, then taught at Columbia, Vassar College, and Cornell University.
In 1964 Brustein published “The Theatre of Revolt,” a critical study. His publications are remarkably extensive. With his leading genres the review or chapter essay, he authored more than a dozen books, chapters in volumes edited by others, scores of reviews, articles in learned journals, a comedy about Shakespeare and Marlowe, and an autobiographical play, “Spring Forward, Fall Back.” His other plays include “Nobody Dies on Friday,” which satirizes the acting teacher Lee Strasberg, and “Shlemiel the First,” a klezmer musical based on stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Beginning in 1959, Brustein was a drama critic for The New Republic for 46 years. He contributed reviews and essays to The New York Review of Books. Among his books, one should mention “Letters to a Young Actor,” a variation on Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” Brustein advised young actors to obtain a broad liberal arts education rather than a narrow professional one. He edited Strindberg. Other favorite playwrights included Ibsen, O’Neill, Genet, Pirandello, and Shaw, all of whom he treated in “The Theater of Revolt” and whose works he showcased at the A.R.T. He continued to publish until shortly before his death, which occurred at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 29, 2023.
Brustein’s energy and productivity in directing, producing, teaching, mentoring, and writing were astounding. Feisty, he sometimes created controversy but to those encounters always brought opinions informed by knowledge, theatrical experience, and scholarly research. He seemed, at times unusually, to love the heat of friction. The more prominent his opponent, the grittier became his sandpaper.
Brustein and Samuel Beckett clashed over Akalaitis’s version of the set for Beckett’s “Endgame” at the A.R.T. Brustein retorted, “To threaten any deviations from a purist rendering of this or any other play . . . not only robs collaborating artists of their interpretive freedom but threatens to turn the theater into a waxworks.” Brustein also disputed with August Wilson about the nature and scope of Black theater in the United States.
Later in life, Brustein criticized what he believed was a renewed, even vicious, American worship of money and success, along with a concomitant decline in integrity, intelligence, and soul. He believed similar forces were eroding American theater. To The Boston Globe, he remarked in 2012, “I think the American theater reflects America now, as everything that happens is beginning to reflect America — one-percent America.”
First married to Norma Ofstrock, who died in 1979, Brustein in 1996 married Doreen Beinart, who survives him, as do his son, Daniel Brustein, stepchildren, and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren.
Pregnancy may offer some protection from developing long COVID, found a new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Utah Health and Louisiana Public Health Institute.
Pregnancy may offer some protection from developing long COVID, found a new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, University of Utah Health and Louisiana Public Health Institute.
ETH Zurich has provided its final report to the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) on the “Leading House Asia” mandate. After more than 20 years and around 1,000 funded projects, the University has declined to apply for a new mandate period. The University of Zurich will take on the future role of Leading House for research cooperation with Asia.
ETH Zurich has provided its final report to the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) on the “Leading House Asia” mandate. After more than 20 years and around 1,000 funded projects, the University has declined to apply for a new mandate period. The University of Zurich will take on the future role of Leading House for research cooperation with Asia.
Imagine a coffee company trying to optimize its supply chain. The company sources beans from three suppliers, roasts them at two facilities into either dark or light coffee, and then ships the roasted coffee to three retail locations. The suppliers have different fixed capacity, and roasting costs and shipping costs vary from place to place.The company seeks to minimize costs while meeting a 23 percent increase in demand.Wouldn’t it be easier for the company to just ask ChatGPT to come up with a
Imagine a coffee company trying to optimize its supply chain. The company sources beans from three suppliers, roasts them at two facilities into either dark or light coffee, and then ships the roasted coffee to three retail locations. The suppliers have different fixed capacity, and roasting costs and shipping costs vary from place to place.
The company seeks to minimize costs while meeting a 23 percent increase in demand.
Wouldn’t it be easier for the company to just ask ChatGPT to come up with an optimal plan? In fact, for all their incredible capabilities, large language models (LLMs) often perform poorly when tasked with directly solving such complicated planning problems on their own.
Rather than trying to change the model to make an LLM a better planner, MIT researchers took a different approach. They introduced a framework that guides an LLM to break down the problem like a human would, and then automatically solve it using a powerful software tool.
A user only needs to describe the problem in natural language — no task-specific examples are needed to train or prompt the LLM. The model encodes a user’s text prompt into a format that can be unraveled by an optimization solver designed to efficiently crack extremely tough planning challenges.
During the formulation process, the LLM checks its work at multiple intermediate steps to make sure the plan is described correctly to the solver. If it spots an error, rather than giving up, the LLM tries to fix the broken part of the formulation.
When the researchers tested their framework on nine complex challenges, such as minimizing the distance warehouse robots must travel to complete tasks, it achieved an 85 percent success rate, whereas the best baseline only achieved a 39 percent success rate.
The versatile framework could be applied to a range of multistep planning tasks, such as scheduling airline crews or managing machine time in a factory.
“Our research introduces a framework that essentially acts as a smart assistant for planning problems. It can figure out the best plan that meets all the needs you have, even if the rules are complicated or unusual,” says Yilun Hao, a graduate student in the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and lead author of a paper on this research.
She is joined on the paper by Yang Zhang, a research scientist at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab; and senior author Chuchu Fan, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and LIDS principal investigator. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations.
Optimization 101
The Fan group develops algorithms that automatically solve what are known as combinatorial optimization problems. These vast problems have many interrelated decision variables, each with multiple options that rapidly add up to billions of potential choices.
Humans solve such problems by narrowing them down to a few options and then determining which one leads to the best overall plan. The researchers’ algorithmic solvers apply the same principles to optimization problems that are far too complex for a human to crack.
But the solvers they develop tend to have steep learning curves and are typically only used by experts.
“We thought that LLMs could allow nonexperts to use these solving algorithms. In our lab, we take a domain expert’s problem and formalize it into a problem our solver can solve. Could we teach an LLM to do the same thing?” Fan says.
Using the framework the researchers developed, called LLM-Based Formalized Programming (LLMFP), a person provides a natural language description of the problem, background information on the task, and a query that describes their goal.
Then LLMFP prompts an LLM to reason about the problem and determine the decision variables and key constraints that will shape the optimal solution.
LLMFP asks the LLM to detail the requirements of each variable before encoding the information into a mathematical formulation of an optimization problem. It writes code that encodes the problem and calls the attached optimization solver, which arrives at an ideal solution.
“It is similar to how we teach undergrads about optimization problems at MIT. We don’t teach them just one domain. We teach them the methodology,” Fan adds.
As long as the inputs to the solver are correct, it will give the right answer. Any mistakes in the solution come from errors in the formulation process.
To ensure it has found a working plan, LLMFP analyzes the solution and modifies any incorrect steps in the problem formulation. Once the plan passes this self-assessment, the solution is described to the user in natural language.
Perfecting the plan
This self-assessment module also allows the LLM to add any implicit constraints it missed the first time around, Hao says.
For instance, if the framework is optimizing a supply chain to minimize costs for a coffeeshop, a human knows the coffeeshop can’t ship a negative amount of roasted beans, but an LLM might not realize that.
The self-assessment step would flag that error and prompt the model to fix it.
“Plus, an LLM can adapt to the preferences of the user. If the model realizes a particular user does not like to change the time or budget of their travel plans, it can suggest changing things that fit the user’s needs,” Fan says.
In a series of tests, their framework achieved an average success rate between 83 and 87 percent across nine diverse planning problems using several LLMs. While some baseline models were better at certain problems, LLMFP achieved an overall success rate about twice as high as the baseline techniques.
Unlike these other approaches, LLMFP does not require domain-specific examples for training. It can find the optimal solution to a planning problem right out of the box.
In addition, the user can adapt LLMFP for different optimization solvers by adjusting the prompts fed to the LLM.
“With LLMs, we have an opportunity to create an interface that allows people to use tools from other domains to solve problems in ways they might not have been thinking about before,” Fan says.
In the future, the researchers want to enable LLMFP to take images as input to supplement the descriptions of a planning problem. This would help the framework solve tasks that are particularly hard to fully describe with natural language.
This work was funded, in part, by the Office of Naval Research and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) is collaborating with Microsoft Research Asia to drive deep scientific exploration in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing while fostering the next generation of tech talent across Asia and beyond.NUS will focus on AI-driven research with Microsoft Research Asia in key areas such as healthcare, societal AI, spatial intelligence, as well as data-intensive computing. This collaboration will boost progress in these fields, enhance cross-disciplinary
The National University of Singapore (NUS) is collaborating with Microsoft Research Asia to drive deep scientific exploration in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing while fostering the next generation of tech talent across Asia and beyond.
NUS will focus on AI-driven research with Microsoft Research Asia in key areas such as healthcare, societal AI, spatial intelligence, as well as data-intensive computing. This collaboration will boost progress in these fields, enhance cross-disciplinary research capability, and aim to strengthen the region’s role in shaping the future of AI and computing on a global scale.
Talent is the key driver behind the development of AI. NUS has signed a five-year research collaboration agreement with Microsoft Research Asia for a Joint PhD Supervision Programme, bringing together NUS' academic and research excellence with Microsoft Research Asia’s global leadership in AI, computing research, and industrial applications to cultivate talent. As part of this collaboration, NUS and Microsoft Research Asia will nurture PhD students through the Industrial Postgraduate Programme (IPP), a programme supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) that enables globally leading companies to develop talent aligned with industry needs, as well as PhD programmes offered by the NUS School of Computing. This initiative will help to cultivate interdisciplinary, high-calibre tech professionals and drive the integration of AI technology across industries.
Through strategic research projects and workshops, NUS and Microsoft Research Asia will strive to strengthen Asia’s integration with the global AI research community and amplify the region’s impact on international technology innovation.
Professor Tan Eng Chye, NUS President, said, “In line with Singapore’s AI strategy to accelerate the growth of the digital economy, the collaboration between NUS and Microsoft Research Asia will strengthen local AI capabilities and create meaningful impact for society and industries. As a leader in AI research and innovation, Microsoft Research Asia has a strong track record of pioneering breakthroughs and fostering deep academic collaborations. By joining forces with Microsoft Research Asia, we hope to drive cutting-edge advancements, translate research into real-world applications, and nurture AI talent with a global perspective.”
Dr Lidong Zhou, Corporate Vice President and Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, added, “Microsoft Research Asia is committed to driving technological innovation through cutting-edge open research and establishing long-term collaboration with leading academic institutions worldwide. Asia is a key global hub for AI innovation with a robust research ecosystem, strong industrial foundation, and international outlook. NUS, as one of the most influential academic institutions in Asia and beyond, has been our longstanding partner. We believe this collaboration will significantly advance AI technology and its applications and contribute to the global AI ecosystem.”
Mr Jermaine Loy, Managing Director, EDB said, "Talent development is central to Singapore’s vision to become a globally leading AI innovation hub. This collaboration between NUS and Microsoft Research Asia will offer our local students the opportunity to advance the development of frontier AI technology in Singapore under the mentorship of world-class researchers. At the same time, by fostering interdisciplinary expertise and industry-academia collaboration, this initiative will further strengthen Singapore’s AI talent pipeline and enhance the competitiveness of our companies and industries here."
Diane Macdonald/Getty Images
Health
Mortality rates between Black, white Americans narrow — except in case of infants
70-year study finds widening gap despite longer life expectancy for both racial groups
Anna Gibbs
Harvard Correspondent
April 1, 2025
5 min read
Americans are living longer than ever. And the disparity in overall mortality rates between Black and white Americans has narrow
Mortality rates between Black, white Americans narrow — except in case of infants
70-year study finds widening gap despite longer life expectancy for both racial groups
Anna Gibbs
Harvard Correspondent
5 min read
Americans are living longer than ever. And the disparity in overall mortality rates between Black and white Americans has narrowed since the 1950s. Among infants, however, the gap has widened, with Black infants dying at twice the rate of white infants, a new study reports.
A team of researchers, including Associate Professor Soroush Saghafian, founder and director of the Public Impact Analytics Science Lab at Harvard, collected and analyzed data across the U.S. from 1950 to 2019 to determine how mortality rates and disparities have changed over time.
In general, life expectancy has improved for both Black Americans (from 60.5 years in the 1950s to 76 years in the 2010s, a 20.4 percent increase) and white Americans (from 69 years in the 1950s to 79.3 years in the 2010s, a 13 percent rise), according to the new research. The racial gap has also improved, though Black adults still have an 18 percent higher mortality rate.
The picture for Black infants is far bleaker. While mortality rates for both Black and white infants have improved, the disparity between races has worsened. The mortality rate for Black infants was 92 percent higher than for white infants in the 1950s. Today the difference is 115 percent. Medical conditions during pregnancy were the leading cause of excess death in the 2010s.
In this edited conversation, Saghafian explains where these disparities have persisted and what needs to happen to address them.
Soroush Saghafian.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Life expectancy has been improving for 70 years, and yet the difference between mortality in Black and white infants has actually gotten worse. What’s happened since the 1950s?
There is a public understanding that healthcare has improved over time in the U.S., and that life expectancy and other healthcare metrics are improving. This study is showing that, while all that is true, there have been gaps between different races, specifically between Black and white Americans.
When focusing on adults, we see that, fortunately, things have improved. But in the case of Black infants, they are now dying twice as often as white infants. That’s just a huge number. And the fact that it has worsened since the 1950s is of great concern. Public policy and public health authorities should have put their utmost priority on at least improving such gaps. I mean, the ideal is to make measures like this equal between different races. But at least you can improve things.
What accounts for the disparity in infant rates?
We did look at the causes of death, and it turns out that, for infants, the main reasons for excess mortalities are medical. There is, unfortunately, a large amount of healthcare inequality, and it’s multidimensional. There’s access to care, but also quality of care. There’s a large set of factors that cause these disparities.
However, the goal of this particular study was not to study the reasons, but to point out the important differences. The hope is that it can inform other studies to get to the reasons, and to inform policymakers about what they should do. Our work raises the critical question of why, over seven decades post-World War II, we still haven’t figured out a solution for this enormous problem.
“This is like a red alarm. Our findings are saying: Look, we could have saved 5 million Black Americans if they had the same things as white Americans have.”
Several shorter-span studies have also found mortality rate disparities between races. What does this study tell us that the others didn’t?
This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time that the whole data over seven decades — the entire postwar era — has been collected and analyzed. When you look at shorter periods, you might not get the full picture.
Looking at a more extended period, we can think more carefully about all the claims that say, “Look, healthcare is improving” — which, to be clear, is mostly true. We are still seeing that, by and large, healthcare is improving for both Black and white Americans in most dimensions.
The problem is the comparisons. For instance, are things getting better for Black people compared to white people? When we look at measures like excess infant and childhood mortality among Black Americans during this whole seven-decade period, it becomes clear that not only have things not improved, but they have gotten worse. However, if you looked at, say, only three decades, instead of seven, you might not be able to see this full picture.
Your results showed that 5 million excess deaths of Black Americans could’ve been avoided over the past 70 years.Now that the disparities have been laid out, what needs to happen next?
As I mentioned, we didn’t go into the details of the causes, and I think that needs a lot more attention from both researchers and public policy and public health authorities. At the same time, our findings raise important questions for both researchers and authorities.
This is like a red alarm. Our findings are saying: Look, we could have saved 5 million Black Americans if they had the same things as white Americans have. This, in turn, raises an important question: What should the priorities for public policy and public health officials be now and in the next few decades?
Giang Nguyen (left) and Robin Glover. File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Campus & Community
Healthy Minds Survey asks students about mental health
University will use results to tailor resources and support to students’ needs
Nicole Rura
Harvard Correspondent
April 1, 2025
6 min read
On Wednesday the University will launch the Healthy Minds Survey, which asks
Healthy Minds Survey asks students about mental health
University will use results to tailor resources and support to students’ needs
Nicole Rura
Harvard Correspondent
6 min read
On Wednesday the University will launch the Healthy Minds Survey, which asks all degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students about their current mental health, as well as their awareness and utilization of Harvard’s mental health resources and support. Sponsored by the Provost Office of Student Affairs and University Health Services, the confidential survey will be open until April 23.
The survey, developed at the University of Michigan and administered at hundreds of colleges and universities across the country, will provide Harvard with national benchmarking data to gauge progress and evaluate challenges related to student mental health. It is one of a series of steps Harvard has taken in response to the University’s Report of the Task Force on Managing Student Mental Health released in 2020.
To learn more about the survey and how the University will use its results, the Gazette sat down with Robin Glover, associate provost for student affairs, and Giang Nguyen, associate provost for campus health and well-being and executive director of Harvard University Health Services.
What is the Healthy Minds Survey?
Glover: The Healthy Minds Survey is a national survey based at the University of Michigan that has provided data for more than 15 years on the mental health of students in colleges and universities across the U.S. It includes a lot of the questions that we wanted to ask our students about their mental health and whether the resources and support we’re currently offering meet students’ needs. Without asking, we don’t really know how we’re doing. All of this information will inform decisions about any changes to the services and support we provide to our students.
Nguyen: The Healthy Minds Survey will also help us evaluate where we stand within the context of the broader mental health needs of college and university students all over the country. While the University has recently administered other surveys, such as the HESMA and Pulse surveys, Healthy Minds is the only University-wide survey specifically focused on student mental health and benchmarked against other universities.
How will the survey’s results be used?
Nguyen: In response to previous assessments of the student mental health experience, we improved student access to mental health support by implementing the 24/7 CAMHS Cares phone support line, providing access to TimelyCare for virtual mental health visits, and implementing a new clinical access coordinator team staffed by CAMHS licensed clinicians. We’ve also implemented campus-wide educational programs for members of our community to address mental health needs. Through the Healthy Minds Survey, we want to know whether our students know that these resources exist, what their experience has been with them, and which resources should be added or strengthened.
Periodically surveying students about their experiences and needs regarding health, and specifically mental health, is good public health practice. So, we will likely be conducting additional surveys every three years in the future.
Why is this survey important, and why should students take it?
Glover: We are really encouraging every student who is invited — every undergraduate and graduate student — to complete the survey. We want to hear as many different voices from as many different perspectives as possible. This will give us a complete picture of the mental health status of our students, as well as feedback about the programs that we offer here. A broad response across the University is important because an undergraduate student is different from a graduate student, and a professional student at the Medical School is different from one at the Business School.
What type of questions will be included and how long will it take?
Nguyen: In addition to asking about awareness and utilization of mental health services on campus, we do ask students to anonymously share with us their own experiences with mental health, which may include questions about depression, anxiety, body image issues, or other mental health diagnoses. We also ask questions about how connected they are with the community around them, as well as any exposures to trauma or substance abuse in the past. All of this feedback helps us to understand, in a more direct way, the experience of our students.
Glover: In total, the survey will take about 25 minutes, and we recognize that’s a significant commitment. As a thank-you for their time, students will receive a $15 gift card after completing the survey. Students may also exit the survey at any time, or they can pause taking it and pick it up again later using their personal survey link.
Mental health can be a difficult topic. How will the responses be kept confidential?
Nguyen: The folks at the national Healthy Minds Study have been doing this since 2007. Because they know how sensitive this subject matter is for participants, they have worked out very thoughtful and careful approaches to protecting students’ privacy.
Glover: That’s correct. They are contractually committed to anonymizing all responses and will not generate or maintain any internal connection logs with IP addresses. No information linking a student’s identity to their survey response, including an incomplete survey response, will be available to Harvard, any of the other participating universities, or any other party that may have access to the anonymized data.
Why is it important for Harvard to continue to invest in student mental health awareness services and resources?
Nguyen: We know that throughout academic life, our students face challenges. These are sometimes related to campus life and sometimes related to things going on in the broader world. We want to support our students throughout their academic journey at Harvard by helping them address their well-being and developing the capacity to strengthen their well-being in all its facets. And we recognize that one of the most critical facets of well-being is emotional well-being.
Glover: Our undergraduate and graduate students are here one year, two years, five years, seven years. Harvard is their home, their community during that time. It’s up to us to make sure that we’re offering them all the services and support that ensures their well-being, and that they feel comfortable about getting those services, support, and resources, where they need it, in a timely manner, and without judgment.
It’s very important for all of us to know that mental health is just as important as physical health. If someone says they’re getting a physical examination, people don’t think twice. And we want taking care of mental health to be the same way.
Work & Economy
You, too, can never, ever relax
Illustration by Ben Sanders/Ikon Images
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
April 1, 2025
5 min read
In ‘Make Your Own Job,’ Erik Baker explores how entrepreneurialism has altered Americans’ relationship with work
There are lots of entrepreneurs these days. Founders of businesses, of course, are entrepreneurs, and so are the managers below
In ‘Make Your Own Job,’ Erik Baker explores how entrepreneurialism has altered Americans’ relationship with work
There are lots of entrepreneurs these days. Founders of businesses, of course, are entrepreneurs, and so are the managers below them. Ride-share drivers, influencers, life coaches: entrepreneurs. There are self-styled intrapreneurs, solopreneurs, and sidepreneurs, all of whom embody the ideals of entrepreneurialism in their own unique ways.
In “Make Your Own Job,” history of science lecturer Erik Baker explores the American embrace of entrepreneurialism and why, for all the popularity of the approach, it can feel so exhausting.
Baker got interested in the topic as his friends graduated from college, landed well-paying corporate jobs, and quickly became miserable. One told him that she felt like Natalie Portman’s character in the sci-fi movie “Annihilation,” who descends into a black pit and discovers a sinister doppelganger. There was something interesting, Baker thought, about how work changes our relationships with ourselves.
In “Make Your Own Job,” Baker traces America’s enthusiasm for entrepreneurialism to the end of the 19th century. It was the conclusion of the first era of American industrialization, and the rapid electrification of manufacturing plants, among other developments, depressed demand for factory labor. After high levels of job growth throughout the 1800s, Baker writes, “The rate of employment growth in manufacturing began to taper off in 1890 and became negative around 1920.”
Social scientists called this job loss “structural” or “technological” unemployment: “Unemployment that was not the product of transient, cyclical crises,” Baker writes, “but was rather a side effect of irreversible changes to the technical structure of American industry.”
In response, Americans shifted from an industrious work ethic to an entrepreneurial one infused with ideas of personal transcendence in New Thought. Instead of focusing on the inherent value of hard work, the new ethic emphasized that hard work wasn’t enough; one should apply one’s own unique skills to the task at hand with ceaseless ambition. A cohort of success writers, across racial and gender demographics, began preaching a similar ideology: “Make your own job.”
Baker chronicles how entrepreneurialism, and its very definition, expanded over time. In the early 1900s, orthodox management styles that focused primarily on production processes gave way to “entrepreneurial management,” which focused not on merely managing employees, but inspiring them. At Harvard Business School, among other institutions, management intellectuals preached the importance of leaders who made workers “not truly feel like subordinates,” in Baker’s words, “but like members of a team or a family, or even a revolutionary cadre.”
The new ethic emphasized that hard work wasn’t enough; one should apply one’s own unique skills to the task at hand with ceaseless ambition.
In Baker’s narrative, entrepreneurial fervor tends to increase during times of economic stress. During the Great Depression, “odd jobs” became something more. Doing freelance work was not just a way to make a few dollars, but, as the authors of the 1933 book “Make Your Own Job: Opportunities in Unusual Vocations” put it, a way for someone to build “a small one-man business of his own.” Women over 40, who often faced hiring discrimination, could embrace this individualistic ethic. “We Are Forty and We Did Get Jobs,” boasted the title of one self-help book aimed at women.
Baker uses these references to self-help literature to illustrate shifts in national sentiment. Authors such as Napoleon Hill, whose 1937 book “Think and Grow Rich” remains popular to this day, encouraged readers to turn work into a calling that relied on specialized knowledge, creativity, and self-promotion. “With the changed conditions ushered in by the world economic collapse,” Hill wrote, “came also the need for newer and better ways of marketing personal services.”
By the mid-20th century, Baker writes, interest in entrepreneurialism had surged into non-economic fields, with Abraham Maslow and other psychologists becoming cheerleaders. “The most valuable 100 people to bring into a deteriorating society,” Maslow wrote, “would be not 100 chemists, or politicians, or professors, or engineers, but rather 100 entrepreneurs.”
It also became a catch-all explanation for a lack of economic development. As the fate of American cities sharply diverged with the relocation and shuttering of factories during the 1960s, certain experts blamed increasing unemployment in places like Detroit on a lack of entrepreneurial spirit.
With these mid-century changes, Baker argues, almost everyone could think of themselves as entrepreneurs: leaders of companies, managers who could inspire their co-workers, employees who could take more initiative, and even unemployed people looking for work. “It was far from obvious that high-tech corporate executives … were doing exactly the same sort of thing as a laid-off Black worker taking adult education classes, or a shopkeeper in India contemplating a change in management methods,” Baker writes. “But midcentury thinking about entrepreneurship and development depended upon precisely this equivalence.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t so much a scarcity of work that drew people toward entrepreneurialism, Baker argues, but a scarcity of jobs people found meaningful. This yearning was filled in part by leaders who encouraged employees to see their work as a source of enlightenment. Apple’s Steve Jobs would state that competing with IBM was not an economic imperative but a moral one — lest IBM win and stifle innovation. Ralph Nader’s Center for Study of Responsive Law was supported by young, ambitious employees. When asked how many hours he expected them to work, Nader deadpanned: “The ideal is 100.”
The popularity of entrepreneurialism continues to this day, Baker says, in part because it glorifies a perpetual state of risk. With fears of technological job displacement rising along with the number of people in freelance or temporary roles, more people can consider themselves the center of an entrepreneurial operation — even if the operation is just themselves.
Reading “Make Your Own Job,” one can see why Baker’s friend found herself experiencing science-fiction levels of misery. When failure always feels tangible, it’s hard to relax. For Baker, entrepreneurialism requires that everyone keep a solitary eye on the future — and remain anxious in the present.
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