“Class of 2025, are you ready?”
This was the question Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, posed to the graduating class at the school’s Advanced Degree Ceremony at Kresge Auditorium on May 29. The response was enthusiastic applause and cheers from the 224 graduates from the departments of Architecture and Urban Studies and Planning, the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, and the Center for Real Estate.
Following his welcome to an audience filled with family and friends of the graduates, Sarkis introduced the day’s guest speaker, whom he cited as the “perfect fit for this class.” Recognizing the “international rainbow of graduates,” Sarkis welcomed Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation — Climate Justice to the podium. Robinson, a lawyer by training, has had a wide-ranging career that began with elected positions in Ireland followed by leadership roles in global causes for justice, human rights, and climate change.
Robinson laced her remarks with personal anecdotes from her career, from with earning a master’s in law at nearby Harvard University in 1968 — a year of political unrest in the United States — to founding The Elders in 2007 with world leaders: former South African President Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid and human rights activist Desmond Tutu, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
She described an “early lesson” in recounting her efforts to reform the laws of contraception in Ireland at the beginning of her career in the Irish legislature. Previously, women were not prescribed birth control unless they were married and had irregular menstrual cycles certified by their physicians. Robinson received thousands of letters of condemnation and threats that she would destroy the country of Ireland if she would allow contraception to be more broadly available. The legislation introduced was successful despite the “hate mail” she received, which was so abhorrent that her fiancé at the time, now her husband, burned it. That experience taught her to stand firm to her values.
“If you really believe in something, you must be prepared to pay a price,” she told the graduates.
In closing, Robinson urged the class to put their “skills and talent to work to address the climate crisis,” a problem she said she came late to in her career.
“You have had the privilege of being here at the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT,” said Robinson. “When you leave here, find ways to lead.”
© Photo: Justin Knight
Graduates celebrate as their School is announced in Tercentenary Theatre.
Photo by Grace DuVal
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
On Thursday the University awarded a total of 9,434 degrees. A breakdown of degrees and programs is listed below.
Harvard College granted a total of 2,014 degrees. Degrees from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences were awarded by Harvard College, the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Design.
All Ph.D. degrees are conferred by the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
All figures include degrees awarded in November 2024 and March and May 2025.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
With family in mind — and big dreams for the future — Harvard employee Jorge Mendoza completes long journey to degree
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Jorge Mendoza thought he was only joking when he told his then-girlfriend, now-wife, “Maybe one day I’ll go to school at Harvard.”
Years later, the joke, he’s happy to report, is on him.
“It actually came true!” says Mendoza, who graduated this week with a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts in Extension Studies with a concentration on business administration and management.
Born in Colombia and raised in New York City, Mendoza joined Harvard as a custodial supervisor in 2018. Soon after, he enrolled at Harvard Extension School to pick up where prior college studies left off.
“To see the finish line, it’s unbelievable because it seemed so far,” said Mendoza, a 39-year-old father of two. “I’ve been in management for a very long time, so being able to do my business degree and knowing that this is what I want to do careerwise, it just made sense for me.”
“Jorge was one of those students who just came in and I saw determination to leave no stone unturned.”
Jill Slye
The six-year journey was far from easy. With help from Harvard’s Tuition Assistance Program, Mendoza immediately began to “chip away” at coursework, taking two courses per semester and a few over several summers. Two offerings on public speaking taught by Jill Slye were among his favorites.
Slye, in turn, praised Mendoza for his academic efforts.
“There are always students who tend to give off an energy that they are fully committed, right from the get-go,” she said. “They come into the class dedicated, open-minded, and nothing’s going to get in their way of learning. Jorge was one of those students who just came in and I saw determination to leave no stone unturned.”
Being a full-time employee and part-time student at Harvard offered Mendoza “insider knowledge” in his classes, he said. This spring Mendoza took an architecture class that incorporated a large number of buildings on campus, many of them familiar from his 9-to-5.
“Other people are joining the class from around the world,” he said. “They might be able to see pictures online and take some virtual tours. But to be able to be on campus, walk through or by the buildings, and even manage some of them gives you a unique [perspective],” he said.
Mendoza briefly considered skipping Commencement because it’s typically just another day on the job. “Then I really started getting excited about it.”
The only downside to being an employee who also takes classes is that you might not fully register the joy of being a Harvard student, Mendoza said. In fact, he briefly considered skipping Commencement because it’s typically just another day on the job.
But his mother and sisters told him that they wanted to be a part of the tradition, and his wife challenged his lack of enthusiasm. “Then I really started getting excited about it, and I said, ‘You know what? This is different. This is my Commencement. This is what I’ve worked so hard for,’” he said.
He’s also worked hard to serve as a role model to his kids.
“I want them to be able to say, ‘My dad finished while we were here,’” he said. “’He did it with kids and a family.”’
And that’s one big reason he’s not done yet. Mendoza has his eyes on a new goal: a master’s in liberal arts in sustainability from the Extension School.
“I hope to continue to grow academically, because I love to learn,” he said. “I want to go back to focus on sustainability. It’s a focus of the University and of the world. It is something I want to focus on to grow and develop in my career and to continue to make an impact.”
Statisticians from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a pioneering approach for analysing population-scale metabolomic data, marking a major advancement in the precision and depth of metabolic profiling. This new method promises to improve both personalised healthcare and preventive medicine by improving the accuracy and interpretability of metabolic analyses.
The pioneering framework, developed by a team of researchers led by Associate Professor Yao Zhigang from the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the NUS Faculty of Science, employs advanced mathematical techniques to fit low-dimensional manifolds into the high-dimensional space of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based metabolic biomarkers. This effectively reduces noise and reveals meaningful patterns associated with metabolic change. It can be used to better stratify individuals based on their metabolic profile and associated risk of disease. The research was carried out in collaboration with Professor Yau Shing-Tung of Tsinghua University.
Their findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on 28 May 2025.
Exploiting manifold fitting techniques to decipher metabolic heterogeneity
Metabolomic profiling, particularly through NMR-based biomarkers, offers rich insights into human metabolism. However, the complexity and dimensionality of such data have long challenged conventional analytical techniques. Traditional methods often struggle to uncover the subtle and structured biological variations underpinning disease risks.
The new framework represents a significant advancement in overcoming these limitations. It begins by clustering 251 metabolic biomarkers—measured from over 210,000 participants in the UK Biobank—into seven biologically meaningful categories, reflecting the modular organisation of human metabolism. Manifold fitting is then applied to each category to reveal smooth, low-dimensional structures that capture the essential variations in metabolic states.
At the core of this framework is the manifold fitting module, which models how individuals are distributed in a low-dimensional space based on their metabolic profiles. This geometric representation not only reduces noise but also enhances interpretability by uncovering coherent metabolic patterns that correlate with health and disease outcomes.
The key innovation lies in the method’s ability to stratify the population. In three of the seven categories, the fitted manifolds clearly divide individuals into two major subgroups, each associated with distinct risks for conditions such as metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease, and autoimmune conditions.
During a plenary lecture at the 2025 International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians (ICCM), Assoc Prof Yao explained, "The new approach allows us to identify meaningful metabolic subgroups by fitting low-dimensional manifolds to high-dimensional biomarker data. This will significantly improve our ability to relate metabolic states to susceptibility to disease."
Compared to traditional analyses, this manifold-based framework demonstrates superior performance in preserving biological signals, identifying disease-relevant subgroups, and aligning with demographic, clinical, and lifestyle factors. These strengths position it as a powerful tool for metabolic research and precision health applications.
Future directions: Advancing genetic and longitudinal insight into metabolic health
Building on the success of this framework, the research team is now exploring several promising directions to deepen their understanding of metabolic heterogeneity and its clinical implications.
One key avenue involves integrating genetic data with the identified metabolic subgroups. By conducting genome-wide association studies within each manifold-defined subgroup, the researchers aim to uncover genetic variants linked to specific metabolic patterns. This could provide critical insights into the hereditary basis of metabolic diversity and help elucidate the genetic architecture underlying complex metabolic traits and their associated disease risks.
Another focus is the longitudinal analysis of metabolic manifolds to assess their stability over time and evaluate their potential as predictive biomarkers. By analysing time-series metabolomic data, the team seeks to trace how individuals transition between metabolic states over time and determine whether these shifts are associated with disease onset or progression. Such findings could pave the way for early detection systems and more precisely timed preventive interventions.
“Our framework not only captures the current structure of metabolic variation but also lays the foundation for investigating its genetic origins and temporal dynamics. These future directions could significantly enhance personalised healthcare by enabling earlier and more targeted responses to metabolic risk,” added Assoc Prof Yao.
This ongoing research continues to expand the frontiers of metabolic profiling, providing a robust and adaptable platform for population health studies and precision medicine.
Under the NUSOne initiative, the freedom to spend Wednesday afternoons pursuing out-of-classroom activities has given NUS students more opportunities to develop a richer, more holistic student life. Students have spent the time learning about sustainability and serving the community, equipping them with skills ranging from entrepreneurship to cookery and crafts, while building bridges with other segments of society.
At NUS College (NUSC), this allocated time has been turned into a community-building opportunity for faculty, staff, and students, some of whom live off-campus, with the rest spread across two residential colleges.
Inspired by weekly family meals that help families remain close even as children grow up and start to lead independent lives, Associate Professor Eleanor Wong, NUSC Vice Dean (Residential Programmes & Enrichment), proposed making Wednesday afternoons and evenings the default timing for all NUSC events.
“We want to create a regular time when members of the NUSC community – students, staff and faculty, past and present – know that if they ‘come home’ to NUSC during this time, there will always be some other members of our family there, there will always be some activity going on, and there will always be the chance to catch up with each other,” said Prof El, as she is fondly known on campus.
Thus was born “Wednesdays at NUSC”, an initiative that consolidates both student- and staff-led events into a consistent schedule of opportunities for the community to gather. The first run took place in Semester 2 of AY2024/2025 and the initiative is set to continue in the new academic year.
The NUS College Club, a constituent club of the NUS Students’ Union that represents the NUSC student community, leads the planning together with NUSC staff advisors by creating a list of event themes at the start of the semester and sending out a call for proposals. The college’s Student Life Team further supports them by facilitating collaboration among the committees and assisting with logistics and funding to make the ideas happen.
Every Wednesday of the past semester (except for Reading Week and Exam Week), the students have gathered for activities like watching movies, engaging in arts and crafts, and enjoying performances by NUSC interest groups. Casual gatherings were interspersed with structured events such as town hall meetings, start- and end-of-semester dinners, and a Valentine’s Day carnival with nostalgic activities and treats such as a bouncy castle and old-school ice cream.
The results have been “very encouraging,” said Prof El, who observed that the events attract consistent attendance from students and even some alumni. There is no pressure to attend every event, but with a wide variety to choose from, the hope is that most members of the NUSC community will attend at least a few in each semester and Wednesdays at NUSC will become a tradition that draws them back “home” whenever they can spare the time.
Combined efforts yield bigger, better events
Students have reacted positively to the initiative, with some noting that the fixed schedule aligned with their common free time makes it more convenient to attend the events. Those involved in organising the events also appreciate the additional support to make their efforts more impactful, since the initiative provides some funding and encourages collaboration between student interest groups.
“Previously, there were a lot of smaller-scale events planned by specific groups and the reach of each one was smaller. But when two committees collaborate, we can publicise the event via two channels and have greater reach,” shared Larissa Yong, a second-year Data Science and Analytics student with a second major in Quantitative Finance who served as vice president of community life in the NUS College Club for AY2024/2025.
“A lot of us also try to make it every Wednesday, since we know beforehand that there will be something to attend.”
The NUS College Club is now brainstorming ideas for the next semester, with possible activities including a primary school-style sports day featuring three-legged races and hula hoop games, as well as an arts-themed night to showcase student performances.
Ymir Meddeb, a third-year Computer Engineering major and director of NUSC’s Student Affairs Committee, said the Wednesdays at NUSC initiative helped his committee make this year’s combined NUSC Cultural Night and Chinese New Year Celebrations the largest edition of their diversity-themed events so far. Students and alumni set up about 10 booths with activities and food showcasing different cultures, traditions and religions, and the event attracted a turnout of about 120 students.
“It was stressful and took quite a bit of coordination with other committees, but when people started flooding in at the event, I felt like ‘Wow, I did that!’” he said.
With more opportunities to interact across cohorts, bond over shared interests, and try out new experiences like performing in front of an audience, first-year students like Psychology major Syed Ariq Miiad can integrate more quickly into the college, fostering a stronger sense of community and well-being among the students.
Miiad participated in several events where the Livecore (music and band) interest group was involved, quickly made friends with students who shared his interest, and ended up joining the group’s organising committee within his first year.
Said Summer Fong, a Year 2 Mechanical Engineering major: “Having these regular events makes the dorm experience much livelier, which is really important to help people feel like NUSC is their home, rather than their bedroom.”
Having an event to look forward to every Wednesday is also good for mental health, Miiad noted. “It offers something to do in the mid-week when you need to relax and take a break from academic work, and this is a way that people can use the time to chill and engage in community bonding.”
He added: “I feel that these events are important for well-being. Most people will probably choose to attend them rather than being alone in their rooms.”
Photos by Niles Singer and Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographers; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Harvard Staff Writers
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
All he got out was “Welcome,” before the crowd sprang to its feet to give a visibly moved President Alan Garber a standing ovation as he stood at the podium in the opening moments of Commencement. Across the Charles, University lawyers were presenting their case against a Trump administration move to block Harvard from enrolling international students. It was a graduation unlike others in its legal and political context but one that at its core remained deeply and distinctly personal. The blend of hope for the future, gratitude for family, friends, and teachers, and the poignancy of moving on were in evidence throughout the Yard. Here are some snapshots of the day.
In remarks to students, President Garber delivered a warning about the danger of getting too comfortable.
“The world as it is tempts us with the lure of what one might generously call comfortable thinking,” said Garber, “a habit of mind that readily convinces us of the merits of our own assumptions, the veracity of our own arguments, and the soundness of our own opinions, positions, and perspectives — so committed to our beliefs that we seek information that confirms them as we discredit evidence that refutes them.
“Though many would be loath to admit it, absolute certainty and willful ignorance are two sides of the same coin, a coin with no value but costs beyond measure. False conviction saps true potential. Focused on satisfying a deep desire to be right, we can willingly lose that which is so often gained from being wrong — humility, empathy, generosity, insight — squandering opportunities to expand our thinking and to change our minds in the process.”
Nearing the close of his address, he celebrated graduates as “the hope of this institution embodied — living proof that our mission changes not only the lives of individuals but also the trajectories of communities that you will join, serve, and lead.”
President Alan Garber processes into Tercentenary Theatre.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Early Thursday morning, tucked in a quiet, grassy nook in front of Holden Chapel, seniors gathered one last time to hear from Rakesh Khurana, the Danoff Dean of Harvard College.
In his final address to students before stepping down as dean, Khurana urged soon-to-be graduates to savor having reached such an important academic and personal milestone in their young lives.
“Enjoy this moment. Think of where you were four years ago, where you are today, and all that came in between, and embrace every second of this special day,” Khurana said.
He also urged students to use their time and talents to make positive contributions to the world. “Whatever your calling is in life, I encourage you to do good,” he said, later adding: “My fondest hope for all of you — that your education has helped prepare you to be good citizens and citizen leaders for our society. Go forth and make us proud.”
Khurana, who was named dean of the College in 2014, plans to return to the faculty of the Department of Sociology and Harvard Business School.
“I will miss you dearly, and it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to spend these last four years with you and to serve as dean of Harvard College,” he said. “Semper Veritas!”
Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, M.D. ’92, and her son Malik Aaron Bradford III at Eliot House.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
More than three decades after her own Harvard graduation, Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, M.D. ’92, beamed as her oldest son Malik Aaron Bradford III ’25 received his degree in biomedical engineering.
“I’m just so proud of him and it’s wonderful to see him accomplish this,” the former Kirkland House resident said. “This place has so many opportunities that he’s been a part of, and he’ll continue to grow from.”
She continued: “He’s really matured quite a bit. It’s been nice to see that evolution. He’s really settled and comfortable in his own skin.”
Alves-Bradford and her husband, Malik Bradford II, said they were excited for their son’s next steps. The new Harvard alumnus already has a job lined up after Commencement, the couple proudly shared. Bradford II shared his hope that Malik’s pursuits can be “applied in a way that’s going to help him feel fulfilled.”
A few feet away, fellow Eliot House parent Linda Erickson shared her excitement at seeing her daughter, Sarah Erickson ’25, accomplish her childhood dream.
Linda Erickson embraces daughter Sarah just after she received her degree.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
“When she was 8 years old, she told me, ‘I want to go to Harvard someday.’ So, to see that dream realized over all these years has been absolutely amazing,” Linda said. “She has pushed herself so hard to achieve that goal and to get to this day has just been inspirational.”
Sarah, who was homeschooled in Cincinnati by her mother before starting high school, received her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering. At Harvard, she danced and performed in musical theater with the Harvard-Radcliffe Modern Dance Company and became a staff photographer for the Harvard Crimson.
“She’s not the same girl I dropped off four years ago,” Linda said. “She’s built great memories here with all the people she’s interacted with. It’s been amazing.”
“Honestly, it still doesn’t feel real,” said Jesse Hernandez, about moving on from life at Harvard. “I’m first-generation too, so there’s a part of me that has trouble imagining what comes next after something like this.”
The College graduate who studied economics, resided in Lowell House, and plans to hunt for a job in finance this summer, was especially grateful his parents and younger brother could make the rare trip from Florida to offer their support. “It feels good to be celebrating with all the people that helped me get here.”
With many close friends who are international students, Hernandez said he’s worried about their future after the Trump administration’s effort to block Harvard from enrolling them.
“Everybody’s nervous. Just when you start to think things can’t get worse,” they do, he said. Despite the circumstances, Hernandez said he’s trying to stay positive.
“I’ve got confidence that we’ll see this through, and that higher education won’t die today.”
Jubilant graduates fill Tercentenary Theatre.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Danielle Ray’s journey to Harvard began with a knee injury. The professional squash player born in Calgary, Canada, had competed professionally since graduating from Cornell, but during the 2022 Canadian National Championships, she took an awkward step and tore her ACL, MCL, and meniscus all at once.
“It just got stuck on the floor as I was turning and just collapsed in,” she said.
Facing the prospect of multiple surgeries and many months out of the sport, Ray looked for something she could do in the meantime that could prepare her for the future. Her now-husband, who had graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree, suggested the Harvard Extension School.
A month later, Ray was enrolled in a master’s degree in information management systems. “I blew my knee out in June,” she said, “and I started the program in July.”
The program, Ray found, was a good mix of technical and policy-based courses. Her favorite course, “Fundamentals of the Law and Cybersecurity,” examined the legal, economic, and policy challenges that arise from cybersecurity threats. She found herself especially drawn to the policy components of the program and her work in agile project management — figuring out ways to solve dynamic, complex problems.
Because she could complete the degree online while taking one or two courses at a time, Ray could also move her life forward in other directions. She recovered from her surgeries, worked through physical therapy, and returned to the professional squash circuit — representing Canada at the international level. She competed in tournaments while pregnant and in January, gave birth to a baby girl.
Ray says she’s in a place right now “that’s a bit transitional.” She hopes to work herself into a policy-related position in the near future, building off interests she developed at Harvard. She still competes professionally.
But at Commencement Thursday with her family, she celebrated her accomplishment. “It’s almost three years to the day since I tore my knee,” she said. It would have been hard then to imagine all that would quickly follow.
Aidan Fitzsimons of Winthrop House said he paused his studies for several years before returning to Harvard. “I’m gonna miss this place,” he said.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
“I didn’t see this for myself,” said Courtney Ebonique Smith, a newly minted graduate of the Harvard Extension School with a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology.
Smith grew up in foster care before being adopted and when she graduated from high school, she was living in a homeless shelter. Her experiences led her to start the Detroit Phoenix Center, a nonprofit in Detroit that provides housing, academic, and workforce support to young people who are experiencing housing insecurity and other barriers to opportunities.
“We provide them with support so they can thrive,” she said, “and maybe even come to Harvard.”
A few years after starting the nonprofit at the age of 25, Smith looked for ways to gain skills that she could immediately use as its CEO. She found the Extension School, which allowed her to take courses both on campus and from home.
In 2020, she started the Extension School’s Nonprofit Management Graduate Certificate. When she finished, she enrolled in a master’s degree. The flexibility of the program allowed her to work whenever she had time to spare. “I was able to do it at night, on the plane, in the morning, during the day,” she said, laughing. “It’s very convenient.”
Smith said that her skills in fundraising and project management improved after taking classes in both subjects. Overall, she said, the program taught her “how to be adaptable and to juggle a lot of things at once.”
Looking back, Smith is proud of the journey that led to her graduating from Harvard. “I want every person to know that it doesn’t matter where you come from,” she said. “There are opportunities for you to be able to live out the dreams that you have for your life and to thrive.”
Graduates pose in front of Widener Library.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Scott Woods II is a person of loyalties.
First on the list of the economics graduate is his House, Cabot.
“I’m a big quad guy — very loyal to the quad,” he said, while toting the Cabot House sign used in the Commencement Exercises across the Yard. “I boast about how great it is, even though it catches a lot of flak.”
Woods said Cabot, which is on the “quad,” is seen by some as less desirable than the other Houses, which are closer to the main campus along the Charles River. And he gets it because he started out that way.
“I remember it vividly,” he said of the moment he got his housing assignment as a first-year. “You could hear a pin drop — no one was excited about it at first. But then as soon as we got out there, we just realized it was all a myth, and we had to make it what it was, which was a good time.”
Besides being a Cabot House booster, Woods is also a Crimson football loyalist, having been a wide receiver on the team.
“Harvard came in with a last-minute offer that changed my life. And since I committed to play here, my life has been on the upward trend,” he said.
Woods said he’s off to the University of Maine next year, where he’ll pursue an M.B.A. Originally from Virginia, he said in all seriousness that Cabot helped make Harvard home.
“The people in Cabot made me feel seen and made me feel comfortable. It made me feel like I had a family,” he said, grinning. “Being all the way out here you don’t really have too many people to interact with.”
Woods was joined on Commencement Day by his mom, dad, brother, and two grandmothers. He said they were proud of their Cabot House mascot.
“They thought I was the man. They wanted to get a picture with me,” he said.
Maryam Hussaini (center) cheers as her group of graduate students is recognized during the Commencement Exercises.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Jean Filo hustled to meet his parents after the Commencement ceremony, part of a departing wave of other Medical School graduates identifiable by the stethoscopes they wore along with their caps and gowns.
He paused for a moment to reflect on what his graduation meant not only to himself as an immigrant from Syria but also to his parents waiting eagerly to hug their son.
“It’s surreal,” he said. “Today is mostly about my parents and them enjoying this.”
During his time at Harvard Medical School, Filo worked in cerebrovascular research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Brain Aneurysm Institute. He said he’s now heading off to Philadelphia to do a residency in neurosurgery.
But first, he said, rushing off, he had dinner plans with the parents.
Caroline Maynes and Sierra Dorweiler have been watching their son and brother, respectively, for years, and, though they know him well, they’re still impressed. Nicholas Maynes, who graduated with a master’s degree in public administration on Thursday, has been on a yearslong journey that has taken him to war and back.
As the pair watched the Commencement unfold in Tercentenary Theatre, they said that Maynes has been entirely self-driven, starting with his education at West Point.
His Army service as a field artillery officer included deployment to Iraq during the liberation of Mosul. After that, he earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of California at Berkeley before enrolling at Harvard to study at the Kennedy School.
“Academics has just been his passion,” said Caroline.
Watching her brother couldn’t help but have an impact on her, Dorweiler said. Maynes has always encouraged her to focus on what can be done, not what can’t, she added.
“I’m so proud because he’s been the one who’s pushed me to achieve academically,” she said. “He just makes it seem like pretty much anything is possible.”
Growing up in India, Devina Neema — who graduated Thursday from the Harvard Graduate School of Education — observed a major disparity between private and public schools. Her school had good classrooms and teachers and 40 hours of class every week. In public schools, students could get four or five hours of instruction, with few books and limited interaction between teachers and parents.
After graduating from college, Neema began teaching in public schools through a nonprofit program. The conditions weren’t ideal. At times, she led classrooms filled with 90 students. “It was a new world for me,” she said. “I realized this is where education needs to happen and get better.”
For different nonprofits, Neema worked across rural and urban areas to understand how students learned at different types of schools. How did they learn their first language? What were the math disparities? Were there any technological solutions?
To explore those questions more thoroughly, and to get a more formal education in teaching and how to change education at a systemic level, Neema looked to the HGSE’s master’s program in Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology.
At Harvard, Neema explored how people of different ages learn and how technology can augment it. She also studied how learners can develop transferable skills, such as social skills, and apply them to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Having never formally studied education in a university setting, she was struck — and inspired — by the sheer amount of research her professors performed in their areas of expertise. “If you have to truly understand something at heart,” she said, “then you have to broaden your perspective but also narrow down your niche and go deep.”
With her program now complete, Neema plans to stay in the area so she can continue to learn and “build something here,” she said. After studying the education systems in many countries and the workings of international and humanitarian aid, she wants to help as many people learn as she can — with any tools she has.
Sheriff of Middlesex County Peter J. Koutoujian leads the processional into Harvard Yard.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Like many, College seniors Kylie Hunts-in-Winter and Taylor Larson weren’t quite sure what to expect from Morning Exercises on what is typically a joyful day.
Given the tensions sparked by Harvard’s legal battles with the Trump administration, they weren’t certain how graduating students would respond to University officials or the celebration.
“Some people were saying on [the social media app] Sidechat that they want to cheer for [President Alan] Garber, and other people. And so, I’m interested to see how this plays out,” said Hunts-in-Winter, a champion martial artist who studied sociology and Ethnicity, Migration, Rights.
The duo stood with Larson’s Adams House colleagues as undergraduates prepared to process into Tercentenary Theatre. Not long after, Garber and other University officials received robust cheers from the assembled crowd as they made their way toward the stage.
For Larson, a history and literature concentrator from Minnesota, the morning was one of conflicting emotions. While it was “exciting,” she confessed to also feeling “overwhelmed by everything that’s to come after this.”
Both identify as first-generation, low-income students. Larson plans to pursue a master’s degree in history in London, while Hunts-in-Winter, whose family is Lakota from the Standing Rock Reservation, intends to remain in the Boston area to pursue public service work with Native American communities.
“I am glad and I’m very grateful for my time,” said Larson. “I met all my best friends here and had a lot of opportunities because of Harvard funding.”
Residents of Dunster House returned to their home of the last three years to gather with parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends, receive degrees, enjoy lunch — and let it all sink in.
Graduate Minsoo Kwon, a Mather House resident, was at Dunster to celebrate her friend Hannah Ahn, whom she met five years ago during a gap year in Korea.
Kwon said the two, who have remained friends throughout college, will both be heading off to law school in the fall — with plans already in the works for frequent visits.
“I’ll be at Yale, and Hannah will be at Columbia,” she said. “Still along the Amtrak line.”
Ahn earned a degree in government while Kwon got hers in neuroscience. She’s interested in drug and healthcare policies that overlap law and science.
Sara Silarszka receives her diploma at Dunster House.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Two other friends sharing in the afternoon festivities were Sara Silarszka and Quincy Brunner Donley — first-year roommates who got along so well they stayed together for the next three years at Dunster.
“We were in a double for three years together, and so this is the first year we had our own rooms,” Donley said.
Asked whether they missed sharing the close quarters, Donley said, “I think I did,” followed by a quick “definitely” by Silarszka.
Both roommates made their mark in Harvard athletics — Silarszka, as a field hockey player, now with a degree in integrated biology, and Donley, a Nordic skier with a degree in economics.
Donley said after graduation, she’s moving back to her home state of Alaska to pursue professional skiing.
“At least for the foreseeable future,” she said.
Silarszka, who grew up in Virginia, said she is hoping to visit her old roomie. And she’s taking a gap year before applying to medical school.
“I just love living with my best friends,” she said. “You’ll just never be this close to so many people you love, so that’ll be hard to leave behind.”
Graduates entering Tercentenary Theatre.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Chidimma Adinna, a graduating senior from Adams House, left Nigeria at age 6 when her parents immigrated to California. Now she’s set to return, thanks to a fellowship to teach at a high school some of her family members still attend.
While her desire to return to Nigeria stems from her family history, the how and why owe largely to her studies at Harvard. A psychology concentrator, Adinna became interested in climate change during her time as an undergrad. As a fellow in Nigeria, she plans to promote sustainability and help the school take steps to fight the climate crisis. She’ll also act as a tutor and mentor students who want to go to college.
“Since I was younger, I was always trying to be connected to my community in Nigeria,” she said. “This has involved me donating clothes through organizations that I founded with my family, and it’s a mission that I’m trying to continue, even postgrad. It’s been evolving over the years I’ve been trying to give back to my community.”
Justin Biassou spent a lot of time in an airplane cabin on the way to his master’s degree.
Starting in 2022, he would occasionally commute from Seattle to Cambridge for in-person classes from Harvard Extension School, where he earned an A.L.M. in international relations.
But Biassou is comfortable in the air. He started flight training at 12 and got his private pilot’s license at 17. Even as he studied, he was working full time leading an air safety team for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Biassou took up his coursework in January 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic still loomed over campuses, classrooms, and airports.
“I took one class per semester, and each one had this incredible group of students with all these different backgrounds — often they were working, too.”
Many of Biassou’s courses did take place online. But person-to-person time in Cambridge was well worth the flight, as were a few intensive January courses crammed into his time off from work.
At a time when “a lot of us just felt isolated, and very uneasy,” Biassou recalled, class “just really brought a lot of us together … These have become lifelong friends.”
The Extension School allowed Biassou a chance to expand his skill set in aviation safety. With new expertise in international relations, he hopes to “harmonize” safety efforts beyond U.S. borders, with authorities like the United Nations and the International Civil Aviation Organization.
His three-year, transcontinental balancing act may have earned Biassou “a lot of gray hairs.”
“But I had a really incredible support system: my significant other Michelle, my parents, my sisters,” Biassou said, as his family stood by. “They allowed me to focus on the things that needed to get done: Yes, 40 hours a week keeping aviation safe, then also working on my classes.”
Makena Tenpenny (center) embraces her fellow Harvard Graduate School of Education classmates as their class is recognized.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Many faculty and graduates at Commencement ceremonies wore stickers, flowers, and other symbols in support of Harvard’s international students — now facing threats from the Trump administration.
For Daniel Roque-Coplín, J.D. ’25, the cause of safeguarding the rights of newcomers in America is personal — and the focus of his professional goals.
“Both of my parents are immigrants: My mom is from the Dominican Republic; my dad is from Cuba,” Roque-Coplín said, as he and his mother huddled before lunch. “They never in their lives dreamed that their son could go to a school like this one.”
His law school journey was not always easy — particularly at the beginning.
“First year, second year, you spend a lot of time in the library,” he said. “A lot of times, the studying can consume you, because you’re competing with everyone else, in a sense.”
Roque-Coplín said he was driven by a desire to help families like his own, with immigrant pasts and big ambitions in the United States.
Even before the latest tightening of immigration law and enforcement, the law did not always serve those families well, Roque-Coplín said.
He hopes to change that.
“Immigration law is intersectional, right? There are public-health needs, criminal needs, straightforward needs” related to legal status and asylum.
He had already begun that work in Cambridge as a student attorney in family practice with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, which offers free representation to low-income clients in Greater Boston.
Roque-Coplín acknowledged that he enters the legal professional at an acutely difficult moment for the families he hopes to serve. But he and other Law School graduates said they see that field as a chance to do urgent work.
“Through the grace of God, I’ve overcome — I’m here,” Roque-Coplín said. About the fights to come, “I’m nervous, I’m excited, and I feel, honestly, like nothing can stop me.”
Graduates wait to receive their diplomas at Lowell House.
Photo by Grace DuVal
As the official ceremonies of Commencement Day wound down, families gathered on the steps of Widener Library for photographs with their graduates.
Elio Kennedy-Yoon showed particular patience with the many iterations of family pictures on offer: his three siblings, separately and together; his father, then grandfather; his girlfriend; then the whole clan together.
You might credit Kennedy-Yoon’s recent experience with celebrity, as an actor and singer in Din & Tonics, the College a capella group. Just last year, he made a splash online with a viral solo version of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.” Fan art, mashups, and the group’s world tour ensued.
After Commencement, Kennedy-Yoon wore two sashes: one honoring his Asian American heritage and another for LGBT pride.
Even before that viral moment, the last five years have been transformative for Kennedy-Yoon.
First, a gender transition during the pandemic, and a jarring move from Utah to Cambridge.
“I love Utah, but the people can be very conservative. I really found a community here that’s very accepting, very diverse.” (Among that community was Kennedy-Yoon’s girlfriend, a few years older — and “the love of my life,” he said with a smile.)
Still, as a queer Asian American with some online visibility, it hasn’t been possible to dodge hostility or derision. When Donald Trump was elected president the first time, Kennedy-Yoon was 13. In this tumultuous spring, he said it feels like a long time to have lived in conflict with the country’s political leadership.
That has made the University’s resistance to Trump administration mean all the more.
“In a weird way. I’ve never been prouder to be a Harvard student than right now,” Kennedy-Yoon said. “That we’re standing up for academia, for knowledge, for truth … and against tyranny.”
When Annabeth Tao was an undergraduate at UCLA, she worked as a research assistant for a professor focused on computer game animation. In her year at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, she added to that experience a better understanding of how students learn, which she plans to blend into a startup focused on devising interactive games to help students become more creative in STEM studies.
When she arrived on campus in the fall, enrolled in the Ed School’s Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology master’s degree program, Tao had a vague plan to use the arts to enhance education. Over the course of her studies, she refined that ambition, in part through conversations with fellow students. In fact, some of her best memories of her time at Harvard are the brainstorming sessions with classmates.
She’ll have to find a job while getting the startup off the ground, but said that she’s excited about the chance to help unleash creativity among students and teachers, shaping “a dynamic learning experience for kids.”
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A federal judge on Thursday extended a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from terminating Harvard’s right to host international students and scholars. The restraining order was issued last week after the University sued in response to an attempt by the government to revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification.
More than 5,000 international students and scholars at Harvard are at risk of losing legal status due to the revocation order, which was first conveyed in a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and has sown fear and confusion among international students and scholars at Harvard and other universities. In its lawsuit, Harvard argues that the government’s actions violate the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. President Alan Garber has described the Trump administration’s efforts as retaliatory.
Responding Thursday to Judge Allison Burroughs’ decision to extend the temporary restraining order, the University noted the contributions of international students and scholars and pledged to continue to fight for its ability to welcome them to campus.
“Harvard will continue to take steps to protect the rights of our international students and scholars, members of our community who are vital to the University’s academic mission and community — and whose presence here benefits our country immeasurably,” a University spokesperson said.
The extension of the restraining order came as students, staff, and faculty celebrated Commencement in Harvard Yard. Garber received a standing ovation when he began welcoming remarks that included a nod to the University’s global community.
“Welcome members of the Class of 2025 — members of the Class of 2025 from down the street, across the country, and around the world,” he said, adding: “Around the world just as it should be.”
Elsewhere in the Yard and around campus, students, alums, and others welcomed Harvard’s success in court.
International students are “part of what makes Harvard one of the best universities in the world,” said Kevin Pacheco, an instructor at the Medical School. Caleb Thompson ’27, co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Association, agreed.
“I’m obviously very happy about the news,” Thompson said. “International students are a part of all our lives. I’m not the first person to say this, but Harvard isn’t Harvard without international students … these are some of the most talented, intellectually capable students on our campus.”
He added: “For me it’s personal even though I’m a domestic student: I have eight international suitemates. They’re the most important people in my life.”
Sy Boles of the Harvard Staff contributed to this report.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Abraham Verghese underscored the vital role of immigrants in the life of the nation at Harvard’s 374th Commencement Thursday at Tercentenary Theatre. He was speaking from experience.
Born in Ethiopia to expatriate teachers from India, Verghese, a doctor and writer, began his medical studies in Addis Ababa but had to interrupt them as the country descended into civil war in 1974. After completing his medical studies at Madras Medical College in India, he arrived in Johnson City, Tennessee, as an infectious disease specialist in the mid-1980s, the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Verghese, who teaches at Stanford, was the principal speaker at Commencement, which unfolded as a federal judge in Boston extended a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to host international students and scholars. That action and others by the government were on Verghese’s mind as he delivered a passionate defense of immigrants and international students living, studying, and working in the U.S.
“When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country, including so many of your international students, worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it’s fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me,” he said.
He also spoke directly to the contributions of foreign-born doctors at hospitals across the country.
“We were recruited here because American medical schools simply don’t graduate sufficient numbers of physicians to fill the country’s need,” said Verghese, who spent two years early in his career at what is now Boston Medical Center. “More than a quarter of the physicians in the country are foreign medical graduates, many of them ultimately settling in places that others might not find as desirable.
“A part of what makes America great, if I may use the phrase, is that it allows an immigrant like me to blossom here, just as generations of other immigrants and their children have flourished and contributed in every walk of life, working to keep America great.”
Pointing to his experience as a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop — his books include “Cutting for Stone,” “My Own Country,” and “The Covenant of Water” — Verghese credited America for enriching his life as an author. He quoted the novelist E.L. Doctorow: “It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year. Who believes in America more than the people who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?”
He also praised Harvard President Alan Garber for resisting Trump administration demands for viewpoint audits and other measures, even as dramatic funding cuts imperil the University’s ability to carry out its research mission. Harvard deserves support and praise, he said, for “affirming and courageously defending the essential values of this university, and indeed of this nation.”
Closing his remarks, Verghese offered a few pieces of advice to the Class of 2025. First, he urged students to read fiction, because novels offer “powerful lessons about life” and can open a reader’s mind to unfamiliar lives and experiences. He was inspired to become a doctor in part by reading W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage,” he recalled.
“If you don’t read fiction,” Verghese said, “my considered medical opinion is that a part of your brain responsible for active imagination atrophies.”
Verghese also stressed the importance of character and courage: “Graduates, the decisions you will make in the future under pressure will say something about your character, while they also shape and transform you in unexpected ways. Make your decisions worthy of those who supported, nurtured, and sacrificed for you: your parents, your partners, your family, and your ancestors. Make your decisions worthy of this great university and the hardship it must endure going forward as it works to preserve the value of what you accomplished here.”
Lastly, drawing on the lessons he learned from AIDS patients he tended to Tennessee in the mid-1980s, Verghese asked students to take great care with the gift of time. Seeing men in their 30s and 40s face death was heartbreaking, he said, but he found comfort in the fact that many of them, at the end of their lives, cherished the company of family.
“They found that meaning at the end of a shortened life did not reside in fame, power, reputation, money, or good looks,” he said. “Instead, they found that meaning in their lives ultimately resided in the successful relationships they had forged in a lifetime, particularly with family.”
Verghese read to the crowd a letter he had shared many times before. In it, a young man dying of AIDS assures his mother that, having fulfilled many of his dreams, he has no regrets, and is grateful that his illness has allowed him to slow down to spend time with his family.
“I’ve enjoyed a life full of adventure and travel, and I loved every moment of it. But I probably never would have slowed down enough to really appreciate all of you if it hadn’t been for my illness. That’s the silver lining in this very dark cloud …
“If anyone ever asks you if I went to heaven, tell them this: I just came from there. No place could conceivably be as wonderful as where I’ve spent these last 30 years. I’ll miss it. I’ll miss you, mother. I’m so glad we made good use of this time to get to know each other again.”
After reading the last lines, Verghese exhorted students, “Cherish this special day. And above all, make good use of your time.”
The Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity (AFSE) has opened applications for the 2026 cohort, seeking changemakers from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Pacific Island nations.
Kannon K. Shanmugam.
Gittings Global Photography
Kannon K. Shanmugam ’93, J.D. ’98, a prominent and prolific appellate attorney and alumnus of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, will join the Harvard Corporation as its newest member, the University announced on Thursday. Shanmugam will succeed Theodore V. Wells Jr., J.D. ’76, M.B.A. ’76, who departs the board after 12 years of service.
Citing his “deep devotion to Harvard and to the importance of academic values and academic freedom,” President Alan Garber and Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker announced Shanmugam’s election in a message to the Harvard community on Thursday afternoon.
“Kannon Shanmugam is one of the nation’s most accomplished and admired appellate attorneys, who has also served an array of educational institutions,” said Garber and Pritzker. “Beyond his extensive experience counseling and representing major organizations in complex matters, he is known for his intellectual acuity and curiosity, his remarkable work ethic, his warm and collegial manner, his adroitness in engaging people with varied points of view, and his commitment to academic excellence.”
Shanmugam has argued 39 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and more than 150 other appeals in courts across the country, including all 13 federal courts of appeals and numerous state courts. Formerly a partner at the law firm Williams & Connolly and a member of the Office of the Solicitor General in the Department of Justice, Shanmugam is now a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he is also the founding chair of the firm’s Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Practice, chair of its office in Washington, D.C., and co-chair of the Litigation Department.
Shanmugam has also served a number of educational institutions in advisory and governance roles, including as past chair of the board of trustees of Thurgood Marshall Academy, a public charter high school in Washington, D.C.; current trustee of both the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the University of Kansas Endowment; and past trustee of the Association of Marshall Scholars.
“It’s an honor to have been asked to serve on the Harvard Corporation, and I look forward to contributing my perspective to the Corporation’s deliberations in the coming years,” said Shanmugam. “My reason for agreeing to serve is simple: I owe everything to Harvard. Harvard gave me opportunities I never would have had, and it exposed me to different people and new ideas.
“Harvard has gone through difficult times and faces substantial challenges, but it does so much good for the world,” he continued. “Harvard is one of our nation’s most important institutions, and when an institution has problems, I believe the solution is to work constructively to fix the problems, while holding true to its foundational commitment to academic excellence. I look forward to doing my part to help Harvard meet those challenges and to make the University a better, stronger place for the future.”
A native of Kansas, Shanmugam’s father was a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Kansas after his parents emigrated from India. In 1993, Shanmugam graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, where he concentrated in classics and served as editor in chief of the Harvard Independent. He studied as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, where he received a Master of Letters degree in classical languages and literature. Shanmugam was executive editor of the Harvard Law Review before graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1998.
After law school, Shanmugam clerked for Judge J. Michael Luttig of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court. He entered private practice as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis and later served as assistant to the solicitor general in the Department of Justice from 2004 to 2008.
Shanmugam practiced as a partner at Williams & Connolly for more than a decade after leaving the solicitor general’s office, rising to become one of the country’s most sought-after appellate lawyers. He served as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Appellate Practice Committee and as the president of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court — an organization dedicated to advancing the rule of law through example, education, and mentoring. Shanmugam is the only practicing American lawyer who is an honorary bencher of the Inner Temple, one of the four English Inns of Court. He has also taught Supreme Court advocacy at Georgetown University Law Center and is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a Federalist Society contributor.
One of six appellate lawyers ranked as a Star Individual by Chambers USA, Shanmugam was a finalist for The American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Year in 2022 and 2024, and he was named Appellate Litigator of the Year by Benchmark Litigation in 2021.
In accordance with the University’s charter, Shanmugam was elected by the members of the Corporation with the consent of the University’s Board of Overseers. He will begin his service on July 1 as Wells departs the board. Garber and Pritzker thanked Wells and noted his service in their message to the community.
“We owe profound gratitude to our colleague Ted Wells, who since 2013 has served the Corporation and the University superbly with his powerful mind, his formidable legal expertise, his strong commitment to academic ideals and principled decision-making, and his humane concern for others,” said Garber and Pritzker. “In Kannon Shanmugam, we are fortunate to have someone well positioned to carry forward and build on Ted’s remarkable legacy, while bringing fresh perspectives and valuable insights to the hard and important work ahead.”
The Harvard Corporation, formally the President and Fellows of Harvard College, was chartered in 1650 and exercises fiduciary responsibility with regard to the University’s academic, financial, and physical resources and overall well-being. Chaired by the president, the 13-member 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.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Growing up in Afghanistan, Muqtader Omari ’25 loved astrophysics, but the political climate of his country led him on a couple of detours — working as a writer and studying government — before he ultimately returned to his scientific roots to focus on artificial intelligence.
After he graduated from high school in Kabul, Omari launched a nonprofit called Talk Science, which aimed to educate young people on social media platforms. But he soon found education had political dimensions he hadn’t anticipated.
“I started noticing all these limitations that exist and was interested in learning more about where these came from,” said Omari, pointing to the barriers faced by Afghan girls seeking an education under Taliban rule. His curiosity led him to write for a newspaper in Kabul, and eventually to pursue higher education in the U.S.
At Harvard, where he is one of nearly 6,800 international students across the University, Omari opted to concentrate in government and in computer science. Throughout his undergraduate years, he sought to learn more about his birth country as the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan’s government. In 2023, the Adams House resident met lecturer in the Modern Middle East Mohammad Sagha through a course dedicated to regional order, U.S. wars, and the politics of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“What makes Muqtader unique is that while he has a compelling personal story, he never relied on that to solely inform his worldview,” said Sagha. “He’s intellectually rigorous and tries to objectively study and understand Afghanistan, its neighboring environment, U.S. foreign policy, and other factors through a balanced scholarly lens — that is rare to find.”
Sagha added: “He is very passionate about what is happening in his country and is eager to make a difference.”
“I preplanned a lot of my life in high school, and none of it worked out. I’ll let myself decide in the moment. I just hope I’m happy and I’m learning.”
Omari’s early intellectual leanings may have been with Afghanistan, but he was determined to push himself to meet students from all walks of life. About filling out his first-year roommate survey, Omari said, “I didn’t want to be with other international or Middle Eastern students. I wanted it to be as opposing to who I am as possible, because that’s what I thought Harvard was all about.”
He joined the Institute of Politics as a study group leader and the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Committee, where he assisted in the production of nonpartisan dialogues on politics, public service, and other affairs. But halfway through his four years, Omari realized that politics wasn’t for him. Missing the rigidity that science offered, he became fascinated with artificial intelligence.
“It’s mind-boggling to me,” he said. “It feels like we’re reaching a new period of human history.”
Omari’s plans after Harvard are unclear. “I preplanned a lot of my life in high school, and none of it worked out,” he said. “I’ll let myself decide in the moment. I just hope I’m happy and I’m learning.”
Eventually, he hopes to return to Afghanistan, although the political situation is too unstable now, he said. His family, including younger sisters, moved to the U.K. after the Taliban takeover. “I could never feel like I’m at home anywhere else but Kabul,” he said.
Sagha is confident Omari will be successful wherever he lands. “He, alongside other gifted Afghan diaspora, can play a positive role in representing their country and enriching our own society and knowledge here in the United States.”
At Law School, Sophia Hunt discovers passion for defense — and rises to job once held by Obama
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
When Sophia Hunt found out she had been elected president of the Harvard Law Review in February 2024, she texted her family group chat: “What do Barack Obama and I have in common?”
That commonality of course, was being selected by their peers to lead the nearly 140-year-old student publication that has been influential in shaping American law throughout its history.
“The works that we publish can be read by justices, lawyers, professors, and students and can not only shape the law itself but also shape our orientation about what the law can and should be,” she said.
After she graduates with her Juris Doctorate, Hunt plans to enter the world of criminal defense. Once she passes the bar, that is. Her interest, Hunt said, stems from working for the Office of the Federal Public Defender after her first year of Law School.
“That was a really formative experience,” she said. “It was really nice to be able to put legal research and writing to practice.”
Hunt joined Harvard Defenders, a student practice that provides pro bono representation to low-income defendants in criminal show-cause hearings and assists clients looking to seal their records, among other legal issues.
Hunt also took part in the Tenant Advocacy Project at HLS helping represent clients facing issues such as revocation of Section 8 housing vouchers. She also provided representation and legal research assistance to incarcerated people through the Prison Legal Assistance Project.
In her last year at the Law School, she worked with Harvard’s Criminal Justice Institute.
“That was like being a baby public defender, where I visited clients in jail and stood up in court and wrote motions,” she said. “Sometimes it was just talking and listening to someone’s story and being the first person to hear them. That has been incredibly fulfilling.”
“I just find so much meaning in working and advocating on behalf of individual clients.”
Hunt graduated from Harvard College in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature. From there she headed off to Stanford to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology.
But after three years of research and writing at the intersection of law and society and receiving her master’s, she felt a call to law school and took a leave of absence from her Ph.D. program.
“In the back of my head, I’ve thought — is being a lawyer the best way to help the individuals and communities that I care about? Should I be doing more policy-related work, or should I be thinking about academia and putting new ideas out there and trying to change the law from that standpoint?” she said.
“I just find so much meaning in working and advocating on behalf of individual clients,” she added. “It’s the best feeling, getting to tell their stories, and helping a prosecutor, a judge, see someone’s humanity.”
In addition to her course load and participation in groups that brought her into the courtroom, Hunt said she joined Harvard Law Review in her second year at HLS to “further invest” herself in the Law School community and flex her academic muscles.
Hunt went on to be elected by that community to lead the Law Review as its second-ever Black woman president, after ImeIme Umana, who was elected in 2017.
“Just being in the same sentence as her is a complete privilege,” Hunt said. “It was an honor to be in consideration of all these amazing former presidents, including ones who were Black. But for me, I hope that we’re past the hump of having first and seconds. I hope it’s become more normalized at this point — someone being elected because they’re perceived as being the best person for the job.”
Reflecting on her time in the top spot, Hunt said it was challenging and rewarding but overall not as much an exercise in shaping the voice of the Review as an exercise in management.
“When it comes to editorial decisions, what’s really helpful is that our entire body is involved in the articles that we publish,” she said. “I tried to reflect the body’s will and interest in carrying out those decisions. And getting to work so closely on so many brilliant pieces was just phenomenal.”
Maureen Brady, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, said Hunt’s leadership skills should serve her well during challenging times.
“It’s an incredibly important moment in our world,” said Brady, who teaches property law and related subjects. “There’s so much conflict, and there’s incredible polarization. I think law school is about learning a common language that we can use to argue about things and to deeply disagree, but also to, hopefully, reach justice. Sophia is someone who really embodies that, who has led a wide range of people, and who has pursued a really interesting path here, toward justice.”
After she passes the bar, Hunt plans to clerk for a judge in Mississippi.
“Through law school, you read a bunch of judicial opinions and now to switch over and help in the crafting of judicial opinions … it’s going to be interesting to see things on the other side.”
She added: “I’m excited to eat well and meet a bunch of new people, and I think I have to get into college football.”
Honorary degree recipients Rita Moreno (clockwise from top left), Elaine H. Kim, Abraham Verghese, Richard Alley, Esther Duflo, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pose for their portrait with President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning in front of Massachusetts Hall.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Lucia Huntington
Harvard Correspondent
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
The University conferred six honorary degrees during Thursday’s Commencement ceremony.
Doctor of Laws
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is known world-wide over as one of the greatest basketball players to ever play the game as well as a committed social activist and award-winning writer. As a player, he was the NBA’s all-time leading scorer for 39 years, with 38,387, until his record was broken in 2023 by fellow Laker great Lebron James. Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time NBA champion, and the league’s only six-time MVP. Time magazine dubbed him “History’s Greatest Player” and ESPN and The Pac 12 named him the No. 1 Collegiate Athlete of the 21st Century.
Abdul-Jabbar has a national platform as a regular contributing columnist for newspapers and magazines around the world. He currently publishes on kareem.substack.com, where he shares his thoughts on some of the most socially relevant and politically controversial topics facing our nation. He is a nationally recognized speaker and regularly appears on the lecture circuit.
President Barack Obama awarded Abdul-Jabbar the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest honor for civilians. He has also received The Ford Medal of Freedom, The Rosa Parks Award, The Double Helix Medal, and Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal of Courage. Abdul-Jabbar holds eight honorary doctorate degrees and is a U.S. Cultural Ambassador, a title created specifically for him by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Abdul-Jabbar is a New York Times bestselling author of 17 books, most of which explore the often-overlooked history of African Americans, from the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance to forgotten Black inventors who changed daily life. He currently has several book and film projects in development.
He is an award-winning documentary producer and was twice nominated for an Emmy. He was featured in HBO’s most watched sports documentary of all time, “Kareem: Minority of One,” and he a writer/producer on Season 5 of “Veronica Mars.”
In 2015, the Basketball Hall of Fame created the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar College Center of the Year Award, and in 2021, the NBA created the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award.
Abdul-Jabbar is the California STEM Ambassador because of his commitment to youth education, and also serves on the Advisory Board for UCLA Health. Now 76 years old, he likes to say, “Only my jersey is retired.”
Doctor of Science
Geologist Richard Alley, widely known as one of the best professors at Pennsylvania State University, is an expert who studies the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to predict coming changes in climate and sea level. A 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner (with Al Gore), he has been honored for research, teaching, and service, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society, and has advised top government officials from both major political parties.
Educated at Ohio State University and University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1987, Alley has authored or co-authored than 400 articles for scholarly publications about the relationships between Earth’s cryosphere and global climate change. His research was the first to show that the last Ice Age ended abruptly and violently rather than as a result of gradual change, suggesting a warning to look to the past before making environmental decisions for the future.
Alley’s “The Two-Mile Time Machine,” a Phi Beta Kappa science book of the year, focuses not on the long-term changes that may have caused the ice ages, but on newly discovered “flickering” climate changes revealed by drilling through Greenland’s ice. The ice core showed sudden, immense climate shifts that have changed the Earth from livable to inhospitably frozen to unbearably hot.
Alley has warned that the U.N.’s “best estimate” of 3 feet of sea-level rise by the end of this century is misleading: “It could be 2, it could be 15 or 20,” he has said.
“People who study the history of climate desperately need a record,” he told Knowable Magazine in 2022. “I really do think that this understanding of the ice ages, the role of carbon dioxide, has been a key step in the full understanding of the role of carbon dioxide in our climate.”
Alley participated in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and presented the PBS TV miniseries “Earth: The Operators’ Manual,” based on his book of the same name. In it, he wrote, “Science is not the result of dispassionate machines spitting out Truth; it involves passionate humans pursuing truth and fame and next week’s paycheck, while satisfying curiosity at the same time.”
Doctor of Laws
Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Chaire, Pauvreté et politiques publiques at the Collège de France. Her research seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim of helping design and evaluate social policies.
Duflo has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance, believing that “Evidence-based policies are the key to solving complex social issues.”
Known for the “Randomista Movement,” which uses randomized control trials to study poverty interventions, Duflo says that without these trials poverty reduction efforts do no more than simply hope for the best. From 2000 to 2012 the number of published economic studies relying on randomized controlled studies nearly quadrupled.
Duflo has written, “If you want to understand the root causes of poverty, you have to lookbeyond the symptoms,” which she defines as a lack of cash. “If we want to fight poverty effectively, we must first understand the lives of the poor.”
Duflo’s first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1999.
Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes, including 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (with co-laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer), the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences in 2015, the A.SK Social Science Award (2015), Infosys Prize in 2014, the David N. Kershaw Award in 2011, a John Bates Clark Medal in 2010, and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship in 2009.
With Banerjee, she wrote “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty,” which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into more than 17 languages. She also wrote “Good Economics for Hard Times.”
Duflo is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
Doctor of Laws
Elaine H. Kim is professor emerita of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was also chair of the Ethnic Studies Department, associate dean of the Graduate Division, faculty assistant for the Status of Women, and assistant dean in the College of Letters and Science.
Questions of who is represented and how are central to Kim’s work. At UC Berkeley, believing that, “If something you want does not exist, you can try to create it,” she helped establish the Ethnic Studies Department.
Kim has written, edited, and co-edited 10 books and directed or produced and co-produced three video documentaries, including “Labor Women” in 2002 and “Slaying the Dragon: Reloaded” in 2011. She received the Asian Pacific American Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award, the Association for Asian American Studies Lifetime Achievement Award, the State of California Award for Excellence in Education, and the Association for Asian American Studies Cultural Studies Book Award.
Drawn to questions of representation by Hollywood stereotyping (“Very early on, everybody was interested in representation and felt the importance of films and television in our fate. And so all the students could relate to the fact that, for men, there was only Charlie Chan. Bruce Lee wasn’t even a possibility because they wouldn’t let him play in the roles. And then for women, it was just as bad — Madame Butterfly and Dragon Lady,” she told the Cal Alumni Association in 2021), she has worked hard to correct misimpressions of the Korean community in the U.S. and Asians more broadly, though she pointedly dislikes hearing one person speak for an entire group. She has served as president of the Association for Asian American Studies and on the National Council of the American Studies Association. She also co-founded Asian Women United of California, the Korean Community Center of the East Bay in Oakland, and Asian Immigrant Women Advocates.
Kim earlier received an honorary doctorate of laws from Notre Dame University, honorary doctorates in human letters from the University of Massachusetts Boston, Amherst College, the Global Korea Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship.
Doctor of Arts
Rita Moreno is a triple-threat performer whose legendary performances include roles as Anita in “West Side Story,” for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Louise in “Carnal Knowledge”; Miller in “The Electric Company” (a role in which she popularized the shout “Hey, you guys!”); Sister Peter Marie Reimondo in “Oz”; and recently, Abuelita Toretto in “Fast X.” She is one of only six women to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.
She began her career at 9 years old, dancing in New York City nightclubs, and broke into movies two years later by dubbing Spanish-language films. Her first appearance on stage, opposite Eli Wallach, came in 1945, when she was still 13. She broke into movies in 1950 with “So Young, So Bad” and worked steadily in movies and television throughout that era. Her 43 wins and 51 nominations include honors from the American Latino Media Arts, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Daytime and Primetime Emmys, Grammy, and NAACP Image awards.
Moreno broke barriers for Latines and others. A social activist, she worked with the Civil Rights Movement and was part of the March on Washington in 1963. She has championed racial, gender, immigration, education (she herself attended Public School 132 in Brooklyn but dropped out of high school at age16), and LGBTQ+ rights, and advocated for relief for Puerto Rico, her homeland.
Acknowledging that she was typecast early in her career, even having her skin darkened for her role in “West Side Story,” she believes she owes her professional longevity to her ability “to get up and dust myself off and keep moving forward.” Moreno has said, “No one’s going to tell me how to make my own choices. For too many years, everybody told me what to say and what to do and how to be.”
She has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Kennedy Center Honor, the Peabody Award, and the Medal for the National Endowment for the Arts. The 2021 Netflix documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It” tells the story of her amazing 85-year Hollywood career.
Principal Speaker
Doctor of Humane Letters
Abraham Verghese is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor in the Department of Medicine, Stanford University. He also leads PRESENCE, a multidisciplinary center that studies the human experience of patients, physicians, and caregivers.
He began his medical training in Ethiopia in 1974, but when a military government deposed Emperor Haile Selassie he immigrated to America and worked as a hospital orderly for a year. He has written that that experience made him determined to finish his medical training. He earned his bachelor’s in medicine in India, completed a residency in Johnson City, Tennessee, and a fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine.
Verghese returned to Johnson City in 1985 and was quickly overwhelmed by the rural AIDS epidemic. To tell that story, he attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, writing in 2009, “I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn’t to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound.”
Since 1991 Verghese has published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His first book, “My Own Country,” was made into a movie directed by Mira Nair; and his novel, “Cutting for Stone,” spent 107 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. “The Covenant of Water,” his latest, was a New York Times bestseller, an Oprah pick, and is currently being made into a series by Netflix and Harpo Productions.
Verghese is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015 President Obama awarded him the National Humanities Medal, “For reminding us that the patient is the center of the medical enterprise. His range of proficiency embodies the diversity of the humanities; from his efforts to emphasize empathy in medicine, to his imaginative renderings of the human drama.” In 2023, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. This is his seventh honorary doctorate.
By Prof Sing Tien Foo, Provost’s Chair Professor from the Dept of Real Estate at NUS Business School
By Ms Elyana Syazana Mohd Ridwan, a third-year student from the Dept of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS
Some legacies aren’t written in legislation or court records, but in lives changed and minds inspired. The story of the NUS Pro Bono Group (NUS PBG) is one with such a legacy – sparked by student passion and shaped by professors who believed that the law should serve the public good.
Law students have been doing pro bono work since 1959, when students at the then-University of Malaya assisted the Legal Aid Bureau. In the 1990s, a handful of passionate NUS Law students became involved in pro bono work when they volunteered at prison facilities and children’s homes.
As student interest grew, so did the need for a formal platform – one that could sustain these efforts and weave pro bono work into the fabric of legal education at NUS Law. In 2005, under Professor Tan Cheng Han, SC’s then-deanship, that vision came to life with the launch of the student-initiated NUS PBG – Singapore’s first student-run pro bono group. This was a bold step at a time when pro bono work was not yet a part of mainstream legal education.
NUS PBG has just celebrated 20 years of student pro bono efforts, and two decades on, pro bono work and community work has become a cornerstone of the NUS Law undergraduate experience. The Faculty has a number of student-led pro bono groups who receive support from NUS Law professors and the NUS Law Centre for Pro Bono and Clinical Legal Education. Today, NUS PBG remains the largest student-run pro bono initiative in the country with over 240 students championing access to justice every year, working with migrant workers, at-risk youth, and many other underserved communities across 10 projects, including FIDReC, Syariah Law Friends and the Legal Education & Awareness Programme (LEAP). Pro bono work has also become mandatory for students in all three law schools in Singapore.
To mark the 20 year Anniversary of PBG’s founding, Prof Tan reflects on the challenges and evolution of student pro bono work, and how NUS PBG has made a lasting impact on legal education at NUS Law and in Singapore.
1. How did the idea of a Pro Bono Group at NUS Law first come about?
This was a student-led idea. It began when Joseph Wong, then a final-year law student, approached me with the idea of starting a student pro bono initiative within NUS Law. I had little hesitation agreeing as exposing students to pro bono cases has many advantages. These include defining the type of lawyer we want our students to be and giving them the exposure to practical problems that lawyers have to face in practice. It also showcases how meaningful the law can be, which we hope will instil pride in our students for the profession they will become a part of.
The initial idea was that this would be led by the school’s management. Instead, I challenged the student to make it a student-led initiative, with supervision from one of our Faculty, Associate Professor Helena Whalen-Bridge. My experience with NUS Law students is that they are creative, enterprising and idealistic. I had great confidence that if they embraced this approach, the activity would be a success, and that taking ownership of such an initiative was also an opportunity for them to learn and grow as individuals. They did not disappoint me. Assoc Prof Whalen-Bridge has reported that students embody the developments I envisioned, and that allowing students to identify legal need in the community has had a lasting impact.
2. What were some of the challenges the students faced when doing pro bono work then and what kind of impact has NUS PBG made on Singapore’s legal landscape?
Pro bono work was in its infancy up till the turn of the century, especially compared to where it is today. While there were groups of lawyers who engaged in pro bono work, it was not something that was emphasised ̶ the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme initiated by the Law Society of Singapore being a notable exception.
NUS Law was the only law school in Singapore when NUS PBG was established. Student involvement in pro bono work had been somewhat minimal before NUS PBG, with activities largely stemming from personal connections with particular lawyers who did some pro bono work. Under the Legal Profession Act, only qualified lawyers can give legal advice, so when NUS PBG was established, it was crucial for the students to establish partnerships with lawyers and appropriate organisations to work collaboratively with.
I facilitated some of the initial connections and recall that one of the first collaborations NUS PBG established was with the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE). The students worked as research assistants with AWARE to prepare a paper for the Singapore Parliament on possible legislation to criminalise child sex tourism. This eventually led to the enactment of Section 376C of the Penal Code that made it a crime for a citizen or permanent resident of Singapore to have commercial sex with a minor outside Singapore. This initial project gave the students confidence that they could make a difference and led to many other collaborations, such as with the then-Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society (now PBSG), the State Courts, and the Legal Aid Bureau.
NUS Law was also fortunate that Assoc Prof Helena Whalen-Bridge agreed to be the Faculty Advisor to the students. Her wise guidance and dedication over the past 20 years have been crucial to NUS PBG’s success.
3. How has the legal profession’s pro bono landscape evolved over the years?
Prior to becoming Dean of NUS Law in 2001, a senior judge whom I liked and respected cautioned that pro bono initiatives could be seen as pushing against established norms or ‘activism’, even if they were just ensuring access to justice.
That said, this perception has shifted over time. Today, pro bono work is widely recognised and even institutionalised, with practising lawyers being encouraged to take up more of such cases to help those in need and even government support for community legal clinics.
Over time, the NUS PBG also gained recognition as a vital part of the legal education at NUS, one that fosters a culture of community service and civic responsibility among law students. The benefits of pro bono work on the development of law students are so well-established today that it has been made compulsory for all law students in Singapore to complete at least 20 hours of pro bono work! I have no doubt that it was the success of NUS PBG that led to this outcome and contributed to the change of mindset.
4. Tell us more about the increasing importance of student-led initiatives in bridging the access-to-justice gap and empowering the next generation of lawyers to take on social responsibility.
Most societies are likely to have some access-to-justice gaps and Singapore is no exception. Engaging in pro bono work while in university sensitises students to the plight of those who cannot easily afford legal advice. It also makes them more aware of the opportunities in this space and the positive difference they can make as future members of the profession. All these set the foundation for members of the legal profession to continue to contribute meaningfully to the social fabric of Singapore. I am confident that NUS PBG and the legacy it has built will continue to influence future generations of law students to be engaged in helping the less able have better access to justice.
Please click here to learn more about NUS PGB’s projects and the communities they serve.
Professor Rickie Patani, who will soon join the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in August 2025, has been elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. This prestigious recognition celebrates excellence in the field and is a testament to Prof Patani’s leadership and impact on medicine and society.
A distinguished physician and scientist, Prof Patani has over a decade of research experience in neurodegeneration, particularly in human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models. His work has significantly advanced understanding of ribonucleic acid (RNA) metabolism and cellular autonomy in the context of neurodegenerative diseases.
Prof Patani has received multiple prestigious awards for his research, including the Lister Research Prize, the Brain Sciences Young Investigator Award, International 3Rs Prize, Paulo Gontijo Prize in Medicine, Graham Bull Prize, and Goulstonian Lectureship from the Royal College of Physicians.
At NUS, Prof Patani will be Professor of Neuroscience in the Departments of Medicine and Anatomy. He will also take on the role of Director of the Neurobiology Programme at the Life Sciences Institute.
In addition to his research and clinical roles, Prof Patani contributes to the scientific community through service on several influential panels, including the MRC Neuroscience and Mental Health Board, MRC Training and Careers Strategy Board, and the MND Association Funding Panel.
Despite a deadly disease which has nearly wiped out the critically endangered Alpine Tree Frog from the Snowy Mountains, a new study has found the species is fighting back by breeding more when infected.
Harvard grad Ayleen Villarreal (second from left), with her family.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Commencement season is a time to celebrate the achievements of graduates, but behind every individual success is a network of parents, family members, and friends whose unwavering support made each diploma possible — or at least easier. Four families shared their stories — and their pride — on the eve of graduation.
Gunjan and Gurmeet Batra journeyed from Denver to celebrate their son, Arjun, who is graduating with a concentration in electrical engineering.
“It’s a very proud moment for our entire family,” said mom Gunjan in a bustling Harvard Yard on Wednesday. “It’s been lovely having him go through the process and through such a prestigious institution. It’s been wonderful. We’re very proud of him.”
Arjun picked electrical engineering because a professor inspired him, but the decision has a special meaning for his family: His grandfather was also an electrical engineer.
Arjun said his parents supported him every step of the way. “I’d call them every night and complain about a p-set or complain about a class, and they’d help me get through it. I would call them multiple times a day. Having their support in the background, being there always, has been incredible.”
Gurmeet said it was a bittersweet moment for his son.
“On one hand, he’s graduating and moving on, exploring new ventures,” he said. “On the other hand, he’s going to miss this. College is the place you build memories. He’s going to miss all this.”
Owen Fanning always knew what he wanted: to play volleyball at a top college.
For mom Carolyn, that meant years of driving him to practice and matches during his high school years in Needham, Massachusetts.
“Without great support, people don’t typically get here,” said Owen, a physics concentrator and outside hitter for the men’s volleyball team, as he thanked his mom for schlepping him to “all those tournaments.”
But Carolyn deflected the praise. “He got himself here for sure. We were just there to be the car driver.”
The Fannings enjoyed coming into Cambridge to watch Owen’s matches. Carolyn said the family will miss those outings but are gratified to see how far Owen has come.
“This was the dream,” she said. “For us, it was worth every effort we put into it.”
Alongside the Fannings at Class Day, the Diaks were celebrating their own volleyball success story.
Parents Nikki and Bradley were volleyball players themselves, and soon-to-be-graduate Callum grew up playing the game with them on Lake Ontario near their hometown of Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
“Without them, I definitely wouldn’t be as passionate as I am about this sport,” Callum said.
Nikki said she was proud of her son for taking the initiative to apply to Harvard as a foreign student, and that playing on a college team taught him about determination and resilience.
“He’s grown so much personally and education-wise,” she said. “We’re so proud of all he’s learned.”
Sandra Villarreal posed for a photo with daughter Ayleen in front of one of the most recognizable landmarks on campus: the statue of John Harvard.
For Villarreal and husband Sergio, who immigrated from Mexico before Ayleen was born, watching their daughter earn a Harvard degree was a milestone decades in the making. The couple and 15-year-old son Dylan made the trip from El Paso, Texas, to attend Commencement.
“I feel fortunate to have been able to bring my family here and to have been able to give her the opportunity to go to whatever university she wanted and follow her dreams,” Sandra said in Spanish.
Ayleen spent four and a half years in the U.S. Air Force before coming to Harvard and is graduating with a concentration in government and a secondary in global health and health policy. She plans on working in politics for a few years before going to law school.
“At Harvard, I found my love for the law,” she said. “I believe that laws, regulations, and policies affect a human being’s everyday life all the way to their biological cells. … I’m very, very thankful for Harvard academics, because I’ve learned a lot in the government department, and I’m very grateful to the professors. I will take everything they gave me and go and keep serving the United States.”
Ayleen said her path was different than most of her classmates, as a Mexican American, a first-generation student, and a female veteran at the College — at one point, there were only five others. But she hopes her experience will show others that difference is not an insurmountable barrier.
“I want females in my hometown, in El Paso, Texas, or in Texas in general, to know that it is possible to achieve your dreams despite being a minority in the United States,” she said.
“I feel very, very proud of her for everything she’s done. It’s a very great pride,” her father Sergio said in Spanish. “She took every opportunity. She had a lot of options for university; it wasn’t just one or two. She could have gone to any university, and she decided to come here. We’re very happy with her choice.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar arrives onstage to address the Class of 2025.
Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
In early 1956, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stood next to his bombed-out house in Montgomery, Alabama, and urged angry supporters to recommit to nonviolence, reassuring them that “if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place.”
On Wednesday, basketball hall of famer, writer, and social justice champion Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said that he counts Harvard University and President Alan Garber among “the others willing to take Dr. King’s place.” Then he asked the Class of 2025 whether he can count on them.
“When a tyrannical administration tried to bully and threaten Harvard to give up their academic freedom and destroy free speech, Dr. Alan Garber rejected the illegal and immoral pressures the way Rosa Parks defied the entire weight of systemic racism in 1955,” said Abdul-Jabbar, addressing grads during Class Day ceremonies at Tercentenary Theatre. “As I look out over the crowd of eager faces today who are ready to launch their lives of successful careers, I wonder how many of you will also be among the others willing to take Dr. King’s place.”
Abdul-Jabbar’s 20-minute speech was the centerpiece of the two-hour Class Day ceremony, which is hosted by graduating seniors. The event also featured a farewell address from Danoff Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana, who is departing his post after 11 years of service.
Reflecting on his own journey as an undergrad, which took him first to the State University of New York at Binghamton and then to Cornell University, Khurana recalled his time at Cornell as a major turning point — the moment when he stopped trying to be the person others wanted him to be and instead explored who he was, reading deeply and beginning to understand his own values. It was then, he said, that he realized education was more than just memorizing facts and getting good grades, but an experience that helps you appreciate life’s long journey.
In the next chapter of your life, he told students, you will be faced with choices about new jobs and challenges, choices between opportunities that are transformational and those that are merely transactional.
“Wherever you go next, the important question isn’t where you go now, but who you’re going to be,” he said. “May your road be a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.”
Abdul-Jabbar, who followed up his record-breaking 20-year NBA career by becoming a successful writer, received standing ovations at the beginning and end of his speech. He said that his passion for social justice and civil rights stems from the Cleveland Summit, a meeting organized by a group of Black athletes and activists to interview boxer Muhammad Ali after Ali refused to participate in the Vietnam War draft. The group’s aim was to determine whether Ali’s claim to be a conscientious objector was sincere.
Ali convinced them that he was, but not everyone agreed: He was soon convicted of evading the draft and sentenced to five years in prison, a fine, and a three-year boxing ban. (The Supreme Court would overturn the conviction in 1971.) The episode, combined with King’s assassination, left Abdul-Jabbar shaken, prompting him to turn down an invitation to the 1968 Olympics. Civil rights, he said, felt like “a fading dream.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to become a smiling symbol of the promise of the United States to be a multiracial democracy when it was doing everything it could to not fulfill that promise,” Abdul-Jabbar said.
Choosing justice, Abdul-Jabbar said, usually comes with risk. Sometimes the risk is financial, he said; sometimes it’s physical. In any case, the stakes are always high.
“You have to decide whether you’re part of the old-timey fire brigades passing buckets of water down a long line of people trying to put out a fire or if you’re content to stand by and let it burn,” Abdul-Jabbar said.
And one victory is not enough, he said, urging grads to commit themselves to a lifelong fight.
“It is a never-ending battle that must be fought over and over,” Abdul Jabbar said. “After seeing so many cowering billionaires, media moguls, law firms, politicians, and other universities bend their knees to an administration that is systematically strip-mining the U.S. Constitution, it is inspiring to me to see Harvard University take a stand for freedom.”
In addition to remarks by Abdul-Jabbar, Khurana, and incoming HAA president Will Makris, Class Day included a moment of silence to remember two classmates: Luke Balstad, who died in November 2022, and Ryan Murdock, who died after a brief illness in October. Byron Gonzalez and Talia Levitt received the Richard Glover Ames and Henry Russell Ames Awards, which recognize graduating seniors for unsung service to the community.
ROTC members representing the Air Force, Navy, and Army swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution during the commissioning ceremony in Sanders Theatre.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Even in the face of near-constant opposition, have the confidence of your convictions and stand up for the truth, Harvard President Alan Garber urged 19 soon-to-be graduates on Wednesday during the annual joint Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) commissioning ceremony.
Gathered with loved ones watching in Sanders Theatre, the Army, Air Force, and Navy cadets swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution and were pinned with two gold bars marking their elevation to military officer ranks. Each received their first salute as a newly minted officer from a family member, friend, or mentor chosen for the honor.
In his remarks, Garber recounted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s historic visit to Harvard on Sept. 6, 1943, to accept an honorary degree at a critical juncture of World War II. Churchill had long warned about the danger Adolf Hitler and Germany posed to the world but was met with skepticism and even ridicule “by those who chose to blind themselves to the truth that was unfolding before their eyes,” Garber said.
“Despite being dismissed as paranoid and pushed to the margins, Churchill had the courage to persist, to keep his eyes open and unblinking. His confidence even in the face of near-constant opposition offers a powerful and enduring lesson for anyone who seeks to stand up for the truth,” he said. “I hope that you will carry this lesson with you as you support and defend the Constitution.”
Garber presented a biography of Churchill by William Manchester (“The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940”) to each student and a coin featuring Memorial Hall on one side and on the other, a Veritas shield and 1916 — the year Harvard first welcomed ROTC to campus.
The students will embark on a wide range of duties next. Some will undergo basic officer leader courses at military bases around the country, while others will begin training to become intelligence officers, members of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, pilots, and a missile and nuclear operations officer.
Lt. Gen. Joseph P. McGee of the Army, the keynote speaker and an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the world is undergoing “significant geopolitical shifts” in Europe, across the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific, and that the U.S. military is rapidly evolving to meet the changing landscape.
Many of the graduating students have a STEM education, McGee noted, a critical tool that will become even more essential as AI, drone warfare, nanotechnology, robotics, and cyber are “redefining the future of warfare and what it looks like.”
What hasn’t changed, McGee said, is the diversity of people who make up the military.
“You’re going to join a military community that represents every single element of American society,” he said. “It is still the true melting pot of the United States. Your success is going to depend on hard work, leadership, peer leadership, and your ability to relate to your fellow Americans and have them prevail in the face of daunting challenges.”
As future military leaders, McGee said, “It’ll be your job to bring this unique group of individuals to realize their potential, build cohesive, high-functioning, and lethal teams, and lead them into the future.” United by a sense of common purpose and love of country, “You will all be amazed by what you can accomplish in the years ahead.”
Army grads were Matthew Fitch, Eytan Goldstein, Chloe Hansen, Conner Huey, Morgan Kim, Carly Lehman, Andrew Lim, Matthew Sau, Jack Schwab, and Isaac Tang. Sworn in for the Navy was Jasmine Zhang. Air Force graduates were Sarah (Sally) Barksdale, Caitlin Beirne, Blake Chen, Emily McCallum, Jenny Peters, Elizabeth Sasse, Faith Schmidt, and Charles Whitehead.
Photo illustration by Judy Blomquist/Harvard Staff
Alexandra Petri
Harvard Correspondent
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Alexandra Petri ’10, formerly a Washington Post columnist, is currently a staff writer for The Atlantic. She won the 2025 Thurber Prize for American Humor for her book “Alexandra Petri’s U.S. History: Important American Documents I Made Up.”
OK, Harvard graduates. Listen. Many of you want to be doctors and lawyers and researchers and benefit the world in some large way. I’m not talking to you. But the odds are non-zero that somebody currently graduating will be the one guy who makes a ludicrous, cartoonish amount of money and the world worse (that’s zeugma! I was an English concentrator). This is addressed to him, just on the off chance that he is reading the Harvard Gazette. I want to answer the question I am sure is already plaguing him: After the cataclysmic Event happens that unravels society and sends me scurrying to my luxury bunker, how do I keep my guards loyal?
Great question! Let’s dive in.
Okay, you have your luxury bunker with its hydroponic garden, its decontamination chamber, and its secure boundary patrolled by guards. How, once money ceases to be a concept with any relevance to human interactions, do you keep those guards in their place? Remember, before, they were your employees. But now you are alone in your bunker, after the Event! Money no longer matters to them, and they are much stronger than you! Much stronger than anyone! That is why you hired them as guards.
What is it that people do for other people? Make them laugh? Bake them pies? Remember what interests them and ask them about it? Tell stories? Give good foot rubs? Yes! Better!
Oh, you weren’t thinking about that, were you? The special technology you invented to give billionaires a second, bonus set of teeth that descends in front of their original teeth, like a curtain, at the press of a button (I don’t know what billionaires want) may have lined your pockets back in the day, but now you’re alone in that bunker, and you have to justify why you should still be in charge. No algorithms here! No stock exchanges! It’s just you and that strong man you hired, that man whose name is almost certainly Greg (but what if you’re wrong? Can you afford to be wrong? Remember, your money is no good any longer!).
Now it is just you and Greg. You and Greg, and, I hope, his family. You did remember to pick up his family, didn’t you? When you all piled into the helicopter and came rushing here? That’s the first thing I would have recommended.
Society is over. Bang! You created a lot of value for your shareholders, enough value that you were able to commission a yacht too big for even God to lift, have yourself surgically enhanced to look more like the vampire Lestat, and purchase this glorious bunker on a small island. Now large swaths of the planet aren’t livable, for reasons that people would probably say are your fault, if they had survived the Event. You are going to be stuck in this bunker for a while. And unfortunately, your money is no good any longer. Which is a shame because you had such a lot of it! Some of it was even bitcoin. Not that that matters. You can try telling Greg (Is it Greg? Maybe it’s Jeff!) that you have some bitcoin for him and see what he does. Maybe it will make him laugh. Maybe that can be the start of something.
Think hard about your guards! What do they love more than anything in the world? Maybe you can stash some of it in the bunker! But what if it runs out? There’s no way to get more, because society (as previously stated) is over. After you have disposed of the last box of Jeff (Greg?)’s favorite cereal, what will you do? The factory where it used to be made is under the ocean, or possibly being overrun by some sort of Mad Max situation. What it is not doing is making cereal.
Think! Think! What do people love? The warmth of sunshine on their skin? Fresh fruit? The smell of the top of a baby’s head? Doritos? Laughter? Joy? The feeling of being seen? No, no! These answers are all wrong. It needs to be something that you can access after the Event! Something that you can stockpile in advance and store in a vault, to be released at intervals to your guards only if you enter a code that indicates you are still unharmed.
Or, wait. What is it that people do for other people? Make them laugh? Bake them pies? Remember what interests them and ask them about it? Tell stories? Give good foot rubs? Yes! Better! Maybe you can invent a machine that does that and sell access to it in the bunker, using a special coin of your own devising?
No, never mind, we are back to money again. Remember, money doesn’t exist anymore!
What is the thing that you have to offer others? What about you is worth preserving? Don’t tell me it’s absurd that you should have to justify your worth in this transactional way. Don’t tell me you are valuable simply because you are a human being who exists. I know that. But does Greg (Jeff?)?
Maybe you should have thought about that before you made all that value for shareholders and triggered the Event. You should have thought about that before you let the cereal factory sink under the sea. I am begging you to think about it.
Failing that, try getting really, really buff.
Scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have re-engineered a compact RNA-guided enzyme they found in bacteria into an efficient, programmable editor of human DNA.
The protein they created, called NovaIscB, can be adapted to make precise changes to the genetic code, modulate the activity of specific genes, or carry out other editing tasks. Because its small size simplifies delivery to cells, NovaIscB’s developers say it is a promising candidate for developing gene therapies to treat or prevent disease.
The study was led by Feng Zhang, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT who is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a core member of the Broad Institute. Zhang and his team reported their open-access work this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
NovaIscB is derived from a bacterial DNA cutter that belongs to a family of proteins called IscBs, which Zhang’s lab discovered in 2021. IscBs are a type of OMEGA system, the evolutionary ancestors to Cas9, which is part of the bacterial CRISPR system that Zhang and others have developed into powerful genome-editing tools. Like Cas9, IscB enzymes cut DNA at sites specified by an RNA guide. By reprogramming that guide, researchers can redirect the enzymes to target sequences of their choosing.
IscBs had caught the team’s attention not only because they share key features of CRISPR’s DNA-cutting Cas9, but also because they are a third of its size. That would be an advantage for potential gene therapies: compact tools are easier to deliver to cells, and with a small enzyme, researchers would have more flexibility to tinker, potentially adding new functionalities without creating tools that were too bulky for clinical use.
From their initial studies of IscBs, researchers in Zhang’s lab knew that some members of the family could cut DNA targets in human cells. None of the bacterial proteins worked well enough to be deployed therapeutically, however: the team would have to modify an IscB to ensure it could edit targets in human cells efficiently without disturbing the rest of the genome.
To begin that engineering process, Soumya Kannan, a graduate student in Zhang’s lab who is now a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and postdoc Shiyou Zhu first searched for an IscB that would make good starting point. They tested nearly 400 different IscB enzymes that can be found in bacteria. Ten were capable of editing DNA in human cells.
Even the most active of those would need to be enhanced to make it a useful genome editing tool. The challenge would be increasing the enzyme’s activity, but only at the sequences specified by its RNA guide. If the enzyme became more active, but indiscriminately so, it would cut DNA in unintended places. “The key is to balance the improvement of both activity and specificity at the same time,” explains Zhu.
Zhu notes that bacterial IscBs are directed to their target sequences by relatively short RNA guides, which makes it difficult to restrict the enzyme’s activity to a specific part of the genome. If an IscB could be engineered to accommodate a longer guide, it would be less likely to act on sequences beyond its intended target.
To optimize IscB for human genome editing, the team leveraged information that graduate student Han Altae-Tran, who is now a postdoc at the University of Washington, had learned about the diversity of bacterial IscBs and how they evolved. For instance, the researchers noted that IscBs that worked in human cells included a segment they called REC, which was absent in other IscBs. They suspected the enzyme might need that segment to interact with the DNA in human cells. When they took a closer look at the region, structural modeling suggested that by slightly expanding part of the protein, REC might also enable IscBs to recognize longer RNA guides.
Based on these observations, the team experimented with swapping in parts of REC domains from different IscBs and Cas9s, evaluating how each change impacted the protein’s function. Guided by their understanding of how IscBs and Cas9s interact with both DNA and their RNA guides, the researchers made additional changes, aiming to optimize both efficiency and specificity.
In the end, they generated a protein they called NovaIscB, which was over 100 times more active in human cells than the IscB they had started with, and that had demonstrated good specificity for its targets.
Kannan and Zhu constructed and screened hundreds of new IscBs before arriving at NovaIscB — and every change they made to the original protein was strategic. Their efforts were guided by their team’s knowledge of IscBs’s natural evolution, as well as predictions of how each alteration would impact the protein’s structure, made using an artificial intelligence tool called AlphaFold2. Compared to traditional methods of introducing random changes into a protein and screening for their effects, this rational engineering approach greatly accelerated the team’s ability to identify a protein with the features they were looking for.
The team demonstrated that NovaIscB is a good scaffold for a variety of genome editing tools. “It biochemically functions very similarly to Cas9, and that makes it easy to port over tools that were already optimized with the Cas9 scaffold,” Kannan says. With different modifications, the researchers used NovaIscB to replace specific letters of the DNA code in human cells and to change the activity of targeted genes.
Importantly, the NovaIscB-based tools are compact enough to be easily packaged inside a single adeno-associated virus (AAV) — the vector most commonly used to safely deliver gene therapy to patients. Because they are bulkier, tools developed using Cas9 can require a more complicated delivery strategy.
Demonstrating NovaIscB’s potential for therapeutic use, Zhang’s team created a tool called OMEGAoff that adds chemical markers to DNA to dial down the activity of specific genes. They programmed OMEGAoff to repress a gene involved in cholesterol regulation, then used AAV to deliver the system to the livers of mice, leading to lasting reductions in cholesterol levels in the animals’ blood.
The team expects that NovaIscB can be used to target genome editing tools to most human genes, and look forward to seeing how other labs deploy the new technology. They also hope others will adopt their evolution-guided approach to rational protein engineering. “Nature has such diversity, and its systems have different advantages and disadvantages,” Zhu says. “By learning about that natural diversity, we can make the systems we are trying to engineer better and better.”
This study was funded, in part, by the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics at MIT, Broad Institute Programmable Therapeutics Gift Donors, Pershing Square Foundation, William Ackman, Neri Oxman, the Phillips family, and J. and P. Poitras.
© Image courtesy of the researchers.
Sarah Alnegheimish’s research interests reside at the intersection of machine learning and systems engineering. Her objective: to make machine learning systems more accessible, transparent, and trustworthy.
Alnegheimish is a PhD student in Principal Research Scientist Kalyan Veeramachaneni’s Data-to-AI group in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). Here, she commits most of her energy to developing Orion, an open-source, user-friendly machine learning framework and time series library that is capable of detecting anomalies without supervision in large-scale industrial and operational settings.
Early influence
The daughter of a university professor and a teacher educator, she learned from an early age that knowledge was meant to be shared freely. “I think growing up in a home where education was highly valued is part of why I want to make machine learning tools accessible.” Alnegheimish’s own personal experience with open-source resources only increased her motivation. “I learned to view accessibility as the key to adoption. To strive for impact, new technology needs to be accessed and assessed by those who need it. That’s the whole purpose of doing open-source development.”
Alnegheimish earned her bachelor’s degree at King Saud University (KSU). “I was in the first cohort of computer science majors. Before this program was created, the only other available major in computing was IT [information technology].” Being a part of the first cohort was exciting, but it brought its own unique challenges. “All of the faculty were teaching new material. Succeeding required an independent learning experience. That’s when I first time came across MIT OpenCourseWare: as a resource to teach myself.”
Shortly after graduating, Alnegheimish became a researcher at the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia’s national lab. Through the Center for Complex Engineering Systems (CCES) at KACST and MIT, she began conducting research with Veeramachaneni. When she applied to MIT for graduate school, his research group was her top choice.
Creating Orion
Alnegheimish’s master thesis focused on time series anomaly detection — the identification of unexpected behaviors or patterns in data, which can provide users crucial information. For example, unusual patterns in network traffic data can be a sign of cybersecurity threats, abnormal sensor readings in heavy machinery can predict potential future failures, and monitoring patient vital signs can help reduce health complications. It was through her master’s research that Alnegheimish first began designing Orion.
Orion uses statistical and machine learning-based models that are continuously logged and maintained. Users do not need to be machine learning experts to utilize the code. They can analyze signals, compare anomaly detection methods, and investigate anomalies in an end-to-end program. The framework, code, and datasets are all open-sourced.
“With open source, accessibility and transparency are directly achieved. You have unrestricted access to the code, where you can investigate how the model works through understanding the code. We have increased transparency with Orion: We label every step in the model and present it to the user.” Alnegheimish says that this transparency helps enable users to begin trusting the model before they ultimately see for themselves how reliable it is.
“We’re trying to take all these machine learning algorithms and put them in one place so anyone can use our models off-the-shelf,” she says. “It’s not just for the sponsors that we work with at MIT. It’s being used by a lot of public users. They come to the library, install it, and run it on their data. It’s proving itself to be a great source for people to find some of the latest methods for anomaly detection.”
Repurposing models for anomaly detection
In her PhD, Alnegheimish is further exploring innovative ways to do anomaly detection using Orion. “When I first started my research, all machine-learning models needed to be trained from scratch on your data. Now we’re in a time where we can use pre-trained models,” she says. Working with pre-trained models saves time and computational costs. The challenge, though, is that time series anomaly detection is a brand-new task for them. “In their original sense, these models have been trained to forecast, but not to find anomalies,” Alnegheimish says. “We’re pushing their boundaries through prompt-engineering, without any additional training.”
Because these models already capture the patterns of time-series data, Alnegheimish believes they already have everything they need to enable them to detect anomalies. So far, her current results support this theory. They don’t surpass the success rate of models that are independently trained on specific data, but she believes they will one day.
Accessible design
Alnegheimish talks at length about the efforts she’s gone through to make Orion more accessible. “Before I came to MIT, I used to think that the crucial part of research was to develop the machine learning model itself or improve on its current state. With time, I realized that the only way you can make your research accessible and adaptable for others is to develop systems that make them accessible. During my graduate studies, I’ve taken the approach of developing my models and systems in tandem.”
The key element to her system development was finding the right abstractions to work with her models. These abstractions provide universal representation for all models with simplified components. “Any model will have a sequence of steps to go from raw input to desired output. We’ve standardized the input and output, which allows the middle to be flexible and fluid. So far, all the models we’ve run have been able to retrofit into our abstractions.” The abstractions she uses have been stable and reliable for the last six years.
The value of simultaneously building systems and models can be seen in Alnegheimish’s work as a mentor. She had the opportunity to work with two master’s students earning their engineering degrees. “All I showed them was the system itself and the documentation of how to use it. Both students were able to develop their own models with the abstractions we’re conforming to. It reaffirmed that we’re taking the right path.”
Alnegheimish also investigated whether a large language model (LLM) could be used as a mediator between users and a system. The LLM agent she has implemented is able to connect to Orion without users needing to know the small details of how Orion works. “Think of ChatGPT. You have no idea what the model is behind it, but it’s very accessible to everyone.” For her software, users only know two commands: Fit and Detect. Fit allows users to train their model, while Detect enables them to detect anomalies.
“The ultimate goal of what I’ve tried to do is make AI more accessible to everyone,” she says. So far, Orion has reached over 120,000 downloads, and over a thousand users have marked the repository as one of their favorites on Github. “Traditionally, you used to measure the impact of research through citations and paper publications. Now you get real-time adoption through open source.”
© Photo: Gretchen Ertl
MIT course 2.797/2.798 (Molecular Cellular and Tissue Biomechanics) teaches students about the role that mechanics plays in biology, with a focus on biomechanics and mechanobiology: “Two words that sound similar, but are actually very different,” says Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Professor of Tissue Engineering in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.
Biomechanics, Raman explains, conveys the mechanical properties of biological materials, where mechanobiology teaches students how cells feel and respond to forces in their environment. “When students take this class, they're getting a really unique fusion of not only fundamentals of mechanics, but also emerging research in biomechanics and mechanobiology,” says Raman.
Raman and Peter So, professor of mechanical engineering, co-teach the course, which So says offers a concrete application of some of the basic theory. “We talk about some of the applications and why the fundamental concept is important.”
The pair recently revamped the curriculum to incorporate hands-on lab-learning through the campus BioMakers space and the Safety, Health, Environmental Discovery Lab (SHED) bioprinting makerspace. This updated approach invites students to “build with biology” and see how cells respond to forces in their environment in real time, and it was a change that was seemingly welcomed from the start, with the first offering yielding the course’s largest-ever enrollment.
“Many concepts in biomechanics and mechanobiology can be hard to conceptualize because they happen at length scales that we can't typically visualize,” Raman explains. “In the past, we've done our best to convey these ideas via pictures, videos, and equations. The lab component adds another dimension to our teaching methods. We hope that students seeing firsthand how living cells sense and respond to their environment helps the concepts sink in deeper and last longer in their memories.”
Makerspaces, which are located throughout the campus, offer tools and workspace for MIT community members to invent, prototype, and bring ideas to life. The Institute has over 40 design/build/project spaces that include facilities for 3D printing, glassblowing, wood and metal working, and more. The BioMakers space welcomes students engaged in hands-on bioengineering projects. SHED similarly leverages cutting-edge technologies across disciplines, including a new space focused on 3D bio-printing.
Kamakshi Subramanian, a cross-registered Wellesley College student, says she encountered a polymer model in a prior thermodynamics class, but wondered how she’d apply it. Taking this course gave her a new frame of reference. “I was like, ‘Why are we doing this?’ … and then I came here and I was like, ‘OK, thinking about entropy in this way is actually useful.’”
Raman says there’s a special kind of energy and excitement associated with being in a lab versus staying in the classroom. “It reminds me of going on a field trip when I was in elementary school,” she says, adding that seeing that energy in students during the course’s first run inspired the instructors to expand lab offerings even further in the second offering.
“[In addition to] one main lab on the biomechanics of muscle contraction, we have added a second lab where students visit the SHED makerspace to learn about 3D bio-printing,” she says. “We have also incorporated an optional hands-on component into the final project, [and] most students in the class are taking advantage of this extra lab time to try exciting curiosity-driven experiments at the intersection of biology and mechanics.”
Raman and So, who were joined in teaching the second iteration of the course this semester by professor of biological engineering Mark Bathe, say they hope to continue to build the amount of hands-on time incorporated into the class in the coming years.
Ayi Agboglo, a Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology graduate student who is studying the physical properties of red blood cells relevant to sickle cell disease (SCD), says taking the course introduced him to studies where mathematical models extracted mechanical properties of red blood cell (RBC) membranes in the context of SCD.
“In SCD, deoxygenation causes rigid protein fibers to form within cells, altering their mechanical and physical properties,” he explains. “This field of work has largely informed my research which focuses on measuring the physical properties of RBCs (mass, volume, and density) in both oxygenated and deoxygenated states. These measurements aim to reveal patient-specific differences in fiber formation — the primary pathological event in SCD — potentially uncovering new therapeutic opportunities.”
Agboglo, who works in Professor Cullen Buie’s lab at MIT and John Higgins’ lab at MGH, says, “I left [the class] not only understanding more about molecular mechanics, but also understanding just fundamentals about thermodynamics and energy and things that I think will be useful as a scientist in general.”
In addition to lab and lecture time, 2.797/2.798 students also had the opportunity to work with the Museum of Science, Boston and generate open-source educational resources about the interplay between mechanics and biology. These resources are now available on the museum's website.
© Photo: Lauren Futami/MechE
A new web app developed at the University of Melbourne is empowering those with disabilities to confidently engage with their community by simplifying the process of finding accessible venues.
Scientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have re-engineered a compact RNA-guided enzyme they found in bacteria into an efficient, programmable editor of human DNA.
The protein they created, called NovaIscB, can be adapted to make precise changes to the genetic code, modulate the activity of specific genes, or carry out other editing tasks. Because its small size simplifies delivery to cells, NovaIscB’s developers say it is a promising candidate for developing gene therapies to treat or prevent disease.
The study was led by Feng Zhang, the James and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience at MIT who is also an investigator at the McGovern Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a core member of the Broad Institute. Zhang and his team reported their open-access work this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
NovaIscB is derived from a bacterial DNA cutter that belongs to a family of proteins called IscBs, which Zhang’s lab discovered in 2021. IscBs are a type of OMEGA system, the evolutionary ancestors to Cas9, which is part of the bacterial CRISPR system that Zhang and others have developed into powerful genome-editing tools. Like Cas9, IscB enzymes cut DNA at sites specified by an RNA guide. By reprogramming that guide, researchers can redirect the enzymes to target sequences of their choosing.
IscBs had caught the team’s attention not only because they share key features of CRISPR’s DNA-cutting Cas9, but also because they are a third of its size. That would be an advantage for potential gene therapies: compact tools are easier to deliver to cells, and with a small enzyme, researchers would have more flexibility to tinker, potentially adding new functionalities without creating tools that were too bulky for clinical use.
From their initial studies of IscBs, researchers in Zhang’s lab knew that some members of the family could cut DNA targets in human cells. None of the bacterial proteins worked well enough to be deployed therapeutically, however: the team would have to modify an IscB to ensure it could edit targets in human cells efficiently without disturbing the rest of the genome.
To begin that engineering process, Soumya Kannan, a graduate student in Zhang’s lab who is now a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and postdoc Shiyou Zhu first searched for an IscB that would make good starting point. They tested nearly 400 different IscB enzymes that can be found in bacteria. Ten were capable of editing DNA in human cells.
Even the most active of those would need to be enhanced to make it a useful genome editing tool. The challenge would be increasing the enzyme’s activity, but only at the sequences specified by its RNA guide. If the enzyme became more active, but indiscriminately so, it would cut DNA in unintended places. “The key is to balance the improvement of both activity and specificity at the same time,” explains Zhu.
Zhu notes that bacterial IscBs are directed to their target sequences by relatively short RNA guides, which makes it difficult to restrict the enzyme’s activity to a specific part of the genome. If an IscB could be engineered to accommodate a longer guide, it would be less likely to act on sequences beyond its intended target.
To optimize IscB for human genome editing, the team leveraged information that graduate student Han Altae-Tran, who is now a postdoc at the University of Washington, had learned about the diversity of bacterial IscBs and how they evolved. For instance, the researchers noted that IscBs that worked in human cells included a segment they called REC, which was absent in other IscBs. They suspected the enzyme might need that segment to interact with the DNA in human cells. When they took a closer look at the region, structural modeling suggested that by slightly expanding part of the protein, REC might also enable IscBs to recognize longer RNA guides.
Based on these observations, the team experimented with swapping in parts of REC domains from different IscBs and Cas9s, evaluating how each change impacted the protein’s function. Guided by their understanding of how IscBs and Cas9s interact with both DNA and their RNA guides, the researchers made additional changes, aiming to optimize both efficiency and specificity.
In the end, they generated a protein they called NovaIscB, which was over 100 times more active in human cells than the IscB they had started with, and that had demonstrated good specificity for its targets.
Kannan and Zhu constructed and screened hundreds of new IscBs before arriving at NovaIscB — and every change they made to the original protein was strategic. Their efforts were guided by their team’s knowledge of IscBs’s natural evolution, as well as predictions of how each alteration would impact the protein’s structure, made using an artificial intelligence tool called AlphaFold2. Compared to traditional methods of introducing random changes into a protein and screening for their effects, this rational engineering approach greatly accelerated the team’s ability to identify a protein with the features they were looking for.
The team demonstrated that NovaIscB is a good scaffold for a variety of genome editing tools. “It biochemically functions very similarly to Cas9, and that makes it easy to port over tools that were already optimized with the Cas9 scaffold,” Kannan says. With different modifications, the researchers used NovaIscB to replace specific letters of the DNA code in human cells and to change the activity of targeted genes.
Importantly, the NovaIscB-based tools are compact enough to be easily packaged inside a single adeno-associated virus (AAV) — the vector most commonly used to safely deliver gene therapy to patients. Because they are bulkier, tools developed using Cas9 can require a more complicated delivery strategy.
Demonstrating NovaIscB’s potential for therapeutic use, Zhang’s team created a tool called OMEGAoff that adds chemical markers to DNA to dial down the activity of specific genes. They programmed OMEGAoff to repress a gene involved in cholesterol regulation, then used AAV to deliver the system to the livers of mice, leading to lasting reductions in cholesterol levels in the animals’ blood.
The team expects that NovaIscB can be used to target genome editing tools to most human genes, and look forward to seeing how other labs deploy the new technology. They also hope others will adopt their evolution-guided approach to rational protein engineering. “Nature has such diversity, and its systems have different advantages and disadvantages,” Zhu says. “By learning about that natural diversity, we can make the systems we are trying to engineer better and better.”
This study was funded, in part, by the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics at MIT, Broad Institute Programmable Therapeutics Gift Donors, Pershing Square Foundation, William Ackman, Neri Oxman, the Phillips family, and J. and P. Poitras.
© Image courtesy of the researchers.
Grant Jones.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Grant Jones incorporated love of meditation and listening to R&B, hip-hop into dissertation on mindfulness interventions
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Grant M. Jones was around 10 years old when he first contemplated becoming a psychologist. A curious child who loved to read and was being raised by his mother, aunt, and grandmother in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston, he noted it in his journal.
Later he concentrated in psychology and began practicing meditation to cope with stress as a Harvard undergraduate. Now a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard, Jones reflects on how this personal practice became the focus of his professional life.
“Slowly over time, the impact the meditation practice had in my life really made it clear to me that I wanted to center meditation as a core part of not only my personal life, but also my professional life,” said Jones. “Clinical psychology became a practical way to center the study of contemplative practices in my career and to be able to bring those tools to others.”
“Clinical psychology became a practical way to center the study of contemplative practices in my career and to be able to bring those tools to others.”
Grant Jones
As part of the research for his dissertation, Jones developed music-based mindfulness interventions that aim to decrease stress and anxiety among underserved populations. Jones, who grew up listening to artists such as Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child, Usher, and Tupac, calls music “one of my first spiritual practices.”
“Like mindfulness, music is a clear conduit toward being present, being centered, being grounded. A lot of people within the Black community, and a lot of people in general, don’t really find mindfulness very compelling or inviting for a lot of reasons. Music is so intuitive. It is a potential vehicle that folks could use to access the practice of mindfulness to heal.”
Inspiration for Jones’ research was nurtured in classes on songwriting and performance that he took with Grammy-award winning jazz musician esperanza spalding, who doesn’t capitalize her name. Spalding, who was professor of the practice in the Music Department from 2018 to 2023, taught courses that helped Jones enhance his singing and songwriting skills. As a result, Jones was invited to be part of spalding’s album “Songwrights Apothecary Lab,” a collaboration between neuroscientists, psychologists, spiritual leaders, and music therapists that was “part songwriting, part guided research,” in spalding’s words, and a testament to her aspiration to heal through music.
In some ways, those courses inspired Jones to produce, as part of his dissertation, music-based mindfulness interventions as method of decreasing stress and anxiety in the Black and other disadvantaged communities. Spalding, Matthew Nock, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, and leading Black Buddhist contemplative Lama Rod Owens, M.Div. ’17, offered mentorship and support throughout his project, but spalding’s influence was crucial, said Jones.
“Esperanza was truly one of the best forces to ever enter into my life. It was like a fairy tale moment where a hero of mine invited me to be a part of a work that was devoted to using research to support the composition of songs with healing practices and intentions. In terms of our personal journeys, there was a lot of overlap.”
“I deeply appreciate and recognize what a rare combination of qualities it is to have someone who can be very rigorous in the scientific research angle.”
esperanza spalding
In a voice message, spalding credited Jones’ research for “bridging music and mental wellness as therapeutic support tools for people struggling with anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges.”
“I deeply appreciate and recognize what a rare combination of qualities it is to have someone who can be very rigorous in the scientific research angle,” said spalding, “and Grant can also bring his poetic and musical sensibility to bridge the gap between those epistemologies, those ways of understanding how our bodies and beings are supported by music.”
Spalding became a musical collaborator in Jones’ dissertation project, which will include an album with music-based mindfulness interventions by Jones and guided meditations from Owens. A release date is in the works.
After graduation, Jones plans to work as a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, but eventually he would like to start his own lab focused on meditation, music, and other contemplative tools, including psychedelics, to help improve mental health and wellness among disadvantaged populations. He sees his work as part of a longstanding belief among African Americans in the healing power of music, a tradition that includes gospel music, freedom songs, the blues, jazz, and rock.
“For Black folks, so many musicians and artists have been influential in holding community and providing a guiding light in dark times for our community,” said Jones. “My work strives to be of service to Blacks but also to any communities that can benefit from it. It is open to anyone who feels supported by music.”
Melissa Shang.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Melissa Shang had planned to become a disability rights attorney and had set her sights on studying sociology on a prelaw track. Once at Harvard, she quickly found a new possibility.
“My whole reason for wanting to go into disability rights law was to be able to support people with disabilities,” said Shang, who has a degenerative nerve disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. “I realized I could do that within the field of psychology.”
Switching her concentration allowed the Waltham, Massachusetts, native to take a deep look at the barriers faced by more than 70 million Americans who report one or more disability. Her senior thesis, which draws upon a deep well of original survey data, tested the hypothesis that experiencing what social scientists call “minority stressors” is associated with increased risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts for people with disabilities.
Shang argued that the link between minority stressors and suicidal behavior was brought on by “greater perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness.” She also set out to prove that greater “positive disability identity and community engagement” had the power to weaken the effect.
According to thesis adviser Mina Cikara, the Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society, Shang identified a “major gap” in the field’s research and literature. “It’s incredibly important work,” Cikara said.
Upon landing at Harvard, Shang immediately set about forging her own campus community. First up was co-launching the Harvard University Disability Justice Club. The officially recognized student group, initiated during Shang’s first semester, has since grown to 140 active members.
“I always thought advocacy work to be a bit of a lonely experience, but being able to have this community has been really powerful,” said Shang.
“I always thought advocacy work to be a bit of a lonely experience, but being able to have this community has been really powerful.”
Melissa Shang
The Leverett House resident subsequently fell in love with the Harvard Noteables, a student-run, non-audition Broadway show choir, after attending a single rehearsal her first year.
“Then I went to more rehearsals, and I realized that it was an accepting space and so different from the environment that I was exposed to back at my high school,” Shang said. “The sense of inclusion, accessibility, and community that this club brought — that allowed me to rekindle my passion for singing — has been really incredible.”
In the classroom, Shang’s early years were spent seeking answers to important questions within the field of disability studies. “I started learning more about what the mental health system was for people with disabilities and how inaccessible it could be,” Shang explained. “It can be extraordinarily difficult to find providers who are disability-informed, and many people are denied mental health services because of their disability needs.”
She also learned how little attention the problem has received from academics. “When I looked into the research that’s been done about systemic barriers for people with disabilities, I found very little to no research about it,” she recalled.
As a sophomore, Shang enrolled in Cikara’s research methods course. It proved to be a pivotal decision. The course introduced Shang to Cikara’s work, which later helped Shang identify a set of minority stressors to investigate in her thesis, including discrimination, internalized stigma, and identity concealment.
Cikara initially counseled Shang against her “incredibly grand plan” of reaching out to various disability organizations for help distributing surveys to those they serve. But Shang could not be dissuaded. In the end, the strategy enabled her to survey hundreds of Americans with disabilities about their mental health experiences.
“This is a testament to her character,” Cikara observed. “She just did it. She pounded the pavement over and over again. She collected over 200 responses from people all over the country, many of whom have a wide variety of disabilities. That was no small feat.”
Ultimately, Shang’s findings only somewhat supported her theory that stigma experienced by people with disabilities relates to suicidal behavior. Shang noted that “internalized stigma” was one factor that was found to be associated with suicidal behavior. But the project still marks an essential contribution, Cikara said.
“What she’s done is seed the field with this incredible pilot dataset which she could spend years building,” she said.
Shang’s next chapter brings her to a clinical psychology doctorate program at Oregon State University. She plans to continue researching people with disabilities, their encounters within the mental health system, and the many barriers they face.
“Because people with disabilities are so valuable in society,” Shang said, “it’s important to keep conducting research that gauges their experiences and mental health — and to make an active effort to better support them and improve the way they’re treated.”
Lilian Smith.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
When Lilian Smith left Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to attend Harvard, she was eager for new experiences and a fresh start in a bigger city. She didn’t expect to ever look back. But during her junior year, a religion course on nationalism prompted her to re-examine her hometown from a new perspective.
“I didn’t learn much about it growing up,” Smith said, “but I feel it’s a history that could really benefit people in the town — so as to not repeat history. It’s important to talk about things that make people uncomfortable sometimes.”
Smith, a history concentrator with a secondary in chemistry, wrote her senior thesis on the establishment of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, a grassroots organization that has been instrumental in the fight against white supremacy in Idaho. It started as a group of concerned citizens who came together in opposition to the Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi, white supremacist hate group that was headquartered just outside her hometown from 1978 to 2000.
Smith’s interest in the topic began in “Religion and Nationalism in the United States,” a course with Catherine Brekus, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America.
“From the very beginning, when Lilian first considered doing a project about Coeur d’Alene, she has been absolutely fearless,” said Carleigh Beriont, assistant director of undergraduate studies for the Committee on the Study of Religion, who advised Smith’s thesis. “Willing to dig into the darker recesses of the past to better understand why and how ideologies like that promoted by the Aryan Nations continue to resonate in her home community, happy to sit down with anybody and everybody who might have a story to tell, regardless of their political ideology or party affiliation. She has been resolute in her desire to portray Coeur d’Alene and its residents with nuance and care, challenging national media portrayals of her community and underscoring how shallow portrayals of the region have served as a draw for white supremacists.”
“From the very beginning, when Lilian first considered doing a project about Coeur d’Alene, she has been absolutely fearless.”
Carleigh Beriont
Smith did research in the archives of North Idaho College and Gonzaga University, and conducted formal interviews with locals, including the town’s former mayor, former and current members of the Task Force on Human Relations, leaders at the Human Rights Education Institute, a former member of the Aryan Nations, a police officer, an FBI agent, and a Republican Party leader in Kootenai County.
Her thesis describes how the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations grew from a few concerned citizens into a unified front of businesses, schools, churches, law enforcement, and politicians, working together to stop the spread of hate in the community. They offered victim support to residents who experienced religious or race-based harassment or violence from the Aryan Nations, advocated for state laws against malicious harassment, and raised $35,000 for human rights organizations during an Aryan Nations parade.
“Silence gives consent” became one of their biggest slogans, Smith said.
“These people really care about this work,” Smith said. “Many of these leaders saw the best in people in a way that I might not have, and that really shifted my perspective on my town.”
Even after Aryan Nations was bankrupted by a lawsuit in 2000 and vacated their property near Coeur d’Alene, the Task Force and its sister organization, the Human Rights Education Institute, continued to promote human rights more broadly, through education and diversity programming, awareness events, an annual human rights banquet, and Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations.
Even so, Smith’s research showed how national media narratives have continued to portray her hometown as a haven for intolerance. She believes this had a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, attracting an influx of residents who are now pushing back against the work of the Task Force.
“One of the themes of my thesis is the powerful role media narratives play in shaping the evolution of towns,” Smith said. “The town that exists today is not the town that existed in the ’70s, and it’s made the work of the Task Force and the Human Rights Education Institute increasingly difficult.”
On campus, Smith also worked in Roy G. Gordon Professor of Chemistry Eugene Shakhnovich’s biophysics lab, led tours for the Admissions Office, and served on the business board of The Crimson. She also founded Harvard Undergraduate SWAN, a nonprofit for students pursuing careers in public service.
After commencement, Smith will move to Washington, D.C., to pursue her longtime dream of becoming a teacher with the Teach for America corps.
Her feelings about not returning to Coeur d’Alene after commencement are complicated. Through her thesis research, Smith grew increasingly concerned about America’s deepening political polarization — fueled, she believes, by a trend of people moving to areas that better align with their political values, reinforcing ideological echo chambers.
“This is a national trend that young people are leaving their hometowns when they feel their values don’t align,” Smith said. “Many don’t return to reinvest in their communities. It’s really concerning.”
Nearly every Coeur d’Alene resident Smith interviewed for her thesis asked if she planned to return home after graduation. While she is excited for her next chapter in Washington, D.C., Smith said she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt each time she told them no. “That pushed me to think more critically about the fact that I was leaving and consider the possibility of returning someday,” Smith said. “It’s disheartening that so many people tend to leave rather than stay and work to address the issues impacting their community. Realizing the strength of those who’ve remained in the community for so long gave me a deep respect for them.”
Lowell House bell tower.
Harvard file photo
Cynthia W. Rossano
Harvard Correspondent
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
In celebration of the city of Cambridge and of the country’s oldest university, neighboring churches and institutions will ring their bells in recognition of Harvard’s 374th Commencement.
For the 38th year the bells will begin to ring at 12:15 p.m. Thursday, just after the sheriff of Middlesex County declares the Commencement Exercises adjourned. They will ring for approximately 15 minutes.
Bells of varying tones hold a place in history, as they summoned students from sleep to prayer, work, or study. The deep-toned bell in the Memorial Church tower, for years the only bell to acknowledge the festival rites of Commencement, will be joined by the set of bells cast to replace the original 17-bell Russian zvon of Lowell House that was returned in 2008 to the Danilov Monastery near Moscow. The Harvard Business School bell will be heard across the river. The historic 13-bell “Harvard Chime” of Christ Church Cambridge, the Harvard Divinity School bell in Swartz Hall, and the bells of the Church of the New Jerusalem, First Church Congregational, First Parish Unitarian Universalist, First Baptist Church, St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, University Lutheran Church, Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church, and St. Anthony’s Church will ring for the graduates.
Bells were already in use at Harvard in 1643 when “New England’s First Fruits,” published in London that year, set forth some College rules: “Every Schollar shall be present in his tutor’s chambers at the 7th houre in the morning, immediately after the sound of the bell … opening the Scripture and prayer.”
Three of the 15 bells known to have been in use in Massachusetts before 1680 were hung within the precincts of the present College Yard, including the original College bell and the bell of the First Parish Church.
Of the churches participating in the joyful ringing on Commencement Day one, the First Parish, has links with Harvard that date from its founding. The College had use of the church’s bell, Harvard’s first Commencement was held in the church’s meetinghouse, and one of the chief reasons for selecting Cambridge as the site of the College was the proximity of this church and its minister, the Rev. Thomas Shepard, a clergyman of “marked ability and piety,” according to the late Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison.
Another church ringing its bells in celebration is Christ Church Cambridge. The oldest church in the area, it houses the “Harvard Chime,” the name given to the bells cast for the church in anticipation of its 1861 centennial. Two fellow alumni and Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of “Two Years Before the Mast,” arranged for the chime’s creation. The 13 bells were first rung on Easter Sunday, 1860: each bell of the Harvard Chime bears in Latin a portion of the “Gloria in Excelsis.”
Referring in 1893 to the Harvard Chime, Samuel Batchelder wrote, “From the outset the bells were considered as a common object of interest and enjoyment for the whole city, and their intimate connection with the University made it an expressed part of their purpose that they should be rung, not alone on church days but also on all festivals and special occasions of the College, a custom which has continued to the present time.”
The old Russian bells of Lowell House, in place for 76 years, rang on an Eastern scale; the more newly cast bells give out a charming sound, as do the bells of the Cambridge churches joining in concert. A thoughtful student of bells wrote in 1939, “… church bells, whether they sound in a tinkling fashion the end of the first watch in the dead of night, announce the matins a few hours later, or intone the vespers or angelus, have a peculiar fascination. Chimes affect the heartstrings …”
Consuming a high-fat diet can lead to a variety of health problems — not only weight gain but also an increased risk of diabetes and other chronic diseases.
At the cellular level, hundreds of changes take place in response to a high-fat diet. MIT researchers have now mapped out some of those changes, with a focus on metabolic enzyme dysregulation that is associated with weight gain.
Their study, conducted in mice, revealed that hundreds of enzymes involved in sugar, lipid, and protein metabolism are affected by a high-fat diet, and that these disruptions lead to an increase in insulin resistance and an accumulation of damaging molecules called reactive oxygen species. These effects were more pronounced in males than females.
The researchers also showed that most of the damage could be reversed by giving the mice an antioxidant along with their high-fat diet.
“Under metabolic stress conditions, enzymes can be affected to produce a more harmful state than what was initially there,” says Tigist Tamir, a former MIT postdoc. “Then what we’ve shown with the antioxidant study is that you can bring them to a different state that is less dysfunctional.”
Tamir, who is now an assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, is the lead author of the new study, which appears today in Molecular Cell. Forest White, the Ned C. and Janet C. Rice Professor of Biological Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, is the senior author of the paper.
Metabolic networks
In previous work, White’s lab has found that a high-fat diet stimulates cells to turn on many of the same signaling pathways that are linked to chronic stress. In the new study, the researchers wanted to explore the role of enzyme phosphorylation in those responses.
Phosphorylation, or the addition of a phosphate group, can turn enzyme activity on or off. This process, which is controlled by enzymes called kinases, gives cells a way to quickly respond to environmental conditions by fine-tuning the activity of existing enzymes within the cell.
Many enzymes involved in metabolism — the conversion of food into the building blocks of key molecules such as proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids — are known to undergo phosphorylation.
The researchers began by analyzing databases of human enzymes that can be phosphorylated, focusing on enzymes involved in metabolism. They found that many of the metabolic enzymes that undergo phosphorylation belong to a class called oxidoreductases, which transfer electrons from one molecule to another. Such enzymes are key to metabolic reactions such as glycolysis — the breakdown of glucose into a smaller molecule known as pyruvate.
Among the hundreds of enzymes the researchers identified are IDH1, which is involved in breaking down sugar to generate energy, and AKR1C1, which is required for metabolizing fatty acids. The researchers also found that many phosphorylated enzymes are important for the management of reactive oxygen species, which are necessary for many cell functions but can be harmful if too many of them accumulate in a cell.
Phosphorylation of these enzymes can lead them to become either more or less active, as they work together to respond to the intake of food. Most of the metabolic enzymes identified in this study are phosphorylated on sites found in regions of the enzyme that are important for binding to the molecules that they act upon or for forming dimers — pairs of proteins that join together to form a functional enzyme.
“Tigist’s work has really shown categorically the importance of phosphorylation in controlling the flux through metabolic networks. It’s fundamental knowledge that emerges from this systemic study that she’s done, and it’s something that is not classically captured in the biochemistry textbooks,” White says.
Out of balance
To explore these effects in an animal model, the researchers compared two groups of mice, one that received a high-fat diet and one that consumed a normal diet. They found that overall, phosphorylation of metabolic enzymes led to a dysfunctional state in which cells were in redox imbalance, meaning that their cells were producing more reactive oxygen species than they could neutralize. These mice also became overweight and developed insulin resistance.
“In the context of continued high fat diet, what we see is a gradual drift away from redox homeostasis towards a more disease-like setting,” White says.
These effects were much more pronounced in male mice than female mice. Female mice were better able to compensate for the high fat diet by activating pathways involved in processing fat and metabolizing it for other uses, the researchers found.
“One of the things we learned is that the overall systemic effect of these phosphorylation events led to, especially in males, an increased imbalance in redox homeostasis. They were expressing a lot more stress and a lot more of the metabolic dysfunction phenotype compared to females,” Tamir says.
The researchers also found that if they gave mice who were on a high-fat diet an antioxidant called BHA, many of these effects were reversed. These mice showed a significant decrease in weight gain and did not become prediabetic, unlike the other mice fed a high-fat diet.
It appears that the antioxidant treatment leads cells back into a more balanced state, with fewer reactive oxygen species, the researchers say. Additionally, metabolic enzymes showed a systemic rewiring and changed state of phosphorylation in those mice.
“They’re experiencing a lot of metabolic dysfunction, but if you co-administer something that counters that, then they have enough reserve to maintain some sort of normalcy,” Tamir says. “The study suggests that there is something biochemically happening in cells to bring them to a different state — not a normal state, just a different state in which now, at the tissue and organism levels, the mice are healthier.”
In her new lab at the University of North Carolina, Tamir now plans to further explore whether antioxidant treatment could be an effective way to prevent or treat obesity-associated metabolic dysfunction, and what the optimal timing of such a treatment would be.
The research was funded in part by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Ludwig Center at MIT, and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine.
© Credit: iStock
A $20 million gift from the Leinweber Foundation, in addition to a $5 million commitment from the MIT School of Science, will support theoretical physics research and education at MIT.
Leinweber Foundation gifts to five institutions, totaling $90 million, will establish the newly renamed MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute within the Department of Physics, affiliated with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the School of Science, as well as Leinweber Institutes for Theoretical Physics at three other top research universities: the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, as well as a Leinweber Forum for Theoretical and Quantum Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study.
“MIT has one of the strongest and broadest theory groups in the world,” says Professor Washington Taylor, the director of the newly funded center and a leading researcher in string theory and its connection to observable particle physics and cosmology.
“This landmark endowment from the Leinweber Foundation will enable us to support the best graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to develop their own independent research programs and to connect with other researchers in the Leinweber Institute network. By pledging to support this network and fundamental curiosity-driven science, Larry Leinweber and his family foundation have made a huge contribution to maintaining a thriving scientific enterprise in the United States in perpetuity.”
The Leinweber Foundation’s investment across five institutions — constituting the largest philanthropic commitment ever for theoretical physics research, according to the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supports philanthropic support for science — will strengthen existing programs at each institution and foster collaboration across the universities. Recipient institutions will work both independently and collaboratively to explore foundational questions in theoretical physics. Each institute will continue to shape its own research focus and programs, while also committing to big-picture cross-institutional convenings around topics of shared interest. Moreover, each institute will have significantly more funding for graduate students and postdocs, including fellowship support for three to eight fully endowed Leinweber Physics Fellows at each institute.
“This gift is a commitment to America’s scientific future,” says Larry Leinweber, founder and president of the Leinweber Foundation. “Theoretical physics may seem abstract to many, but it is the tip of the spear for innovation. It fuels our understanding of how the world works and opens the door to new technologies that can shape society for generations. As someone who has had a lifelong fascination with theoretical physics, I hope this investment not only strengthens U.S. leadership in basic science, but also inspires curiosity, creativity, and groundbreaking discoveries for generations to come.”
The gift to MIT will create a postdoc program that, once fully funded, will initially provide support for up to six postdocs, with two selected per year for a three-year program. In addition, the gift will provide student financial support, including fellowship support, for up to six graduate students per year studying theoretical physics. The goal is to attract the top talent to the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute and support the ongoing research programs in a more robust way.
A portion of the funding will also provide support for visitors, seminars, and other scholarly activities of current postdocs, faculty, and students in theoretical physics, as well as helping with administrative support.
“Graduate students are the heart of our country’s scientific research programs. Support for their education to become the future leaders of the field is essential for the advancement of the discipline,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics.
The Leinweber Foundation gift is the second significant gift for the center. “We are always grateful to Virgil Elings, whose generous gift helped make possible the space that houses the center,” says Deepto Chakrabarty, head of the Department of Physics. Elings PhD ’66, co-founder of Digital Instruments, which designed and sold scanning probe microscopes, made his gift more than 20 years ago to support a space for theoretical physicists to collaborate.
“Gifts like those from Larry Leinweber and Virgil Elings are critical, especially now in this time of uncertain funding from the federal government for support of fundamental scientific research carried out by our nation’s leading postdocs, research scientists, faculty and students,” adds Mavalvala.
Professor Tracy Slatyer, whose work is motivated by questions of fundamental particle physics — particularly the nature and interactions of dark matter — will be the subsequent director of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute beginning this fall. Slatyer will join Mavalvala, Taylor, Chakrabarty, and the entirety of the theoretical physics community for a dedication ceremony planned for the near future.
The Leinweber Foundation was founded in 2015 by software entrepreneur Larry Leinweber, and has worked with the Science Philanthropy Alliance since 2021 to shape its philanthropic strategy. “It’s been a true pleasure to work with Larry and the Leinweber family over the past four years and to see their vision take shape,” says France Córdova, president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. “Throughout his life, Larry has exemplified curiosity, intellectual openness, and a deep commitment to learning. This gift reflects those values, ensuring that generations of scientists will have the freedom to explore, to question, and to pursue ideas that could change how we understand the universe.”
© Photo: Peter Vanderwarker
A $20 million gift from the Leinweber Foundation, in addition to a $5 million commitment from the MIT School of Science, will support theoretical physics research and education at MIT.
Leinweber Foundation gifts to five institutions, totaling $90 million, will establish the newly renamed MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute within the Department of Physics, affiliated with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at the School of Science, as well as Leinweber Institutes for Theoretical Physics at three other top research universities: the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, as well as a Leinweber Forum for Theoretical and Quantum Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study.
“MIT has one of the strongest and broadest theory groups in the world,” says Professor Washington Taylor, the director of the newly funded center and a leading researcher in string theory and its connection to observable particle physics and cosmology.
“This landmark endowment from the Leinweber Foundation will enable us to support the best graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to develop their own independent research programs and to connect with other researchers in the Leinweber Institute network. By pledging to support this network and fundamental curiosity-driven science, Larry Leinweber and his family foundation have made a huge contribution to maintaining a thriving scientific enterprise in the United States in perpetuity.”
The Leinweber Foundation’s investment across five institutions — constituting the largest philanthropic commitment ever for theoretical physics research, according to the Science Philanthropy Alliance, a nonprofit organization that supports philanthropic support for science — will strengthen existing programs at each institution and foster collaboration across the universities. Recipient institutions will work both independently and collaboratively to explore foundational questions in theoretical physics. Each institute will continue to shape its own research focus and programs, while also committing to big-picture cross-institutional convenings around topics of shared interest. Moreover, each institute will have significantly more funding for graduate students and postdocs, including fellowship support for three to eight fully endowed Leinweber Physics Fellows at each institute.
“This gift is a commitment to America’s scientific future,” says Larry Leinweber, founder and president of the Leinweber Foundation. “Theoretical physics may seem abstract to many, but it is the tip of the spear for innovation. It fuels our understanding of how the world works and opens the door to new technologies that can shape society for generations. As someone who has had a lifelong fascination with theoretical physics, I hope this investment not only strengthens U.S. leadership in basic science, but also inspires curiosity, creativity, and groundbreaking discoveries for generations to come.”
The gift to MIT will create a postdoc program that, once fully funded, will initially provide support for up to six postdocs, with two selected per year for a three-year program. In addition, the gift will provide student financial support, including fellowship support, for up to six graduate students per year studying theoretical physics. The goal is to attract the top talent to the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute and support the ongoing research programs in a more robust way.
A portion of the funding will also provide support for visitors, seminars, and other scholarly activities of current postdocs, faculty, and students in theoretical physics, as well as helping with administrative support.
“Graduate students are the heart of our country’s scientific research programs. Support for their education to become the future leaders of the field is essential for the advancement of the discipline,” says Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science and the Curtis (1963) and Kathleen Marble Professor of Astrophysics.
The Leinweber Foundation gift is the second significant gift for the center. “We are always grateful to Virgil Elings, whose generous gift helped make possible the space that houses the center,” says Deepto Chakrabarty, head of the Department of Physics. Elings PhD ’66, co-founder of Digital Instruments, which designed and sold scanning probe microscopes, made his gift more than 20 years ago to support a space for theoretical physicists to collaborate.
“Gifts like those from Larry Leinweber and Virgil Elings are critical, especially now in this time of uncertain funding from the federal government for support of fundamental scientific research carried out by our nation’s leading postdocs, research scientists, faculty and students,” adds Mavalvala.
Professor Tracy Slatyer, whose work is motivated by questions of fundamental particle physics — particularly the nature and interactions of dark matter — will be the subsequent director of the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – A Leinweber Institute beginning this fall. Slatyer will join Mavalvala, Taylor, Chakrabarty, and the entirety of the theoretical physics community for a dedication ceremony planned for the near future.
The Leinweber Foundation was founded in 2015 by software entrepreneur Larry Leinweber, and has worked with the Science Philanthropy Alliance since 2021 to shape its philanthropic strategy. “It’s been a true pleasure to work with Larry and the Leinweber family over the past four years and to see their vision take shape,” says France Córdova, president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance. “Throughout his life, Larry has exemplified curiosity, intellectual openness, and a deep commitment to learning. This gift reflects those values, ensuring that generations of scientists will have the freedom to explore, to question, and to pursue ideas that could change how we understand the universe.”
© Photo: Peter Vanderwarker
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Reaching the tiny settlement, located deep within the Amazon rainforest, required several hours of travel by river boat.
“When we finally got there, we were immediately greeted by the mayor,” recalled Eduardo Vasconcelos ’25, who reached the far-flung municipality as a volunteer delivering medical supplies during the pandemic. “He took us to see the public school and the public health facility, all of which was managed locally. I was just mesmerized. I thought, ‘Wow! This is the most fascinating experiment in self-governance I’ve ever seen.’”
The encounter stuck with the double concentrator in economics and government, stirring old passions and eventually shaping his senior thesis. Vasconcelos set out to investigate what prevents elected officials like the one he met from falling in with illegal gold miners. Brazil’s federal government has banned these black-market operators, who rely on a process that pumps the environment with toxins. But the miners have proven effective at enlisting cooperation from some of the rainforest’s secluded local powers.
“People tend to look at policy in the Amazon as something that is determined by national administrations,” said Frances Hagopian, the Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government and one of three faculty advising the thesis. “There are those who are more protective of the environment and there are those who lean more toward developing the Amazon’s resources. What Eduardo did that was different was look below the level of national government.”
Vasconcelos, who grew up amid a family of civil servants in Brazil’s federal capital of Brasília, was interested in government from a young age. He was just 14 years old when he started working with teen trauma survivors. A wave of violent threats against the country’s public schools later inspired him to co-found Jovens Líderes pela Paz (Young Peacebuilders), a nonprofit that trains Brazilian students in de-escalation and advancing mental health supports.
Vasconcelos also worked on education issues as a government volunteer while still in high school. During his senior year, a federal scholarship enabled his first visit to Cambridge for the Harvard Model United Nations program. “I immediately fell in love with the institution,” he recalled.
At the time, then-Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was actively freezing public funding for universities while taking shots at certain humanities and social science disciplines. “That really motivated me to try to come,” said Vasconcelos, whose application was supported by the Jorge Paulo Lemann Fund. “It would allow me to study what I love.”
“When we talk about protecting the rainforest, we don’t always think about how we can better support local governments.”
Eduardo Vasconcelos
As a College first-year, he made his first trip to the rainforest with the nonprofit G10 Favelas, which transported medical supplies to Brazil’s small communities during the pandemic. Inspired by the responsive democracy he saw practiced in a remote Amazon outpost, Vasconcelos subsequently landed spots on two immersions in the region organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS).
“I feel like the Amazon is what bonds every Brazilian together,” Vasconcelos said, noting that Brazilian Chief Supreme Court Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, a senior fellow at the Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, helped him home in on the rainforest as a research focus. “I see an opportunity to rediscover our sense of identity in the Amazon’s conservation and its future.”
Vasconcelos learned that illegal gold mining, on the rise since the early 2000s, contributes not only to deforestation and CO₂ rise. The extractors’ reliance on mercury and cyanide, used to isolate gold from river sentiment, contaminates water and air alike. Widespread mercury poisoning, with its devastating harms to the human nervous system, has been found in corners of the rainforest where unlawful mining is prevalent.
“He became very interested in why some local governments seem to allow this and others don’t,” said Hagopian. “And it turned out that the answer was not as simple as, some municipalities have the gold and others don’t.”
Vasconcelos kicked off his research project by indexing the influence of criminal mining interests over local governments. He focused on 50 municipalities in the Brazilian state of Pará, home to more than half of all illegal gold mining in the Amazon, finding some level of capture in 13. Advising the thesis with Hagopian were Government Professor Steven Levitsky, a Latin America expert, and Rio de Janeiro native Marcia Castro, a demography professor at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In search of deeper understanding, Vasconcelos next turned to assessing a host of political variables in each municipality. “Most political scientists and economists who study illicit economic activity assume that it flourishes where states are weak,” Hagopian explained. “What’s interesting about what Eduardo found is that it’s not the weakest local governments that play host to a lot of this activity. It’s actually local governments with some capacity.
“They have enough trained bureaucrats to give legal license to mine on land reserved for environmental protection or Indigenous nations,” she continued. “They have enough resources to build new infrastructure.”
Instead, one-party rule emerged as the most predictive factor. “The specific result shows us that when there is more diversity of parties, we see a lower likelihood of gold miners running for election or funding campaigns,” Vasconcelos explained, pointing to Brazil’s diverse political landscape with more than 30 parties.
In a separate chapter, the Kirkland House resident and former World Bank intern went deep on the social impacts of this brand of corruption. He found that rates of deforestation doubled in the Amazon’s captured municipalities, while these communities saw decreased investment in education and public health.
“We also see war-level homicide rates — the highest in the country,” Vasconcelos added. “Our data show that this is not a sustainable economic activity. It doesn’t bring better quality of life for the local population.”
The bottom line, he concluded, is that local government is the first line of defense against a profoundly damaging industry. DRCLAS awarded Vasconcelos its 2025 Kenneth Maxwell Thesis Prize on Brazilian Studies this week.
“When we talk about protecting the rainforest, we don’t always think about how we can better support local governments,” said Vasconcelos, a Schwartzman Scholar who will move to Beijing this summer for a one-year, fully funded master’s program in global affairs at Tsinghua University. “I’d like to see more research looking at this intersection.”
Danoff Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana (right) with the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts (from left), President Alan Garber, and Karen Thornber, president of the University’s PBK chapter.
Photos by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Dozens of graduating scholars elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society gathered in Sanders Theatre Tuesday morning.
They were called to order by Karen Thornber, president of the University’s chapter of the venerated honor society, the Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature, and professor of East Asian languages and civilizations.
Thornber noted that students are elected, not merely for their near-spotless GPAs, but for their “depth and breadth” as scholars.
And she set a tone for the two-hour ceremony: commending the more than 200 elected students for this “tremendous honor,” then charging them with a responsibility to “continue your love of learning [and] inspire others to do the same.”
In prayer and oration, poetry and song, the event also acknowledged the troubled moment — notably, the University’s ongoing conflict with the Trump administration.
As he blessed the event, the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, invoked “a spirit of bravery.” And in a hymn with lyrics drawn from Langston Hughes, the Harvard University Choir enjoined graduates “to sit and learn about the world / Outside our world of here and now / Our problem world.”
Seated on the theater’s floor, the graduating members formed a cosmopolitan group: Over their gowns, many sported saris and hijabs, regalia from racial and ethnic affinity groups, and sashes marking home countries from Thailand to Brazil.
On stage were the officers of Harvard’s chapter and the three members of faculty who’d been awarded the chapter’s annual teaching prizes: Remo Airaldi in Theater, Dance & Media, Samantha Matherne in philosophy, and Steven Levitsky in government.
In keeping with traditions that stretch back to John Quincy Adams and Alfred Kazin, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Elizabeth Bishop, this year’s newly elected members heard from both a poet and an orator.
The poet was Arthur Sze — the son of Chinese immigrants who first dropped calculus for verse in a lecture hall at MIT over 50 years ago. Against his parents’ better judgment, Sze went on to Berkeley, a National Book Award for Poetry in 2019, and being honored as the first poet laureate of his adoptive hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In brief remarks, Sze called on the graduates to take risks and to attend to the interconnectedness — to neighbors and nature — at the heart of his own poetry. Of juxtaposition, Sze said, it “is more than mere artistic technique,” but “a vision of how to share our world.”
Reading his 2021 poem “Farolitos,” Sze sought to prepare his audience for the setbacks and wrong turns that are sure to mark their lives off-campus:
in this life, you may try, try
to light a match, fail,
fail again and again; yet, letting go, you strike
a tip one more time
when it bursts into flame —
Meanwhile, this year’s oration was delivered by Rakesh Khurana in one of his last acts as the longest-serving dean of Harvard College.
After 11 years leading the college, Khurana — who has dual appointments in sociology and at the Business School — warned that Harvard and other elite universities have a role to play in overcoming a “legitimacy crisis” now facing them.
“[Even] if we teach values of equity, selective institutions are seen as gatekeepers of privilege — hoarding opportunities rather than extending them,” Khurana said. And too often, he added, graduates of exclusive schools fail to use their capacities “in the best interests of the broader society.”
As he wrapped up an address once delivered by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Khurana contemplated the weightier meanings of the University’s motto: veritas.
In a time of deep division, where “confidence substitutes for understanding [and] complexity is flattened by outrage,” Khurana said that “truth — veritas — emerges slowly. It demands humility, skepticism, and the willingness to revise one’s views.”
Khurana cited his own work on efforts to foster “intellectual vitality” at the College as an effort to show veritas in action, as well as President Alan Garber’s resistance to federal demands. (Garber, who was seated onstage, drew a standing ovation at Khurana’s mention.)
As the event wound down, students and their families spilled into the transept of Memorial Hall to take photos and exchange greetings with classmates.
Nicolás Domínguez Carrero, one of the chapter’s four undergraduate marshals, found Khurana’s speech — and the ovation for Garber — “very moving.”
“I feel very proud to be a PBK scholar, and a Harvard student, at this moment,” he said, flanked by family from both Texas and Colombia. “I think Harvard’s doing an amazing job standing up for academic freedom and democracy, writ large. It is a time of crisis, but if there’s an institution that can weather this storm, it’s Harvard.”
Meanwhile, Levitsky, author of the bestsellers “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority,” was humbled by his teaching award.
But, he added, “The most wonderful thing about the ceremony was sitting on stage, watching the faces of the students. In this age of cynicism, I was blown away by how absorbed, how sincere they were… It really renewed my faith.”
President Alan Garber addressing the Class of 2025.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
In his second Baccalaureate address, Harvard President Alan Garber stressed to the Class of 2025 the importance of education, and those who impart it, for advancing knowledge.
“The best way to acknowledge Harvard — and what this time has meant to you — is to advocate for education,” Garber told students gathered at Tercentenary Theatre on Tuesday afternoon. “Everything we might achieve — morally, scientifically, technologically, and even economically — is grounded in knowledge. Where else are you more likely to find a path to knowledge and all that it unlocks for humanity than in education?”
Garber’s address capped this year’s interfaith ceremony celebrating undergraduates, a tradition dating back to Harvard’s first Commencement in 1642. The president’s plea to stand up for education comes amid funding cuts to the University by the federal government that will affect research across disciplines, including medicine and Garber’s area of expertise — economics.
In his speech, Garber — who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1976 — took a moment to thank the educators in his life who led him to his career path, and he urged the soon-to-be graduates to do the same. In particular, he made note of his resident tutor in Dunster House, Jerome Culp, who told him to switch his concentration from biochemistry to economics.
“That conversation with him changed my life. I still think about it all these years later. Who inspired you? Who gave you the attention and gentle nudging you needed exactly when you needed it? Who kindled your true ambition? Send that note that you have been meaning to send to a mentor who meant more to you than they might realize.”
Throughout the ceremony, faith leaders from across the University congratulated the Class of 2025, and blessed their future endeavors. And, like Garber, a few of the speakers chose to honor the past.
“If you are here today, it’s because you are descended from people from around this globe who have survived deprivations and immigrations and persecutions and liberations, just so you could sit here on this Yard today,” said the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church.
He continued, “You are the answer to your ancestors’ hopes and prayers. You are their dreams come true. It’s not just the past that lives in you — the future does too, because you have your own hopes and dreams and wishes and visions of all that you might be and all that you will become from this point forward.”
The Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, a retired physician and the current Swartz Resident Practitioner in Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School, also reflected on the influence of generations previous, noting marked differences from her own graduation from Harvard College in 1972.
“The relative diversity of your class compared to ours is a compelling indicator that we have been faithful to our callings,” she said. “And because the struggle continues, I want you to know that we are not here to pass our torches to you. Yes, we are old, but no, we are not dead. We are here to stoke the fire of your torch.”
Garber closed out by wishing one final good luck to students before Commencement on Thursday.
“May these final 44 hours, give or take some minutes, be filled with opportunities to celebrate how far you have traveled since your arrival. You have done so much. Rest on your laurels, but not for too long. The world, with its countless magnificent destinations, awaits you.”
Graduates Thor Reimann (from left), Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, and Aidan Scully will deliver speeches Thursday at Commencement.
Photos by Veasey Conway and Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographers and Grace DuVal
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
On Thursday, three graduating students selected in a University-wide competition will deliver speeches at Tercentenary Theatre — one of the oldest of Harvard’s Commencement traditions.
The student orators are Yurong “Luanna” Jiang, a graduating master’s student at the Harvard Kennedy School who will deliver the Graduate English Address; Aidan Scully, a graduating senior who will deliver the Latin Salutatory; and Thor Reimann, also a senior, who will deliver the Senior English.
Yurong “Luanna” Jiang
Growing up in Qingdao, China, Jiang realized that education was a way to change the trajectory of her life. And it did.
High test scores earned her a full scholarship to a high school in Cardiff, Wales. She attended Duke University for her undergraduate education and will represent Harvard Kennedy School as the University’s Graduate Orator.
One of her friends had the same early understanding about education. But while Jiang had plenty of time to study, her friend — the daughter of fishmongers — had to help before and after school at her parents’ shop.
“It’s almost like you’re standing at a railway,” Jiang said, “and you know you have to hop off. Otherwise, your life will always be the same.” Jiang’s path shifted, and her friend’s didn’t.
The disparity got Jiang thinking about a question that would guide her educational journey: “What does it mean to have equality, fairness, and social justice?”
In Cardiff, where Jiang arrived not knowing English, she became interested in economics. “I trace it back to middle school,” she said. “When you see those hardships, why do they happen? What would the solution be?”
She continued studying economics at Duke and became increasingly interested in philosophy and politics, reading the work of thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and William L. Rowe. To Jiang, economics felt like learning to drive a car, and philosophy felt like learning where to take it.
She also hosted a boxing club, having learned the sport growing up. Despite standing at around 5 feet, 3 inches tall, Jiang often prepared for competitions by sparring with men.
“It strengthens your character,” she said. “You have to look at them eye-to-eye and not be scared — because if you close your eyes, you cannot block the punch you can’t see, and you cannot hit a target you cannot see.”
Jiang worked in private-sector finance after Duke, thinking she might become an economist, but she felt the work was too far removed from the people she wanted to serve. The instinct brought her to the Kennedy School’s two-year M.P.A./I.D. program in international development.
She joined a class of 77 students from 34 countries. As she arrived, she writes in her address, “the countries I knew only as colorful shapes on a map turned into real people — with laughter, dreams, and the perseverance of surviving the long winter in Cambridge.”
She found her fellow students as idealistic as she was about supporting communities across the world — and one another on campus. When classmates lost loved ones or went through other tough experiences, friends from the program came to their aid, making sure they were eating and were not lonely.
“It makes us realize that this kind of empathy or human connection is beyond the countries,” she said.
She also continued studying philosophy, taking a class, and later a tutorial, with Arthur Isak Applbaum, Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values. Reading philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s thoughts on recognizing the humanity of those very different from himself helped inspire her, more than 400 years later, to write her own reflection on the topic.
In her speech, Jiang encourages people to listen to one another without judgment, looking for shared beliefs rather than conflict.
“If we still believe in a shared future,” she writes, “let’s not forget: Those we label as enemies, they, too, are human. In seeing their humanity, we find our own.”
Aidan Scully
When your father is a high-school Latin teacher, “The Aeneid for Boys and Girls” is bedtime story material. At least, that was the case for Scully.
“The story was not in Latin,” he clarified, “but I had ancient history stories floating around from pretty early on.”
When it came time to choose a language at nearby Taunton High School, he remembers his father joking that he was allowed to study whichever one he wanted — as long as it was Latin.
Fortunately, Scully loved it.
“From day one,” he said, “I was hooked.” He took every Latin class the school offered, and when he was done, he continued independent study courses with his Latin teacher, Jessica Ouellette.
With her support, he worked toward publishing a translation of the first poem in Ovid’s “Amores,” from 16 B.C. Though others had translated the text before, he wanted to preserve its original metric playfulness.
“You can read Latin, and it can be an intellectual thing,” he said. “But I think trying to make poetry accessible to people in the way that it would have been 2,000 years ago bridges history in a way that is really exciting.”
Scully, a resident of Adams House, planned to concentrate in classics and government but realized his interests better aligned with a joint concentration in classics and religion. From sophomore year on, he split the bulk of his academic work studying the relationship between politics and religion in the ancient world and how they shape the modern U.S.
His former area of interest led to his thesis about how Romans in Late Antiquity balanced their Roman and Christian identities. While most people accept today that one can embrace both a religious and national identity, many Romans found this inconceivable.
“People at this time are trying to make sense of the fact of, ‘Well, if I am Roman and I am Christian, what does that mean? How are the two different? How do I make sense of the parts where it doesn’t seem like I can be both?’”
He found those fundamental questions relevant to the modern relationship between religion and government in the U.S. While mainstream U.S. history highlights religion’s impact on certain eras — The Great Awakening, the Civil Rights Movement — Scully studied its persistent presence over time.
Learning about evangelicalism and the landscape of Protestantism in the U.S. while studying ancient analogues fascinated Scully.
“This is the intersection I want to work at,” he said, “seeing what comparisons I can draw that maybe people haven’t thought to put in the conversation.”
His studies also affected how Scully approached his own faith and community service.
“Every work of religious scholarship begins with something like, ‘We don’t really know what religion is,’” Scully said, smiling. “It’s not easy to provide a definition that isn’t just a list of examples.” He finds that lack of certainty — and expansive approach — helpful in his volunteer work with queer interfaith communities.
“The lines we’re drawing are almost always arbitrary and usually based on at least one misconception,” he said. “Thinking critically about that leads to more inclusive activism.”
Besides introducing Scully to age-appropriate epics in childhood, Scully’s father, Christopher, also provided an example to Scully in a different way: He was Harvard’s Latin Orator in 1994. Family legend has it that his grandmother showed up not knowing that his father was about to deliver a Commencement address.
This time, though, Scully’s parents will know. He credits his mother, who graduated from Harvard as Elisa Leone in 1996 with a degree in social anthropology, for holding him accountable to reach the goals he set for education, and his life.
“I’ve been truly extremely fortunate to have a family that’s been so supportive of me doing a thing that’s kind of obscure and not, you know, employable,” he said. “The fact that things seem to be working out so far is a testament to them.”
Thor Reimann
Reimann was born and raised in Apple Valley, Minnesota, with parents who encouraged him and his two older siblings to pursue their own interests. It took each on a different path: His sister is a nurse; his brother is a nuclear submarine officer with the U.S. Navy; and Reimann hopes to attend law school and practice environmental law.
As a first-year, though, Reimann’s vision wasn’t quite so clear. In high school, he said, “I loved every subject.” He trusted that he’d find his way to a fulfilling academic experience and, as one of the only openly queer students from his high school, “the personal space to fully explore who I was,” he writes in his English Oration.
At first, Reimann, a resident of Mather House, thought he might concentrate in history and literature or social studies, which would allow him to take a broad range of classes. A general education course he took freshman year shifted his trajectory: “Life and Death in the Anthropocene.”
The course, taught by Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, encouraged Reimann to think about climate change and environmental problems from a range of academic and personal perspectives.
“They really touch every aspect of human life that’s out there,” he said. “I found myself constantly thinking about it when I would leave class.”
A lover of nature who would go on to join the steering committee for the First-Year Outdoors Program, Reimann decided to pursue a joint concentration in environmental science and public policy and comparative religion. Though he appreciated the technocratic element of environmental studies, the added focus on religion helped him balance policy with a big-picture idea of what he was trying to protect in the first place.
With guidance from Terry Tempest Williams, the Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence, Reimann developed a deep interest in conservation. His joint major, and his conservation interest, sparked his senior thesis on Bears Ears National Monument, a federally protected area in southeastern Utah.
One of the most culturally dense landscapes in the U.S., the federal monument contains artifacts from different Native American tribes dating back thousands of years. Reimann was interested in how political organizing across different tribes that described the area as “sacred” helped earn it federal protection in 2016 — and how the same idea of “sacredness” was used by different groups to reduce its size the following year.
“The government just doesn’t have the right policy tools to be able to create space to talk about these claims,” he said.
Just as his thesis can be traced to first-year discoveries, so too can his speech. The title, “This World is Not Conclusion,” is borrowed from an Emily Dickinson poem that he read during a first-year seminar.
“I was having this big moment of, ‘Oh gosh, what am I going to do? How do I think about this opportunity?’” said Reimann. “And I think a lot of the poem is about how the circumstances of the day that you’re in right now are going to change. There’s going to be something that comes next.”
He felt especially struck by the final two lines of the poem: “Narcotics cannot still the Tooth / That nibbles at the soul —”
“You can have a lot of money or you can have a lot of power,” Reimann said, “but still, the tooth is going to nibble — so you better listen.”
The poem helped him be comfortable letting his curiosities guide him as he started his undergraduate experience. It also helped him process its conclusion.
“In this time when there’s a lot of uncertainty and fear, I think it can be reassuring that there is something coming next, and we have the agency to go and be a part of creating that,” he said. “It’s not just an end. New things are beginning.”
The rise of artificial intelligence resurfaces a question older than the abacus: If we have a tool to do it for us, why learn to do it ourselves?
The answer, argues MIT electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) Professor Devavrat Shah, hasn’t changed: Foundational skills in mathematics remain essential to using tools well, from knowing which tool to use to interpreting results correctly.
“As large language models and generative AI meet new applications, these cutting-edge tools will continue to reshape entire sectors of industry, and bring new insights to challenges in research and policy,” argues Shah. “The world needs people who can grasp the underlying concepts behind AI to truly leverage its potential.”
Shah is a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), a cross-disciplinary unit meeting the global need for data skills with online course offerings like the MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science, which Shah directs.
“With over a thousand credential holders worldwide, and tens of thousands more learners engaged since its inception, the MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science has proven to be a rigorous but flexible way for skilled learners to develop an MIT-level grasp of statistics fundamentals,” says Shah.
The MicroMasters also forms the backbone of IDSS education partnerships, where an embedded MIT team collaborates with organizations to support groups of learners through the MicroMasters curriculum.
“Together with our first strategic partner in education, IDSS is providing graduate-level data science education through the Brescia Institute of Technology (BREIT) in Peru,” explains Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of the Social Sciences at MIT and director of IDSS. “Through this partnership, IDSS is training data scientists who are informing decision-making in Peruvian industry, society, and policy.”
Training the next generation
BREIT’s Advanced Program in Data Science and Global Skills, developed in collaboration with IDSS, provides training in both the technical and nontechnical skills needed to take advantage of the insights that data can offer. Members complete the MicroMasters in Statistics and Data Science (SDS), learning the foundations of statistics, probability, data analysis, and machine learning. Meanwhile, these learners are equipped with career skills from communication and critical thinking to team-building and ethics.
“I knew that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science was the future, and I wanted to be in that wave,” explains BREIT learner Renato Castro about his decision to join the program. Now a credential holder, Castro has developed data projects for groups in Peru, Panama, and Guatemala. “The program teaches more than the mathematics. It’s a systematic way of thinking that helps you have an impact on real-world problems and create wealth not only for a company, but wealth for the people.”
“The aim is to develop problem-solvers and leaders in a field that is growing and becoming more relevant for organizations around the world,” says Lucia Haro, manager of BREIT. “We are training the next generation to contribute to the economic development of our country, and to have a positive social impact in Peru.”
To help accomplish this, IDSS provides BREIT learners with tailored support. MIT grad student teaching assistants lead regular sessions to provide hands-on practice with class concepts, answer learner questions, and identify topics for developing additional resources.
“These sessions were very useful because you see the application of the theoretical part from the lectures,” says Jesús Figueroa, who completed the program and now serves as a local teaching assistant. Learners like Figueroa must go beyond a deep understanding of the course material in order to support future learners.
“Maybe you already understand the fundamentals, the theoretical part,” explains Figueroa, “but you have to learn how to communicate it.”
Eight cohorts have completed the program, with three more in progress, for a total of almost 100 holders of the MicroMasters credential — and 90 more in the pipeline. As BREIT has scaled up their operation, the IDSS team worked to meet new needs as they emerged, such as collaborating in the development of a technical assessment to support learner recruitment.
“The assessment tool gauges applicants’ familiarity with prerequisite knowledge like calculus, elementary linear algebra, and basic programming in Python,” says Karene Chu, assistant director of education for the SDS MicroMasters. “With some randomization to the questions and automatic grading, this quiz made determining potential for the Advanced Program in Data Science and Global Skills easier for BREIT, while also helping applicants see where they might need to brush up on their skills.”
Since implementing the assessment, the program has continued to evolve in multiple ways, such as incorporating systematic feedback from MIT teaching assistants on data projects. This guidance, structured into multiple project stages, ensures the best outcomes for learners and project sponsors alike. The IDSS MicroMasters team has developed new coding demos to help familiarize learners with different applications and deepen understanding of the principles behind them. Meanwhile, the MicroMasters program itself has expanded to respond to industry demand, adding a course in time series analysis and creating specialized program tracks for learners to customize their experience.
“Partner input helps us understand the landscape, so we better know the demands and how to meet them,” says Susana Kevorkova, program manager of the IDSS MicroMasters. “With BREIT, we are now offering a prerequisite ‘bootcamp’ to help learners from different backgrounds refresh their knowledge or cover gaps. We are always looking for ways to add value for our partners.”
Better decisions, bigger impact
To accelerate the development of data skills, BREIT’s program offers hands-on opportunities to apply these skills to data projects. These projects are developed in collaboration with local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on a variety of social impact projects intended to improve quality of life for Peruvian citizens.
“I worked with an NGO trying to understand why students do not complete graduate study,” says Diego Trujillo Chappa, a BREIT learner and MicroMasters credential holder. “We developed an improved model for them considering student features such as their reading levels and their incomes, and tried to remove bias about where they come from.”
“Our methodology helped the NGO to identify more possible applicants,” adds Trujillo. “And it’s a good step for the NGO, moving forward with better data analysis.”
Trujillo has now brought these data skills to bear in his work modeling user experiences in the telecommunications sector. “We have some features that we want to improve in the 5G network in my country,” he explains. “This methodology helped me to correctly understand the variable of the person in the equation of the experience.”
Yajaira Huerta’s social impact project dealt with a particularly serious issue, and at a tough time. “I worked with an organization that builds homes for people who are homeless,” she explains. “This was when Covid-19 was spreading, which was a difficult situation for many people in Peru.”
One challenge her project organization faced was identifying where need was the highest in order to strategize the distribution of resources — a kind of problem where data tools can make a big impact. “We built a clustering model for capturing indicators available in the data, and also to show us with geolocation where the focal points of need were,” says Huerta. “This helped the team to make better decisions.”
Global networks and pipelines
As a part of the growing, global IDSS community, credential holders of the MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science have access to IDSS workshops and conferences. Through BREIT’s collaboration with IDSS, learners have more opportunities to interact with MIT faculty beyond recorded lectures. Some BREIT learners have even traveled to MIT, where they have met MIT students and faculty and learned about ongoing research.
“I feel so in love with this history that you have, and also what you are building with AI and nanotechnology. I’m so inspired.” says Huerta of her time on campus.
At their most recent visit in February, BREIT learners received completion certificates in person, toured the MIT campus, joined interactive talks with students and faculty, and got a preview of a new MicroMasters development: a sports analytics course designed by mechanical engineering professor Anette “Peko” Hosoi.
“Hosting BREIT and their extraordinarily talented learners brings all our partner efforts full circle, especially as MicroMasters credential holders are a pool of potential recruits for our on-campus graduate programs,” says Christia. “This partnership is a model we are ready to build on and iterate, so that we are developing similar networks and pipelines of data science talent on every part of the globe.”
© Photo: Mike Canale
“Recently one of the best funders of spinal cord injury research … had its funding cut. It was about $40 million, a third of all spinal cord injury funding,” said Jason Biundo, a first-year doctoral student.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
First-year Ph.D. students at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences studying in Harvard Medical School’s Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program are facing an unprecedented challenge as they begin a process that will soon lead to one of the most consequential decisions in their careers: finding the right lab and mentor for their research.
“I’m supposed to be choosing labs, but all of the labs I’m talking to and rotating in, they have no idea what the funding situation is, if they can take students, if they have money for our salaries or the projects we want to do,” said Jason Biundo, a first-year doctoral student. “It feels disappointing.”
The University has been buffeted in recent weeks by a series of Trump administration moves to halt or cut federal research funds, beginning on April 15 when the administration announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in grants. In response, Harvard has filed suit, arguing the government’s actions and demands violate federal law and the University’s First Amendment rights.
Harvard is not the only institution of higher education in the nation losing federal research funds. The administration has targeted at least two dozen others and made at least $11 billion in cuts. Scientists say the losses threaten to upend the government-higher education partnership that has led to medical breakthroughs that saved millions of lives and launched numerous companies in the post-war period.
An integral part of that innovation ecosystem involves ensuring a steady pipeline of up-and-coming researchers.
Graduate students are “the engines in our labs that are generating all these new ideas and all this data,” said Beth Stevens, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. “Their salaries are covered by federal funds. It’s so fundamentally important: the ability to recruit amazing talent, keep amazing talent, and then support them in the next phases of their careers where they’re going to apply for grants. It’s the way we do it.”
Ph.D. students doing work in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program typically spend their first year rotating between labs, both “auditioning” for long-term research positions and doing their own assessments: Is it a good cultural fit? Would the principal investigator be a good mentor for their personality and career goals? Would they be able to do the kind of research they’re passionate about? By the third year of the program, students’ salaries should be covered by a combination of their own federal grants and work they do to assist their PIs on the PIs’ grants.
Biundo plans to study spinal cord injuries, a topic that’s deeply personal to him: When he was an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he suffered a serious spinal cord injury that left him partially paralyzed.
“Recently one of the best funders of spinal cord injury research, the Department of Defense’s [Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs], had its funding cut. It was about $40 million, a third of all spinal cord injury funding,” Biundo said. “I think it was already an underfunded condition to begin with, with such a large patient population, and to see that is really disheartening for the future of spinal cord research.”
Postdoc Cherish Taylor fears her funding will be terminated at the end of the current funding cycle because the program falls under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.
The funding uncertainty isn’t just impacting doctoral candidates. Cherish Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher studying environmental risk factors for the onset, progression, and severity of psychiatric disorders, has been funded by the NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience Award (D-SPAN). The program supported graduate students and postdoctoral scholars from diverse backgrounds, including groups that have been under-represented in neuroscience.
“People of color, even to some extent women, but less so nowadays, and certainly people in the LGBTQ community, we are minorities within the STEM field. You may be the only person that looks like you in your program, in your department. Having this type of grant program is nice for remembering that you aren’t actually the only person who looks like you in the field.”
Taylor fears her funding will be terminated at the end of the current funding cycle because the program falls under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, which has been a target of the current administration.
“My PI has repeatedly assured me that she will do whatever she can to provide funding for me,” Taylor said. “But it still doesn’t remove that emotional burden of knowing your peers are not in the same place, people you know and care about and want the best for.”
Harvard President Alan Garber announced on May 14 that the University is dedicating $250 million of central funding to support research affected by suspensions and cancellations.
“We stand behind our thousands of outstanding faculty, postdoctoral, staff, and student researchers,” Garber said. “Together they continue to make revolutionary discoveries, cure illness, deepen our understanding of the world, and translate that understanding into impact and invaluable teaching and mentorship that will produce the next generation of leading scientists and innovators. It is crucial for this country, the economy, and humankind that this work continues.”
Some labs may be able to support junior researchers through philanthropic funding, industry partnerships, or operational adjustments. But uncertainty remains.
“At the beginning of the year, things felt like, you’re starting a new Ph.D. program, and you have a very bright future ahead,” said Biundo. “And then you’re hit with the uncertainty of this career path as a whole.”
Rupen Dajee.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Had it not been for wildfires, Rupen Dajee may never have gone to graduate school.
They’re a seasonal occurrence in his home state of California, where he was a firefighter-paramedic before coming to Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management to complete a dual M.P.A./M.B.A. degree program. He’ll graduate from the Kennedy School this week.
After college, Dajee became a licensed emergency medical technician working on an ambulance in Los Angeles in the area once known as South Central. What started out as a rewarding side job became a passion. So he went to paramedic school and trained as a firefighter, joining a small rural fire department in the mountains outside of the city.
There, Dajee experienced the technology inequities that rural emergency responders like firefighters have to overcome just to do what is already a difficult job.
“I would get sent out to wildfires during the summers and experience communications issues,” he said. “It’s a really tough technological environment to operate within and so, I thought, ‘What can I do to help with that?’”
“I would get sent out to wildfires during the summers and experience communications issues. It’s a really tough technological environment to operate within and so, I thought, ‘What can I do to help with that?'”
Dajee started a technology venture called Twisted Kelp that develops tools to help solve some of the field challenges facing wildland firefighting, emergency services, and disaster management.
The infrastructure that enables emergency communications to work can fail under harsh conditions or may be insufficient for the vast expanses and difficult rural terrain, forcing firefighters to make some tough calls.
“You need to start thinking, ‘Do we send people down there, do we not because we’re not able to support adequate communications? Is that a vital area we still have to send people into even if we can’t cover it?’ There can be gaps in areas of opportunity where technology can help to solve those problems, to enable greater capabilities.”
The company produces satellite tracking and communications solutions with an online interface that overlays fire maps and infrared data so firefighters can see where personnel and equipment are positioned or needed. Another product enables emergency radio service using Internet Protocol packets. The company also developed a digitized version of a pocket-size booklet called the Incident Response Pocket Guide that firefighters often carry on them to reference instructions on the fly for an array of scenarios.
Because technology advances for the public sector are often longer-cycle and can affect a much broader scale than the private sector, Dajee said he realized it would take more than an M.B.A. to make his company truly effective. The focus on leadership and problem-solving on a grand scale at the Kennedy School and Sloan’s emphasis on principled business innovation were motivating, he said.
“Leadership and management shouldn’t just be about gross revenue maximization,” Dajee said. “It’s about the people, their context, and the environment,” as well as “trying to push the boundaries of what’s possible and what good that you can bring into the world with business.”
“It’s about the people, their context, and the environment.”
After Commencement, Dajee will return to L.A., where he spent three weeks in January fighting the devastating wildfire in the Pacific Palisades, an area he had lived near for many years.
“I knew almost every street where the fires were burning and had driven up and down those streets for a better part of 10 years,” said Dajee. “It was very surreal seeing these places that I knew, these homes that I had passed by many times and recognized, burned to the ground.”
Dajee said he’s immensely grateful to have had an opportunity to study at Harvard and MIT when so few of his colleagues in emergency services have chosen to attend graduate school. Most have a “deep passion” for what they do but struggle with systemic issues facing emergency healthcare and rural emergency services in the U.S., he said.
“It’s important that the work they do is recognized because they put their lives on the line on a daily basis in the harshest conditions to keep others safe, with long-term consequences that are often unsupported,” he said. “And while it is great that everyone thanks their first responders when they have a need for them, it is also important to remember that the work continues in the background even when they don’t.”
Long before she stepped into a lab, Ananda Santos Figueiredo was stargazing in Brazil, captivated by the cosmos and feeding her curiosity of science through pop culture, books, and the internet. She was drawn to astrophysics for its blend of visual wonder and mathematics.
Even as a child, Santos sensed her aspirations reaching beyond the boundaries of her hometown. “I’ve always been drawn to STEM,” she says. “I had this persistent feeling that I was meant to go somewhere else to learn more, explore, and do more.”
Her parents saw their daughter’s ambitions as an opportunity to create a better future. The summer before her sophomore year of high school, her family moved from Brazil to Florida. She recalls that moment as “a big leap of faith in something bigger and we had no idea how it would turn out.” She was certain of one thing: She wanted an education that was both technically rigorous and deeply expansive, one that would allow her to pursue all her passions.
At MIT, she found exactly what she was seeking in a community and curriculum that matched her curiosity and ambition. “I’ve always associated MIT with something new and exciting that was grasping towards the very best we can achieve as humans,” Santos says, emphasizing the use of technology and science to significantly impact society. “It’s a place where people aren’t afraid to dream big and work hard to make it a reality.”
As a first-generation college student, she carried the weight of financial stress and the uncertainty that comes with being the first in her family to navigate college in the U.S. But she found a sense of belonging in the MIT community. “Being a first-generation student helped me grow,” she says. “It inspired me to seek out opportunities and help support others too.”
She channeled that energy into student government roles for the undergraduate residence halls. Through Dormitory Council (DormCon) and her dormitory, Simmons Hall, her voice could help shape life on campus. She began serving as reservations chair for her dormitory but ended up becoming president of the dormitory before being elected dining chair and vice president for DormCon. She’s worked to improve dining hall operations and has planned major community events like Simmons Hall’s 20th anniversary and DormCon’s inaugural Field Day.
Now, a senior about to earn her bachelor’s degree, Santos says MIT’s motto, “mens et manus” — “mind and hand” — has deeply resonated with her from the start. “Learning here goes far beyond the classroom,” she says. “I’ve been surrounded by people who are passionate and purposeful. That energy is infectious. It’s changed how I see myself and what I believe is possible.”
Charting her own course
Initially a physics major, Santos’ academic path took a turn after a transformative internship with the World Bank’s data science lab between her sophomore and junior years. There, she used her coding skills to study the impacts of heat waves in the Philippines. The experience opened her eyes to the role technology and data can play in improving lives and broadened her view of what a STEM career could look like.
“I realized I didn’t want to just study the universe — I wanted to change it,” she says. “I wanted to join systems thinking with my interest in the humanities, to build a better world for people and communities."
When MIT launched a new major in climate system science and engineering (Course 1-12) in 2023, Santos was the first student to declare it. The interdisciplinary structure of the program, blending climate science, engineering, energy systems, and policy, gave her a framework to connect her technical skills to real-world sustainability challenges.
She tailored her coursework to align with her passions and career goals, applying her physics background (now her minor) to understand problems in climate, energy, and sustainable systems. “One of the most powerful things about the major is the breadth,” she says. “Even classes that aren’t my primary focus have expanded how I think.”
Hands-on fieldwork has been a cornerstone of her learning. During MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP), she studied climate impacts in Hawai’i in the IAP Course 1.091 (Traveling Research Environmental Experiences, or TREX). This year, she studied the design of sustainable polymer systems in Course 1.096/10.496 (Design of Sustainable Polymer Systems) under MISTI’s Global Classroom program. The IAP class brought her to the middle of the Amazon Rainforest to see what the future of plastic production could look like with products from the Amazon. “That experience was incredibly eye opening,” she explains. “It helped me build a bridge between my own background and the kind of problems that I want to solve in the future.”
Santos also found enjoyment beyond labs and lectures. A member of the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble since her first year, she took to the stage in her final spring production of “Henry V,” performing as both the Chorus and Kate. “The ensemble’s collaborative spirit and the way it brings centuries-old texts to life has been transformative,” she adds.
Her passion for the arts also intersected with her interest in the MIT Lecture Series Committee. She helped host a special screening of the film “Sing Sing,” in collaboration with MIT’s Educational Justice Institute (TEJI). That connection led her to enroll in a TEJI course, illustrating the surprising and meaningful ways that different parts of MIT’s ecosystem overlap. “It’s one of the beautiful things about MIT,” she says. “You stumble into experiences that deeply change you.”
Throughout her time at MIT, the community of passionate, sustainability-focused individuals has been a major source of inspiration. She’s been actively involved with the MIT Office of Sustainability’s decarbonization initiatives and participated in the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program.
Santos acknowledges that working in sustainability can sometimes feel overwhelming. “Tackling the challenges of sustainability can be discouraging,” she says. “The urgency to create meaningful change in a short period of time can be intimidating. But being surrounded by people who are actively working on it is so much better than not working on it at all."
Looking ahead, she plans to pursue graduate studies in technology and policy, with aspirations to shape sustainable development, whether through academia, international organizations, or diplomacy.
“The most fulfilling moments I’ve had at MIT are when I’m working on hard problems while also reflecting on who I want to be, what kind of future I want to help create, and how we can be better and kinder to each other,” she says. “That’s what excites me — solving real problems that matter.”
© Photo: Callie Ayoub
Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That’s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.
Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell — which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity. The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.
In a series of experiments with a prototype device, the researchers demonstrated that this cell could carry more than three times as much energy per unit of weight as the lithium-ion batteries used in virtually all electric vehicles today. Their findings are being published today in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT doctoral students Karen Sugano, Sunil Mair, and Saahir Ganti-Agrawal; professor of materials science and engineering Yet-Ming Chiang; and five others.
“We expect people to think that this is a totally crazy idea,” says Chiang, who is the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics. “If they didn’t, I’d be a bit disappointed because if people don’t think something is totally crazy at first, it probably isn’t going to be that revolutionary.”
And this technology does appear to have the potential to be quite revolutionary, he suggests. In particular, for aviation, where weight is especially crucial, such an improvement in energy density could be the breakthrough that finally makes electrically powered flight practical at significant scale.
“The threshold that you really need for realistic electric aviation is about 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram,” Chiang says. Today’s electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries top out at about 300 watt-hours per kilogram — nowhere near what’s needed. Even at 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram, he says, that wouldn’t be enough to enable transcontinental or trans-Atlantic flights.
That’s still beyond reach for any known battery chemistry, but Chiang says that getting to 1,000 watts per kilogram would be an enabling technology for regional electric aviation, which accounts for about 80 percent of domestic flights and 30 percent of the emissions from aviation.
The technology could be an enabler for other sectors as well, including marine and rail transportation. “They all require very high energy density, and they all require low cost,” he says. “And that’s what attracted us to sodium metal.”
A great deal of research has gone into developing lithium-air or sodium-air batteries over the last three decades, but it has been hard to make them fully rechargeable. “People have been aware of the energy density you could get with metal-air batteries for a very long time, and it’s been hugely attractive, but it’s just never been realized in practice,” Chiang says.
By using the same basic electrochemical concept, only making it a fuel cell instead of a battery, the researchers were able to get the advantages of the high energy density in a practical form. Unlike a battery, whose materials are assembled once and sealed in a container, with a fuel cell the energy-carrying materials go in and out.
The team produced two different versions of a lab-scale prototype of the system. In one, called an H cell, two vertical glass tubes are connected by a tube across the middle, which contains a solid ceramic electrolyte material and a porous air electrode. Liquid sodium metal fills the tube on one side, and air flows through the other, providing the oxygen for the electrochemical reaction at the center, which ends up gradually consuming the sodium fuel. The other prototype uses a horizontal design, with a tray of the electrolyte material holding the liquid sodium fuel. The porous air electrode, which facilitates the reaction, is affixed to the bottom of the tray.
Tests using an air stream with a carefully controlled humidity level produced a level of more than 1,500 watt-hours per kilogram at the level of an individual “stack,” which would translate to over 1,000 watt-hours at the full system level, Chiang says.
The researchers envision that to use this system in an aircraft, fuel packs containing stacks of cells, like racks of food trays in a cafeteria, would be inserted into the fuel cells; the sodium metal inside these packs gets chemically transformed as it provides the power. A stream of its chemical byproduct is given off, and in the case of aircraft this would be emitted out the back, not unlike the exhaust from a jet engine.
But there’s a very big difference: There would be no carbon dioxide emissions. Instead the emissions, consisting of sodium oxide, would actually soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This compound would quickly combine with moisture in the air to make sodium hydroxide — a material commonly used as a drain cleaner — which readily combines with carbon dioxide to form a solid material, sodium carbonate, which in turn forms sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda.
“There’s this natural cascade of reactions that happens when you start with sodium metal,” Chiang says. “It’s all spontaneous. We don’t have to do anything to make it happen, we just have to fly the airplane.”
As an added benefit, if the final product, the sodium bicarbonate, ends up in the ocean, it could help to de-acidify the water, countering another of the damaging effects of greenhouse gases.
Using sodium hydroxide to capture carbon dioxide has been proposed as a way of mitigating carbon emissions, but on its own, it’s not an economic solution because the compound is too expensive. “But here, it’s a byproduct,” Chiang explains, so it’s essentially free, producing environmental benefits at no cost.
Importantly, the new fuel cell is inherently safer than many other batteries, he says. Sodium metal is extremely reactive and must be well-protected. As with lithium batteries, sodium can spontaneously ignite if exposed to moisture. “Whenever you have a very high energy density battery, safety is always a concern, because if there’s a rupture of the membrane that separates the two reactants, you can have a runaway reaction,” Chiang says. But in this fuel cell, one side is just air, “which is dilute and limited. So you don’t have two concentrated reactants right next to each other. If you’re pushing for really, really high energy density, you’d rather have a fuel cell than a battery for safety reasons.”
While the device so far exists only as a small, single-cell prototype, Chiang says the system should be quite straightforward to scale up to practical sizes for commercialization. Members of the research team have already formed a company, Propel Aero, to develop the technology. The company is currently housed in MIT’s startup incubator, The Engine.
Producing enough sodium metal to enable widespread, full-scale global implementation of this technology should be practical, since the material has been produced at large scale before. When leaded gasoline was the norm, before it was phased out, sodium metal was used to make the tetraethyl lead used as an additive, and it was being produced in the U.S. at a capacity of 200,000 tons a year. “It reminds us that sodium metal was once produced at large scale and safely handled and distributed around the U.S.,” Chiang says.
What’s more, sodium primarily originates from sodium chloride, or salt, so it is abundant, widely distributed around the world, and easily extracted, unlike lithium and other materials used in today’s EV batteries.
The system they envisage would use a refillable cartridge, which would be filled with liquid sodium metal and sealed. When it’s depleted, it would be returned to a refilling station and loaded with fresh sodium. Sodium melts at 98 degrees Celsius, just below the boiling point of water, so it is easy to heat to the melting point to refuel the cartridges.
Initially, the plan is to produce a brick-sized fuel cell that can deliver about 1,000 watt-hours of energy, enough to power a large drone, in order to prove the concept in a practical form that could be used for agriculture, for example. The team hopes to have such a demonstration ready within the next year.
Sugano, who conducted much of the experimental work as part of her doctoral thesis and will now work at the startup, says that a key insight was the importance of moisture in the process. As she tested the device with pure oxygen, and then with air, she found that the amount of humidity in the air was crucial to making the electrochemical reaction efficient. The humid air resulted in the sodium producing its discharge products in liquid rather than solid form, making it much easier for these to be removed by the flow of air through the system. “The key was that we can form this liquid discharge product and remove it easily, as opposed to the solid discharge that would form in dry conditions,” she says.
Ganti-Agrawal notes that the team drew from a variety of different engineering subfields. For example, there has been much research on high-temperature sodium, but none with a system with controlled humidity. “We’re pulling from fuel cell research in terms of designing our electrode, we’re pulling from older high-temperature battery research as well as some nascent sodium-air battery research, and kind of mushing it together,” which led to the “the big bump in performance” the team has achieved, he says.
The research team also included Alden Friesen, an MIT summer intern who attends Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Arizona; Kailash Raman and William Woodford of Form Energy in Somerville, Massachusetts; Shashank Sripad of And Battery Aero in California, and Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan of the University of Michigan. The work was supported by ARPA-E, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and the National Science Foundation, and used facilities at MIT.nano.
© Credit: Gretchen Ertl
The human brain contains about 86 billion neurons. These cells fire electrical signals that help the brain store memories and send information and commands throughout the brain and the nervous system.
The brain also contains billions of astrocytes — star-shaped cells with many long extensions that allow them to interact with millions of neurons. Although they have long been thought to be mainly supportive cells, recent studies have suggested that astrocytes may play a role in memory storage and other cognitive functions.
MIT researchers have now put forth a new hypothesis for how astrocytes might contribute to memory storage. The architecture suggested by their model would help to explain the brain’s massive storage capacity, which is much greater than would be expected using neurons alone.
“Originally, astrocytes were believed to just clean up around neurons, but there’s no particular reason that evolution did not realize that, because each astrocyte can contact hundreds of thousands of synapses, they could also be used for computation,” says Jean-Jacques Slotine, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences, and an author of the new study.
Dmitry Krotov, a research staff member at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab and IBM Research, is the senior author of the open-access paper, which appeared May 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Leo Kozachkov PhD ’22 is the paper’s lead author.
Memory capacity
Astrocytes have a variety of support functions in the brain: They clean up debris, provide nutrients to neurons, and help to ensure an adequate blood supply.
Astrocytes also send out many thin tentacles, known as processes, which can each wrap around a single synapse — the junctions where two neurons interact with each other — to create a tripartite (three-part) synapse.
Within the past couple of years, neuroscientists have shown that if the connections between astrocytes and neurons in the hippocampus are disrupted, memory storage and retrieval are impaired.
Unlike neurons, astrocytes can’t fire action potentials, the electrical impulses that carry information throughout the brain. However, they can use calcium signaling to communicate with other astrocytes. Over the past few decades, as the resolution of calcium imaging has improved, researchers have found that calcium signaling also allows astrocytes to coordinate their activity with neurons in the synapses that they associate with.
These studies suggest that astrocytes can detect neural activity, which leads them to alter their own calcium levels. Those changes may trigger astrocytes to release gliotransmitters — signaling molecules similar to neurotransmitters — into the synapse.
“There’s a closed circle between neuron signaling and astrocyte-to-neuron signaling,” Kozachkov says. “The thing that is unknown is precisely what kind of computations the astrocytes can do with the information that they’re sensing from neurons.”
The MIT team set out to model what those connections might be doing and how they might contribute to memory storage. Their model is based on Hopfield networks — a type of neural network that can store and recall patterns.
Hopfield networks, originally developed by John Hopfield and Shun-Ichi Amari in the 1970s and 1980s, are often used to model the brain, but it has been shown that these networks can’t store enough information to account for the vast memory capacity of the human brain. A newer, modified version of a Hopfield network, known as dense associative memory, can store much more information through a higher order of couplings between more than two neurons.
However, it is unclear how the brain could implement these many-neuron couplings at a hypothetical synapse, since conventional synapses only connect two neurons: a presynaptic cell and a postsynaptic cell. This is where astrocytes come into play.
“If you have a network of neurons, which couple in pairs, there’s only a very small amount of information that you can encode in those networks,” Krotov says. “In order to build dense associative memories, you need to couple more than two neurons. Because a single astrocyte can connect to many neurons, and many synapses, it is tempting to hypothesize that there might exist an information transfer between synapses mediated by this biological cell. That was the biggest inspiration for us to look into astrocytes and led us to start thinking about how to build dense associative memories in biology.”
The neuron-astrocyte associative memory model that the researchers developed in their new paper can store significantly more information than a traditional Hopfield network — more than enough to account for the brain’s memory capacity.
Intricate connections
The extensive biological connections between neurons and astrocytes offer support for the idea that this type of model might explain how the brain’s memory storage systems work, the researchers say. They hypothesize that within astrocytes, memories are encoded by gradual changes in the patterns of calcium flow. This information is conveyed to neurons by gliotransmitters released at synapses that astrocyte processes connect to.
“By careful coordination of these two things — the spatial temporal pattern of calcium in the cell and then the signaling back to the neurons — you can get exactly the dynamics you need for this massively increased memory capacity,” Kozachkov says.
One of the key features of the new model is that it treats astrocytes as collections of processes, rather than a single entity. Each of those processes can be considered one computational unit. Because of the high information storage capabilities of dense associative memories, the ratio of the amount of information stored to the number of computational units is very high and grows with the size of the network. This makes the system not only high capacity, but also energy efficient.
“By conceptualizing tripartite synaptic domains — where astrocytes interact dynamically with pre- and postsynaptic neurons — as the brain’s fundamental computational units, the authors argue that each unit can store as many memory patterns as there are neurons in the network. This leads to the striking implication that, in principle, a neuron-astrocyte network could store an arbitrarily large number of patterns, limited only by its size,” says Maurizio De Pitta, an assistant professor of physiology at the Krembil Research Institute at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the study.
To test whether this model might accurately represent how the brain stores memory, researchers could try to develop ways to precisely manipulate the connections between astrocytes’ processes, then observe how those manipulations affect memory function.
“We hope that one of the consequences of this work could be that experimentalists would consider this idea seriously and perform some experiments testing this hypothesis,” Krotov says.
In addition to offering insight into how the brain may store memory, this model could also provide guidance for researchers working on artificial intelligence. By varying the connectivity of the process-to-process network, researchers could generate a huge range of models that could be explored for different purposes, for instance, creating a continuum between dense associative memories and attention mechanisms in large language models.
“While neuroscience initially inspired key ideas in AI, the last 50 years of neuroscience research have had little influence on the field, and many modern AI algorithms have drifted away from neural analogies,” Slotine says. “In this sense, this work may be one of the first contributions to AI informed by recent neuroscience research.”
© Image: MIT News
MIT today launched its Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), an Institute-wide effort to reinfuse U.S. industrial production with leading-edge technologies, bolster crucial U.S. economic sectors, and ignite job creation.
The initiative will encompass advanced research, innovative education programs, and partnership with companies across many sectors, in a bid to help transform manufacturing and elevate its impact.
“We want to work with firms big and small, in cities, small towns and everywhere in between, to help them adopt new approaches for increased productivity,” MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the Institute community this morning. “We want to deliberately design high-quality, human-centered manufacturing jobs that bring new life to communities across the country.”
Kornbluth added: “Helping America build a future of new manufacturing is a perfect job for MIT — and I’m convinced that there is no more important work we can do to meet the moment and serve the nation now.”
The Initiative for New Manufacturing also announced its first six founding industry consortium members: Amgen, Flex, GE Vernova, PTC, Sanofi, and Siemens. Participants in the INM Industry Consortium will support seed projects proposed by MIT researchers, initially in the area of artificial intelligence for manufacturing.
INM joins the ranks of MIT’s other presidential initiatives — including The Climate Project at MIT; MITHIC, which supports the human-centered disciplines; MIT HEALS, centered on the life sciences and health; and MGAIC, the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium.
“There is tremendous opportunity to bring together a vibrant community working across every scale — from nanotechnology to large-scale manufacturing — and across a wide-range of applications including semiconductors, medical devices, automotive, energy systems, and biotechnology,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of engineering, who is part of the initiative’s leadership team. “MIT is uniquely positioned to harness the transformative power of digital tools and AI to shape future of manufacturing. I’m truly excited about what we can build together and the synergies this creates with other cross-cutting initiatives across the Institute.”
The initiative is just the latest MIT-centered effort in recent decades aiming to expand American manufacturing. A faculty research group wrote the 1989 bestseller “Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge,” advocating for a renewal of manufacturing; another MIT project, called Production in the Innovation Economy, called for expanded manufacturing in the early 2010s. In 2016, MIT also founded The Engine, a venture fund investing in hardware-based “tough tech” start-ups including many with potential to became substantial manufacturing firms.
As developed, the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing is based around four major themes:
The initiative has mapped out many concrete activities and programs, which will include an Institute-wide research program on emerging technologies and other major topics; workforce and education programs; and industry engagement and participation. INM also aims to establish new labs for developing manufacturing tools and techniques; a “factory observatory” program which immerses students in manufacturing through visits to production sites; and key “pillars” focusing on areas from semiconductors and biomanufacturing to defense and aviation.
The workforce and education element of INM will include TechAMP, an MIT-created program that works with community colleges to bridge the gap between technicians and engineers; AI-driven teaching tools; professional education; and an effort to expand manufacturing education on campus in collaboration with MIT departments and degree programs.
INM’s leadership team has three faculty co-directors: John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering; Suzanne Berger, Institute Professor at MIT and a political scientist who has conducted influential empirical studies of manufacturing; and Chris Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering. The initiative’s executive director is Julie Diop.
The initiative is in the process of forming a faculty steering committee with representation from across the Institute, as well as an external advisory board. INM stems partly from the work of the Manufacturing@MIT working group, formed in 2022 to assess many of these issues.
The launch of the new initiative was previewed at a daylong MIT symposium on May 7, titled “A Vision for New Manufacturing.” The event, held before a capacity audience in MIT’s Wong Auditorium, featured over 30 speakers from a wide range of manufacturing sectors.
“The rationale for growing and transforming U.S. manufacturing has never been more urgent than it is today,” Berger said at the event. “What we are trying to build at MIT now is not just another research project. … Together, with people in this room and outside this room, we’re trying to change what’s happening in our country.”
“We need to think about the importance of manufacturing again, because it is what brings product ideas to people,” Love told MIT News. “For instance, in biotechnology, new life-saving medicines can’t reach patients without manufacturing. There is a real urgency about this issue for both economic prosperity and creating jobs. We have seen the impact for our country when we have lost our lead in manufacturing in some sectors. Biotechnology, where the U.S. has been the global leader for more than 40 years, offers the potential to promote new robust economies here, but we need to advance our capabilities in biomanufacturing to maintain our advantage in this area.”
Hart adds: “While manufacturing feels very timely today, it is of enduring importance. Manufactured products enable our daily lives and manufacturing is critical to advancing the frontiers of technology and society. Our efforts leading up to launch of the initiative revealed great excitement about manufacturing across MIT, especially from students. Working with industry — from small to large companies, and from young startups to industrial giants — will be instrumental to creating impact and realizing the vision for new manufacturing.”
In her letter to the MIT community today, Kornbluth stressed that the initiative’s goal is to drive transformation by making manufacturing more productive, resilient, and sustainable.
“We want to reimagine manufacturing technologies and systems to advance fields like energy production, health care, computing, transportation, consumer products, and more,” she wrote. “And we want to reach well beyond the shop floor to tackle challenges like how to make supply chains more resilient, and how to inform public policy to foster a broad, healthy manufacturing ecosystem that can drive decades of innovation and growth.”
Editor’s note: A seventh founding member, Autodesk, was announced on May 30.
© Credit: Emily Dahl
Harvard Yard.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
New Overseers and HAA directors to begin terms in May, July
Six alumni have been newly elected as members of Harvard University’s Board of Overseers, with another six joining the board of directors of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA). The new Overseers will assume their roles on May 30, while the HAA directors will begin their terms on July 1. Five of the new Overseers were elected for six-year terms. The sixth, Anjali Sud, will serve the remaining two years of the unexpired term of Mark Carney.
Mark A. Edwards ’82, cum laude
Co-founder and CEO, Upstream USA; founder and former executive director, Opportunity Nation
Brookline, Massachusetts
Mary Louise Kelly ’93, magna cum laude
M.Phil. ’95, University of Cambridge, with distinction
Journalist and broadcaster, co-host of “All Things Considered,” NPR
Washington, D.C.
Nathaniel Owen Keohane, Ph.D. ’01
B.A. ’93, Yale University, magna cum laude
President, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
New York
Michael Rosenblatt, M.D. ’73, magna cum laude
B.A. ’69, summa cum laude, Columbia University
Advisory partner, Ascenta Capital; senior adviser, Bain Capital Life Sciences and Flagship Pioneering; former executive vice president and chief medical officer, Merck & Co.; former dean, Tufts University School of Medicine
Newton, Massachusetts
Anjali Sud, M.B.A. ’11 (filling Carney’s unexpired term)
B.S. ’05, University of Pennsylvania
CEO, Tubi; former CEO, Vimeo
New York
Courtney B. Vance ’82
M.F.A. ’86, Yale University
Actor, producer, writer; president and chair, SAG-AFTRA Foundation
La Cañada Flintridge, California
A group of seven candidates for the Board of Overseers were nominated by an alumni nominating committee whose 13 voting members are appointed by the Harvard Alumni Association executive committee. An eighth candidate withdrew from consideration. Harvard degree holders cast a total of 39,725 ballots in the election.
The Board of Overseers is one of Harvard’s two governing boards, along with the President and Fellows, also known as the Corporation. Formally established in 1642, the board plays an integral role in the governance of the University, complementing the Corporation’s work as Harvard’s principal fiduciary board. As a central part of its work, the board directs the visitation process, the primary means for periodic external assessment of Harvard’s Schools and departments. Through its array of standing committees, and the roughly 50 visiting committees that report to them, the board probes the quality of Harvard’s programs and assures that the University remains true to its charter as a place of learning. More generally, drawing on its members’ diverse experience and expertise, the board provides counsel to the University’s leadership on priorities, plans, and strategic initiatives. The board also has the power of consent to certain actions, such as the election of Corporation members. Additional information about the board, its members, and its work can be found on its webpage.
Theresa J. Chung ’98, magna cum laude, J.D. ’02
Administrative judge, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board
Dallas, Texas
Colin J. Kegler ’97
Senior software engineer, HealthEdge Inc.
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Victoria “Vicky” Wai Ka Leung ’91, cum laude
M.B.A. ’98, New York University
Managing director and consultant, EC M&A
London
Nicholas J. Melvoin ’08
M.A. ’10, Loyola Marymount University; J.D. ’14, New York University
Elected board member, Los Angeles Unified School District
Los Angeles
Angela M. Ruggiero ’02, cum laude, M.B.A. ’14
M.Ed. ’10, University of Minnesota
Co-founder and chair, Sports Innovation Lab
Weston, Massachusetts
Sanjay Seth, M.P.A. ’19, M.U.P. ’19
B.A. ’12, Goldsmiths, University of London
Former chief of staff and senior adviser for climate and equity, U.S. EPA New England
East Boston, Massachusetts
The new directors were elected for three-year terms. They were chosen from among nine candidates, nominated by the same HAA committee that puts forward candidates for Overseers. Harvard degree holders cast 41,069 ballots in the directors election.
The HAA board, including its elected directors, is an advisory board that aims to foster a sense of community, engagement, and University citizenship among Harvard alumni around the world. The work focuses on developing volunteer leadership and increasing and deepening alumni engagement through an array of programs that support alumni communities worldwide. In recent years, the board’s priorities have included strengthening outreach to recent graduates and graduate school alumni and continuing to build and promote inclusive communities.
Harvard President Alan Garber.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
As grades were being calculated and the Yard was being transformed into a stage for Commencement, President Alan Garber sat down with the Gazette to reflect on the challenges of a turbulent year and the promise of graduation day.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Students are preparing to graduate in what is always one of the most celebratory and hopeful weeks of the year. You received an economics degree from Harvard College in 1976. Do you remember your state of mind that day — whether you felt a sense of purpose?
At the time, I probably would have told you that I did. I had already decided to pursue both a Ph.D. in economics and an M.D. I was certainly excited about learning economics at a deeper level and becoming a physician. But I had only a vague idea of what would come after I completed my formal studies.
What I did have was a sense that I would be well-equipped to grapple with important health policy issues, with a program of study that was unusual at the time. Above all else, I felt grateful to my fellow students from whom I learned so much, toward the faculty who worked with me, advised me, and inspired me, and toward the institution as a whole for giving me a chance to become part of a great community.
Combining economics and medicine would likely never have occurred to me had I gone to college elsewhere. My path was probably set when I took Ec10, which was nearly a universal course at the time — about three-quarters of Harvard undergrads took it. If not for that, I might have become a doctor of a different kind.
Harvard and higher education have been caught up in a deeply politicized environment, and we’ve seen the federal government cut research funding and launch investigations into institutions. What do you say to members of the community concerned about the University’s future?
We should all be concerned that colleges and universities have increasingly come under attack. But we should not dismiss the criticisms even when they are based on distortions or inaccuracies — we need to look for the underlying concerns that can be embedded in them. For example, many members of our community have been alarmed that students have become increasingly reluctant to speak openly about controversial or uncomfortable topics, especially if they believe their personal views are unpopular. That’s a problem we need to solve, and over the past year and a half we’ve done a great deal to address it. Many of those efforts are described in the report of the working group on open inquiry and constructive dialogue.
Still, we believe that the government overreach and devastating attacks on scientific and medical research are unwarranted and unlawful, and so we have taken legal action to defend the institution.
There are also concerns about the cost of higher education and the value it offers students. In fact, the actual cost of attending Harvard College is much lower than people may think. We offer generous financial aid, so, for most Americans, it would cost less to attend Harvard than a state university. The actual cost of attendance for the average student receiving financial aid — more than half of all undergraduates — is roughly $13,000. And starting with this year’s entering class, Harvard will be tuition-free for children from families earning less than $200,000 per year.
We need to ensure that the public has a better understanding not only of the affordability of the education we offer, but also of the benefits we provide to our students and the public at large. We’re a research university, always striving to expand the boundaries of knowledge. That has large and very tangible benefits for our country, often manifested in contributions to economic growth and to better health. When we look ahead, I am confident that the value of research universities will continue to be widely recognized and that we will be successful for the long term, despite the challenges we’re facing today.
Last week, the University secured a temporary restraining order blocking the federal government from removing F and J visas from Harvard students starting next academic year. Can you talk about the University’s quick response and what’s next?
We needed to move quickly because the consequences of revocation of visas for our international students were dire. These are students who are following their dreams at Harvard. Their contributions to our community are deep and extensive; they bring with them their expertise and insight as well as unique perspectives and experiences, which they share in the classroom, in residences, and everywhere that students can be found. We are doing all we can to ensure that these and future students can successfully pursue their studies at Harvard.
There will be a hearing in court later this week where we will argue that the restraining order should be extended. And even though we were successful last week, we recognize that there will continue to be many questions and concerns. The Harvard International Office is working closely with our international students to help.
How might the unsettled environment for students affect learning? Are there important lessons even in times of conflict?
Learning often advances most rapidly during times of conflict. We gain a new understanding of our strengths and weaknesses. We often learn that we can do what we didn’t think was possible.
As we think about impediments to open dialogue and how we’ve addressed them, I believe that students who are graduating now have gained a deeper understanding of what it means to truly listen to, and speak with, another person. I hope that our students — indeed every member of our community — will have learned that forming close relationships, especially with people who are different from us, is intensely rewarding. Along the way, we will develop greater empathy and learn valuable lessons.
What challenges and opportunities do you see for graduates? It seems safe to say that artificial intelligence counts as both, in significant ways.
It’s too soon to predict how AI will change the lives and careers of graduating students, but knowing how to work with AI is already advantageous in some areas of work and essentially a requirement in others. With the rapid progress in generative AI, we’re seeing that specific skills in its use — say, prompt engineering — can become less important as the technology evolves.
I expect that, overall, the people who will thrive in the economy of the future are those who are adept at using technological tools well. But who will those people be? We have people working on scientific problems whose expertise is in AI, and others whose expertise is in a specific area of science, and many whose expertise is a blend of each. What will be the best mix? We’ll be learning this in many domains of application in the coming years.
I count myself among those who think that basic human skills — empathy, compassion, and interest in other people — will be more important than ever as the reach of AI expands.
How do you balance the demands of hard, time-consuming problems versus those that require a quick decision?
You don’t usually have a choice — you need to deal with both. But even when there are quick decisions to be made, we should always think about long-term consequences. As we approach our 400th anniversary as an institution, we continue to benefit from far-sighted decisions of our predecessors. A long-term perspective enables us to make investments today whose payoffs will be long-delayed but consequential — even transformative. That is the fundamental premise of basic science research, for example, but it applies far more broadly.
You recently announced that the University will dedicate $250 million to support research at the Schools. What can that money do and what can it not do?
The support that we’re providing is intended to facilitate the continuity of our research efforts. It is meant to ensure that we can maintain a strong base of research and minimize the disruption of the research enterprise that comes from the federal denial of research funding. It cannot sustain our research operations for the long term, so we are taking a close look at ways to further lower the costs of conducting research and to diversify the sources of funding. However, the research advances at Harvard and other universities that have led to the scientific pre-eminence of the United States would not have been possible without federal research support. The partnership between universities and the federal government is important for this country’s future scientific accomplishments, not only at Harvard but also at other universities throughout the nation.
When we talk about lowering the cost of research, is that seen as a way to get through a difficult time or might there be changes that spark innovation and lower costs over the long term?
The latter. Our efforts to improve the efficiency of the scientific enterprise may be more intense at a time of financial stress, but we should always look for ways to do more with less money. This won’t be easy. Some of the most important scientific advances are inherently expensive. For example, we’ve made investments in cryo-electron microscopy, a recently developed technology that requires large capital investments but has led to extraordinary scientific advances. Expensive tools, used appropriately, can find answers more quickly and less expensively than the approaches they replace. To keep costs down often means that we need to invest wisely, which sometimes means making a smaller number of large but strategic investments. Our researchers are creative and ingenious. I am confident that they will find new ways to do truly cutting-edge research more efficiently.
Is the endowment being considered as an additional funding source?
The endowment already supports the operating budgets of our Schools, much of it directed toward research activities. About 80 percent of the endowment is subject to restrictions: We can’t use money intended to support a professor of economics, for example, to fund scientists in a molecular biology lab. So, although it’s a critical asset, the endowment — and ours consists of roughly 14,000 endowment funds — can’t be used as a general-purpose fund or, as some people say, as a rainy-day account. In addition, an endowment is intended to be available in perpetuity. Recognizing those constraints, the endowment certainly can be helpful.
If there were to be declines in the value of the endowment — if, for example, the large endowment tax in the House budget bill were passed into law — it would affect all of these activities. The impact would be particularly severe for financial aid, which is heavily supported by endowment funds.
With regard to antisemitism and other forms of bias, how sure are you that the steps Harvard is taking will alter the campus environment?
We’re building on work that we have undertaken over the course of the last year and a half, along with the recently released final recommendations of the two task forces. The Schools and the University are working on implementation of those recommendations. It’s worth reviewing the recommendations to appreciate their scope — they apply to many different aspects of University life.
Some of the interventions we’ve undertaken or planned are quite specifically targeted to improve the lives of Jewish students. Others are intended to educate the University community. The latter areas include orientation programs, training of faculty, and the addition of new courses that relate to the topics of antisemitism and the history of the Middle East. But much of what we are doing involves changing attitudes toward one another, facilitating constructive speech and constructive disagreement, and building bridges across different identities and student groups. It’s a multifaceted strategy intended to change culture on campus.
If that strategy is fully successful, we will have made vital progress in tackling hate and bias, and it will prevent the shunning and other forms of social exclusion reported by Jewish and Israeli students; by Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students; and by other members of our community. There can be no place for hate at Harvard.
As to the effectiveness of the actions we’re undertaking, it may be too early to tell. But reports of a more open and less tense campus atmosphere throughout the academic year that is now ending give me hope that even our early efforts are bearing fruit.
Although we know that Harvard alone will not end antisemitism — it has been a stain on humanity for more than 2,000 years and is pervasive in the world — we need to do all we can to address it with resolve and with humility, knowing that it will require sustained effort.
Similarly, we need to pursue educational approaches, make accommodations for the practice of religion, and build empathy. We have heard a similar set of stories about how Muslim or Palestinian students often feel unwelcome and isolated. Our programs regarding speech and building bridges across differences are designed to help with all forms of hate and discrimination.
That would align with steps the University is taking to encourage viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement?
Yes, these are mutually reinforcing efforts. We want to ensure that our students are exposed to diverse perspectives on the issues that we study, discuss, and research. We often hear complaints that universities like ours have a political monoculture, because politically our faculty and students skew to the left when compared to Americans overall. This means that there is at least a risk — particularly in the social sciences and humanities — that our community will not be exposed to the full range of ideas that should be discussed and debated. Furthermore, people who hold minority views on campus may feel uncomfortable expressing them. Surveys generally confirm these impressions.
Part of the challenge is to ensure that people who bring more diverse views will feel welcome on our campus and free to express their views. We are developing plans to bring respected, rigorous, and compelling voices to campus, including tenured faculty, who will expand our intellectual horizons and bring new insights into many fields, such as those related to policy, government, and law.
An immediate challenge is to nurture an environment of openness and mutual respect that will encourage people who fear that their views are unpopular to feel comfortable expressing them. So, what must we do as an institution to ensure those views can be heard?
This is where our efforts to promote open discourse and constructive dialogue should make a difference. It’s important for faculty to model this behavior in the classroom and create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable expressing views that others may not agree with. We’ve begun that work and will continue to build on it.
It is obviously not a secular university’s role to dictate a set of values, but do you think Harvard students leave campus with a stronger foundation for developing their own?
Encouraging thinking about values is pervasive in the University. It’s in the obvious places, like philosophy and the Divinity School, but it’s also a prominent topic in the Business School. It’s in the humanities in general. Almost all great literature presents situations that provoke thinking about what constitutes ethical behavior, why people knowingly commit wrongs, and the consequences of failing to act according to one’s values.
I doubt that any Harvard College student can graduate without having to grapple with questions about values. Judging from the enrollments in Michael Sandel’s “Justice” course, they don’t want to miss the opportunity. As in so much else, we want to help our students learn how to think about values and how to act on them, but that doesn’t mean that we should tell them which values they should adopt. Except “veritas.” I hope that every graduate embraces the importance of truth and chooses to live by it.
By Assoc Prof Chong Ja Ian, from the Dept of Political Science, at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS
By Adjunct Assoc Prof (Practice) Terence Ho, from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS
Associate Professor Taberez Ahmed Neyazi from the Department of Communications and New Media at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has been named a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton for the Academic Year 2025-2026.
Founded in 1930, the IAS is one of the world’s leading centres for theoretical research and intellectual exploration. Renowned for providing an environment of deep intellectual engagement and academic freedom, its membership is awarded to individuals whose research is expected to produce significant and original contributions.
Members of the IAS span the academic spectrum, from early-career researchers of exceptional promise to distinguished senior scholars, and come to the Institute for residencies ranging from one term to several years. Past Members include luminaries such as Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist or ‘father of the atomic bomb’ J. Robert Oppenheimer, and renowned anthropologist Clifford Geertz.
This prestigious appointment places Assoc Prof Neyazi among a select group of approximately 200 scholars chosen annually from a competitive pool of applicants worldwide. He will begin his fellowship in IAS’ School of Social Science from September this year.
Assoc Prof Neyazi said, “I’m honoured to be selected as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study. The IAS has long been a place where scholars are given the time and space to think deeply and engage critically with big ideas. I look forward to joining this extraordinary intellectual community and to advancing my research in such a uniquely stimulating environment.”
While in residence, he will be working on his book that focuses on the politics of internet shutdowns. As part of this project, he will be researching the evolving relationship between technology, governance, and power, with a particular focus on how digital infrastructure and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence shape political and social dynamics across different political regimes.
More broadly, Assoc Prof Neyazi’s research focuses on the relationship between media use and political behaviour, analysing campaign strategies, internet control, and misinformation. He pays particular attention to developments in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, examining how the evolving information environment shapes online behaviours and influences the future of democratic politics.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
Back in the early 1980s, a few pages of incomplete paperwork were casting a shadow over Susan Dynarski’s future as a Harvard undergraduate.
“My parents got divorced,” Dynarski recalled. “And when I turned 18, my dad refused to fill out the financial aid forms any longer — he said he wasn’t responsible for me since I had come of age.”
That left Dynarski to pay tuition without grants that reflected her true financial need. Her single mother took a few risks — opening new loans, taking a mortgage on their Somerville home — and Dynarski earned her A.B. in social studies in 1987.
Forty years on, Dynarski is now at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, at the front of a wave of scholars working at the intersection of economics and education.
It’s a very different moment. There are well-maintained federal databases tracking how and why students from all backgrounds enroll in college and how they fare once there. And while tuition is markedly more expensive, financial aid is more generous, and administrators are more attuned to the special challenges confronting first-generation college students.
Even still, low-income students — even with sterling academic qualifications — tend to enroll at the nation’s top schools at far lower rates than peers who are similarly qualified.
Dynarski remembers being cash-strapped on campus. But her recent work has focused less on the amount of money available than the process for securing it.
“It’s not that people can’t fill out forms,” Dynarski said. “You could figure it out, but it’s a time cost. And then the whole structure of the financial aid process delays knowing about your eligibility until after you’ve applied, been accepted, and gotten an offer from an institution — it backloads all of that information.”
Starting in 2015, Dynarski proposed an alternative. Along with several colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, that state’s most selective university, she launched what came to be called the HAIL scholarship program.
Dynarski’s team identified young people who had both the academic credentials to have a chance of admission to the Michigan flagship, and the economic circumstances to attend for free if they enrolled.
The HAIL trial aimed, simply, to let those students know that fact.
In the fall of their senior year, eligible students in the “treatment group” were sent colorful, celebratory packages, including what Dynarski and co-authors call “an early, unconditional guarantee of tuition” for four years. (Their parents and school principals received similar messages.)
The effects were remarkable. Nearly 70 percent of eligible students who received HAIL notices applied to Michigan, compared to 26 percent of those who didn’t. Almost half of those who applied were accepted — much higher than the university’s acceptance rate for all applicants. And 27 percent went on to enroll.
The effects extended to selective schools elsewhere, too. And, perhaps most impressive, those effects were achieved without offering new aid.
“The intervention did not change costs for these students: Rather, it offered an early guarantee of grants for which, in expectation, they were already eligible,” Dynarski and her coauthors noted in a 2018 paper.
It’s a kind of “nudge,” a simple intervention that improves a complex system: simplifying bureaucracy, growing lifetime earnings, and expanding the well-trained workforce.
With that and other findings, Dynarski has marshaled high-level economics to work in the public interest.
“I was always in this, not because I’m into testing economic theories, but because I wanted to make the world better — to advance economic mobility,” she said, pointing out that she was a union organizer for six years before her academic career fully took shape.
And her career, in turn, is almost unthinkable without public support.
In study after study, Dynarski has relied on large, longitudinal datasets that only the federal government could maintain. And she has received millions in research support from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The HAIL program, for instance, would have been much more difficult without federal grants that allowed her to set up a longitudinal data system still running in Michigan.
Just a few years after coming to Harvard, an ongoing symbiosis is now in considerable doubt.
Dynarski has a grant request outstanding with the IES, and — amid the escalating funding fight between Harvard and the Trump administration — assumes it’s dead.
Meanwhile, cuts proposed by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, aim to shrink the IES from 100 employees to just three, meaning a near-total elimination of the datasets on which she her built her career.
Dynarski said such a cut could imperil the booming subfield of education economics — closing a window on the progress of American lives and catapulting the country back to where it was when she was a teenager, and families like hers were struggling in obscurity.
“I feel like this administration has attacked just about everything I’ve been working for,” Dynarski said. In the worst-case scenario, she adds, “It’s not just that low-income people won’t be able to get jobs as scientists — there won’t be American science.”
But she’s not yet discouraged. “You just pick where you can make a difference. I advise students. We still have state governments, local governments — I put my hope into them.”
And, just last month, she joined a lawsuit filed by the National Academy of Education against the Department of Education, aiming to block the planned cuts.
Expanding on decades of research, a new study seeks to pinpoint movement’s molecular benefits
That’s according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which over its 87-year run has generated data that benefits work on other issues
JoAnn Manson has spent her career researching – and highlighting – how everyday choices influence health
Story of game-changing therapy illustrates crucial role of fundamental research breakthroughs
David Liu, Breakthrough Prize recipient, retraces path to an ‘incredibly exciting’ disease fighter: ‘This is the essence of basic science.’
Gary Ruvkun recounts years of research, which gradually drew interest, mostly fueled by NIH grants
Lindsey Chrismon.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Lindsey Chrismon sets sights high from West Point to Harvard Business School
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Lindsey Chrismon wasn’t satisfied just getting into West Point, the country’s top military college, for her undergraduate degree. She would go on to be selected as the First Captain, the top cadet, in her graduating class of 2014, only the fourth woman to hold the position in the academy’s more than 200-year history.
After graduation, she wasn’t going to hold just any military position — she would fly the top attack helicopter, the Apache, as part of the most elite force in the sky. And when it came time to move on from her military career, she wouldn’t go to just any business school for her MBA. She would go to Harvard.
“I actually wrote in my West Point yearbook that I wanted to go to Harvard Business School 10 years ago,” Chrismon said.
Chrismon is the type to set a goal and make it come true. Becoming a helicopter pilot, for example, was a goal she set in her first year at the academy.
“I remember sitting in my room and an Apache helicopter came down and landed on the parade field, right outside,” she said. “I was like, I want to fly that … it was just a dream from the first moment I saw it.”
She got the grades, scored well on the necessary tests, and after graduation became the first woman in Army history to fly the AH-6 Little Bird helicopter for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
“It’s the same unit that flew the SEALs into the Osama bin Laden raid,” Chrismon said. “It’s the most elite helicopter force on the planet, honestly.”
After flying Little Birds, and then her dream Apaches for almost 10 years, Chrismon started to get, for lack of a better word, bored. It was time for a new venture.
“Every single day was actually pretty great. It didn’t feel like work in that regard, but I did feel at a certain point intellectually capped,” she said. “I also saw where I would be in, say, three years, and I didn’t really want to have my future completely laid out for me. I wanted to experiment and get out in the world and do other things and face different challenges.”
Her husband, Gabe Chrismon, said his wife, who was his West Point classmate, “has never chosen the easy route.”
“HBS was where she was going to go no matter what.”
He added, “If Linds has an idea of what she wants to do, she’s pretty much going to find a way to make sure that happens. And then she’s going to find a way to succeed and be one of the better ones at it — from West Point being the First Captain, to flying Apaches, to flying Little Birds, to going to HBS, to being a female founder and raising money.”
The Chrismons are not just life partners, they’re business partners. They co-founded Oply — an AI-powered tool to help homeowners manage their home systems and maintenance.
Chrismon has spent much of the last year at Harvard raising capital for the company, and many of the last year’s weekends flying to her home city of Nashville to get the business up and running.
“Sometimes she’d get beaten up, and she would just continue fighting back. This is a real mark of a founder, which is, yes, you take the advice, but you’ve thought about this problem a lot more than the person you’re talking to and so you don’t wither, you fight back.”
Reza Satchu
“I’ve cold-called her to present her business to very-high-profile investors in my classroom without her knowing it was coming,” said Reza Satchu, senior lecturer in the Entrepreneurship Management Unit at the Business School. “Everyone from senior decision-makers at venture capital firms, to the CEO of Delta, to Kevin O’Leary, to all sorts of people.”
Classes that Chrismon took with Satchu, “Founder Mindset” and “Founder Launch,” both specialize in getting student enterprises up and running.
“She has an ability to just stand up and deliver a compelling value proposition with real conviction around her business,” Satchu added. “Sometimes she’d get beaten up, and she would just continue fighting back. This is a real mark of a founder, which is, yes, you take the advice, but you’ve thought about this problem a lot more than the person you’re talking to and so you don’t wither, you fight back.”
While Chrismon is excited to get back to her life in Nashville, she’s sorry to be leaving the Business School.
“It went really, really fast,” she said. “It’s bittersweet that it’s over. It’s wonderful because then I can focus solely on our venture, but not waking up every day and going to class with my friends — that’s going to be sad to leave behind.”
Harvard file photo
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
The professor’s office was wallpapered with declassified U.S. intelligence photos.
“I walked in and the first thing I saw were these floor-to-ceiling printouts of U2 and CORONA aerial imagery,” recalled Shane Rice ’25. “I took one look and thought — maybe there’s something here.”
Rice, 26, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, needed a new scholarly focus. When he first arrived at Harvard from Warrenton, Virginia, he had his sights set on environmental engineering. But the field proved a poor fit for his interests and talents. “So I went on this search,” he recalled. “I got lunch with all these different department heads including integrative bio and environmental science public policy.”
The quest ended in the office of Jason Ur, Stephen Phillips Professor of Archaeology and Ethnology, with its collection of aerial landscapes. The display resonated with Rice, in part due to his military training. As a mortarman, he frequently worked with maps and satellite imagery over three deployments.
Rice was drawn to Ur’s introductory “Can We Know Our Past?” course. The Cabot House resident, who settled into College life with the help of the Warrior-Scholar Project and other veteran supports, later won a prize for his essay on the clarity he gained during the Gen Ed offering.
The curriculum, he wrote, helped him reconcile a calling to public service with interests in antiquities, procedure, organizing data, and working in places far from home. “Shane wrote very eloquently about how studying archaeology helped him figure out the transition to academia from the military,” Ur said.
“Shane wrote very eloquently about how studying archaeology helped him figure out the transition to academia from the military.”
Jason Ur
Those Cold War-era stills that captivated Rice allow Ur to survey sites in Syria, Turkey, and Iran. Since 2012, the technique has helped Ur scour the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq for traces of ancient atrocities. Rice became the rare undergraduate to join Ur’s fieldwork in the semi-autonomous region. He even applied Ur’s methods to an investigation of scars left far more recently in the area. Rice used declassified satellite reconnaissance to uncover hundreds of lost settlements, all destroyed during Iraq’s suppression of ethnic Kurds.
“In 1987, the Iraqi Army, under the regime of Saddam Hussein, cleared the entire plain where we’re working of its rural Kurdish villages,” Ur said. “The intensive mapping Shane did offers us a great analogy for understanding the distribution and density of rural settlements in the deeper past. But it also stands as a testament to genocidal state actions.”
Visiting Ur during weekly office hours became a new habit for Rice. That’s how he learned of the professor’s fieldwork around the city of Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region. Ur collaborates with researchers there to sift the area for features dating to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (ca. 900-600 B.C.)
“We’re there to test the hypothesis that the Assyrian kings engaged in large-scale deportation,” explained Ur, noting that the rulers’ accounts are corroborated by their victims in the Hebrew Bible.
Also pocking the region’s landscapes is evidence of recent demographic assaults. Hussein was eventually charged with killing tens of thousands of Kurds during the 1988 Anfal campaign. U.S. news coverage has often focused on the government’s use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians but less so on the destruction, a year earlier, of rural farming villages.
“We don’t think of the 1980s as being terribly archaeological,” said Ur, who helped Rice settle on these villages for his thesis topic. “But this was the same tragic story told 3,000 years after the Assyrians. And it really needed some dedicated work.”
Rice was invited to join Ur on the Erbil plain just before his junior year. “I choose my team very carefully, because we’re basically as an extension of American diplomacy when we’re there,” Ur said. “Shane impressed me early on with his extraordinary responsibility and discipline, which I’m sure comes from his military background.”
The archaeology concentrator had been toying with specializing in nomad pastoralists. Rice, who also completed a language citation in Russian, arrived in Erbil after spending weeks with reindeer herders in northern Mongolia. But Ur’s work in the Kurdistan Region felt far more urgent. “They’re racing against the clock with this project,” Rice said. “They’re racing against urban development and sprawl to try to document these sites.”
Upon returning to Cambridge, Rice immediately set about structuring his own research project. Foundational to his approach was Ur’s graduate-level course on archaeological applications of Geographical Information Systems. Rice started searching government databases that semester for declassified intelligence photos that fit his needs in terms of resolution, timescale, and coverage of the 3,000-square-kilometer survey area.
That’s how he discovered a cache of high-resolution landscape images, declassified in 2013, that were collected in June 1980 by the KH-9 Hexagon U.S. photo-reconnaissance satellite. “In a perfect world, you would compare photos taken right before and right after the point of impact,” Rice said. “But 1980 was pretty close to the time we were looking at.”
Matching these satellite captures to contemporary commercial imagery enabled Rice to document hundreds of destroyed settlements. The village of Shakhulan, he found, had been plowed over, appearing in modern images as little more than cultivated fields. Standing in place of other locales were new construction or ruins.
Rice compared images from 1980 and 2013 to document destroyed settlements in the Kurdish Region of Iraq.
Images courtesy of Shane Rice
“Sometimes there is literally the footprint of the four walls that once made a building,” Rice said.
The 1980 set also revealed a tightly gridded refugee complex, or mujamma’a, that matched one described in a 1993 Human Rights Watch report. By then, the undergraduate knew the history’s rough contours from his Kurdish collaborators and friends. The Anfal campaign followed years of the Iraqi military forcibly removing Kurds to tent camps like the one he identified 25 kilometers south of Erbil.
“These sites have existed purely in oral tradition and memory,” said Rice, who will begin at Cornell Law School in the fall. “And here we have primary-source evidence of one of these sites that thousands of individuals and families were moved through. To me, that speaks to the real value of doing this project.”
Where did the moon’s magnetism go? Scientists have puzzled over this question for decades, ever since orbiting spacecraft picked up signs of a high magnetic field in lunar surface rocks. The moon itself has no inherent magnetism today.
Now, MIT scientists may have solved the mystery. They propose that a combination of an ancient, weak magnetic field and a large, plasma-generating impact may have temporarily created a strong magnetic field, concentrated on the far side of the moon.
In a study appearing today in the journal Science Advances, the researchers show through detailed simulations that an impact, such as from a large asteroid, could have generated a cloud of ionized particles that briefly enveloped the moon. This plasma would have streamed around the moon and concentrated at the opposite location from the initial impact. There, the plasma would have interacted with and momentarily amplified the moon’s weak magnetic field. Any rocks in the region could have recorded signs of the heightened magnetism before the field quickly died away.
This combination of events could explain the presence of highly magnetic rocks detected in a region near the south pole, on the moon’s far side. As it happens, one of the largest impact basins — the Imbrium basin — is located in the exact opposite spot on the near side of the moon. The researchers suspect that whatever made that impact likely released the cloud of plasma that kicked off the scenario in their simulations.
“There are large parts of lunar magnetism that are still unexplained,” says lead author Isaac Narrett, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But the majority of the strong magnetic fields that are measured by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by this process — especially on the far side of the moon.”
Narrett’s co-authors include Rona Oran and Benjamin Weiss at MIT, along with Katarina Miljkovic at Curtin University, Yuxi Chen and Gábor Tóth at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Elias Mansbach PhD ’24 at Cambridge University. Nuno Loureiro, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, also contributed insights and advice.
Beyond the sun
Scientists have known for decades that the moon holds remnants of a strong magnetic field. Samples from the surface of the moon, returned by astronauts on NASA’s Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s, as well as global measurements of the moon taken remotely by orbiting spacecraft, show signs of remnant magnetism in surface rocks, especially on the far side of the moon.
The typical explanation for surface magnetism is a global magnetic field, generated by an internal “dynamo,” or a core of molten, churning material. The Earth today generates a magnetic field through a dynamo process, and it’s thought that the moon once may have done the same, though its much smaller core would have produced a much weaker magnetic field that may not explain the highly magnetized rocks observed, particularly on the moon’s far side.
An alternative hypothesis that scientists have tested from time to time involves a giant impact that generated plasma, which in turn amplified any weak magnetic field. In 2020, Oran and Weiss tested this hypothesis with simulations of a giant impact on the moon, in combination with the solar-generated magnetic field, which is weak as it stretches out to the Earth and moon.
In simulations, they tested whether an impact to the moon could amplify such a solar field, enough to explain the highly magnetic measurements of surface rocks. It turned out that it wasn’t, and their results seemed to rule out plasma-induced impacts as playing a role in the moon’s missing magnetism.
A spike and a jitter
But in their new study, the researchers took a different tack. Instead of accounting for the sun’s magnetic field, they assumed that the moon once hosted a dynamo that produced a magnetic field of its own, albeit a weak one. Given the size of its core, they estimated that such a field would have been about 1 microtesla, or 50 times weaker than the Earth’s field today.
From this starting point, the researchers simulated a large impact to the moon’s surface, similar to what would have created the Imbrium basin, on the moon’s near side. Using impact simulations from Katarina Miljkovic, the team then simulated the cloud of plasma that such an impact would have generated as the force of the impact vaporized the surface material. They adapted a second code, developed by collaborators at the University of Michigan, to simulate how the resulting plasma would flow and interact with the moon’s weak magnetic field.
These simulations showed that as a plasma cloud arose from the impact, some of it would have expanded into space, while the rest would stream around the moon and concentrate on the opposite side. There, the plasma would have compressed and briefly amplified the moon’s weak magnetic field. This entire process, from the moment the magnetic field was amplified to the time that it decays back to baseline, would have been incredibly fast — somewhere around 40 minutes, Narrett says.
Would this brief window have been enough for surrounding rocks to record the momentary magnetic spike? The researchers say, yes, with some help from another, impact-related effect.
They found that an Imbrium-scale impact would have sent a pressure wave through the moon, similar to a seismic shock. These waves would have converged to the other side, where the shock would have “jittered” the surrounding rocks, briefly unsettling the rocks’ electrons — the subatomic particles that naturally orient their spins to any external magnetic field. The researchers suspect the rocks were shocked just as the impact’s plasma amplified the moon’s magnetic field. As the rocks’ electrons settled back, they assumed a new orientation, in line with the momentary high magnetic field.
“It’s as if you throw a 52-card deck in the air, in a magnetic field, and each card has a compass needle,” Weiss says. “When the cards settle back to the ground, they do so in a new orientation. That’s essentially the magnetization process.”
The researchers say this combination of a dynamo plus a large impact, coupled with the impact’s shockwave, is enough to explain the moon’s highly magnetized surface rocks — particularly on the far side. One way to know for sure is to directly sample the rocks for signs of shock, and high magnetism. This could be a possibility, as the rocks lie on the far side, near the lunar south pole, where missions such as NASA’s Artemis program plan to explore.
“For several decades, there’s been sort of a conundrum over the moon’s magnetism — is it from impacts or is it from a dynamo?” Oran says. “And here we’re saying, it’s a little bit of both. And it’s a testable hypothesis, which is nice.”
The team’s simulations were carried out using the MIT SuperCloud. This research was supported, in part, by NASA.
© Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
Harvard Yard.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A federal judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students and to sponsor international scholars.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs prevents the government from “implementing, instituting, maintaining, or giving effect” to the revocation. In a message to the community Friday afternoon, President Alan Garber said that a hearing has been set for Thursday to determine whether the restraining order will be extended.
Harvard’s initial complaint on the matter, filed early Friday, called the Trump order “a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act.”
Harvard’s actions were prompted by the Trump administration’s latest escalation in its dispute with the University. In a letter sent Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that the University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification had been revoked, effective immediately, claiming the action was a result of Harvard’s failure to adequately comply with an April 16 government request seeking records related to international students. The letter and the secretary’s accompanying press release also cited grievances against the University that were unrelated to Harvard SEVP participation, applicable regulations, or Harvard international students.
The motion for a temporary restraining order, filed shortly after the main complaint, sought an immediately halt to the government’s action, arguing that the revocation would inflict irreparable harm on the University and its students. It cites the human costs of no longer being able to sponsor or host thousands of students and scholars, whose lives and work face major disruptions. The action by the Trump administration is “undisguised retaliation,” and “quintessential arbitrary, irrational, and unilateral executive action,” the motion says. “The effects on Harvard’s students — all of its students — will be devastating. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.”
In a message sent to the community Friday morning, Garber said that the University has complied with the government’s records request to the extent required by law. He condemned the Noem order and vowed to fight it.
“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” he said.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
International students at Harvard hail from more than 140 countries and make up about a quarter of its student body. In her letter, Noem said the certificate revocation means Harvard cannot host nonimmigrant international students or scholars on F- or J-visas for the 2025-26 academic year. That means current students in those visa categories have to transfer to other institutions in order to maintain their visa status, she wrote.
The order left researchers, fellows, and students shaken and angry — and worried about the implications for the country and the University. Among them was Eduardo Vasconcelos, a senior from Brazil whose family arrived in Boston for Commencement week hours before the Trump administration issued its order.
“It was hard to hold back my tears” when he heard of the Noem letter, Vasconcelos said. “The order from the administration felt like a rejection of the four years that I have spent at Harvard and an attack on the immense work that international students and scholars dedicate to the production of knowledge relevant to the United States and to the world.”
If the action were to take effect, said Vasconcelos, an honors concentrator in government and economics, the country would suffer an “immeasurable” loss of “vitality, of intellectual diversity, and of an opportunity to do good for the world.”
He added: “The federal administration is harming the capacity of America’s oldest educational institution to serve as a staircase open to all. This horrific decision limits the ability of our institution to help address the world’s most pressing challenges, which invariably requires identifying talents and voices from all over the world and bringing them to Harvard.”
Scott Delaney, an epidemiologist at the Harvard Chan School whose research has yielded insights on the health effects of air pollution and other environmental hazards, said that the action by the Trump administration threatens what should be a source of pride for the nation.
“The United States is the global leader in health science research because the best researchers from all over the world come here as students, and then they stay and build their careers,” he said.
“I personally work with students and postdocs from at least five different countries on research to improve the lives of Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. If we kick them out just because they were born somewhere else — as the Trump administration is trying to do — then my team simply won’t produce as much high-impact research, and the United States will lose out on their insights and contributions. All of these world-class researchers will just take their talents elsewhere.”
Garber closed his message to the community by directly addressing international students and scholars: “You are our classmates and friends, our colleagues and mentors, our partners in the work of this great institution. Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world.”
In this series, NUS News explores how NUS is accelerating sustainability research and education in response to climate change challenges, and harnessing the knowledge and creativity of our people to pave the way to a greener future for all.
In the fight against climate change, a new generation of NUS student entrepreneurs is storming the sustainability frontier.
From reducing energy waste to reinventing urban agriculture, these eco-warriors have been tackling environmental challenges through viable business models. With support from programmes such as the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC), BLOCK71 at THE HANGAR, BLOCK71 Social Impact Hub (SIH), and various initiatives by NUS Enterprise, they have shown how the University serves as a fertile ground for sustainability innovation, proving that environmental responsibility and entrepreneurial success can go hand in hand.
Here’s how three promising NUS-supported start-ups are making a green mark.
EcoVolt
“Vampire energy” might sound like something out of a horror movie, but it’s a real environmental menace that silently drains power and resources. This phenomenon — where devices continue to “suck” energy even when not in use — accounts for over 16 per cent of power consumption in homes and offices.
Enter EcoVolt, a start-up determined to drive a stake through the problem. Founded by four NUS students who met through the Sustainable Development Goals Open Hack @ NUS 2024, it has developed a two-pronged solution to monitor and eliminate such energy wastage.
“We empower organisations to monitor, manage and eliminate plug load wastage,” said the team, which comprises Year 5 Computer Science undergraduate Eugene Chia, Year 4 Business undergraduate Raphael Chew, Year 4 Information Systems undergraduate Glenn Quah and Year 4 Electrical Engineering undergraduate Ho Wei Hao. All four are participants of the NOC programme, through which they undertook internships at overseas tech start-ups.
By employing custom-designed adapters, socket plates, and extension cords, EcoVolt collects and transmits data to its proprietary software platform, enabling users to monitor and manage plug loads across multiple locations — from individual desks to entire building networks. This allows users to easily track and target idle plug loads, or electricity consumed by devices that remain plugged in but are not actively used.
Incubated under BLOCK71 SIH since April 2025, EcoVolt hopes its technology will be widely adopted. “This is really an ‘every little bit counts’ initiative,” said the founders. “This is our only planet, so we need to find ways to stay on it.”
Cityscape Farms
As urbanisation increases, so does the distance between people and their food sources. Cityscape Farms is addressing this disconnect with plug-and-play hydroponic systems designed specifically for Singapore’s urban environment.
“Our mission is to bring sustainable farming to Singaporeans by integrating nature into homes, schools, and offices,” said the team founded by College of Design and Engineering alumni Davian Chan Sze Peng and Manzel Joseph Seet, School of Computing and Faculty of Science alumnus Ho Hol Yin, and Year 3 undergraduate from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Chew Chi Ying.
The start-up tackles two major sustainability challenges: urban food insecurity and inefficient use of space and resources in traditional farming methods. Their modular hydroponic systems, which are complemented by smart irrigation solutions, aim to reduce the reliance on traditional farming methods while promoting local food production with minimal waste.
After initially creating systems that were overly complex and costly, the team pivoted to a simplified design with a gamified app, making urban farming accessible to anyone, regardless of whether they have green fingers or experience in sustainable farming. The start-up aims to promote local food production, creating a win-win solution by reducing reliance on overseas imports and lowering the carbon footprint associated with them.
Currently incubated at the NUS Agritech Centre, the recipient of the NUS Enterprise Venture Initiation Programme — Impact Track is finalising its commercial products for corporate clients while expanding its outreach to schools, offices and even the broader Southeast Asian market.
PlasticTinkers
Over 900 million kg of plastic waste is generated annually in Singapore alone. Only a small fraction of this is recycled, while most end up in landfills or incinerators and contribute to pollution and carbon emissions.
PlasticTinkers tackles the growing plastic waste problem by giving discarded plastics a second life. The start-up collects and processes used plastic bottles, transforming them into filaments for 3D printing.
Co-founded by Edwin Lam, a Master of Architecture Year 5 student, the start-up consolidates the entire recycling process under one roof – from gathering waste plastic, converting it to usable filament, to producing functional products using 3D printing.
“We want to significantly increase the plastic recycling rate by empowering individuals and revolutionising the sustainability culture in Singapore,” said Edwin, whose start-up was awarded a project grant from the NUS x Hult Prize 2025 and is currently incubated under BLOCK71 at THE HANGAR.
In addition to promoting environmental awareness through hands-on workshops and community collaborations, the start-up collaborated with Yeo’s and other partners earlier this year to create Singapore’s largest 3D-printed fortune cat, measuring 1.2 m by 0.8 m. The project earned a spot in the Singapore Book of Records as the largest 3D-printed model made from recycled plastic bottles.
Moving forward, the team aims to develop a compact recycling machine deployable in collaborative workspaces and educational institutions across Singapore to enable and empower communities to produce their own 3D printing filaments from plastic waste.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) have developed a blood test capable of rapidly diagnosing rare genetic diseases in babies and children, eliminating the need for costly and invasive procedures and giving families earlier access to treatment.
The University of Melbourne is proud to support the Yoorrook Justice Commission Walk for Truth which gets underway this Sunday 25 May and ends on 18 June.
Traditionally, success in meritocratic Singapore has been closely tied to academic achievement, career advancement and wealth accumulation – think elite schools, top university degrees and high-paying jobs in coveted professional industries like finance and law. But is this definition too narrow? And should it be broadened to include other considerations to foster greater individual well-being and societal resilience?
These questions, which many young Singaporeans have been grappling with more openly in recent years, were central to discussions at the recent Insights Singapore Forum (ISF) themed “Redefining Success: Navigating One’s Youth”.
Organised by the NUS Political Science Society (PSSOC), this year’s Forum gathered prominent speakers including Ms Sun Xueling, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Transport, Associate Professor Razwana Begum from the Singapore University of Social Sciences and Nominated Member of Parliament, and Dr Mathew Mathews, Principal Research Fellow and Head of the IPS Social Lab at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), for a dialogue with secondary- and tertiary-level students.
Speakers at the Forum weighed in on the themes of meritocracy, the reality of inherited privilege, and how peer pressure and social media can influence conventional ideas of success. While they emphasised the pivotal role of society and employers in recognising and valuing individuals who pursue less traditional career paths, they also stressed the need for individuals to align their purpose with market realities and evolving technologies, particularly with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is fuelled by advances in artificial intelligence.
The discussion also touched on the topic of elitism and whether such attitudes can be fully overcome. A key point of consideration for participants was whether the issue could also stem from an unintended and unfortunate consequence of meritocracy. Speakers pointed out that the belief in success as solely being the result of hard work can lead individuals to assume that those who have not done as well simply did not try hard enough.
Participants also discussed how meritocracy, while intended to reward individual effort and ability, can unintentionally entrench intergenerational privilege. This is because those who have benefitted from the system are better positioned to support their children not only in education, but also in access to resources, networks, and opportunities. While government interventions can address these imbalances, there was a call among speakers and participants for a broader societal shift – one that moves the focus beyond individual success toward a more inclusive and multi-dimensional understanding of success within society.
Another point raised during the discussion was whether having a narrow definition of success, based solely on academic and career achievement, could lead to negative outcomes such as narcissism, mental health issues, and a distorted sense of what success truly means. Instead of narrowly pursuing rigid definitions, a better definition of success could involve recognising each individual’s attributes and aspirations and celebrating achievements at different milestones, the speakers suggested.
Ultimately, more open conversations amongst policymakers, educators, parents and young people themselves would also be imperative to communicate and catalyse such a paradigm shift.
The dialogue was moderated by Mr Ng Chia Wee from the Department of Political Science at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). Noting that the idea of success is “never an easy topic to grapple with in our society”, Mr Ng said he appreciated the speakers’ candour at tackling the topic and expressed hope that participants will build on these insightful takeaways and “continue the conversation in their own ways”.
One participant, Hwa Chong Institution’s Ms Soh Jia Min, shared that it was interesting to hear different perspectives about how success in today’s society no longer follows just a few conventional paths, and how there are structural efforts being made to support more diverse definitions of success.
Ms Irdina Duran, President of PSSOC and a Year 2 FASS student said: “We hope that attendees would have gained a clearer understanding of what success truly means: the steps we, as a society, need to take to get there, and the importance of embracing this mindset shift. We also hope that students managed to make meaningful connections with one another, and we truly appreciate their support and enthusiastic participation.”
Formerly known as Ninety Percent, the ISF is an annual dialogue aimed at fostering vibrant academic discussions on Singapore’s past, present and future to enhance political awareness among today’s youth. Previous iterations of the Forum have witnessed the discussion of a host of engaging and topical issues, both local and international, such as the role of the People’s Action Party in Singapore or political liberalisation in China. Past panellists have included prominent academics, members of parliament as well as representatives from civil society and non-governmental organisations.
By NUS Political Science Society at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Robert Huckman and Isaac Kohlberg.
Harvard file photos
Healthcare, innovation experts say funding cuts to university labs will slow or stop the basic research on which breakthroughs are built
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
The world’s most significant medical therapies often spring from surprising sources.
It would have been almost impossible to predict that studying the unique pancreas of an anglerfish might lead to revolutionary medications for diabetes or that the discovery of microRNA in a tiny worm could spur an entirely new class of treatments.
“If one thinks pharmaceutical prices are high today, it is safe to assume they will become even more so in the face of these funding reductions.”
Robert Huckman
But while the story of any individual breakthrough might seem improbable, the pattern repeats. Basic, fundamental research — often paid for by the government and conducted by university faculty and students — leads to transformative drugs and technology.
With recent cancellations of research grants, experts in medical science worry that the U.S. may lose its long-held advantages in research and development for decades to come.
“If these grants are not restored, it would not be surprising to me if 10 years from now, we see a markedly lower number of therapies coming to market,” said Robert Huckman, the Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the Howard Cox Faculty Chair of the HBS Healthcare Initiative. “That’s a real risk.”
Isaac Kohlberg, senior associate provost and the University’s chief technology development officer, agreed.
“If you attack the foundation of the building, the building will collapse,” he said. “Academic innovations are the foundation of many products and services that reach consumers. If we fail to invest in the necessary resources to advance fundamental discoveries, universities’ labs may shrink, and the U.S. innovation ecosystem will decline.”
These problems start from the outset of the innovation pipeline.
“To treat disease, we need to understand how it works,” Huckman said. “And understanding how disease works is a complicated problem.”
By the time a company decides to invest in a clinical trial for a new treatment or intervention, years — or decades — of government-funded research have generally taken place.
“You have to think about it as a building block,” said Kohlberg. “Without basic research, there is no translational research.”
As it stands, few companies are set up to fund this research. While a report from the nonprofit United for Medical Research shows that every dollar of research funded by the National Institutes of Health results in $2.56 in economic activity, companies generally lack the up-front resources — and long-term economic horizons — to fund wide-ranging early stage research.
“It’s not the role of companies to invest in basic research,” Kohlberg pointed out. “Companies are set up to make money, to develop products. It’s more immediate outcomes.”
They do, however, closely monitor government-funded research, the results of which must be released to the public.
A multitude of companies, for example, build off the revolutionary gene-editing technology CRISPR or develop GLP-1 drugs — even though portions of early research behind the technologies took place at Harvard.
“You have to have a model there to take big swings at problems,” Huckman said. “And I think that the relationship between government and academic institutions has historically been one that has allowed those big swings to be taken.”
When money going to early research dries up, so does the opportunity to commercialize promising developments.
“You could begin to see a narrowing of research portfolios that could apply both to the research labs themselves as well as those organizations that hope to commercialize the technologies those labs would have discovered,” said Huckman.
Biotech companies hoping to pursue technologies that could help treat many different diseases might see cuts to basic research and decide to pursue less ambitious goals.
“There’s a chain of activities to get from an understanding of basic science to an approved treatment,” explained Huckman. “If we break or weaken one link in that chain, we compromise the whole process.”
Kohlberg sees a similar potential spiral: With less research funding, fewer ideas will come out of universities; startups won’t be able to develop those ideas; and larger companies that have traditionally identified, acquired, and funded promising startups will see fewer opportunities to do so.
“It’s like a funnel,” he said. “Eventually the patient’s going to have fewer options.”
And more expensive ones.
Huckman pointed out that if pharmaceutical companies need to take on riskier, early stage research, they’ll have to recoup it when pricing whatever drugs they are able to bring to market.
“If one thinks pharmaceutical prices are high today, it is safe to assume they will become even more so in the face of these funding reductions,” he said.
For both Kohlberg and Huckman, cutting off the university-government partnerships puts the entire system of American innovation into disarray.
“These cuts mean there is no oxygen going to the research enterprise,” Kohlberg said. “This will completely undercut the future of innovation.”
Growing up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with engineer parents who worked in the state’s silver mining industry, MIT senior Maria Aguiar developed an early interest in materials. The star garnet, the state’s mineral, is still her favorite. It’s a sheer coincidence, though, that her undergraduate thesis also focuses on garnets.
Her research explores ways to manipulate the magnetic properties of garnet thin films — work that can help improve data storage technologies. After all, says Aguiar, a major in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), technology and energy applications increasingly rely on the use of materials with favorable electronic and magnetic properties.
Passionate about engineering in high school — science fiction was also her jam — Aguiar applied and got accepted to MIT. But she had only learned about materials engineering through a Google search. She assumed she would gravitate toward aerospace engineering, astronomy, or even physics, subjects that had all piqued her interest at one time or another.
Aguiar was indecisive about a major for a while but began to realize that the topics she enjoyed would invariably center on materials. “I would visit an aerospace museum and would be more interested in the tiles they used in the shuttle to tolerate the heat. I was interested in the process to engineer such materials,” Aguiar remembers.
It was a first-year pre-orientation program (FPOP), designed to help new students test-drive majors, that convinced Aguiar that materials engineering was a good fit for her interests. It helped that the DMSE students were friendly and approachable. “They were proud to be in that major, and excited to talk about what they did,” Aguiar says.
During the FPOP, Associate Professor James LeBeau, a DMSE expert in transmission electron microscopy, asked students about their interests. When Aguiar piped up, saying she loved astronomy, LeBeau compared the subject to microscopy.
“An electron microscope is just a telescope in reverse,” she recalls him saying. Instead of looking at something far away, you go from big to small — zooming in to see the finer details. That comparison stuck with Aguiar and inspired her to pursue her first Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project with Lebeau, where she learned more about microscopy.
Drawn to magnetic materials
It was class 3.152 (Magnetic Materials), taught by Professor Caroline Ross, that stoked Aguiar’s interest in magnetic materials. The subject matter was fascinating, Aguiar says, and she knew related research would make important contributions to modern data storage technology. After starting a UROP in Ross’s magnetic materials lab in the spring of her junior year, Aguiar was hooked, and the work eventually morphed into her undergraduate thesis, “Effects of Annealing on Atomic Ordering and Magnetic Anisotropy in Iron Garnet Thin Films.”
The broad goal of her work was to understand how to manipulate materials’ magnetic properties, such as anisotropy — the tendency of a material’s magnetic properties to change depending on which direction they are measured in. It turns out that changing where certain metal atoms — or cations — sit in the garnet’s crystal structure can influence this directional behavior. By carefully arranging these atoms, researchers can “tune” garnet films to deliver novel magnetic properties, enabling the design of advanced materials for electronics.
When Aguiar joined the lab, she began working with doctoral candidate Allison Kaczmarek, who was investigating the connection between cation ordering and magnetic properties for her PhD thesis. Specifically, Kaczmarek was studying the growth and characterization of garnet films, evaluating different ways to induce cation ordering by varying the parameters in the pulsed laser deposition process — a technique that fires a laser at a target material (in this case, garnet), vaporizing it so it deposits onto a substrate, such as glass. Adjusting variables such as laser energy, pressure, and temperature, along with the composition of the mixed oxides, can significantly influence the resulting film.
Aguiar studied one specific parameter: annealing — heating a material to a high temperature before cooling it. The strengthening technique is often used to alter the way atoms are arranged in a material. “So far, I have found that when we anneal these films for times as short as five minutes, the film gets closer to preferring out-of-plane magnetization,” Aguiar says. This property, known as perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, is significant for magnetic memory applications because it offers advantages in performance, scalability, and energy efficiency.
“Maria has been very reliable and quick to be independent. She picks things up very quickly and is very thoughtful about what she’s doing,” Kaczmarek says. That thoughtfulness showed early on. When asked to identify an optimal annealing temperature for the films, Aguiar didn’t just run tests — she first conducted a thorough literature review to understand what had been worked out before, then carefully tested films at different temperatures to find one that worked the best.
Kaczmarek first got to know Aguiar as a teaching assistant for class 3.030 (Microstructural Evolution of Materials), taught by Professor Geoffrey Beach. Even before starting the UROP in Ross’ lab, Aguiar had shared a clear research goal: to gain hands-on experience with advanced techniques such as X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometry, and ferromagnetic resonance — tools typically used by more senior researchers. “That’s a goal she has certainly achieved,” Kaczmarek says.
Beyond the lab, beyond MIT
Outside of the lab, Aguiar combines her love of materials with a strong sense of community outreach and social cohesion. As co-president of the Society of Undergraduate Materials Scientists in DMSE, she helps organize events that make the department more inclusive. Class dinners are great fun — many seniors recently went to a Cambridge restaurant for sushi — and “Materials Week” every semester functions primarily as a recruitment event for new students. A hot cocoa event near the winter holidays combined seasonal cheer with class evaluations — painful for some, perhaps, but necessary for improving instruction.
After graduating this spring, Aguiar is looking forward to pursuing graduate school at Stanford University and is setting her sights on teaching. She loved her time as a teaching assistant for the popular first-year classes 3.091 (Introduction to Solid-State Chemistry) and 3.010 (Structure of Materials), earning her an undergraduate student teaching award.
Ross is convinced that Aguiar is a strong fit for graduate studies. “For graduate school, you need academic excellence and technical skills like being good in the lab, and Maria has both. Then there are the soft skills, which have to do with how well organized you are, how resilient you are, how you manage different responsibilities. Usually, students learn them as they go along, but Maria is well ahead of the curve,” Ross says.
“One thing that makes me hopeful for Maria’s time in grad school is that she is very broadly interested in a lot of aspects of materials science,” Kaczmarek adds.
Aguiar’s passion for the subject spilled over into a fun side project: a DMSE-exclusive “Meow-terials Science” T-shirt she designed — featuring cats doing familiar lab experiments — was a hit among students.
She remains endlessly fascinated by the materials around her, even in the water bottle she drinks from every day. “Studying materials science has changed the way I see the world. I can pick up something as ordinary as this water bottle and think about the metallurgical processing techniques I learned from my classes. I just love that there’s so much to learn from the everyday.”
© Photo: Jason Sparapani
A team of international astronomers led by Richard Teague, the Kerr-McGee Career Development Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) has gathered the most sensitive and detailed observations of 15 protoplanetary disks to date, giving the astronomy community a new look at the mechanisms of early planetary formation.
“The new approaches we’ve developed to gather this data and images are like switching from reading glasses to high-powered binoculars — they reveal a whole new level of detail in these planet-forming systems,” says Teague.
Their open-access findings were published in a special collection of 17 papers in the Astrophysical Journal of Letters, with several more coming out this summer. The report sheds light on a breadth of questions, including ways to calculate the mass of a disk by measuring its gravitational influence and extracting rotational velocity profiles to a precision of meters per second.
Protoplanetary disks are a collection of dust and gas around young stars, from which planets form. Observing the dust in these disks is easier because it is brighter, but the information that can be gleaned from dust alone is only a snapshot of what is going on. Teague’s research focus has shifted attention to the gas in these systems, as they can tell us more about the dynamics in a disk, including properties such as gravity, velocity, and mass.
To achieve the resolution necessary to study gas, the exoALMA program spent five years coordinating longer observation windows on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. As a result, the international team of astronomers, many of whom are early-career scientists, were able to collect some of the most detailed images ever taken of protoplanetary disks.
“The impressive thing about the data is that it’s so good, the community is developing new tools to extract signatures from planets,” says Marcelo Barraza-Alfaro, a postdoc in the Planet Formation Lab and a member of the exoALMA project. Several new techniques to improve and calibrate the images taken were developed to maximize the higher resolution and sensitivity that was used.
As a result, “we are seeing new things that require us to modify our understanding of what’s going on in protoplanetary disks,” he says.
One of the papers with the largest EAPS influence explores planetary formation through vortices. It has been known for some time that the simple model of formation often proposed, where dust grains clump together and “snowball” into a planetary core, is not enough. One possible way to help is through vortices, or localized perturbations in the gas that pull dust into the center. Here, they are more likely to clump, the way soap bubbles collect in a draining tub.
“We can see the concentration of dust in different regions, but we cannot see how it is moving,” says Lisa Wölfer, another postdoc in the Planet Formation Lab at MIT and first author on the paper. While astronomers can see that the dust has gathered, there isn’t enough information to rule out how it got to that point.
“Only through the dynamics in the gas can we actually confirm that it’s a vortex, and not something else, creating the structure,” she says.
During the data collection period, Teague, Wölfer, and Barraza-Alfaro developed simple models of protoplanetary disks to compare to their observations. When they got the data back, however, the models couldn’t explain what they were seeing.
“We saw the data and nothing worked anymore. It was way too complicated,” says Teague. “Before, everyone thought they were not dynamic. That’s completely not the case.”
The team was forced to reevaluate their models and work with more complex ones incorporating more motion in the gas, which take more time and resources to run. But early results look promising.
“We see that the patterns look very similar; we think this is the best test case to study further with more observations,” says Wölfer.
The new data, which have been made public, come at a fortuitous time: ALMA will be going dark for a period in the next few years while it undergoes upgrades. During this time, astronomers can continue the monumental process of sifting through all the data.
“It’s going to just keep on producing results for years and years to come,” says Teague.
© Image courtesy of Richard Teague/exoALMA Collaboration.
Telomeres are the protective caps found at the ends of chromosomes.
Illustration/Getty Images
Mass General Brigham Communications
Results from a randomized controlled trial reveal that vitamin D supplementation helps maintain telomeres, protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten during aging and are linked to the development of certain diseases.
The new report, which is published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, is based on data from a VITAL (VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL) sub-study co-led by researchers at the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham and the Medical College of Georgia, and supports a promising role in slowing a pathway for biological aging.
“VITAL is the first large-scale and long-term randomized trial to show that vitamin D supplements protect telomeres and preserve telomere length,” said co-author JoAnn Manson, the principal investigator of VITAL and chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School.
“This is of particular interest because VITAL had also shown benefits of vitamin D in reducing inflammation and lowering risks of selected chronic diseases of aging, such as advanced cancer and autoimmune disease,” said Manson.
JoAnn Manson (center) meeting with members of the VITAL research team.
Credit: BWH
Telomeres are made of repeating sequences of DNA, or base pairs, that prevent chromosome ends from degrading or fusing with other chromosomes. Telomere shortening is a natural part of aging and is associated with an increased risk of various age-related diseases.
A few short-term, small-scale studies have suggested that vitamin D or omega-3 fatty acid supplementation may help support telomeres, but results have been inconsistent. VITAL is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of vitamin D3 (2,000 IU/day) and omega-3 fatty acid (1 g/day) supplementation that tracked U.S. females aged 55 years and older and males aged 50 years and older for five years. The VITAL Telomere sub-study included 1,054 of these participants, whose telomere length in white blood cells was assessed at baseline and at Year 2 and Year 4.
Compared with taking placebo, taking vitamin D3 supplements significantly reduced telomere shortening over four years, preventing the equivalent of nearly three years of aging. Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation had no significant effect on telomere length throughout follow-up.
“Our findings suggest that targeted vitamin D supplementation may be a promising strategy to counter a biological aging process, although further research is warranted,” said Haidong Zhu, first author of the report and a molecular geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University.
Mass General Brigham-affiliated authors include Nancy R. Cook, William Christen, and I-Min Lee. Additional authors include Haidong Zhu, Bayu B. Bekele, Li Chen, Kevin J. Kane, Ying Huang, Wenju Li, and Yanbin Dong.
This work was supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
For the typical high-schooler, math is a plug-and-play activity. You study a problem, figure out how to find the answer, and then apply what you’ve learned to a test. Creativity isn’t part of the process.
That was how Eliot Hodges, a graduating mathematics concentrator in Dunster House, experienced the subject before College. He enjoyed math — and did well on exams — but unlike some of his future classmates, left it behind when he left the classroom.
It was music that held his attention.
The third of four musically inclined siblings, Hodges studied cello — taking lessons, attending summer music programs, participating in youth orchestras, and competing in solo competitions. With his siblings, he founded InTune String Ensemble, a nonprofit that raises funds for different children’s organizations. After collecting door-to-door donations, the group realized they could raise more money playing gigs and busking around Denver. “When we started we were quite young,” Hodges said. “I think that factor helped a lot.”
During his senior year, just as he was deciding that he didn’t want to pursue music professionally, Hodges enrolled in a remote linear algebra class. He didn’t realize it at first, but the course was proof-based — focusing less on pure application and more on theorems and other mathematical statements. “I remember pulling up some practice exercises for the midterm and not knowing how to do a single one,” he said. To study, he ended up copying down the solutions to try to teach himself to write proofs. He liked that sense of exploration.
“You’re not really being taught how to do the problems,” Hodges said. “You really have the opportunity to be creative in how you think about problems, and I really fell in love with that approach.”
During a gap year, he studied as much math as he could and took a few classes through the University of Colorado at Boulder, becoming especially interested in number theory, which is a branch of pure mathematics devoted to the study of whole numbers — and especially prime numbers — and how other numbers can be built by multiplying primes, along with the patterns that emerge from that process.
“In a way, prime numbers are the mathematical atom, which is why they are so ubiquitous,” he explained, “and despite being so fundamental to math, some aspects of the primes are still very mysterious.” He liked how simple questions about the primes opened into complex problems.
“Sometimes you are banging your head against the wall, and then you realize that if you step back and move two feet over you can find an open door.”
Hodges didn’t sleep much during his first year at Harvard, but he did learn a lot of math — including through a number theory class with Gerhard Gade University Professor Barry Mazur. He was struck by the elegance of concepts like Fermat’s last theorem, which an elementary school student could comprehend but required 300 years of mathematical development to prove. “Often, solving problems in number theory requires applying ideas from different mathematical fields,” he said, “And you have to be very creative with how you bring everything together.”
After a grueling first year, he vowed to tone down his quantitative courseload to two math classes, plus research. One of the math classes had to be what Hodges called a “vegetable.”
“A vegetable class is one that is good for me,” he explained. “It would expand my horizons and be very useful later on.” The other kind of class was a “chicken nugget,” where he came in liking the material.
The combination of depth and breadth helped his research. Often, he explained, it’s harder to identify a novel problem than it is to actually solve it. “Once you have a greater understanding of what you want to say about the mathematical objects you’re studying, the work is, one hopes, more straightforward,” he said. “A lot of the hard work is in conceiving your ‘mathematical thesis statement.’”
For one project, his goal was to calculate the distribution of a certain kind of random group with an additional piece of algebraic data called a pairing. “The naïve generalization of known methods for approaching the problem didn’t work,” he said, but once he stopped thinking about the pairing as a function and thought about it as an identification of the group with its dual — a mirror image of the group — he was able to apply known techniques to solve the problem. “Sometimes you are banging your head against the wall, and then you realize that if you step back and move two feet over you can find an open door.”
It helped to have support and guidance from William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics Melanie Matchett Wood, who mentored Hodges for three years and advised his thesis along with Benjamin Peirce Fellow and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow Ashvin Swaminathan.
Hodges also kept the door open to cello, taking lessons with Professor Kee-Hyun Kim of the Parker Quartet and enrolling in “MUS189R: Chamber Music Performance” each semester. Some of his favorite campus memories include playing with his sister Eloise Hodges ’22 and performing end-of-semester recitals with Christian Chiu ’25, his roommate and an accomplished pianist. The two share a background in intense musical study and a desire to focus on having fun playing together. “The recitals feel very triumphant,” he said, smiling, “even if they go badly.”
After graduating, Hodges will pursue a one-year M.A.St. in pure mathematics at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar before enrolling in a mathematics Ph.D. at Princeton.
He hopes that his time at Cambridge will help him master techniques from other mathematical fields that he can apply to number theory. The more math he can learn, the more creative he can be. “The most exciting part,” he said, “is that you might discover a connection that other people haven’t thought about before and contribute something meaningful to the field.”
A team of international astronomers led by Richard Teague, the Kerr-McGee Career Development Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) has gathered the most sensitive and detailed observations of 15 protoplanetary disks to date, giving the astronomy community a new look at the mechanisms of early planetary formation.
“The new approaches we’ve developed to gather this data and images are like switching from reading glasses to high-powered binoculars — they reveal a whole new level of detail in these planet-forming systems,” says Teague.
Their open-access findings were published in a special collection of 17 papers in the Astrophysical Journal of Letters, with several more coming out this summer. The report sheds light on a breadth of questions, including ways to calculate the mass of a disk by measuring its gravitational influence and extracting rotational velocity profiles to a precision of meters per second.
Protoplanetary disks are a collection of dust and gas around young stars, from which planets form. Observing the dust in these disks is easier because it is brighter, but the information that can be gleaned from dust alone is only a snapshot of what is going on. Teague’s research focus has shifted attention to the gas in these systems, as they can tell us more about the dynamics in a disk, including properties such as gravity, velocity, and mass.
To achieve the resolution necessary to study gas, the exoALMA program spent five years coordinating longer observation windows on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. As a result, the international team of astronomers, many of whom are early-career scientists, were able to collect some of the most detailed images ever taken of protoplanetary disks.
“The impressive thing about the data is that it’s so good, the community is developing new tools to extract signatures from planets,” says Marcelo Barraza-Alfaro, a postdoc in the Planet Formation Lab and a member of the exoALMA project. Several new techniques to improve and calibrate the images taken were developed to maximize the higher resolution and sensitivity that was used.
As a result, “we are seeing new things that require us to modify our understanding of what’s going on in protoplanetary disks,” he says.
One of the papers with the largest EAPS influence explores planetary formation through vortices. It has been known for some time that the simple model of formation often proposed, where dust grains clump together and “snowball” into a planetary core, is not enough. One possible way to help is through vortices, or localized perturbations in the gas that pull dust into the center. Here, they are more likely to clump, the way soap bubbles collect in a draining tub.
“We can see the concentration of dust in different regions, but we cannot see how it is moving,” says Lisa Wölfer, another postdoc in the Planet Formation Lab at MIT and first author on the paper. While astronomers can see that the dust has gathered, there isn’t enough information to rule out how it got to that point.
“Only through the dynamics in the gas can we actually confirm that it’s a vortex, and not something else, creating the structure,” she says.
During the data collection period, Teague, Wölfer, and Barraza-Alfaro developed simple models of protoplanetary disks to compare to their observations. When they got the data back, however, the models couldn’t explain what they were seeing.
“We saw the data and nothing worked anymore. It was way too complicated,” says Teague. “Before, everyone thought they were not dynamic. That’s completely not the case.”
The team was forced to reevaluate their models and work with more complex ones incorporating more motion in the gas, which take more time and resources to run. But early results look promising.
“We see that the patterns look very similar; we think this is the best test case to study further with more observations,” says Wölfer.
The new data, which have been made public, come at a fortuitous time: ALMA will be going dark for a period in the next few years while it undergoes upgrades. During this time, astronomers can continue the monumental process of sifting through all the data.
“It’s going to just keep on producing results for years and years to come,” says Teague.
© Image courtesy of Richard Teague/exoALMA Collaboration.
Separating crude oil into products such as gasoline, diesel, and heating oil is an energy-intensive process that accounts for about 6 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Most of that energy goes into the heat needed to separate the components by their boiling point.
In an advance that could dramatically reduce the amount of energy needed for crude oil fractionation, MIT engineers have developed a membrane that filters the components of crude oil by their molecular size.
“This is a whole new way of envisioning a separation process. Instead of boiling mixtures to purify them, why not separate components based on shape and size? The key innovation is that the filters we developed can separate very small molecules at an atomistic length scale,” says Zachary P. Smith, an associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.
The new filtration membrane can efficiently separate heavy and light components from oil, and it is resistant to the swelling that tends to occur with other types of oil separation membranes. The membrane is a thin film that can be manufactured using a technique that is already widely used in industrial processes, potentially allowing it to be scaled up for widespread use.
Taehoon Lee, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Science.
Oil fractionation
Conventional heat-driven processes for fractionating crude oil make up about 1 percent of global energy use, and it has been estimated that using membranes for crude oil separation could reduce the amount of energy needed by about 90 percent. For this to succeed, a separation membrane needs to allow hydrocarbons to pass through quickly, and to selectively filter compounds of different sizes.
Until now, most efforts to develop a filtration membrane for hydrocarbons have focused on polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs), including one known as PIM-1. Although this porous material allows the fast transport of hydrocarbons, it tends to excessively absorb some of the organic compounds as they pass through the membrane, leading the film to swell, which impairs its size-sieving ability.
To come up with a better alternative, the MIT team decided to try modifying polymers that are used for reverse osmosis water desalination. Since their adoption in the 1970s, reverse osmosis membranes have reduced the energy consumption of desalination by about 90 percent — a remarkable industrial success story.
The most commonly used membrane for water desalination is a polyamide that is manufactured using a method known as interfacial polymerization. During this process, a thin polymer film forms at the interface between water and an organic solvent such as hexane. Water and hexane do not normally mix, but at the interface between them, a small amount of the compounds dissolved in them can react with each other.
In this case, a hydrophilic monomer called MPD, which is dissolved in water, reacts with a hydrophobic monomer called TMC, which is dissolved in hexane. The two monomers are joined together by a connection known as an amide bond, forming a polyamide thin film (named MPD-TMC) at the water-hexane interface.
While highly effective for water desalination, MPD-TMC doesn’t have the right pore sizes and swelling resistance that would allow it to separate hydrocarbons.
To adapt the material to separate the hydrocarbons found in crude oil, the researchers first modified the film by changing the bond that connects the monomers from an amide bond to an imine bond. This bond is more rigid and hydrophobic, which allows hydrocarbons to quickly move through the membrane without causing noticeable swelling of the film compared to the polyamide counterpart.
“The polyimine material has porosity that forms at the interface, and because of the cross-linking chemistry that we have added in, you now have something that doesn’t swell,” Smith says. “You make it in the oil phase, react it at the water interface, and with the crosslinks, it’s now immobilized. And so those pores, even when they’re exposed to hydrocarbons, no longer swell like other materials.”
The researchers also introduced a monomer called triptycene. This shape-persistent, molecularly selective molecule further helps the resultant polyimines to form pores that are the right size for hydrocarbons to fit through.
This approach represents “an important step toward reducing industrial energy consumption,” says Andrew Livingston, a professor of chemical engineering at Queen Mary University of London, who was not involved in the study.
“This work takes the workhorse technology of the membrane desalination industry, interfacial polymerization, and creates a new way to apply it to organic systems such as hydrocarbon feedstocks, which currently consume large chunks of global energy,” Livingston says. “The imaginative approach using an interfacial catalyst coupled to hydrophobic monomers leads to membranes with high permeance and excellent selectivity, and the work shows how these can be used in relevant separations.”
Efficient separation
When the researchers used the new membrane to filter a mixture of toluene and triisopropylbenzene (TIPB) as a benchmark for evaluating separation performance, it was able to achieve a concentration of toluene 20 times greater than its concentration in the original mixture. They also tested the membrane with an industrially relevant mixture consisting of naphtha, kerosene, and diesel, and found that it could efficiently separate the heavier and lighter compounds by their molecular size.
If adapted for industrial use, a series of these filters could be used to generate a higher concentration of the desired products at each step, the researchers say.
“You can imagine that with a membrane like this, you could have an initial stage that replaces a crude oil fractionation column. You could partition heavy and light molecules and then you could use different membranes in a cascade to purify complex mixtures to isolate the chemicals that you need,” Smith says.
Interfacial polymerization is already widely used to create membranes for water desalination, and the researchers believe it should be possible to adapt those processes to mass produce the films they designed in this study.
“The main advantage of interfacial polymerization is it’s already a well-established method to prepare membranes for water purification, so you can imagine just adopting these chemistries into existing scale of manufacturing lines,” Lee says.
The research was funded, in part, by ExxonMobil through the MIT Energy Initiative.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers
Dealroom’s Global Tech Ecosystem Index analyses and compares start-up ecosystems in 288 cities across 69 countries. To measure innovation intensity, it looks for ecosystems that are performing well relative to their population size. These hubs typically have high start-up activity, research intensity and strong links with local universities.
Diarmuid O’Brien, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation at the University of Cambridge, said: “It’s great to see that, as a relatively small city, Cambridge continues to lead the UK in innovation intensity but it’s no accident that we punch above our weight. In recent years, the University and the wider ecosystem have put in place a range of initiatives to ensure that we realise our potential and are able to bring transformative science and technologies out of the lab and into the real world.”
Gerard Grech, Head of Founders at the University of Cambridge, which supports new ventures emerging from the University, added: “Cambridge is proof of what happens when world-class research meets relentless ambition. While global venture capital funding in 2024 pulled back, Cambridge doubled investment – a powerful signal that deep tech innovation is increasingly leading the way in shaping our future economies.
“What makes Cambridge unique is its cutting-edge science, an increasing flywheel of people who have successfully scaled ventures, and a culture built to turn ground-breaking ideas into transformative companies.”
A new report by Dealroom shows that Cambridge is, for its size, the most innovative city in the UK. Globally, it ranks fourth behind US innovation powerhouses San Francisco, Boston and New York.
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Magnets and superconductors go together like oil and water — or so scientists have thought. But a new finding by MIT physicists is challenging this century-old assumption.
In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature, the physicists report that they have discovered a “chiral superconductor” — a material that conducts electricity without resistance, and also, paradoxically, is intrinsically magnetic. What’s more, they observed this exotic superconductivity in a surprisingly ordinary material: graphite, the primary material in pencil lead.
Graphite is made from many layers of graphene — atomically thin, lattice-like sheets of carbon atoms — that are stacked together and can easily flake off when pressure is applied, as when pressing down to write on a piece of paper. A single flake of graphite can contain several million sheets of graphene, which are normally stacked such that every other layer aligns. But every so often, graphite contains tiny pockets where graphene is stacked in a different pattern, resembling a staircase of offset layers.
The MIT team has found that when four or five sheets of graphene are stacked in this “rhombohedral” configuration, the resulting structure can exhibit exceptional electronic properties that are not seen in graphite as a whole.
In their new study, the physicists isolated microscopic flakes of rhombohedral graphene from graphite, and subjected the flakes to a battery of electrical tests. They found that when the flakes are cooled to 300 millikelvins (about -273 degrees Celsius), the material turns into a superconductor, meaning that any electrical current passing through the material can flow through without resistance.
They also found that when they swept an external magnetic field up and down, the flakes could be switched between two different superconducting states, just like a magnet. This suggests that the superconductor has some internal, intrinsic magnetism. Such switching behavior is absent in other superconductors.
“The general lore is that superconductors do not like magnetic fields,” says Long Ju, assistant professor of physics at MIT. “But we believe this is the first observation of a superconductor that behaves as a magnet with such direct and simple evidence. And that’s quite a bizarre thing because it is against people’s general impression on superconductivity and magnetism.”
Ju is senior author of the study, which includes MIT co-authors Tonghang Han, Zhengguang Lu, Zach Hadjri, Lihan Shi, Zhenghan Wu, Wei Xu, Yuxuan Yao, Jixiang Yang, Junseok Seo, Shenyong Ye, Muyang Zhou, and Liang Fu, along with collaborators from Florida State University, the University of Basel in Switzerland, and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.
Graphene twist
In everyday conductive materials, electrons flow through in a chaotic scramble, whizzing by each other, and pinging off the material’s atomic latticework. Each time an electron scatters off an atom, it has, in essence, met some resistance, and loses some energy as a result, normally in the form of heat. In contrast, when certain materials are cooled to ultracold temperatures, they can become superconducting, meaning that the material can allow electrons to pair up, in what physicists term “Cooper pairs.” Rather than scattering away, these electron pairs glide through a material without resistance. With a superconductor, then, no energy is lost in translation.
Since superconductivity was first observed in 1911, physicists have shown many times over that zero electrical resistance is a hallmark of a superconductor. Another defining property was first observed in 1933, when the physicist Walther Meissner discovered that a superconductor will expel an external magnetic field. This “Meissner effect” is due in part to a superconductor’s electron pairs, which collectively act to push away any magnetic field.
Physicists have assumed that all superconducting materials should exhibit both zero electrical resistance, and a natural magnetic repulsion. Indeed, these two properties are what could enable Maglev, or “magnetic levitation” trains, whereby a superconducting rail repels and therefore levitates a magnetized car.
Ju and his colleagues had no reason to question this assumption as they carried out their experiments at MIT. In the last few years, the team has been exploring the electrical properties of pentalayer rhombohedral graphene. The researchers have observed surprising properties in the five-layer, staircase-like graphene structure, most recently that it enables electrons to split into fractions of themselves. This phenomenon occurs when the pentalayer structure is placed atop a sheet of hexagonal boron nitride (a material similar to graphene), and slightly offset by a specific angle, or twist.
Curious as to how electron fractions might change with changing conditions, the researchers followed up their initial discovery with similar tests, this time by misaligning the graphene and hexagonal boron nitride structures. To their surprise, they found that when they misaligned the two materials and sent an electrical current through, at temperatures less than 300 millikelvins, they measured zero resistance. It seemed that the phenomenon of electron fractions disappeared, and what emerged instead was superconductivity.
The researchers went a step further to see how this new superconducting state would respond to an external magnetic field. They applied a magnet to the material, along with a voltage, and measured the electrical current coming out of the material. As they dialed the magnetic field from negative to positive (similar to a north and south polarity) and back again, they observed that the material maintained its superconducting, zero-resistance state, except in two instances, once at either magnetic polarity. In these instances, the resistance briefly spiked, before switching back to zero, and returning to a superconducting state.
“If this were a conventional superconductor, it would just remain at zero resistance, until the magnetic field reaches a critical point, where superconductivity would be killed,” Zach Hadjri, a first-year student in the group, says. “Instead, this material seems to switch between two superconducting states, like a magnet that starts out pointing upward, and can flip downwards when you apply a magnetic field. So it looks like this is a superconductor that also acts like a magnet. Which doesn’t make any sense!”
“One of a kind”
As counterintuitive as the discovery may seem, the team observed the same phenomenon in six similar samples. They suspect that the unique configuration of rhombohedral graphene is the key. The material has a very simple arrangement of carbon atoms. When cooled to ultracold temperatures, the thermal fluctuation is minimized, allowing any electrons flowing through the material to slow down, sense each other, and interact.
Such quantum interactions can lead electrons to pair up and superconduct. These interactions can also encourage electrons to coordinate. Namely, electrons can collectively occupy one of two opposite momentum states, or “valleys.” When all electrons are in one valley, they effectively spin in one direction, versus the opposite direction. In conventional superconductors, electrons can occupy either valley, and any pair of electrons is typically made from electrons of opposite valleys that cancel each other out. The pair overall then, has zero momentum, and does not spin.
In the team’s material structure, however, they suspect that all electrons interact such that they share the same valley, or momentum state. When electrons then pair up, the superconducting pair overall has a “non-zero” momentum, and spinning, that, along with many other pairs, can amount to an internal, superconducting magnetism.
“You can think of the two electrons in a pair spinning clockwise, or counterclockwise, which corresponds to a magnet pointing up, or down,” Tonghang Han, a fifth-year student in the group, explains. “So we think this is the first observation of a superconductor that behaves as a magnet due to the electrons’ orbital motion, which is known as a chiral superconductor. It’s one of a kind. It is also a candidate for a topological superconductor which could enable robust quantum computation.”
“Everything we’ve discovered in this material has been completely out of the blue,” says Zhengguang Lu, a former postdoc in the group and now an assistant professor at Florida State University. “But because this is a simple system, we think we have a good chance of understanding what is going on, and could demonstrate some very profound and deep physics principles.”
“It is truly remarkable that such an exotic chiral superconductor emerges from such simple ingredients,” adds Liang Fu, professor of physics at MIT. “Superconductivity in rhombodedral graphene will surely have a lot to offer.”
The part of the research carried out at MIT was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and a MathWorks Fellowship. This research was carried out, in part, using facilities at MIT.nano.
© Image credit: Sampson Wilcox and Michael Hurley, Research Laboratory of Electronics
On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through their network, and over the course of the next 10 days the crisis ended up stranding over 2 million passengers and causing losses of $750 million for the airline.
How did a localized weather system end up triggering such a widespread failure? Researchers at MIT have examined this widely reported failure as an example of cases where systems that work smoothly most of the time suddenly break down and cause a domino effect of failures. They have now developed a computational system for using the combination of sparse data about a rare failure event, in combination with much more extensive data on normal operations, to work backwards and try to pinpoint the root causes of the failure, and hopefully be able to find ways to adjust the systems to prevent such failures in the future.
The findings were presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), which was held in Singapore from April 24-28 by MIT doctoral student Charles Dawson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics Chuchu Fan, and colleagues from Harvard University and the University of Michigan.
“The motivation behind this work is that it’s really frustrating when we have to interact with these complicated systems, where it’s really hard to understand what’s going on behind the scenes that’s creating these issues or failures that we’re observing,” says Dawson.
The new work builds on previous research from Fan’s lab, where they looked at problems involving hypothetical failure prediction problems, she says, such as with groups of robots working together on a task, or complex systems such as the power grid, looking for ways to predict how such systems may fail. “The goal of this project,” Fan says, “was really to turn that into a diagnostic tool that we could use on real-world systems.”
The idea was to provide a way that someone could “give us data from a time when this real-world system had an issue or a failure,” Dawson says, “and we can try to diagnose the root causes, and provide a little bit of a look behind the curtain at this complexity.”
The intent is for the methods they developed “to work for a pretty general class of cyber-physical problems,” he says. These are problems in which “you have an automated decision-making component interacting with the messiness of the real world,” he explains. There are available tools for testing software systems that operate on their own, but the complexity arises when that software has to interact with physical entities going about their activities in a real physical setting, whether it be the scheduling of aircraft, the movements of autonomous vehicles, the interactions of a team of robots, or the control of the inputs and outputs on an electric grid. In such systems, what often happens, he says, is that “the software might make a decision that looks OK at first, but then it has all these domino, knock-on effects that make things messier and much more uncertain.”
One key difference, though, is that in systems like teams of robots, unlike the scheduling of airplanes, “we have access to a model in the robotics world,” says Fan, who is a principal investigator in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). “We do have some good understanding of the physics behind the robotics, and we do have ways of creating a model” that represents their activities with reasonable accuracy. But airline scheduling involves processes and systems that are proprietary business information, and so the researchers had to find ways to infer what was behind the decisions, using only the relatively sparse publicly available information, which essentially consisted of just the actual arrival and departure times of each plane.
“We have grabbed all this flight data, but there is this entire system of the scheduling system behind it, and we don’t know how the system is working,” Fan says. And the amount of data relating to the actual failure is just several day’s worth, compared to years of data on normal flight operations.
The impact of the weather events in Denver during the week of Southwest’s scheduling crisis clearly showed up in the flight data, just from the longer-than-normal turnaround times between landing and takeoff at the Denver airport. But the way that impact cascaded though the system was less obvious, and required more analysis. The key turned out to have to do with the concept of reserve aircraft.
Airlines typically keep some planes in reserve at various airports, so that if problems are found with one plane that is scheduled for a flight, another plane can be quickly substituted. Southwest uses only a single type of plane, so they are all interchangeable, making such substitutions easier. But most airlines operate on a hub-and-spoke system, with a few designated hub airports where most of those reserve aircraft may be kept, whereas Southwest does not use hubs, so their reserve planes are more scattered throughout their network. And the way those planes were deployed turned out to play a major role in the unfolding crisis.
“The challenge is that there’s no public data available in terms of where the aircraft are stationed throughout the Southwest network,” Dawson says. “What we’re able to find using our method is, by looking at the public data on arrivals, departures, and delays, we can use our method to back out what the hidden parameters of those aircraft reserves could have been, to explain the observations that we were seeing.”
What they found was that the way the reserves were deployed was a “leading indicator” of the problems that cascaded in a nationwide crisis. Some parts of the network that were affected directly by the weather were able to recover quickly and get back on schedule. “But when we looked at other areas in the network, we saw that these reserves were just not available, and things just kept getting worse.”
For example, the data showed that Denver’s reserves were rapidly dwindling because of the weather delays, but then “it also allowed us to trace this failure from Denver to Las Vegas,” he says. While there was no severe weather there, “our method was still showing us a steady decline in the number of aircraft that were able to serve flights out of Las Vegas.”
He says that “what we found was that there were these circulations of aircraft within the Southwest network, where an aircraft might start the day in California and then fly to Denver, and then end the day in Las Vegas.” What happened in the case of this storm was that the cycle got interrupted. As a result, “this one storm in Denver breaks the cycle, and suddenly the reserves in Las Vegas, which is not affected by the weather, start to deteriorate.”
In the end, Southwest was forced to take a drastic measure to resolve the problem: They had to do a “hard reset” of their entire system, canceling all flights and flying empty aircraft around the country to rebalance their reserves.
Working with experts in air transportation systems, the researchers developed a model of how the scheduling system is supposed to work. Then, “what our method does is, we’re essentially trying to run the model backwards.” Looking at the observed outcomes, the model allows them to work back to see what kinds of initial conditions could have produced those outcomes.
While the data on the actual failures were sparse, the extensive data on typical operations helped in teaching the computational model “what is feasible, what is possible, what’s the realm of physical possibility here,” Dawson says. “That gives us the domain knowledge to then say, in this extreme event, given the space of what’s possible, what’s the most likely explanation” for the failure.
This could lead to a real-time monitoring system, he says, where data on normal operations are constantly compared to the current data, and determining what the trend looks like. “Are we trending toward normal, or are we trending toward extreme events?” Seeing signs of impending issues could allow for preemptive measures, such as redeploying reserve aircraft in advance to areas of anticipated problems.
Work on developing such systems is ongoing in her lab, Fan says. In the meantime, they have produced an open-source tool for analyzing failure systems, called CalNF, which is available for anyone to use. Meanwhile Dawson, who earned his doctorate last year, is working as a postdoc to apply the methods developed in this work to understanding failures in power networks.
The research team also included Max Li from the University of Michigan and Van Tran from Harvard University. The work was supported by NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the MIT-DSTA program.
© Image: iStock
On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through their network, and over the course of the next 10 days the crisis ended up stranding over 2 million passengers and causing losses of $750 million for the airline.
How did a localized weather system end up triggering such a widespread failure? Researchers at MIT have examined this widely reported failure as an example of cases where systems that work smoothly most of the time suddenly break down and cause a domino effect of failures. They have now developed a computational system for using the combination of sparse data about a rare failure event, in combination with much more extensive data on normal operations, to work backwards and try to pinpoint the root causes of the failure, and hopefully be able to find ways to adjust the systems to prevent such failures in the future.
The findings were presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), which was held in Singapore from April 24-28 by MIT doctoral student Charles Dawson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics Chuchu Fan, and colleagues from Harvard University and the University of Michigan.
“The motivation behind this work is that it’s really frustrating when we have to interact with these complicated systems, where it’s really hard to understand what’s going on behind the scenes that’s creating these issues or failures that we’re observing,” says Dawson.
The new work builds on previous research from Fan’s lab, where they looked at problems involving hypothetical failure prediction problems, she says, such as with groups of robots working together on a task, or complex systems such as the power grid, looking for ways to predict how such systems may fail. “The goal of this project,” Fan says, “was really to turn that into a diagnostic tool that we could use on real-world systems.”
The idea was to provide a way that someone could “give us data from a time when this real-world system had an issue or a failure,” Dawson says, “and we can try to diagnose the root causes, and provide a little bit of a look behind the curtain at this complexity.”
The intent is for the methods they developed “to work for a pretty general class of cyber-physical problems,” he says. These are problems in which “you have an automated decision-making component interacting with the messiness of the real world,” he explains. There are available tools for testing software systems that operate on their own, but the complexity arises when that software has to interact with physical entities going about their activities in a real physical setting, whether it be the scheduling of aircraft, the movements of autonomous vehicles, the interactions of a team of robots, or the control of the inputs and outputs on an electric grid. In such systems, what often happens, he says, is that “the software might make a decision that looks OK at first, but then it has all these domino, knock-on effects that make things messier and much more uncertain.”
One key difference, though, is that in systems like teams of robots, unlike the scheduling of airplanes, “we have access to a model in the robotics world,” says Fan, who is a principal investigator in MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). “We do have some good understanding of the physics behind the robotics, and we do have ways of creating a model” that represents their activities with reasonable accuracy. But airline scheduling involves processes and systems that are proprietary business information, and so the researchers had to find ways to infer what was behind the decisions, using only the relatively sparse publicly available information, which essentially consisted of just the actual arrival and departure times of each plane.
“We have grabbed all this flight data, but there is this entire system of the scheduling system behind it, and we don’t know how the system is working,” Fan says. And the amount of data relating to the actual failure is just several day’s worth, compared to years of data on normal flight operations.
The impact of the weather events in Denver during the week of Southwest’s scheduling crisis clearly showed up in the flight data, just from the longer-than-normal turnaround times between landing and takeoff at the Denver airport. But the way that impact cascaded though the system was less obvious, and required more analysis. The key turned out to have to do with the concept of reserve aircraft.
Airlines typically keep some planes in reserve at various airports, so that if problems are found with one plane that is scheduled for a flight, another plane can be quickly substituted. Southwest uses only a single type of plane, so they are all interchangeable, making such substitutions easier. But most airlines operate on a hub-and-spoke system, with a few designated hub airports where most of those reserve aircraft may be kept, whereas Southwest does not use hubs, so their reserve planes are more scattered throughout their network. And the way those planes were deployed turned out to play a major role in the unfolding crisis.
“The challenge is that there’s no public data available in terms of where the aircraft are stationed throughout the Southwest network,” Dawson says. “What we’re able to find using our method is, by looking at the public data on arrivals, departures, and delays, we can use our method to back out what the hidden parameters of those aircraft reserves could have been, to explain the observations that we were seeing.”
What they found was that the way the reserves were deployed was a “leading indicator” of the problems that cascaded in a nationwide crisis. Some parts of the network that were affected directly by the weather were able to recover quickly and get back on schedule. “But when we looked at other areas in the network, we saw that these reserves were just not available, and things just kept getting worse.”
For example, the data showed that Denver’s reserves were rapidly dwindling because of the weather delays, but then “it also allowed us to trace this failure from Denver to Las Vegas,” he says. While there was no severe weather there, “our method was still showing us a steady decline in the number of aircraft that were able to serve flights out of Las Vegas.”
He says that “what we found was that there were these circulations of aircraft within the Southwest network, where an aircraft might start the day in California and then fly to Denver, and then end the day in Las Vegas.” What happened in the case of this storm was that the cycle got interrupted. As a result, “this one storm in Denver breaks the cycle, and suddenly the reserves in Las Vegas, which is not affected by the weather, start to deteriorate.”
In the end, Southwest was forced to take a drastic measure to resolve the problem: They had to do a “hard reset” of their entire system, canceling all flights and flying empty aircraft around the country to rebalance their reserves.
Working with experts in air transportation systems, the researchers developed a model of how the scheduling system is supposed to work. Then, “what our method does is, we’re essentially trying to run the model backwards.” Looking at the observed outcomes, the model allows them to work back to see what kinds of initial conditions could have produced those outcomes.
While the data on the actual failures were sparse, the extensive data on typical operations helped in teaching the computational model “what is feasible, what is possible, what’s the realm of physical possibility here,” Dawson says. “That gives us the domain knowledge to then say, in this extreme event, given the space of what’s possible, what’s the most likely explanation” for the failure.
This could lead to a real-time monitoring system, he says, where data on normal operations are constantly compared to the current data, and determining what the trend looks like. “Are we trending toward normal, or are we trending toward extreme events?” Seeing signs of impending issues could allow for preemptive measures, such as redeploying reserve aircraft in advance to areas of anticipated problems.
Work on developing such systems is ongoing in her lab, Fan says. In the meantime, they have produced an open-source tool for analyzing failure systems, called CalNF, which is available for anyone to use. Meanwhile Dawson, who earned his doctorate last year, is working as a postdoc to apply the methods developed in this work to understanding failures in power networks.
The research team also included Max Li from the University of Michigan and Van Tran from Harvard University. The work was supported by NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the MIT-DSTA program.
© Image: iStock
Global warming will likely hinder our future ability to control ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant that is a primary component of smog, according to a new MIT study.
The results could help scientists and policymakers develop more effective strategies for improving both air quality and human health. Ground-level ozone causes a host of detrimental health impacts, from asthma to heart disease, and contributes to thousands of premature deaths each year.
The researchers’ modeling approach reveals that, as the Earth warms due to climate change, ground-level ozone will become less sensitive to reductions in nitrogen oxide emissions in eastern North America and Western Europe. In other words, it will take greater nitrogen oxide emission reductions to get the same air quality benefits.
However, the study also shows that the opposite would be true in northeast Asia, where cutting emissions would have a greater impact on reducing ground-level ozone in the future.
The researchers combined a climate model that simulates meteorological factors, such as temperature and wind speeds, with a chemical transport model that estimates the movement and composition of chemicals in the atmosphere.
By generating a range of possible future outcomes, the researchers’ ensemble approach better captures inherent climate variability, allowing them to paint a fuller picture than many previous studies.
“Future air quality planning should consider how climate change affects the chemistry of air pollution. We may need steeper cuts in nitrogen oxide emissions to achieve the same air quality goals,” says Emmie Le Roy, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and lead author of a paper on this study.
Her co-authors include Anthony Y.H. Wong, a postdoc in the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy; Sebastian D. Eastham, principal research scientist in the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy; Arlene Fiore, the Peter H. Stone and Paola Malanotte Stone Professor of EAPS; and senior author Noelle Selin, a professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) and EAPS. The research appears today in Environmental Science and Technology.
Controlling ozone
Ground-level ozone differs from the stratospheric ozone layer that protects the Earth from harmful UV radiation. It is a respiratory irritant that is harmful to the health of humans, animals, and plants.
Controlling ground-level ozone is particularly challenging because it is a secondary pollutant, formed in the atmosphere by complex reactions involving nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds in the presence of sunlight.
“That is why you tend to have higher ozone days when it is warm and sunny,” Le Roy explains.
Regulators typically try to reduce ground-level ozone by cutting nitrogen oxide emissions from industrial processes. But it is difficult to predict the effects of those policies because ground-level ozone interacts with nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds in nonlinear ways.
Depending on the chemical environment, reducing nitrogen oxide emissions could cause ground-level ozone to increase instead.
“Past research has focused on the role of emissions in forming ozone, but the influence of meteorology is a really important part of Emmie’s work,” Selin says.
To conduct their study, the researchers combined a global atmospheric chemistry model with a climate model that simulate future meteorology.
They used the climate model to generate meteorological inputs for each future year in their study, simulating factors such as likely temperature and wind speeds, in a way that captures the inherent variability of a region’s climate.
Then they fed those inputs to the atmospheric chemistry model, which calculates how the chemical composition of the atmosphere would change because of meteorology and emissions.
The researchers focused on Eastern North America, Western Europe, and Northeast China, since those regions have historically high levels of the precursor chemicals that form ozone and well-established monitoring networks to provide data.
They chose to model two future scenarios, one with high warming and one with low warming, over a 16-year period between 2080 and 2095. They compared them to a historical scenario capturing 2000 to 2015 to see the effects of a 10 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions.
Capturing climate variability
“The biggest challenge is that the climate naturally varies from year to year. So, if you want to isolate the effects of climate change, you need to simulate enough years to see past that natural variability,” Le Roy says.
They could overcome that challenge due to recent advances in atmospheric chemistry modeling and by taking advantage of parallel computing to simulate multiple years at the same time. They simulated five 16-year realizations, resulting in 80 model years for each scenario.
The researchers found that eastern North America and Western Europe are especially sensitive to increases in nitrogen oxide emissions from the soil, which are natural emissions driven by increases in temperature.
Due to that sensitivity, as the Earth warms and more nitrogen oxide from soil enters the atmosphere, reducing nitrogen oxide emissions from human activities will have less of an impact on ground-level ozone.
“This shows how important it is to improve our representation of the biosphere in these models to better understand how climate change may impact air quality,” Le Roy says.
On the other hand, since industrial processes in northeast Asia cause more ozone per unit of nitrogen oxide emitted, cutting emissions there would cause greater reductions in ground-level ozone in future warming scenarios.
“But I wouldn’t say that is a good thing because it means that, overall, there are higher levels of ozone,” Le Roy adds.
Running detailed meteorology simulations, rather than relying on annual average weather data, gave the researchers a more complete picture of the potential effects on human health.
“Average climate isn’t the only thing that matters. One high ozone day, which might be a statistical anomaly, could mean we don’t meet our air quality target and have negative human health impacts that we should care about,” Le Roy says.
In the future, the researchers want to continue exploring the intersection of meteorology and air quality. They also want to expand their modeling approach to consider other climate change factors with high variability, like wildfires or biomass burning.
“We’ve shown that it is important for air quality scientists to consider the full range of climate variability, even if it is hard to do in your models, because it really does affect the answer that you get,” says Selin.
This work is funded, in part, by the MIT Praecis Presidential Fellowship, the J.H. and E.V. Wade Fellowship, and the MIT Martin Family Society of Fellows for Sustainability.
© Image: iStock
By Prof Sing Tien Foo, Provost's Chair Professor from the Depart of Real Estate at NUS Business School, and Mr Robert Lee, CEO of SINGRASS
By Dr Chew Han Ei, Senior Research Fellow from the Institute of Policy Studies, and Associate Professor (Practice) Carol Soon from the Dept of Communications and New Media at NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Humans naturally learn by making connections between sight and sound. For instance, we can watch someone playing the cello and recognize that the cellist’s movements are generating the music we hear.
A new approach developed by researchers from MIT and elsewhere improves an AI model’s ability to learn in this same fashion. This could be useful in applications such as journalism and film production, where the model could help with curating multimodal content through automatic video and audio retrieval.
In the longer term, this work could be used to improve a robot’s ability to understand real-world environments, where auditory and visual information are often closely connected.
Improving upon prior work from their group, the researchers created a method that helps machine-learning models align corresponding audio and visual data from video clips without the need for human labels.
They adjusted how their original model is trained so it learns a finer-grained correspondence between a particular video frame and the audio that occurs in that moment. The researchers also made some architectural tweaks that help the system balance two distinct learning objectives, which improves performance.
Taken together, these relatively simple improvements boost the accuracy of their approach in video retrieval tasks and in classifying the action in audiovisual scenes. For instance, the new method could automatically and precisely match the sound of a door slamming with the visual of it closing in a video clip.
“We are building AI systems that can process the world like humans do, in terms of having both audio and visual information coming in at once and being able to seamlessly process both modalities. Looking forward, if we can integrate this audio-visual technology into some of the tools we use on a daily basis, like large language models, it could open up a lot of new applications,” says Andrew Rouditchenko, an MIT graduate student and co-author of a paper on this research.
He is joined on the paper by lead author Edson Araujo, a graduate student at Goethe University in Germany; Yuan Gong, a former MIT postdoc; Saurabhchand Bhati, a current MIT postdoc; Samuel Thomas, Brian Kingsbury, and Leonid Karlinsky of IBM Research; Rogerio Feris, principal scientist and manager at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab; James Glass, senior research scientist and head of the Spoken Language Systems Group in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and senior author Hilde Kuehne, professor of computer science at Goethe University and an affiliated professor at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. The work will be presented at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Syncing up
This work builds upon a machine-learning method the researchers developed a few years ago, which provided an efficient way to train a multimodal model to simultaneously process audio and visual data without the need for human labels.
The researchers feed this model, called CAV-MAE, unlabeled video clips and it encodes the visual and audio data separately into representations called tokens. Using the natural audio from the recording, the model automatically learns to map corresponding pairs of audio and visual tokens close together within its internal representation space.
They found that using two learning objectives balances the model’s learning process, which enables CAV-MAE to understand the corresponding audio and visual data while improving its ability to recover video clips that match user queries.
But CAV-MAE treats audio and visual samples as one unit, so a 10-second video clip and the sound of a door slamming are mapped together, even if that audio event happens in just one second of the video.
In their improved model, called CAV-MAE Sync, the researchers split the audio into smaller windows before the model computes its representations of the data, so it generates separate representations that correspond to each smaller window of audio.
During training, the model learns to associate one video frame with the audio that occurs during just that frame.
“By doing that, the model learns a finer-grained correspondence, which helps with performance later when we aggregate this information,” Araujo says.
They also incorporated architectural improvements that help the model balance its two learning objectives.
Adding “wiggle room”
The model incorporates a contrastive objective, where it learns to associate similar audio and visual data, and a reconstruction objective which aims to recover specific audio and visual data based on user queries.
In CAV-MAE Sync, the researchers introduced two new types of data representations, or tokens, to improve the model’s learning ability.
They include dedicated “global tokens” that help with the contrastive learning objective and dedicated “register tokens” that help the model focus on important details for the reconstruction objective.
“Essentially, we add a bit more wiggle room to the model so it can perform each of these two tasks, contrastive and reconstructive, a bit more independently. That benefitted overall performance,” Araujo adds.
While the researchers had some intuition these enhancements would improve the performance of CAV-MAE Sync, it took a careful combination of strategies to shift the model in the direction they wanted it to go.
“Because we have multiple modalities, we need a good model for both modalities by themselves, but we also need to get them to fuse together and collaborate,” Rouditchenko says.
In the end, their enhancements improved the model’s ability to retrieve videos based on an audio query and predict the class of an audio-visual scene, like a dog barking or an instrument playing.
Its results were more accurate than their prior work, and it also performed better than more complex, state-of-the-art methods that require larger amounts of training data.
“Sometimes, very simple ideas or little patterns you see in the data have big value when applied on top of a model you are working on,” Araujo says.
In the future, the researchers want to incorporate new models that generate better data representations into CAV-MAE Sync, which could improve performance. They also want to enable their system to handle text data, which would be an important step toward generating an audiovisual large language model.
This work is funded, in part, by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.
© Image: MIT News; iStock
Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a scalable, non-viral technology that efficiently delivers genetic material into human immune cells. The platform, called Nanostraw Electro-actuated Transfection (NExT), uses tiny hollow nanostructures and electrical pulses to insert a wide variety of biomolecules — proteins, mRNA and gene-editing tools — into immune cells with high efficiency and minimal disruption.
The team, led by Assistant Professor Andy Tay from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering as well as the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology at NUS, demonstrated that NExT can transfect – that is, deliver genetic material into – over 14 million immune cells in a single run, including difficult-to-engineer cell types such as gamma-delta T cells, T regulatory cells, dendritic cells, macrophages, natural killer cells and neutrophils which are being developed as alternative immune cell therapies.
NExT makes gene delivery quicker and less damaging, which in turn helps lower manufacturing costs and improve the consistency of engineered cell products, including those used in chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cell therapies for cancer. This could potentially widen patient access to advanced treatments that are currently limited by high costs and production challenges.
The team’s findings were published in the journal Biomaterials on 5 January 2025. Researchers from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine also contributed to the research breakthrough.
Next-generation gene delivery
Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death globally, responsible for nearly 10 million lives each year. Among the most promising treatment strategies to emerge in recent times is CAR-T cell therapy, which involves reprogramming a patient’s immune cells to recognise, target and kill cancer cells. This personalised approach has demonstrated success in treating blood cancers, especially in those who have exhausted conventional options. However, it remains expensive and logistically complex.
On 1 August 2024, the Singapore Ministry of Health began to provide subsidies for cell, tissue and gene therapy products (CTGTPs) that are assessed to be clinically and cost effective. The first CTGTP eligible for subsidy is a treatment known as tisagenlecleucel, a type of CAR-T cell therapy for treating blood cancers.
“In Singapore, a single CAR-T cell infusion can cost about S$670,000. Although subsidies are available, they typically cover only a fraction of the cost. This may limit access to the therapy for a significant number of patients, even as demand grows,” said Asst Prof Tay.
One of the main hurdles in CAR-T manufacturing lies in the delivery of genetic material into immune cells. Current industry-standard methods include viral vectors and bulk electroporation. On the one hand, while viral approaches are effective, they raise concerns around safety, immunogenicity and random gene integration. On the other, bulk electroporation, which relies on high-voltage electric pulses, can stress and damage cells, thus reducing their therapeutic quality.
The NUS team’s NExT platform overcomes these limitations. It works by interfacing cells with a dense forest of nanostraws — microscopic hollow tubes less than a thousandth the width of a human hair. When a mild electrical signal is applied, the nanostraws open temporary pores in the cell membrane, allowing biomolecules such as mRNA or CRISPR/Cas9 complexes to enter the cell cytoplasm directly.
“Our NExT platform can handle a wide range of immune cell types. This is particularly timely as the field of cell therapy expands beyond traditional CAR-T approaches to include other cell types,” said Mr Arun Kumar, the paper’s first author and a PhD student at NUS supervised by Asst Prof Tay.
“Think of gene delivery like selecting a food delivery service. Ideally you want one that’s fast, reliable, keeps the food fresh and doesn’t cost a fortune. That’s what gene delivery should be like — efficient, cost-effective, doesn’t stress the cells too much, and adaptable to many different ‘orders’, or biomolecules,” added Mr Kumar.
In preclinical experiments, the NExT platform achieved transfection efficiencies of up to 94% for proteins and over 80% for mRNA in primary T cells, while maintaining key biological functions such as proliferation, migration and cytokine production.
“We were very encouraged to see that even after transfection, the immune cells retained their essential tumour-fighting characteristics. This suggests that the platform delivers both the efficiency as well as the cell quality needed for effective therapy,” said Asst Prof Tay.
More accessible and adaptable cancer treatments
The NExT platform can engineer alternative immune cells that are less likely to trigger severe immune reactions, and in some cases can function without matching the patient’s immune profile, making them suitable for “off-the-shelf” allogeneic therapies.
In addition, the high-throughput nature of the platform is designed to address the scale and cost bottlenecks of cell therapy production. The NUS researchers’ multi-well version of the platform can transfect over 14 million cells in a single run, enabling the simultaneous delivery of different genetic cargoes into multiple immune cell types from various donors to reduce production time.
Working towards clinical translation, the team’s next step is to validate the technology in preclinical studies before advancing to human trials. They are also working with industry partners to explore how the system can be integrated into existing cell therapy manufacturing workflows and are actively seeking opportunities to test the platform in real-world commercial settings.
The University of Melbournes2024 Annual Reporthas been tabled in the Victorian Parliament today, covering the period between 1 January and 31 December 2024.
The University of Melbourne is proud to support the Yoorrook Walk for Truth which gets underway this Sunday 25 May and ends on 18 June.
The new Fellows have been recognised for their remarkable contributions to advancing medical science, groundbreaking research discoveries and translating developments into benefits for patients and the wider public. Their work exemplifies the Academy’s mission to create an open and progressive research sector that improves health for everyone.
They join an esteemed Fellowship of 1,450 researchers who are at the heart of the Academy’s work, which includes nurturing the next generation of scientists and shaping research and health policy in the UK and worldwide.
One of Cambridge’s new Fellows, Professor Sam Behjati, is a former recipient of the Academy’s prestigious Foulkes Foundation medal, which recognises rising stars within biomedical research. Sam is Clinical Professor of Paediatric Oncology at the University and an Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, as well as Group Leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. His research is rooted in cancer genomics, phylogenetics, and single cell transcriptomics and spans a wide range of diseases and biological problems. More recently, his work has focused on the origin of cancers, in particular of childhood cancer. In addition, he explores how to use genomic data to improve the treatment of children. Sam is a Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Also elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship are:
Professor Clare Bryant, Departments of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Clare Bryant is Professor of Innate Immunity. She studies innate immune cell signalling during bacterial infection to answer fundamental questions about host-pathogen interactions and to search for new drugs to modify them. She also applies these approaches to study inflammatory signalling in chronic diseases of humans and animals. Clare has extensive collaborations with many pharmaceutical companies, is on the scientific advisory board of several biotech companies, and helped found the natural product company Polypharmakos. Clare is a Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge.
Professor Frank Reimann, Institute of Metabolic Science-Metabolic Research Laboratories
Frank Reimann is Professor of Endocrine Signaling. The main focus of his group, run in close partnership with Fiona Gribble, is the enteroendocrine system within the gut, which helps regulate digestion, metabolism, and how full we feel. Their work has included the use of animal models and human cellular models to understand how cells function. One of these cells, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is the target of therapies now widely used in the treatment of diabetes mellitus and obesity. How cells shape feeding behaviour has become a major focus of the lab in recent years.
Professor Mina Ryten, UK Dementia Research Institute
Mina Ryten is a clinical geneticist and neuroscientist, and Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cambridge since January 2024. She also holds the Van Geest Professorship and leads a lab focused on understanding molecular mechanisms driving neurodegeneration. Mina’s research looks at how genetic variation influences neurological diseases, particularly Lewy body disorders. Her work has advanced the use of single cell and long-read RNA sequencing to map disease pathways and identify potential targets for new treatments. Her expertise in clinical care and functional genomics has enabled her to bridge the gap between patient experience and scientific discovery.
Professor Andrew Morris CBE FRSE PMedSci, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said: “The breadth of disciplines represented in this year’s cohort – from mental health and infectious disease to cancer biology and respiratory medicine – reflects the rich diversity of medical science today. Their election comes at a crucial time when scientific excellence and collaboration across disciplines are essential for addressing global health challenges both now and in the future. We look forward to working with them to advance biomedical research and create an environment where the best science can flourish for the benefit of people everywhere.”
The new Fellows will be formally admitted to the Academy at a ceremony on Wednesday 9 July 2025.
Four Cambridge biomedical and health researchers are among those announced today as newly-elected Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Around 10% of women have very dense breasts. Between the ages of 50 and 70, these women are up to four-times more likely to develop breast cancer compared to women with low breast density.
Over 2.2 million women receive breast screening in the UK each year. For women with very dense breasts, mammograms (breast X-rays), which are used for breast screening, can be less effective at detecting cancer. This is because denser breasts look whiter on mammograms, which makes it harder to spot small early-stage cancers which also appear white.
Published today in The Lancet, a trial of over 9000 women across the UK who have dense breasts and had a negative (no cancer) mammogram result, found 85 cancers.
The trial, called BRAID, tested different scanning methods that could be used in addition to mammograms to detect cancers in dense breasts. Per 1000 women screened, two of the methods detected 17-19 cancers that were not seen in mammograms.
The two methods are known as CEM (contrast enhanced mammography) and AB-MRI (abbreviated magnetic resonance imaging).
The researchers that ran the trial recommend that adding either of these methods to existing breast screening could detect 3,500 more cancers per year in the UK. Estimates suggest that screening reduces mortality for about 20% of cancers detected, so this could mean an extra 700 lives saved each year.
BRAID also included a third scanning method, ABUS (automated whole breast ultrasound), which also detected cancers not seen in mammograms but was three times less effective than CEM and AB-MRI.
Each of the three methods was used to scan around 2000 women. Per 1000 women scanned, CEM detected 19 cancers, AB-MRI found 17 cancers, and ABUS found 4.
Mammograms already detect approximately 8 cancers per 1000 women with dense breasts. This means additional scans could more than treble breast cancer detection in this group of women.
BRAID is the first trial to directly compare supplemental imaging methods and to demonstrate their value for early cancer detection as part of widespread screening. The team hope their results will be used to enhance screening programmes in the UK and globally to diagnose more cancers early.
More work is needed to confirm whether additional scans will reduce the number of deaths as cancers detected through screening are not always life-threatening.
The trial was led from Cambridge. It recruited across 10 UK sites, including over 2000 women at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.
The research was led by Professor Fiona Gilbert, Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge and honorary consultant radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH). The trial was funded by Cancer Research UK with support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).
Professor Gilbert said: “Getting a cancer diagnosis early makes a huge difference for patients in terms of their treatment and outlook. We need to change our national screening programme so we can make sure more cancers are diagnosed early, giving many more women a much better chance of survival.”
Professor Stephen Duffy, Emeritus Professor, Queen Mary University, London, trial statistician and screening programme expert said: “The NHS Breast Screening Programme has made a huge difference to many lives. Thanks to these results we can see that the technology exists to make screening even better, particularly for the 10% of women with dense breast tissue."
Dr David Crosby, head of prevention and early detection at Cancer Research UK, said: “Breast cancer screening is for people without symptoms and helps to spot the disease at an early stage, when treatment is more likely to be successful. But having dense breasts can make it harder to detect cancer.
“This study shows that making blood vessels more visible during mammograms could make it much easier for doctors to spot signs of cancer in women with dense breasts. More research is needed to fully understand the effectiveness of these techniques, but these results are encouraging.
“Remember, having dense breasts is not something you can check for yourself or change, but if you’re concerned at all, you can speak to your GP.”
Reference
Gilbert, FJ et al. Comparison of supplemental imaging techniques – interim results of BRAID (Breast Screening: risk adapted imaging for density) randomized controlled trial. Lancet; 22 May 2025; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(25)00582-3
Press release from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Researchers in Cambridge are calling for additional scans to be added to breast screening for women with very dense breasts. This follows a large-scale trial, which shows that extra scans could treble cancer detection for these women, potentially saving up to 700 lives a year in the UK.
Louise Duffield, age 60, a grandmother of four from Ely was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer as a result of the BRAID trial.
Louise works in local government. She spends her free time knitting, and visiting 1940s events around the UK with her husband, Fred, and their two restored wartime Jeep. She is enthusiastic about clinical research and has previously participated as a healthy participant in several studies.
In 2023, Louise was invited to participate in the BRAID trial following her regular mammogram screening, which showed that she had very dense breasts. As part of the trial, Louise had an AB-MRI scan which identified a small lump deep inside one of her breasts.
“When they rang to say they’d found something, it was a big shock. You start thinking all sorts of things but, in the end, I just thought, at least if they’ve found something, they’ve found it early. The staff were brilliant, and so supportive.”
Soon after the MRI, Louise had a biopsy that confirmed she had stage 0 (very early) breast cancer within the ducts of one of her breasts. Six weeks later Louise underwent surgery to remove the tumour, during that time the tumour had already grown larger than it appeared on the scans.
“It’s been a stressful time and it’s a huge relief to have it gone. The team have been fantastic throughout. The tumour was deep in the breast so, if I hadn’t been on the trial, it could have gone unnoticed for years.
“I feel very lucky, it almost doesn’t feel like I’ve really had cancer. Without this research I could have had a very different experience.”
The location of Louise’s tumour meant it would have been difficult for her to find it through self-examination, and since it was not detected during her regular mammogram it would have been at least three years before she was invited for another.
Following a short course of radiotherapy, Louise is now cancer free. She will continue to be monitored for several years and will continue to be attending her regular mammograms every three years as part of the national breast cancer screening programme.
“This experience has highlighted to me how important screening is. If I hadn’t had the mammogram, I wouldn’t have been invited to the trial. Getting treated was so quick because they found the cancer early.”
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Kermit Pattison
Harvard Staff Writer
The quest for scientific truth leads Harvard researchers to a wide array of pursuits: sea slugs that steal body parts from other animals, microwave resonator telescopes powerful enough to detect traces of the Big Bang, and lab-grown human kidneys.
These are examples of seven novel research projects that are grant recipients of this year’s Star-Friedman Challenge for Promising Scientific Research.
The program provides seed funding for Harvard faculty to conduct research in the life, physical, and social sciences. Star-Friedman supports promising research that might not be funded by traditional sources and encourages investigators to explore new directions branching off their previous work.
The program was established in 2013 by a gift from James A. Star ’83 and expanded five years later by support from Josh Friedman ’76, M.B.A. ’80, J.D. ’82, and Beth Friedman. The 2025 winners were recognized in a ceremony at University Hall on Wednesday.
Corey Allard, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School
Project: How do some species make use of body parts purloined from other animals? New insights may come from sea slugs that have evolved the ability to steal organelles (specialized structures within cells) from other species.
For example, so-called “solar powered” sea slugs from the genus Elysia pilfer the chloroplasts of algae cells and then use them for photosynthesis for up to one year. Other sea slugs from the genus Berghia pilfer the stinging organelles of sea anemones and place them on their own backs to deter predators.
Allard and colleagues will investigate the biological mechanisms that allow these slugs to maintain the stolen organelles.
Goal: The long-term aim of this “slug-inspired” research is to engineer cells capable of maintaining foreign organelles. The work also may offer insights into preventing diseases caused by intracellular parasites such as tuberculosis and malaria.
Josefina del Mármol, Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School
Project: One of the great events in the history of life occurred when aquatic animals colonized land. The del Mármol team will investigate one facet of this mystery: How did ancient invertebrates adapt the sensory organs required for living on terrestrial environments?
Insects — the largest group of species on Earth — are believed to have evolved humidity receptors from organs called ionotropic variant receptors. These organs still exist in aquatic arthropods that have no history of living on land and thus never had the need to monitor air humidity.
This study will examine how these organs function in species still living in water, specifically American lobsters.
Goal: The team seeks to reveal how invertebrates evolved the ability to monitor the humidity of air. The del Mármol lab specializes in studying olfaction in invertebrates, and this new area of research — the neurobiology and evolution of sensory organs in early terrestrial animals — represents a new direction.
John M. Kovac, Professor of Astronomy and Physics
Project: The Big Bang is still making waves — and a Harvard research team hopes to detect more of them.
The Kovac group has built telescopes at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station that are capable detecting faint radiation from the Big Bang 14 billion years ago.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the oldest light in the universe and contains clues about its history. One theory predicts that primordial gravitational waves have left faint patterns of polarization.
The development of telescopes capable of observing these patterns is a top priority for the scientific fields of high-energy physics and cosmology.
To map the microwave sky, these telescopes must detect slight variations in thermal brightness in an environment billions of times brighter. This requires precise microwave optics cooled to cryogenic temperatures — a steep technical challenge.
Goal: The team proposes a novel use of optical resonant cavities (an arrangement of componentsthat repeatedly reflects the targeted spectrum) to study microwave photons.
Similar technologies already have been used in other fields: Laser cavities have helped detect gravitational waves and microwave cavities have helped search for dark matter particles.
The group already has built a promising prototype and hopes to extend this work to a broader range of frequencies and temperatures and to identify the most promising materials.
Christopher Kuzawa, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology
Project: The human brain is a greedy organ. In adults, it accounts for only 2 percent of our bodyweight but consumes about one-fifth of our energy. In children, the brain is even more demanding: It consumes about two-thirds of resting energy around age 5.
After the brain has nearly reached full size, the peak energy demand occurs during an intensive phase of creating new synapses and pruning them between ages 4 and 6. During this time, body growth slows and body fat drops to its lowest stage in the human lifespan.
When brain energy demand subsides, children start to regain body fat — a phenomenon known as the “adiposity rebound.” These processes have implications for public health: Kids who experience the rebound earlier tend to become heavier adults.
Better understanding of these dynamics also may shed light on chronic disease such as adult diabetes and long-term outcomes such as schooling and income.
Goal: Investigating these questions requires more “kid-friendly” techniques for measuring brain energy consumption. The preferred technique — PET scans with radioactive tracer dyes — is not practical for children.
Instead, Kuzawa and colleagues propose using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to measure cerebral blood flow as a proxy for brain energy consumption.
But the accuracy of this technique must be validated by comparison to other methods and the investigators propose to do so in a study with 25 adults. If successful, these kid-friendly MRI methods could be used to investigate childhood brain energetics and the implications for public health.
Jennifer A. Lewis, Hansjorg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Jianming Yu Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science
Leonardo Riella, Harold and Ellen Danser Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation, Massachusetts General Hospital
Project: Chronic kidney disease affects more than one in seven U.S. adults, or more than 35 million people. More than 800,000 Americans suffer from end-stage renal disease and require dialysis or kidney transplant. But demand for transplants is about four times higher than the number of kidneys donated per year.
Goal: Lewis and Riella hope to develop a revolutionary new treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease, seeking to engineer lab-grown kidneys from human stem cells.
They will employ induced pluripotent stem cells to fabricate human kidney organoids in the lab then transplant small versions of these human kidneys into mice to study their function.
If successful, these techniques would represent a step towards fabricating kidneys for human patients.
Jessica Whited, Assistant Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard Stem Cell Institute
George V. Lauder, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor, Museum of Comparative Zoology
Project: Salamanders have an enviable ability: They can regrow severed limbs. This remarkable trait is a classic example of regeneration often described in biology textbooks, yet little is known about the energetic costs.
Whited and Lauder seek to understand the molecular and metabolic changes that occur during limb regeneration. Focusing on a species of salamander called axolotls, they aim to answer a fundamental question: How much does it cost to regrow a limb?
The investigators posit that salamanders fuel the generation process by boosting their metabolic rate by autophagy, a process in which cells break down their own components and use the molecules as fuel.
Goal: The work will illuminate the biological regulators of limb regeneration and why they work in some species but not others. The researchers hope the work will generate insights that might be applied to human patients who have lost limbs.
Suyang Xu, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Ashvin Vishwanath, George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics
Project: Can the most promising photovoltaic materials be turned into high-temperature superconductors? This question drives a new collaboration between a theorist and experimentalist of quantum materials.
Goal: Metal halide perovskites have been demonstrated to be an extremely efficient material for solar cells. Now the two investigators propose using these materials for high-temperature superconductors.
They propose that the twisted bilayer of metal halide perovskite may serve as a platform for high-temperature superconductivity. In their proposal they assert, “This seemingly crazy idea is not only possible … but promising.”
In the partnership, Vishwanath will perform theoretical calculations while Xu will lead the experiments. If successful, this application would be a groundbreaking discovery. The researchers also will test theoretical questions and potentially bridge two emerging fields.
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff served as a Presbyterian minister before love of religious studies led her to Harvard
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Growing up in a Catholic family in California’s Bay Area, Kelsey Hanson Woodruff’s path from altar girl to Presbyterian minister to scholar of American religion seemed somehow preordained.
“I have always been interested in religion, because to me, the question of why humans are here and how they make meaning is important,” said Hanson Woodruff. “I have always been interested in how religion affects society, and how people’s religious faiths inform how they want society to run, and what kind of a community they imagine.”
“They set an example for me, that your ministry can be lived out in your personal life as well as in the classroom.”
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff
Hanson Woodruff’s Catholic upbringing, and the presence of many educators in her tight-knit family helped her foresee a path in which education and religion could be intertwined. The example of her godparents, who are also her uncle and aunt, Eric Hanson, a former Jesuit priest, and Kathleen Hanson, a former Maryknoll nun, looms large in her life, she said. They met after both had left the church and become college professors. “They set an example for me, that your ministry can be lived out in your personal life as well as in the classroom,” she said.
Still, it was only after taking a class in Buddhism at Stanford that Hanson Woodruff fell in love with religious studies. Drawn by Protestant churches’ policy of ordaining women, she became a Presbyterian minister and served congregations in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts in the years before she came to Harvard.
A Ph.D. candidate in religion with a secondary in anthropology in the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Hanson Woodruff studies transformations in American Christianity. Her dissertation, a historical and ethnographic study of post-evangelical feminists, explores the impact of digital technologies and societal changes on faith, and underlines her interest in studying progressive religious people.
“In the United States, we often hear only about conservative Catholics, conservative evangelicals, and conservative Christians,” Hanson Woodruff said. “But there are religious people on the left, and there are progressive people within all religious communities. There’s certainly some scholarship on it, but there should be more; there needs to be more public knowledge about that.”
In her fieldwork, much of which took place during the pandemic, Hanson Woodruff researched a number of digital religious communities led by women who were pushing back against conservative streams within evangelical Protestantism. As a millennial, she was interested in how these women leaders were using digital media, including blogs, social media, and digital forums, to explore their Christian faith.
Among the figures Hanson Woodruff studied were Rachel Held Evans, author of the New York Times best-seller “A Year of Biblical Womanhood” (2012); Sarah Bessey, who published “Jesus Feminist” (2013); and Austin Channing Brown, who wrote the best-selling “I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness” (2018).
As progressive Christian authors, Evans, Bessey, and Channing Brown challenged traditional views within the evangelical church on politics, feminism, anti-racism, and LGBTQ issues, said Hanson Woodruff. Held Evans, who died at 37 in 2019, wrote about how she grappled with her conservative upbringing while questioning long-established evangelical views on the role of women. Bessey asked readers to reconsider whether feminism was antithetical to Christianity. Channing Brown wrote about her experience as a Black Christian woman in white conservative evangelical spaces.
“Many of these women authors are advocating for alternative theologies within conservative evangelicalism.”
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff
“Many of these women authors are advocating for alternative theologies within conservative evangelicalism,” said Hanson Woodruff. “Many of them were raised in churches where women would not be allowed to be pastors or elders or other kinds of leaders. And they’re talking to each other, and saying that that’s not in the Bible, and that’s not what it says. And their readers are reconsidering these things as well.”
Hanson Woodruff’s work will have a significant academic impact, said David Holland, Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School.
“Kelsey’s ability to identify the way technology and culture have converged to create these spaces and opportunities for women’s religious leadership in spaces that have traditionally been reserved for male leadership has been a really important breakthrough in our understanding of the religious landscape of our present moment,” said Holland.
After graduation, Hanson Woodruff plans to pursue postdoctoral studies and publish a biography of Held Evans, which she has been working on for the past few years. In the meantime, she has a few words of advice for those students interested in religious studies. “Young adulthood is a wonderful time to consider the most significant questions of meaning: What makes us human? What is our purpose? And how have other people, in other times and other places, understood the answers to these questions?” said Hanson Woodruff. “Religious studies, and indeed all the humanities, can lead us to consider these things.”
Kenichi Iwasaki working with fruit flies.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
Fruit flies, one of the most studied organisms in science, are efficient little creatures, able to navigate their environment with agility. They were also one of the first animals to be manipulated by geneticists.
A new study, published last month by PNAS, exploited these qualities by turning fruit flies into what the co-authors call “living micro-robots,” whose movements can be controlled by sensory clues. The paper was completed at Harvard’s Rowland Institute, dedicated to experimental research across engineering and science disciplines.
“Typically, people think about robots as devices that you build with plastic and metal and the wires and software,” said co-author Aleksandr “Sasha” Rayshubskiy, a fellow at the Rowland Institute. But because fruit flies — aka Drosophilae melanogaster — are so well understood, they can be treated as living robots.
“You can get them to do things that you want them to do,” Rayshubskiy said.
The research team used two methods to manipulate the flies’ movements, the first involving light and a wheel. “We can rotate the light and wheel either clockwise or counterclockwise, and that makes the flies turn,” explained Charles Neuhauser, a postbaccalaureate fellow on the study.
The second method involved scent, again used to get the flies to one side. “We get them to think that they are smelling something either to the left of their body or to the right of their body,” Neuhauser said.
The paper describes how these controls were used to lead flies through a maze and block out phrases like “Hello, world,” a familiar greeting to computer programmers. “We can hack their genes to turn on actions,” said co-author Kenichi Iwasaki, a research associate at the Rowland Institute. “We can hack them the same way that you would hack a conventional robotic system. We have a way of steering a fly like you would a car.”
But do these flies really constitute robots? “Our work pushes that conceptual boundary,” Rayshubskiy said. “I think a robot is a machine that you can get to do useful work for you.”
The project is the result of “two fields that normally don’t interact,” he added. “You have the field of engineering where people build robots. They don’t really see the fly as a player yet in that world. And then you have a field of people who care deeply, very deeply about fruit flies, but they don’t really venture into the robotic field.
“I’ve engineered myself into this bridge between these two fields,” Rayshubskiy said.
Although the fruit fly’s 1 mg, 2.5 mm body is tiny, Rayshubskiy sees multiple possibilities for future applications. “They can carry about their own weight,” he pointed out. “We could not only guide them places, but we can also activate behaviors inside of them where they could do something else.”
He gave a practical example. “It’s actually really hard to clean buildings,” Rayshubskiy said. “They’re covered in junk constantly and it builds up over time. Imagine having a swarm of fruit flies, thousands and thousands of flies, that you could direct onto the face of a building, and they would clean all the dirt that builds up. You could use swarms of flies as cleaning devices.”
A second paper, currently being finalized by the same set of researchers, addresses how fruit flies can be made to interact with foreign objects, essentially exploring their potential as tiny beasts of burden.
“Our work provides a foundation for deploying swarms of natural ‘robots’ that, with further innovations, could transform applications like environmental monitoring and disaster response,” said Rosy Hosking, director of research affairs at the Rowland Institute.
The forthcoming research also gives insight into the workings of the fruit fly brain. “There’s tension between our guidance, which doesn’t know or care about how the fruit fly feels, and the fly’s own feelings about what feels safe to do,” Rayshubskiy said. By studying that tension, and the fruit fly’s responses, he said, “We could tease out the hidden variables about what the fly cares about by forcing it to do certain things.”
On Wednesday, April 16, members of the MIT community gathered at the MIT Welcome Center to celebrate the annual IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge Showcase and Awards ceremony. Hosted by the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG Center), the event celebrated 19 student-led teams who spent the spring semester developing and implementing solutions to complex social and environmental challenges, both locally and globally.
Founded in 2001, the IDEAS Challenge is an experiential learning incubator that prepares students to take their early-stage social enterprises to the next level. As the program approaches its 25th anniversary, IDEAS serves a vital role in the Institute’s innovation ecosystem — with a focus on social impact that encourages students across disciplines to think boldly, act compassionately, and engineer for change.
This year’s event featured keynote remarks by Amy Smith, co-founder of IDEAS and founder of D-Lab, who reflected on IDEAS’ legacy and the continued urgency of its mission. She emphasized the importance of community-centered design and celebrated the creativity and determination of the program’s participants over the years.
“We saw the competition as a vehicle for MIT students to apply their technical skills to problems that they cared about, with impact and community engagement at the forefront,” Smith said. “I think that the goal of helping as many teams as possible along their journey has continued to this day.”
A legacy of impact and a vision for the future
Since its inception, the IDEAS Challenge has fueled over 1,200 ventures through training, mentorship, and seed funding; the program has also awarded more than $1.3 million to nearly 300 teams. Many of these have gone on to effect transformative change in the areas of global health, civic engagement, energy and the environment, education, and employment.
Over the course of the spring semester, MIT student-led teams engage in a rigorous process of ideating, prototyping, and stakeholder engagement, supported by a robust series of workshops on the topics of systems change, social impact measurement, and social enterprise business models. Participants also benefit from mentorship, an expansive IDEAS alumni network, and connections with partners across MIT’s innovation ecosystem.
“IDEAS continues to serve as a critical home to MIT students determined to meaningfully address complex systems challenges by building social enterprises that prioritize social impact and sustainability over profit,” said Lauren Tyger, the PKG Center’s assistant dean of social innovation, who has overseen the program since 2023.
Voices of innovation
For many of this year’s participants, IDEAS offered the chance to turn their academic and professional experience into real-world impact. Blake Blaze, co-founder of SamWise, was inspired to design a platform that provides personalized education for incarcerated students after teaching classes in Boston-area jails and prisons in partnership with The Educational Justice Institute (TEJI) at MIT.
“Our team began the year motivated by a good idea, but IDEAS gave us the frameworks, mindset, and, more simply, the language to be effective collaborators with the communities we aim to serve,” said Blaze. “We learned that sometimes building technology for a customer requires more than product-market fit — it requires proper orientation for meaningful outcomes and impact.”
Franny Xi Wu, who co-founded China Dispossession Watch, a platform to document and raise awareness of grassroots anti-displacement activism in China, highlighted the niche space that IDEAS occupies within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. “IDEAS provided crucial support by helping us achieve federated, trust-based program rollout rather than rapid extractive scaling, pursue diversified funding aligned with community-driven incentives, and find like-minded collaborators equally invested in human rights and spatial justice.”
A network of alumni and other volunteers play an invaluable mentorship role in IDEAS, fostering remarkable growth in their mentees over the course of the semester.
“Engaging with mentors, judges, and peers profoundly validated our vision, reinforcing our confidence to pursue what initially felt like audacious goals,” said Xi Wu. “Their insightful feedback and genuine encouragement created a supportive environment that inspired and energized us. They also provided us valuable perspectives on how to effectively launch and scale social ventures, communicate compellingly with funders, and navigate the multifaceted challenges in impact entrepreneurship.”
“Being a PKG IDEAS mentor for the last two years has been an incredible experience. I have met a group of inspiring entrepreneurs trying to solve big problems, helped them on their journeys, and developed my own mentoring skills along the way,” said IDEAS mentor Dheera Ananthakrishnan SM ’90, EMBA ’23. “The PKG network is an incredible resource, a reinforcing loop, giving back so much more than it gets — I’m so proud to be a part of it. I look forward to seeing the impact of IDEAS teams as they continue on their journey, and I am excited to mentor and learn with the MIT PKG Center in the future.”
Top teams recognized with over $60K in awards
The 2025 IDEAS Challenge culminated with the announcement of this year’s winners. Teams were evaluated by a panel of expert judges representing a wide range of industries, and eight were selected to receive awards and additional mentorship that will jump-start their social innovations. These volunteer judges evaluated each proposal for innovation, feasibility, and potential for social impact.
The showcase was not just a celebration of projects — it was a testament to the value of systems-driven design, collaborative problem-solving, and sustained engagement with community partners.
The 2025 grantees include:
Looking ahead: Supporting the next generation
As IDEAS nears its 25th anniversary, the PKG Center is launching a year-long celebration and campaign to ensure the program’s longevity and expand its reach. Christine Ortiz, the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, announced the IDEAS25 campaign during the event.
“Over the past quarter-century, close to 300 teams have launched projects through the support of IDEAS Awards, and several hundred more have entered the challenge — working on projects in over 60 countries,” Ortiz said. “IDEAS has supported student-led work that has had real-world impact across sectors and regions.”
In honor of the program’s 25th year, the PKG Center will measure the collective impact of IDEAS teams, showcase the work of alumni and partners at an Alumni Showcase this fall, and rally support to sustain the program for the next 25 years.
“Whether you're a past team member, a mentor, a friend of IDEAS, or someone who just learned about the program tonight,” Ortiz said, “we invite you to join us. Let’s keep the momentum going together.”
© Photo: Gretchen Ertl
Building on decades of research, Robert Gerszten seeks to pinpoint movement’s molecular benefits
Anna Lamb
Harvard Staff Writer
Robert Gerszten in his lab.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
We know exercise is good for us — but not exactly why. At Harvard, researchers are trying to pinpoint how exercise impacts our bodies down to the cellular level.
“It’s been known since Hippocrates that exercise is associated with health,” said Robert Gerszten, a professor at Harvard Medical School and chief of cardiovascular medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “But how exercise is beneficial at a molecular level is not well described.”
For decades, Gerszten’s lab has been tackling this question. Notably, he’s been involved in a landmark National Institutes of Health project launched in 1992 known as the HERITAGE Family Study. Drawing on data from more than 650 men and women of varying fitness levels undertaking a 20-week exercise program, the study continues to publish findings.
In 2021, Gerszten helped author a paper using HERITAGE data in which researchers were able to predict with reasonable accuracy whether individuals could improve their cardiovascular fitness, and by how much. The team used pioneering molecular tools to identify blood-based biomarkers linked to fitness and training response. Out of the more than 5,000 proteins his lab studied, Gerszten and his team were able to identify 147 that had strong predictive relationships.
“We began to identify some new biochemicals that hadn’t been described previously in the context of exercise physiology,” Gerszten said.
Building on that work, Gerszten is a part of another NIH-funded project — the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium. His lab is one of the core chemical analysis sites analyzing clinical metrics like blood pressure, VO₂ max (a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness), and muscle strength in more than 2,000 participants. Additionally, the team is taking blood samples and tissue biopsies before and after 12 weeks of exercise to analyze molecular changes compared to baseline samples.
“The HERITAGE study was a prelude for this study,” Gerszten said. “It was the largest exercise study ever done, and it was about 650 people, so about a third of the size of this.”
“The notion is, if you identify some pathway that’s conferring a lot of the benefit of exercise, do you really need the exercise?”
Gerszten noted that this study isn’t comprehensive just because of its size, but also its breadth of patients. There are participants under 18 and over 60. And from each person, about seven blood samples are taken, along with tissue samples, during acute exercise. “Each time,” he said, “before and after training, you get muscle and fat biopsies.”
The researchers are seeking to better understand why some people respond better to different types of workouts, such as running versus weightlifting. They also hope their findings will lead to clinical applications.
“The notion is, if you identify some pathway that’s conferring a lot of the benefit of exercise, do you really need the exercise?” Gerszten said. “You can imagine that for certain individuals, wheelchair-bound, super frail, etc., these types of putative interventions might be particularly helpful.”
Early findings from pre-COVID trials of patients are starting to be released. Though Gerszten said it may be years before all the data is collected and analyzed, an unusual feature of the study is that data is being released publicly on a rolling basis to allow doctors and scientists to use it for their own research.
“This is one of the largest genomic databases,” Gerszten said. “So there’s going to be so many eyes on the data. I would underscore that the real goal is to get this out ASAP for everybody to look at.”
This research is supported by the NIH Common Fund and is managed by a program team led by the NIH Office of Strategic Coordination, National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the National Institute on Aging, and by a trans-agency working group representing multiple NIH institutes and centers.
Financial aid red tape nearly derailed Susan Dynarski’s undergrad dreams. Now she sees decades of progress under threat.
That’s according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which over its 87-year run has generated data that benefits work on other issues
JoAnn Manson has spent her career researching – and highlighting – how everyday choices influence health
Story of game-changing therapy illustrates crucial role of fundamental research breakthroughs
David Liu, Breakthrough Prize recipient, retraces path to an ‘incredibly exciting’ disease fighter: ‘This is the essence of basic science.’
We’ve all felt the sting of guilt when fruit and vegetables go bad before we could eat them. Now, researchers from MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) have shown they can extend the shelf life of harvested plants by injecting them with melatonin using biodegradable microneedles.
That’s a big deal because the problem of food waste goes way beyond our salads. More than 30 percent of the world’s food is lost after it’s harvested — enough to feed more than 1 billion people. Refrigeration is the most common way to preserve foods, but it requires energy and infrastructure that many regions of the world can’t afford or lack access to.
The researchers believe their system could offer an alternative or complement to refrigeration. Central to their approach are patches of silk microneedles. The microneedles can get through the tough, waxy skin of plants without causing a stress response, and deliver precise amounts of melatonin into plants’ inner tissues.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to apply these microneedles to extend the shelf life of a fresh-cut crop,” says Benedetto Marelli, the study’s senior author, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, and the director of the Wild Cards mission of the MIT Climate Project. “We thought we could use this technology to deliver something that could regulate or control the plant’s post-harvest physiology. Eventually, we looked at hormones, and melatonin is already used by plants to regulate such functions. The food we waste could feed about 1.6 billion people. Even in the U.S., this approach could one day expand access to healthy foods.”
For the study, which appears today in Nano Letters, Marelli and researchers from SMART applied small patches of the microneedles containing melatonin to the base of the leafy vegetable pak choy. After application, the researchers found the melatonin was able to extend the vegetables’ shelf life by four days at room temperature and 10 days when refrigerated, which could allow more crops to reach consumers before they’re wasted.
“Post-harvest waste is a huge issue. This problem is extremely important in emerging markets around Africa and Southeast Asia, where many crops are produced but can't be maintained in the journey from farms to markets,” says Sarojam Rajani, co-senior author of the study and a senior principal investigator at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory in Singapore.
Plant destressors
For years, Marelli’s lab has been exploring the use of silk microneedles for things like delivering nutrients to crops and monitoring plant health. Microneedles made from silk fibroin protein are nontoxic and biodegradable, and Marelli’s previous work has described ways of manufacturing them at scale.
To test microneedle’s ability to extend the shelf life of food, the researchers wanted to study their ability to deliver a hormone known to affect the senescence process. Aside from helping humans sleep, melatonin is also a natural hormone in many plants that helps them regulate growth and aging.
“The dose of melatonin we’re delivering is so low that it’s fully metabolized by the crops, so it would not significantly increase the amount of melatonin normally present in the food; we would not ingest more melatonin than usual,” Marelli says. “We chose pak choy because it's a very important crop in Asia, and also because pak choy is very perishable.”
Pak choy is typically harvested by cutting the leafy plant from the root system, exposing the shoot base that provides easy access to vascular bundles which distribute water and nutrients to the rest of the plant. To begin their study, the researchers first used their microneedles to inject a fluorescent dye into the base to confirm that vasculature could spread the dye throughout the plant.
The researchers then compared the shelf life of regular pak choy plants and plants that had been sprayed with or dipped into melatonin, finding no difference.
With their baseline shelf life established, the researchers applied small patches of the melatonin-filled microneedles to the bottom of pak choy plants by hand. They then stored the treated plants, along with controls, in plastic boxes both at room temperature and under refrigeration.
The team evaluated the plants by monitoring their weight, visual appearance, and concentration of chlorophyll, a green pigment that decreases as plants age.
At room temperature, the leaves of the untreated control group began yellowing within two or three days. By the fourth day, the yellowing accelerated to the point that the plants likely could not be sold. Plants treated with the melatonin-loaded silk microneedles, in contrast, remained green on day five, and the yellowing process was significantly delayed. The weight loss and chlorophyll reduction of treated plants also slowed significantly at room temperature. Overall, the researchers estimated the microneedle-treated plants retained their saleable value until the eighth day.
“We clearly saw we could enhance the shelf life of pak choy without the cold chain,” Marelli says.
In refrigerated conditions of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, plant yellowing was delayed by about five days on average, with treated plants remaining relatively green until day 25.
“Spectrophotometric analysis of the plants indicated the treated plants had higher antioxidant activity, while gene analysis showed the melatonin set off a protective chain reaction inside the plants, preserving chlorophyll and adjusting hormones to slow senescence,” says Monika Jangir, co-first author and former postdoc at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory.
“We studied melatonin’s effects and saw it improves the stress response of the plant after it’s been cut, so it’s basically decreasing the stress that plant’s experience, and that extends its shelf life,” says Yangyang Han, co-first author and research scientist at the Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP) interdisciplinary research group at SMART.
Toward postharvest preservation
While the microneedles could make it possible to minimize waste when compared to other application methods like spraying or dipping crops, the researchers say more work is needed to deploy microneedles at scale. For instance, although the researchers applied the microneedle patches by hand in this experiment, the patches could be applied using tractors, autonomous drones, and other farming equipment in the future.
“For this to be widely adopted, we’d need to reach a performance versus cost threshold to justify its use,” Marelli explains. “This method would need to become cheap enough to be used by farmers regularly.”
Moving forward, the research team plans to study the effects of a variety of hormones on different crops using its microneedle delivery technology. The team believes the technique should work with all kinds of produce.
“We’re going to continue to analyze how we can increase the impact this can have on the value and quality of crops,” Marelli says. “For example, could this let us modulate the nutritional values of the crop, how it’s shaped, its texture, etc.? We're also going to continue looking into scaling up the technology so this can be used in the field.”
The work was supported by the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) and the National Research Foundation of Singapore.
© Image: Dr. Yangyang Han; MIT News
Statement by Associate Professor Natalie Pang, University Librarian, National University of Singapore
In maintaining our library collection, excess books are routinely rehomed in other libraries or given away to faculty members and, at times, students. Books which are not taken up are then sent for recycling, in line with common library practices.
In our current exercise of relocating the books from the Yale-NUS College Library, the majority of the books has been rehomed within NUS Libraries.
In this instance, excess books were offered only to faculty members, and not students.
We understand later that many students are interested in having these books and we would have usually acceded to their requests. We did not do so on this occasion and we apologise for the operational lapse.
In view of the strong interest from students, we are now organising a giveaway on campus so that the excess books can find a new home.
Going forward, we are reviewing our process and will take proactive steps to distribute excess books to the NUS community and the wider public so that they can benefit as many people as possible.
By Zara Khanna, AI Research Intern at the Dept of Biomedical Engineering, College of Design and Engineering at NUS
By Ms Nur Diyana Azman, Senior Research Assistant, and Ms Atiqah Lee, Research Associate, both from the Centre for Ageing Research & Education at Duke-NUS Medical School
By Assoc Prof Mak Yuen Teen from the Dept of Accounting at NUS Business School
By Prof Yeo Guat Kwang, Visiting Prof at NUS Business School and Advisor, National Trade Unions Congress, Singapore
By Assoc Prof Gu Qingyang from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS
Robert Waldinger.
Harvard file photo
That’s according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which over its 87-year run has generated data that benefits work on other issues
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
Money can’t buy happiness, but strong relationships can. And having those ties can bring better health, too.
That is the main lesson from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest in-depth studies of physical and mental health among adults, said its director, Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In its 87th year, the longitudinal study represents the world’s longest-running scientific examination of human health and happiness. It began in 1938 with 724 participants and has grown to 2,500, including the wives and descendants of the original participants.
“The lessons aren’t about wealth, or fame, or working harder and harder,” said Waldinger in a 2015 TED Talk that has been viewed nearly 50 million times.
”The clearest message is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.”
“The clearest message is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period … It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier; they are physically healthier and live longer than people who are less well connected.”
The data collected by the study over decades, consisting of medical records, brain scans, in-person interviews and questionnaires, is a treasure trove of information that can be used for research beyond that of Waldinger’s group.
As of now, the Harvard Study is collaborating with researchers from the Boston Veterans Administration, Northwestern University, University of Malmo in Sweden, and Bryn Mawr College.
One of those collaborations looks at lead exposure in childhood, through air and water, and its potential impact on physical and mental health by using the study’s data on participants and the neighborhoods where they grew up, including lead exposure, and their physical and mental well-being throughout their lives.
This collaborative study also aims to examine whether long-term effects of exposure to lead affect levels of juvenile delinquency, dropping out of school, or developing dementia later in life.
Over the years, the study has been funded primarily by grants from the National Institutes of Health, and since 2003 by grants from the National Institute on Aging.
The Harvard Study has not been affected by the Trump administration’s recent funding cuts, but the cuts pose a threat to long-term research, which can only be supported by government funding, said Waldinger.
“So many foundations will do a pilot grant,” said Waldinger. “But then they don’t want to keep funding something for eight decades, understandably, but the government can take on these longer, big projects. The government is the only funding source likely to do that.”
In the Harvard Study’s case, federal funding has covered participant testing and compensation and salaries of research assistants, who do in-person visits or phone calls, and collect and store data.
But another key benefit of federal-funding projects is that they help train young scientists who will go on to lead research discoveries, said Waldinger.
“Many of our most important discoveries are discoveries that happen because people were investigating an area that didn’t necessarily have a direct practical application when they started studying it, and then they discovered things that turn out to be hugely important things.”
Longitudinal research, or studying people over time, is a specialized kind of study that requires special statistical techniques. Over the years, dozens of undergraduate students, Ph.D. candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty have been trained by the Harvard Study, he said.
Critics are concerned the recent funding cuts might discourage young scientists from going into research. Even if the funds are restored in the next administration, the pipeline of researchers will have been disrupted, said Waldinger. Some of his students no longer see research as a reliable career, and many are going into clinical work or business, he added, but the effects on the country’s position as a global leader in scientific research and discoveries are worrisome as well.
“My biggest worry is that we will stop being the premier place for research,” said Waldinger.
“Many of our most important discoveries are discoveries that happen because people were investigating an area that didn’t necessarily have a direct practical application when they started studying it, and then they discovered things that turn out to be hugely important things.”
In addition, much of the research has fueled economic innovation over the decades, and funding cuts also put those advances in jeopardy. “So even if you were just interested in money and not in knowledge and science, you would say, this is a really important thing to continue, and we should never lose this, or we will lose our advantage economically,” he said.
One of the most profound open questions in modern physics is: “Is gravity quantum?”
The other fundamental forces — electromagnetic, weak, and strong — have all been successfully described, but no complete and consistent quantum theory of gravity yet exists.
“Theoretical physicists have proposed many possible scenarios, from gravity being inherently classical to fully quantum, but the debate remains unresolved because we’ve never had a clear way to test gravity’s quantum nature in the lab,” says Dongchel Shin, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE). “The key to answering this lies in preparing mechanical systems that are massive enough to feel gravity, yet quiet enough — quantum enough — to reveal how gravity interacts with them.”
Shin, who is also a MathWorks Fellow, researches quantum and precision metrology platforms that probe fundamental physics and are designed to pave the way for future industrial technology. He is the lead author of a new paper that demonstrates laser cooling of a centimeter-long torsional oscillator. The open-access paper, “Active laser cooling of a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator,” was recently published in the journal Optica.
Lasers have been routinely employed to cool down atomic gases since the 1980s, and have been used in the linear motion of nanoscale mechanical oscillators since around 2010. The new paper presents the first time this technique has been extended to torsional oscillators, which are key to a worldwide effort to study gravity using these systems.
“Torsion pendulums have been classical tools for gravity research since [Henry] Cavendish’s famous experiment in 1798. They’ve been used to measure Newton’s gravitational constant, G, test the inverse-square law, and search for new gravitational phenomena,” explains Shin.
By using lasers to remove nearly all thermal motion from atoms, in recent decades scientists have created ultracold atomic gases at micro- and nanokelvin temperatures. These systems now power the world’s most precise clocks — optical lattice clocks — with timekeeping precision so high that they would gain or lose less than a second over the age of the universe.
“Historically, these two technologies developed separately — one in gravitational physics, the other in atomic and optical physics,” says Shin. “In our work, we bring them together. By applying laser cooling techniques originally developed for atoms to a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator, we try to bridge the classical and quantum worlds. This hybrid platform enables a new class of experiments — ones that could finally let us test whether gravity needs to be described by quantum theory.”
The new paper demonstrates laser cooling of a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator from room temperature to a temperature of 10 millikelvins (1/1,000th of a kelvin) using a mirrored optical lever.
“An optical lever is a simple but powerful measurement technique: You shine a laser onto a mirror, and even a tiny tilt of the mirror causes the reflected beam to shift noticeably on a detector. This magnifies small angular motions into easily measurable signals,” explains Shin, noting that while the premise is simple, the team faced challenges in practice. “The laser beam itself can jitter slightly due to air currents, vibrations, or imperfections in the optics. These jitters can falsely appear as motion of the mirror, limiting our ability to measure true physical signals.”
To overcome this, the team used the mirrored optical lever approach, which employs a second, mirrored version of the laser beam to cancel out the unwanted jitter.
“One beam interacts with the torsional oscillator, while the other reflects off a corner-cube mirror, reversing any jitter without picking up the oscillator’s motion,” Shin says. “When the two beams are combined at the detector, the real signal from the oscillator is preserved, and the false motion from [the] laser jitter is canceled.”
This approach reduced noise by a factor of a thousand, which allowed the researchers to detect motion with extreme precision, nearly 10 times better than the oscillator’s own quantum zero-point fluctuations. “That level of sensitivity made it possible for us to cool the system down to just 10 milli-kelvins using laser light,” Shin says.
Shin says this work is just the beginning. “While we’ve achieved quantum-limited precision below the zero-point motion of the oscillator, reaching the actual quantum ground state remains our next goal,” he says. “To do that, we’ll need to further strengthen the optical interaction — using an optical cavity that amplifies angular signals, or optical trapping strategies. These improvements could open the door to experiments where two such oscillators interact only through gravity, allowing us to directly test whether gravity is quantum or not.”
The paper’s other authors from the Department of Mechanical Engineering include Vivishek Sudhir, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the Class of 1957 Career Development Professor, and PhD candidate Dylan Fife. Additional authors are Tina Heyward and Rajesh Menon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah. Shin and Fife are both members of Sudhir’s lab, the Quantum and Precision Measurements Group.
Shin says one thing he’s come to appreciate through this work is the breadth of the challenge the team is tackling. “Studying quantum aspects of gravity experimentally doesn’t just require deep understanding of physics — relativity, quantum mechanics — but also demands hands-on expertise in system design, nanofabrication, optics, control, and electronics,” he says.
“Having a background in mechanical engineering, which spans both the theoretical and practical aspects of physical systems, gave me the right perspective to navigate and contribute meaningfully across these diverse domains,” says Shin. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to see how this broad training can help tackle one of the most fundamental questions in science.”
© Photo: Tony Pulsone/MechE
Cristina Morilla, associate paintings conservator, working in 2020 on a portrait of King Philip of Spain at Harvard Art Museums. In some cases, conservators are practitioners themselves, explains Brenda Bernier, the director of Preservation Services for Harvard Library. To understand how and why an object is falling apart, one has to know how it’s put together. “Each one is like a little puzzle.”
Harvard file photo
Veasey Conway
Harvard Staff Photographer
Across the University and the world, Harvard students, staff, and researchers dedicate themselves to documenting, organizing, and restoring items big and small. The tools of the trade could be trowels, tweezers, erasers, microscopes, or 3D scanners, but their goal is the same: to preserve works of literature, art, science, and civilization, and keep them accessible for future generations of researchers, students, and the wider public.
“There are secrets to unlock,” says Brenda Bernier, the Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian and director of Preservation Services for Harvard Library. “I find that the most exciting and exhilarating part of it, and also the most daunting.”
Bernier’s office is near the Weissman Preservation Center on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. “Anytime you walk through that lab, there’s something that’s gonna knock your socks off,” Bernier said.
The Weissman specializes in handling and treating rare book, paper, and photographic collections. Other departments and museums around campus have their own conservation and archival specialties.
Harvard’s history in preservation and conservation runs deep. In 1928, it established the first art conservation laboratory in the U.S., called the Department of Technical Research, in the Fogg Museum. It’s now called the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies.
Bernier compares the scale of Harvard’s preservation efforts to the Library of Congress. “Harvard has been collecting library materials since the 1600s,” she said. “It’s our responsibility to maintain it into the future.”
What makes Harvard’s collections of books, photographs, recordings, digital media, and ephemera so important? These original items are primary resources, and they can jumpstart new research inquiries. “They hold the witness of the time,” Bernier said. “It could be scientific data. It could be cultural and historical events. Preserving that, that powers research right there. Because it is close to the truth; it’s what actually happened.”
Scott Edwards, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and curator of ornithology, researches albatross specimens, looking at mercury poisoning over time in the species. Pictured in 2011, the MCZ has one of the oldest collections of black-footed albatross. The Department is a rich source of data on the environment and on the bird.
Harvard file photo
In 2020, Dennis Piechota (from left), Adam Middleton, and Joe Green work on the coffin of Ankh-Khonsu with a team at the Semitic Museum that opens ancient Egyptian coffins to analyze and photograph the coffins from all angles using scanning technology and 3D photography.
Harvard file photo
Edith Young, camera operator at Imaging Services, scans a rare Chinese book in 2010 in the digital lab in Widener Library. “The library is committed to making our collections as open as possible,” Bernier said. “And the digitization step is needed for that. There’s also materials coming in that are ‘born digital.’ So where we used to get, for example, a bunch of manuscripts from a famous author, we’re now getting laptops, we’re now getting hard drives.”
Harvard file photo
A storage space at the Museum of Comparative Zoology is pictured in 2017.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School students participate in hands-on activities in 2022, examining endless rows of specimens as part of Marine Science Day at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Harvard file photo
As the renovation of Harvard Art Museums nears completion in 2014, a woman walks past the Forbes Pigment Collection.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Jackson Kehoe, research assistant at Harvard Herbarium, displays collections in 2023 at the Harvard University Herbaria.
Harvard file photo
Stuart Heebner, collections assistant (left), and Scott Fulton, conservator, move casts to be cleaned as part of a major project in 2007 to stabilize the plaster cast collection in the Peabody Museum. Preservation can take many forms, depending on an institution’s priorities or an object’s needs. Large collections require care and efficiency. “It’s almost like you’re in a field hospital, you know, and each one has to come through your care, as gently but quickly as possible,” Bernier said. “It could be just a couple of minutes, or it could be hundreds of hours. It really depends on what it needs or why it needs it.”
Harvard file photo
Inside the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, Makeda Daniel, media and publications coordinator, spins a record on a turntable in 2019.
Harvard file photo
Charles Orta ’16 (from left), Blake Lee ’16, Miye D’Oench ’16, and Sarah Fellay ’16 look at research materials in 2012 inside the Harvard-Yenching Library. “There’s a definite increase in interest from the faculty in object-based learning, and having students actually work with the original thing,” Bernier said. “It’s a very powerful and impactful experience to pick up a journal from 150 years ago and see what someone their age would have been saying about their experiences at Harvard or anywhere else.”
Harvard file photo
Melissa Dole (right) reletters the seat numbers in Harvard Stadium using stencils. Steve Zarba (left), who heads the two-month-long project in 2018 said, “In 1903, they did this by hand, we are trying to preserve the old look.”
Harvard file photo
Writings by Keats are pictured in 2011 in the Keats Room in Houghton Library that demonstrates cross-writing, an economical use of paper during a time when paper was valuable.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Richard Ketchen, who tends to and maintains Harvard’s clocks, is pictured in 2020 working on a clock at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Conservator of the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants Scott Fulton works in 2019 to clean and restore objects from the glass flowers collection.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
In 2017, Dale Stinchcomb, curatorial assistant in Harvard Theatre Collection, examines a figurine by Jean-Auguste Barre of the young French ballerina Emma Livry (1842-1863) in “Le Papillon.”
Harvard file photo
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments disassembles the legendary Mark 1 computer in 2021 at the Science Center and transports it to the SEC, where it will be reassembled.
Harvard file photo
Sara Frankel, the collections manager for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, removes years of dust from the computers’ interior mechanisms during the 2021 move.
Harvard file photo
Book conservator Katherine Beaty works in 2016 on a bound volume of business records, including partnership agreements and other related documents from the Baker Library at Harvard Business School. “It’s a complete rush,” said Bernier. “It is I think why a lot of conservators got into the field. It is an intimate process to have this item come to us from generations before, on our desk in front of us. And it’s in our hands and we have to steward it and care for it. It’s humbling as well. And exhilarating.”
Harvard file photo
Book Conservator Catherine Badot-Costello uses a microscope in 2016 to work on an illuminated, bound parchment manuscript from Houghton Library, dated 1464. Conservators preserve, repair, and save rare books and unique library materials at the Weissman Preservation Center. Repairs to objects should be unobtrusive and focus on stabilizing the object, explained Bernier. “We try to be conservative in our approach.”
Harvard file photo
In 2016, Anne Corrsin, conservation technician for Special Collections, cleans off an account book for medical services rendered by John Perkins (1698-1781) dating 1744 to 1780. Objects and collections are regularly reinterpreted and probed by new generations of scholars. A non-destructive analysis of the types of leather used to bind books, for example, could reveal new discoveries about trade routes, business, and the history of civilizations.
Harvard file photo
Nancy Lloyd, objects conservator for the Straus Center for Conservation, restores the fallen soldier statue in 2005 in the Memorial Room at Memorial Church.
Harvard file photo
Jun Imabayashi prunes a lilac plant in 2019 in the bonsai collection at the Arnold Arboretum. The meticulous pruning and care nurtures the existing plant.
Harvard file photo
The Harvard Yard Archaeology Project continues in 2021 as students participate in an excavation of the grounds in front of Matthews Hall. Patricia Capone (left) speaks with Sarah Faber ’24 as she sifts through her findings.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Robert Shure (left) and Noe Magana restore the John Harvard Statue in 2021 in Harvard Yard.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
One of the most profound open questions in modern physics is: “Is gravity quantum?”
The other fundamental forces — electromagnetic, weak, and strong — have all been successfully described, but no complete and consistent quantum theory of gravity yet exists.
“Theoretical physicists have proposed many possible scenarios, from gravity being inherently classical to fully quantum, but the debate remains unresolved because we’ve never had a clear way to test gravity’s quantum nature in the lab,” says Dongchel Shin, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE). “The key to answering this lies in preparing mechanical systems that are massive enough to feel gravity, yet quiet enough — quantum enough — to reveal how gravity interacts with them.”
Shin, who is also a MathWorks Fellow, researches quantum and precision metrology platforms that probe fundamental physics and are designed to pave the way for future industrial technology. He is the lead author of a new paper that demonstrates laser cooling of a centimeter-long torsional oscillator. The open-access paper, “Active laser cooling of a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator,” was recently published in the journal Optica.
Lasers have been routinely employed to cool down atomic gases since the 1980s, and have been used in the linear motion of nanoscale mechanical oscillators since around 2010. The new paper presents the first time this technique has been extended to torsional oscillators, which are key to a worldwide effort to study gravity using these systems.
“Torsion pendulums have been classical tools for gravity research since [Henry] Cavendish’s famous experiment in 1798. They’ve been used to measure Newton’s gravitational constant, G, test the inverse-square law, and search for new gravitational phenomena,” explains Shin.
By using lasers to remove nearly all thermal motion from atoms, in recent decades scientists have created ultracold atomic gases at micro- and nanokelvin temperatures. These systems now power the world’s most precise clocks — optical lattice clocks — with timekeeping precision so high that they would gain or lose less than a second over the age of the universe.
“Historically, these two technologies developed separately — one in gravitational physics, the other in atomic and optical physics,” says Shin. “In our work, we bring them together. By applying laser cooling techniques originally developed for atoms to a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator, we try to bridge the classical and quantum worlds. This hybrid platform enables a new class of experiments — ones that could finally let us test whether gravity needs to be described by quantum theory.”
The new paper demonstrates laser cooling of a centimeter-scale torsional oscillator from room temperature to a temperature of 10 millikelvins (1/1,000th of a kelvin) using a mirrored optical lever.
“An optical lever is a simple but powerful measurement technique: You shine a laser onto a mirror, and even a tiny tilt of the mirror causes the reflected beam to shift noticeably on a detector. This magnifies small angular motions into easily measurable signals,” explains Shin, noting that while the premise is simple, the team faced challenges in practice. “The laser beam itself can jitter slightly due to air currents, vibrations, or imperfections in the optics. These jitters can falsely appear as motion of the mirror, limiting our ability to measure true physical signals.”
To overcome this, the team used the mirrored optical lever approach, which employs a second, mirrored version of the laser beam to cancel out the unwanted jitter.
“One beam interacts with the torsional oscillator, while the other reflects off a corner-cube mirror, reversing any jitter without picking up the oscillator’s motion,” Shin says. “When the two beams are combined at the detector, the real signal from the oscillator is preserved, and the false motion from [the] laser jitter is canceled.”
This approach reduced noise by a factor of a thousand, which allowed the researchers to detect motion with extreme precision, nearly 10 times better than the oscillator’s own quantum zero-point fluctuations. “That level of sensitivity made it possible for us to cool the system down to just 10 milli-kelvins using laser light,” Shin says.
Shin says this work is just the beginning. “While we’ve achieved quantum-limited precision below the zero-point motion of the oscillator, reaching the actual quantum ground state remains our next goal,” he says. “To do that, we’ll need to further strengthen the optical interaction — using an optical cavity that amplifies angular signals, or optical trapping strategies. These improvements could open the door to experiments where two such oscillators interact only through gravity, allowing us to directly test whether gravity is quantum or not.”
The paper’s other authors from the Department of Mechanical Engineering include Vivishek Sudhir, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and the Class of 1957 Career Development Professor, and PhD candidate Dylan Fife. Additional authors are Tina Heyward and Rajesh Menon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah. Shin and Fife are both members of Sudhir’s lab, the Quantum and Precision Measurements Group.
Shin says one thing he’s come to appreciate through this work is the breadth of the challenge the team is tackling. “Studying quantum aspects of gravity experimentally doesn’t just require deep understanding of physics — relativity, quantum mechanics — but also demands hands-on expertise in system design, nanofabrication, optics, control, and electronics,” he says.
“Having a background in mechanical engineering, which spans both the theoretical and practical aspects of physical systems, gave me the right perspective to navigate and contribute meaningfully across these diverse domains,” says Shin. “It’s been incredibly rewarding to see how this broad training can help tackle one of the most fundamental questions in science.”
© Photo: Tony Pulsone/MechE
Presented by The Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, the exhibit is part of a brand-new GreenSTEM section that celebrates cutting-edge research and innovation in the world of plant science.
Blooming Numbers takes visitors on an immersive journey through the latest discoveries in quantitative plant biology—starting with the humble flower and diving deep into molecular biology, genetics, imaging technologies, computational modelling, and the often-overlooked mathematical patterns that govern plant development.
“This award is just so exciting,” said Kathy Grube from the Sainsbury Laboratory.
“We came in in the morning to water the plants and turn on the microscopes, and the medal had been laid out by the judges. We were jumping up and down when we found it.”
The eye-catching exhibit was a collaborative effort across multiple Cambridge institutions and partners. The University’s Department of Engineering co-designed the infrastructure, drawing inspiration from the Fibonacci sequence—an iconic numerical pattern found throughout nature. The Pollinator Patch, a lush highlight of the exhibit, was designed and cultivated by Oakington Garden Centre to demonstrate pollinator-friendly planting. Darwin Nurseries added wildlife-friendly hanging baskets that captivated visitors and judges alike.
“One of our fellow exhibitors, who have been coming to Chelsea for years, told us that getting a silver-gilt on your first try is a real achievement,” said Kathy.
“The judges came over and said the design of the stand was fantastic, and they loved the interactive exhibits. We’re just so honoured.”
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s most famous horticultural show, runs until the end of the week and attracts horticultural experts, designers, and plant lovers from across the globe.
The University of Cambridge has made a dazzling debut at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, winning a prestigious silver-gilt medal for its interactive plant science exhibit, Blooming Numbers.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere efficiently is often seen as a crucial need for combatting climate change, but systems for removing carbon dioxide suffer from a tradeoff. Chemical compounds that efficiently remove CO₂ from the air do not easily release it once captured, and compounds that release CO₂ efficiently are not very efficient at capturing it. Optimizing one part of the cycle tends to make the other part worse.
Now, using nanoscale filtering membranes, researchers at MIT have added a simple intermediate step that facilitates both parts of the cycle. The new approach could improve the efficiency of electrochemical carbon dioxide capture and release by six times and cut costs by at least 20 percent, they say.
The new findings are reported today in the journal ACS Energy Letters, in a paper by MIT doctoral students Simon Rufer, Tal Joseph, and Zara Aamer, and professor of mechanical engineering Kripa Varanasi.
“We need to think about scale from the get-go when it comes to carbon capture, as making a meaningful impact requires processing gigatons of CO₂,” says Varanasi. “Having this mindset helps us pinpoint critical bottlenecks and design innovative solutions with real potential for impact. That’s the driving force behind our work.”
Many carbon-capture systems work using chemicals called hydroxides, which readily combine with carbon dioxide to form carbonate. That carbonate is fed into an electrochemical cell, where the carbonate reacts with an acid to form water and release carbon dioxide. The process can take ordinary air with only about 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide and generate a stream of 100 percent pure carbon dioxide, which can then be used to make fuels or other products.
Both the capture and release steps operate in the same water-based solution, but the first step needs a solution with a high concentration of hydroxide ions, and the second step needs one high in carbonate ions. “You can see how these two steps are at odds,” says Varanasi. “These two systems are circulating the same sorbent back and forth. They’re operating on the exact same liquid. But because they need two different types of liquids to operate optimally, it’s impossible to operate both systems at their most efficient points.”
The team’s solution was to decouple the two parts of the system and introduce a third part in between. Essentially, after the hydroxide in the first step has been mostly chemically converted to carbonate, special nanofiltration membranes then separate ions in the solution based on their charge. Carbonate ions have a charge of 2, while hydroxide ions have a charge of 1. “The nanofiltration is able to separate these two pretty well,” Rufer says.
Once separated, the hydroxide ions are fed back to the absorption side of the system, while the carbonates are sent ahead to the electrochemical release stage. That way, both ends of the system can operate at their more efficient ranges. Varanasi explains that in the electrochemical release step, protons are being added to the carbonate to cause the conversion to carbon dioxide and water, but if hydroxide ions are also present, the protons will react with those ions instead, producing just water.
“If you don’t separate these hydroxides and carbonates,” Rufer says, “the way the system fails is you’ll add protons to hydroxide instead of carbonate, and so you’ll just be making water rather than extracting carbon dioxide. That’s where the efficiency is lost. Using nanofiltration to prevent this was something that we aren’t aware of anyone proposing before.”
Testing showed that the nanofiltration could separate the carbonate from the hydroxide solution with about 95 percent efficiency, validating the concept under realistic conditions, Rufer says. The next step was to assess how much of an effect this would have on the overall efficiency and economics of the process. They created a techno-economic model, incorporating electrochemical efficiency, voltage, absorption rate, capital costs, nanofiltration efficiency, and other factors.
The analysis showed that present systems cost at least $600 per ton of carbon dioxide captured, while with the nanofiltration component added, that drops to about $450 a ton. What’s more, the new system is much more stable, continuing to operate at high efficiency even under variations in the ion concentrations in the solution. “In the old system without nanofiltration, you’re sort of operating on a knife’s edge,” Rufer says; if the concentration varies even slightly in one direction or the other, efficiency drops off drastically. “But with our nanofiltration system, it kind of acts as a buffer where it becomes a lot more forgiving. You have a much broader operational regime, and you can achieve significantly lower costs.”
He adds that this approach could apply not only to the direct air capture systems they studied specifically, but also to point-source systems — which are attached directly to the emissions sources such as power plant emissions — or to the next stage of the process, converting captured carbon dioxide into useful products such as fuel or chemical feedstocks. Those conversion processes, he says, “are also bottlenecked in this carbonate and hydroxide tradeoff.”
In addition, this technology could lead to safer alternative chemistries for carbon capture, Varanasi says. “A lot of these absorbents can at times be toxic, or damaging to the environment. By using a system like ours, you can improve the reaction rate, so you can choose chemistries that might not have the best absorption rate initially but can be improved to enable safety.”
Varanasi adds that “the really nice thing about this is we’ve been able to do this with what’s commercially available,” and with a system that can easily be retrofitted to existing carbon-capture installations. If the costs can be further brought down to about $200 a ton, it could be viable for widespread adoption. With ongoing work, he says, “we’re confident that we’ll have something that can become economically viable” and that will ultimately produce valuable, saleable products.
Rufer notes that even today, “people are buying carbon credits at a cost of over $500 per ton. So, at this cost we’re projecting, it is already commercially viable in that there are some buyers who are willing to pay that price.” But by bringing the price down further, that should increase the number of buyers who would consider buying the credit, he says. “It’s just a question of how widespread we can make it.” Recognizing this growing market demand, Varanasi says, “Our goal is to provide industry scalable, cost-effective, and reliable technologies and systems that enable them to directly meet their decarbonization targets.”
The research was supported by Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. through the MIT Energy Initiative, and the U.S. National Science Foundation, and made use of the facilities at MIT.nano.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers
“It is with great pleasure that I welcome the latest cohort of outstanding researchers into the Fellowship of the Royal Society,” said Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society. “Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament to the power of curiosity-driven research and innovation.
“The strength of the Fellowship lies not only in individual excellence, but in the diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and experiences each new member brings. This cohort represents the truly global nature of modern science and the importance of collaboration in driving scientific breakthroughs.”
The Fellows and Foreign Members join the ranks of Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Lise Meitner, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Dorothy Hodgkin.
The new Cambridge fellows are:
Professor Edward Bullmore FMedSci FRS
Professor Ed Bullmore is Professor of Psychiatry and former Head of the Department of Psychiatry. His research mainly involves the application of brain imaging to psychiatry. He has introduced an entirely original approach to the analysis of human brain anatomy, involving graph theory and its application to small-world networks. This has had an enormous impact on the field, especially in relation to understanding the biological basis of schizophrenia and depression. His work has been key to the understanding of the 'wiring' of the human brain.
Professor Gábor Csányi FRS
Professor Gábor Csányi is Professor of Molecular Modelling in the Department of Engineering, and a Fellow of Pembroke College. His work is in the field of computational chemistry, and is focused on developing algorithms to predict the properties of materials and molecules from first principles. He pioneered the application of machine learning to molecular modelling which lead to enormous gains in the efficiency of molecular dynamics simulation.
Professor Judith Driscoll FRS
Professor Judith Driscoll is Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, and a Fellow of Trinity College. Her research is concerned with the nanoscale design and tuning of functional oxide thin film materials for energy-efficient electronic applications. A particular focus of her research group is oxide thin films, owing to their wide range of functionalities and their stability. However, their compositions tend to be complex, defects are prevalent, and interface effects play a strong role. Also, for many applications device structural dimensions are required down to nanometre length-scales. Together, all these factors produce exciting challenges for the materials scientist.
Professor Marie Edmonds FRS
Professor Marie Edmonds is Head of Department and Professor of Volcanology and Petrology in the Department of Earth Sciences. She is also a Fellow of Queens’ College. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of volcanoes on our environment and on the habitability of our planet. Her research spans the boundaries between traditional disciplines, from deciphering the nature of the interior of the Earth, to magma transport and storage in the crust, to volcano monitoring, understanding ore deposits and the dynamic chemistry of volcanic gases in the atmosphere and climate.
Professor Julian Hibberd FRS
Professor Julian Hibberd is Head of the Department of Plant Sciences and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. His research focuses on guiding optimisation of photosynthesis to improve crop yields. The C4 pathway is a complex form of photosynthesis that evolved around 30 million years ago and is now used by the most productive plants on the planet. Professor Hibberd has provided key insights into the evolution of C4 photosynthesis through analysis of plant physiology, cell specialisation, organelle development, and the control of gene expression.
Dr Gregory Jefferis FRS
Dr Gregory Jefferis is Joint Head of the Neurobiology Division at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Director of Research of the Department of Zoology. The broad goal of his research is to understand how smell turns into behaviour in the fruit fly brain. His group is particularly interested in how odour information is processed by the higher olfactory centres that mediate innate and learned behaviour.
Professor Jason Miller FRS
Professor Jason Miller is a Professor in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics and a Fellow of Trinity College. His research interests are in probability, in particular stochastic interface models, random walk, mixing times for Markov chains, and interacting particle systems.
Professor Andrew Pitts FRS
Professor Andrew Pitts is Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science and Technology and an Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College. His research makes use of techniques from category theory, mathematical logic and type theory to advance the foundations of programming language semantics and theorem proving systems. His aim is to develop mathematical models and methods that aid language design and the development of formal logics for specifying and reasoning about programs. He is particularly interested in higher-order typed programming languages and in dependently typed logics.
Dr Marta Zlatic FRS
Dr Marta Zlatic is Programme Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and Director of Research in the Department of Zoology. She is also a Fellow of Trinity College. Her research aims to understand the relationship between the structure of the nervous system and its function and to discover the basic principles by which neural circuits implement fundamental computations. A major focus of her research is the circuit implementation of learning and decision-making.
Nine outstanding Cambridge scientists have been elected as Fellows of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences and the oldest science academy in continuous existence.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.
Measuring the density of a cell can reveal a great deal about the cell’s state. As cells proliferate, differentiate, or undergo cell death, they may gain or lose water and other molecules, which is revealed by changes in density.
Tracking these tiny changes in cells’ physical state is difficult to do at a large scale, especially with single-cell resolution, but a team of MIT researchers has now found a way to measure cell density quickly and accurately — measuring up to 30,000 cells in a single hour.
The researchers also showed that density changes could be used to make valuable predictions, including whether immune cells such as T cells have become activated to kill tumors, or whether tumor cells are susceptible to a specific drug.
“These predictions are all based on looking at very small changes in the physical properties of cells, which can tell you how they’re going to respond,” says Scott Manalis, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering in the departments of Biological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Manalis is the senior author of the new study, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The paper’s lead author is MIT Research Scientist Weida (Richard) Wu.
Measuring density
As cells enter new states, their molecular contents, including lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids, can become more or less crowded. Measuring the density of a cell offers an indirect view of this crowding.
The new density measurement technique reported in this study builds on work that Manalis’ lab has done over the past two decades on technologies for making measurements of cells and tiny particles. In 2007, his lab developed a microfluidic device known as a suspended microchannel resonator (SMR), which consists of a microchannel across a tiny silicon cantilever that vibrates at a specific frequency. As a cell passes through the channel, the frequency of the vibration changes slightly, and the magnitude of that change can be used to calculate the cell’s mass.
In 2011, the researchers adapted the technique to measure the density of cells. To achieve that, cells are sent through the device twice, suspended in two liquids of different densities. A cell’s buoyant mass (its mass as it floats in fluid) depends on its absolute mass and volume, so by measuring two different buoyant masses for a cell, its mass, volume, and density can be calculated.
That technique works well, but swapping fluids and flowing cells through each one is time-consuming, so it can only be used to measure a few hundred cells at a time.
To create a faster, more streamlined system, the researchers combined their SMR device with a fluorescent microscope, which enables measurements of cell volume. The microscope is positioned at the entrance to the resonator, and cells flow through the device while floating in a fluorescent dye that can’t be absorbed by cells. When cells pass by the microscope, the dip in the fluorescent signal can be used to determine the volume of the cell.
After that volume measurement is taken, the cells flow into the resonator, which measures their mass. This process, which allows for rapid calculation of density, can be used to measure up to 30,000 cells in an hour.
“Instead of trying to flow the cells back and forth at least twice through the cantilever to get cell density, we wanted to try to create a method to do a streamlined measurement, so the cells only need to pass through the cantilever once,” Wu says. “From a cell’s mass and volume, we can then derive its density, without compromising the throughput or the precision.”
Evaluating T cells
The researchers used their new technique to track what happens to the density of T cells after they are activated by signaling molecules.
As T cells transition from a quiescent state to an active state, they gain new molecules, as well as water, the researchers found. From their pre-activation state to the first day of activation, the densities of the cells dropped from an average of 1.08 grams per milliliter to 1.06 grams per milliliter. This means that the cells are becoming less crowded, as they gain water faster than they gain other molecules.
“This is suggesting that cell density is very likely reflecting an increase in cellular water content as the cells transit from a quiescent, non-proliferative state to a high-growth state,” Wu says. “These data are pointing to the notion that cell density is an interesting biomarker that is changing during T-cell activation and may have functional relevance to how well the T cells could proliferate.”
Travera, a clinical-stage company co-founded by Manalis, is working on using the SMR mass measurements to predict whether individual cancer patients’ T cells will respond to drugs meant to stimulate a strong anti-tumor immune response. The company has also begun using the density measurement technique, and preliminary studies have found that using mass and density measurements together gives a much more accurate prediction that using either one alone.
“Both mass and density are revealing something about the overall fitness of the immune cells,” Manalis says.
Using physical measurements of cells to monitor their immune activation “is very exciting and may offer a new way of evaluating and measuring changes in immune cells in circulation,” says Genevieve Boland, an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and vice chair of research for the Integrated Department of Surgery at Mass General Brigham, who was not involved in the study.
“This is a complementary, but very different, method than those currently used for immune assessments in cancer and other diseases, potentially offering a novel tool to assist in clinical decision-making regarding the need for and the choice of a specific cancer therapy, allow monitoring of response to therapy, and/or in early detection of side effects of immune-based therapies,” she says.
Making predictions
Another potential application for this approach is predicting how tumor cells will respond to different types of cancer drugs. In previous work, Manalis has shown that tracking changes in cell mass after treatment can predict whether a tumor cell is undergoing drug-induced apoptosis. In the new study, he found that density could also reveal these responses.
In those experiments, the researchers treated pancreatic cancer cells with one of two different drugs — one that the cells are susceptible to, and one they are resistant to. They found that density changes after treatment accurately reflected the cells’ known responses to treatment.
“We capture something about the cells that is highly predictive within the first couple of days after they get taken out from the tumor,” Wu says. “Cell density is a rapid biomarker to predict in vivo drug response in a very timely manner.”
Manalis’ lab is now working on using measurements of cell mass and density as a way to evaluate the fitness of cells used to synthesize complex proteins such as therapeutic antibodies.
“As cells are producing these proteins, we can learn from these markers of cell fitness and metabolic state to try to make predictions about how well these cells can produce these proteins, and hopefully in the future also guide design and control strategies to even further improve the yield of these complex proteins,” Wu says.
The research was funded by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, the Virginia and Daniel K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine, the Stand up to Cancer Convergence Program, Bristol Myers Squibb, and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.
© Photo: Courtesy of the researchers
By combining information from many large datasets, MIT researchers have identified several new potential targets for treating or preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
The study revealed genes and cellular pathways that haven’t been linked to Alzheimer’s before, including one involved in DNA repair. Identifying new drug targets is critical because many of the Alzheimer’s drugs that have been developed to this point haven’t been as successful as hoped.
Working with researchers at Harvard Medical School, the team used data from humans and fruit flies to identify cellular pathways linked to neurodegeneration. This allowed them to identify additional pathways that may be contributing to the development of Alzheimer’s.
“All the evidence that we have indicates that there are many different pathways involved in the progression of Alzheimer’s. It is multifactorial, and that may be why it’s been so hard to develop effective drugs,” says Ernest Fraenkel, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study. “We will need some kind of combination of treatments that hit different parts of this disease.”
Matthew Leventhal PhD ’25 is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Communications.
Alternative pathways
Over the past few decades, many studies have suggested that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain, which triggers a cascade of events that leads to neurodegeneration.
A handful of drugs have been developed to block or break down these plaques, but these drugs usually do not have a dramatic effect on disease progression. In hopes of identifying new drug targets, many scientists are now working on uncovering other mechanisms that might contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s.
“One possibility is that maybe there’s more than one cause of Alzheimer’s, and that even in a single person, there could be multiple contributing factors,” Fraenkel says. “So, even if the amyloid hypothesis is correct — and there are some people who don’t think it is — you need to know what those other factors are. And then if you can hit all the causes of the disease, you have a better chance of blocking and maybe even reversing some losses.”
To try to identify some of those other factors, Fraenkel’s lab teamed up with Mel Feany, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and a geneticist specializing in fruit fly genetics.
Using fruit flies as a model, Feany and others in her lab did a screen in which they knocked out nearly every conserved gene expressed in fly neurons. Then, they measured whether each of these gene knockdowns had any effect on the age at which the flies develop neurodegeneration. This allowed them to identify about 200 genes that accelerate neurodegeneration.
Some of these were already linked to neurodegeneration, including genes for the amyloid precursor protein and for proteins called presenillins, which play a role in the formation of amyloid proteins.
The researchers then analyzed this data using network algorithms that Fraenkel’s lab has been developing over the past several years. These are algorithms that can identify connections between genes that may be involved in the same cellular pathways and functions.
In this case, the aim was to try to link the genes identified in the fruit fly screen with specific processes and cellular pathways that might contribute to neurodegeneration. To do that, the researchers combined the fruit fly data with several other datasets, including genomic data from postmortem tissue of Alzheimer’s patients.
The first stage of their analysis revealed that many of the genes identified in the fruit fly study also decline as humans age, suggesting that they may be involved in neurodegeneration in humans.
Network analysis
In the next phase of their study, the researchers incorporated additional data relevant to Alzheimer’s disease, including eQTL (expression quantitative trait locus) data — a measure of how different gene variants affect the expression levels of certain proteins.
Using their network optimization algorithms on this data, the researchers identified pathways that link genes to their potential role in Alzheimer’s development. The team chose two of those pathways to focus on in the new study.
The first is a pathway, not previously linked to Alzheimer’s disease, related to RNA modification. The network suggested that when one of two of the genes in this pathway — MEPCE and HNRNPA2B1 — are missing, neurons become more vulnerable to the Tau tangles that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. The researchers confirmed this effect by knocking down those genes in studies of fruit flies and in human neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs).
The second pathway reported in this study is involved in DNA damage repair. This network includes two genes called NOTCH1 and CSNK2A1, which have been linked to Alzheimer’s before, but not in the context of DNA repair. Both genes are most well-known for their roles in regulating cell growth.
In this study, the researchers found evidence that when these genes are missing, DNA damage builds up in cells, through two different DNA-damaging pathways. Buildup of unrepaired DNA has previously been shown to lead to neurodegeneration.
Now that these targets have been identified, the researchers hope to collaborate with other labs to help explore whether drugs that target them could improve neuron health. Fraenkel and other researchers are working on using IPSCs from Alzheimer’s patients to generate neurons that could be used to evaluate such drugs.
“The search for Alzheimer’s drugs will get dramatically accelerated when there are very good, robust experimental systems,” he says. “We’re coming to a point where a couple of really innovative systems are coming together. One is better experimental models based on IPSCs, and the other one is computational models that allow us to integrate huge amounts of data. When those two mature at the same time, which is what we’re about to see, then I think we’ll have some breakthroughs.”
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
© Image: MIT News
The ocean is teeming with life. But unless you get up close, much of the marine world can easily remain unseen. That’s because water itself can act as an effective cloak: Light that shines through the ocean can bend, scatter, and quickly fade as it travels through the dense medium of water and reflects off the persistent haze of ocean particles. This makes it extremely challenging to capture the true color of objects in the ocean without imaging them at close range.
Now a team from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has developed an image-analysis tool that cuts through the ocean’s optical effects and generates images of underwater environments that look as if the water had been drained away, revealing an ocean scene’s true colors. The team paired the color-correcting tool with a computational model that converts images of a scene into a three-dimensional underwater “world,” that can then be explored virtually.
The researchers have dubbed the new tool “SeaSplat,” in reference to both its underwater application and a method known as 3D gaussian splatting (3DGS), which takes images of a scene and stitches them together to generate a complete, three-dimensional representation that can be viewed in detail, from any perspective.
“With SeaSplat, it can model explicitly what the water is doing, and as a result it can in some ways remove the water, and produces better 3D models of an underwater scene,” says MIT graduate student Daniel Yang.
The researchers applied SeaSplat to images of the sea floor taken by divers and underwater vehicles, in various locations including the U.S. Virgin Islands. The method generated 3D “worlds” from the images that were truer and more vivid and varied in color, compared to previous methods.
The team says SeaSplat could help marine biologists monitor the health of certain ocean communities. For instance, as an underwater robot explores and takes pictures of a coral reef, SeaSplat would simultaneously process the images and render a true-color, 3D representation, that scientists could then virtually “fly” through, at their own pace and path, to inspect the underwater scene, for instance for signs of coral bleaching.
“Bleaching looks white from close up, but could appear blue and hazy from far away, and you might not be able to detect it,” says Yogesh Girdhar, an associate scientist at WHOI. “Coral bleaching, and different coral species, could be easier to detect with SeaSplat imagery, to get the true colors in the ocean.”
Girdhar and Yang will present a paper detailing SeaSplat at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). Their study co-author is John Leonard, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.
Aquatic optics
In the ocean, the color and clarity of objects is distorted by the effects of light traveling through water. In recent years, researchers have developed color-correcting tools that aim to reproduce the true colors in the ocean. These efforts involved adapting tools that were developed originally for environments out of water, for instance to reveal the true color of features in foggy conditions. One recent work accurately reproduces true colors in the ocean, with an algorithm named “Sea-Thru,” though this method requires a huge amount of computational power, which makes its use in producing 3D scene models challenging.
In parallel, others have made advances in 3D gaussian splatting, with tools that seamlessly stitch images of a scene together, and intelligently fill in any gaps to create a whole, 3D version of the scene. These 3D worlds enable “novel view synthesis,” meaning that someone can view the generated 3D scene, not just from the perspective of the original images, but from any angle and distance.
But 3DGS has only successfully been applied to environments out of water. Efforts to adapt 3D reconstruction to underwater imagery have been hampered, mainly by two optical underwater effects: backscatter and attenuation. Backscatter occurs when light reflects off of tiny particles in the ocean, creating a veil-like haze. Attenuation is the phenomenon by which light of certain wavelengths attenuates, or fades with distance. In the ocean, for instance, red objects appear to fade more than blue objects when viewed from farther away.
Out of water, the color of objects appears more or less the same regardless of the angle or distance from which they are viewed. In water, however, color can quickly change and fade depending on one’s perspective. When 3DGS methods attempt to stitch underwater images into a cohesive 3D whole, they are unable to resolve objects due to aquatic backscatter and attenuation effects that distort the color of objects at different angles.
“One dream of underwater robotic vision that we have is: Imagine if you could remove all the water in the ocean. What would you see?” Leonard says.
A model swim
In their new work, Yang and his colleagues developed a color-correcting algorithm that accounts for the optical effects of backscatter and attenuation. The algorithm determines the degree to which every pixel in an image must have been distorted by backscatter and attenuation effects, and then essentially takes away those aquatic effects, and computes what the pixel’s true color must be.
Yang then worked the color-correcting algorithm into a 3D gaussian splatting model to create SeaSplat, which can quickly analyze underwater images of a scene and generate a true-color, 3D virtual version of the same scene that can be explored in detail from any angle and distance.
The team applied SeaSplat to multiple underwater scenes, including images taken in the Red Sea, in the Carribean off the coast of Curaçao, and the Pacific Ocean, near Panama. These images, which the team took from a pre-existing dataset, represent a range of ocean locations and water conditions. They also tested SeaSplat on images taken by a remote-controlled underwater robot in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
From the images of each ocean scene, SeaSplat generated a true-color 3D world that the researchers were able to virtually explore, for instance zooming in and out of a scene and viewing certain features from different perspectives. Even when viewing from different angles and distances, they found objects in every scene retained their true color, rather than fading as they would if viewed through the actual ocean.
“Once it generates a 3D model, a scientist can just ‘swim’ through the model as though they are scuba-diving, and look at things in high detail, with real color,” Yang says.
For now, the method requires hefty computing resources in the form of a desktop computer that would be too bulky to carry aboard an underwater robot. Still, SeaSplat could work for tethered operations, where a vehicle, tied to a ship, can explore and take images that can be sent up to a ship’s computer.
“This is the first approach that can very quickly build high-quality 3D models with accurate colors, underwater, and it can create them and render them fast,” Girdhar says. “That will help to quantify biodiversity, and assess the health of coral reef and other marine communities.”
This work was supported, in part, by the Investment in Science Fund at WHOI, and by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers
Life is a little brighter in Kapiyo these days.
For many in this rural Kenyan town, nightfall used to signal the end to schoolwork and other family activities. Now, however, the darkness is pierced by electric lights from newly solar-powered homes. Inside, children in this off-the-grid area can study while parents extend daily activities past dusk, thanks to a project conceived by an MIT mechanical engineering student and financed by the MIT African Students Association (ASA) Impact Fund.
There are changes coming, too, in the farmlands of Kashusha in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where another ASA Impact Fund project is working with local growers to establish an energy-efficient mill for processing corn — adding value, creating jobs, and sparking new economic opportunities. Similarly, plans are underway to automate processing of locally-grown cashews in the Mtwara area of Tanzania — an Impact Fund project meant to increase the income of farmers who now send over 90 percent of their nuts abroad for processing.
Inspired by a desire by MIT students to turn promising ideas into practical solutions for people in their home countries, the ASA Impact Fund is a student-run initiative that launched during the 2023-24 academic year. Backed by an alumni board, the fund empowers students to conceive, design, and lead projects with social and economic impact in communities across Africa.
After financing three projects its first year, the ASA Impact Fund received eight project proposals earlier this year and plans to announce its second round of two to four grants sometime this spring, says Pamela Abede, last year’s fund president. Last year’s awards totaled approximately $15,000.
The fund is an outgrowth of MIT’s African Learning Circle, a seminar open to the entire MIT community where biweekly discussions focus on ways to apply MIT’s educational resources, entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation to improve lives on the African continent.
“The Impact Fund was created,” says MIT African Students Association president Victory Yinka-Banjo, “to take this to the next level … to go from talking to execution.”
Aimed at bridging a gap between projects Learning Circle participants envision and resources available to fund them, the ASA Impact Fund “exists as an avenue to assist our members in undertaking social impact projects on the African continent,” the initiative’s website states, “thereby combining theoretical learning with practical application in alignment with MIT's motto.”
The fund’s value extends to the Cambridge campus as well, says ASA Impact Fund board member and 2021 MIT graduate Bolu Akinola.
“You can do cool projects anywhere,” says Akinola, who is originally from Nigeria and currently pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at Harvard University. “Where this is particularly catalyzing is in incentivizing folks to go back home and impact life back on the continent of Africa.”
MIT-Africa managing director Ari Jacobovits, who helped students get the fund off the ground last year, agrees.
“I think it galvanized the community, bringing people together to bridge a programmatic gap that had long felt like a missed opportunity,” Jacobovits says. “I’m always impressed by the level of service-mindedness ASA members have towards their home communities. It’s something we should all be celebrating and thinking about incorporating into our home communities, wherever they may be.”
Alumni Board president Selam Gano notes that a big part of the Impact Fund’s appeal is the close connections project applicants have with the communities they’re working with. MIT engineering major Shekina Pita, for example, is from Kapiyo, and recalls “what it was like growing up in a place with unreliable electricity,” which “would impact every aspect of my life and the lives of those that I lived around.” Pita’s personal experience and familiarity with the community informed her proposal to install solar panels on Kapiyo homes.
So far, the ASA Impact Fund has financed installation of solar panels for five households where families had been relying on candles so their children could do homework after dark.
“A candle is 15 Kenya shillings, and I don’t always have that amount to buy candles for my children to study. I am grateful for your help,” comments one beneficiary of the Kapiyo solar project.
Pita anticipates expanding the project, 10 homes at a time, and involving some college-age residents of those homes in solar panel installation apprenticeships.
“In general, we try to balance projects where we fund some things that are very concrete solutions to a particular community’s problems — like a water project or solar energy — and projects with a longer-term view that could become an organization or a business — like a novel cashew nut processing method,” says Gano, who conducted projects in her father’s homeland of Ethiopia while an MIT student. “I think striking that balance is something I am particularly proud of. We believe that people in the community know best what they need, and it’s great to empower students from those same communities.”
Vivian Chinoda, who received a grant from the ASA Impact Fund and was part of the African Students Association board that founded it, agrees.
“We want to address problems that can seem trivial without the lived experience of them,” says Chinoda. “For my friend and I, getting funding to go to Tanzania and drive more than 10 hours to speak to remotely located small-scale cashew farmers … made a difference. We were able to conduct market research and cross-check our hypotheses on a project idea we brainstormed in our dorm room in ways we would not have otherwise been able to access remotely.”
Similarly, Florida Mahano’s Impact Fund-financed project is benefiting from her experience growing up near farms in the DRC. Partnering with her brother, a mechanical engineer in her home community of Bukavu in eastern DRC, Mahano is on her way to developing a processing plant that will serve the needs of local farmers. Informed by market research involving about 500 farmers, consumers, and retailers that took place in January, the plant will likely be operational by summer 2026, says Mahano, who has also received funding from MIT’s Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Public Service Center.
“The ASA Impact Fund was the starting point for us,” paving the way for additional support, she says. “I feel like the ASA Impact Fund was really amazing because it allowed me to bring my idea to life.”
Importantly, Chinoda notes that the Impact Fund has already had early success in fostering ties between undergraduate students and MIT alumni.
“When we sent out the application to set up the alumni board, we had a volume of respondents coming in quite quickly, and it was really encouraging to see how the alums were so willing to be present and use their skill sets and connections to build this from the ground up,” she says.
Abede, who is originally from Ghana, would like to see that enthusiasm continue — increasing alumni awareness about the fund “to get more alums involved … more alums on the board and mentoring the students.”
Mentoring is already an important aspect of the ASA Impact Fund, says Akinola. Grantees, she says, get paired with alumni to help them through the process of getting projects underway.
“This fund could be a really good opportunity to strengthen the ties between the alumni community and current students,” Akinola says. “I think there are a lot of opportunities for funds like this to tap into the MIT alumni community. I think where there is real value is in the advisory nature — mentoring and coaching current students, helping the transfer of skills and resources.”
As more projects are proposed and funded each year, awareness of the ASA Impact Fund among MIT alumni will increase, Gano predicts.
“We’ve had just one year of grantees so far, and all of the projects they’ve conducted have been great,” he says. “I think even if we just continue functioning at this scale, if we’re able to sustain the fund, we can have a real lasting impact as students and alumni and build more and more partnerships on the continent.”
© Photo courtesy of the MIT-Africa Program.
Photo by Stuart Simpson ©
In new book, neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod traces connections between brain biology, political beliefs
Excerpted from “The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking” by Leor Zmigrod, Visiting Research Fellow ’19
From fascism and communism to eco-activism and spiritual evangelism, ideological groups offer absolute and utopian answers to societal troubles, strict rules for behavior, and an ingroup mentality through dedicated practices and symbols. These features exist across the spectrum of ideological persuasions. Such characteristics can emerge even when the ideology is guided by the sincerest intentions and noblest ideals — even if it claims to protect human dignity or flourishing.
Typically, ideologies are imagined as big visions. Grand and atmospheric. Intangible and out of our personal control. Few of us can outline the precise tenets of pompously uppercased Conservatism, Liberalism, Fascism, Communism, Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, Theism, or Populism, with all their myriad meanings and interpretations. As though from the heavens, these -isms describe the contours of life and prescribe human action, instructing us about the cosmos and how we ought to relate to others within it. For believers, the utopian destiny of an ideology seems carved from the clouds of eternity. A looming force soaring above our heads, meant to be venerated and revered.
The image of ideologies as celestial and static has always troubled me. Ideologies coexist among us, within us, on earth. Not in the skies of history or the towers of political elites. There is no transcendent plane on which they live; no altitudes from which attitudes descend fully formed and holy. Ideologies inhabit individuals. Individual minds convert social doctrines into ideological thinking, a style of thinking that is governed by strict mental rules and carefully regimented mental leaps.
While most definitions perceive ideologies as historical currents and sociological movements, I am interested in examining ideologies as psychological phenomena instead. This psychological lens allows us to ask what an ideology does to its believers and whom it most easily attracts. By spotlighting the processes happening within individual brains, we can probe when an ideology constrains its followers’ mental lives and whether it can ever liberate them.
I invite you to sit down on that gray chair — yes, the one at the desk — and make yourself comfortable. I point to the monitor in front of you and say this is where the experiment will happen. Soon, when I leave the room, you will see instructions pop up on the screen.
Please press ENTER when you are ready.
You press ENTER.
Hello! Welcome to the experiment. Today you will play a series of brain games and problem-solving challenges. For the first game, you will be presented with a deck of cards. Each card will be painted with a number of geometric objects of a specific color and shape. For instance, you may encounter a card with three red circles or a card decorated with a single blue triangle.
The game is a “card-sorting task.” A card will appear at the bottom of your screen. Imagine it is painted with four orange squares. You need to decide how to match it to one of four cards already at the top of the screen.
You will hear a happy jingle when you choose the CORRECT match.
You will hear an angry beep when you choose the INCORRECT match.
Please press ENTER if you understand the instructions.
You press ENTER.
Your first card has three green stars.
You try to match it with the card at the top of the screen decorated with the two blue stars. Maybe stars should go together with other stars.
BEEP!
You sigh. You try again. Maybe your three green stars should be paired with the card containing four green circles? Green-on-green?
Drag, press, release, and … happy jingles! You are right!
You shrug proudly to yourself.
Green-on-green. Easy.
Next card in your deck: one red triangle.
You follow the rule: pair color with color. You place red on red and … jackpot! Jingles again.
You like this rule. You apply it on the next round and the next. Green-on-green, red-on-red, orange-on-orange, blue-on-blue.
The habit is oddly fulfilling. Sliding cards to their rightful grouping, you barely need to think.
After five, or ten, or fifteen rounds — repetition blurs the boundaries of time — the next card in your deck has two blue squares. You go for the blue card at the top of the screen.
BEEP!
An angry, unexpected noise is emitted from the speakers.
You feel betrayed. You forgot the game world was capable of such an offensive sound. It’s insulting.
Maybe it’s just a glitch.
You select the blue card again. It’s second nature to you now, blue on blue.
BEEP!
How can this be? The game world’s inconsistency is like an astonishing infidelity. It makes you want to get up and leave the experiment room.
But you are an addict now. The jingle gave you the feeling (the illusion?) of control, of self-possession. It signaled your cleverness.
In a mad rush you drag the two-blue-squared card toward the three-orange-circled card — there is nothing unifying these cards, not number or color or shape, but you don’t care, you are annoyed. BEEP! The noise barely dissipates before you are lugging the card again, this time toward the four-green-starred card. BEEP! Outraged at this rebellion, you move the mouse in fast, frenzied motions. The rules are not supposed to change halfway through the game. You haul the card to the last unexplored option, swearing to yourself that if this isn’t a match, if the jingle doesn’t return, you will storm out of here in protest, you will wave your arm in the air to call the experimenter back in the room and demand answers, you will — jingle! It worked! You strain your eyes to see what the matching card was. It was two red triangles. Two. Two! Hah! The number of shapes on the card was the same as on the card you held. Hallelujah! Maybe order will return once more. Or maybe this iteration of the task was just a bug. A mere hiccup.
Next time a card pops up on the screen, should you obey the old tradition, follow the color code, or try this new pattern, count the numbers and sort anew? Should you stick to your guns — ignore the anomaly — or should you change, explore, adjust, adapt, revise, and realize that …
This is where I step out of the experiment and tell you that your natural reaction to the change can tell me almost everything about you. Your spontaneous response to the fact that the old rule stopped working and you needed to discover a new one to survive is a kind of inadvertent confession. In this simple game of stars and circles, you have accidentally and inevitably exposed your innermost beliefs.
Why? Because there are two of you. There is the participant who notices the change in the rule governing the game and responds by changing in line with the new demands of the task. This version of you is the adaptable, cognitively flexible individual. When the world changes, you may feel surprise, but you have no fear. You change with the times, with the demands of the environment. You are not strongly rule-bound. You are happy to slip between habits. In fact, you don’t mind having no habit at all. You easily switch between modes of thinking; you are fluid; elastic; you adapt.
However, there is another you. In this version of you, you hate the change. You notice the fact that the old rule no longer works, and you refuse to believe it. You will try again and again to repeat the first rule, but it will be in vain. In fact, you will be punished every time you repeat the original habit. The unnerving BEEP will hit you like a slap in the face. But you won’t move, won’t dodge the blow. You will remain immobile, hanging on tightly to the false belief that somehow the wrathful beep will dissipate and be replaced by a jolly melody. The false and nostalgic belief that the environment around you will magically return and so you don’t need to change. You persevere even when it would be faster to sever ties with the past and move on. This is the cognitively rigid version of you.
Which of these copies of you is you? The flexible or the rigid? The adaptable or the stubbornly unmoving?
Maybe you are neither the first nor the second. You could be somewhere in between: sometimes adaptable, sometimes rigid. Maybe your flexibility depends on circumstance. At ease, you are fluid, adjusting calmly to novelty or surprise. Yet in moments of stress, your movements narrow, your thoughts harden. Anxiety solidifies you, rendering you stiff.
What I, the experimenter, the scientist, have discovered is that how you perform in this game can give me clues about your whole approach to life. Your level of rigidity in this neuropsychological test foreshadows the rigidity with which you believe in ideologies in the social and political world. Your perceptual reflexes are linked to your ideological reflexes.
In fact, your brain comes to mirror your politics and prejudices in strange, profound, and astonishing ways — ways that challenge how we understand the tensions between nature and nurture, risk and resilience, freedom and fate. If our ideological beliefs are related to our cognitive and neural patterns of responding, then we must face new questions about how our bodies become politicized and in what ways we are capable of resisting, changing, and exercising personal agency.
When my colleagues and I invited thousands of people to complete cognitive tests of mental flexibility such as this game, called the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, we found that the people who are the most behaviorally adaptable on neuropsychological tasks are the same people who — in the realm of ideologies — are most open-minded, most accepting of plurality and difference. The people with the most flexible minds are the people who acknowledge that the intellectual realm can be separated from the personal realm. They do not viscerally hate their interlocuters — they may hate their opinions but they do not project that hatred onto the persons voicing them. In contrast, the most cognitively rigid individuals, those who struggle to change when rules change, tend to hold the most dogmatic attitudes. They hate disagreement and are unwilling to shift their beliefs when credible counterevidence is presented.
Cognitive rigidity translates into ideological rigidity.
This may seem obvious to some: a rigid person is a rigid person. But in fact these patterns are not obvious. When neuroscientists talk about cognition and perception, we are talking about information processing that deals with simple stimuli, with basic sensory information in neutral contexts. Cognitive tasks are composed of uncomplicated elements — colored shapes and moving black dots — displayed on spare, undecorated screens. Through these tasks, we are not assessing how you deal with emotionally evocative or triggering information — information that genuinely scares you or makes you feel a sour pinch of disgust. We are not studying tasks that are too cognitively demanding or complex — ones that would exasperate you needlessly. When neuroscientists measure cognition and perception, we glean individual differences in how a brain forms decisions, learns from the environment, and responds to challenges or contradictions at the most foundational level.
These individual differences are implicit; we have little conscious access to them or control over their expression. A cognitively rigid person may insist that they are spectacularly flexible, and an adaptable thinker may believe that they lack mental malleability. It is astonishing how rarely we know ourselves.
As a result, the link between mental inflexibility and ideological rigidity reveals a critical insight about how our brains work and how ideologies penetrate human brains. It suggests that our characteristic rigidity, rigidity that is evident when we deal with any information — even orange stars and blue circles — can propagate up to higher-level rigidities that emerge in our ideological choices and actions.
Even when we are not thinking explicitly about politics, the reverberations of our ideological convictions can be felt and measured. Ideological imprints on the brain can be observed when our minds are left to roam and drift, when we imagine and invent, when we observe and interpret even the most neutral of situations. The ideological brain’s rigidities and idiosyncrasies manifest where we least expect them, in our most private sensations and physiological responses, beneath the surface of our public convictions and conscious feelings. The dangers of dogmatic ideologies are therefore not just political — the consequences are neural, individual, and existential.
Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2025 by Leor Zmigrod. All rights reserved.
Behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan has never forgotten the pleasure he felt the first time he tasted a delicious crisp, yet gooey Levain cookie. He compares the experience to when he encounters new ideas.
“That hedonic pleasure is pretty much the same pleasure I get hearing a new idea, discovering a new way of looking at a situation, or thinking about something, getting stuck and then having a breakthrough. You get this kind of core basic reward,” says Mullainathan, the Peter de Florez Professor with dual appointments in the MIT departments of Economics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a principal investigator at the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS).
Mullainathan’s love of new ideas, and by extension of going beyond the usual interpretation of a situation or problem by looking at it from many different angles, seems to have started very early. As a child in school, he says, the multiple-choice answers on tests all seemed to offer possibilities for being correct.
“They would say, ‘Here are three things. Which of these choices is the fourth?’ Well, I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ There are good explanations for all of them,” Mullainathan says. “While there’s a simple explanation that most people would pick, natively, I just saw things quite differently.”
Mullainathan says the way his mind works, and has always worked, is “out of phase” — that is, not in sync with how most people would readily pick the one correct answer on a test. He compares the way he thinks to “one of those videos where an army’s marching and one guy’s not in step, and everyone is thinking, what’s wrong with this guy?”
Luckily, Mullainathan says, “being out of phase is kind of helpful in research.”
And apparently so. Mullainathan has received a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” has been designated a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, was named a “Top 100 thinker” by Foreign Policy magazine, was included in the “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world” by Wired magazine, and won the Infosys Prize, the largest monetary award in India recognizing excellence in science and research.
Another key aspect of who Mullainathan is as a researcher — his focus on financial scarcity — also dates back to his childhood. When he was about 10, just a few years after his family moved to the Los Angeles area from India, his father lost his job as an aerospace engineer because of a change in security clearance laws regarding immigrants. When his mother told him that without work, the family would have no money, he says he was incredulous.
“At first I thought, that can’t be right. It didn’t quite process,” he says. “So that was the first time I thought, there’s no floor. Anything can happen. It was the first time I really appreciated economic precarity.”
His family got by running a video store and then other small businesses, and Mullainathan made it to Cornell University, where he studied computer science, economics, and mathematics. Although he was doing a lot of math, he found himself drawn not to standard economics, but to the behavioral economics of an early pioneer in the field, Richard Thaler, who later won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work. Behavioral economics brings the psychological, and often irrational, aspects of human behavior into the study of economic decision-making.
“It’s the non-math part of this field that’s fascinating,” says Mullainathan. “What makes it intriguing is that the math in economics isn’t working. The math is elegant, the theorems. But it’s not working because people are weird and complicated and interesting.”
Behavioral economics was so new as Mullainathan was graduating that he says Thaler advised him to study standard economics in graduate school and make a name for himself before concentrating on behavioral economics, “because it was so marginalized. It was considered super risky because it didn’t even fit a field,” Mullainathan says.
Unable to resist thinking about humanity’s quirks and complications, however, Mullainathan focused on behavioral economics, got his PhD at Harvard University, and says he then spent about 10 years studying people.
“I wanted to get the intuition that a good academic psychologist has about people. I was committed to understanding people,” he says.
As Mullainathan was formulating theories about why people make certain economic choices, he wanted to test these theories empirically.
In 2013, he published a paper in Science titled “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” The research measured sugarcane farmers’ performance on intelligence tests in the days before their yearly harvest, when they were out of money, sometimes nearly to the point of starvation. In the controlled study, the same farmers took tests after their harvest was in and they had been paid for a successful crop — and they scored significantly higher.
Mullainathan says he is gratified that the research had far-reaching impact, and that those who make policy often take its premise into account.
“Policies as a whole are kind of hard to change,” he says, “but I do think it has created sensitivity at every level of the design process, that people realize that, for example, if I make a program for people living in economic precarity hard to sign up for, that’s really going to be a massive tax.”
To Mullainathan, the most important effect of the research was on individuals, an impact he saw in reader comments that appeared after the research was covered in The Guardian.
“Ninety percent of the people who wrote those comments said things like, ‘I was economically insecure at one point. This perfectly reflects what it felt like to be poor.’”
Such insights into the way outside influences affect personal lives could be among important advances made possible by algorithms, Mullainathan says.
“I think in the past era of science, science was done in big labs, and it was actioned into big things. I think the next age of science will be just as much about allowing individuals to rethink who they are and what their lives are like.”
Last year, Mullainathan came back to MIT (after having previously taught at MIT from 1998 to 2004) to focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“I wanted to be in a place where I could have one foot in computer science and one foot in a top-notch behavioral economics department,” he says. “And really, if you just objectively said ‘what are the places that are A-plus in both,’ MIT is at the top of that list.”
While AI can automate tasks and systems, such automation of abilities humans already possess is “hard to get excited about,” he says. Computer science can be used to expand human abilities, a notion only limited by our creativity in asking questions.
“We should be asking, what capacity do you want expanded? How could we build an algorithm to help you expand that capacity? Computer science as a discipline has always been so fantastic at taking hard problems and building solutions,” he says. “If you have a capacity that you’d like to expand, that seems like a very hard computing challenge. Let’s figure out how to take that on.”
The sciences that “are very far from having hit the frontier that physics has hit,” like psychology and economics, could be on the verge of huge developments, Mullainathan says. “I fundamentally believe that the next generation of breakthroughs is going to come from the intersection of understanding of people and understanding of algorithms.”
He explains a possible use of AI in which a decision-maker, for example a judge or doctor, could have access to what their average decision would be related to a particular set of circumstances. Such an average would be potentially freer of day-to-day influences — such as a bad mood, indigestion, slow traffic on the way to work, or a fight with a spouse.
Mullainathan sums the idea up as “average-you is better than you. Imagine an algorithm that made it easy to see what you would normally do. And that’s not what you’re doing in the moment. You may have a good reason to be doing something different, but asking that question is immensely helpful.”
Going forward, Mullainathan will absolutely be trying to work toward such new ideas — because to him, they offer such a delicious reward.
© Photo: Adam Glanzman
The Conemaugh Generating Station in New Florence, Pennsylvania, was slated to close in 2028. In April, President Trump signed executive orders aimed at bolstering coal mining and coal-fired power plants.
Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
The Trump administration is attacking climate science on multiple fronts with little regard for federal law, say Harvard experts who worry that the damage will be hard to reverse even if the government eventually loses in court.
“This isn’t normal,” said Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law and faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. “No president that I know of in contemporary history has ever issued executive orders that are so reckless in disregard of legal limits. They’re willing to roll the dice or intentionally violate legal requirements and then say, ‘Chase us around and sue us to stop us.’”
In April, the president signed at least two executive orders that threaten climate progress, Freeman said. One instructs the Department of Justice to investigate state climate policies that conflict with the federal government; the other calls for federal agencies to prop up the nation’s fading coal industry.
Freeman spoke at an online briefing sponsored by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. Other speakers were former Obama science adviser and Teresa and John Heinz Research Professor of Environmental Policy John Holdren; Teresa and John Heinz Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy Joseph Aldy; and Mary Rice, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Respiratory Health.
“All of this runs the risk of climate change growing faster than it otherwise would have, possibly passing catastrophic tipping points.”
John Holdren
Panelists Jody Freeman (clockwise from upper left), Mary Rice, and John Holdren with moderator Joseph Aldy.
Photo by Grace DuVal
By turning its back on climate change, the U.S. loses more than the trust of its global partners, said Holdren. It loses time in a race with very little margin for error.
“Time lost from advancing solutions is gone forever,” he said. “And all of this runs the risk of climate change growing faster than it otherwise would have, possibly passing catastrophic tipping points.”
Many of the administration’s actions seem designed to undercut our ability to understand, never mind fight, the climate crisis, Holdren said. He cited changes that have weakened the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the National Science Foundation, along with cuts to work being carried out by nongovernmental organizations and universities. The U.S. and China have been the global leaders of efforts to better address climate change, he said. By slashing climate science, the administration is ceding leadership on an issue of global importance matched only by nuclear arms and pandemic threats, he argued.
Aldy charged that the new administration is seeking a “low information” government, with multiple actions aimed at shrinking government datasets, on climate and other issues. He is bracing for widespread negative effects touching everything from student science projects, to projections for hurricanes, extreme heat, and wildfires, to the ability of insurance companies to understand and incorporate extreme weather risks in setting rates.
“This government is actually making concerted efforts to reduce the amount of data available and reduce the generation of new data and evidence by both government scientists as well as scientists who are supported through government funding,” he said.
Aldy also lamented workforce reductions at federal agencies, including civil servants with scientific and policy expertise who will be hard to replace.
“Implementing policy is hard work,” Aldy said. “It’s critical to have a dedicated team of public servants who have the expertise and are trained in the sciences and law and public policy and public health and engineering and more. You need them to be able to understand what Congress passes, to understand what the White House may say we want to do, and then to be able to work effectively on implementation so that you can actually advance your goals.”
Rice is particularly concerned about cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose research office has been slated for major changes and whose research funding to university scientists has been slashed. Philanthropy can fill some of the holes, she said, but not at the same scale or with the same consistency. Much of the affected work has direct links to human health, she noted.
“In just the past few days, the EPA has canceled hundreds of research grants to universities, to scientists,” she said, adding: “When science is silenced, lives are lost.”
William Makris, Ed.M. ’00.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Incoming board president William Makris hopes alumni will share experiences and learn from one another
In his role as a business school admissions officer, William Makris, Ed.M. ’00, was guided by a simple principle when interviewing candidates: listen for opportunity.
“What qualities does each person bring with them?” Makris said. “How can we continue to nurture a person’s unique strengths while supporting them as they learn and grow?”
And as he prepares to step into the role of Harvard alumni board president on July 1 — a position that leads the Harvard Alumni Association board of directors and represents alumni worldwide — he is eager to listen and learn how to support and strengthen the growth of Harvard’s global alumni community.
Throughout his career, he has helped coach and advise mid-career professionals pursuing advanced degrees by being present, open to innovative ideas, and unafraid to ask questions — qualities he honed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Makris has worked in various leadership roles at business schools throughout New England. He served on the admissions committee and as an adviser for the MIT executive M.B.A. program at the MIT Sloan School of Management, as associate dean of M.B.A. admissions at Babson College, and as manager of part-time and executive M.B.A. programs at Northeastern University.
“When someone shares their story, I’m going to take the time to learn deeply about this person,” Makris said. “Being curious and understanding someone’s experience is very important to me and my work with alumni.”
Higher education is deeply intertwined with Makris’ family history. The grandson of Greek immigrants who moved to Cambridge with no formal education and a hope for a better life, Makris has always had a deep connection to Harvard.
His grandfather George Culolias founded The Tasty Sandwich Shop — affectionately known as “The Tasty” — a legendary one-room lunch restaurant in Harvard Square that served generations of hungry customers from 1916 until 1997. His grandmother Penio Culolias, who lived to 102, was a driving force for her children and grandchildren to pursue higher education.
As she brought her children to work, Makris’ grandmother walked with them through Harvard Yard. They would stop at the John Harvard Statue, where she would encourage them to study hard in the hopes that one day they could walk through the Yard as students.
Makris’ mother, Helen C. (Eleni) Makris ’50, graduated from Radcliffe College and became a teacher, and her brothers, Nicholas Culolias ’53 and Charles Bradford Ellis ’39, graduated from Harvard College. In a moment of serendipitous timing, Makris’ own graduation from HGSE coincided with his mother’s 50th reunion. His father, George “Moose” Makris, attended Northeastern University on a full football scholarship, where he also played baseball and hockey, returning to his alma mater after his official retirement to work in fundraising for athletic programs.
In today’s tumultuous time for higher education, Makris recognizes its value more than ever. “The opportunity for me to continue the journey that my grandmother envisioned is phenomenal,” he said. “I believe in the promise of higher education. I believe in what it’s done for me, and for generations of people here in the United States and in countries around the world.”
Makris, who arrived at Harvard later in life, thinks often of a quote from past HAA President Allyson Mendenhall ’90, M.L.A. ’99, who said: “Harvard comes to you when you’re ready, and you come to it when you’re ready.”
Makris earned his bachelor’s degree in public health from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, followed by an M.B.A. from Northeastern University. Working in finance at a tech company, he pivoted to a career in higher education — finding an atmosphere that provided opportunities to give new ideas a chance, even for someone just starting out — and enrolled in the master’s degree program at HGSE.
He found “an incredible home” at HGSE. “Harvard gave me a new lens to see the world,” he said. “It adjusted my orbit. I learned how to dive deep into a topic, to be thoughtful, and to make decisions informed by data — skills I carry with me today.”
Shortly after his graduation, he was inspired to volunteer after attending an event at the Harvard Club of Boston, where he found a “commonality of intellectual curiosity, sharing, and community” among his fellow alumni across the University.
Makris served for three years as co-chair of the HGSE Recent Alumni Council before joining the Graduate School Alumni Council as co-chair. He was also the appointed director from HGSE to the HAA board for two terms, where he co-led a graduate school alumni engagement initiative and helped develop a training program for new board members. Additionally, he spent three years as vice president of University-wide alumni affairs, representing the graduate and professional Schools, followed by his current term as first vice president of the HAA.
As he approaches his term, Makris feels humbled by the privilege of representing alumni.
He has been working closely with current alumni president, Moitri Chowdhury Savard ’93, whose “warmth, genuine leadership style, and collaborative energy is a gift,” he said.
Makris is building on Savard’s concept of veritates, or many truths — embracing multiple truths in order to connect in dialogue across differences — a turn of phrase Tracy Moore II ’06 helped coin, with a new theme that emphasizes speaking from experience and listening with empathy.
“I want people to activate their Harvard voices,” he said. “If you share your knowledge and experience, it invites others to share their stories. Listening is fostered. Commonalities arise. Identification is discovered. You begin to hear others’ stories with greater empathy. You are motivated to engage in debate and dialogue.”
He wants to ensure that all alumni feel welcome to be part of the community. “Harvard is going to be there for you when you need it, no matter what age you are,” he said. “Whether you’re attending your first event ever or your first event in 20 years, you’ll find your community waiting for you, and your voice will be heard.”
As Savard has reflected on her tenure during a challenging time for higher education, she has appreciated hearing the views of alumni around the country and the world. “Alumni hold multiple truths, but agree on many shared values, including the importance of education and open inquiry,” Savard said.
She is excited to support Makris in his new role. “He understands the significance of alumni voice and brings various viewpoints to the table. His expertise in bringing people together and his positive outlook will be invaluable to the alumni community — we are lucky to have him at the helm.”
NUS Information Technology (NUS IT) has been recognised with the Digital Achievers (Team) award at the Singapore Computer Society’s Tech Leader Awards 2025, in recognition of their trailblazing work on AI-Know—a transformative platform poised to redefine how the NUS community engages with artificial intelligence.
Developed in-house by the Enterprise Services Team at NUS IT in collaboration with departments across the University, AI-Know is a university-wide initiative aimed at empowering, enabling, and educating the NUS community on Generative AI (GenAI). Designed as a one-stop super-app for AI-driven tools and training, AI-Know has already impacted nearly 1,000 staff members across more than 120 departments, driving unprecedented levels of digital transformation and innovation.
At the heart of AI-Know is a centralised suite of AI productivity tools, namely, AI-Chat, AI-Draw, AI-Minute, and AI-Guide These tools are revolutionising traditional workflows by automating manual tasks, enhancing decision-making, and boosting efficiency across administrative and academic domains. For instance, the AI-Minute tool alone has saved an estimated 9,480 man-hours annually by automating the generation of meeting minutes.
“AI-Know isn’t just a project—it’s a movement,” said Mr Irving Neil Kwok, Head of Enterprise Services, NUS IT. “It exemplifies how a university can lead digital transformation from within. This award reflects our team’s commitment to making AI accessible, impactful, and sustainable for everyone at NUS. We’re proud that AI-Know has empowered our staff to build and use AI solutions tailored to their needs—and we’re just getting started.”
One of AI-Know’s standout features is its emphasis on citizen development, enabling staff to independently create AI solutions via the AI-Create platform. This bottom-up innovation has led to successful deployments such as the automation of hostel appeals processing by the Office of Student Affairs which helps reduce processing time and human errors; and the aptitude-based admissions process for the Office of Admissions speeding up decision-making while ensuring no promising candidate is overlooked.
Beyond its operational impact, AI-Know also prioritises AI literacy through tiered Digital Enablement training sessions, offering foundational to advanced skills in using GenAI for work. To date, over 1,000 NUS staff have undergone AI training sessions, fostering a future-ready culture of innovation across campus.
AI-Know’s scalability and agility are also key to its success. The platform supports rapid prototyping, iterative enhancements based on user feedback, and seamless integration of the latest AI models from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. This ensures that the NUS community always has access to cutting-edge capabilities.
Looking ahead, the team is working to extend the reach of AI-Know to the 50,000-strong student community. One initiative on the horizon is a new AI-powered career guidance chatbot, co-developed with the Centre for Future Graduates, to deliver personalised support and boost career readiness.
With its comprehensive, collaborative, and future-facing approach, AI-Know is not only setting the gold standard for AI integration within higher education but also serving as a blueprint for digital transformation in institutions worldwide.
An AI version of Karim R. Lakhani, the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, delivers opening remarks at the Generative AI Symposium in a packed Klarman Hall.
Photos by Grace DuVal
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
How is generative AI shaping academia? Faculty, students, and staff from across Harvard gathered recently to tackle that urgent question.
Speakers at the half-day event, co-sponsored by the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, Harvard University Information Technology, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, wrestled with how generative AI is changing the skills students need to succeed. The core message: AI compels higher education to fundamentally re-evaluate its purpose, its methods, and its values.
“This is an incredible opportunity for all of us, wherever we are at Harvard, to imagine how the ways in which we work, the ways in which we teach, the ways in which we learn, and the ways in which we do our research can be fundamentally transformed,” said Karim Lakhani, Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration and founding chair of the Digital Data Design Institute. “Our mission of veritas can actually be enhanced by using these tools.”
“We need to be clear that access to information is not the same as learning, and it’s certainly not the same as active learning and sustained learning.”
Nonie K. Lesaux, dean of the faculty
Harvard University Provost and Dane Professor of Law John Manning framed the event at Klarman Hall as a “One Harvard” moment.
The symposium surfaced disagreements about the proper use of AI in academia. Rebecca Nesson, panel moderator and dean for academic programs at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, polled the audience: Is it OK for students to use AI to summarize the readings for a class, instead of doing the reading themselves? Is it appropriate for a professor to use AI to write a letter of recommendation? What about a first-pass assessment of student work? The audience was split.
In a panel on generative AI and the future of learning, the speakers grappled with what it means to genuinely learn something in a world shaped by AI.
“We need to be clear that access to information is not the same as learning, and it’s certainly not the same as active learning and sustained learning,” said Nonie K. Lesaux, dean of the faculty and Roy E. Larsen Professor of Education and Human Development at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Christopher W. Stubbs, Samuel C. Moncher Professor of Physics and of Astronomy at FAS and senior adviser on generative AI, said FAS faculty vary in their adoption of AI and AI policies in the classroom: Some organize their teaching around it, while others ban it outright. “We have a long way to go in having our colleagues appreciate what this means, to rip down to the studs what it is we want to accomplish in the education we give our students, and then build it back up again,” he said.
Iavor Bojinov, assistant professor and Richard Hodgson Fellow at Harvard Business School, teaches the first AI-native course at that School, “Data Science and AI for Leaders.” Students use AI to prepare for class, answer questions, and build their own companies. “People are very positive about these tools, but it made it so easy for them to cheat. A lot of students came to me and said, ‘I can just copy-paste things, so do I really need to learn these things?’ This is something we’re thinking really hard about.”
Despite these open questions, researchers across Harvard are leveraging generative AI to achieve remarkable advancements. Alberto Cavallo, Thomas S. Murphy Professor of Business Administration and co-director of the Pricing Lab at the Digital Data Design Institute, used it to identify the countries of origin for thousands of products to estimate the impact of tariffs. Rachel Carmody, Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at FAS, shared AI research that combed through 40 terabytes of metagenomic data to analyze the possible extinction of certain gut bacteria in developed countries. “It’s a trillion-piece jigsaw puzzle,” she said. “With generative AI, we can get results back in a week, whereas a year ago it would have taken us a year.”
The symposium is the latest in Harvard’s efforts to elevate teaching, learning, and research through the innovative use of AI. Harvard Business School launched the Digital Data Design Institute in 2022 to be a global research center, providing data-driven insights on the ways AI is transforming work and the economy. In 2023, HUIT, in partnership with the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and faculty and staff from across the University, launched an AI “sandbox” where users can safely play with various large language models.
The symposium finished with student presentations and a reception featuring hands-on demonstrations of AI applications. FAS, the SEAS, and the Harvard Library also co-sponsored the event.
Krista River and the Arneis Quartet.
Photos by Dylan Goodman
Clea Simon
Harvard Correspondent
Music can be difficult to talk about. But WordSong, which styles itself “Boston’s premier interactive concert organization,” confronts the fraught relationship between music and words directly.
Earlier this month the Mahindra Humanities Center hosted a WordSong performance and discussion centered on William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” By commissioning multiple composers to set a single text to music and then inviting discussion about the poem and its varied musical settings, the series invites deeper listening of both poetry and contemporary composition.
The occasion, co-sponsored by Arts and Humanities Dean Sean Kelly, marked the premiere of short pieces by Boston-area composers Elena Ruehr, Howard Frazin, and Tom Schnauber. All three works were performed in Holden Chapel by the local Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Krista River and New England-based Arneis Quartet.
“It’s difficult to talk about music, but we believe that everybody can,” said Schnauber, who founded WordSong with Frazin in 2008.
However, the German American composer added: “It is easier to talk about words than about music.”
With that in mind, the program began with a reading of Yeats’ poem. Its imagery of disconnection and a strange Sphynx-like creature waking as a moment of doom approaches, was written in 1919. That tumultuous time, following the horrific destruction of the first World War as well as Ireland’s struggles for independence, echoes into our own era, as audience members quickly noted.
As attendees chimed in about what the poem evoked for them, Schnauber jotted down themes on a white board. They included politics, disenchantment, and blame as well as religion and Einstein, whose theory of relativity was relatively new when the poem was written. Also brought up was Yeats’ animal imagery (“the falcon cannot hear the falconer”) and the poem’s structure, including its use of repetition.
The three compositions took different approaches to the text.
Schnauber’s setting was performed first. A cappella sections, which left River’s voice exposed, were used to accentuate phrases, as when the soprano mused over the title line. Pizzicato passages played up the disconnection that is a theme of the poem.
Ruehr’s composition took a more lyrical approach. Perhaps in response to the circling falcon of the first stanza, repeated (or circling) motifs gave way to the disruption of harsh staccato passages. The music of the string quartet then turned almost dreamy for the poem’s contemplative second stanza.
Frazin’s piece started with River singing a cappella before a dramatic entrance by the strings, the instrumentals accenting the long, held vocal phrasings. This piece also made use of a few repeated motifs passed between the viola and the cello, the instrument most associated with the human voice.
After the three pieces were performed, the composers invited audience comments. Attendees remarked how different musical settings played up various emotional responses.
At times, the conversation focused on what imagery each musical piece highlighted. When Ruehr noted that the natural imagery was important to her, a listener said that had been clear in the music: “I heard the falcon swooping in yours.”
During the conversation, each piece was performed for a second time, provoking more conversation about what each composer sought to emphasize, and which were the most successful. Comments ranged from technical critiques, with some listeners saying they heard echoes of early religious or Irish folk music in the compositions, to emotional reactions.
When Schnauber and Frazin got to the monstrous “rough beast” of the second stanza, one listener noted, the effect was “cataclysmic.” In Frazin’s piece, that listener said, the effect was more “resigned.”
As the conversation turned once again to the events of Yeats’ time, Frazin emphasized how relevant the poem, and the pieces it inspired, are today.
“We’re living through a time not so unlike his time, and there are very complicated emotional conflicts,” said the composer, who also serves as WordSong’s artistic director. This raises its own questions. “Even if you don’t like something, what you are going to do about it is complicated. We are having to step back and say, how did we get here?”
As the conversation continued well past the event’s scheduled end time, it was clear that neither the text nor the music had left the audience at a loss for words.
“Listeners know a lot more than they think they do,” said Frazin. He credited people’s “intuitive artistic understanding,” an understanding that is aided by the sharing of ideas.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Do well by doing: That’s the attitude Michael Oved, a graduating senior, says he brought to his time at Harvard College.
An economics and history concentrator with a passion for entrepreneurship and Republican politics, Oved says he takes an economics approach to projects, whether academic or extracurricular. At College, that meant identifying an unmet need and then building something new to serve that need and connect people.
“Everything I’ve done at Harvard has been about doing,” said Oved, who grew up in New York City and attended a Jewish high school in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.
After a summer job at a startup in Barcelona, Oved wanted to bring some of that same startup buzz to Harvard and to other college students in Boston. A member of the Harvard Venture Capital Club, he envisioned an entrepreneurship summit where young aspiring VCs could meet and hear from real-world experts. Since nothing like that existed, Oved decided he’d just have to start one. Naysayers thought it was too ambitious and costly to pull off, he said, but the conference sold out and has continued for the last three years.
“I’m interested in building, I’m interested in doing, and that’s what the venture capital group was about,” he said. “It was about me using my platform as a sophomore at Harvard, an 18-year-old kid who felt like the world was at his fingertips. How can I do something with that feeling?”
Oved brought that same zeal and drive to the Harvard Republican Club, another group he joined as a first-year student looking to explore as much as the College had to offer.
“I want everyone to experience what I’ve experienced here.”
For a while, Oved kept his political views to himself. But in “Ec10,” a 500-plus student survey course taught by Harvard economists Jason Furman and David Laibson, he started speaking up in class. People took notice.
“I think people had a sense that I was asking questions from a very Republican-leaning perspective. I got dozens of people coming up to me on the street, literally, coming up to me on the street saying, ‘Michael, thank you for asking that question. I had the same question,’” he said.
Furman, Oved’s senior thesis adviser, called him “as brilliant as he is charismatic,” and said he stood out in class for his “openness to debating alternative perspectives.”
Though the cohort of Republican-leaning students on campus was thought to be small, Oved sensed there was a “hunger” for community, but no outlet where they could get together and share viewpoints. “And so, I said, how can we build something to meet that need?”
In late 2023, as president of the Harvard Republican Club, Oved grew the mailing list to 850 members and brought in high-profile speakers like tech investor Peter Thiel and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’76, now the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
His goal was to move the club from the campus social fringe to the center. He did just that when the club offered its full-throated endorsement of the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump, in August 2024.
The move turned a bright, national spotlight on the club. Not long after Trump’s victory, Oved penned an essay in The Harvard Crimson, “Being Republican at Harvard Has Never Been Better,” about the need for students from across the ideological spectrum to engage in real life, not argue on the internet. But not all of the attention was welcome.
“It was a very, very difficult time for me when we endorsed,” Oved says now. Though he expected to receive some criticism for the decision, the vitriol from strangers, particularly online, was “difficult to endure.”
Still, that experience hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm for being bold and building new things. Drawing on his religious education and family values about the importance of giving back, last year Oved launched the podcast “30 Years in 30 Minutes,” where guests share life lessons from pivotal points in their lives.
“How can I bring world-class speakers that only someone from Harvard would have access to, how can I bring them to the average person?” he said of the podcast’s origin. “I want everyone to experience what I’ve experienced here.”
“MIT Sloan was my first and only choice,” says MIT graduate student David Brown. After receiving his BS in chemical engineering at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Brown spent eight years as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army, serving as a platoon leader and troop commander.
Now in the final year of his MBA, Brown has co-founded a climate tech company — Helix Carbon — with Ariel Furst, an MIT assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Evan Haas MBA ’24, SM ’24. Their goal: erase the carbon footprint of tough-to-decarbonize industries like ironmaking, polyurethanes, and olefins by generating competitively-priced, carbon-neutral fuels directly from waste carbon dioxide (CO2). It’s an ambitious project; they’re looking to scale the company large enough to have a gigaton per year impact on CO2 emissions. They have lab space off campus, and after graduation, Brown will be taking a full-time job as chief operating officer.
“What I loved about the Army was that I felt every day that the work I was doing was important or impactful in some way. I wanted that to continue, and felt the best way to have the greatest possible positive impact was to use my operational skills learned from the military to help close the gap between the lab and impact in the market.”
The following photo gallery provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Brown has been like as an MIT student.
The Knight Science Journalism Program (KSJ) at MIT has announced that Usha Lee McFarling, national science correspondent for STAT and former KSJ Fellow, will be joining the team in August as their next director.
As director, McFarling will play a central role in helping to manage KSJ — an elite mid-career fellowship program that brings prominent science journalists from around the world for 10 months of study and intellectual exploration at MIT, Harvard University, and other institutions in the Boston area.
“I’m eager to take the helm during this critical time for science journalism, a time when journalism is under attack both politically and economically and misinformation — especially in areas of science and health — is rife,” says McFarling. “My goal is for the program to find even more ways to support our field and its practitioners as they carry on their important work.”
McFarling is a veteran science writer, most recently working for STAT News. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light, and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow in 1992-93. McFarling graduated from Brown University with a degree in biology in 1988 and later earned a master’s degree in biological psychology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Her work on the diseased state of the world’s oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and a Polk Award, among others. Her coverage of health disparities at STAT has earned an Edward R. Murrow award, and awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024, she was awarded the Victor Cohn prize for excellence in medical science reporting and the Bernard Lo, MD award in bioethics.
McFarling will succeed director Deborah Blum, who served as director for 10 years. Blum, also a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the bestselling author of six books, is retiring to return to a full-time writing career. She will join the board of Undark, a magazine she helped found while at KSJ, and continue as a board member of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, among others.
“It’s been an honor to serve as director of the Knight Science Journalism program for the past 10 years and a pleasure to be able to support the important work that science journalists do,” Blum says. “And I know that under the direction of Usha McFarling — who brings such talent and intelligence to the job — that KSJ will continue to grow and thrive in all the best ways.”
By Prof Hsu Li Yang, Vice Dean of Global Health and Programme Leader of Infectious Diseases from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUS
By Bao Rong, a student from the Dept of Communications and New Media and the Dept of Chinese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS
Singapore is home to cultural neighbourhoods such as Little India, Chinatown, Kampong Glam and the area around Tanjong Pagar that has become affectionately known as ‘Koreatown’. But did you know that there was once a ‘Little Japan’ too?
‘Little Japan’ was an area around Middle Road – part of what we know as Bugis today – that comprised businesses, schools and places of worship for a Japanese community that settled in Singapore in the 1800s and 1900s. A community of thousands, they were far from little. Their presence in pre-war Singapore was significant in shaping Singapore’s identity as a cosmopolitan port city in the colonial period.
Dr Clay Eaton, historian and lecturer in the NUS Department of Japanese Studies and Associate at the NUS Asia Research Institute’s (ARI’s) Inter-Asia Engagement cluster, said, “The Japanese wartime occupation of Singapore is well-known to many of us, but Japan and Singapore’s relationship predates World War II. The unique role that the Japanese played here, as representatives of a major imperial power as well as a part of the broader Asian community, can help us better appreciate Singapore’s rich cultural past. Very little work has been done on this community, especially in English, but they can tell us quite a bit about the social complexity of this period.”
In an attempt to reconstruct the pre-war Japanese community in Singapore’s “Little Japan” around Middle Road, Dr Eaton; Professor Naoko Shimazu, also an Associate at ARI’s Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster and former Research Cluster Leader; and Dr Chee Keng Lee from NUS College teamed up for a project known as ‘Mapping Middle Road’, the first public history project of its kind about the Japanese community in Singapore.
The project was carried out under the National Heritage Board’s (NHB) Heritage Research Grant and was hosted by ARI. It took two years to complete and was published as a story map for the National Library Board’s Curiocity[1]. Mapping these historical findings allows users to better visualise how past movements of the Japanese communities around Middle Road unfolded and changed with significant events, thus turning abstract historical change into something we can see and trace across a real-world landscape.
The findings in ‘Mapping Middle Road’ were widely discussed at conferences and talks in Asia and Europe.
The researchers’ findings were also further expanded and later developed into an online resource named ‘Middle Road: Pre-War Japanese Community in Singapore’ that is accessible to the public at MUSE, NHB’s digital heritage publication hosted on Roots.
Bringing the Japanese community’s shifting past to life through maps and movement
Developing this digital map to help users see not only where events and communities existed, but also how they shifted over time, was no easy task.
A team of faculty and student researchers combed through resources such as photos, advertisements, newspaper articles, travelogues and guides in various English- and Japanese-language materials residing in the National Library’s NewspaperSG online archive, the Japanese Association of Singapore’s collections, and the National Diet Library (the national library of Japan); to locate specific references to the Japanese community associated with particular places in the country.
They identified over 20 locations and institutions to feature in the story map, with their efforts culminating in the visual reconstruction of the presence and movement of various Japanese institutions over time. These included schools, clinics, places of worship and businesses – all of which together help us imagine what life was like for the Japanese community here in Singapore at that time.
Dr Eaton shared, “Perhaps our biggest surprise, since this was a mapping project, was how mobile some of the institutions we were tracking ended up being. Just about every prominent business moved at least once (like the clothier Ebisuya) or had multiple branch locations (like the Tamagawa restaurant).”
Important locations such as the Japanese Consulate, Japanese Association and Toyo Hotel moved multiple times, making it challenging to pinpoint their locations onto a map, Dr Eaton shared. Ultimately, the team embraced the shifts in locations as a key factor in explaining the changes within the community over time.
The Consulate’s move from its original location on Sophia Road – located near the Japanese resident community along Middle Road – to the ‘Gudan’ district (the Japanese term for the Central Business District) came as Japan rose in political power globally. Its eventual return to quieter offices on Mt Emily before World War II presumably symbolised the growing isolation of the Japanese Empire on the world stage.
Prof Shimazu shared how researchers had also identified a significant class division within Singapore’s pre-war Japanese community, noting tensions between the first Japanese settlers in Singapore in the late 1800s and a more affluent and educated wave of Japanese immigrants who arrived after 1910 and worked in the Gudan district.
The establishment of elite institutions like the Japanese Association and Japanese Club did not help to bridge the gap. The Gudan expatriates played a crucial role in ending licensed Japanese prostitution in 1920, which affected the original Japanese community along Middle Road.
The stories the research team uncovered confirmed what they had initially thought – that the Japanese community was diverse just like any other and was made up of interesting and dynamic individuals who were at times at odds with each other, but at other times, brought together by a shared sense of national belonging.
[1] National Library Board’s Curiocity houses digitised maps, photographs and multimedia content that are combined for users to explore the past and see how it has shaped the present.
By Elyssa Liu from the Centre for Outbreak Preparedness at Duke-NUS Medical School
By Prof Teo Yik Ying, Vice-President (Global Health) and Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUS
In a world of rising sea levels, record-high temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, climate change knows no borders and addressing this requires urgent, wide-ranging solutions. NUS is stepping up to the plate with the launch of NUS Sustainable Futures (NUS SF) — a new initiative that encourages experts across different disciplines to work together to tackle green issues.
It aims to break down academic silos and foster collaborative research to develop solutions to complex sustainability challenges, said Professor Koh Lian Pin, NUS Vice President (Sustainability and Resilience) and Chief Sustainability Scientist, who heads the NUS SF team, in his welcome address at the launch.
Climate-related challenges are “amplifying the tensions and trade-offs among the competing priorities of society, creating wicked problems”, observed Prof Koh, adding that solving these challenges will require researchers and partners from different fields to work together.
The new NUS SF will answer that collaborative call. As a show of commitment, the University will invest S$10 million to support training and research, focusing on the areas of building energy resilience, addressing climate and nature-related challenges, and enhancing urban sustainability. It also aims to secure additional funding from the government and industry partners over the next 12 months.
In his opening address, the event’s Guest-of-Honour, Mr Stanley Loh, Permanent Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment, highlighted that the urgency for collaborative initiatives is real. Following the United States’ recent withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty which pledges to cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, there was a notable shift leading to some uncertainties around global climate commitments.
“But what has not changed is the speed of climate change,” he stressed, adding that the government will not be able to solve challenges alone. “The public, private, and people sectors need to work together to co-create projects, systems, and mindset changes required for this huge transition.”
Additionally, a new NUS Sustainability Academy will complement NUS SF’s education and capacity-building arm. Jointly established with the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education, the Academy will curate programmes to upskill professionals on sustainability topics such as climate, energy, nature, and green finance. An example is the newly launched Professional Certificate in Carbon Services and Trading that is developed in collaboration with industry professionals and government agencies such as the Singapore Economic Development Board and Enterprise Singapore.
Also under the NUS SF umbrella is a Sustainability Plaza that will showcase NUS’ sustainability research and thought leadership, as well as facilitate engagements between the University and various external stakeholders in exploring partnership and entrepreneurial opportunities.
NUS Sustainable Futures Forum: Accelerating science translation through Public-Private-People partnership
The launch of NUS SF, held during the NUS Sustainable Futures Forum, brought together industry leaders, academics, and government officials across four panel discussions aligned with the key pillars of NUS SF:
Breaking down silos
Dr Su Bin, Senior Research Fellow and Division Head of NUS Energy Studies Institute (ESI) and panellist at the forum, said that energy modelling can inform policy and investment decisions across countries.
One of ESI’s key findings is that an integrated ASEAN power grid could reduce total system costs by up to 12 per cent. There is growing momentum in this area, with Singapore doubling its capacity to import electricity from Laos and Malaysia in 2024.
Such collaboration should be extended beyond energy to the field of agriculture, which is the foundation of food security and sustainability. Yet, agriculture practices often come with an environmental cost — from deforestation to soil and water pollution as well as the loss of biodiversity — so how can we meet our food security needs while mitigating these harmful consequences?
In response, Associate Professor Janice Lee from Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment suggested working directly with smallholder farmers to improve their green footprint, but cautioned that this needs to be complemented by strong governance that protects biodiversity.
There is, however, reason to be optimistic, said Assistant Professor Remi Luo from NUS’ Department of Geography. For instance, he noted that research has shown that oil palm production can be doubled by closing yield gaps without the need for deforestation. Yield gaps refer to the difference between a crop’s actual and potential yield.
“Some answers are already out there. We just need significant effort to pick them up and implement them,” he said.
Education and equity in climate action
Panellists also discussed ways to mitigate the impact of climate change on different segments of society, by relooking policies, education and urban development.
In the sinking capital of Jakarta, Indonesia, the wealthy are able to relocate to avoid rising sea levels, said Professor Yu Qin from NUS’ Department of Real Estate. The poor have no choice but to stay. Such “market failures” necessitate re-examining policies to see how they can help lower-income groups better adapt to the effects of climate change, she said.
But there are also opportunities for everyday folk to play their part, especially in the healthcare sector. As healthcare itself contributes significantly to carbon emissions –– more than aviation or shipping globally –– engaging healthcare workers in sustainability is crucial, said Adjunct Assistant Professor Amanda Zain, Deputy Director at the NUS Centre of Sustainable Medicine.
Given their trusted position in society, healthcare workers can be a “significant lever for climate action”, she said. For example, they can help to decarbonise the sector by switching to more environmentally friendly anaesthetic gases.
There is, however, a gap between will and action. While 80 per cent of global healthcare professionals expressed willingness to adopt sustainable practices, only about one-third knew what their country’s net-zero target was, she added.
NUS aims to improve awareness by enhancing sustainability education. For example, the NUS Sustainability Academy recently refreshed its flagship Climate Change and Sustainability 101 Course for Public Officers, which has been expanded to include additional topics on green supply chain and procurement, water sustainability as well as waste recycling.
The Academy has also partnered with the London-based Task Force on Nature-related Financial Disclosures to launch its first regional “Train the Trainers” programme in Singapore, which aims to communicate nature-related financial disclosures to industry players in a more consistent way.
Sustainability, however, is a long game. The impact of sustainability education should be measured over extended timeframes, said Professor Lawrence Loh, Director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the NUS Business School.
“We need three, five, 10-year follow-ups with our learners. Ultimately, we should bring them back for continuous learning as their career needs evolve,” he said.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele during a White House visit last month.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Sociologist traces rise, career of Salvadoran leader some view as savior, others as authoritarian
Liz Mineo
Harvard Staff Writer
President Nayib Bukele is both widely popular and highly controversial in El Salvador.
But he was less well-known in the U.S. until his visit to the White House in April to underscore his cooperation with the U.S. government’s plan to send some migrants to El Salvador for imprisonment.
Born to a wealthy family of Palestinian ancestry, Bukele has won supporters in El Salvador due to his widespread crackdown on the nation’s powerful criminal gangs with an “iron fist” policy. Critics say he has also trampled constitutional rights and civil liberties and seeks to curtail press freedoms.
In this edited interview, Professor of Sociology Jocelyn Viterna, who has researched El Salvador for over 30 years, spoke about Bukele’s rise to power and her concerns over his methods.
Jocelyn Viterna.
Harvard file photo
Bukele has jokingly referred to himself as the “the coolest dictator in the world.” How do you describe his political ideology?
Before Bukele ran for president in 2019, he had been mayor of a small suburb near San Salvador and then mayor of San Salvador. He identified himself as a left-wing politician who ran on an FMLN (a former rebel group) ticket, but he grew frustrated with the FMLN just like many people in the country.
By the end of his term as mayor of San Salvador, he had become an independent politician. He formed his own party, Nuevas Ideas, and began adopting a populist image — that he was neither right nor left, but something new. Originally, he framed himself as being heavily invested in the development of El Salvador through people, the economy, and especially through tourism. But since 2022, with a crackdown on gang violence in El Salvador, he’s adopted a much more authoritarian identity.
Can you talk a bit more about what that looks like on the ground?
Between Bukele’s controversial second term in 2024, which he accomplished after packing the Supreme Court with loyalists who ruled that he could run despite constitutional limits, and the continuing state of exception, we have seen a complete override of democratic checks and balances. That includes attacks on the media, and his willingness to jail people who oppose his policies or whom he sees as not sufficiently loyal.
People now feel a sense of security; they can go out at night, because Bukele has reduced gang violence in El Salvador. But they are also scared to talk freely. I used to do interviews in El Salvador in the late 1990s and early 2000s, shortly after the civil war, and I never found anyone who wouldn’t talk to me frankly about their political beliefs or what they thought about the government. Now, everyone, from doctors to lawyers to politicians, is afraid of saying anything critical of the government.
What also worries me is that the state of exception, which suspended civil liberties and due process, is leading to a lot of other crimes not being reported. For example, reports suggest that police are increasingly using extra-legal violence, yet nobody reports it because nobody wants to be thrown in jail.
“It’s hard to overstate how frustrated the country was with the two main political parties, with the corruption that both of them engaged in, and especially with the very high rates of violence.”
Bukele has an over 80 percent approval rating in El Salvador. Why is he seemingly so popular?
There’s a number of reasons. First, when Bukele ran for president, many people on the left and the right saw him as someone who represented a way forward, different from a traditional politician. It’s hard to overstate how frustrated the country was with the two main political parties, with the corruption that both of them engaged in, and especially with the very high rates of violence.
The second reason why people love Bukele is that he has reduced both gang violence and murder rates in El Salvador. Gangs used to control large swaths of the country and were very brutal; many people lost their lives, their children, and their properties. Now people have safety, security and freedom from the gang violence that they have not had in over two decades.
And the third reason is that Bukele is a master of publicity. He is very adept at using social media, and he’s passed laws that have reduced the ability of media outlets to speak out against him. When you have that kind of complete control of the narrative, you often paint a picture that helps maintain your popularity.
El Salvador had one of the highest murder rates in the continent due to the violent criminal gangs. How did Bukele manage to control them?
There are a lot of unanswered questions, but what our own U.S. Department of Justice has reported is that early in his first presidency, Bukele engaged in illegal negotiations with the gangs to keep the violence down.
Bukele has denied this, but there is some evidence of his dealings with the gangs. One example is that in March of 2022, the gangs allegedly felt that Bukele was not holding up his end of the negotiations and went on a massive killing spree. They killed 87 people in one weekend — the highest number of people killed in El Salvador since the civil war in a single day.
Some media outlets report that this gave Bukele the impetus to crack down on the gangs; he passed a state of exception that was supposed to last 90 days, and it is now in its third year.
In the sweeps that followed, somewhere between 80,000 and 90,000 additional people were put into prison in El Salvador and Bukele’ s own government said that at least 8,000 innocent people were caught up in those sweeps. Because of the state of exception and lack of due process, it’s unclear whether and how these individuals will get out of jail.
Why is Bukele cooperating with the Trump administration on immigration?
Bukele has thrived on using a policy of “mano dura,” presenting himself as a strong-handed leader who is going to fix problems quickly and effectively and won’t take no for an answer. I think that to have the opportunity to highlight what he’s done in El Salvador from the White House was something that was difficult to resist for him.
What do Salvadorans think about Bukele’s imprisoning deported migrants from the U.S.?
I’ve been surprised at how positive they have been about it, at least in social media. I find this surprising because the Salvadoran diaspora, mostly those living in the United States, is responsible for holding up the economy that Bukele is running.
I’m very bothered by the fact that Bukele, the first Salvadoran president who’s ever gotten invited to the White House, did not take advantage of the opportunity to ask for an extension of TPS [Temporary Protected Status, which allows immigrants from troubled nations to live and work in the U.S.] or a sort of work-exchange program, or even to advocate for the migrants in the U.S., but instead laughed and made jokes about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was picked up by mistake by ICE and was sent back to El Salvador.
Alberto Ascherio, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Chan School of Public Health.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Anna Gibbs
Harvard Correspondent
More than half of the average American adult’s calories come from ultra-processed foods, which have minimal nutritional value and often contain artificial additives. A growing body of research suggests that eating large amounts of such foods may raise the risk of various chronic diseases. New evidence links high consumption with greater likelihood of developing features that precede Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, in collaboration with Alberto Ascherio at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, worked with the self-reported diet data from more than 40,000 health professionals, tracked since the mid-1980s. In the 2010s, the participants also answered questions about early nonmotor features associated with Parkinson’s.
Comparing these data points, the team found that people who consumed about 11 servings of ultra-processed foods per day were 2.5 times likelier to develop early nonmotor features than people who consumed about two to three servings.
In this edited conversation, Ascherio explains the significance of the finding and what’s still unknown.
Going into this study, what’s the understanding about how diet can affect brain health, particularly neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s?
There’s no question that diet is important. In fact, there’s a consensus that we could delay the onset of many neurodegenerative diseases by being physically active and having a healthy diet. But there is still a lot that we need to understand, particularly when it comes to Parkinson’s, which is a bit of an exception among chronic diseases. For instance, cigarette smoking is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s — it’s one of the very, very few diseases in which cigarette smoking doesn’t raise the risk of the disease. With diet, it’d be nice if the diet that delays cardiovascular disease or cancer also contributes to prevent Parkinson’s. But we don’t know yet.
We do know a few things. We’ve previously found that caffeine intake is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson’s disease. There’s evidence that the Mediterranean diet, which is associated with lower risk of many chronic diseases, might do the same for Parkinson’s, but it’s not as clear as with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. And we’ve seen that intake of flavonoid, which is a component of fruits and vegetables, also tends to be modestly associated with lower risk of Parkinson’s. I think we’re still missing something. In this study with ultra-processed food, though, we found much stronger signals than we’ve seen before.
Why did you focus on early symptoms, as opposed to people who developed Parkinson’s? And why ultra-processed food?
Parkinson’s disease really starts at least 10 to 15 years before the diagnosis. If you study individuals with diagnosed Parkinson’s disease, you’re really 15 years late. So we wanted to find out which factors may influence the development of Parkinson’s disease. For this purpose, we created this large cohort in which we assess the presence of what we call prodromal features of Parkinson’s disease, which occur many years before the typical signs and symptoms of the disease.
In terms of the dietary aspect, we’ve been studying nutrient and dietary patterns for many years, but more recently, it became of interest to look at food in terms of the amount of processing and artificial ingredients. Food processing has always been a necessity for preservation and shelf life, but we’re talking about something different with ultra-processed food. This is really an industrial process to make the food more attractive. It goes well beyond what is needed to preserve the food and is more related to the marketing and commercial aspects of the food industry.
Which prodromal features, or early signs, did you focus on?
We had a huge cohort, so we selected from the clinical literature those common prodromal features that are relatively easy to assess with just simple questions or inexpensive tests. One feature was acting out dreams, which we only asked of people who had a sleeping partner who could verify it. Another was hyposmia, or reduced sense of smell. For that, there was a scratch-and-sniff test that we mailed out for people to smell. And also intestinal constipation, a non-specific feature that can be significant when combined with other signs.
Obviously when you look at these features one by one, they are very common, but the combination of three or more is present in only about 2 percent of older adults. We’ve found in past research that people with all three of these features are 23 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.
“Will eating less of these foods be sufficient to prevent Parkinson’s? Almost certainly not, but it could be beneficial. So far, the strongest evidence for reducing Parkinson’s risk is for physical activity.”
You found an association, but not necessarily a cause. How likely is it that the ultra-processed food is causing the development of the prodromal features?
It is very challenging. There’s always the risk of reverse causality, where the prodromal features influence the diet, rather than diet influencing the prodromal features. For instance, if you’re constipated, you might eat more fruits and vegetables to offset the constipation. But we tried to address this by looking at diet very early on. We started assessing the prodromal features in 2012, and we found that there’s already an association between those features in 2012 and the diet back in 1986. In other words, if you have high consumption of ultra-processed food in 1986, you’re more likely to have these prodromal features in 2012. If it was reverse causation, you wouldn’t expect an association to be present that early.
The other limitation is what we call confounding: Could the consumption of ultra-processed food be a marker or something else? We try to adjust for other factors, but the adjustment is never perfect or complete. We do not know yet whether there’s something toxic in the ultra-processed food, or maybe, given that they contribute to 50 percent or more of your calories, you’re just missing other components of the diet that are protective.
If ultra-processed food is the cause, what might the mechanism be?
We don’t really know. But there is evidence that some chemicals can cause Parkinson’s disease. The evidence is particularly strong for pesticides and herbicides. It’s clear that they can increase risk; we just don’t know which pesticides do that. This is because we are exposed to combinations of pesticides and herbicides, not to individual compounds.
Here, we are in a similar situation. We can see that this ultra-processed food is associated with a higher frequency of these prodromal features, but we really don’t know which component. And, as I mentioned, it could even be a displacement of nutrients rather than a specific toxic effect.
What should people do with this information?
Well, given the accumulated evidence related to risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic decline, and dementia, there’s no question that we should limit consumption of ultra-processed foods as much as possible. And it seems that Parkinson’s is in the same direction. Will eating less of these foods be sufficient to prevent Parkinson’s? Almost certainly not, but it could be beneficial. So far, the strongest evidence for reducing Parkinson’s risk is for physical activity. I know it’s a bit disappointing to not have a clear answer. It’s a very difficult question to address, but it’s one that we’ll continue to study.
This research was funded in part by the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Department of Defense.
Photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
Starting in the late 1960s, cardiovascular disease deaths fell and fell. Mortality decreased by 70 percent — from 206 deaths per 100,000 in 1968 to 62 deaths in 2017. The share of all premature deaths attributable to heart disease fell, too.
The trends no longer look so promising. Around 2010, the long decline in cardiovascular deaths began to level off and appear stalled. Some studies find that they’re increasing year over year for the first time since the 1950s.
Scientific innovation hasn’t stopped. Fundamental research has led to new drugs, treatments, and interventions. Public health campaigns warn against smoking, and some of the most powerful drugs to treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol — two major, common risk factors —are widely available and cheaper than ever. Those who actually suffer a heart attack survive more than 90 percent of the time.
But, health professionals say, greater awareness of the urgency of the problem is needed. Too many ignore lifestyle practices like healthy diets and regular exercise, and medical professionals need to be more aggressive about preventive care. In addition, there are deficiencies in the healthcare system itself. Working on all of this, along with continued innovation, is viewed as key to getting the nation back on track.
Heart disease is a lifelong struggle. For Rishi Wadhera, a cardiologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), the problems start with young people. “I call it a smoldering crisis,” he says.
Wadhera researches heart health in younger adult populations and finds that they’re putting more stress on their hearts. In a paper published in the journal JAMA, Wadhera and his colleagues found that between 2009 and 2020, people between 20 and 44 saw increases in diabetes (3 percent to 4.1 percent), obesity (32.7 percent to 40.9 percent), and hypertension (9.3 to 11.5 percent).
These risk factors lead to earlier heart attacks. In the European Heart Journal, Wadhera and colleagues reported that heart attacks for people between 25 and 64 rose from 155 per 100,000 people to 161. This cohort of adults also suffered more instances of heart failure (from 165.3 to 225.3 per 100,000) and ischemic strokes (76.3 to 108.1 per 100,000).
Wadhera called the report “alarming.” In lower-income communities, cardiovascular hospitalization rates among younger adults were two to three times larger than in their high-income counterparts. Black Americans fared particularly poorly; about 40 percent of hospitalized younger adults from low-income communities were Black. These disparities did not narrow over time.
Plenty of progress has been made over the last few decades. Of the total number of premature deaths in the U.S., nearly 39 percent of them were heart-disease related in 1980. Today, that number is 20 percent. Overall rates of premature deaths related to cardiovascular disease is down about 70 percent since its 1968 peak.
Still, heart disease remains the leading cause of death for Americans.
Cardiologists believe public-health campaigns will be critical to lowering heart disease — from increasing awareness of new treatments, to focusing on prevention, to simply raising awareness of the risk of heart disease in the U.S.
The last factor, says Michelle O’Donoghue, McGillycuddy-Logue Endowed Chair in Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is still not common knowledge. “There’s this misconception that cancer — in particular, breast cancer — is what women need to hear about the most when it comes to conditions that may affect them in their lifetime,” she said. “But in fact, cardiovascular disease remains, unfortunately, the No. 1 killer of both women and men.”
This lack of awareness has downstream effects. O’Donoghue, who is also associate professor of medicine at HMS, has found that women are likely to be undertreated when it comes to heart disease compared to men. They’re also less likely than men to correctly identify symptoms of a heart attack, which can sometimes vary by sex.
Michelle O’Donoghue and Rishi Wadhera are among the many Harvard-affiliated specialists working to raise awareness about the persistent threat posed by heart disease.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
The most common symptom in both men and women is chest tightness or heaviness, with women more likely to experience accompanying dizziness, nausea, and fatigue. But even presenting the same symptoms, O’Donoghue says, women are likelier to be ignored.
This lack of attention paid to heart disease in both men and women, O’Donoghue argues, makes it easier for patients — and doctors — to perpetually delay treatment. “Your primary care doctor may say, ‘Your blood pressure is a little high. Let’s check it again next time,’” said O’Donoghue. “And, you know, that inevitably keeps happening.”
That’s if people have access to a doctor at all. Wadhera says there are still significant barriers for preventative screenings. “If you look at Boston right now, it’s very hard to get an appointment to see a primary care doctor,” Wadhera said. “And if you don’t have access to a primary care provider, how are you supposed to receive important preventive screenings and care?”
The barriers continue from there. “Even if you have coverage, copay or deductibles may be high, creating barriers to obtaining testing and treatments that mitigate the risk of developing heart disease, heart attacks, or stroke.” For those who need more powerful drugs than statins, the cost can be insurmountable.
Due to the slow-burn nature of heart disease, the barriers to screenings, and the limited attention paid to preventative care, patients don’t always follow medical advice or use their prescriptions. According to a 2023 paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the use of statins jumped from 11.6 percent in 1999-2000 to 33.6 percent in 2013-2014 by guideline-eligible patients, and have since stagnated.
Today, only about one-third of patients eligible to take statins actually do so. “If we could get that number up closer to 100 percent,” said Wadhera, “we could probably make a huge dent in reducing cardiovascular risk and improving cardiovascular outcomes at the population level.”
“Cardiovascular disease remains, unfortunately, the No. 1 killer of both women and men.”
Michelle O’Donoghue
Most doctors argue that even with new treatments, implementation remains an issue.
“In a large healthcare system, there is just inertia,” says Marc Sabatine, the Lewis Dexter M.D. Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
For Type 2 diabetes, for example, Sabatine notes that many patients remain on older drugs that may control blood-glucose levels but would be better off taking drugs that also have been proven to reduce the risk of adverse heart outcomes.
It can be difficult for a doctor to say, “Even though you feel OK, we have data to suggest that we should change your medical regimen,” says Sabatine — especially because the first time a patient may feel the effects of dealing with risk factors could be sudden cardiac death.
But these sorts of proactive shifts could be crucial to improving heart health. Sabatine points to LDL cholesterol — also known as “bad” cholesterol — as a risk factor that doctors could target more aggressively. While doctors generally consider 100 mg/dL a healthy level of LDL cholesterol in the blood, Sabatine argues the standard should be lowered to about 70 mg/dL, the point at which arterial plaque begins to actually decline.
In all, Sabatine thinks the way the U.S. deals with heart disease is inadequate.
“Periodic visits with a primary care physician is a relatively inefficient way to do it,” he said. Instead of cramming preventative care into a few minutes a year with a physician, argues Sabatine, it has been shown that medical systems can train nurse practitioners and pharmacists to measure patients’ risk factors more frequently and adjust medications as needed under the supervision of physicians.
But while doctors see plenty of room to improve with the current, accessible medications, they see promise in the state of drug development.
“It used to be that we had a very small arsenal of drugs available to us,” O’Donoghue said. But the possibilities are growing. GLP-1 receptor agonists — originally developed to treat diabetes — can help people lose weight and improve heart health.
Verve Therapeutics, founded by former HMS professor Sekar Kathiresan, is running Phase 1b trials on gene-editing therapies that could lower cholesterol by rewriting DNA instructions in liver cells that control cholesterol production. New scientific developments carry not only the potential to treat symptoms, but also to address some of the logistical limitations of existing heart-disease treatment.
New scientific developments carry not only the potential to treat symptoms, but also to address some of the logistical limitations of existing heart-disease treatment.
O’Donoghue herself is working on a drug with the pharmaceutical company Amgen that significantly lowers lipoprotein(a) concentration in the blood. Though this form of cholesterol is about 90 percent genetically predetermined — especially high for people of African and South Asian descent, as well as for women after menopause — there is no current treatment.
As a graduate student in Andrew Kruse’s lab, Sarah Erlandson figured out the structure and function of RXFP-1 receptor, which interacts with the hormone relaxin to dilate blood vessels, boost blood flow, break down collagen in the heart, and reduce inflammation — effects that could make it a powerful target for treating heart failure.
After mapping how the receptor functioned, Erlandson teamed up with Kruse, the Springer Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, to design a new therapeutic that mimics the hormone’s beneficial effects but lasts much longer in the body. Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator provided funding and business development support to advance the technology toward commercialization.
With help from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD), the University patented the new molecule and licensed it to Tectonic Pharmaceuticals, a company Kruse founded. Fewer than five years after the original prototype, Tectonic is now testing an updated version of Erlandson’s molecule in Phase 2 clinical trials.
Other technologies aim to treat other advanced stages of heart disease. With funding support from Harvard’s Blavatnik Biomedical Accelerator, stem cell and regenerative biology professor Richard T. Lee and engineering professor Jia Liu are co-developing a flexible, tissue-like device designed to both detect and stop atrial fibrillation — an irregular heart rhythm that can lead to stroke and heart failure. “If you could stop it before it gets going, then you really have something,” Lee said.
“We’ve made good progress,” Sabatine said, “and we should celebrate the progress we’ve made.” But with rates remaining as stubborn as they have been in half a century, Sabatine and his colleagues are committed to searching for novel ways to get better treatment for more people. “We need to continue to drive rates ever downward,” he said.
Illustrations by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
There’s nothing quite like looking up at the sky on a dark night and catching a glimpse of the path of light we know as the Milky Way. More than 400 years ago, Galileo viewed the Milky Way through a rudimentary telescope and determined that it was made up of innumerable individual stars. Today we know much more about our own galaxy and countless others, but major questions remain unanswered.
Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian are researching some of our biggest questions about galaxies. We asked CfA researcher and Harvard Ph.D. student Vedant Chandra to help develop this quiz about what we know so far, and what remains to be discovered.
Research from the CfA is supported by the Smithsonian, a federally funded trust.
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Raymond Mak (left) and Hugo Aerts.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Deep-learning algorithm FaceAge uses snapshots, can help oncologists tailor treatments
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A new artificial intelligence tool developed by researchers at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School uses a snapshot of a patient’s face to predict biological age and cancer survival time, knowledge that physicians can use to tailor treatments.
“We all know that people age in different ways. A person’s chronological age is based on the day they were born, but it’s not the same as biological age, which is actually a predictor of their physiological health and life expectancy,” said Hugo Aerts, the study’s co-senior author, director of MGB’s Artificial Intelligence in Medicine program, and professor of radiation oncology at HMS. “A person’s biological age is dependent on many factors, like lifestyle, genetics, and other health factors. We had this idea that how old a person looks could actually be a reflection of their biological age.”
Led by scientists at MGB’s Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Program, the researchers trained FaceAge, their deep-learning algorithm, on more than 58,000 photos of healthy individuals of known age and on more than 6,000 photos of cancer patients whose age and clinical outcome was known.
The algorithm indicated that cancer patients’ FaceAge averaged five years older than their chronological age. It also found that looking older was associated with worse outcomes for patients suffering from several cancer types.
“We had this idea that how old a person looks could actually be a reflection of their biological age.”
Hugo Aerts
Judging one’s health according to appearance is nothing new, Aerts said. Doctors routinely make a visual assessment — the “eyeball test,” Aerts called it — when they walk in the room. It can encompass things like whether the patient is in a wheelchair, how robust they look, and whether they’re obviously ill.
The research showed, however, that the eyeball test — at least when performed by human physicians — is not a very good predictor of short-term life expectancy.
Published in the journal The Lancet Digital Health in early May, the study, which received funding from the National Institutes of Health, asked 10 clinicians and researchers to predict short-term life expectancy using photos of 100 terminal patients who were receiving palliative radiation therapy.
On average, they performed only slightly better than random chance, even when they knew things like the patient’s chronological age and the status of their cancer. Prediction improved, however, when the physicians were provided with FaceAge information for those patients.
Raymond Mak, a faculty member at the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Program, HMS associate professor of radiology oncology, and co-senior author of the study, said having a better understanding of a patient’s biological age and how much time they likely have remaining allows oncologists to better tailor treatments.
He described a lung cancer patient who, though chronologically 86, looked considerably younger. That was a factor in Mak suggesting more aggressive treatment. Today, the man continues to do well at age 90. When Mak used FaceAge to analyze a photo of the patient at the time of treatment, the algorithm put his biological age as 10 years younger than his chronological age.
The opposite can also be true, Mak said, and patients who are frailer than their chronological age might suggest may need less-intensive treatment because that’s what their body can tolerate.
“We hypothesize that FaceAge could be used as a biomarker in cancer care to quantify a patient’s biological age and help a doctor make these tough decisions,” Mak said.
FaceAge has proved effective across several different types of cancer, Mak and Aert said, and they’re exploring its potential usefulness to predict outcomes in other diseases.
The algorithm employs deep learning, which means that it learns as researchers train it on thousands of photographs of people whose outcomes are known.
Researchers, however, don’t know which specific cues draw FaceAge’s focus, Aert said. It’s likely the algorithm is picking up on different things than a doctor might, such as wrinkles, gray hair, and baldness. If that’s true, that would make it particularly useful, he said, because it brings a different perspective to the physicians’ analysis of the patient’s condition.
Aerts and Mak said FaceAge would not be used on its own to determine courses of action but rather would be a tool available to physicians. It could not only help to determine initial treatment, but it could also monitor changes over time, alerting a doctor if a patient appears to be going downhill.
Before it is used in the clinic, however, it needs additional testing on diverse patient populations.
“In the clinic, the impact can be very large, because we now have a way to actually very easily monitor a patient’s health status continuously — before, during, and after treatment — and this could help us to better predict the risk of complications after, for example, a major surgery or other treatments,” Aerts said.
A protein located in the wrong part of a cell can contribute to several diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. But there are about 70,000 different proteins and protein variants in a single human cell, and since scientists can typically only test for a handful in one experiment, it is extremely costly and time-consuming to identify proteins’ locations manually.
A new generation of computational techniques seeks to streamline the process using machine-learning models that often leverage datasets containing thousands of proteins and their locations, measured across multiple cell lines. One of the largest such datasets is the Human Protein Atlas, which catalogs the subcellular behavior of over 13,000 proteins in more than 40 cell lines. But as enormous as it is, the Human Protein Atlas has only explored about 0.25 percent of all possible pairings of all proteins and cell lines within the database.
Now, researchers from MIT, Harvard University, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have developed a new computational approach that can efficiently explore the remaining uncharted space. Their method can predict the location of any protein in any human cell line, even when both protein and cell have never been tested before.
Their technique goes one step further than many AI-based methods by localizing a protein at the single-cell level, rather than as an averaged estimate across all the cells of a specific type. This single-cell localization could pinpoint a protein’s location in a specific cancer cell after treatment, for instance.
The researchers combined a protein language model with a special type of computer vision model to capture rich details about a protein and cell. In the end, the user receives an image of a cell with a highlighted portion indicating the model’s prediction of where the protein is located. Since a protein’s localization is indicative of its functional status, this technique could help researchers and clinicians more efficiently diagnose diseases or identify drug targets, while also enabling biologists to better understand how complex biological processes are related to protein localization.
“You could do these protein-localization experiments on a computer without having to touch any lab bench, hopefully saving yourself months of effort. While you would still need to verify the prediction, this technique could act like an initial screening of what to test for experimentally,” says Yitong Tseo, a graduate student in MIT’s Computational and Systems Biology program and co-lead author of a paper on this research.
Tseo is joined on the paper by co-lead author Xinyi Zhang, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute; Yunhao Bai of the Broad Institute; and senior authors Fei Chen, an assistant professor at Harvard and a member of the Broad Institute, and Caroline Uhler, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Engineering in EECS and the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), who is also director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center and a researcher at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS). The research appears today in Nature Methods.
Collaborating models
Many existing protein prediction models can only make predictions based on the protein and cell data on which they were trained or are unable to pinpoint a protein’s location within a single cell.
To overcome these limitations, the researchers created a two-part method for prediction of unseen proteins’ subcellular location, called PUPS.
The first part utilizes a protein sequence model to capture the localization-determining properties of a protein and its 3D structure based on the chain of amino acids that forms it.
The second part incorporates an image inpainting model, which is designed to fill in missing parts of an image. This computer vision model looks at three stained images of a cell to gather information about the state of that cell, such as its type, individual features, and whether it is under stress.
PUPS joins the representations created by each model to predict where the protein is located within a single cell, using an image decoder to output a highlighted image that shows the predicted location.
“Different cells within a cell line exhibit different characteristics, and our model is able to understand that nuance,” Tseo says.
A user inputs the sequence of amino acids that form the protein and three cell stain images — one for the nucleus, one for the microtubules, and one for the endoplasmic reticulum. Then PUPS does the rest.
A deeper understanding
The researchers employed a few tricks during the training process to teach PUPS how to combine information from each model in such a way that it can make an educated guess on the protein’s location, even if it hasn’t seen that protein before.
For instance, they assign the model a secondary task during training: to explicitly name the compartment of localization, like the cell nucleus. This is done alongside the primary inpainting task to help the model learn more effectively.
A good analogy might be a teacher who asks their students to draw all the parts of a flower in addition to writing their names. This extra step was found to help the model improve its general understanding of the possible cell compartments.
In addition, the fact that PUPS is trained on proteins and cell lines at the same time helps it develop a deeper understanding of where in a cell image proteins tend to localize.
PUPS can even understand, on its own, how different parts of a protein’s sequence contribute separately to its overall localization.
“Most other methods usually require you to have a stain of the protein first, so you’ve already seen it in your training data. Our approach is unique in that it can generalize across proteins and cell lines at the same time,” Zhang says.
Because PUPS can generalize to unseen proteins, it can capture changes in localization driven by unique protein mutations that aren’t included in the Human Protein Atlas.
The researchers verified that PUPS could predict the subcellular location of new proteins in unseen cell lines by conducting lab experiments and comparing the results. In addition, when compared to a baseline AI method, PUPS exhibited on average less prediction error across the proteins they tested.
In the future, the researchers want to enhance PUPS so the model can understand protein-protein interactions and make localization predictions for multiple proteins within a cell. In the longer term, they want to enable PUPS to make predictions in terms of living human tissue, rather than cultured cells.
This research is funded by the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center at the Broad Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Burroughs Welcome Fund, the Searle Scholars Foundation, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the Merkin Institute, the Office of Naval Research, and the Department of Energy.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers; MIT News
Around the world, 20 percent of children are not fully immunized, leading to 1.5 million child deaths each year from diseases that are preventable by vaccination. About half of those underimmunized children received at least one vaccine dose but did not complete the vaccination series, while the rest received no vaccines at all.
To make it easier for children to receive all of their vaccines, MIT researchers are working to develop microparticles that can release their payload weeks or months after being injected. This could lead to vaccines that can be given just once, with several doses that would be released at different time points.
In a study appearing today in the journal Advanced Materials, the researchers showed that they could use these particles to deliver two doses of diphtheria vaccine — one released immediately, and the second two weeks later. Mice that received this vaccine generated as many antibodies as mice that received two separate doses two weeks apart.
The researchers now hope to extend those intervals, which could make the particles useful for delivering childhood vaccines that are given as several doses over a few months, such as the polio vaccine.
“The long-term goal of this work is to develop vaccines that make immunization more accessible — especially for children living in areas where it’s difficult to reach health care facilities. This includes rural regions of the United States as well as parts of the developing world where infrastructure and medical clinics are limited,” says Ana Jaklenec, a principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Jaklenec and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, are the senior authors of the study. Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang, an MIT graduate student who recently completed her PhD in chemical engineering, is the paper’s lead author.
Self-boosting vaccines
In recent years, Jaklenec, Langer, and their colleagues have been working on vaccine delivery particles made from a polymer called PLGA. In 2018, they showed they could use these types of particles to deliver two doses of the polio vaccine, which were released about 25 days apart.
One drawback to PLGA is that as the particles slowly break down in the body, the immediate environment can become acidic, which may damage the vaccine contained within the particles.
The MIT team is now working on ways to overcome that issue in PLGA particles and is also exploring alternative materials that would create a less acidic environment. In the new study, led by Zhang, the researchers decided to focus on another type of polymer, known as polyanhydride.
“The goal of this work was to advance the field by exploring new strategies to address key challenges, particularly those related to pH sensitivity and antigen degradation,” Jaklenec says.
Polyanhydrides, biodegradable polymers that Langer developed for drug delivery more than 40 years ago, are very hydrophobic. This means that as the polymers gradually erode inside the body, the breakdown products hardly dissolve in water and generate a much less acidic environment.
Polyanhydrides usually consist of chains of two different monomers that can be assembled in a huge number of possible combinations. For this study, the researchers created a library of 23 polymers, which differed from each other based on the chemical structures of the monomer building blocks and the ratio of the two monomers that went into the final product.
The researchers evaluated these polymers based on their ability to withstand temperatures of at least 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius, or slightly above body temperature) and whether they could remain stable throughout the process required to form them into microparticles.
To make the particles, the researchers developed a process called stamped assembly of polymer layers, or SEAL. First, they use silicon molds to form cup-shaped particles that can be filled with the vaccine antigen. Then, a cap made from the same polymer is applied and sealed using heat. Polymers that proved too brittle or didn’t seal completely were eliminated from the pool, leaving six top candidates.
The researchers used those polymers to design particles that would deliver diphtheria vaccine two weeks after injection, and gave them to mice along with vaccine that was released immediately. Four weeks after the initial injection, those mice showed comparable levels of antibodies to mice that received two doses two weeks apart.
Extended release
As part of their study, the researchers also developed a machine-learning model to help them explore the factors that determine how long it takes the particles to degrade once in the body. These factors include the type of monomers that go into the material, the ratio of the monomers, the molecular weight of the polymer, and the loading capacity or how much vaccine can go into the particle.
Using this model, the researchers were able to rapidly evaluate nearly 500 possible particles and predict their release time. They tested several of these particles in controlled buffers and showed that the model’s predictions were accurate.
In future work, this model could also help researchers to develop materials that would release their payload after longer intervals — months or even years. This could make them useful for delivering many childhood vaccines, which require multiple doses over several years.
“If we want to extend this to longer time points, let’s say over a month or even further, we definitely have some ways to do this, such as increasing the molecular weight or the hydrophobicity of the polymer. We can also potentially do some cross-linking. Those are further changes to the chemistry of the polymer to slow down the release kinetics or to extend the retention time of the particle,” Zhang says.
The researchers now hope to explore using these delivery particles for other types of vaccines. The particles could also prove useful for delivering other types of drugs that are sensitive to acidity and need to be given in multiple doses, they say.
“This technology has broad potential for single-injection vaccines, but it could also be adapted to deliver small molecules or other biologics that require durability or multiple doses. Additionally, it can accommodate drugs with pH sensitivities,” Jaklenec says.
The research was funded, in part, by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers
By Mathavi Senguttuvan, Research Associate from the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at NUS
The Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) of the NUS Faculty of Science commemorated its 10th anniversary on 6 May 2025 with a series of engaging activities. Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, President of the Republic of Singapore and NUS Chancellor, attended the celebration as the Guest-of-Honour, marking a decade of excellence in biodiversity research, education, and natural heritage conservation at LKCNHM.
Since its official opening on 18 April 2015, the Museum has transformed into a leading institute in Southeast Asia, dedicated to preserving biodiversity and inspiring future generations. Over the last decade, LKCNHM has welcomed more than 650,000 visitors, with 2024 recording its highest annual visitorship of over 88,000.
The Museum’s educational outreach efforts have also expanded significantly since its establishment, having engaged over 105,000 participants – from pre-schoolers to tertiary students – through gallery tours, talks, nature walks, and workshops. In addition, the Museum runs seasonal biodiversity programmes for the public and continues to enhance inclusivity and accessibility, ensuring that learning opportunities remain available to all.
“Over the past decade, [the] Museum has been a beacon of learning and exploration, welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors to its galleries and engaging tens of thousands of students through workshops and tours. It has also become an indispensable resource for NUS students, offering unique opportunities for experimental learning and deep dives into the rich biodiversity of Singapore and Southeast Asia,” said Professor Aaron Thean, NUS Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost.
“Our vision is to be a leader in Southeast Asian biodiversity research, education, and outreach,” said Associate Professor Darren Yeo, Head of LKCNHM. “To this end, we have actively pursued research and discovery with local and regional partners, imparted expertise to biodiversity and conservation, and nurtured awareness and interest in biodiversity, natural heritage and environmental issues.”
Living up to its name as a regional biodiversity research hub, LKCNHM’s Zoological Reference Collection serves as Singapore’s national zoological repository, and houses over one million specimens today – approximately double from when it was first launched in 2015. The Museum has been a catalyst for biodiversity research, leading over 20 expeditions and biodiversity surveys across Singapore and the region. These efforts have contributed to the discovery of new species and strengthened international scientific partnerships, reinforcing LKCNHM’s position as a research node in the region.
Appreciating the past to preserve a brighter future
As part of the 10th anniversary celebration, LKCNHM unveiled its special anniversary exhibition ‘A Decade of Discovery: Stories from the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum’, showcasing the Museum’s origins, journey, and milestones over the past decade. Reflecting LKCNHM’s legacy and outlining its vision for the future, the exhibition highlights how Singapore’s only natural history museum has served as a vital hub for scientific research, education, and community engagement – uncovering the rich biodiversity and deep historical connections of Southeast Asia.
One unique specimen on display at the exhibition is the leaf coral or Pavona Decussata, collected in 1974 from Pulau Hantu – an island located to the south of the main island of Singapore, off the Straits of Singapore. This large coral colony was a gift donated to the Museum by Dr Chuang Shou-Hwa, a Singaporean zoologist who headed the Zoology Department of the then University of Singapore from 1971-1977.
At the event, the Museum also launched its commemorative book, Archipelago of Islands: Natural and Other Histories of Singapore, to mark Singapore’s 60th year of independence. The book explores the key roles of Singapore’s islands as habitats, homes and navigational landmarks — interweaving stories of nature, history, and culture, while also offering fresh perspectives on the nation’s archipelagic nature.
For example, a chapter in the book traces the historical identities of St John’s Island. Starting out as a quarantine location in response to a cholera epidemic in Singapore in 1873 and later repurposed as a detention centre for political detainees in 1948, the chapter explores St John’s Island’s historical evolution into the vibrant marine research and conservation hub it is today.
In conjunction with the 10th anniversary celebration, LKCNHM is also collaborating with the Science Centre Singapore on a special year-end exhibition themed around extinctions and dinosaurs, featuring an extraordinary journey over 400 million years of Earth’s history.
Embarking on a new decade of innovation and impact
Looking ahead to the future, LKCNHM seeks to continue its efforts in uncovering new insights into the natural history of Singapore and the region by expanding the adjacent wing of the LKCNHM building located in NUS. At the event, Assoc Prof Yeo shared LKCNHM’s aspiration that the expansion will realise the Museum’s “ambitions for growth and greater impact in the years to come” and “will ultimately lead to an enlarged and enhanced LKCNHM before our 20th year”.
Embracing the latest technological advancements, LKCNHM will expand its research scope to include artificial intelligence (AI) tools. “We are partnering with NUS School of Computing and NUS AI Institute to develop AI toolkits for researchers, educators, and the public,” said Assoc Prof Yeo.
“By leveraging on the Museum’s extensive biodiversity database and expertise, and collaborating with subject matter experts across NUS, we are well-positioned to execute this innovative interdisciplinary endeavour”, he added.
What is a memory?
Is it a distinct pattern of brain activity, a blueprint for future behaviour, or a skill that we can improve with a little training? Probably all these things and more, argues Jon Simons, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and Head of the School of the Biological Sciences.
Jon’s Memory Lab studies all aspects of memory. They invite volunteers to complete memory tasks online, in the laboratory, or sometimes while lying in an MRI machine while the team scans their brains.
The biochemical changes that represent memories range across the brain’s real estate. A long list of factors determine which brain areas light up during the experience: whether a memory is being encoded or reconstructed, whether it's an old or a new pattern, and what kind of information it deals with.
“We know that the hippocampus is crucial for forming new memories, but it’s not necessarily the permanent storage site," Jon says. "For long-term storage, we also recruit cortical areas – the frontal lobes, temporal lobes, parietal lobes and more.”
To plot a route through tangled terrain, researchers divide memory into different types. Short-term memory lasts a minute at most and has a limited capacity – around 7 items give-or-take, according to Harvard’s George Miller in the 1950s. Think of repeating numbers to yourself while jotting down someone’s phone number. If we don’t record those numbers fast enough, they’ll fade quickly.
But even short-term memory isn’t unitary. Alan Baddeley (Churchill 1959), former director of Cambridge’s Medical Research Council (MRC) Applied Psychology Unit (now called the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit), coined a new way of understanding how short-term memories are stored and manipulated. His 'working memory' model proposes that separate brain systems deal with different kinds of inputs. One part rehearses and replays sounds, for instance, while another holds visual information like a ‘mental canvas’.
This is different yet again from our long-term memories. These deeper experiences can stay with us for a lifetime. Recalling them can be thought of as a kind of ‘mental time-travel’, allowing us to subjectively relive past events complete with the sights, smells and sounds of cherished scenes.
Researchers now believe that we reconstruct our memories each time we experience them. From scant traces, we extrapolate the narrative of what happened. In this way, memory is a creative act, not a simple recap. One classic Cambridge study revealed how our memories are morphed by bias, beliefs, feelings and expectations.
Enter the elegant study of Sir Frederic Bartlett, Cambridge’s first Psychology professor.
Bartlett’s book ‘Remembering’ (1932) made use of a now famous story: the war of the ghosts.
In this Native American folk tale, a man meets warriors paddling their canoes downriver, who invite him to join a war party. He later realises the men are ghosts, waging war on the living.
Bartlett taught his Edwardian undergraduates this tale, then asked them to retell it in their own words. Over several retellings, his students altered key elements of the story so that it sounded more like the world they knew. ‘Canoes’ became ‘boats’, while mentions of ‘spirits’ were dropped altogether.
Bartlett's study showed the effects of culture on recall, and how the changes we make to our memories aren’t random. Even if we’re not conscious of doing so, we prefer to change story elements so that they align with our expectations, biases and cultural norms.
This feature of memory has massive implications for how we remember the past. Eye-witness testimony will be prey to the same biases. Unintentional errors, made in favour of what is familiar to us, are very difficult to avoid.
Another titan of memory research was an undergraduate while Bartlett was teaching. During World War II, Brenda Milner (Newnham 1936) helped the Psychology department repurpose itself for the war effort. After this, Milner moved to Canada to analyse patient Henry Molaison (formerly known as H M). Molaison would become one of the most famous patients in all of psychology.
Molaison had profound amnesia. This was due to experimental surgery, where doctors removed his hippocampus to try and improve his epilepsy. Milner meticulously documented how Molaison’s memory functioned after surgery. She showed how he was unable to form new memories or remember events from the years leading up to his surgery, but that his memories from earlier in life remained intact. This work transformed our understanding of the hippocampus’ role in memory.
Psychologists like Milner and Bartlett showed us the primacy of the hippocampus and highlighted the creative nature of memory. Modern Cambridge researchers can take our investigations even further.
With all we now know about memory, can we understand what makes for better performance?
Together with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and his team at the Autism Research Centre, Jon is currently studying thousands of the UK’s best memorisers to find the keys to their prowess. Volunteers completed a battery of memory tests online – the best performers then came for brain scans and further testing in the lab.
Their early results suggest some interesting traits, as well as the strategies people use to enhance their abilities.
“There's a psychological trait called ‘systemising’,” says Jon. “It's found in people who have a drive to analyse and construct rule-based ways of thinking. Those kinds of people seem to be more likely to have exceptional memories.”
Simon Baron-Cohen was the first to define this trait. He did so in relation to people on the autism spectrum, for whom ‘systemising’ is set very high.
So if you happen to think like a ‘systemiser’, you may have a better memory. If you don’t, there are also concrete strategies to boost your memory capacities.
“Mnemonics are an evidence-based technique that can improve our memories,” Jon explains. “They often involve thinking spatially. Start by visualising somewhere you know well, then mentally ‘place’ important information in that map. You can then 'travel through' that map when recalling.”
Think Sherlock’s ‘mind palace’ from the BBC adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s books. Jon points out that pre-BBC, this strategy was familiar to ancient Greek and Roman orators. They called it the method of loci, using it as a way to remember extremely long speeches. It can also be helpful for everyday tasks, like remembering a shopping list.
Jon’s tip for this method is to make the memory triggers striking. Associate the eggs on your shopping list with a fire-breathing dragon guarding its young, for example, and the sensory impression might be distinct enough to stand out from the background noise.
“The more bizarre the better! Our memories have a big job in trying to differentiate one memory from another. We can help it out by making key information more distinctive. This helps our brains to distinguish memories from one another, and stop irrelevant ones from overlapping or interfering.”
Indeed, one of the functions of the hippocampus is to perform pattern separation – trying to make our memories distinct. If memories are too similar, we find it harder to recall specific experiences.
This might go some way to explaining the ‘brain fog’ many experienced during COVID-19 lockdowns. With days inside tending to repeat familiar routines, we had less distinct and varied experiences. Our brains were less able to create rich, meaningful memories. Looking back on 2020 and 2021, people find it hard to separate what happened when.
There’s a lesson for non-lockdown living here too. If we want a rich life that feels like it lasts longer and is full of accessible, interesting memories, we should prioritise variety in our experience.
To further improve memory function, we should strive to decrease stress, fear and anxiety (where possible). These emotional states increase our cognitive load and reduce our memory abilities.
“When anxious thoughts flood our minds, they compete for space in our working memory and impair our ability to recall long-term memories. They pull attention and resources away from the things we’d like to focus on. If we can find ways to reduce stress and anxiety, our memory can often bounce back.”
While this might be easier said than done, science has concrete recommendations for reducing stress and anxiety. Done consistently, a healthy diet, regular exercise and a good sleep schedule, as well as techniques like mindfulness practice, can have transformative effects.
Researchers like Jon are deepening our understanding of what memories are. The Memory Lab follows an illustrious line of Cambridge psychologists who identified key pieces of memory’s endless puzzle. Wherever the next steps lead, they will affirm a wonder of nature: the intricate patterns our mind weaves to make sense of the world outside.
For a handy guide to building mental resilience, check out Brain Boost by Dr Barbara Sahakian and Dr Christelle Langley. To focus on fighting anxiety with scientific techniques, try Dr Olivia Remes.
By tying together more than a century of memory research at Cambridge, the Memory Lab gives us tangible ways to improve, preserve and understand our memory.
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By Prof Lionel Wee, Dean and Adj Prof Low Ee Ling, Dept of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, both from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS, and Ms Nora Samosir, Lecturer, Acting and Musical Theatre at Lasalle College of the Arts, University of the Arts, Singapore
By Asst Prof Reuben Ng, Behavioural and Data Scientist from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS
At this moment, there are approximately 35,000 tracked human-generated objects in orbit around Earth. Of these, only about one-third are active payloads: science and communications satellites, research experiments, and other beneficial technology deployments. The rest are categorized as debris — defunct satellites, spent rocket bodies, and the detritus of hundreds of collisions, explosions, planned launch vehicle separations, and other “fragmentation events” that have occurred throughout humanity’s 67 years of space launches.
The problem of space debris is well documented, and only set to grow in the near term as launch rates increase and fragmentation events escalate accordingly. The clutter of debris — which includes an estimated 1 million objects over 1 centimeter, in addition to the tracked objects — regularly causes damage to satellites, requires the repositioning of the International Space Station, and has the potential to cause catastrophic collisions with increasing frequency.
To address this issue, in 2019 the World Economic Forum selected a team co-led by MIT Associate Professor Danielle Wood’s Space Enabled Research Group at the MIT Media Lab to create a system for scoring space mission operators on their launch and de-orbit plans, collision-avoidance measures, debris generation, and data sharing, among other factors that would allow for better coordination and maintenance of space objects. The team has developed a system called the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), and launched it in 2021 as an independent nonprofit.
“Satellites provide valuable services that impact everyone in the world by helping us understand the environment, communicate globally, navigate, and operate our modern infrastructure. As innovative new missions are proposed that operate thousands of satellites, a new approach is needed to provide space traffic management. National governments and space operators need to design coordination approaches to reduce the risk of losing access to valuable satellite missions,” says Wood, who is jointly appointed in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “The Space Sustainability Rating plays a role by compiling internationally recognized responsible on-orbit behaviors, and celebrating space actors that implement them.”
France-based Eutelsat Group, a geostationary Earth orbit and low Earth orbit satellite operator, signed on as the first constellation operator with a large deployment of satellites to undergo a rating. Eutelsat submitted a mission to SSR for assessment, and was rated on a tiered scoring system based on six performance modules. Eutelsat earned a platinum rating with a score exceeding 80 percent, indicating that the mission demonstrated exceptional sustainability in design, operations, and disposal practices.
As of December 2024, SSR has also provided ratings to operators such as OHB Sweden AB, Stellar, and TU Delft.
In a new open-access paper published in Acta Astronautica, lead author Minoo Rathnasabapathy, Wood, and the SSR team provide the detailed history, motivation, and design of the Space Sustainability Rating as an incentive system that provides a score for space operators based on their effort to reduce space debris and collision risk. The researchers include AeroAstro alumnus Miles Lifson SM '20, PhD '24; University of Texas at Austin professor and former MIT MLK Scholar Moriba Jah; and collaborators from the European Space Agency, BryceTech, and the Swiss Institute of Technology of Lausanne Space Center (eSpace).
The paper provides transparency about the inception of SSR as a cross-organizational collaboration and its development as a composite indicator that evaluates missions across multiple quantifiable factors. The aim of SSR is to provide actionable feedback and a score recognizing operators’ contributions to the space sustainability effort. The paper also addresses the challenges SSR faces in adoption and implementation, and its alignment with various international space debris mitigation guidelines.
SSR draws heavily on proven rating methodologies from other industries, particularly Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in the building and manufacturing industries, Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) in the agriculture industry, and Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) in the education industry.
“By grounding SSR in quantifiable metrics and testing it across diverse mission profiles, we created a rating system that recognizes sustainable decisions and operations by satellite operators, aligned with international guidelines and industry best practices,” says Rathnasabapathy.
The Space Sustainability Rating is a nongovernmental approach to encourage space mission operators to take responsible actions to reduce space debris and collision risk. The paper highlights the roles for private sector space operators and public sector space regulators to put steps in place to ensure such responsible actions are pursued.
The Space Enabled Research Group continues to perform academic research that illustrates the benefits of space missions and government oversight bodies enforcing sustainable and safe space practices. Future work will highlight the need for a sustainability focus as practices such as satellite service and in-space manufacturing start to become more common.
At this moment, there are approximately 35,000 tracked human-generated objects in orbit around Earth. Of these, only about one-third are active payloads: science and communications satellites, research experiments, and other beneficial technology deployments. The rest are categorized as debris — defunct satellites, spent rocket bodies, and the detritus of hundreds of collisions, explosions, planned launch vehicle separations, and other “fragmentation events” that have occurred throughout humanity’s 67 years of space launches.
The problem of space debris is well documented, and only set to grow in the near term as launch rates increase and fragmentation events escalate accordingly. The clutter of debris — which includes an estimated 1 million objects over 1 centimeter, in addition to the tracked objects — regularly causes damage to satellites, requires the repositioning of the International Space Station, and has the potential to cause catastrophic collisions with increasing frequency.
To address this issue, in 2019 the World Economic Forum selected a team co-led by MIT Associate Professor Danielle Wood’s Space Enabled Research Group at the MIT Media Lab to create a system for scoring space mission operators on their launch and de-orbit plans, collision-avoidance measures, debris generation, and data sharing, among other factors that would allow for better coordination and maintenance of space objects. The team has developed a system called the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), and launched it in 2021 as an independent nonprofit.
“Satellites provide valuable services that impact everyone in the world by helping us understand the environment, communicate globally, navigate, and operate our modern infrastructure. As innovative new missions are proposed that operate thousands of satellites, a new approach is needed to provide space traffic management. National governments and space operators need to design coordination approaches to reduce the risk of losing access to valuable satellite missions,” says Wood, who is jointly appointed in the Program in Media Arts and Sciences and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “The Space Sustainability Rating plays a role by compiling internationally recognized responsible on-orbit behaviors, and celebrating space actors that implement them.”
France-based Eutelsat Group, a geostationary Earth orbit and low Earth orbit satellite operator, signed on as the first constellation operator with a large deployment of satellites to undergo a rating. Eutelsat submitted a mission to SSR for assessment, and was rated on a tiered scoring system based on six performance modules. Eutelsat earned a platinum rating with a score exceeding 80 percent, indicating that the mission demonstrated exceptional sustainability in design, operations, and disposal practices.
As of December 2024, SSR has also provided ratings to operators such as OHB Sweden AB, Stellar, and TU Delft.
In a new open-access paper published in Acta Astronautica, lead author Minoo Rathnasabapathy, Wood, and the SSR team provide the detailed history, motivation, and design of the Space Sustainability Rating as an incentive system that provides a score for space operators based on their effort to reduce space debris and collision risk. The researchers include AeroAstro alumnus Miles Lifson SM '20, PhD '24; University of Texas at Austin professor and former MIT MLK Scholar Moriba Jah; and collaborators from the European Space Agency, BryceTech, and the Swiss Institute of Technology of Lausanne Space Center (eSpace).
The paper provides transparency about the inception of SSR as a cross-organizational collaboration and its development as a composite indicator that evaluates missions across multiple quantifiable factors. The aim of SSR is to provide actionable feedback and a score recognizing operators’ contributions to the space sustainability effort. The paper also addresses the challenges SSR faces in adoption and implementation, and its alignment with various international space debris mitigation guidelines.
SSR draws heavily on proven rating methodologies from other industries, particularly Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in the building and manufacturing industries, Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) in the agriculture industry, and Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) in the education industry.
“By grounding SSR in quantifiable metrics and testing it across diverse mission profiles, we created a rating system that recognizes sustainable decisions and operations by satellite operators, aligned with international guidelines and industry best practices,” says Rathnasabapathy.
The Space Sustainability Rating is a nongovernmental approach to encourage space mission operators to take responsible actions to reduce space debris and collision risk. The paper highlights the roles for private sector space operators and public sector space regulators to put steps in place to ensure such responsible actions are pursued.
The Space Enabled Research Group continues to perform academic research that illustrates the benefits of space missions and government oversight bodies enforcing sustainable and safe space practices. Future work will highlight the need for a sustainability focus as practices such as satellite service and in-space manufacturing start to become more common.
Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum clutches his foot in pain after an injury during Monday’s playoff game vs. the New York Knicks.
Getty Images
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
When Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum dropped to the ground and grabbed his right foot in agony during Monday’s playoff game against the New York Knicks, fans feared the worst.
They weren’t wrong to panic. On Tuesday, the team announced that Tatum had undergone surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon. He will miss the rest of the playoffs and possibly all of the 2025-2026 season.
In this edited conversation with the Gazette, George Theodore, a Medical School alum and an orthopedic surgeon at Mass General Brigham, explains why the Achilles tear is the injury that athletes dread most. Theodore is a foot and ankle consultant for Harvard’s men’s and women’s athletics and treats patients on local professional teams, including the Boston Red Sox, for whom he is team physician, as well as the New England Patriots and Boston Bruins.
How does an Achilles tendon rupture?
Number one, it’s important to know that it’s the largest tendon in the body, and as a result, it’s very important in sports and in recreation for push-off. When there’s a forceful movement down at the Achilles or the ankle area, such as a dorsiflexion, it can trigger an injury. Also, the area where it ruptures has a low blood supply compared to other areas of the body. So there’s already a low blood supply and then combined with a very forceful flexion of the ankle, these two things injure the Achilles. Often we don’t know why this has happened. Athletes can have risk factors for the injury, but it’s very difficult to prevent.
The achilles tendon is the “largest tendon in the body,” says Mass General Brigham orthopedic surgeon George Theodore, making it key in sports for “push-off” and vulnerable to injury.
Getty Images
Tatum seemed fine up until the moment it happened. Is it possible that a small pre-existing injury can contribute to a rupture?
We know that in older patients who get Achilles tendon ruptures — we see this a lot in pickleball and tennis — often there’s longstanding tendon damage. In younger patients, the rupture is usually from a forceful injury. It’s possible that they’ve had some pre-existing issues in there, but that’s not as common as with the older athlete.
A tear can mean everything from a strain — a little stretch — to a partial tear to a complete tear. A rupture is a complete tear. A strain is usually treated with a period of rest followed by rehabilitation. A partial tear is also something that’s usually not treated surgically, but with rest and rehabilitation, and usually with successful return to sport. The rupture is the most serious. That has the most important decision-making over whether to fix it or not to fix it, and then implications for how the patient will do down the line.
How is the Achilles repaired during surgery?
During the surgery, the two ends are brought together and fixed with suture. And this can be done either through an open incision or a mini percutaneous incision: You can use an open incision to bring the two ends together, or sometimes we pass sutures through the skin and then just tie the two ends together under the surface.
Is surgery the only option to repair a rupture?
In certain groups, we can treat ruptures non-operatively with good results. Those tend to be patients whose demand to return to a high-energy, push-off lifestyle may not be as great. It may also be patients who are not healthy enough to undergo surgery. There may be patients who, for example, are only interested in doing normal walking and low-impact activities. They can be successfully treated non-operatively. That involves a different protocol. Sometimes we put them in a cast or a boot with heel lifts, followed by a physical therapy program.
What’s the typical recovery time and protocol for people like Tatum, who had surgery after a complete Achilles tear?
There will be a time where the patient will be immobilized. That is to say, they’ll have a short time and a cast to allow the incision to heal. After that, they’ll be allowed to bear weight in a walking boot, and then they’ll be allowed to start a comprehensive rehabilitation program. The return to sport for someone at his level is approximately nine to 12 months. Studies have shown that 80 percent of elite athletes eventually get back to their previous level of performance.
How does recovery today compare to five or 10 years ago — have there been any significant advances?
I think the three main advances are: 1. More minimally invasive surgery or smaller incisions; 2. A more aggressive rehabilitation program so that people are bearing weight earlier, starting to move the ankle earlier, and getting into physical therapy earlier; 3. Testing that shows what patients’ limitations are, which gives us the ability to see those limitations — functional, physical, and psychological — and get patients back to where they want to be. That involves a lot of resources and a lot of people. It involves the surgeon, the patient, the physical therapist, and the psychologist.
JoAnn Manson has spent her career researching – and highlighting – how everyday choices influence health
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
JoAnn Manson.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
When it comes to the idea that prevention is the best medicine, JoAnn Manson doesn’t mess around.
Since the 1980s, Manson has dedicated her career to teasing out complex threads of human health, with an emphasis on factors under our control: physical activity, diet, sleep, smoking, alcohol consumption, medications such as menopausal hormone therapy, low-dose aspirin, statins, and, most recently, vitamins and other dietary supplements.
“Ever since my early years of medical training, I’ve been astounded by the powerful role of modifiable lifestyle factors as bulwarks against chronic disease,” said Manson, who is the Michael and Lee Bell Endowed Professor of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a professor of epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School. “I became motivated to devote my research career to testing interventions to reduce chronic disease burden, extend years of good health or ‘healthspan,’ and to try to decrease premature mortality.”
“Ever since my early years of medical training, I’ve been astounded by the powerful role of modifiable lifestyle factors as bulwarks against chronic disease.”
A scan of Manson’s publication history — one major database of medical research returns more than 1,800 hits on her name — reads like a list of national health headlines over the past 20 years: menopausal hormone therapy and cardiovascular disease and breast cancer; passive smoking in the workplace; walking versus vigorous exercise in prevention of heart disease; steps per day and cancer risk; pre-pandemic physical activity and COVID severity. A member of the National Academy of Medicine, she is listed by Research.com as the world’s top female scientist based on citation metrics, with more than 369,000 citations and an h-index, which reflects the scope and influence of her work, of 310.
Her tools have been major randomized prevention trials and large longitudinal studies that follow tens of thousands of people over time, gathering health, diet, and behavioral data, often augmented by blood, tissue, and other physical samples that enrich the picture and provide physical evidence of changes reported by participants. Many of these initiatives have received support from the federal government.
Manson’s research began with the landmark Nurses’ Health Study, which launched in 1976, when most study subjects were white males, and sought to fill gaps around women’s health. The decadeslong study, established by Brigham and Harvard investigators to explore links between contraceptive use, smoking, heart disease, and cancer, expanded over time to provide a broad view of lifestyle and health. Manson has been involved with the project since the mid-1980s and has been a principal investigator of the cardiovascular component for 26 years.
In 1993, Manson became one of the initial principal investigators of a National Institutes of Health-backed study called the Women’s Health Initiative, which enrolled 160,000 postmenopausal women in three large, randomized trials, along with an investigation of major causes of chronic disease and mortality in older women, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis. Manson leads the study’s clinical center in Boston.
More recently, she has focused on what she has described as the “Wild West” of American healthcare — dietary supplements, whose health claims and distribution are unchecked and unregulated. In the nationwide VITAL randomized trial of 25,000 men and women 50 and older, she and colleagues investigated health claims about vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, reporting in 2018 that omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil were associated with a 28 percent reduction in heart attack. The effect was even higher among those who reported minimal fish in their diet, cutting risk about 40 percent. For vitamin D, there appeared to be little effect on heart disease, but a significant 17 percent reduction in advanced cancer, and a 22 percent reduction in autoimmune diseases.
A more recent randomized trial, COSMOS, the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcome Study, investigated links between cocoa flavanols — the major ingredient in dark chocolate — multivitamins, and health impacts, including effects related to cognition. In 2023 and 2024 it linked the humble daily multivitamin to benefits for cognitive aging and a reduction in cognitive decline, with consistent findings in three separate placebo-controlled studies in COSMOS.
Manson, like all health researchers, is keeping a wary eye on cuts to federal research funding. (A halt to support for the Women’s Health Initiative was reversed after an outcry.) Her own funding hasn’t been affected, though proposed cuts to indirect research costs would have a significant impact, as studies like VITAL and COSMOS have major infrastructure and blood repository costs. She’s concerned about cutbacks beyond her own division’s research, because they will have broad impact on science and prevention nationally, as well as on training programs and pipelines for future generations of scientists.
“It’s distressing what’s happening,” Manson said. “We’re very concerned, obviously, about our faculty and staff supported by federal funding, but it really goes far beyond the impact on any individual division or research program. It’s really the nationwide, and even global, impact on the scientific enterprise and population health.”
Pavements form the backbone of our built environment. In the United States, almost 2.8 million lane-miles, or about 4.6 million lane-kilometers, are paved. They take us to work or school, take goods to their destinations, and much more.
To secure a more sustainable future, we must take a careful look at the long-term performance and environmental impacts of our pavements. Haoran Li, a postdoc at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is deeply invested in studying how to give stakeholders the information and tools they need to make informed pavement decisions with the future in mind. Here, he discusses life-cycle assessments for pavements as well as research from MIT in addressing pavement sustainability.
Q: What is life-cycle assessment, and why does it matter for pavements?
A: Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a method that helps us holistically assess the environmental impacts of products and systems throughout their life cycle — everything from the impacts of raw materials to construction, use, maintenance, and repair, and finally decommissioning. For pavements, up to 78 percent of the life-cycle impact comes from the use phase, with the majority stemming from vehicle fuel use impacted by pavement characteristics, such as stiffness and smoothness. This phase also includes the sunlight reflected by pavements: Lighter, more reflective pavement bounces heat back into the atmosphere instead of absorbing it, which can help keep nearby buildings and streets cooler. At the same time, there are positive use phase impacts like carbon uptake — the natural process by which cement-based products like concrete roads and infrastructure sequester CO2 [carbon dioxide] from the atmosphere. Due to the sheer area of our pavements, they offer a great potential for the sustainability solution. Unlike many decarbonization solutions, pavements are managed by government agencies and influence the emissions from vehicles and surrounding buildings, allowing for a coordinated push toward sustainability through better materials, designs, and maintenance.
Q: What are the gaps in current pavement life-cycle assessment methods and tools and what has the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub done to address them so far?
A: A key gap is the complexity of performing pavement LCA. Practitioners should assess both the long-term structural performance and environmental impacts of paving materials, considering the pavements’ interactions with the built environment. Another key gap is the great uncertainty associated with pavement LCA. Since pavements are designed to last for decades, it is necessary to handle the inherent uncertainty through their long-term performance evaluations.
To tackle these challenges, the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) developed an innovative method and practical tools that address data intensity and uncertainty while offering context-specific and probabilistic LCA strategies. For instance, we demonstrated that it is possible to achieve meaningful results on the environmentally preferred pavement alternatives while reducing data collection efforts by focusing on the most influential and least variable parameters. By targeting key variables that significantly impact the pavement’s life cycle, we can streamline the process and still obtain robust conclusions. Overall, the efforts of the CSHub aim to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of pavement LCAs, making them better aligned with real-world conditions and more manageable in terms of data requirements.
Q: How does the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s new streamlined pavement life-cycle assessment method improve on previous designs?
A: The CSHub recently developed a new framework to streamline both probabilistic and comparative LCAs for pavements. Probabilistic LCA accounts for randomness and variability in data, while comparative LCA allows the analysis of different options simultaneously to determine the most sustainable choice.
One key innovation is the use of a structured data underspecification approach, which prioritizes the data collection efforts. In pavement LCA, underspecifying can reduce the overall data collection burden by up to 85 percent, allowing for a reliable decision-making process with minimal data. By focusing on the most critical elements, we can still reach robust conclusions without the need for extensive data collection.
To make this framework practical and accessible, it is being integrated into an online LCA software tool. This tool facilitates use by practitioners, such as departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations. It helps them identify choices that lead to the highest-performing, longest-lasting, and most environmentally friendly pavements. Some of these solutions could include incorporating low-carbon concrete mixtures, prioritizing long-lasting treatment actions, and optimizing the design of pavement geometry to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Overall, the CSHub’s new streamlined pavement LCA method significantly improves the efficiency and accessibility of conducting pavement LCAs, making it easier for stakeholders to make informed decisions that enhance pavement performance and sustainability.
© Photo: Andrew Laurent
Pavements form the backbone of our built environment. In the United States, almost 2.8 million lane-miles, or about 4.6 million lane-kilometers, are paved. They take us to work or school, take goods to their destinations, and much more.
To secure a more sustainable future, we must take a careful look at the long-term performance and environmental impacts of our pavements. Haoran Li, a postdoc at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is deeply invested in studying how to give stakeholders the information and tools they need to make informed pavement decisions with the future in mind. Here, he discusses life-cycle assessments for pavements as well as research from MIT in addressing pavement sustainability.
Q: What is life-cycle assessment, and why does it matter for pavements?
A: Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a method that helps us holistically assess the environmental impacts of products and systems throughout their life cycle — everything from the impacts of raw materials to construction, use, maintenance, and repair, and finally decommissioning. For pavements, up to 78 percent of the life-cycle impact comes from the use phase, with the majority stemming from vehicle fuel use impacted by pavement characteristics, such as stiffness and smoothness. This phase also includes the sunlight reflected by pavements: Lighter, more reflective pavement bounces heat back into the atmosphere instead of absorbing it, which can help keep nearby buildings and streets cooler. At the same time, there are positive use phase impacts like carbon uptake — the natural process by which cement-based products like concrete roads and infrastructure sequester CO2 [carbon dioxide] from the atmosphere. Due to the sheer area of our pavements, they offer a great potential for the sustainability solution. Unlike many decarbonization solutions, pavements are managed by government agencies and influence the emissions from vehicles and surrounding buildings, allowing for a coordinated push toward sustainability through better materials, designs, and maintenance.
Q: What are the gaps in current pavement life-cycle assessment methods and tools and what has the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub done to address them so far?
A: A key gap is the complexity of performing pavement LCA. Practitioners should assess both the long-term structural performance and environmental impacts of paving materials, considering the pavements’ interactions with the built environment. Another key gap is the great uncertainty associated with pavement LCA. Since pavements are designed to last for decades, it is necessary to handle the inherent uncertainty through their long-term performance evaluations.
To tackle these challenges, the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub) developed an innovative method and practical tools that address data intensity and uncertainty while offering context-specific and probabilistic LCA strategies. For instance, we demonstrated that it is possible to achieve meaningful results on the environmentally preferred pavement alternatives while reducing data collection efforts by focusing on the most influential and least variable parameters. By targeting key variables that significantly impact the pavement’s life cycle, we can streamline the process and still obtain robust conclusions. Overall, the efforts of the CSHub aim to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of pavement LCAs, making them better aligned with real-world conditions and more manageable in terms of data requirements.
Q: How does the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s new streamlined pavement life-cycle assessment method improve on previous designs?
A: The CSHub recently developed a new framework to streamline both probabilistic and comparative LCAs for pavements. Probabilistic LCA accounts for randomness and variability in data, while comparative LCA allows the analysis of different options simultaneously to determine the most sustainable choice.
One key innovation is the use of a structured data underspecification approach, which prioritizes the data collection efforts. In pavement LCA, underspecifying can reduce the overall data collection burden by up to 85 percent, allowing for a reliable decision-making process with minimal data. By focusing on the most critical elements, we can still reach robust conclusions without the need for extensive data collection.
To make this framework practical and accessible, it is being integrated into an online LCA software tool. This tool facilitates use by practitioners, such as departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations. It helps them identify choices that lead to the highest-performing, longest-lasting, and most environmentally friendly pavements. Some of these solutions could include incorporating low-carbon concrete mixtures, prioritizing long-lasting treatment actions, and optimizing the design of pavement geometry to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Overall, the CSHub’s new streamlined pavement LCA method significantly improves the efficiency and accessibility of conducting pavement LCAs, making it easier for stakeholders to make informed decisions that enhance pavement performance and sustainability.
© Photo: Andrew Laurent
MIT alumnus Steven Troung ’20 has been awarded a 2025 Knight-Hennessy Scholarship and will join the eighth cohort of the prestigious fellowship. Knight-Hennessy Scholars receive up to three years of financial support for graduate studies at Stanford University.
Knight-Hennessy Scholars are selected for their independence of thought, purposeful leadership, and civic mindset. Troung is dedicated to making scientific advances in metabolic disorders, specifically diabetes, a condition that has affected many of his family members.
Truong, the son of Vietnamese refugees, originally hails from Minneapolis and graduated from MIT in 2020 with bachelor’s degrees in biological engineering and creative writing. During his time at MIT, Truong conducted research on novel diabetes therapies with professors Daniel Anderson and Robert Langer at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and with Professor Douglas Lauffenburger in the Department of Biological Engineering.
Troung also founded a diabetes research project in Vietnam and co-led Vietnam’s largest genome-wide association study with physicians at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Ho Chi Minh City, where the team investigated the genetic determinants of Type 2 diabetes.
In his senior year at MIT, Truong won a Marshall Scholarship for post-graduate studies in the U.K. As a Marshall Scholar, he completed an MPhil in computational biology at Cambridge University and an MA in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Troung is currently pursuing an MD and a PhD in biophysics at the Stanford School of Medicine.
In addition to winning a Knight-Hennessy Scholarship and the Marshall Scholarship, Truong was the recipient of a 2019-20 Goldwater Scholarship and a 2023 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.
Students interested in applying to the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program can contact Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development.
© Photo: Carolyn Fong Photography/Knight-Hennessy Scholars
Dr O’Brien, who is an Irish citizen, will leave his role in Cambridge in September.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice said: “Diarmuid has helped deliver genuine progress in ensuring that Cambridge continues to be recognised globally as a centre of innovation and technology, building partnerships, working with Government, and driving UK economic growth.
"We have great plans and ambitions, including for a new Innovation Hub in the heart of this city. We wish Diarmuid well in his exciting new role in Ireland.”
Dr O’Brien, who was previously Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise, said: “I have hugely enjoyed my time in Cambridge, which is a thriving world leader in innovation.
"The brilliant people and dynamic ecosystem here will continue to generate the startups and success stories of the future. I look forward to watching Cambridge flourish.”
He will remain in the role until September, with Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Professor Sir John Aston, providing continuing leadership through the transition from Diarmuid to his successor. Recruitment will begin in due course.
The University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation, Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, has been appointed as the first Chief Executive Officer of Research Ireland, Ireland’s new research and innovation funding agency, based in Dublin.
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Imagine a radiologist examining a chest X-ray from a new patient. She notices the patient has swelling in the tissue but does not have an enlarged heart. Looking to speed up diagnosis, she might use a vision-language machine-learning model to search for reports from similar patients.
But if the model mistakenly identifies reports with both conditions, the most likely diagnosis could be quite different: If a patient has tissue swelling and an enlarged heart, the condition is very likely to be cardiac related, but with no enlarged heart there could be several underlying causes.
In a new study, MIT researchers have found that vision-language models are extremely likely to make such a mistake in real-world situations because they don’t understand negation — words like “no” and “doesn’t” that specify what is false or absent.
“Those negation words can have a very significant impact, and if we are just using these models blindly, we may run into catastrophic consequences,” says Kumail Alhamoud, an MIT graduate student and lead author of this study.
The researchers tested the ability of vision-language models to identify negation in image captions. The models often performed as well as a random guess. Building on those findings, the team created a dataset of images with corresponding captions that include negation words describing missing objects.
They show that retraining a vision-language model with this dataset leads to performance improvements when a model is asked to retrieve images that do not contain certain objects. It also boosts accuracy on multiple choice question answering with negated captions.
But the researchers caution that more work is needed to address the root causes of this problem. They hope their research alerts potential users to a previously unnoticed shortcoming that could have serious implications in high-stakes settings where these models are currently being used, from determining which patients receive certain treatments to identifying product defects in manufacturing plants.
“This is a technical paper, but there are bigger issues to consider. If something as fundamental as negation is broken, we shouldn’t be using large vision/language models in many of the ways we are using them now — without intensive evaluation,” says senior author Marzyeh Ghassemi, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of the Institute of Medical Engineering Sciences and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.
Ghassemi and Alhamoud are joined on the paper by Shaden Alshammari, an MIT graduate student; Yonglong Tian of OpenAI; Guohao Li, a former postdoc at Oxford University; Philip H.S. Torr, a professor at Oxford; and Yoon Kim, an assistant professor of EECS and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. The research will be presented at Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition.
Neglecting negation
Vision-language models (VLM) are trained using huge collections of images and corresponding captions, which they learn to encode as sets of numbers, called vector representations. The models use these vectors to distinguish between different images.
A VLM utilizes two separate encoders, one for text and one for images, and the encoders learn to output similar vectors for an image and its corresponding text caption.
“The captions express what is in the images — they are a positive label. And that is actually the whole problem. No one looks at an image of a dog jumping over a fence and captions it by saying ‘a dog jumping over a fence, with no helicopters,’” Ghassemi says.
Because the image-caption datasets don’t contain examples of negation, VLMs never learn to identify it.
To dig deeper into this problem, the researchers designed two benchmark tasks that test the ability of VLMs to understand negation.
For the first, they used a large language model (LLM) to re-caption images in an existing dataset by asking the LLM to think about related objects not in an image and write them into the caption. Then they tested models by prompting them with negation words to retrieve images that contain certain objects, but not others.
For the second task, they designed multiple choice questions that ask a VLM to select the most appropriate caption from a list of closely related options. These captions differ only by adding a reference to an object that doesn’t appear in the image or negating an object that does appear in the image.
The models often failed at both tasks, with image retrieval performance dropping by nearly 25 percent with negated captions. When it came to answering multiple choice questions, the best models only achieved about 39 percent accuracy, with several models performing at or even below random chance.
One reason for this failure is a shortcut the researchers call affirmation bias — VLMs ignore negation words and focus on objects in the images instead.
“This does not just happen for words like ‘no’ and ‘not.’ Regardless of how you express negation or exclusion, the models will simply ignore it,” Alhamoud says.
This was consistent across every VLM they tested.
“A solvable problem”
Since VLMs aren’t typically trained on image captions with negation, the researchers developed datasets with negation words as a first step toward solving the problem.
Using a dataset with 10 million image-text caption pairs, they prompted an LLM to propose related captions that specify what is excluded from the images, yielding new captions with negation words.
They had to be especially careful that these synthetic captions still read naturally, or it could cause a VLM to fail in the real world when faced with more complex captions written by humans.
They found that finetuning VLMs with their dataset led to performance gains across the board. It improved models’ image retrieval abilities by about 10 percent, while also boosting performance in the multiple-choice question answering task by about 30 percent.
“But our solution is not perfect. We are just recaptioning datasets, a form of data augmentation. We haven’t even touched how these models work, but we hope this is a signal that this is a solvable problem and others can take our solution and improve it,” Alhamoud says.
At the same time, he hopes their work encourages more users to think about the problem they want to use a VLM to solve and design some examples to test it before deployment.
In the future, the researchers could expand upon this work by teaching VLMs to process text and images separately, which may improve their ability to understand negation. In addition, they could develop additional datasets that include image-caption pairs for specific applications, such as health care.
© Image: iStock; MIT News
By Prof Hsu Li Yang, Director for Asia Centre for Health Security and Vice Dean of Global Health, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUS
Harvard University.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
Harvard amended its lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday to account for the most recent round of cuts to research funding. The government’s actions violate federal law and the University’s First Amendment rights and have no link to charges of campus antisemitism, the complaint says.
The original complaint was filed on April 21 and asked the court to vacate and set aside the termination of $2.2 billion in grants. Last week, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon informed the University that it should no longer seek federal grants “since none will be provided.” On Tuesday, the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism said that Harvard researchers would lose another $450 million in grants from several agencies.
In the weeks since the original suit was filed, Harvard has received grant termination letters from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Defense Department, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The letters echo one another, saying that awards have been terminated because the projects “no longer effectuate agency priorities,” and that there is, in essence, no way to modify the projects so they would become acceptable.
At risk, the amended complaint contends, is the University’s ability to continue research that has contributed to breakthroughs in health, science, national security, and other fields.
“All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear. Allow the government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” the complaint says.
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter sent to McMahon on Monday, sought to seek common ground with some Trump administration priorities, highlighting University initiatives to fight antisemitism and its efforts to encourage constructive disagreement on campus, among other actions.
“As your letter suggests, we share common ground on a number of critical issues, including the importance of ending antisemitism and other bigotry on campus,” Garber wrote. “Like you, I believe that Harvard must foster an academic environment that encourages freedom of thought and expression, and that we should embrace a multiplicity of viewpoints rather than focusing our attention on narrow orthodoxies.”
But he rejected as unlawful Trump administration demands that include governance and hiring changes and “audits” of student and faculty viewpoints, pushing back against “the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law.” The administration, he said, has “ignored the many meaningful steps we have taken and will continue to take to live up to our principles and improve the lives of people across the country and throughout the world.”
The lawsuit argues that the government is seeking to coerce ideological balance and therefore violating the University’s right to free speech. The funding freezes and terminations announced so far also ignore procedures laid out in federal law through which complaints about civil rights violations are investigated and resolved, the University says.
Garber has repeatedly highlighted several University reforms aimed at combating antisemitism. Last month, he accepted the reports of two task forces investigating antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias, describing them before their release as “hard-hitting and painful.”
In his letter to McMahon, Garber said additional steps taken by Harvard in recent months include new investments in the study of Judaism and related fields and new initiatives to make Harvard more pluralistic and welcoming from the standpoint of intellectual diversity. He also disputed claims that Harvard is a partisan institution.
“It is neither Republican nor Democratic,” Garber wrote. “It is not an arm of any other political party or movement. Nor will it ever be.”
The MIT Press has announced that beginning in 2026, Duke University Press will join its Direct to Open (D2O) program. This collaboration marks the first such partnership with another university press for the D2O program, and reaffirms their shared commitment to open access publishing that is ethical, equitable, and sustainable.
Launched in 2021, D2O is the MIT Press’ framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single e-books, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.
Duke University Press brings their distinguished catalog in the humanities and social sciences to Direct to Open, providing open access to 20 frontlist titles annually alongside the MIT Press’ 80 scholarly books each year. Their participation in the D2O program — which will also include free term access to a paywalled collection of 250 key backlist titles — enhances the range of openly available academic content for D2O’s library partners.
“By expanding the Direct to Open model to include one of the most innovative university presses publishing today, we’re taking a significant step toward building a more open and accessible future for academic publishing,” says Amy Brand, director and publisher of the MIT Press. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be building this partnership with Duke University Press. This collaboration will benefit the entire scholarly community, ensuring that more books are made openly available to readers worldwide.”
“We are honored to participate in MIT Press’ dynamic and successful D2O program,” says Dean Smith, director of Duke University Press. “It greatly expands our open-access footprint and serves our mission of making bold and transformational scholarship accessible to the world.”
With Duke University Press’ involvement in 2026, D2O will feature multiple package options, combining content from both the MIT Press and Duke University Press. Participating institutions will have the opportunity to support each press individually, providing flexibility for libraries while fostering collective impact.
For details on how your institution might participate in or support Direct to Open, please visit the D2O website or contact the MIT Press library relations team.
Starting in July, MIT’s Shaping the Future of Work Initiative in the Department of Economics will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education of the next generation of scholars, made possible by a gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. In recognition of the gift and the expansion of priorities it supports, on July 1 the initiative will become part of the new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. This center will be officially launched at a public event in fall 2025.
The Stone Center will be led by Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, and co-directors David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It will join a global network of 11 other wealth inequality centers funded by the Stone Foundation as part of an effort to advance research on the causes and consequences of the growing accumulation at the top of the wealth distribution.
“This generous gift from the Stone Foundation advances our pioneering economics research on inequality, technology, and the future of the workforce. This work will create a pipeline of scholars in this critical area of study, and it will help to inform the public and policymakers,” says Provost Cynthia Barnhart.
Originally established as part of MIT Blueprint Labs with a foundational gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative is a nonpartisan research organization that applies economics research to identify innovative ways to move the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory, with a central focus on revitalizing labor market opportunities for workers without a college education. Building on frontier micro- and macro-economics, economic sociology, political economy, and other disciplines, the initiative seeks to answer key questions about the decline in labor market opportunities for non-college workers in recent decades. These labor market changes have been a major driver of growing wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has, in turn, broadly reshaped our economy, democracy, and society.
Support from the Stone Foundation will allow the new Stone Center to build on the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative’s ongoing research agenda and extend its focus to include a growing emphasis on the interplay between technologies and inequality, as well as the technology sector’s role in defining future inequality.
Core objectives of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work will include fostering connections between scholars doing pathbreaking research on automation, AI, the intersection of work and technology, and wealth inequality across disciplines, including within the Department of Economics, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing; strengthening the pipeline of emerging scholars focused on these issues; and using research to inform and engage a wider audience including the public, undergraduate and graduate students, and policymakers.
The Stone Foundation’s support will allow the center to strengthen and expand its commitments to produce new research, convene additional events to share research findings, promote connection and collaboration between scholars working on related topics, provide new resources for the center’s research affiliates, and expand public outreach to raise awareness of this important emerging challenge. “Cathy and I are thrilled to welcome MIT to the growing family of Stone Centers dedicated to studying the urgent challenges of accelerating wealth inequality,” James M. Stone says.
Agustín Rayo, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, says, “I am thrilled to celebrate the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center in the MIT economics department. Not only will it enhance the cutting-edge work of MIT’s social scientists, but it will support cross-disciplinary interactions that will enable new insights and solutions to complex social challenges.”
Jonathan Gruber, chair of the Department of Economics, adds, “I couldn’t be more excited about the Stone Foundation’s support for the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. The initiative’s leaders have been far ahead of the curve in anticipating the rapid changes that technological forces are bringing to the labor market, and their influential studies have helped us understand the potential effects of AI and other technologies on U.S. workers. The generosity of the Stone Foundation will allow them to continue this incredible work, while expanding their priorities to include other critical issues around inequality. This is a great moment for the paradigm-shifting research that Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson are leading here at MIT.”
“We are grateful to the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation for their generous support enabling us to study two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the future of work,” says Acemoglu, who was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2024 (with co-laureates Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson). “We hope to go beyond exploring the causes of inequality and the determinants of the availability of good jobs in the present and in the future, but also develop ideas about how society can shape both the work of the future and inequality by its choices of institutions and technological trajectories.”
“We are incredibly fortunate to be joining the family of Stone Centers around the world. Jim and Cathleen Stone are far-sighted and generous donors, and we are delighted that they are willing to back us and MIT in this way,” says Johnson. “We look forward to working with all our colleagues, at MIT and around the world, to advance understanding and practical approaches to inequality and the future of work.”
Autor adds, “This support will enable us — and many others — to focus our scholarship, teaching and public outreach towards shaping a labor market that offers opportunity, mobility, and economic security to a far broader set of people.”
© Photo: Emily Dahl
Starting in July, MIT’s Shaping the Future of Work Initiative in the Department of Economics will usher in a significant new era of research, policy, and education of the next generation of scholars, made possible by a gift from the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation. In recognition of the gift and the expansion of priorities it supports, on July 1 the initiative will become part of the new James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work. This center will be officially launched at a public event in fall 2025.
The Stone Center will be led by Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor, and co-directors David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in Economics, and Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship. It will join a global network of 11 other wealth inequality centers funded by the Stone Foundation as part of an effort to advance research on the causes and consequences of the growing accumulation at the top of the wealth distribution.
“This generous gift from the Stone Foundation advances our pioneering economics research on inequality, technology, and the future of the workforce. This work will create a pipeline of scholars in this critical area of study, and it will help to inform the public and policymakers,” says Provost Cynthia Barnhart.
Originally established as part of MIT Blueprint Labs with a foundational gift from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative is a nonpartisan research organization that applies economics research to identify innovative ways to move the labor market onto a more equitable trajectory, with a central focus on revitalizing labor market opportunities for workers without a college education. Building on frontier micro- and macro-economics, economic sociology, political economy, and other disciplines, the initiative seeks to answer key questions about the decline in labor market opportunities for non-college workers in recent decades. These labor market changes have been a major driver of growing wealth inequality, a phenomenon that has, in turn, broadly reshaped our economy, democracy, and society.
Support from the Stone Foundation will allow the new Stone Center to build on the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative’s ongoing research agenda and extend its focus to include a growing emphasis on the interplay between technologies and inequality, as well as the technology sector’s role in defining future inequality.
Core objectives of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work will include fostering connections between scholars doing pathbreaking research on automation, AI, the intersection of work and technology, and wealth inequality across disciplines, including within the Department of Economics, the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing; strengthening the pipeline of emerging scholars focused on these issues; and using research to inform and engage a wider audience including the public, undergraduate and graduate students, and policymakers.
The Stone Foundation’s support will allow the center to strengthen and expand its commitments to produce new research, convene additional events to share research findings, promote connection and collaboration between scholars working on related topics, provide new resources for the center’s research affiliates, and expand public outreach to raise awareness of this important emerging challenge. “Cathy and I are thrilled to welcome MIT to the growing family of Stone Centers dedicated to studying the urgent challenges of accelerating wealth inequality,” James M. Stone says.
Agustín Rayo, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, says, “I am thrilled to celebrate the creation of the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center in the MIT economics department. Not only will it enhance the cutting-edge work of MIT’s social scientists, but it will support cross-disciplinary interactions that will enable new insights and solutions to complex social challenges.”
Jonathan Gruber, chair of the Department of Economics, adds, “I couldn’t be more excited about the Stone Foundation’s support for the Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. The initiative’s leaders have been far ahead of the curve in anticipating the rapid changes that technological forces are bringing to the labor market, and their influential studies have helped us understand the potential effects of AI and other technologies on U.S. workers. The generosity of the Stone Foundation will allow them to continue this incredible work, while expanding their priorities to include other critical issues around inequality. This is a great moment for the paradigm-shifting research that Acemoglu, Autor, and Johnson are leading here at MIT.”
“We are grateful to the James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Foundation for their generous support enabling us to study two defining challenges of our age: inequality and the future of work,” says Acemoglu, who was awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2024 (with co-laureates Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson). “We hope to go beyond exploring the causes of inequality and the determinants of the availability of good jobs in the present and in the future, but also develop ideas about how society can shape both the work of the future and inequality by its choices of institutions and technological trajectories.”
“We are incredibly fortunate to be joining the family of Stone Centers around the world. Jim and Cathleen Stone are far-sighted and generous donors, and we are delighted that they are willing to back us and MIT in this way,” says Johnson. “We look forward to working with all our colleagues, at MIT and around the world, to advance understanding and practical approaches to inequality and the future of work.”
Autor adds, “This support will enable us — and many others — to focus our scholarship, teaching and public outreach towards shaping a labor market that offers opportunity, mobility, and economic security to a far broader set of people.”
© Photo: Emily Dahl
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
David Deming — Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and faculty dean of Kirkland House — was named Danoff Dean of Harvard College on Tuesday. He begins in his new role July 1.
In announcing the appointment, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra said: “A recognized and respected expert in higher education research and policy, an inspiring academic leader, and a beloved faculty dean with a deep, authentic connection to undergraduate life, David is uniquely well-suited to lead the College at this consequential moment in Harvard’s history.”
“David is a stellar researcher, a great educator, a beloved faculty dean, and a role model to students and faculty alike,” said Harvard President Alan M. Garber. “His work on education and social mobility, and much else, gets to core questions in education, and I have benefited greatly from his expertise and his ability to distill the key implications of his research. I am excited that he has agreed to take on this critical role for the College and the University, as he shapes the experiences of generations of undergraduates.”
Deming is a nationally recognized scholar at the intersection of education, labor markets, and economic inequality. He is a principal investigator with the CLIMB Initiative at Opportunity Insights, which studies how higher education drives social mobility and how policymakers and institutions can amplify that impact. He also co-leads the Project on Workforce, a cross-Harvard initiative that focuses on preparing students for meaningful careers in a rapidly changing labor market. In addition, Deming co-founded the Skills Lab, which creates performance-based measures of “soft” skills, such as teamwork and decision-making. His most recent work explores how the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence has affected jobs and the economy.
Deming’s “work explores how education transforms lives, especially for low-income and first-generation students, and how public policy can expand opportunity and upward mobility,” said Hoekstra in a message to the FAS community. “His research blends rigorous economic analysis with a strong sense of purpose: to ensure that education systems work better for more people.”
“David embodies the many virtues and traits needed in a great Harvard College Dean,” said Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee professor of Economics, who co-authored research with Deming when he was a graduate student and is a long-time colleague. “He is a caring and committed colleague; an empathetic friend, teacher, and father; and a gifted communicator.
“David has been a leader in labor market research on the roles of social skills and teamwork. His most recent work reveals how generative AI is impacting education and employment and explores the similarities of this technological disruption to those of the past. David exemplifies veritas as a person and as a researcher.”
Deming began teaching in Harvard College in 2018. He and his wife, Janine Santimauro, became faculty deans of Kirkland House in 2020. During their five years of leadership, Deming and Santimauro have transformed the Kirkland community, fostering connection and camaraderie through intramural sports; “Kirkland Teaches Kirkland,” where students share their senior theses with the House community; and new student-initiated traditions like “The Choosening,” a Sunday night ceremony to announce and celebrate a House-wide theme for the week.
“As a faculty dean, I’ve loved getting to know our students outside the classroom and contributing to their academic and personal development,” said Deming. “While our current moment brings many challenges, I believe deeply in the intellectual rigor and transformative power of a Harvard College education and experience. I am honored to become the next dean and excited to work with Dean Hoekstra and Harvard leadership as we chart a path forward.”
Deming has held multiple leadership roles during his time at Harvard, serving as director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Kennedy School and later becoming the School’s academic dean, a position he held until 2024.
Born in Nashville, Deming moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio, when he was 15. He holds degrees in economics and political science from Ohio State University, a master’s degree from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the HKS policy program. After beginning his career at Carnegie Mellon, he joined Harvard as an assistant professor at HGSE in 2011 and was promoted to full professor with tenure in 2016.
In 2022, Deming won the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to labor economics. In 2018, he was awarded the David N. Kershaw Prize for distinguished contributions to the field of public policy and management under the age of 40. He has written columns for The New York Times and The Atlantic and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Deming succeeds Rakesh Khurana, Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School and a professor of sociology in the FAS, who is stepping down as dean at the end of the academic year, following 11 years of service to Harvard College.
Just 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness practice a day led to reduced stress and anxiety for autistic adults who participated in a study led by scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Participants in the study used a free smartphone app to guide their practice, giving them the flexibility to practice when and where they chose.
Mindfulness is a state in which the mind is focused only on the present moment. It is a way of thinking that can be cultivated with practice, often through meditation or breathing exercises — and evidence is accumulating that practicing mindfulness has positive effects on mental health. The new open-access study, reported April 8 in the journal Mindfulness, adds to that evidence, demonstrating clear benefits for autistic adults.
“Everything you want from this on behalf of somebody you care about happened: reduced reports of anxiety, reduced reports of stress, reduced reports of negative emotions, and increased reports of positive emotions,” says McGovern investigator and MIT Professor John Gabrieli, who led the research with Liron Rozenkrantz, an investigator at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research affiliate in Gabrieli’s lab. “Every measure that we had of well-being moved in significantly in a positive direction,” adds Gabrieli, who is also the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
One of the reported benefits of practicing mindfulness is that it can reduce the symptoms of anxiety disorders. This prompted Gabrieli and his colleagues to wonder whether it might benefit adults with autism, who tend to report above average levels of anxiety and stress, which can interfere with daily living and quality of life. As many as 65 percent of autistic adults may also have an anxiety disorder.
Gabrieli adds that the opportunity for autistic adults to practice mindfulness with an app, rather than needing to meet with a teacher or class, seemed particularly promising. “The capacity to do it at your own pace in your own home, or any environment you like, might be good for anybody,” he says. “But maybe especially for people for whom social interactions can sometimes be challenging.”
The research team, including Cindy Li, the autism recruitment and outreach coordinator in Gabrieli’s lab, recruited 89 autistic adults to participate in their study. Those individuals were split into two groups: one would try the mindfulness practice for six weeks, while the others would wait and try the intervention later.
Participants were asked to practice daily using an app called Healthy Minds, which guides participants through seated or active meditations, each lasting 10 to 15 minutes. Participants reported that they found the app easy to use and had little trouble making time for the daily practice.
After six weeks, participants reported significant reductions in anxiety and perceived stress. These changes were not experienced by the wait-list group, which served as a control. However, after their own six weeks of practice, people in the wait-list group reported similar benefits. “We replicated the result almost perfectly. Every positive finding we found with the first sample we found with the second sample,” Gabrieli says.
The researchers followed up with study participants after another six weeks. Almost everyone had discontinued their mindfulness practice — but remarkably, their gains in well-being had persisted. Based on this finding, the team is eager to further explore the long-term effects of mindfulness practice in future studies. “There’s a hypothesis that a benefit of gaining mindfulness skills or habits is they stick with you over time — that they become incorporated in your daily life,” Gabrieli says. “If people are using the approach to being in the present and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, that’s what you want most of all. It’s a habit of thought that’s powerful and helpful.”
Even as they plan future studies, the researchers say they are already convinced that mindfulness practice can have clear benefits for autistic adults. “It’s possible mindfulness would be helpful at all kinds of ages,” Gabrieli says. But he points out the need is particularly great for autistic adults, who usually have fewer resources and support than autistic children have access to through their schools. Gabrieli is eager for more people with autism to try the Healthy Minds app. “Having scientifically proven resources for adults who are no longer in school systems might be a valuable thing,” he says.
This research was funded, in part, by The Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT and the Yang Tan Collective.
© Photo: iStock
Just 10 to 15 minutes of mindfulness practice a day led to reduced stress and anxiety for autistic adults who participated in a study led by scientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Participants in the study used a free smartphone app to guide their practice, giving them the flexibility to practice when and where they chose.
Mindfulness is a state in which the mind is focused only on the present moment. It is a way of thinking that can be cultivated with practice, often through meditation or breathing exercises — and evidence is accumulating that practicing mindfulness has positive effects on mental health. The new open-access study, reported April 8 in the journal Mindfulness, adds to that evidence, demonstrating clear benefits for autistic adults.
“Everything you want from this on behalf of somebody you care about happened: reduced reports of anxiety, reduced reports of stress, reduced reports of negative emotions, and increased reports of positive emotions,” says McGovern investigator and MIT Professor John Gabrieli, who led the research with Liron Rozenkrantz, an investigator at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine at Bar-Ilan University in Israel and a research affiliate in Gabrieli’s lab. “Every measure that we had of well-being moved in significantly in a positive direction,” adds Gabrieli, who is also the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.
One of the reported benefits of practicing mindfulness is that it can reduce the symptoms of anxiety disorders. This prompted Gabrieli and his colleagues to wonder whether it might benefit adults with autism, who tend to report above average levels of anxiety and stress, which can interfere with daily living and quality of life. As many as 65 percent of autistic adults may also have an anxiety disorder.
Gabrieli adds that the opportunity for autistic adults to practice mindfulness with an app, rather than needing to meet with a teacher or class, seemed particularly promising. “The capacity to do it at your own pace in your own home, or any environment you like, might be good for anybody,” he says. “But maybe especially for people for whom social interactions can sometimes be challenging.”
The research team, including Cindy Li, the autism recruitment and outreach coordinator in Gabrieli’s lab, recruited 89 autistic adults to participate in their study. Those individuals were split into two groups: one would try the mindfulness practice for six weeks, while the others would wait and try the intervention later.
Participants were asked to practice daily using an app called Healthy Minds, which guides participants through seated or active meditations, each lasting 10 to 15 minutes. Participants reported that they found the app easy to use and had little trouble making time for the daily practice.
After six weeks, participants reported significant reductions in anxiety and perceived stress. These changes were not experienced by the wait-list group, which served as a control. However, after their own six weeks of practice, people in the wait-list group reported similar benefits. “We replicated the result almost perfectly. Every positive finding we found with the first sample we found with the second sample,” Gabrieli says.
The researchers followed up with study participants after another six weeks. Almost everyone had discontinued their mindfulness practice — but remarkably, their gains in well-being had persisted. Based on this finding, the team is eager to further explore the long-term effects of mindfulness practice in future studies. “There’s a hypothesis that a benefit of gaining mindfulness skills or habits is they stick with you over time — that they become incorporated in your daily life,” Gabrieli says. “If people are using the approach to being in the present and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, that’s what you want most of all. It’s a habit of thought that’s powerful and helpful.”
Even as they plan future studies, the researchers say they are already convinced that mindfulness practice can have clear benefits for autistic adults. “It’s possible mindfulness would be helpful at all kinds of ages,” Gabrieli says. But he points out the need is particularly great for autistic adults, who usually have fewer resources and support than autistic children have access to through their schools. Gabrieli is eager for more people with autism to try the Healthy Minds app. “Having scientifically proven resources for adults who are no longer in school systems might be a valuable thing,” he says.
This research was funded, in part, by The Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT and the Yang Tan Collective.
© Photo: iStock
In a trial where cancers were treated with chemotherapy followed by a targeted cancer drug before surgery, 100% of patients survived the critical three-year period post-surgery.
The discovery, published today in Nature Communications, could become the most effective treatment to date for patients with early-stage breast cancer with inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.
Breast cancers with faulty copies of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are challenging to treat, and came to public attention when actress Angelina Jolie, a BRCA1 carrier, underwent a preventative double mastectomy in 2013.
Current standard treatment aims to shrink the tumour using chemotherapy and immunotherapy, before removing it through surgery. The first three years after surgery is a critical period, when there is the greatest risk of relapse or death.
The Partner trial took a different approach and demonstrates two innovations: the addition of olaparib and chemotherapy pre-surgery, and the benefits of careful timing of when the treatments are given to patients. Taken as tablets, olaparib is a targeted cancer drug already available on the NHS.
Led by Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge, the trial saw patients recruited from 23 NHS sites across the UK.
Results show that leaving a 48-hour “gap” between chemotherapy and olaparib, leads to better outcomes, possibly because a patient’s bone marrow has time to recover from chemotherapy, while leaving the tumour cells susceptible to the targeted drug.
Of the 39 patients who received chemotherapy followed by olaparib, only one patient relapsed three years after surgery and 100% of patients survived.
In comparison, the survival rate for the control arm was 88% three years after surgery. Of the 45 patients on the control arm who received chemotherapy only, nine patients relapsed, of whom six died.
Jackie Van Bochoven, 59, from South Cambridgeshire, was diagnosed in February 2019 with a small but aggressive tumour. She said: “When I had the diagnosis, I was completely shocked and numb, I thought about my children, and my mum and sister who were diagnosed with breast cancer. I was pretty worried.
“Six years on, I’m well and cancer free. I’m back at work, enjoying life and spending time with my family. When you’ve had cancer, I think you look at life differently and every day is a bonus.”
The findings have the potential to be applied to other cancers caused by faulty copies of BRCA genes, such as some ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers.
It may also have cost-saving benefits for the NHS, as patients currently offered olaparib take the drug post-surgery for 12 months, whereas patients on the trial took the tablets pre-surgery for 12 weeks.
Addenbrooke’s consultant and trial lead, Professor Jean Abraham said: “It is rare to have a 100% survival rate in a study like this and for these aggressive types of cancer. We’re incredibly excited about the potential of this new approach, as it’s crucial that we find a way to treat and hopefully cure patients who are diagnosed with BRCA1 and BRCA2 related cancers.”
Professor Abraham, who is also Professor of Precision Breast Cancer Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at St John's College, said trialling the 48-hour gap approach followed a “chance conversation” with Mark O’Connor, chief scientist in Early Oncology R&D at nearby AstraZeneca.
Mark O’Connor added: “The Partner trial highlights the importance of detecting and treating cancer early, and the value of innovative science in informing clinical trial design, in this case using bone marrow stem cells to identify the combination gap schedule. While the findings need to be validated in a larger study, they’re incredibly exciting, and have the potential to transform outcomes for patient populations who have unmet clinical need.”
This type of collaboration between NHS, academia and industry reflects the vision of Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, a specialist cancer research hospital due to be built on Europe’s leading life sciences campus, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. It will bring clinical expertise from Addenbrooke’s Hospital with world-class scientists from the University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, and industry partners together in one location to create new diagnostics and treatments to detect the earliest signs of cancer and deliver personalised, precision medicine. Find out how the hospital and the research that takes place there promises to change the lives of cancer patients across the UK and beyond.
Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, Michelle Mitchell, said: “One of the best ways that we can beat cancer sooner is by making more effective use of treatments that are already available to us.
"While this research is still in its infancy, it is an exciting discovery that adding olaparib at a carefully-timed stage of treatment can potentially give patients with this specific type of breast cancer more time with their loved ones.
“Research like this can help find safer and kinder ways to treat certain types of cancer. Further studies in more patients are needed to confirm whether this new technique is safe and effective enough to be used by the NHS."
Professor Abraham and team are now planning the next phase of the research, which will look to replicate the results in a larger study and confirm that the Partner approach offers a less toxic treatment for patients as well as being more cost effective, compared to the current standard of care.
The Partner trial was sponsored by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Cambridge, funded by Cancer Research UK and AstraZeneca, and supported by the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT).
Reference
Abraham, JE et al. Neoadjuvant PARP inhibitor scheduling in BRCA1 and BRCA2 related breast cancer: PARTNER, a randomized phase II/III trial. Nat Comms; 13 May 2025; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59151-0
Press release from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
A new treatment approach significantly improves survival rates for patients with aggressive, inherited breast cancers, according to Cambridge researchers.
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Memorial Minute — Faculty of Arts and Sciences
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 6, 2025, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Walter Jacob Kaiser was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
Walter Jacob Kaiser, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Emeritus, led a life of vibrant culture, knowledge, and accomplishment.
In 1963 Kaiser published “Praisers of Folly: Erasmus, Rabelais, Shakespeare,” a study of Renaissance humanism, philosophy, witty fools, and cosmopolitanism based on his dissertation. The next year saw his edition of the essays of Michel de Montaigne in John Florio’s English. Kaiser soon produced translations, first of three longer poems from the modern Greek by the Nobel laureate George Seferis 1969 and later of three volumes of prose from the French by Marguerite Yourcenar, the first woman elected to the Académie Française: “Alexis” (“Alexis ou le traité du vain combat”) in 1984; “Two Lives and a Dream” (“Comme l’eau qui coule”) in 1987; and, in 1992, “That Mighty Sculptor, Time,” a collection of Yourcenar’s essays on which he collaborated. His skill as a translator drew praise, including from the reviewer Philip Thody in the Times Literary Supplement in 1992. Kaiser’s 1983 essay, “The Achievement of Marguerite Yourcenar,” is an important contribution to English criticism of that writer.
Kaiser devoted much of his career at Harvard to revitalizing Villa I Tatti, the University’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, housed in Bernard Berenson’s villa and grounds in the valley of the Mensola in the hills northeast of the city. The choice of Kaiser to lead this institution had a certain logic. As an undergraduate in 1953, he had met Berenson — “I was terrified,” he later recounted — but the two became acquainted on walks. Thirty-five years later, Walter became I Tatti’s director. During his tenure, serving from 1988 to 2002, he consolidated its scholarly programs and gave new life and vitality to its garden, properties, people, and programs.
According to one member of the Memorial Minute Committee, a visiting professor at I Tatti in 1991, when Kaiser was director, “he was absolutely perfect for the position. Presiding at daily lunches with grace and humor, he always managed to steer the conversation to the varied and interesting research projects of the Fellows. . . . Walter loved the gardens and saw to it that they were kept in the best possible condition of each season. His Italian and French were perfect. He could talk about anything with anyone. He was loved and admired by staff and fellows. He presided like a happy Renaissance Prince of the Church, lavishing his blessings on his guests. He knew how to raise money and keep order so that a very complicated organization seemed to flow effortlessly. Walter was smart, sharp; he loved to laugh and make people laugh with him!”
The present director, Alina Payne, remarks how much she benefited from Kaiser, “both as a scholar and personally from what he managed to build . . . at I Tatti — the community, the place, the grounds, and its sound financial basis.” He oversaw the expansion of the library and photo collection. His efforts were marked by the establishment of a fund named in his honor to support the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti and, in 2018, by the reopening of its newly renovated main space as the Walter J. Kaiser Reading Room.
Kaiser also inaugurated a library of a different sort: the I Tatti Renaissance Library. This highly regarded series of Latin literary, historical, philosophical, and scientific texts with facing English translations, distributed by Harvard University Press, now runs to more than one hundred volumes. He also contributed to the Press’s Villa I Tatti Series, which publishes studies on topics related to Bernard Berenson, his colleagues, interests, and collections, editing, with Michael Mallon, a selection of book reviews by the eminent art historian John Pope-Hennessy.
Above all, Kaiser valued interdisciplinarity. Under his direction, I Tatti focused on the Italian Renaissance, a purview since expanded to encompass the broader Mediterranean. For more than seven decades, I Tatti has supported scholarly work in many fields, including literature, history, art history, philosophy, and musicology. Kaiser called the resulting conversation among the disciplines “the greatness of I Tatti.”
Before his directorship of I Tatti, Kaiser taught courses featuring Shakespeare, Spenser, Ariosto, and Montaigne. He enlivened his lectures on Shakespeare with analysis, criticism, and a marvelous ability to play characters in different voices. Memory of his renderings of Falstaff, Justice Shallow, and Justice Silent in “Henry IV, Part 2,” never fades. When one student asked what, aside from verbal ability, permitted Shakespeare to become a great poet, Kaiser replied, “He was open to every kind of experience.”
From 2009 through 2015, Kaiser wrote essays and reviews for The New York Review of Books. His subjects reflected his wide interests: Renaissance and American art, connoisseurship, the task of translation, Paul and Julia Child in the Office of Strategic Services, Arezzo, Florence, Shakespeare, modern European painting, Caravaggio, Piero della Francesca, Janet Ross, and Bernard Berenson. In these essays, as in all his undertakings, he connected learning to living as much as to the academy.
Born May 31, 1931, in Bellevue, Ohio, the son of a grocer, Kaiser earned the position of page in the U.S. Senate in 1944, followed by scholarships to Phillips Academy and Harvard, which conferred his A.B. magna cum laude with highest honors in 1954 and his Ph.D. in 1960. He published poems in The Harvard Advocate and The New Yorker. Appointed assistant professor of English and comparative literature in 1962, promoted to associate professor in 1965, and tenured in 1969, he was, in 1999, granted a named professorship. From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, he chaired the Department of Comparative Literature three times, totaling eight years.
Before divorcing in 1981, Kaiser and Neva Goodwin Rockefeller had two children. Kaiser is survived by his daughter, Miranda Kaiser; her two daughters; and two daughters by his son, David Kaiser, a courageous climate advocate who died in 2020. Walter Kaiser died peacefully in New York City on Jan. 5, 2016.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert Kiely
Katharine Park
Jan Ziolkowski
James Engell, Chair
Gloria Ferrari Pinney.
Photo by Laura Slatkin
Memorial Minute — Faculty of Arts and Sciences
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 6, 2025, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Gloria Ferrari Pinney was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
Some friends had occasion a few years ago to ask a distinguished classical archaeologist her opinion of the scholarship of an art historian in her own field of Greek vase painting — her view was highly positive, so one friend said, musingly, “I wonder if that person’s work is as original as Gloria Ferrari Pinney’s?” The archaeologist’s immediate response was, “That would be impossible!”
Gloria Ferrari Pinney’s internationally renowned scholarship, which transformed the study of her field, was brilliantly original — and she was an original: resolutely independent-minded and, at the same time, a tireless collaborator; endlessly generous — intellectually, and in every way — to colleagues and friends old and new; inspiring to her many students and mentees across the globe, and inspiringly loyal to them; and, as seriously as she took everyone she dealt with, she never took herself too seriously. She had a hilarious sense of humor and a profound modesty that one could describe as hard-wired. On the matter of originality, Pinney may be the only Classicist one knows who took flying lessons as a teenager and became proficient at it.
Pinney was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1941 and died in Sept. 2023 in New Jersey, where she had moved to be near her daughter, Dr. Antonia Pinney, and Antonia’s family. Her father, Antonio Ferrari, was an Italian air force pilot and died in the war before she was born, and her mother, Laura, subsequently moved to Rome, where Pinney grew up and then did her undergraduate studies at the Università degli Studi di Roma, receiving a Laurea in Lettere Classiche in 1964. She stayed in Rome for two more years, studying at the Scuola Nazionale de Archeologia and the American Academy in Rome, where she was a Fulbright Scholar in 1965–66 and took part in excavations in Cosa, under the auspices of the American Academy, and at Punta della Vipera. In 1966 Pinney married a young American architect, Paul Pinney, and moved with him to his home in Kentucky, where her daughter was born several years later. She pursued doctoral work at the University of Cincinnati, where she wrote a dissertation on early red-figure vase painting and earned a Ph.D. in 1976. After beginning her teaching career that same year at Wilson College in Pennsylvania, in 1977 she moved to Bryn Mawr College, where she taught in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, holding the Doreen Canaday Spitzer Professorship in Classical Studies until 1993, when she joined the University of Chicago’s Departments of Art History and of Classical Languages and Literatures. She came to Harvard in 1998 as a member of the Department of the Classics and retired in 2003.
Over the years, Pinney’s illuminating, innovative scholarship was recognized by notable fellowships and distinctions, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the National Gallery of Art’s Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.
The American Philosophical Society described her pathbreaking scholarship when she was elected a member in 2003: “Gloria Ferrari Pinney combines a deep knowledge of classical philology and keen artistic sensitivity with a penetrating critical acumen that allows her to reach unprecedented and often revolutionary conclusions about even well-known ancient monuments. Her pioneering study on the origin of Asiatic sarcophagi was in fact disregarded by scholars for almost 20 years until excavational finds confirmed her hypothesis. Within her great range, she is an expert in Greek vase painting, with emphasis on iconography, yet two of her recent publications — on the North metopes of the Parthenon (2000) and the architecture of the Archaic Akropolis (2002) — are among her most startling contributions. Although well versed in current art-historical and linguistic theory, she produces terse and concise analyses that carry conviction with their strict logic.”
In 2004, Pinney received the Archaeological Institute of America’s James R. Wiseman Book Award for “Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece” (2002). Its citation reads, in part, “This fruitful interaction between the visual and textual evidence makes Gloria Ferrari Pinney’s study truly interdisciplinary, and of importance to philologists as well as to archaeologists. “Figures of Speech” is provocative and thoughtful — its sophisticated approach to Greek culture and images should guide discussion in the future.”
Continuing to extend her already formidable range of research interests, after retiring Pinney published such innovative works as “Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta” (2008), which was praised in reviews as “entirely original” and “an important contribution to the study of ancient Greek choral poetry, archaeology, and art history,” as well as major articles and book chapters on such subjects as the Nile mosaic at Praeneste; the metaphor of architectural space in the Greek sanctuary; anthropological approaches to the study of ancient Greek and Roman art; and metaphors of eros in Thucydides’ “History of the Peloponnesian War.” She was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar in 2011–12 and lectured at universities across the country.
Pinney’s students from around the globe — many now eminent scholars themselves — became her lifelong friends. In gratitude for her invaluable, dedicated mentorship, and to celebrate her 80th birthday, they organized a series of monthly online workshops, in which they met to present work directly inspired by Pinney’s contributions to their fields. These workshops continued for two full years — and, in true Pinney fashion, she herself attended each of them and offered incisive feedback, even as her health declined.
Any tribute to Pinney must underscore above all her unshakeable democratic, inclusive ethos; her native intellectual openness; her commitment to feminist ideals; her open-handed hospitality, her devotion as daughter, mother, and grandmother; and her steadfast attachment to Italy and beloved friends there. Gloria was always the first, as all who knew her can attest, to stand up for Harvard’s ideals in protecting freedom of thought and inquiry.
Respectfully submitted,
Emma Dench
Laura Slatkin (New York University)
Gregory Nagy, Chair
Emerson Hall at Harvard University.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Memorial Minute — Faculty of Arts and Sciences
At a meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on May 6, 2025, the following tribute to the life and service of the late Charles Dacre Parsons was spread upon the permanent records of the Faculty.
Charles Parsons was a philosopher of logic and mathematics of great penetration, known for clarifying difficult issues, deeply scrutinizing problems of long standing and their attempted solutions, and articulating both judicious proposals to make progress on them and acute analyses of the difficulties that still stood in the way.
Parsons was raised in Belmont, Massachusetts. His father was Talcott Parsons, the eminent Harvard sociologist, and Parsons grew up in a Harvard atmosphere. He was educated at the University, graduating from the College in 1954 summa cum laude in mathematics and entering the philosophy Ph.D. program after a year in Cambridge, England, on a Henry Fellowship. He joined the Society of Fellows in 1958 and completed his Ph.D. and the Junior Fellowship simultaneously in 1961. After three years as an assistant professor at Harvard, he moved to Columbia University, where he taught for 24 years. He returned to Harvard in 1989, becoming the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy in 1991, and retired in 2005.
Parsons’s dissertation and early research work focused on mathematical logic, in which he obtained some noteworthy results in fine-grained analyses of the deductive strength of various axiom systems for areas of mathematics. Subsequently his interests turned towards less purely technical matters, and his writing concentrated on philosophy of logic and of mathematics. In the 1960s and 1970s he published highly influential papers in this area, collected in his first book, aptly titled “Mathematics in Philosophy” (1983). These papers included his careful examinations of the foundations of set theory and of the Liar Paradox, the seemingly paradoxical consequences of the sentence that says of itself that it is not true. The latter, in particular, spawned a large industry of proposed solutions based on Parsons’s work. But perhaps most striking from this part of his career was his attention to Kant. Before Parsons’s work, Kant — whose concern with mathematics is central to his entire philosophical system — had been dismissed as irrelevant to contemporary philosophy of mathematics due to the subsequent development of modern logic, non-Euclidean geometry, and the theory of relativity. Parsons, almost single-handedly, brought Kant back into dialogue with contemporary philosophy of mathematics by locating what was still of interest in his philosophical structures that might be of help in solving the conundrums that contemporary philosophy of mathematics had encountered. To do this, Parsons also made major contributions to pure Kant scholarship, particularly in his exposition of the role Kant’s notion of intuition plays in a crucial section of the “Critique of Pure Reason.”
Parsons’s resuscitation of Kant had a mode of operation in common with all of his work. He never said outright “That position isn’t going to work.” He always carefully drew out what strands in a position might be able to make contributions to current understanding while gently suggesting which other parts were more troublesome.
Parsons’s work in philosophy of mathematics and logic inspired by historical figures was ongoing. Two more collections of his published essays eventually appeared, titled “From Kant to Husserl” (2012), with essays on Kant, Frege, Brentano, and Husserl, and “Philosophy of Mathematics in the 20th Century” (2014), which continued his conversation linking Kant to contemporary philosophy of mathematics but also considered later figures, particularly the pathbreaking logician Kurt Gödel and the Harvard philosopher W. V. Quine, who was one of Parsons’s teachers.
Parsons’s greatest contribution to modern philosophy of mathematics is his final statement of his mature considered views, “Mathematical Thought and Its Objects” (2008). The first half of this volume took off from his seminal paper “Objects and Logic” (1982), which closely examined what it could amount to be a mathematical object. The ultimate result was a sober defense of a view in philosophy of mathematics known as “structuralism,” which argues that there should be no question of what a mathematical entity is but only of what structure it plays a role in. Other contemporaries have defended a view in this neighborhood, but they usually turn out to be implicitly assuming some notion of mathematical entity. Parsons’s work was exemplary in avoiding any such hidden presuppositions, so that his defense of structuralism was the tightest and most convincing. The second half of the book examined epistemological issues, focusing on the role of reason and the room for some notion of Kantian-style intuition in the concept of evidence for a wide range of mathematical theories. Throughout the book, Parsons drew on all his historical work in formulating and appraising various proposed solutions.
Parsons was a devoted graduate teacher. Despite his initial somewhat austere demeanor, his dissertation students at both Columbia and Harvard quickly came to appreciate his kindness and benevolent scholarly attention and became loyal friends. Many of Parsons’s students became major figures in philosophy of mathematics, Kant scholarship, Husserl scholarship, and philosophy of logic and language. Parsons was also well known for a quirk, in both lecturing and informal personal conversation, of pausing in mid-sentence, clearly reflecting on whether what he was about to say was really accurate and, even after a full minute (or even two) of silence, picking up that sentence at the point he had left it.
Parsons was predeceased in 2017 by his wife of 49 years, Marjorie (née Wood). He is survived by their son, Dr. Jotham Parsons (Harvard College Class of 1990); their daughter, Dr. Sylvia Parsons (Harvard College Class of 1992); and two grandchildren.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Koellner
Christine Korsgaard
Thomas M. Scanlon
Warren Goldfarb, Chair
The LXP’s rollout celebration was held at Harvard Business School’s Batten Hall with more than 120 in attendance.
Jessica McCann
Harvard Correspondent
Harvard marked a milestone in January with the launch of the Learning Experience Platform (LXP) — a University-wide initiative designed to support innovative teaching and enable cutting-edge digital learning experiences.
Hosted at Harvard Business School’s Batten Hall, more than 120 participants, including faculty, deans, and senior administrators, gathered to celebrate the LXP’s rollout. In his opening remarks, Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Bharat Anand underscored the collaborative nature of the effort, developed jointly by the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL), Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT), and Harvard Business School.
“This is about ensuring we retain control over our pedagogical future,” Anand said. “We’ve built a platform that reflects Harvard’s values — one that’s modular, flexible, and rooted in over a decade of innovation in online learning.”
Harvard has long been a leader in digital learning. From co-founding edX in 2012 to pioneering asynchronous case-based learning through HBS Online, the University has consistently explored how technology can expand access and enhance learning.
The pandemic accelerated this shift, highlighting both the opportunities and limitations of existing platforms. The 2022 Harvard Future of Teaching and Learning Report identified, among other things, the need for a modern digital learning platform to match the excellence of Harvard’s physical infrastructure.
LXP answers this call. Built to support online and hybrid learning, it offers a flexible, modular platform that supports a wide range of teaching styles and course lengths and leverages innovative “teaching elements” around peer and active learning, including “online cold calls” and tools for surfacing viewpoint diversity. It enables consistent, high-quality learning experiences for everyone from first-years to alumni and global learners.
One of the motivations for building the LXP was to reduce the complexity and fragmentation of the digital learning ecosystem. “If a learner wanted to find a Harvard course on AI or climate change today, they’d have to visit over a dozen websites,” Dustin Tingley, deputy VPAL, noted.
“There are 40-plus learning platforms that are currently managed by HUIT, creating technology clutter and cost inefficiencies,” said Emily Bottis, HUIT’s managing director for academic technology.
“We needed to solve that fragmentation and inefficiency while preserving the ability to innovate locally,” added Zachary Wang, VPAL’s director of strategic technology.
The LXP consolidates efforts across Schools and allows for consistency in experience while supporting unique pedagogical approaches. Seven Harvard Schools already use the platform in different ways.
The first program launched on the platform was a pre-matriculation course for incoming Harvard Law School students — 20 hours of foundational content that other law schools now can customize for their own needs. This kind of modularity, said HLS Online Executive Director Leah Plunkett, is one of LXP’s greatest strengths: “You can create once and customize infinitely.”
Another milestone came last summer, when more than 1,600 incoming Harvard College first-years completed three short orientation modules through the LXP. These included videos featuring faculty, polls, peer-engagement tools, and interactive content.
“I think what really was the innovation last summer [in online orientation] was getting students excited,” said Katherine Veach, assistant dean for first-year academic programs. “We were able to deliver essential information in a way that felt personal and engaging. Students heard directly from faculty they may have already known, read, or were eager to learn from. The platform made that experience memorable and interactive at scale in a way emails never could.”
LXP is already supporting a broad range of learning experiences, from short modules to semester-long programs, with plans underway to expand offerings for Harvard’s alumni and international partners. Its flexibility enables everything from 15-minute tutorials to multiweek blended courses.
“A 12-week semester is natural for residential learning,” said Anand. “But online, that format doesn’t always make sense. What if an executive program met one day a week for five weeks? Or what if a course could adapt its length to fit the learning outcomes, rather than the academic calendar, whether that meant 10 weeks or 10 hours? The LXP allows Harvard to design around the needs of the learner — not the limitations of legacy systems.”
Anand described three principles that guided the LXP’s creation.
First, pedagogical creativity: “Our faculty are full of ideas for innovative teaching. They shouldn’t have to fit those ideas into one-size-fits-all platforms. The LXP gives them the flexibility to design learning experiences that truly reflect their vision.”
Second, a One Harvard vision: “The platform is available to all Harvard’s Schools and ensures a consistently high-quality learning experience across each, while still allowing for local customization to reflect each School’s unique voice, priorities, and pedagogy.”
Third, global reach: “Whether through online courses, livestreams, or blended experiences, the LXP allows one to deliver on the University’s mission to engage learners at scale far beyond campus.”
With the platform now live, faculty are encouraged to explore new ways to elevate their teaching and connect with learners.
“We’ve built the foundation,” Anand said. “It’s now up to our faculty and academic staff to imagine what comes next, and to create learning experiences that are as inspiring and impactful as the ideas we teach.”
How should personal data be protected? What are the best uses of it? In our networked world, questions about data privacy are ubiquitous and matter for companies, policymakers, and the public.
A new study by MIT researchers adds depth to the subject by suggesting that people’s views about privacy are not firmly fixed and can shift significantly, based on different circumstances and different uses of data.
“There is no absolute value in privacy,” says Fabio Duarte, principal research scientist in MIT’s Senseable City Lab and co-author of a new paper outlining the results. “Depending on the application, people might feel use of their data is more or less invasive.”
The study is based on an experiment the researchers conducted in multiple countries using a newly developed game that elicits public valuations of data privacy relating to different topics and domains of life.
“We show that values attributed to data are combinatorial, situational, transactional, and contextual,” the researchers write.
The open-access paper, “Data Slots: tradeoffs between privacy concerns and benefits of data-driven solutions,” is published today in Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. The authors are Martina Mazzarello, a postdoc in the Senseable City Lab; Duarte; Simone Mora, a research scientist at Senseable City Lab; Cate Heine PhD ’24 of University College London; and Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab.
The study is based around a card game with poker-type chips the researchers created to study the issue, called Data Slots. In it, players hold hands of cards with 12 types of data — such as a personal profile, health data, vehicle location information, and more — that relate to three types of domains where data are collected: home life, work, and public spaces. After exchanging cards, the players generate ideas for data uses, then assess and invest in some of those concepts. The game has been played in-person in 18 different countries, with people from another 74 countries playing it online; over 2,000 individual player-rounds were included in the study.
The point behind the game is to examine the valuations that members of the public themselves generate about data privacy. Some research on the subject involves surveys with pre-set options that respondents choose from. But in Data Slots, the players themselves generate valuations for a wide range of data-use scenarios, allowing the researchers to estimate the relative weight people place on privacy in different situations.
The idea is “to let people themselves come up with their own ideas and assess the benefits and privacy concerns of their peers’ ideas, in a participatory way,” Ratti explains.
The game strongly suggests that people’s ideas about data privacy are malleable, although the results do indicate some tendencies. The data privacy card whose use players most highly valued was for personal mobility; given the opportunity in the game to keep it or exchange it, players retained it in their hands 43 percent of the time, an indicator of its value. That was followed in order by personal health data, and utility use. (With apologies to pet owners, the type of data privacy card players held on to the least, about 10 percent of the time, involved animal health.)
However, the game distinctly suggests that the value of privacy is highly contingent on specific use-cases. The game shows that people care about health data to a substantial extent but also value the use of environmental data in the workplace, for instance. And the players of Data Slots also seem less concerned about data privacy when use of data is combined with clear benefits. In combination, that suggests a deal to be cut: Using health data can help people understand the effects of the workplace on wellness.
“Even in terms of health data in work spaces, if they are used in an aggregated way to improve the workspace, for some people it’s worth combining personal health data with environmental data,” Mora says.
Mazzarello adds: “Now perhaps the company can make some interventions to improve overall health. It might be invasive, but you might get some benefits back.”
In the bigger picture, the researchers suggest, taking a more flexible, user-driven approach to understanding what people think about data privacy can help inform better data policy. Cities — the core focus on the Senseable City Lab — often face such scenarios. City governments can collect a lot of aggregate traffic data, for instance, but public input can help determine how anonymized such data should be. Understanding public opinion along with the benefits of data use can produce viable policies for local officials to pursue.
“The bottom line is that if cities disclose what they plan to do with data, and if they involve resident stakeholders to come up with their own ideas about what they could do, that would be beneficial to us,” Duarte says. “And in those scenarios, people’s privacy concerns start to decrease a lot.”
© Image: Lukas Biba
Today, the University of Melbourne published its inaugural Annual Report on Racism. The report outlines the Universitys anti-racism priorities, progress since the launch of its Anti-Racism Commitment in 2023, and complaints and reports of racism submitted by students and staff during 2024.
The United States population is older than it has ever been. Today, the country’s median age is 38.9, which is nearly a decade older than it was in 1980. And the number of adults older than 65 is expected to balloon from 58 million to 82 million by 2050. The challenge of caring for the elderly, amid shortages in care workers, rising health care costs, and evolving family structures, is an increasingly urgent societal issue.
To help address the eldercare challenge, a team of MIT engineers is looking to robotics. They have built and tested the Elderly Bodily Assistance Robot, or E-BAR, a mobile robot designed to physically support the elderly and prevent them from falling as they move around their homes.
E-BAR acts as a set of robotic handlebars that follows a person from behind. A user can walk independently or lean on the robot’s arms for support. The robot can support the person’s full weight, lifting them from sitting to standing and vice versa along a natural trajectory. And the arms of the robot can catch them by rapidly inflating side airbags if they begin to fall.
With their design, the researchers hope to prevent falls, which today are the leading cause of injury in adults who are 65 and older.
“Many older adults underestimate the risk of fall and refuse to use physical aids, which are cumbersome, while others overestimate the risk and may not exercise, leading to declining mobility,” says Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT. “Our design concept is to provide older adults having balance impairment with robotic handlebars for stabilizing their body. The handlebars go anywhere and provide support anytime, whenever they need.”
In its current version, the robot is operated via remote control. In future iterations, the team plans to automate much of the bot’s functionality, enabling it to autonomously follow and physically assist a user. The researchers are also working on streamlining the device to make it slimmer and more maneuverable in small spaces.
“I think eldercare is the next great challenge,” says E-BAR designer Roberto Bolli, a graduate student in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. “All the demographic trends point to a shortage of caregivers, a surplus of elderly persons, and a strong desire for elderly persons to age in place. We see it as an unexplored frontier in America, but also an intrinsically interesting challenge for robotics.”
Bolli and Asada will present a paper detailing the design of E-BAR at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) later this month.
Asada’s group at MIT develops a variety of technologies and robotic aides to assist the elderly. In recent years, others have developed fall prediction algorithms, designed robots and automated devices including robotic walkers, wearable, self-inflating airbags, and robotic frames that secure a person with a harness and move with them as they walk.
In designing E-BAR, Asada and Bolli aimed for a robot that essentially does three tasks: providing physical support, preventing falls, and safely and unobtrusively moving with a person. What’s more, they looked to do away with any harness, to give a user more independence and mobility.
“Elderly people overwhelmingly do not like to wear harnesses or assistive devices,” Bolli says. “The idea behind the E-BAR structure is, it provides body weight support, active assistance with gait, and fall catching while also being completely unobstructed in the front. You can just get out anytime.”
The team looked to design a robot specifically for aging in place at home or helping in care facilities. Based on their interviews with older adults and their caregivers, they came up with several design requirements, including that the robot must fit through home doors, allow the user to take a full stride, and support their full weight to help with balance, posture, and transitions from sitting to standing.
The robot consists of a heavy, 220-pound base whose dimensions and structure were optimized to support the weight of an average human without tipping or slipping. Underneath the base is a set of omnidirectional wheels that allows the robot to move in any direction without pivoting, if needed. (Imagine a car’s wheels shifting to slide into a space between two other cars, without parallel parking.)
Extending out from the robot’s base is an articulated body made from 18 interconnected bars, or linkages, that can reconfigure like a foldable crane to lift a person from a sitting to standing position, and vice versa. Two arms with handlebars stretch out from the robot in a U-shape, which a person can stand between and lean against if they need additional support. Finally, each arm of the robot is embedded with airbags made from a soft yet grippable material that can inflate instantly to catch a person if they fall, without causing bruising on impact. The researchers believe that E-BAR is the first robot able to catch a falling person without wearable devices or use of a harness.
They tested the robot in the lab with an older adult who volunteered to use the robot in various household scenarios. The team found that E-BAR could actively support the person as they bent down to pick something up from the ground and stretched up to reach an object off a shelf — tasks that can be challenging to do while maintaining balance. The robot also was able to lift the person up and over the lip of a tub, simulating the task of getting out of a bathtub.
Bolli envisions a design like E-BAR would be ideal for use in the home by elderly people who still have a moderate degree of muscle strength but require assistive devices for activities of daily living.
“Seeing the technology used in real-life scenarios is really exciting,” says Bolli.
In their current paper, the researchers did not incorporate any fall-prediction capabilities in E-BAR’s airbag system. But another project in Asada’s lab, led by graduate student Emily Kamienski, has focused on developing algorithms with machine learning to control a new robot in response to the user’s real-time fall risk level.
Alongside E-BAR, Asada sees different technologies in his lab as providing different levels of assistance for people at certain phases of life or mobility.
“Eldercare conditions can change every few weeks or months,” Asada says. “We’d like to provide continuous and seamless support as a person’s disability or mobility changes with age.”
This work was supported, in part, by the National Robotics Initiative and the National Science Foundation.
© Image: Courtesy of the researchers
By Mr David Dickinson, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow; Prof Joseph Ooi, Professor of Real Estate at NUS Business School and Co-Director; and Ms Chen Huaying, Research Assistant; all at the Institute of Real Estate and Urban Studies at the NUS Business School
By Adjunct Assoc Prof (Practice) Terence Ho, at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS
By Assoc Prof Iqbal Singh Sevea, Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at NUS
Jodie Foster (right) talks with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
Jodie Foster always thought she’d become a writer.
“I didn’t really think I wanted to be an actor when I grew up because it seemed like kind of a dumb job,” the Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker said during a Radcliffe Day event Friday with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
Acting seemed too superficial to be intellectually satisfying as a career, she said. But then, Robert De Niro took her under his wing and worked with her on improvisation skills while the two starred in “Taxi Driver.” DeNiro was the lead in the 1976 Oscar winner, and Foster played a young sex worker, a role for which she received her first Academy Award nomination.
“My 12-year-old mind was blown. I suddenly understood that acting was more than just saying lines and ‘being yourself,’” she told Gates, who was Foster’s thesis adviser at Yale in the early 1980s. “I hadn’t looked at it the way I might look at a book or the way I might look at a painting. I hadn’t really looked at it as an art form, and … It was up to me to challenge myself to go beyond that.”
Foster was on hand at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute to receive the 2025 Radcliffe Medal, presented by Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin, for her accomplishments over a six-decade career as an actor and filmmaker, and her advocacy for suicide prevention among LGBT youth.
As part of the annual Radcliffe Day celebration, Foster spoke about her evolution from 1970s Disney child star to celebrated filmmaker and two-time Academy Award winner for leading roles in “The Accused” (1988) and “Silence of the Lambs” (1991).
Famously private, Foster delved into the trauma she experienced as an 18-year-old Yale freshman after a stalker shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in a bid to win her favor. She was forced into hiding, couldn’t live on campus or attend classes anymore, and needed round-the-clock security.
The ordeal was, she said, “a trial by fire. I became adult really quickly” and learned some good life lessons about the value of community and also some bad ones, like “now you can trust no one.”
Foster said she deliberately avoided talking about the experience for decades.
“I wanted to have a long career where I was known for myself and for my work, and I wanted my identity to be about what I produced,” she explained to Gates. “I just didn’t want to be ‘that girl’ who was chosen abstractly by an insane man to be a footnote in history.”
“I wanted to have a long career where I was known for myself and for my work, and I wanted my identity to be about what I produced.”
Foster also talked about being a mother and of the complicated relationship she had with her own. Brandy Foster, a single mother of four, pushed her daughter into acting and modeling at age 3 and managed her career for many years, steering her toward many films that achieved critical and commercial success.
“Because of her generation and her status [as a] pre-feminist woman, she wanted me to be respected above anything else, and so she engineered, in some ways propelled me in, a career where she could feel respected because her daughter was respected,” she said. “That was a big burden and a big responsibility.”
Diana Nyad, the record-breaking endurance swimmer who inspired “Nyad,” the 2023 biopic for which Foster earned her fifth Oscar nomination, spoke about Foster’s meticulousness as an actor and her status as a somewhat reluctant lesbian icon.
Foster said she feels proud that people say she helped facilitate greater acceptance of LGBTQ people in the film industry, but she wishes she “could have done more” to be an outspoken leader.
“My No. 1 concern … was surviving intact, emotionally and intellectually,” she said. “What I didn’t want to do was end up dead in a hotel room with a needle in my arm.” Accomplishing that required “a kind of emotional safety and privacy that was unusual for the film business” then and perhaps more so now.
“I don’t think I would have survived it intact” if she’d been a young actor now, Foster said. “But in those days, the way to survive that was to say, ‘I am off limits. You can’t have me. You can have all this part that I give you. You can have my art… You can count on me, but you can’t have all of me.”
Earlier in the day, actor Amy Brenneman ’86, acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair ’79, Naomi McDougall Jones, an advocate for gender parity in film industry, and television showrunner Saladin K. Patterson spoke with Stacy L. Smith, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, about how underrepresented women remain in the film and television industry the obstacles that still need to be overcome both in front of and behind the camera, despite societal gains.
Since 1987, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute each year has recognized outstanding women who have made a lasting impact on the world. Past recipients include Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, labor activist Dolores Huerta, former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton, and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Outwardly, everything has changed since he broke his neck in his first Harvard football game in 2017. But Ben Abercrombie says he’s not all that different on the inside.
He still loves football. He still considers himself determined and hard-working — a point with which those around him emphatically agree. He still plans to go into personal finance when he graduates from Harvard College this spring, a career that, if all goes well, will have him guiding professional athletes’ personal wealth, blending his interests in economics and sports.
He admits, though, that it’s hard having to ask for help all the time.
“That’s one thing. I used to try to do everything myself,” Abercrombie said. “I like to think I haven’t changed too much, but it does open your eyes not to take things for granted, to be thankful for what you have, for your family, and for the grace that people show you.”
That grace helped Abercrombie navigate a tough eight years. That determination got him back to Harvard after two years of rehabilitation, of learning how to live paralyzed below the neck, and how to get around in a wheelchair and guide a laptop computer with his eyes. That hard work has him graduating with a degree in economics after years of coursework that competed with his new reality, where even getting out of bed takes longer. And all of that has made him an inspiration to those around him, even those whose role once was to inspire him.
“As a coach, part of my job is to motivate, but every time I would see Ben after his accident — with very few exceptions — he was in such high spirits, laughing, talking football, that he motivated me,” said former Crimson football coach Tim Murphy, who recruited Abercrombie to Harvard and was standing just feet away from the seemingly routine tackle that changed Abercrombie’s life. “He makes my day. They are a remarkable family on many levels.”
Even before the injury, Abercrombie was a standout, said Murphy, who retired as the Ivy League’s winningest coach in 2024. Abercrombie was recruited from Hoover, a suburb of Birmingham in football-mad Alabama, to play safety for Harvard. He was the only freshman defensive player to suit up with the team in fall 2017 for the season opener at the University of Rhode Island. And, when a starter injured a hamstring during the opening kickoff, Abercrombie got the nod, covering the deep right side of the field.
Just before halftime, Abercrombie recognized the receiver’s route and broke toward him as the ball was thrown. Murphy, standing nearby, saw the tackle and later said Abercrombie used good technique. Still, Murphy knew something was amiss by the way Abercrombie fell to the turf.
The impact damaged two vertebrae in Abercrombie’s neck along with the nerve to the diaphragm, which controls breathing. Abercrombie was conscious long enough to realize something was wrong before passing out.
“I didn’t go home with the team, I jumped in the car with my wife, Martha, and we drove directly to the hospital,” Murphy said. “We were there for the next seven or eight hours, until about midnight. I had the opportunity to squeeze Ben’s hand just before he went into surgery. I had the opportunity to see him as he came out of surgery. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
Weeks in Providence Hospital were followed by months at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, which specializes in brain and spinal-cord injury. There, he and his parents, Sherri and Marty Abercrombie, came to grips with how much had changed.
They returned home to Hoover in January — right before the 2018 college football title game, Abercrombie recalled. Over the next 18 months, he and his parents relearned how to live, creating new daily routines and working with the state Department of Rehabilitation Services so Abercrombie could learn to control a computer with his eyes. Sherri Abercrombie, a registered nurse, left her job to become her son’s full-time caregiver. Marty Abercrombie, a restaurant owner and manager, retired and sold the business.
In 2019, Abercrombie enrolled in a summer school course through the Harvard Extension School. That fall, he returned to campus, settling into a modified suite in Winthrop House with his parents, who have been at his side since. They’ve helped with daily activities, gotten Abercrombie to and from class, and worked closely with health aides who’ve assisted with care.
“They’ve done a very nice job helping us do what we need to do,” Sherri Abercrombie said. “I’m glad he was able to come up here and is able to finish, though I do miss the weather at home, except in the summer.”
Abercrombie said he’s has been struck by the generosity of the Harvard community. The University supported his desire to return to campus, resume his studies, and graduate. El Jefe’s Taqueria in Harvard Square has held annual fundraisers, donating the proceeds to a fund created by the Harvard Varsity Club to defray the costs of his care. Former Crimson teammates also hold an annual bowling fundraiser for the fund.
Abercrombie said classes have been challenging, but he has become more adept at completing coursework. He continued to take summer classes and, a couple of years ago, was able to increase his workload from two classes per semester to three. He has kept in touch with friends and teammates via social media and has also stayed in touch with Crimson football coaches. He stops by their offices to talk football weekly while visiting the athletic complex for physical therapy. The Abercrombie family and Murphy, who retired in 2024, became close, regularly celebrating Thanksgiving at Murphy’s home on Cape Cod.
“It’s been an extraordinarily challenging path that he has undertaken since that injury and it’s taken him a long time to get his degree, but at no time was there any indication from his mom or dad or Ben that they were not going to complete their Harvard experience,” Murphy said. “I’m really excited to see him graduate in Harvard Yard. I will be there with him and his family and we’re going to have a great day.”
“As a coach, part of my job is to motivate, but every time I would see Ben after his accident — with very few exceptions — he was in such high spirits, laughing, talking football, that he motivated me.”
Tim Murphy
Abercrombie keeps an eye on advances in medical science in hopes that he’ll one day be able to breathe and move on his own. His physical therapy utilizes cutting-edge equipment such as a Locomat, a robot-assisted device that supports him and helps him move, and electric stimulation to move his arms and legs, maintaining flexibility and preventing atrophy. Using the Locomat, he’s able to walk on the treadmill for 45 minutes during his weekly two-hour session.
Progress has been slow, but Abercrombie can move his fingers slightly and feel pressure on his skin. When he sits in one position too long, his body feels uncomfortable. He recognizes the improvements are small, but they give him something to build upon. He also uses electric stimulation in an effort to build up breathing muscles in anticipation of achieving a key goal: getting off the ventilator.
Abercrombie isn’t quite sure what to expect on Commencement Day but he enjoys history, so he’s looking forward to taking part in Harvard’s centuries-old traditions. He admits that after so many years as a student he’s ready to move onto the next phase of life. This summer, he will work on passing state licensing tests and in September, plans to start work at a Birmingham-area personal finance firm.
“I’ve been in school for a decade, so I’m excited to finally be done. It’s surreal that it’s coming to a close,” Abercrombie said. “It’s been a long road for sure.”
Former ABC Radio broadcaster Jon Faine is hosting a new podcast series spotlighting current legal issues in interviews with researchers at Melbourne Law School.
Studies by a growing number of labs have identified neurological health benefits from exposing human volunteers or animal models to light, sound, and/or tactile stimulation at the brain’s “gamma” frequency rhythm of 40Hz. In the latest such research at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT, scientists found that 40Hz sensory stimulation improved cognition and circuit connectivity and encouraged the growth of new neurons in mice genetically engineered to model Down syndrome.
Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor at MIT and senior author of the new study in PLOS ONE, says that the results are encouraging, but also cautions that much more work is needed to test whether the method, called GENUS (for gamma entrainment using sensory stimulation), could provide clinical benefits for people with Down syndrome. Her lab has begun a small study with human volunteers at MIT.
“While this work, for the first time, shows beneficial effects of GENUS on Down syndrome using an imperfect mouse model, we need to be cautious, as there is not yet data showing whether this also works in humans,” says Tsai, who directs The Picower Institute and The Alana Center, and is a member of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty.
Still, she says, the newly published article adds evidence that GENUS can promote a broad-based, restorative, “homeostatic” health response in the brain amid a wide variety of pathologies. Most GENUS studies have addressed Alzheimer’s disease in humans or mice, but others have found benefits from the stimulation for conditions such as “chemo brain” and stroke.
Down syndrome benefits
In the study, the research team led by postdoc Md Rezaul Islam and Brennan Jackson PhD ’23 worked with the commonly used “Ts65Dn” Down syndrome mouse model. The model recapitulates key aspects of the disorder, although it does not exactly mirror the human condition, which is caused by carrying an extra copy of chromosome 21.
In the first set of experiments in the paper, the team shows that an hour a day of 40Hz light and sound exposure for three weeks was associated with significant improvements on three standard short-term memory tests — two involving distinguishing novelty from familiarity and one involving spatial navigation. Because these kinds of memory tasks involve a brain region called the hippocampus, the researchers looked at neural activity there and measured a significant increase in activity indicators among mice that received the GENUS stimulation versus those that did not.
To better understand how stimulated mice could show improved cognition, the researchers examined whether cells in the hippocampus changed how they express their genes. To do this, the team used a technique called single cell RNA sequencing, which provided a readout of how nearly 16,000 individual neurons and other cells transcribed their DNA into RNA, a key step in gene expression. Many of the genes whose expression varied most prominently in neurons between the mice that received stimulation and those that did not were directly related to forming and organizing neural circuit connections called synapses.
To confirm the significance of that finding, the researchers directly examined the hippocampus in stimulated and control mice. They found that in a critical subregion, the dentate gyrus, stimulated mice had significantly more synapses.
Diving deeper
The team not only examined gene expression across individual cells, but also analyzed those data to assess whether there were patterns of coordination across multiple genes. Indeed, they found several such “modules” of co-expression. Some of this evidence further substantiated the idea that 40Hz-stimulated mice made important improvements in synaptic connectivity, but another key finding highlighted a role for TCF4, a key regulator of gene transcription needed for generating new neurons, or “neurogenesis.”
The team’s analysis of genetic data suggested that TCF4 is underexpressed in Down syndrome mice, but the researchers saw improved TCF4 expression in GENUS-stimulated mice. When the researchers went to the lab bench to determine whether the mice also exhibited a difference in neurogenesis, they found direct evidence that stimulated mice exhibited more than unstimulated mice in the dentate gyrus. These increases in TCF4 expression and neurogenesis are only correlational, the researchers noted, but they hypothesize that the increase in new neurons likely helps explain at least some of the increase in new synapses and improved short-term memory function.
“The increased putative functional synapses in the dentate gyrus is likely related to the increased adult neurogenesis observed in the Down syndrome mice following GENUS treatment,” Islam says.
This study is the first to document that GENUS is associated with increased neurogenesis.
The analysis of gene expression modules also yielded other key insights. One is that a cluster of genes whose expression typically declines with normal aging, and in Alzheimer’s disease, remained at higher expression levels among mice who received 40Hz sensory stimulation.
And the researchers also found evidence that mice that received stimulation retained more cells in the hippocampus that express Reelin. Reelin-expressing neurons are especially vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease, but expression of the protein is associated with cognitive resilience amid Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which Ts65Dn mice develop. About 90 percent of people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease, typically after the age of 40.
“In this study, we found that GENUS enhances the percentage of Reln+ neurons in hippocampus of a mouse model of Down syndrome, suggesting that GENUS may promote cognitive resilience,” Islam says.
Taken together with other studies, Tsai and Islam say, the new results add evidence that GENUS helps to stimulate the brain at the cellular and molecular level to mount a homeostatic response to aberrations caused by disease pathology, be it neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s, demyelination in chemo brain, or deficits of neurogenesis in Down syndrome.
But the authors also cautioned that the study had limits. Not only is the Ts65Dn model an imperfect reflection of human Down syndrome, but also the mice used were all male. Moreover, the cognitive tests in the study only measured short-term memory. And finally, while the study was novel for extensively examining gene expression in the hippocampus amid GENUS stimulation, it did not look at changes in other cognitively critical brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex.
In addition to Jackson, Islam, and Tsai, the paper’s other authors are Maeesha Tasnim Naomi, Brooke Schatz, Noah Tan, Mitchell Murdock, Dong Shin Park, Daniela Rodrigues Amorim, Fred Jiang, S. Sebastian Pineda, Chinnakkaruppan Adaikkan, Vanesa Fernandez, Ute Geigenmuller, Rosalind Mott Firenze, Manolis Kellis, and Ed Boyden.
Funding for the study came from the Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT and the Alana USA Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the La Caixa Banking Foundation, a European Molecular Biology Organization long-term postdoctoral fellowship, Barbara J. Weedon, Henry E. Singleton, and the Hubolow family.
© Image courtesy of the Tsai Lab/Picower Institute.
Studies by a growing number of labs have identified neurological health benefits from exposing human volunteers or animal models to light, sound, and/or tactile stimulation at the brain’s “gamma” frequency rhythm of 40Hz. In the latest such research at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT, scientists found that 40Hz sensory stimulation improved cognition and circuit connectivity and encouraged the growth of new neurons in mice genetically engineered to model Down syndrome.
Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor at MIT and senior author of the new study in PLOS ONE, says that the results are encouraging, but also cautions that much more work is needed to test whether the method, called GENUS (for gamma entrainment using sensory stimulation), could provide clinical benefits for people with Down syndrome. Her lab has begun a small study with human volunteers at MIT.
“While this work, for the first time, shows beneficial effects of GENUS on Down syndrome using an imperfect mouse model, we need to be cautious, as there is not yet data showing whether this also works in humans,” says Tsai, who directs The Picower Institute and The Alana Center, and is a member of MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences faculty.
Still, she says, the newly published article adds evidence that GENUS can promote a broad-based, restorative, “homeostatic” health response in the brain amid a wide variety of pathologies. Most GENUS studies have addressed Alzheimer’s disease in humans or mice, but others have found benefits from the stimulation for conditions such as “chemo brain” and stroke.
Down syndrome benefits
In the study, the research team led by postdoc Md Rezaul Islam and Brennan Jackson PhD ’23 worked with the commonly used “Ts65Dn” Down syndrome mouse model. The model recapitulates key aspects of the disorder, although it does not exactly mirror the human condition, which is caused by carrying an extra copy of chromosome 21.
In the first set of experiments in the paper, the team shows that an hour a day of 40Hz light and sound exposure for three weeks was associated with significant improvements on three standard short-term memory tests — two involving distinguishing novelty from familiarity and one involving spatial navigation. Because these kinds of memory tasks involve a brain region called the hippocampus, the researchers looked at neural activity there and measured a significant increase in activity indicators among mice that received the GENUS stimulation versus those that did not.
To better understand how stimulated mice could show improved cognition, the researchers examined whether cells in the hippocampus changed how they express their genes. To do this, the team used a technique called single cell RNA sequencing, which provided a readout of how nearly 16,000 individual neurons and other cells transcribed their DNA into RNA, a key step in gene expression. Many of the genes whose expression varied most prominently in neurons between the mice that received stimulation and those that did not were directly related to forming and organizing neural circuit connections called synapses.
To confirm the significance of that finding, the researchers directly examined the hippocampus in stimulated and control mice. They found that in a critical subregion, the dentate gyrus, stimulated mice had significantly more synapses.
Diving deeper
The team not only examined gene expression across individual cells, but also analyzed those data to assess whether there were patterns of coordination across multiple genes. Indeed, they found several such “modules” of co-expression. Some of this evidence further substantiated the idea that 40Hz-stimulated mice made important improvements in synaptic connectivity, but another key finding highlighted a role for TCF4, a key regulator of gene transcription needed for generating new neurons, or “neurogenesis.”
The team’s analysis of genetic data suggested that TCF4 is underexpressed in Down syndrome mice, but the researchers saw improved TCF4 expression in GENUS-stimulated mice. When the researchers went to the lab bench to determine whether the mice also exhibited a difference in neurogenesis, they found direct evidence that stimulated mice exhibited more than unstimulated mice in the dentate gyrus. These increases in TCF4 expression and neurogenesis are only correlational, the researchers noted, but they hypothesize that the increase in new neurons likely helps explain at least some of the increase in new synapses and improved short-term memory function.
“The increased putative functional synapses in the dentate gyrus is likely related to the increased adult neurogenesis observed in the Down syndrome mice following GENUS treatment,” Islam says.
This study is the first to document that GENUS is associated with increased neurogenesis.
The analysis of gene expression modules also yielded other key insights. One is that a cluster of genes whose expression typically declines with normal aging, and in Alzheimer’s disease, remained at higher expression levels among mice who received 40Hz sensory stimulation.
And the researchers also found evidence that mice that received stimulation retained more cells in the hippocampus that express Reelin. Reelin-expressing neurons are especially vulnerable in Alzheimer’s disease, but expression of the protein is associated with cognitive resilience amid Alzheimer’s disease pathology, which Ts65Dn mice develop. About 90 percent of people with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease, typically after the age of 40.
“In this study, we found that GENUS enhances the percentage of Reln+ neurons in hippocampus of a mouse model of Down syndrome, suggesting that GENUS may promote cognitive resilience,” Islam says.
Taken together with other studies, Tsai and Islam say, the new results add evidence that GENUS helps to stimulate the brain at the cellular and molecular level to mount a homeostatic response to aberrations caused by disease pathology, be it neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s, demyelination in chemo brain, or deficits of neurogenesis in Down syndrome.
But the authors also cautioned that the study had limits. Not only is the Ts65Dn model an imperfect reflection of human Down syndrome, but also the mice used were all male. Moreover, the cognitive tests in the study only measured short-term memory. And finally, while the study was novel for extensively examining gene expression in the hippocampus amid GENUS stimulation, it did not look at changes in other cognitively critical brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex.
In addition to Jackson, Islam, and Tsai, the paper’s other authors are Maeesha Tasnim Naomi, Brooke Schatz, Noah Tan, Mitchell Murdock, Dong Shin Park, Daniela Rodrigues Amorim, Fred Jiang, S. Sebastian Pineda, Chinnakkaruppan Adaikkan, Vanesa Fernandez, Ute Geigenmuller, Rosalind Mott Firenze, Manolis Kellis, and Ed Boyden.
Funding for the study came from the Alana Down Syndrome Center at MIT and the Alana USA Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the La Caixa Banking Foundation, a European Molecular Biology Organization long-term postdoctoral fellowship, Barbara J. Weedon, Henry E. Singleton, and the Hubolow family.
© Image courtesy of the Tsai Lab/Picower Institute.
The Minister joined dignitaries including Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice, Dagmar Dolby, and Head of the Cavendish Laboratory, Professor Mete Atatüre, for the opening ceremony, which celebrated the transformative potential of the Centre for both the University and the nation.
The Ray Dolby Centre now serves as the new home of the Cavendish Laboratory, one of the world’s most renowned centres for physics. More than just a University asset, the Centre – in the Department of Physics – is a national resource: its cutting-edge research capabilities will be made available to academic and industrial researchers from institutions across the UK.
Designed to accelerate breakthroughs in quantum technologies, semiconductors, disease detection, and sustainable energy, the Centre is set to play a critical role in driving UK innovation. It anchors the new Cambridge West Innovation District, which will bring industry and academia together on an unprecedented scale. When complete, the District is expected to support 14,000 jobs and position Cambridge as Europe’s foremost hub for AI, quantum research, and climate solutions.
Ahead of the opening, Lord Livermore toured the proposed city-centre site for Cambridge’s flagship Innovation Hub, a project recently endorsed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. This Hub will act as the UK’s answer to Boston’s Lab Central and Paris’s Station F – connecting entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate partners to catalyse high-growth innovation.
The Hub is projected to double Cambridge’s rate of unicorn company creation, increase venture investment, and significantly grow the number of startups. It is expected to attract global R&D-intensive businesses, reinforcing the UK’s position as a science and innovation superpower.
Lord Livermore also visited the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, where he received a rooftop tour of Europe’s leading life sciences cluster at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology. There, he met with leaders from Cambridge University Health Partners (CUHP) to discuss the region’s role in advancing healthcare innovation and economic growth.
Lord Spencer Livermore, Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Minister for Growth, visited Cambridge to officially open the Ray Dolby Centre – a state-of-the-art facility that will redefine the future of physics research and innovation in the UK.
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The Arts Fest tent took center stage in Science Center Plaza.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
The steady pulse of music filled the Science Center Plaza on May 3 as a crowd of students from visiting artist Steven “Rhythm” Garcia’s Office for the Arts Dance Program course “House” moved freely to the beat, spun by DJ Luna del Flor. Suddenly, the music cut — and members of The Kuumba Singers and the Harvard Choruses began to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” A deep, resonant bass-baritone voice broke through the harmony, as opera singer Davóne Tines ’09, the recipient of the 2025 Harvard Arts Medal, rose to sing a stirring solo.
As Tines’ final note faded, Abe Joyner-Meyers ’22, American Repertory Theater sound engineer, picked up the melody on banjo. He was quickly joined by the Arts Fest Jazz Band, which launched into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” leading a parade of onlookers into the nearby tent and officially kicking off the Harvard Arts Festival’s Performance Fair.
The annual spring celebration of the arts took over stages, museums, and other venues across Harvard’s campus. The annual festival, produced by the Office for the Arts at Harvard, had nearly 2,000 participants, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni, in 150 events ranging from public concerts to theatrical performances, and hands-on art-making activities.
“This is really the culmination of art-making that’s been happening across our campus over the past year,” Fiona Coffey, director of the OFA, told the audience in the plaza tent. “This is a time when we need joy, resilience, community, collectivity more than ever. … I think that the arts are a really great example of how we can lift each other up and how we can lift up humanity during challenging times.”
Adam Bartholomew ’26, a molecular and cellular biology concentrator, and Elizabeth Bennett ’26, a music concentrator with a secondary in government, led the Harvard College Steelpan Ensemble through a resonant rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” made famous by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, to enthusiastic applause from the audience.
Operatic bass-baritone Davóne Tines ’09 (right) performs in Lowell Lecture Hall after receiving the 2025 Harvard Arts Medal, which was presented by Harvard President Alan Garber.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Bartholomew, a member of the Harvard-Berklee Joint Studies program who grew up playing steelpan in Trinidad and Tobago, said bringing the instrument to a Harvard stage has long been a dream.
“As we planned to create this ensemble over the past two years, we’ve always envisioned playing at Arts Fest once we got it started,” Bartholomew said. “The fact that it’s finally coming to fruition is a really good feeling.”
In Holden Chapel, Ethan Chaves ’26, a music and philosophy joint concentrator, performed original compositions for solo viola that were inspired by the idea of the Jungian shadow. It was a busy day for Chaves, who also performed with the Brattle Street Chamber Players in Adolphus Busch Hall earlier in the day, and had an original choral composition, “Exultation is the going,” premiered by the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum at Memorial Church later that afternoon. Chaves, who is enrolled in the Harvard-New England Conservatory Dual Degree program, said the festival allows students to experiment with new projects.
“It’s fun because it’s so hectic, there are always about 80 things going on all at the same time,” Chaves said, “It’s nice to be able to see your friends perform different things than they usually would and try out different works in progress you don’t normally get to see.”
President Alan Garber awarded Tines the Harvard Arts Medal in a ceremony May 4 in Lowell Lecture Hall. In his remarks, Garber recalled standing beside the award-winning opera singer as he transfixed the crowd in Tercentenary Theatre with his rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice” at Harvard’s 2019 Commencement ceremony.
“Art conveys truth in ways that are layered and unique,” Garber said. “It enlarges our hearts as well as our minds. It compels us to deepen our understanding and to expand our perspective at its best. It challenges us to appreciate the world and one another in new ways, creating the possibility for sympathy and empathy, for real and lasting connection.”
Tines (right) smiles during a conversation with Diane Paulus, the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director at American Repertory Theater.
Photo by Grace DuVal
The Harvard College Opera performs during the ceremony honoring Tines.
Photo by Grace DuVal
At the medal ceremony, Tines and his band The Truth performed “Let It Shine,” a stunning “This Little Light of Mine” reprise that brought the audience to its feet. He also spoke with Diane Paulus, the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the A.R.T., about his time at Harvard, where he concentrated in sociology, was a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and sang his first opera, Stravinsky’s “Rake’s Progress,” with the Dunster House Opera Society.
Tines said his years spent working in arts administration (including as an A.R.T. intern) before becoming a performing artist helped him gain a better understanding of all the work that goes into every artistic production. He said being an artist now not only means “holding a mirror up to the world,” but also serving as a model to inspire creativity and bravery in others.
“In my ongoing quest to understand all the parts of myself and put them together in a cohesive way, I’m trying to model that that’s possible for everyone else, artists, people at large,” Tines said. “We’re made of so many things, we come from so many things, and it’s important that we honor all those things and empower ourselves to become them, even when they contradict.”
Anugraha Raman ’12 (left) and Kohal Das warm up for their performance on Science Center Plaza.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Members of the Boston Cendrawasih prep before their performance.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Emil Massad ’25 conducts the Charles Revival and Friends performance. Massad organized the group and arranged the music for the performance.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Anoushka Chander ’25 sings during the Charles Revival and Friends performance. The ensemble is composed exclusively of musicians from the Class of 2025.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Onovughakpor Otitigbe-Dangerfield ’25 performs with the Charles Revival and Friends performance.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Matthew Andrews ’25 plays the bagpipes during the Charles Revival and Friends performance.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Paton Roberts ’25 applauds performers under the big tent.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Roseanne Strategos ’25 (right) goes knees to stage alongside the Three Letter Acronym (TLA) improv group in Harvard Yard.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Nathalie Beerelq (left) laughs during the TLA performance.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Emily Huttin (right) makes a cyanotype in Science Center Plaza.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Zack Li and his mother Linghui Li mold clay at an arts table in Science Center Plaza.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Joshua Halberstadt ’25 (left) and Ava Maha ’28 perform the Act 1 Finale from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” during the Harvard College Opera’s performance at Sanders Theatre.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Dexter Suhn ’27 (right) performs with bassist Rocco Rizzi in Holden Chapel.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Shriya Srinivasan (left), SEAS Faculty, and Shriya Srinivas from the Anubhava Dance Company perform.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Visiting Professor of History of Art and Architecture coleman a. jordan.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Visiting professor’s Venice Architecture Biennial project examines how to build renewable bridges between African, African diaspora communities
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
Four years after curating student work for an exhibition for the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennial, coleman jordan is back in Italy to construct his own project called “Recall and Response” at this year’s exposition.
The visiting architecture and art history professor’s pavilion structure — designed to be taken apart and reused — is meant to act as a talking drum that sparks dialogue among attendees of the showcase, which began Saturday and runs through Nov. 23.
“The pavilion is an instrument you can play. It’s a participatory experience,” jordan said, noting that “Recall and Response” examines the solidarity and commonality between African and African diaspora communities. “It’s a space for gathering, a space for people to collect themselves [and] have dialogues.”
The Morgan State University (MSU) professor is one of four visiting faculty at Harvard from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) supported by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative.
“The pavilion is an instrument you can play. It’s a participatory experience.”
The pavilion structure is designed to be taken apart and reused.
Courtesy of coleman jordan
jordan, whose work focuses on spaces of the Black Atlantic and decolonizing the Black aesthetic, taught a course called “I Can’t Breathe” in the fall before refocusing on his scholarship.
In regard to “Recall and Response,” the scholar believes the two communities share common ground but that there is also disjuncture in communication.
“Because we’re from different places, [and have] different stories, different context, oftentimes our dialogue is not cohesive,” he said. “We’re not really understanding one another.”
Helping jordan with construction in Venice are students from MSU, and Tuskegee University, as well as his former Clemson University classmate Dan Harding, now director of the Community Research and Design Center and a professor at Clemson.
MSU’s drumline, affectionately known as “The Magnificent Marching Machine,” will march through Venice around jordan’s creation on June 20. The drum culture at HBCUs is significant, jordan noted, and can often play a role in the “identification of a school.”
“The idea is to use the drum as a metaphor for bringing people together,” he said.
Beyond the exhibition at the Biennale, “Recall and Response” will be a physical and symbolic representation of the work being conducted at the Pan African Heritage Museum, which is being built in Ghana. The museum currently exists as an interactive digital space that hopes to eventually house artifacts stolen from Africa during the colonial period.
In keeping with the Venice Architecture Biennial’s theme of “Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse,” jordan said he sees his creation as a way to repair dialogue between communities and regenerate those connections.
The pavilion has taken the reuse aspect of the theme literally, and will be given to a community space to repurpose.
jordan praised the support he received during his year at Harvard and highlighted the importance of sustaining partnerships between the University and HBCUs.
“I think that we can learn from each other’s history, no matter what it is,” he said. “Bridging matters, because we’re in this world together. That collaboration really helps to create that bridge, where our histories start to meld together, and we grow faster.”
Jessica McCann
Harvard Correspondent
Generative AI took center stage when more than 300 educators and administrators gathered to explore, learn, and share best practices in teaching and learning at Harvard’s annual Professional and Lifelong Learning Summit, held in early March.
Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Bharat Anand, the keynote speaker, centered his conversation on a topic that has surfaced repeatedly over the past year: generative AI and how it is being used across the University to support teaching and learning.
“We’re not seeing faculty use GenAI to replace their expertise. They’re using it most often to streamline routine tasks that often take up valuable time.”
Bharat Anand
“This isn’t just about AI getting smarter,” Anand said. “What changed with ChatGPT is that it became universally accessible. With a simple text box, anyone — not just coders — can now harness the power of these tools.”
That accessibility is prompting experimentation and reflection across Harvard’s classrooms. “We don’t need to wait for institutional directives or for things to be perfect,” Anand said. “Every person can use these tools since the distance between human and computer is shrinking. That’s why we’re seeing so many people start to test, explore, and adapt.”
When tools like ChatGPT first entered the public domain, faculty responses varied.
“In fall 2023, we saw both excitement and real apprehension amongst our community,” Anand noted.
To support exploration, Harvard University Information Technology, with input from the University-wide Generative AI Teaching and Learning working group, launched a secure GenAI sandbox for Harvard. The aim was simple: give faculty, staff, and students a space to play, prototype, and learn together.
The result? A growing set of grassroots innovations — and a new way to share them.
Observing this interest in experimentation among faculty motivated Anand and his team to connect with faculty across Harvard’s Schools later in the academic year to understand the ways they’d used GenAI in their classrooms. One of the most visible efforts to emerge from this experimentation is the GenAI Faculty Voices Video Library. The project collects short interviews with faculty across the University who have integrated GenAI into their teaching.
“We wanted something useful and practical,” said Melissa Tarr, assistant director of programs at VPAL’s Harvard Institute for Learning and Teaching. “These videos offer concrete examples — quick hits that educators can learn from right away.”
The team asked each participating faculty member to identify a challenge they’d faced, a way GenAI was used to address this, and what they’d learned. Course planning, revising assessments, class discussions, grant editing, and student projects all surfaced as areas of early innovation.
“The faculty we interviewed were open-minded and thoughtful,” said Mary Godfrey, director of multimedia at VPAL. “They used GenAI to stretch their assignments and to test its boundaries. A number also deliberately showed students where the tools failed, as a way to sharpen critical thinking.”
Use cases include generating practice questions, building tutor bots, providing timely student feedback, or helping students learn prompt engineering.
Anand highlighted an important takeaway: “We’re not seeing faculty use GenAI to replace their expertise. They’re using it most often to streamline routine tasks that often take up valuable time. Whether it’s summarizing student responses, answering questions after hours, or drafting new practice problems, the goal is to free up energy for higher-impact teaching. This mirrors what we’re seeing in other sectors. The real value lies not in outperforming humans, but in ‘automating the mundane’: in saving time on things we already do — or don’t do — because they take too long.”
This ethos — of curiosity, reflection, and shared discovery — has come to define Harvard’s approach. Working groups have been in operation across the University, exploring the role of GenAI in research, administration, and pedagogy. The Teaching and Learning working group, chaired by Anand, continues to develop resources and track developments both inside Harvard and beyond.
“The video library is just one piece, and we’ll continue to add to it,” Anand said. “We’re trying to support thoughtful experimentation. At the same time, there is a strong need for GenAI literacy across the University, continued discussion on the ethics of its uses, and engaging in a more strategic conversation about what this all means for the role of educators.”
Examples from the Faculty Voices Library include:
“The Faculty Voices Video Library illustrates the depth and breadth of creativity unfolding across Harvard’s campus,” said Provost John Manning. “I’m excited to see what further innovation lies ahead.”
On May 13, Harvard will host its first University-wide symposium on the future of generative AI and its implications for the various activities of the University: research, teaching and learning, operations, and administration. Held at Harvard Business School’s Klarman Hall and sponsored by a coalition of University offices — including VPAL, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, HUIT, the Harvard Library, and FAS — the half-day event will surface ideas and questions from across disciplines and schools.
“We’ve seen real momentum,” said Anand. “Now is a good time to take stock — to learn from each other, to ask hard questions, and to shape a path forward.”
This interview is part of a series of short interviews from the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, called Student Spotlights. Each spotlight features a student answering their choice of questions about themselves and life at MIT. Today’s interviewee, Aria Eppinger ’24, graduated with her undergraduate degree in Course 6-7 (Computer Science and Molecular Biology) last spring. This spring, she will complete her MEng in 6-7. Her thesis, supervised by Ford Professor of Engineering Doug Lauffenburger in the Department of Biological Engineering, investigates the biological underpinnings of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth and preeclampsia, by applying polytope-fitting algorithms.
Q: Tell us about one teacher from your past who had an influence on the person you’ve become.
A: There are many teachers who had a large impact on my trajectory. I would first like to thank my elementary and middle school teachers for imbuing in me a love of learning. I would also like to thank my high school teachers for not only teaching me the foundations of writing strong arguments, programming, and designing experiments, but also instilling in me the importance of being a balanced person. It can be tempting to be ruled by studies or work, especially when learning and working are so fun. My high school teachers encouraged me to pursue my hobbies, make memories with friends, and spend time with family. As life continues to be hectic, I’m so grateful for this lesson (even if I’m still working on mastering it).
Q: Describe one conversation that changed the trajectory of your life.
A: A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to chat with Warren Buffett. I was nervous at first, but soon put to ease by his descriptions of his favorite foods — hamburgers, French fries, and ice cream — and his hitchhiking stories. His kindness impressed and inspired me, which is something I carry with me and aim to emulate all these years later.
Q: Do you have any pets?
A: I have one dog who lives at home with my parents. Dodger, named after “Artful Dodger” in Oliver Twist, is as mischievous as beagles tend to be. We adopted him from a rescue shelter when I was in elementary school.
Q: Are you a re-reader or a re-watcher — and if so, what are your comfort books, shows, or movies?
A: I don’t re-read many books or re-watch many movies, but I never tire of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” I bought myself an ornately bound copy when I was interning in New York City last summer. Austen’s other novels, especially “Sense and Sensibility,” “Persuasion,” and “Emma,” are also favorites, and I’ve seen a fair number of their movie and miniseries adaptations. My favorite adaptation is the 1995 BBC production of “Pride and Prejudice” because of the cohesion with the original book and the casting of the leads, as well as the touches and plot derivations added by the producer and director to bring the work to modern audiences. The adaptation is quite long, but I have fond memories of re-watching it with some fellow Austinites at MIT.
Q: If you had to teach a really in-depth class about one niche topic, what would you pick?
A: There are two types of people in the world: those who eat to live, and those who live to eat. As one of the latter, I would have to teach some sort of in-depth class on food. Perhaps I would teach the science behind baking chocolate cake, or churning the perfect ice cream. Or maybe I would teach the biochemistry of digesting. In any case, I would have to have lots of hands-on demos and reserve plenty for taste-testing!
Q: What was the last thing you changed your mind about?
A: Brisket! I never was a big fan of brisket until I went to a Texas BBQ restaurant near campus, The Smoke Shop BBQ. Growing up, I had never had true BBQ, so I was quite skeptical. However, I enjoyed not only the brisket but also the other dishes. The Brussels sprouts with caramelized onions is probably my favorite dish, but it feels like a crime to say that about a BBQ place!
Q: What are you looking forward to about life after graduation? What do you think you’ll miss about MIT?
A: I’m looking forward to new adventures after graduation, including working in New York City and traveling to new places. I cross-registered to take Intensive Italian at Harvard this semester and am planning a trip to Italy to practice my Italian, see the historic sites, visit the Vatican, and taste the food. Non vedo l’ora di viaggiare all’Italia! [I can't wait to travel to Italy!]
While I’m excited for what lies ahead, I will miss MIT. What a joy it is to spend most of the day learning information from a fire hose, taking a class on a foreign topic because the course catalog description looked fun, talking to people whose viewpoint is very similar or very different from my own, and making friends that will last a lifetime.
© Photo: Sydney Chun
MIT faculty and researchers receive many external awards throughout the year. The MIT School of Engineering periodically highlights the honors, prizes, and medals won by community members working in academic departments, labs, and centers. Winter 2025 honorees include the following:
© Photo: Conor McArdle
Nghia Nguyen.
Photo courtesy of Nghia Nguyen
Studying neurobiology gives Nghia Nguyen insights into ‘technical, tangible’ reasons for the things he does every day
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
For someone who studies the brain’s ability to predict future experiences, there is little about Nghia Nguyen’s life that could be described as predictable.
Nguyen, who graduated from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in November with a Ph.D. in neurobiology, was born in the very south of Vietnam, where his mother chopped banana leaves for work and his backyard was a rice paddy. “We grew up very poor,” he said. “Every day was a struggle to survive.” Their lives changed due to the American Homecoming Act, which allowed relatives of former American soldiers to immigrate to the U.S. with green cards. Nguyen’s grandfather, whom he’d never met, was an African American soldier in the Vietnam War. The law allowed applicants to prove their racial identity without a birth certificate. “When they saw my dad with an afro,” he said, “they were like, ‘This guy is clearly not full Vietnamese.’”
Nguyen and his family ended up in Burlington, Vermont. His mother packaged candy and his father took on a variety of jobs, like pumping gas and painting houses. They lived on North Street, along with seemingly all the other low-income and immigrant families in the area, about a mile north of downtown.
Though he and his sister attended schools that weren’t especially well-resourced, he said the teachers were kind and helped them learn English. His parents never made him work, and Nguyen and his sister focused their energy on getting perfect grades. “It wasn’t really even my parents’ expectations of me,” he said. “It’s just me observing the world around me and thinking, ‘How can I change that?’”
Nguyen secured full financial aid at Stanford, where he immediately felt himself playing catch-up. “Kids came in saying, ‘I’m going to skip three courses because I already know how to code,’” Nguyen recalled. “I was like, ‘What is coding?’” He picked his major, biomechanical engineering, because it seemed like the most practical and hardest option.
A year or two in, he felt like he’d caught up with his peers, which made him realize that his deficit had been because of an opportunity disparity rather than an innate skill difference. He also got encouragement from his sister to start doing research. “I know you don’t like to do stuff,” she said, “but just try it.”
He applied to several summer research positions for on-campus labs and received one offer. When he arrived, he remembers the professor telling him that he had not been the lab’s first choice. Nguyen didn’t care: “I was just glad they took me.”
“Neuroscience is a very self-fulfilling endeavor because the goal is to understand who you are.”
The job was to train mice on olfactory tasks. He would present an odor to a mouse, which he would direct toward a certain place to earn a reward. He learned to use a miniscope to get live images of mice brains as they performed different activities.
Conducting research felt like the first time his schoolwork actually applied to real life, and he loved it. “Neuroscience is a very self-fulfilling endeavor because the goal is to understand who you are,” he said. “And so doing these experiments gave me a very technical, tangible reason for the things I do every day. Why do I go seek food when I’m hungry? Why do I feel stressed in these moments? It gave me a very mechanistic reason for exactly why these things are happening.”
After graduating from college, Nguyen wondered if he should just try to make as much money as possible to help his mother retire. “But I really love neuroscience,” he said. “It was the only thing I ever really was passionate about.” Once he realized that he was paid for doing Ph.D. research and that he wouldn’t be burdening his family, the decision was easier.
At Harvard, Nguyen joined the lab of Mark Andermann, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who studies how the body determines which sensory cues are attended to, learned, and remembered. For his dissertation, Nguyen studied what the brain is doing when daydreaming or not doing anything in particular. “We know which neurons are responsible for vision, for hunger, for thirst, for learning,” he said, “but we don’t really know what the neurons are doing when we’re really doing nothing — like sleeping and zoning out.”
Even when they’re not seemingly completing a discrete task, neurons still fire. The field has historically called this behavior “spontaneous activity,” but Nguyen doesn’t think the term is accurate. “It seems pretty taxing to fire all the time and just have it be random,” he said. “This activity is not spontaneous.”
To answer what the brain was doing during wakeful rest, Nguyen showed mice one of two videos of black and white blobs moving across a screen, recording the activity of 7,000 neurons in the process. Between the movies, Nugyen peered into their neuronal activity as they sat in a dark room.
Nguyen expected that the mice, after watching the videos, would play back the movies in their head during breaks as they experienced it the previous time. The hypothesis was consistent with the field’s traditional concept of replay or reactivation — that after experiencing something, you replay that experience in your head. Over time, through repeated exposures, it becomes easier to distinguish between different stimuli. Your experience looking at a painting for the 60th time is different than your first experience looking at it.
But Nguyen found that the mice’s brains didn’t repeat the experience of watching the movies; their brains actually predicted how they would experience the movies in the future. “It was the opposite of what we expected,” Nguyen said. “We never expected to have in our mind the representation of an experience that we have not experienced yet.”
The results shocked Nguyen and were novel enough to land in the scientific journal Nature. “Contrary to prevailing theories,” the paper states, “reactivations systemically differed from previous patterns evoked by the stimulus. Instead, they were more similar to future patterns evoked by the stimulus, thereby predicting representational drift.”
“Everything you will ever see ever, has already been played in your mind. It’s like before you saw me, I’ve already existed.”
Nguyen recognizes that there is more to be done to confirm his findings, and he hopes to continue working on similar problems in future research. He also wants to explore other observations from his project — like how the same neurons that processed the movie fired together even before mice watched it for the very first time.
The potential implications of that line of thinking are astounding. “Everything you will ever see ever, has already been played in your mind,” Nguyen said, smiling. “It’s like before you saw me, I’ve already existed.”
After an unpredictable upbringing, Nguyen is grateful to have wound up at Harvard. “Some people have bad experiences with their Ph.D., but every day, I thought, ‘I’m so privileged to do this stuff,’” he said. “There’s no way my parents would ever get this opportunity. I’m living such a surreal life.”
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
It looks like the end of an era for the U.S. dollar.
In his new book “Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead,” Kenneth Rogoff looks back on the currency’s dominant run in global trade and central bank reserves for a host of other countries. Today, he argues, that lofty status is on the wane.
“My thesis is that the U.S. dollar is about to get knocked down a couple pegs,” said Rogoff, a professor of economics and the Maurits C. Boas Chair of International Economics. “It will still be first in global finance, because nothing is poised to fully replace it. The dollar just won’t be as unique as it once was.”
Written entirely before the 2024 election, the book weaves first-person reflections with a history of the U.S. economy and its currency topping a succession of challengers. As a teen chess pro in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Rogoff traveled to tournaments in the Eastern Bloc provided him with rare insight on America’s Communist rivals. As a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan in 1991, he glimpsed a booming economy on the precipice of disaster. He went on to serve as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund in the early ’00s, the nascent days of Europe’s common currency.
“The book is not a memoir,” Rogoff said. “But I do link in anecdotes from my experiences with world leaders, policymakers, former students, and chess players.”
The Gazette met up with Rogoff in his office for a preview of the book’s personal tales and macroeconomic prophesy. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Professor of Economics Kenneth Rogoff.
Photo by Martha Stewart
This release feels extraordinarily well-timed, given the recent sell-off of U.S. Treasuries and the dollar’s decline following President Trump’s April 2 tariff announcement. What events compelled you to revisit the dollar’s incredible rise and offer predictions for its future?
It wasn’t a single event. Based on my research, I thought the dollar peaked in its global footprint in 2015 and was in gentle decline. But I also thought this trend might accelerate. I was particularly concerned with our fiscal deficit and rising interest rates. I recently published a paper showing that if you look at the long history of interest rates, they tend to revert to trend.
I was also very concerned about the Federal Reserve losing independence. I actually wrote the first paper on the importance of central bank independence almost 45 years ago; it’s maybe my most famous paper. But in recent years, I started noticing rhetoric on both the left and the right about reining that in. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell wouldn’t get pushed aside out of the blue. It would take another crisis. During wartime, for example, central banks are commonly made subservient to the government.
That covers some of the internal pressures on dollar dominance. What about external factors?
We’ve been able to use economic sanctions in place of military intervention. It saves us lives; it saves us money. But dollar dominance also gives us access to financial data that no other country has. If you were to go to the CIA today, you would see somebody on a laptop instead of somebody like James Bond.
So there’s quite an appetite, particularly in Asia, to reduce the dollar’s grip. China couldn’t help but notice when the U.S. placed economic sanctions on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. China, of course, has designs on Taiwan.
For most of us in the U.S., our currency’s almighty position isn’t exactly top of mind. Can you illustrate how dollar dominance impacts daily life for everyday Americans?
For one thing, we’re all paying lower interest rates. It’s not a huge amount. You don’t like paying 6 percent on your mortgage, but you’d dislike it even more if you were paying 7 percent. And for the national government, which owes $36 trillion, every additional 1 percent is $360 billion.
Another thing is that, in times of crisis like the pandemic or the global financial crisis of 2008, the U.S. has been able to borrow promiscuously. Interest rates do rise as our debt rises, but the effect is very gentle compared with the U.K. or France. If this privilege is lost, we will notice it.
Tell me about the book’s title.
The U.S. dollar used to be as good as gold. If you were a foreign country holding the equivalent to what is today hundreds of billions of dollars, as many Asian central banks do now, you could just take them to the U.S., and we would give you gold. But then President Richard Nixon decided, in 1971, that we weren’t going to do that anymore.
Leaders from around the world were in a state of shock. As a global financial incident, it was just as dramatic as the introduction of President Trump’s tariffs earlier this year. Nixon sent Treasury Secretary John Connally to meet with these leaders in Rome. They asked, “What do we do? Now that you’re not on gold, you can just inflate this stuff, and we’re stuck with it.” And Connally replied, “Well, it’s our dollar, but it’s your problem.”
What do Connally’s words call to mind for you today?
Connally’s remark captures the arrogance of American leaders that foreign leaders so often feel. I feel our role in the world comes with responsibility, and we should recognize that.
The book’s title is also ironic. After we went off gold, we lost a kind of price anchor. Nixon started beating up on Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns as brutally as Trump beats up on Powell today. It just wasn’t in public; he was doing it in the Oval Office. We only know about it now because of the Watergate tapes. Burns got pressured into printing a lot of money. The result was the worst inflation the U.S. had seen since in a long while. So although Connally was saying “It’s your problem,” the resulting inflation proved a disaster for the U.S., too.
Other economies have emerged as challengers to U.S. power over the years. But you open the book with a surprising example, at least for those who came of age after the Cold War. You start with the post-World War II rise of the Soviet Union. Can you talk about that choice?
By the ’80s, it was becoming clear that the Russian ruble would not outpace the dollar. But in the ’60s and ’70s, we had no idea. I write about the different professors I met as an undergraduate at Yale, as well as textbooks by leading economists such as Paul Samuelson. Samuelson was convinced the Soviet economy would catch up to the U.S. The greatest economic historian of that era was Angus Maddison. He didn’t think the Soviet Union would catch up, but he thought it would do pretty well. These economists were not Marxists!
Later on, we didn’t know Japan would falter. We didn’t know Europe would fizzle. We never imagined the heights the U.S. dollar ultimately reached. My book hits these themes again and again.
How did your experiences as a globe-hopping teen chess master shape your views on the subject?
My professors at Yale talked about how great the Soviet Union was doing. But I had lived on my own abroad, primarily in the former Yugoslavia. I had visited some of my chess-player friends in their homes. Chess was a very big deal in the Communist bloc, so these players had privileged lives and nicer dwellings than the typical resident. But these nice dwellings consisted of little cement blocks in these humorless buildings. They barely had modern plumbing by U.S. standards. It made me very skeptical about Samuelson’s claim.
You write in this book that era of dollar dominance is in “late middle-age, but still in good health.” Is that still true in light of Trump’s second-term trade war?
Well, the dollar is starting to experience more serious health issues under Trump. When you’re an academic, the goal is never to write a book that’s true tomorrow. After coming to Harvard in 1999, I went for a walk across campus with former Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Jeremy Knowles. I’ll never forget what he told me. He said, “The perfect paper is one that everybody thinks is wrong, but in five or 10 years it’s proven right.”
You’ve achieved that in the past.
Carmen Reinhart and I were ridiculed in early 2009 when we presented a paper showing that recoveries from financial crises tend to be much slower and weaker than conventional recoveries. Of course that is exactly what happened. I had a similar experience in 2020 when my work suggested a deep problem in Chinese real estate.
My new book also contains some out-of-consensus forecasts that I believe will ultimately prove correct — on interest rates, inflation, and the role of the dollar. I don’t argue that dollar dominance will fall sharply tomorrow. But Trump has been an accelerant. He has been a catalyst. Parts of the world were already moving away from the dollar. Now they’re moving much faster.
Specialist outlines impact of screen time on developing brains, from toddlerhood to teen years
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
U.S. children aged 8 and younger spend 2½ hours a day on screens, with kids under 2 exceeding an hour each day, according to a recent report from Common Sense Media.
It’s data that Michael Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, finds deeply troubling.
Rich is the co-founder and director of the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital, where he works with young people whose online activities are interfering with their well-being. He sees digital media as an environmental health issue like clean air.
“We should definitely be asking the owners of these platforms to clean up their products, but we also have to help kids breathe right now,” he said. “We have to help them learn how to thrive in the environment we’ve got.”
Here’s how Rich describes the effect of screens at different stages of development:
Screens don’t just attract our attention — they shape the structure of our brains.
“We are constantly making synaptic connections between our neurons,” Rich says. “When we use those connections, they get reinforced, but other connections are made and then get pruned away because we don’t use them so much.”
23%
of children age 0 to 8 sometimes or often use a mobile device while eating at home.
— Common Sense Media
The Common Sense report found that by age 4, more than half of children have their own tablet, and that 36 percent of 2- to 4-year-olds watch online videos every day. Rich has sympathy for their parents, many of whom are juggling multiple tasks. But, he said, the most important thing is to aim for the “richest way possible to build a brain.”
While synaptic connections are formed and pruned all through our lives, the brains of infants develop new connections faster. According to Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, more than a million new neural connections are formed every second in the first few years of life — and these neural pathways lay the foundation for future development.
When babies and toddlers spend time on screens, their brains develop based on input that is at once highly engaging and absent of richer, more meaningful stimulus, Rich said, like the smell of their caregivers’ bodies or the touch of their skin.
“The real issue with screen time is often not what’s coming from the screen being toxic, but what they’re missing out on because they’re on a screen.”
Over time, screens can “desensitize” children to the simpler sensations of the real world. “When they sit down at the dinner table and their parents are saying ‘How was your day?’ it just isn’t enough,” Rich said.
Rich also worries that much of what children consume on screens requires little to no engagement, a curated list of endlessly entertaining content activated by touch.
“It doesn’t demand that they contribute anything,” he said. “So the other piece is ‘I’m going to be fed stimulus’ as opposed to ‘I have to go out and find my stimulus.’ It doesn’t dull creativity; it just doesn’t give creativity space to happen.”
By age 8, nearly 1 in 4 children have their own phones, according to Common Sense Media, a statistic that Rich said poses new and different challenges.
“The lunchroom, the playground, the hallway between classes — these are the places where kids are individuals in a society of their own making, where they figure out who they like and don’t like, how to pick themselves up after challenges,” he said. “If that kid has in their pocket a phone in which mom can say, ‘How did you do on the math test? Do I need to talk to your teacher? What’s going on in the playground?’ they never get the opportunity to figure these things out for themselves.”
Even so, as state and local leaders move to ban or restrict phones in schools, Rich argues for a more nuanced approach.
“I think that we actually should be teaching kids to use these tools, just like we teach them to use the computer or pencil and paper,” he said. “If we ban phones from schools, we will not have any time or space in which kids are taught how to use these powerful tools effectively. An important part of using them effectively is knowing when they are not the best tool for the job and turning them off.”
By the time kids reach high school, some have the social and emotional skills to regulate their own use of technology. For those who don’t, like the patients at Rich’s clinic, problematic internet use is almost universally a symptom of an underlying mental health condition or neurodivergence, typically depression, social anxiety, autism, or ADHD, he said. Helping teens moderate their internet use is really more about giving them tools to cope with those underlying challenges.
54%
of teens ages 13-17 say they visit YouTube “almost constantly” or “several times a day”
— Pew Research Center
Rich cautioned against thinking about problematic internet use as an addiction, though. “The therapeutic goal with addiction is abstinence,” he said. “The internet is a necessary resource. We need it to learn, to teach, to communicate, to connect.” Misuse “is driven by psychological, not physiological, drivers,” he said.
“We see the better analogy as binge-eating disorder, which is the most prevalent eating disorder. That’s the use of a necessary resource — food — but for psychological reasons, trying to fill that empty hole within. Our goal with binge-eating disorder and with problematic interactive media use is self-regulation, being able to use this tool in ways that are effective and productive.”
Rich is optimistic about a path forward for kids. His prescription: getting comfortable with boredom. That goes for adults, too.
“We’re so averse to boredom that we can’t get on an elevator without pulling our phones out,” he said.
He recommends that at any age, parents model healthy media habits, encourage non-screen activities, and have ongoing conversations about how to critique what kids see on their screens.
“Ultimately, whether we’re talking about television or smartphones or Gen AI, our goal is to help kids be critical thinkers, to be digitally literate in what they receive and also what they create and put out there.”
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library; Illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
Today, much of the visual communication around public health is digital — in Instagram infographics, TikToks, or YouTube videos. But in decades past, posters, printed out and pasted up in public, were a key way to spread messaging.
“People remember information better if it’s presented both visually and with printed messages,” said Amanda Yarnell, chair of the Chan Center for Health Communication, which helps online creators spread evidence-based health messages in ways that resonate. “Seeing something and reading something at the same time improves understanding.”
Harvard Library has digitized more than 3,000 posters related to a single major public health crisis: the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The posters come from numerous countries around the world and span roughly 1990 to 2004. The collection tells a story, said Yarnell, of what the public health establishment has learned about what messages work, and why.
In the small area of a poster — and the limited time in which you might hope to catch someone’s attention — designers need to craft a single simple message. Too many words and you lose people.
“A good poster is one point and a feeling: something that the messenger wants you to remember, and then the feeling helps you remember it,” said Yarnell, who is also a lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “And best-case scenario, there’s a route to more. It used to be a phone number, and then it became a website, and now it’s probably a QR code.”
China.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W542995_1
Italy.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W539985_1
South Africa.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W548279_1
Canada.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W463584_1
New Zealand.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W547869_1
Effective messages can be bold, eye-catching, or even provocative.
“Something that draws you in, something that makes you feel seen or resonates with you, gives you some kind of connection with the subject matter.”
Luxembourg.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W555087_1
“Often in the early days, there was a single campaign with a single message that was used in every situation,” Yarnell said. “Over time, we realized that you need multiple different campaigns for multiple different needs.”
Luxembourg.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W540084_1
Uganda.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W548336_1
India.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W543116_1
France.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W544068_1
“For a long time, public health was really focused on, ‘We’ve gathered some expertise and we’re going to share it with you,’ as opposed to ‘We’re going to co-create expertise to help you make better decisions in your life,’” Yarnell said. The best way to make sure the message fits the audience, after all, is to make the audience a part of designing the message.
New Zealand.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W547888_1
South Africa.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W548280_1
United States.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W463631_1
Over time, researchers learned that positive, affirming messages are better for changing behavior than messages based in shame, stigma, or admonition, Yarnell said.
Australia.
Harvard University, Collection Development Department. Widener Library. HCL, W547913_1
Looking back at the posters in the collection is an exercise in remembering the past and preparing for the future, said Neal Baer, lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“Condoms were the only things we had to prevent HIV back then. Now, it’s very different. We have PrEP [Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis]; we have antivirals that keep people alive. … These posters are outdated in the sense of the information they’re giving out.”
It is estimated that about 42 million people worldwide have died from HIV/AIDS since the virus first emerged in the 1980s. With modern preventions and treatments, it is possible to end transmission and prevent deaths, Baer said.
“We haven’t done a good job of preventing HIV transmission in the United States, especially since we have the ability to prevent it completely through ‘U=U,’” Baer said, referencing the “undetectable equals untransmittable” messaging strategy begun in 2016 aimed at changing the conversation around HIV/AIDS. “There should be no one getting HIV.
“This poster collection reaffirms that we need to not forget. … These posters are like gravestones of all the people who have died, and I don’t want them to have died in vain.”
The MIT Supply Chain Management (MCM) master’s program has recognized 34 exceptional students from nine renowned undergraduate programs specializing in supply chain management and engineering across the United States. Twenty-one students have won the 2025 MIT Supply Chain Excellence Award, while an additional 13 were named honorable mentions.
Presented annually, the MIT Supply Chain Excellence Awards honor undergraduate students who have demonstrated outstanding talent in supply chain management or industrial engineering. These students originate from the institutions that have collaborated with the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics’ Supply Chain Management master’s program since 2013 to expand opportunities for graduate study and advance the field of supply chain and logistics.
In this year’s awards, the MIT SCM master’s program has provided over $800,000 in fellowship funding to the recipients. These students come from schools like Arizona State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Lehigh University, Michigan State University, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Mexico), Penn State University, Purdue University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Syracuse University.
Recipients can use their awards by applying to the SCM program after gaining two to five years of professional experience post-graduation. Fellowship funds can be applied toward tuition fees for the SCM master’s program at MIT, or at MIT Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) network centers.
Winners ($30,000 fellowship awards):
Honorable Mentions ($15,000 fellowship awards):
The MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL) is a world leader in supply chain management research and education, with over 50 years of expertise. The center’s work spans industry partnerships, cutting-edge research, and the advancement of sustainable supply chain practices to creates supply chain innovation and drive it into practice through three pillars: research, outreach, and education.
Founded in 1998 by the CTL, MIT SCM attracts a diverse group of talented and motivated students from across the globe. Students work directly with researchers and industry experts on complex and challenging problems in all aspects of supply chain management. MIT SCM students propel their classroom and laboratory learning straight into industry. They graduate from our programs as thought leaders ready to engage in an international, highly competitive marketplace. For more information, contact Kate Padilla.
© Image: Emma Perakis
The newly established Morningside Academy of Design (MAD) Professorships recognize outstanding faculty whose teaching, research, and service have significantly shaped the field of design at MIT and beyond. The appointments support a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, mentorship, and the development of new educational approaches to design.
These appointments mark the creation of the MAD Professorships and were formally announced on April 29 at the MAD in Dialogue event, where faculty members, introduced by their department heads, each gave a short presentation on their work, followed by a shared conversation on the future of design education.
The inaugural chair-holders are Behnaz Farahi, assistant professor of media arts and sciences and director of the Critical Matter Group in the MIT Media Lab; Skylar Tibbits, associate professor of architecture, co-founder and director of the MIT Self-Assembly Lab, and assistant director for education at MAD; and David Wallace, professor of mechanical engineering, MacVicar Fellow, and Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Fellow.
John Ochsendorf, MAD’s founding director, reflects that “the professorships are more than titles — they’re affirming the central role of design in empowering students to solve complex challenges. Behnaz, Skylar, and David are all celebrated designers who each bring a unique perspective to design education and research. By supporting them, we will cultivate more agile, creative thinkers across MIT.”
Professor Farahi’s MAD professorship appointment will begin Sept. 1, upon the completion of her Asahi Broadcast Corp. professorship. Tibbits’ and Wallace’s appointments are effective immediately. The faculty members will remain affiliated with their respective departments.
Behnaz Farahi
Having joined the MIT faculty in fall 2024 as an assistant professor in media arts and sciences, Behnaz Farahi brings her critical lens to design research and education. With a foundation in architecture, her career spans fashion and creative technology. Farahi takes interest in addressing critical social issues with a design practice engaging emerging technologies, human bodies, and the environment. As director of the Critical Matter research group at the MIT Media Lab, Farahi aims to re-integrate the tradition of critical thinking in philosophy and social sciences with the concerns of “matter” in science and technology.
She has won awards including the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Digital Design Award, Innovation by Design Fast Company Award, and the World Technology Award. Her work has been included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and has been exhibited internationally.
Her most recent installation, “Gaze to the Stars,” projected video closeups of MIT community members’ eyes onto the Great Dome, with encoded personal stories of perseverance and transformation. The project integrated large language model and computer vision tools in service of a collective art experience.
Currently the recipient of the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation Career Development Professorship in Media Arts and Sciences, Farahi’s MAD appointment will begin after the completion of her present chair. She will remain affiliated with the MIT Media Lab.
Skylar Tibbits
An architect by training, Skylar Tibbits combines design and computer science as co-founder and director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT and associate professor of design research in the Department of Architecture. Dedicated to broadening the reach of design education, he directs the undergraduate design programs at MIT and contributes to its curricula.
At the Self-Assembly Lab, Tibbits oversees the advancement of self-assembly and programmable material technologies such as 4D knitting and liquid metal printing, with a plurality of applications ranging from garments and housing to coastal resilience.
He has designed and built large-scale installations and exhibited in galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and various others.
David Robert Wallace
David Wallace has long been a recognized leader in design research and education at MIT and around the world. Wallace began his research career focused on computational tools for design representation and has evolved his interests over time to environmentally-conscious design approaches, developing software tools to enhance design and creativity, and incorporating new media and tools into the design classroom to empower engineers and designers. His research goals are to develop new methods that impact upon the practice of product development and to help inspire and equip the next generation of engineering innovators.
Wallace is known both inside and outside of MIT for his development of two iconic design classes at MIT, 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes), and 2.00B (Toy Product Design). In sculpting and refining 2.009 over many years, Wallace merged a studio-based approach with rigorous engineering to create a new paradigm for team-based, project-based design. In these courses, students experience hands-on building and testing in real-world contexts so they experience what it means to design for real users, not just design in theory.
His approach to design education is captured in the video series “Play Seriously!,” which follows one semester of 2.009. For his tremendous educational contributions, he has been awarded the Baker Award for Teaching Excellence and was named a MacVicar Faculty Fellow, which is MIT’s highest teaching award.
© Photos courtesy of MIT MAD.
Astrophysicist says they may have more money than you, but they don’t know anything more about future than anyone else
Nikki Rojas
Harvard Staff Writer
Adam Becker.
Photos by Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Tech billionaires promoting space exploration and colonization as the solution to humanity’s problems should be ignored, says Adam Becker.
These CEOs have little to no expertise in engineering or astrophysics and have little to support their arguments beyond money, according to Becker, an astrophysicist, journalist, and author of the new book “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity.”
“They think that money is some sort of metric that tells you how worthwhile somebody is and how smart they are, and that if somebody else has less money, that means that you don’t have to listen to them,” said Becker, who was joined at a recent Harvard Science Book Talk by Moira Weigel, assistant professor of comparative literature and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and Max Gladstone, an award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer.
Becker earned a Ph.D. in computational cosmology from the University of Michigan in 2012. He said that as a child he also thought the future was among the stars.
“I didn’t question that assumption for a long time,” he told the audience. “As I got older, I learned more and realized, ‘Oh, that’s not happening. We’re not going to go to space and certainly going to space is not going to make things better.’”
In his book, Becker dissects the “baseless fantasies” promulgated by tech CEO billionaires, futurists, and philosophers. Each chapter features key figures — including philosopher Peter Singer, effective altruist William MacAskill, and futurist and former tech entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil — who believe they can optimize what comes next for humanity. Some, like Space X CEO Elon Musk, have the funds to pursue those beliefs.
“People were taking them seriously. That scares me and also I was deeply annoyed because if you know more about these areas, it becomes clear that they have no idea what they’re talking about.”
Originally, Becker believed the subcultures he focuses on in his book — rationalists, effective altruists, and those who believe in the singularity (the point at which tech essentially blends human and machine) — were “mostly harmless.” That belief changed over time.
“People were taking them seriously. That scares me and also I was deeply annoyed because if you know more about these areas, it becomes clear that they have no idea what they’re talking about,” he said.
Becker alluded to individuals, such as Silicon Valley tech billionaires like Musk and Jeff Bezos, who try futilely to “use their money to run as far as they like from their fears.” They have accumulated wealth because they need control in order to feel safe, he argued.
“You end up accumulating more and more money than you could ever possibly spend in one lifetime and more power than any one person should have,” he said. “That’s not enough and you need more.”
Becker also argued that there is “something very dualist and haunted” about the way the subjects of his book view the mind. Following the death of his father, Kurzweil began to explore the possibility that AI will one day be capable of collecting memories and replicating the human mind.
These people believe that “the body is this thing that the mind is unfortunately dependent upon rather than us being our bodies,” Becker said.
“Our bodies are not like space suits for our nervous systems or for our minds,” he said. “They are what we are and instead, there is this horror with the flesh that is just exuded by all of this rhetoric.”
While answering questions from the audience, Becker reiterated pointed criticisms of tech CEO billionaires who claim to have productive visions of the future.
“I think that they have something that sounds cool, that they believe in, that they think is a vision of the future, because they’re not used to thinking anymore. They’re used to vibing, and this might be why they’re so easily fooled into thinking that ChatGPT and other LLMs are actually thinking as opposed to producing extruded, homogenized-thought like products,” he said.
Suzanne Glassburn.
Photo by Grace DuVal
Suzanne Glassburn has been appointed vice president and secretary of the University, President Alan Garber announced Thursday.
“A deeply experienced and widely respected senior university administrator, Suzanne is an individual of exceptional demeanor, diplomacy, and intellect,” Garber said. “Her leadership of the Office of the Governing Boards will advance and strengthen the critical work of both the Corporation and the Board of Overseers at a moment of great consequence for Harvard and for higher education.”
Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Glassburn spent 15 years at MIT, most recently as vice president and secretary of the Corporation, and previously as counsel in MIT’s Office of the General Counsel. Before her move to higher education, Glassburn was a partner at the Boston law firm Nutter, McClennen & Fish, LLP.
“I am deeply grateful to President Garber for the opportunity to serve an institution with such an incredible history of strong governance and respected leadership,” said Glassburn. “I look forward to joining a team committed to maintaining, upholding, and strengthening this essential partnership between administration and governance.”
As vice president and secretary of the University, Glassburn will serve as chief administrative officer of the governing boards, which are comprised of the Corporation and the Board of Overseers. As leader of the Office of the Governing Boards, she will set the priorities and vision for the office, which is responsible for supporting and offering guidance to the boards.
“It is a privilege to work with the dedicated individuals who serve on the Corporation and the Board of Overseers,” said Glassburn. “I look forward to providing guidance and counsel in support of their efforts to steer this venerable institution toward a future in which it continues to make profound and meaningful contributions to society.”
As secretary of the Corporation at MIT, Glassburn coordinated the activities and operations of a large governance body, as well as its standing and visiting committees. Her work included advising on governance issues, serving as liaison between MIT’s senior administration and governing board members, and overseeing the Office of the Corporation.
As vice president, Glassburn was a senior adviser and chief of staff to MIT’s president and a member of the senior team, which included the president’s direct reports. She also oversaw the Office of the President, federal relations, institute events, and the ombuds office.
Her work in the MIT Office of the General Counsel focused on academic and research collaborations, other contracts, governance, and policy. Notably, Glassburn collaborated with colleagues in Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel to structure and establish edX, Inc., a nonprofit online learning and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) provider.
At Nutter, McClennen & Fish, Glassburn represented public bodies and private businesses in a variety of industries, as well as nonprofits, and served in a number of leadership and administrative roles within the firm. Her practice areas included mergers and acquisitions, trademarks, intellectual-property licensing, and securities.
Glassburn will succeed Marc Goodheart, who announced plans in September to conclude his service as vice president and secretary of the University. Goodheart, who held the position for nearly three decades, will become senior adviser to the president and other University leaders while working to ensure a seamless transition in the Office of the Governing Boards.
“We are fortunate that Marc will continue to serve the University with his customary insight and wisdom as Suzanne steps into her new role.” said Garber.
Glassburn is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania Law School and received her undergraduate degree in English from Vanderbilt University.
President Alan Garber (from left) with Tess Kim, founder of PeriPeach, which received a $75,000 award, and Harvard i-lab Managing Director Becca Xiong, and Senior Director Meagan Hall.
Photos by Evgenia Eliseeva
Alex Parks
Harvard Correspondent
Helping mothers protect their bodies during childbirth, reimagining how hydrogen can be transported safely and affordably, and leveraging AI and robotics to transform the thousands-year-old process of hair braiding are a few of the 2025 Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge’s extraordinary winning ventures.
“At a time when so much is uncertain, the possibility of redefining what’s possible is not only a springboard to your own achievements, but also a gift to our community, our nation and our world,” said President Alan Garber. “Your willingness to pursue ideas, to take risks and to carve new paths to excellence reminds us all of the power of knowledge, and the importance and necessity of places like Harvard.”
The President’s Innovation Challenge is an annual competition for Harvard students and select alumni and affiliates pursuing ventures that are redefining what’s possible in their fields. During the Wednesday awards ceremony at Klarman Hall, President’s Innovation Challenge finalists pitched their ventures to a global audience of more than 2,000 in-person and virtual attendees. Winners received a share of $517,000 in non-dilutive funding, made possible by a gift from the Bertarelli Foundation, co-founded by Ernesto Bertarelli, M.B.A. ’93.
“Each year, the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge showcases the incredible creativity and impressive drive of students from across the University,” said Bertarelli. “It’s been an immense honor to support these founders at the earliest stages of their ventures and see how they go on to make a positive impact to society.”
“Your willingness to pursue ideas, to take risks and to carve new paths to excellence reminds us all of the power of knowledge, and the importance and necessity of places like Harvard.”
President Alan Garber
Gurus Inc. (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health): Providing vulnerable populations with housing, education, mentorship, and support services.
Halo Braid (Harvard Business School, Harvard College, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Building an AI-powered robotic hair braider that reduces braiding time from hours to minutes, empowering hair stylists to double their business.
PeriPeach (Harvard Medical School): Designing a medical device to prevent severe tears from childbirth.
Regatta Bio (Harvard Medical School): Developing cellular therapies to restore immune tolerance and prevent immune system-related diseases.
The Paal (Harvard Kennedy School): Improving financial outcomes for smallholder livestock farmers in India.
“Advocacy and awareness has always been a central part of PeriPeach, and I want to thank everybody here today,” said Tess Kim, founder of PeriPeach, after receiving the $75,000 prize. “This is for all the women who had to suffer with severe tears and for all the women who won’t have to.”
Adaptive Reader (Harvard College): Reimagining books so that every learner is able to engage with rigorous content, using AI to personalize languages and reading levels.
Brain Exercise Initiative (Harvard Law School): Preventing memory loss with cognitively stimulating exercises.
HydroHaul (Harvard Business School): Building a safer, more reliable, and cheaper solution for transporting hydrogen using a proxy carrier molecule.
Modulate Bio (Harvard Business School): Developing therapies to treat neurological disorders, including Essential Tremor, epilepsy, and anxiety.
Radiate Biosciences (Harvard Medical School): Creating a new colorectal cancer screening method with a blood test that delivers colonoscopy-level performance.
AIRQUA (Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Transforming flood relief with air-generated water technology, delivering clean, safe water to families in urgent need during crises.
Pythia Diagnostics (Harvard College, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Making a wearable device that predicts epileptic seizures by analyzing skin-released chemicals.
SAMI+ (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health): Equipping health workers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with AI-powered handheld ultrasounds, enhancing prenatal care.
SpiroSniff (Harvard College, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences): Creating an affordable breathalyzer to detect lung cancer early, using sensors and AI for rapid, non-invasive, accessible screening.
Wyndergy (Harvard Extension School): Harnessing wind power to increase range for electric vehicles and eliminate range anxiety.
“Today is one of our favorite days of the year,” said Becca Xiong, managing director of programs and engagement at the Harvard Innovation Labs. “We get to celebrate bold ideas, real-world impact, and the remarkable people behind both. It takes vision, courage, and a lot of hard work to reach this stage — and even more to bring that vision to life.”
To learn more about the President’s Innovation Challenge finalists and winners, and watch a recording of the May 7 awards ceremony, visit the Harvard Innovation Labs website.
Researchers from MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered that a class of peptides expressed in pancreatic cancer cells could be a promising target for T-cell therapies and other approaches that attack pancreatic tumors.
Known as cryptic peptides, these molecules are produced from sequences in the genome that were not thought to encode proteins. Such peptides can also be found in some healthy cells, but in this study, the researchers identified about 500 that appear to be found only in pancreatic tumors.
The researchers also showed they could generate T cells targeting those peptides. Those T cells were able to attack pancreatic tumor organoids derived from patient cells, and they significantly slowed down tumor growth in a study of mice.
“Pancreas cancer is one of the most challenging cancers to treat. This study identifies an unexpected vulnerability in pancreas cancer cells that we may be able to exploit therapeutically,” says Tyler Jacks, the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Jacks and William Freed-Pastor, a physician-scientist in the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Science. Zackery Ely PhD ’22 and Zachary Kulstad, a former research technician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Koch Institute, are the lead authors of the paper.
Cryptic peptides
Pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest survival rates of any cancer — about 10 percent of patients survive for five years after their diagnosis.
Most pancreatic cancer patients receive a combination of surgery, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy. Immunotherapy treatments such as checkpoint blockade inhibitors, which are designed to help stimulate the body’s own T cells to attack tumor cells, are usually not effective against pancreatic tumors. However, therapies that deploy T cells engineered to attack tumors have shown promise in clinical trials.
These therapies involve programming the T-cell receptor (TCR) of T cells to recognize a specific peptide, or antigen, found on tumor cells. There are many efforts underway to identify the most effective targets, and researchers have found some promising antigens that consist of mutated proteins that often show up when pancreatic cancer genomes are sequenced.
In the new study, the MIT and Dana-Farber team wanted to extend that search into tissue samples from patients with pancreatic cancer, using immunopeptidomics — a strategy that involves extracting the peptides presented on a cell surface and then identifying the peptides using mass spectrometry.
Using tumor samples from about a dozen patients, the researchers created organoids — three-dimensional growths that partially replicate the structure of the pancreas. The immunopeptidomics analysis, which was led by Jennifer Abelin and Steven Carr at the Broad Institute, found that the majority of novel antigens found in the tumor organoids were cryptic antigens. Cryptic peptides have been seen in other types of tumors, but this is the first time they have been found in pancreatic tumors.
Each tumor expressed an average of about 250 cryptic peptides, and in total, the researchers identified about 1,700 cryptic peptides.
“Once we started getting the data back, it just became clear that this was by far the most abundant novel class of antigens, and so that’s what we wound up focusing on,” Ely says.
The researchers then performed an analysis of healthy tissues to see if any of these cryptic peptides were found in normal cells. They found that about two-thirds of them were also found in at least one type of healthy tissue, leaving about 500 that appeared to be restricted to pancreatic cancer cells.
“Those are the ones that we think could be very good targets for future immunotherapies,” Freed-Pastor says.
Programmed T cells
To test whether these antigens might hold potential as targets for T-cell-based treatments, the researchers exposed about 30 of the cancer-specific antigens to immature T cells and found that 12 of them could generate large populations of T cells targeting those antigens.
The researchers then engineered a new population of T cells to express those T-cell receptors. These engineered T cells were able to destroy organoids grown from patient-derived pancreatic tumor cells. Additionally, when the researchers implanted the organoids into mice and then treated them with the engineered T cells, tumor growth was significantly slowed.
This is the first time that anyone has demonstrated the use of T cells targeting cryptic peptides to kill pancreatic tumor cells. Even though the tumors were not completely eradicated, the results are promising, and it is possible that the T-cells’ killing power could be strengthened in future work, the researchers say.
Freed-Pastor’s lab is also beginning to work on a vaccine targeting some of the cryptic antigens, which could help stimulate patients’ T cells to attack tumors expressing those antigens. Such a vaccine could include a collection of the antigens identified in this study, including those frequently found in multiple patients.
This study could also help researchers in designing other types of therapy, such as T cell engagers — antibodies that bind an antigen on one side and T cells on the other, which allows them to redirect any T cell to kill tumor cells.
Any potential vaccine or T cell therapy is likely a few years away from being tested in patients, the researchers say.
The research was funded in part by the Hale Family Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, the Lustgarten Foundation, Stand Up To Cancer, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a Conquer Cancer Young Investigator Award, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Cancer Institute.
© Credit: Min Yu (Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC); MIT News
Sahil Chinoy.
Photo by Dylan Goodman
Max Larkin
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Six years ago, Sahil Chinoy was a new hire at The New York Times, working at the intersection of journalism and data analysis. At 23, he was a graphics editor at the paper of record.
Crunching numbers, making charts, and speaking week by week to experts about party ideology, police brutality, or facial recognition: It was a dream job for a curious person.
And it wasn’t enough. “I’d want to read the underlying paper,” Chinoy said. “You’re reading this research on the way home, on the subway, and feeling like, ‘I just don’t have the energy to really understand this — I’d have to do this full time.’”
In retrospect it’s clear to Chinoy how he was borne along — and repeatedly redirected — by his particular curiosity: about systems, abstractions, how things work.
He came to UC Berkeley in 2013 as an aspiring aeronautical engineer, but the shine quickly wore off. “When I went to my first class, all the other kids were super excited to get into the machine shop,” he laughed. “And I was like, ‘Oh, no: The part of this that I like is thinking about building things.’”
So engineering gave way to physics, and physics was in turn displaced by economics. After his year at the Times, he joined Harvard’s Economics Department as a doctoral candidate. He’s set to graduate from the Harvard Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences later this month.
In papers for the National Bureau of Economic Research, he and his co-authors have studied big datasets in search of the sociopolitical patterns that structure American life, such as the influence of “zero-sum” thinking on American policy preferences and how military service in World War I drove Black veterans into the NAACP.
Along the way Chinoy may have benefited from the winding route he took to Harvard, drawing on advanced math, an interest in American politics, and the journalistic instinct for the timely investigation.
Chinoy’s distinctive approach has won him admirers among faculty collaborators and mentors.
Stefanie Stantcheva, his main adviser, is herself a rising star; she was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal for the top American economists under 40 just last month.
In written remarks, Stantcheva said it’s been “such a joy working with Sahil. He is super curious about new issues, but then also engages with them on a deep level.”
Vincent Pons of the Business School praised the “curiosity and ambition” Chinoy brought to their paper on neighborhood roots and political affiliation.
“Sometimes there are very big questions that you’re interested in, but it’s very unclear how you might study those questions,” Pons said. “Sahil is someone who — once he has a big question he’s after — he’ll find the data, and find the strategy, that is required to provide a convincing answer.”
“Sahil is someone who — once he has a big question he’s after — he’ll find the data, and find the strategy, that is required to provide a convincing answer.”
Vincent Pons
For Chinoy’s latest job-market paper, which found “substantial segregation” on the basis of ideology in American workplaces, that meant yoking together two enormous digital databases — voter rolls and the networking site LinkedIn. The work created a political-economic window on more than 34 million Americans, likely the largest such dataset ever compiled.
He and co-author Martin Koenen found that not only are there conservative- and liberal-aligned firms, but voters will measurably forgo some pay to work at a firm that reflects their values — or to avoid joining one that doesn’t.
Chinoy acknowledges that the interdependence of work and politics prompted decades of economic scrutiny before he ever came to Harvard. “A lot of what I am doing is I think addressing some of these long-standing questions with really modern econometric tools and with big data.”
“A lot of what I am doing is I think addressing some of these long-standing questions with really modern econometric tools and with big data.”
Sahil Chinoy
Three papers later, the work has helped him to a nuanced view of personal politics at work.
“In this research, I kind of seesaw between thinking that politics is now this defining form of identity, that for a lot of people shapes all kinds of decisions,” Chinoy said. “On the other hand, the labor market is also about people who want a paycheck, who want to put food on the table. And when a job pays less than another job — even if it’s more politically aligned with your views — that matters, too.”
For now, that’s the big question preoccupying Chinoy: what he calls “the interplay between political identity and political behavior and some of these economic forces,” like the labor market, immigration patterns, and racial coalitions.
And that interest has prompted one more evolution in Chinoy’s professional career. Trained as an economist, he’ll join the political science department at Stanford in 2026.
In the meantime, he has a postdoctoral appointment at Yale’s Program on Ethics, Politics and Economics, which will keep him in Cambridge for one more year with his partner, a public defender.
But first comes Commencement, which the Chinoys — his parents, his brother, and a couple of cousins — will attend ahead of a celebratory weekend trip to the Berkshires.
Asked if he can share any lessons for our polarized political moment, Chinoy remains — characteristically — in the interrogative mood.
“We started getting really good public opinion data in the mid-20th century, around the 1950s. And so we chart the rise of polarization from what might have been a particularly peaceful time in American politics, or at least, where there was less open conflict between different factions. Perhaps that was the anomaly.”
Professor of Medicine Joel Habener.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Story of game-changing therapy illustrates crucial role of fundamental research breakthroughs
Jacob Sweet
Harvard Staff Writer
Sometimes an important discovery springs from a fishing expedition. In Joel Habener’s case, it was an actual one.
More than three decades after the discovery of GLP-1, the hormone has transformed the treatment of obesity, diabetes, and cardiometabolic disorders that affect more than a billion people worldwide. Habener, Svetlana Mojsov, Daniel Drucker, and Jens Juul Holst — scientists who played a crucial role in the hormone’s discovery and characterization — have received some of the biggest awards in science.
But more than three decades ago, when Habener, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School investigator emeritus, set up an experiment that helped lead to the discovery, this outcome was far from clear.
“It’s just been one surprise after the next,” Habener said. “It’s amazing to me.”
The unique pancreas of an ugly fish helped accelerate a revolution in modern medicine.
Back in the late 1970s, Habener’s goal was to identify possible prohormones — precursors of hormones — for the pancreatic hormones glucagon, which raises blood sugar, and somatostatin, which inhibits both insulin and glucagon.
He and MGH investigators P. Kay Lund and Richard H. Goodman decided to use recombinant DNA gene cloning to isolate these prohormones from the pancreases of rats, but they ran into a problem. The National Institutes of Health, which helped fund this fundamental research, had declared a moratorium on recombinant DNA research in warm-blooded animals as scientists evaluated ethical and safety concerns of the new technology.
“The solution to the problem,” Habener said, “required a fishing expedition.”
A member of his lab knew a commercial fisherman who had provided research specimens for other scientists. The anglerfish was raised as a possibility “because the anglerfish is a trash fish,” Habener said. “We throw them back. And they’re big, and they’re ugly.”
It was also cold-blooded and therefore exempt from the NIH moratorium.
The anglerfish turned out to be a boon for Habener’s research. While endocrine and exocrine tissues exist together in a rat’s pancreas, the two types of tissue are separated in anglerfish — with endocrine cells in a marble-sized organ called the Brockmann body. The separation made isolating the mRNA, and the peptide hormones and their precursors, easier.
After extracting mRNA from the Brockmann bodies, Habener and his team were surprised to find that glucagon and somatostatin were embedded in larger proteins that later cleaved into their active forms.
“The eureka moment,” as Habener puts it, was when they discovered that in the larger precursor protein proglucagon, there was a signal peptide, an intervening peptide, a peptide that was homologous to mammalian glucagon, and then a second GLP-related peptide later revealed to be GLP-1.
It took many more fundamental breakthroughs before this discovery could translate into therapeutic use. Mojsov, now a research associate professor at Rockefeller University and then a member of MGH’s endocrine unit, identified the biologically active form of GLP-1, known as GLP-1(7-37).
Holst, a University of Copenhagen professor, discovered that GLP-1 acts as an incretin hormone, stimulating insulin secretion in response to food.
Drucker, a clinician scientist at Sinai Health’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute — and a former member of Habener’s MGH research group — uncovered more of GLP-1’s physiological actions and helped translate GLP-1’s therapeutic benefits to drugs.
The impact of GLP-1 drugs might seem like a given today, but Habener knows that some of the federally funded developments that led there were far from preordained.
“I think the word is serendipity,” he said. The unique pancreas of an ugly fish helped accelerate a revolution in modern medicine.
Financial aid red tape nearly derailed Susan Dynarski’s undergrad dreams. Now she sees decades of progress under threat.
Expanding on decades of research, a new study seeks to pinpoint movement’s molecular benefits
That’s according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which over its 87-year run has generated data that benefits work on other issues
It’s been a scientific truth so universally acknowledged that it’s taught in classrooms and repeated in pop-science videos: An egg is strongest when dropped vertically, on its ends. But when MIT engineers actually put this assumption to the test, they cracked open a surprising revelation.
Their experiments revealed that eggs dropped on their sides — not their tips — are far more resilient, thanks to a clever physics trick: Sideways eggs bend like shock absorbers, trading stiffness for superior energy absorption. Their open-access findings, published today in Communications Physics, don’t just rewrite the rules of the classic egg drop challenge — they’re a lesson in intellectual humility and curiosity. Even “settled” science can yield surprises when approached with rigor and an open mind.
At first glance, an eggshell may seem fragile, but its strength is a marvel of physics. Crack an egg on its side for your morning omelet and it breaks easily. Intuitively, we believe eggs are harder to break when positioned vertically. This notion has long been a cornerstone of the classic “egg drop challenge,” a popular science activity in STEM classrooms across the country that introduces students to physics concepts of impact, force, kinetic energy, and engineering design.
The annual egg drop competition is a highlight of first-year orientation in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Every year we follow the scientific literature and talk to the students about how to position the egg to avoid breakage on impact,” says Tal Cohen, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering. “But about three years ago, we started to question whether vertical really is stronger.”
That curiosity sparked an initial experiment by Cohen’s research group, which leads the department’s egg drop event. They decided to put their remaining box of eggs to the test in the lab. “We expected to confirm the vertical side was tougher based on what we had read online,” says Cohen. “But when we looked at the data — it was really unclear.”
What began as casual inquiry evolved into a research project. To rigorously investigate the strength of both egg orientations, the researchers conducted two types of experiments: static compression tests, which applied gradually increasing force to measure stiffness and toughness; and dynamic drop tests, to quantify the likelihood of breaking on impact.
“In the static testing, we wanted to keep an egg at a standstill and push on it until it cracked,” explains Avishai Jeselsohn, an undergraduate researcher and an author in the study. “We used thin paper supports to precisely orient the eggs vertically and horizontally.”
What the researchers found was it required the same amount of force to initiate a crack in both orientations. “However, we noticed a key difference in how much the egg compressed before it broke, says Joseph Bonavia, PhD candidate who contributed to the work. “The horizontal egg compressed more under the same amount of force, meaning it was more compliant.”
Using mechanical modeling and numerical simulations to validate results of their experiments, the researchers concluded that even though the force to crack the egg was consistent, the horizontal eggs absorbed more energy due to their compliance. “This suggested that in situations where energy absorption is important, like in a drop, the horizontal orientation might be more resilient. We then performed the dynamic drop tests to see if this held true in practice,” says Jeselsohn.
The researchers designed a drop setup using solenoids and 3D-printed supports, ensuring simultaneous release and consistent egg orientation. Eggs were dropped from various heights to observe breakage patterns. The result: Horizontal eggs cracked less frequently when dropped from the same height.
“This confirmed what we saw in the static tests,” says Jeselsohn. “Even though both orientations experienced similar peak forces, the horizontal eggs absorbed energy better and were more resistant to breaking.”
Challenging common notions
The study reveals a misconception in popular science regarding the strength of an egg when subjected to impact. Even seasoned researchers in fracture mechanics initially assumed that vertical oriented eggs would be stronger. “It’s a widespread, accepted belief, referenced in many online sources,” notes Jeselsohn.
Everyday experience may reinforce that misconception. After all, we often crack eggs on their sides when cooking. “But that’s not the same as resisting impact,” explains Brendan Unikewicz, a PhD candidate and author on the paper. “Cracking an egg for cooking involves applying locally focused force for a clean break to retrieve the yolk, while its resistance to breaking from a drop involves distributing and absorbing energy across the shell.”
The difference is subtle but significant. A vertically oriented egg, while stiffer, is more brittle under sudden force. A horizontal egg, being more compliant, bends and absorbs energy over a greater distance — similar to how bending your knees during a fall softens the blow.
“In a way, our legs are ‘weaker’ when bent, but they’re actually tougher in absorbing impact,” Bonavia adds. “It’s the same with the egg. Toughness isn’t just about resisting force — it’s about how that force is dissipated.”
The research findings offer more than insight into egg behavior — they underscore a broader scientific principle: that widely accepted “truths” are worth re-examining.
Which came first?
“It’s great to see an example of ‘received wisdom’ being tested scientifically and shown to be incorrect. There are many such examples in the scientific literature, and it’s a real problem in some fields because it can be difficult to secure funding to challenge an existing, ‘well-known’ theory,” says David Taylor, emeritus professor in the Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, who was not affiliated with the study.
The authors hope their findings encourage young people to remain curious and recognize just how much remains to be discovered in the physical world.
“Our paper is a reminder of the value in challenging common notions and relying on empirical evidence, rather than intuition,” says Cohen. “We hope our work inspires students to stay curious, question even the most familiar assumptions, and continue thinking critically about the physical world around them. That’s what we strive to do in our group — constantly challenge what we’re taught through thoughtful inquiry.”
In addition to Cohen, who serves as senior author on the paper, co-authors include lead authors Antony Sutanto MEng ’24 and Suhib Abu-Qbeitah, a postdoc at Tel Aviv University, as well as the following MIT affiliates: Avishai Jeselsohn, an undergraduate in mechanical engineering; Brendan Unikewicz, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; Joseph Bonavia, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; Stephen Rudolph, a lab instructor in civil and environmental engineering; Hudson Borja da Rocha, an MIT postdoc in civil and environmental engineering; and Kiana Naghibzadeh, Engineering Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow in civil and environmental engineering. The research was funded by U.S. Office of Naval Research with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
© Photos courtesy of the researchers.
It’s been a scientific truth so universally acknowledged that it’s taught in classrooms and repeated in pop-science videos: An egg is strongest when dropped vertically, on its ends. But when MIT engineers actually put this assumption to the test, they cracked open a surprising revelation.
Their experiments revealed that eggs dropped on their sides — not their tips — are far more resilient, thanks to a clever physics trick: Sideways eggs bend like shock absorbers, trading stiffness for superior energy absorption. Their open-access findings, published today in Communications Physics, don’t just rewrite the rules of the classic egg drop challenge — they’re a lesson in intellectual humility and curiosity. Even “settled” science can yield surprises when approached with rigor and an open mind.
At first glance, an eggshell may seem fragile, but its strength is a marvel of physics. Crack an egg on its side for your morning omelet and it breaks easily. Intuitively, we believe eggs are harder to break when positioned vertically. This notion has long been a cornerstone of the classic “egg drop challenge,” a popular science activity in STEM classrooms across the country that introduces students to physics concepts of impact, force, kinetic energy, and engineering design.
The annual egg drop competition is a highlight of first-year orientation in the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Every year we follow the scientific literature and talk to the students about how to position the egg to avoid breakage on impact,” says Tal Cohen, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering. “But about three years ago, we started to question whether vertical really is stronger.”
That curiosity sparked an initial experiment by Cohen’s research group, which leads the department’s egg drop event. They decided to put their remaining box of eggs to the test in the lab. “We expected to confirm the vertical side was tougher based on what we had read online,” says Cohen. “But when we looked at the data — it was really unclear.”
What began as casual inquiry evolved into a research project. To rigorously investigate the strength of both egg orientations, the researchers conducted two types of experiments: static compression tests, which applied gradually increasing force to measure stiffness and toughness; and dynamic drop tests, to quantify the likelihood of breaking on impact.
“In the static testing, we wanted to keep an egg at a standstill and push on it until it cracked,” explains Avishai Jeselsohn, an undergraduate researcher and an author in the study. “We used thin paper supports to precisely orient the eggs vertically and horizontally.”
What the researchers found was it required the same amount of force to initiate a crack in both orientations. “However, we noticed a key difference in how much the egg compressed before it broke, says Joseph Bonavia, PhD candidate who contributed to the work. “The horizontal egg compressed more under the same amount of force, meaning it was more compliant.”
Using mechanical modeling and numerical simulations to validate results of their experiments, the researchers concluded that even though the force to crack the egg was consistent, the horizontal eggs absorbed more energy due to their compliance. “This suggested that in situations where energy absorption is important, like in a drop, the horizontal orientation might be more resilient. We then performed the dynamic drop tests to see if this held true in practice,” says Jeselsohn.
The researchers designed a drop setup using solenoids and 3D-printed supports, ensuring simultaneous release and consistent egg orientation. Eggs were dropped from various heights to observe breakage patterns. The result: Horizontal eggs cracked less frequently when dropped from the same height.
“This confirmed what we saw in the static tests,” says Jeselsohn. “Even though both orientations experienced similar peak forces, the horizontal eggs absorbed energy better and were more resistant to breaking.”
Challenging common notions
The study reveals a misconception in popular science regarding the strength of an egg when subjected to impact. Even seasoned researchers in fracture mechanics initially assumed that vertical oriented eggs would be stronger. “It’s a widespread, accepted belief, referenced in many online sources,” notes Jeselsohn.
Everyday experience may reinforce that misconception. After all, we often crack eggs on their sides when cooking. “But that’s not the same as resisting impact,” explains Brendan Unikewicz, a PhD candidate and author on the paper. “Cracking an egg for cooking involves applying locally focused force for a clean break to retrieve the yolk, while its resistance to breaking from a drop involves distributing and absorbing energy across the shell.”
The difference is subtle but significant. A vertically oriented egg, while stiffer, is more brittle under sudden force. A horizontal egg, being more compliant, bends and absorbs energy over a greater distance — similar to how bending your knees during a fall softens the blow.
“In a way, our legs are ‘weaker’ when bent, but they’re actually tougher in absorbing impact,” Bonavia adds. “It’s the same with the egg. Toughness isn’t just about resisting force — it’s about how that force is dissipated.”
The research findings offer more than insight into egg behavior — they underscore a broader scientific principle: that widely accepted “truths” are worth re-examining.
Which came first?
“It’s great to see an example of ‘received wisdom’ being tested scientifically and shown to be incorrect. There are many such examples in the scientific literature, and it’s a real problem in some fields because it can be difficult to secure funding to challenge an existing, ‘well-known’ theory,” says David Taylor, emeritus professor in the Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, who was not affiliated with the study.
The authors hope their findings encourage young people to remain curious and recognize just how much remains to be discovered in the physical world.
“Our paper is a reminder of the value in challenging common notions and relying on empirical evidence, rather than intuition,” says Cohen. “We hope our work inspires students to stay curious, question even the most familiar assumptions, and continue thinking critically about the physical world around them. That’s what we strive to do in our group — constantly challenge what we’re taught through thoughtful inquiry.”
In addition to Cohen, who serves as senior author on the paper, co-authors include lead authors Antony Sutanto MEng ’24 and Suhib Abu-Qbeitah, a postdoc at Tel Aviv University, as well as the following MIT affiliates: Avishai Jeselsohn, an undergraduate in mechanical engineering; Brendan Unikewicz, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; Joseph Bonavia, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; Stephen Rudolph, a lab instructor in civil and environmental engineering; Hudson Borja da Rocha, an MIT postdoc in civil and environmental engineering; and Kiana Naghibzadeh, Engineering Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow in civil and environmental engineering. The research was funded by U.S. Office of Naval Research with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation.
© Photos courtesy of the researchers.
MIT engineers are getting in on the robotic ping pong game with a powerful, lightweight design that returns shots with high-speed precision.
The new table tennis bot comprises a multijointed robotic arm that is fixed to one end of a ping pong table and wields a standard ping pong paddle. Aided by several high-speed cameras and a high-bandwidth predictive control system, the robot quickly estimates the speed and trajectory of an incoming ball and executes one of several swing types — loop, drive, or chop — to precisely hit the ball to a desired location on the table with various types of spin.
In tests, the engineers threw 150 balls at the robot, one after the other, from across the ping pong table. The bot successfully returned the balls with a hit rate of about 88 percent across all three swing types. The robot’s strike speed approaches the top return speeds of human players and is faster than that of other robotic table tennis designs.
Now, the team is looking to increase the robot’s playing radius so that it can return a wider variety of shots. Then, they envision the setup could be a viable competitor in the growing field of smart robotic training systems.
Beyond the game, the team says the table tennis tech could be adapted to improve the speed and responsiveness of humanoid robots, particularly for search-and-rescue scenarios, and situations in a which a robot would need to quickly react or anticipate.
“The problems that we’re solving, specifically related to intercepting objects really quickly and precisely, could potentially be useful in scenarios where a robot has to carry out dynamic maneuvers and plan where its end effector will meet an object, in real-time,” says MIT graduate student David Nguyen.
Nguyen is a co-author of the new study, along with MIT graduate student Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim, associate professor of mechanical engineering and head of the MIT Biomimetics Robotics Lab. The researchers will present the results of those experiments in a paper at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) this month.
Precise play
Building robots to play ping pong is a challenge that researchers have taken up since the 1980s. The problem requires a unique combination of technologies, including high-speed machine vision, fast and nimble motors and actuators, precise manipulator control, and accurate, real-time prediction, as well as higher-level planning of game strategy.
“If you think of the spectrum of control problems in robotics, we have on one end manipulation, which is usually slow and very precise, such as picking up an object and making sure you’re grasping it well. On the other end, you have locomotion, which is about being dynamic and adapting to perturbations in your system,” Nguyen explains. “Ping pong sits in between those. You’re still doing manipulation, in that you have to be precise in hitting the ball, but you have to hit it within 300 milliseconds. So, it balances similar problems of dynamic locomotion and precise manipulation.”
Ping pong robots have come a long way since the 1980s, most recently with designs by Omron and Google DeepMind that employ artificial intelligence techniques to “learn” from previous ping pong data, to improve a robot’s performance against an increasing variety of strokes and shots. These designs have been shown to be fast and precise enough to rally with intermediate human players.
“These are really specialized robots designed to play ping pong,” Cancio says. “With our robot, we are exploring how the techniques used in playing ping pong could translate to a more generalized system, like a humanoid or anthropomorphic robot that can do many different, useful things.”
Game control
For their new design, the researchers modified a lightweight, high-power robotic arm that Kim’s lab developed as part of the MIT Humanoid — a bipedal, two-armed robot that is about the size of a small child. The group is using the robot to test various dynamic maneuvers, including navigating uneven and varying terrain as well as jumping, running, and doing backflips, with the aim of one day deploying such robots for search-and-rescue operations.
Each of the humanoid’s arms has four joints, or degrees of freedom, which are each controlled by an electrical motor. Cancio, Nguyen, and Kim built a similar robotic arm, which they adapted for ping pong by adding an additional degree of freedom in the wrist to allow for control of a paddle.
The team fixed the robotic arm to a table at one end of a standard ping pong table and set up high-speed motion capture cameras around the table to track balls that are bounced at the robot. They also developed optimal control algorithms that predict, based on the principles of math and physics, what speed and paddle orientation the arm should execute to hit an incoming ball with a particular type of swing: loop (or topspin), drive (straight-on), or chop (backspin).
They implemented the algorithms using three computers that simultaneously processed camera images, estimated a ball’s real-time state, and translated these estimations to commands for the robot’s motors to quickly react and take a swing.
After consecutively bouncing 150 balls at the arm, they found the robot’s hit rate, or accuracy of returning the ball, was about the same for all three types of swings: 88.4 percent for loop strikes, 89.2 percent for chops, and 87.5 percent for drives. They have since tuned the robot’s reaction time and found the arm hits balls faster than existing systems, at velocities of 20 meters per second.
In their paper, the team reports that the robot’s strike speed, or the speed at which the paddle hits the ball, is on average 11 meters per second. Advanced human players have been known to return balls at speeds of between 21 to 25 meters second. Since writing up the results of their initial experiments, the researchers have further tweaked the system, and have recorded strike speeds of up to 19 meters per second (about 42 miles per hour).
“Some of the goal of this project is to say we can reach the same level of athleticism that people have,” Nguyen says. “And in terms of strike speed, we’re getting really, really close.”
Their follow-up work has also enabled the robot to aim. The team incorporated control algorithms into the system that predict not only how but where to hit an incoming ball. With its latest iteration, the researchers can set a target location on the table, and the robot will hit a ball to that same location.
Because it is fixed to the table, the robot has limited mobility and reach, and can mostly return balls that arrive within a crescent-shaped area around the midline of the table. In the future, the engineers plan to rig the bot on a gantry or wheeled platform, enabling it to cover more of the table and return a wider variety of shots.
“A big thing about table tennis is predicting the spin and trajectory of the ball, given how your opponent hit it, which is information that an automatic ball launcher won’t give you,” Cancio says. “A robot like this could mimic the maneuvers that an opponent would do in a game environment, in a way that helps humans play and improve.”
This research is supported, in part, by the Robotics and AI Institute.
© Credit: Courtesy of the researchers
A human clearing junk out of an attic can often guess the contents of a box simply by picking it up and giving it a shake, without the need to see what’s inside. Researchers from MIT, Amazon Robotics, and the University of British Columbia have taught robots to do something similar.
They developed a technique that enables robots to use only internal sensors to learn about an object’s weight, softness, or contents by picking it up and gently shaking it. With their method, which does not require external measurement tools or cameras, the robot can accurately guess parameters like an object’s mass in a matter of seconds.
This low-cost technique could be especially useful in applications where cameras might be less effective, such as sorting objects in a dark basement or clearing rubble inside a building that partially collapsed after an earthquake.
Key to their approach is a simulation process that incorporates models of the robot and the object to rapidly identify characteristics of that object as the robot interacts with it.
The researchers’ technique is as good at guessing an object’s mass as some more complex and expensive methods that incorporate computer vision. In addition, their data-efficient approach is robust enough to handle many types of unseen scenarios.
“This idea is general, and I believe we are just scratching the surface of what a robot can learn in this way. My dream would be to have robots go out into the world, touch things and move things in their environments, and figure out the properties of everything they interact with on their own,” says Peter Yichen Chen, an MIT postdoc and lead author of a paper on this technique.
His coauthors include fellow MIT postdoc Chao Liu; Pingchuan Ma PhD ’25; Jack Eastman MEng ’24; Dylan Randle and Yuri Ivanov of Amazon Robotics; MIT professors of electrical engineering and computer science Daniela Rus, who leads MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Wojciech Matusik, who leads the Computational Design and Fabrication Group within CSAIL. The research will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
Sensing signals
The researchers’ method leverages proprioception, which is a human or robot’s ability to sense its movement or position in space.
For instance, a human who lifts a dumbbell at the gym can sense the weight of that dumbbell in their wrist and bicep, even though they are holding the dumbbell in their hand. In the same way, a robot can “feel” the heaviness of an object through the multiple joints in its arm.
“A human doesn’t have super-accurate measurements of the joint angles in our fingers or the precise amount of torque we are applying to an object, but a robot does. We take advantage of these abilities,” Liu says.
As the robot lifts an object, the researchers’ system gathers signals from the robot’s joint encoders, which are sensors that detect the rotational position and speed of its joints during movement.
Most robots have joint encoders within the motors that drive their moveable parts, Liu adds. This makes their technique more cost-effective than some approaches because it doesn’t need extra components like tactile sensors or vision-tracking systems.
To estimate an object’s properties during robot-object interactions, their system relies on two models: one that simulates the robot and its motion and one that simulates the dynamics of the object.
“Having an accurate digital twin of the real-world is really important for the success of our method,” Chen adds.
Their algorithm “watches” the robot and object move during a physical interaction and uses joint encoder data to work backward and identify the properties of the object.
For instance, a heavier object will move slower than a light one if the robot applies the same amount of force.
Differentiable simulations
They utilize a technique called differentiable simulation, which allows the algorithm to predict how small changes in an object’s properties, like mass or softness, impact the robot’s ending joint position. The researchers built their simulations using NVIDIA’s Warp library, an open-source developer tool that supports differentiable simulations.
Once the differentiable simulation matches up with the robot’s real movements, the system has identified the correct property. The algorithm can do this in a matter of seconds and only needs to see one real-world trajectory of the robot in motion to perform the calculations.
“Technically, as long as you know the model of the object and how the robot can apply force to that object, you should be able to figure out the parameter you want to identify,” Liu says.
The researchers used their method to learn the mass and softness of an object, but their technique could also determine properties like moment of inertia or the viscosity of a fluid inside a container.
Plus, because their algorithm does not need an extensive dataset for training like some methods that rely on computer vision or external sensors, it would not be as susceptible to failure when faced with unseen environments or new objects.
In the future, the researchers want to try combining their method with computer vision to create a multimodal sensing technique that is even more powerful.
“This work is not trying to replace computer vision. Both methods have their pros and cons. But here we have shown that without a camera we can already figure out some of these properties,” Chen says.
They also want to explore applications with more complicated robotic systems, like soft robots, and more complex objects, including sloshing liquids or granular media like sand.
In the long run, they hope to apply this technique to improve robot learning, enabling future robots to quickly develop new manipulation skills and adapt to changes in their environments.
“Determining the physical properties of objects from data has long been a challenge in robotics, particularly when only limited or noisy measurements are available. This work is significant because it shows that robots can accurately infer properties like mass and softness using only their internal joint sensors, without relying on external cameras or specialized measurement tools,” says Miles Macklin, senior director of simulation technology at NVIDIA, who was not involved with this research.
This work is funded, in part, by Amazon and the GIST-CSAIL Research Program.
© Credit: MIT News, iStock
Women with certain variants of the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 have a high risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer. These women are recommended to have their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed at a relatively early age – between the ages 35 and 40 years for BRCA1 carriers, and between the ages 40 and 45 for BRCA2 carriers.
Previously, BSO has been shown to lead to an 80% reduction in the risk of developing ovarian cancer among these women, but there is concern that there may be unintended consequences as a result of the body’s main source of oestrogen being removed, which brings on early menopause. This can be especially challenging for BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers with a history of breast cancer, as they may not typically receive hormone replacement therapy to manage symptoms. The overall impact of BSO in BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers with a prior history of breast cancer remains uncertain.
Ordinarily, researchers would assess the benefits and risks associated with BSO through randomised controlled trials, the ‘gold standard’ for testing how well treatments work. However, to do so in women who carry the BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants would be unethical as it would put them at substantially greater risk of developing ovarian cancer.
To work around this problem, a team at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England, turned to electronic health records and data from NHS genetic testing laboratories collected and curated by NDRS to examine the long-term outcomes of BSO among BRCA1 and BRCA2 PV carriers diagnosed with breast cancer. The results of their study, the first large-scale study of its kind, are published today in The Lancet Oncology.
The team identified a total of 3,400 women carrying one of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 cancer-causing variants (around 1,700 women for each variant). Around 850 of the BRCA1 carriers and 1,000 of the BRCA2 carriers had undergone BSO surgery.
Women who underwent BSO were around half as likely to die from cancer or any other cause over the follow-up period (a median follow-up time of 5.5 years). This reduction was more pronounced in BRCA2 carriers compared to BRCA1 carriers (a 56% reduction compared to 38% respectively). These women were also at around a 40% lower risk of developing a second cancer.
Although the team say it is impossible to say with 100% certainty that BSO causes this reduction in risk, they argue that the evidence points strongly towards this conclusion.
Importantly, the researchers found no link between BSO and increased risk of other long-term outcomes such as heart disease and stroke, or with depression. This is in contrast to previous studies that found evidence in the general population of an association between BSO and increased risk of these conditions.
First author Hend Hassan, a PhD student at the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, and Wolfson College, Cambridge, said: “We know that removing the ovaries and fallopian tubes dramatically reduces the risk of ovarian cancer, but there’s been a question mark over the potential unintended consequences that might arise from the sudden onset of menopause that this causes.
“Reassuringly, our research has shown that for women with a personal history of breast cancer, this procedure brings clear benefits in terms of survival and a lower risk of other cancers without the adverse side effects such as heart conditions or depression.”
Most women undergoing BSO were white. Black and Asian women were around half as likely to have BSO compared to white women. Women who lived in less deprived areas were more likely to have BSO compared to those in the most-deprived category.
Hassan added: “Given the clear benefits that this procedure provides for at-risk women, it’s concerning that some groups of women are less likely to undergo it. We need to understand why this is and encourage uptake among these women.”
Professor Antonis Antoniou, from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, the study’s senior author, said: “Our findings will be crucial for counselling women with cancer linked to one of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants, allowing them to make informed decisions about whether or not to opt for this operation.”
Professor Antoniou, who is also Director of the Cancer Data-Driven Detection programme, added: “The study also highlights the power of exceptional NHS datasets in driving impactful, clinically relevant research.”
The research was funded by Cancer Research UK, with additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
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.
Reference
Hassan, H et al. Long-term health outcomes of bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy in BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic variant carriers with personal history of breast cancer: a retrospective cohort study using linked electronic health records. Lancet Oncology; 7 May 2025; DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(25)00156-1
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who carry particular BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic variants are offered surgery to remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes as this dramatically reduces their risk of ovarian cancer. Now, Cambridge researchers have shown that this procedure – known as bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) – is associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of early death among these women, without any serious side-effects.
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Mike Pompeo (far right) with Meghan O’Sullivan and Nicholas Burns.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christina Pazzanese
Harvard Staff Writer
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the U.S. appears to be pulling back from its leadership role on the world stage and warns there is no other nation that can step in as the champion of global democracy if America walks away.
Pompeo, J.D. ’94, sat down on Monday for a closed-door talk at Harvard Kennedy School about his time as the nation’s top diplomat and spoke candidly about his efforts with Israel and the Middle East, Iran, China, and his views on Russia’s war with Ukraine.
The event was part of the American Secretaries of State Project, a collaboration between the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at HKS. Over the years, past secretaries including James A. Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton have come to these sessions to share insights into some of their greatest diplomatic challenges.
In the wide-ranging discussion, Pompeo detailed the negotiations behind the 2020 Abraham Accords, a series of agreements normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
He said there were three essential components to getting these deals done: first, demonstrate the U.S.’ unwavering support for Israel; second, make clear Iran is a bad actor in global politics and the central impediment to improved Mideast relations; and lastly, convince the Arab Gulf nations that the U.S. would not throw them under the bus if things fell apart.
Pompeo also defended his close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even after a CIA assessment found he was behind the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pompeo, who Monday called the killing “horrific,” said he felt it was important to U.S. long-term strategic interests to remain close with Saudi Arabia.
Asked about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Pompeo, now at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said it’s “very unlikely” there will be a two-state solution in the near or medium term.
“If America doesn’t lead, the world is forlorn. There’s nobody. … For good or for bad, it sits on our shoulders, and we should own that, and we should be happy to go lead in that way.”
Mike Pompeo
While in Congress, Pompeo had been a vocal critic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, believing it gave Iran too much leeway to enrich uranium, a necessary step in the production of a nuclear weapon. Less than two weeks after he became secretary of state, the U.S. withdrew from the deal.
Even now, with Iran’s power diminished from a decade ago, it’s “an absolute imperative” that the U.S. stand firm on its policy of “no enrichment” because there’s no way to ever be absolutely certain Iran wasn’t doing so secretly. “If they can cheat, they will,” said Pompeo.
“As good as our intelligence agencies are, as wonderful as our collection is, [Iran is] a big country, and they have demonstrated their ability to foil our efforts to actually know what’s going on,” he said, adding, “If the Iranians get any closer than they are, you’ll have proliferation in the region.”
Pompeo was joined in the discussion by Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at HKS; Robert Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, at HLS; Meghan L. O’Sullivan, director of the Belfer Center and Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at HKS; and James Sebenius, Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
Before becoming secretary of state, Pompeo served as CIA director from 2017‒2018. While a supporter of the agency, he believes it remains too focused on Middle Eastern counterterrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
One of the CIA’s lingering “shortcomings,” he said, is that it does not spend enough time on economic intelligence, which puts the U.S. at a great competitive disadvantage with China given that President Xi Jinping “has been at war with the United States for 40 years — economically.”
He called standing by as China moved to weaken democracy in Hong Kong following the 2019‒2020 protests “one of my great failures” as secretary.
In regard to Russia, Pompeo said he has not been surprised by the actions of Vladimir Putin. It makes sense that the Russian president remains fixated on Ukraine and righting what he perceives as a historic wrong done to Russia as he continues to “chip away” at Europe’s borders.
“It’s intrinsic to who he is,” Pompeo said, which is why “we should never give an inch of Europe to him, and I regret that it appears that we’re headed that way.”
Pompeo rejected the notion that the U.S. can’t afford to help countries like Ukraine and should cut back its defense of democratic values around the world.
“That’s what saddens me in my own political party, is that too many people who know better, who know how important this is,” have been unwilling to do the hard work and explain to the country “why it’s in America’s best interest to be the world’s leader, that the benefits far exceed the costs,” said Pompeo, who served in the U.S. Army before attending the Law School.
A more isolationist approach to foreign policy is the easier political argument to make to voters, but the U.S. will regret it in the coming decade if we fail in this moment to lead on the global stage, he said.
“If America doesn’t lead, the world is forlorn. There’s nobody. The Japanese can’t do it. The Australians can’t do it. The Indians won’t do it,” said Pompeo. “For good or for bad, it sits on our shoulders, and we should own that, and we should be happy to go lead in that way.”
Photos by Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer, Grace DuVal, and Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff
Eileen O’Grady and Kermit Pattison
Harvard Staff Writers
Five faculty members have been awarded a Harvard College Professorship for excellence in undergraduate teaching, in fields ranging from high-dimensional geometry to comparative politics. Hopi Hoekstra, Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, announced the recipients on May 6. They are:
“I am delighted to recognize these five outstanding colleagues for their contributions to teaching, mentorship, and research,” Hoekstra said. “Their passion, rigor, and creativity inspire our students every day, giving them the opportunity to ask big questions, explore new ideas, and grow as thinkers and scholars. I am grateful for their extraordinary commitment to our students and our educational mission.”
The Harvard College Professorship was launched in 1997 with a gift from John and Frances Loeb. Professors hold the title for five years and receive support for a research fund, summer salary, or semester of paid leave.
Denis Auroux.
Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer
Auroux is a pure mathematician who has spent his career studying ethereal domains such as high-dimensional geometry, in which some shapes are too abstract to be drawn on a blackboard. He finds much more tangible rewards when it comes to teaching.
“I am really happy when I feel that I’ve explained something to a student in a way that suddenly they get it,” Auroux said. “The process of seeing knowledge being acquired, I just love that.”
Auroux has taught at Harvard since 2018. Educated in France, he previously held positions at the Ecole Polytechnique, MIT, and Berkeley. Among his classes is the legendary “Math 55,” a fast-paced course for advanced first-year students.
He described his teaching style as classical — lectures, a “massive amount” of homework, and office hours — and he still prefers an old-fashioned chalkboard. He seeks to guide students toward a deeper understanding of mathematics from multiple perspectives, including algebra, geometry, and analysis. Over the course of the year, the class revisits the same facts from different branches of the discipline.
“There are deep connections that run across different areas of math,” he said. “It’s very beautiful when you get to illuminate that in a class.”
Auroux himself still seeks those deep connections. He studies the geometry of abstract spaces that are not encountered in everyday life, but are subjects of keen interest for mathematicians and theoretical physicists. His research interests include symplectic geometry, low-dimensional topology, and mirror symmetry.
“I’m still trying to understand the same questions I was trying to understand 10 years ago,” said Auroux. “I’m just changing what it means to understand. I have understood certain things, and now I realize there’s more I don’t understand. Maybe mathematicians are a bit obsessive about that.”
Christina Maranci.
File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Maranci, an art historian with a focus in pre-modern Armenia, likes to begin her classes with images — perhaps a 7th-century Armenian manuscript depicting the Annunciation, or photographs from fieldwork in Eastern Turkey — and let her students first experience the image, then learn to understand it.
“One of the wonderful things about working with art and visual culture is that you can really confront them with things before they know what they are, and they just look,” Maranci said. “Then you teach them to ask questions about what they’re looking at. For me, it’s a really helpful way of teaching and it also promotes curiosity.”
Maranci’s area of expertise falls at the intersection of art, architecture, and material culture of medieval Armenia. She teaches courses on all aspects of Armenian culture and history, from liturgical textiles to art and literature.
For Maranci, teaching is a “whole-body” experience. She doesn’t read from notes, choosing instead to walk around the room as she lectures, welcoming questions and drawing individual students into lively, public dialogue.
She vividly recalled her own undergraduate struggles — grappling with material that seemed easily understandable to her peers. That experience, she said, informs the way she teaches today.
“I really like to talk them through things,” Maranci said. “I’m putting myself in their shoes and I want to break things down in a way that makes everybody feel that they can learn this stuff. Even when it’s obscure 7th-century Armenian Church architecture, at bottom it’s all knowable, and that’s something I try to get across.”
Michael Smith.
Harvard file photo by Grace DuVal
For Smith, the surest route to learning is doing — engaging with real problems, solving technical challenges, and wrestling with ethical dilemmas.
“It’s one of my passions,” he said of teaching. “I especially enjoy working with our undergraduates. I try to make it as hands-on and engaging as possible and connect it to the issues that the students are thinking about at the current time.”
Smith has spent decades thinking about education. He began teaching at Harvard in 1992 and spent 11 years as dean of the FAS. He is writing a book about teaching.
A prime example of his hands-on approach is “CS 32: Computational Thinking and Problem Solving,” an introductory course that enrolls some 300 students. On the first day, students install the Integrated Development Environment (a software interface with tools for computer programmers) on their laptops so they can work on problems simultaneously with the professor. In the final weeks, each student presents an independent project. Some students designed a program to turn the popular online game Wordle into a two-player version; another wrote a program to scrape recipes from the Internet and then suggest what to cook for dinner that night based on the ingredients on hand in the kitchen.
“I want them to have a foundation on which they can start to learn for themselves and become self-sufficient,” said Smith.
He applies a similar philosophy to his upper-level class, “Critical Thinking in Data Science,” in which students grapple with the ethical implications of ever-more-powerful information technologies. The class features two-week “sprints,” exercises in which students build deepfakes and facial recognition programs — and contended with the social consequences of their creations. Smith summed up the dilemma: “Yeah, I can build it, but should I build it?”
Karen Thornber.
Harvard file photo by Grace DuVal
Thornber, a cultural historian of East Asia, strives to make her classroom a space where all perspectives are welcome, and where students feel comfortable sharing their insights, even when discussing difficult topics such as gender-based violence, mental health stigmas, or end-of-life care.
Thornber said co-chairing the FAS Civil Discourse Advisory Group and becoming the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning last year made her realize the need to foster this environment with greater intention.
“It’s made me realize the importance of being attentive to students’ own inclination to self-censor, or to come to premature consensus,” Thornber said. “There’s a need for being really intentional about this and being really explicit with the students. If we all come in with the same opinion, that’s great, but we’re going to tackle other opinions as well, because it’s really important that they understand the range of opinions on a difficult topic.”
Thornber’s own scholarship spans the medical and health humanities as well as the environmental humanities, gender justice, indigeneity, and transculturation, as related to the literatures and cultures of East Asia. Her research scope also includes South and Southeast Asia, well as Africa, Europe, and North America. She has taught a range of undergraduate courses, from first-year seminars on gender justice and literature of pandemics to general education courses on mental health and the arts. This fall she will teach a new course, “HUMAN 2: Introduction to the Medical and Health Humanities.”
She said creating a “transformative experience” for students gives her work meaning. For her, that means helping students feel connected to each other and breaking down some of the silos that separate students from different backgrounds so they can all engage in lively and productive classroom discussions.
“I believe very strongly that the humanities provide our students with unique and invaluable information, insights, and perspectives into how we can best make sense of and ameliorate some of our most complex global challenges,” Thornber said. “Not only is it exciting to work with students on increasing their knowledge of global challenges, but also to work with them on how they might ultimately render this knowledge into impactful action. Nurturing the hopefulness, excitement, and creativity that students bring to the table — it’s really a privilege and an honor to be able to do that.”
Yuhua Wang.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Wang likes to build his political science courses around intellectual debates, to show his students that there is always another way to look at the world. Sometimes this means assigning readings and structuring class discussions to reflect contradictory views.
“I ask them, ‘What do you think?’” Wang explained. “We can challenge the reading and challenge each other. I think that debate form is really useful for getting to the bottom of things. At the end of the conversation, we usually gain more understanding of the issue but also change our previous view about the question.”
Wang’s area of expertise is Chinese politics. He has written extensively about state-building in China from the seventh to 20th centuries and is currently doing comparative research to see how China and Europe diverged politically after the year 1000. The undergraduate courses Wang teaches regularly include “Government and Politics of China” and “Comparative Political Development,” and he is part of a rotation of faculty who teach “Foundations of Comparative Politics.”
Wang said his favorite part of teaching Harvard undergraduates is how often they challenge him intellectually — something that he says is “the best thing that can happen to a professor.” He sometimes presents a provocative argument on purpose, inviting students to push back. More than once, their responses have led him to change his own viewpoint.
“One thing I really want to emphasize to them is I’m learning with them — in this class, we are exploring something together,” Wang said. “I think that’s really important, because I don’t want them to stop learning after this class, or after Harvard. I want them to realize even people my age are still learning, and that I can learn from them.”
A team of patients, clinicians, researchers and charity representatives, led by the University of Cambridge and the British Society of Audiology, surveyed over 550 people who are deaf or have hearing loss about their experiences with the NHS – making it the largest study of its kind. Their findings, reported in the journal PLOS One, highlight systemic failures and suggest changes and recommendations for improving deaf-aware communication in the NHS.
“The real power of this study lies in the stories people shared,” said lead author Dr Bhavisha Parmar from Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences (Sound Lab) and UCL Ear Institute. “Patients weren’t just rating their experiences – they were telling us how these barriers affect every part of their healthcare journey, and in many cases, why they avoid healthcare altogether.”
The study found that despite being a legal requirement under the Accessible Information Standards, NHS patients have inadequate and inconsistent access to British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters and other accessibility accommodations such as hearing loop systems.
Nearly two-thirds (64.4%) of respondents reported missing at least half of the important information during appointments, and only a third (32%) expressed satisfaction with NHS staff communication skills. Respondents said they had to rely on family members or advocates to communicate with healthcare workers, raising privacy and consent concerns.
The research found that communication barriers extend across the entire patient journey – from booking appointments to receiving results. Simple actions, like calling a patient’s name in a waiting room or giving instructions during a scan, become anxiety-inducing when basic accommodations are lacking. Respondents noted that hearing aids often must be removed for X-rays or MRI scans, leaving them struggling or unable to follow verbal instructions.
“We heard over and over that patients fear missing their name being called, or avoid making appointments altogether,” said Parmar. “These aren’t isolated experiences – this is a systemic issue.”
The idea for the study was sparked by real-life experiences shared online by NHS patients, particularly audiology patients– a field Parmar believes should lead by example. “We’re audiologists: we see more patients with hearing loss than anyone else in the NHS,” she said. “If we’re not deaf-aware, then how can we expect other parts of the NHS to be?”
The research team included NHS patients with deafness or hearing loss, who contributed to study design, data analysis, and report writing. As part of the study, they received training in research methods, ensuring the work was grounded in and reflective of lived experiences.
Co-author Zara Musker, current England Deaf Women’s futsal captain and winner of deaf sports personality of the year 2023 said her disappointing experiences with the NHS in part motivated her to qualify as an audiologist.
“The research is extremely important as I have faced my own experiences of inadequate access, and lack of deaf awareness in NHS healthcare not just in the appointment room but the whole process of booking appointments, being in the waiting room, interacting with clinicians and receiving important healthcare information,” said Musker. “I really hope that the results will really highlight that NHS services are still not meeting the needs of patients. Despite this, the study also highlights ways that the NHS can improve, and recommendations are suggested by those who face these barriers within healthcare.”
The researchers have also released a set of recommendations that could improve accessibility in the NHS, such as:
“This is a legal obligation, not a luxury,” said Parmar. “No one should have to write down their symptoms in a GP appointment or worry they’ll miss their name being called in a waiting room. These are simple, solvable issues.”
A practice guidance resource – developed in consultation with patients and driven by this research – is open for feedback until 15 June and will be made publicly available as a free tool to help clinicians and NHS services improve deaf awareness. People can submit feedback at the British Society of Audiology website.
“Ultimately, better communication for deaf patients benefits everyone,” Parmar said. “We’re not just pointing out problems – we’re providing practical solutions.”
Reference:
Bhavisha Parmar et al. ‘“I always feel like I’m the first deaf person they have ever met.” Deaf Awareness, Accessibility and Communication in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS): How can we do better?’ PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0322850
A majority of individuals who are deaf or have hearing loss face significant communication barriers when accessing care through the National Health Service (NHS), with nearly two-thirds of patients missing half or more of vital information shared during appointments.
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Harvard canine researcher Erin Hecht (left) and photographer Elias Weiss Friedman (right) of “The Dogist” Instagram account join Faculty Dean David Deming for a talk at Kirkland House.
Photos by Dylan Goodman for the Harvard College Dean of Students Office
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
Inside a sound- and scent-proof room at Harvard’s Canine Brains Lab, photographer Elias Weiss Friedman tapped a hammer on the floor near his hand as Sasha, the Harvard University Police Department’s community engagement dog, watched attentively. When Friedman feigned injury, pretending to hit his thumb and crying out in pain, the black Labrador looked briefly to Officer Steve Fumicello, her handler, before rushing to Friedman and licking his face. The moment was part of an experiment used regularly to assess the empathy of dogs in the lab.
“Some [dogs] react like that, some of them couldn’t care less,” explained Erin Hecht, assistant professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, who runs the Canine Brains Project. “In the real test, the person does this three times, and we had a couple of dogs actually take the hammer away.”
Friedman, founder of popular social media account “The Dogist,” visited Hecht’s lab last week. Friedman has photographed more than 50,000 dogs while Hecht uses a different kind of imagery — MRIs — to study the science behind the beloved pet.
“I’m OK, I was just joshing,” Friedman reassured Sasha, after the experiment, while petting her ears. “Thank you for being so empathetic and caring, because if that were to happen in real life I would need your love.”
Hecht and Friedman later discussed the way they each approach dogs visually in a fireside chat at Kirkland House moderated by Faculty Dean David Deming, Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Education and Economics at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
“They make great photographic subjects because they’re 100 percent candid,” said Friedman, whose new book, “This Dog Will Change Your Life,” is forthcoming. “You can look at a dog and see the expression on their face and know that they’re being 100 percent honest, and there’s something very great about that.”
Hecht said MRI scans allow her to explore the question many dog owners have wondered at some point: What is going on inside their head?
“You can see all kinds of things, signatures of fearfulness, or aggression, or trainability, something we might think of as cognitive capacity or ability to learn, and differences between breeds that might relate to their historical functions,” Hecht said. “I still get shivers when we get a dog in the scanner and their brain image comes up for the first time. It’s like, ‘Wow, there’s a brain in there. That is the dog, all of its emotions and thoughts and plans and desires, we’re looking at it right now.’”
“You can look at a dog and see the expression on their face and know that they’re being 100 percent honest, and there’s something very great about that.”
Elias Weiss Friedman
She said that in science, it’s always possible to invest time in a study only to find no significant results. But that hasn’t been the case with her dog research, likely because of the remarkable variability in canine brains and their close ties to behavior. Hecht’s lab is actively recruiting dogs for research studies, particularly seeking dogs with behavioral issues related to early life stress or trauma. They are also looking for children ages 7 to 12 and their dogs to participate in a study exploring the bonds between kids and their pets.
Friedman said dogs are like “furry icebreakers” that have helped him meet tens of thousands of interesting people as part of his work.
“Before you get a dog you know your neighbor, and after you get a dog you know your neighborhood,” Friedman said. “There is this force of community and socialization when your dog needs to go out, you just end up meeting like 10 people. That’s very real.”
Hecht said dogs have been bred to be good at making friends with people.
“The ability to form a bond with people is the most fundamental thing that they’ve evolved. We are their social partners. Their natural place in the world is within human society. They’re adapted for our world,” Hecht said. “Then humans have developed different lineages of dogs. Some breeds need to be defensive and territorial in order to protect a family or a flock of sheep. Others need to do a job that’s more interactive with the environment. It’s this huge range of cognitive styles.”
During the Q&A, students asked Friedman and Hecht a range of questions: “Do dogs pick favorites within the household?” (Hecht: They have favorites for different activities); “Are dogs judgmental?” (Hecht: They can intuit when people’s intentions are not friendly); and “Do people really look like their dogs?” (Friedman: Yes).
When asked if there were any dogs that stood out from the thousands he has photographed, Friedman recalled Pudding, a pit bull mix bearing the scars of past abuse, whom he photographed back in 2013 when his Instagram account was barely a month old.
“Until then I had been going about it as the joke, like, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to photograph dogs?’” Friedman recalled. “This was a pivotal dog because it made me realize this project was much more profound. Dogs make us laugh and cry and there’s some beauty and sadness, and it’s important that I share all of it.”
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Dean Sean Kelly (second from left) pictured here with professors who will be teaching introductory arts and humanities courses in the fall and spring. They include Lauren Kaminsky (from left), Raquel Vega-Durán, Neel Mukherjee, Spencer Lee-Lenfield, Laura van den Berg, Karen Thornber, and Moira Weigel.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Eileen O’Grady
Harvard Staff Writer
Starting this fall, students will be able to choose among nine introductory courses launching in the Division of Arts and Humanities as part of an initiative by Sean Kelly, dean of Arts and Humanities and Teresa G. and Ferdinand F. Martignetti Professor of Philosophy.
To counter the nationwide problem of declining enrollment in these fields, the initiative aims to engage more first-year students in the studies.
While Kelly attributes declining enrollment in part to a lack of emphasis on the subjects in American high schools, one Harvard statistic gave him pause: While about 12 percent of first-years arrive on campus interested in pursuing arts and humanities, about half end up changing their minds by the time they declare their concentrations.
“That was the thing that really struck me,” Kelly said. “The kinds of introductory courses that we’re teaching don’t grab our students. That was the issue that I wanted us to have conversations about.”
There are exceptions to the enrollment decline — courses in Art, Film & Visual Studies and Theater, Dance & Media, as well as creative writing and music performance, are in high demand among students. But Kelly believes the “Canon Wars” of the ’80s and ’90s — debates over which major texts define disciplines like English or art history — impacted the design, and appeal, of many introductory humanities courses. While these debates broadened our understanding of what counts as a “great work,” Kelly said, they also made it harder to curate a definitive list of must-reads to introduce the subjects.
“The idea that you’re studying something ‘great’ is motivating for a student, and that it was harder for us to say about any text that it is great had an effect on the kinds of courses that we were able to design and teach,” Kelly explained. “That makes it hard for a first-year student, since they can’t gain any sense of what matters in the field.”
“I hope these courses meet the students where they are and really help them understand the intrinsic value of what we do. I hope they are great courses that change their lives.”
Sean Kelly, dean of arts and humanities
Kelly took inspiration from the Department of Philosophy, which has increased its number of concentrators nearly fivefold since 2006 after shifting its goals from preparing students for future Ph.D.s to engaging undergraduates in fundamental questions about human beings and the universe. Questions like these can be beneficial regardless of a student’s future career path.
The department introduced intro courses like Professor Samantha Matherne’s “Phil 129: Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’” which garnered an enrollment of 80 students, and Professor Gina Schouten’s “Phil 16: Sex, Love, and Friendship,” which attracted 120 students the first time it was taught.
Building on this model, and after a series of conversations with faculty last fall, Kelly put out a call for introductory humanities course proposals. He received nearly two dozen. Ten were selected, nine of which will launch in the 2025-2026 academic year.
This fall Karen Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature and Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, will teach “Introduction to the Medical and Health Humanities”; Richard F. Thomas, George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics, will teach “Bob Dylan the Classic”; Lauren Kaminsky, associate senior lecturer in History & Literature, will teach “Culture in Context”; and Raquel Vega-Durán, senior lecturer in Peninsular and Transatlantic Film and Literature, will teach “Migration and Border Crossing in Film and Photography.”
Next spring Moira Weigel, assistant professor of comparative literature, will teach “Humanity, Technology, and Creation”; professor of linguistics Kathryn Davidson will teach “Language”; and incoming assistant professor of comparative literature Spencer Lee-Lenfield will teach “Translation and the Craft of Reading Carefully: A World Literature Introduction.”
John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, will teach “HUM 17: The Human Sciences: Fundamentals and Basic Concepts” next spring. The course offers an overview of the methods, questions, and tools that define the humanities in much the same way gateway courses like LS50 or CS50 do in other disciplines. Students will tackle metaphor and metonymy, epistemology and ontology and the structures of language, and grapple with philosophical ideas such as consciousness, perception, and moral freedom, all ideas that define what it means to study human culture.
“It does give you that ground plan,” said Hamilton. “It says, OK, you’re interested in the humanities? This is what we do, this is how we grapple with all sorts of things. Then you may have a better idea of where you want to delve into for your following time at Harvard.
“In the same way you need to know how momentum works to study physics, and how cells reproduce to study biology, you need to know what a metaphor is, what realism is, and what consciousness is to do the humanities.”
Laura van den Berg, senior lecturer, and Neel Mukherjee, associate senior lecturer in creative writing in the Department of English, will co-teach “HUM 9: Reading for Fiction Writers” in the fall. The course introduces students to a range of texts, including Anton Chekhov, Ursula Le Guin, and Octavia Butler, to help them understand how reading shapes writing, and begin to write their own stories.
“We are trying to bring together the critical side of the English Department, which trains students in how to close-read, understand, and analyze the text, with the creative-writing side, which trains in technique and craft,” Mukherjee said. “We wanted to marry the two to show that good writing is always dependent on being a good reader.”
“Our ability to tell our own story to ourselves and to others, to absorb other people’s stories — that’s so foundational to who we are and our identity,” van den Berg agreed. “A richer, more rigorous, nuanced understanding of how story works, how we work on story, and how story works on us, is incredibly important as a human practice.”
For Kelly, the intro course initiative is not just about increasing enrollment, but about building a more inviting and engaging humanities culture for new students. He hopes to underscore the humanities’ inherent value, not just their instrumental use. As he put it, it’s the difference between reading Shakespeare’s “King Lear” to analyze tyranny, versus reading it to explore what it means to be human.
“I want these introductory courses not just to be about the instrumental value of the disciplines, but about their intrinsic value. I want them to focus on why it matters for all of us engaged in the human project to learn how to read great literature, to think about great philosophy, to encounter great art,” Kelly said.
“I hope these courses meet the students where they are and really help them understand the intrinsic value of what we do. I hope they are great courses that change their lives.”
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Christy DeSmith
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
Addie Esposito ’25 grew up with stories about life in Germany.
“My mom was there for two years just after the Berlin Wall fell,” Esposito said. “She actually has three tiny pieces of the Wall, one for me and each of my sisters.”
At Harvard, Esposito’s fascination with German culture, and the complicated legacy of its post-World War II split into East and West, deepened. A double concentrator in government and German, she was able to fully immerse herself in these interests while completing an internship in the German parliament last summer. Working at the Bundestag also allowed Esposito to launch an ambitious project studying how the Cold War continues to shape German identity today.
“She completed this rich, rich analysis of the persistent divide between East and West,” said her thesis adviser, Daniel Ziblatt, the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. “When Germany unified in 1990, the expectation was that this divide would quickly pass. What’s remarkable is that it has endured for more than a generation and become a permanent feature of German political culture. … In some ways, it’s analogous to regional divides in the U.S. after the Civil War.”
Esposito first visited Germany with her mother at age 5. “I was just fascinated by the language,” she recalled. “My mom said I started saying German words in my sleep, just some basics like ‘blau,’ which is blue, and ‘Brot,’ which is bread.”
In middle school, German was the obvious choice for Esposito’s foreign language elective. In high school, the Raleigh, North Carolina, native completed a two-week exchange program in Frankfurt, Germany, and interned at a nonprofit run by her mother’s friend in a small town near the French border.
As a College first-year, Esposito enrolled in Ziblatt’s “Democracy: Breakthroughs and Breakdowns,” drawn to the professor’s expertise in authoritarianism and democracy in the U.S. and in Europe — Germany in particular.
“I thought, ‘This person is at the intersection of all my interests,’” Esposito recalled. “I kind of clung to him like a barnacle ever since.”
“I’d love to be the ambassador to Germany. I would be thrilled to work for the State Department. I would like to use my German no matter what.”
Ziblatt helped Esposito land her position with a member of the center-left Social Democrat Party representing part of Hamburg, Germany. This provided her with access to the full chamber, which totaled more than 700 legislators at the time. “It meant I could go anywhere I wanted in the Bundestag unaccompanied,” said Esposito, whose internship was made possible by the Center for European Studies.
One area, however, was strictly off-limits. Mainline German political parties have constructed what they call “a firewall” against cooperation with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which is most popular in the country’s eastern states.
“For the parliamentarian with whom I was working, that meant zero contact,” Esposito explained. “Therefore, the AfD was initially excluded from my interview pool.”
In the end, the former Harvard International Review co-editor in chief surveyed 183 parliamentarians to learn about their backgrounds as well as the contours of their identities. Esposito also did face-to-face interviews (in German) with 48 members, including 17 members from the former Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic (GDR). Once her internship was complete, she moved to secure what Ziblatt characterized as “rare” research interviews with two members of the AfD.
“It’s pretty common for students to rely on pre-existing surveys for their theses,” he said. “But in this case, she used her own interviews to dig a lot deeper into how people think about their lives — and how those lives relate to politics and history.”
Esposito’s approach, with its unusual focus on political elites, uncovered regional attachments more pronounced than what pollsters had found with the broader German public. She discovered that more than half the parliamentarians from the former GDR still identify more as East German than anything else.
The identity proved somewhat less central for parliamentarians who grew up after East Germany’s Peaceful Revolution of 1989. “But it was still incredibly high,” Esposito said, with more than 40 percent of Millennial and Gen Z members from the region selecting East German as their primary identity.
A different pattern was observed with parliamentarians hailing from the part of the country once occupied by the U.S., Great Britain, and France. Just 9 percent of those Esposito surveyed identified as primarily West German. More than half identify as broadly German. More than a quarter identify as broadly European.
“West German identification isn’t really a thing,” Esposito said.
Esposito drew on her interviews to advance what she calls an “underdog” theory of East German identity. “It’s strengthened both by adversity and triumph,” she said. “That makes the identity incredibly durable.”
Outsiders can be too quick to connect the phenomenon to the East’s persisting socioeconomic disadvantages, Esposito noted. “There’s also this sense of positive distinctiveness rooted in feeling responsible for reunification. People said things like, ‘We earned this freedom — we’re the reason the wall fell.’”
The thesis also builds on previous findings concerning the East/West divergence in regard to 20th-century history. The East German dictatorship, founded in 1949, positioned itself as an anti-fascist state and distanced itself from Nazi crimes, she said.
In fact, lawmakers with the AfD (both from the former GDR) made statements Esposito interpreted as trivializing the Holocaust — by comparing it to COVID-19 restrictions, for example.
This dynamic helps explain the nuances Esposito recorded in how East and West Germans express national pride. “West Germans’ responses often followed a pattern of ‘I am not proud to be German, but I am proud of Germany’s achievements,’” she writes in her thesis. “East Germans often dropped the hedging language.”
Those from East Germany — comprising 16 to 26 percent of the overall population, depending on how the region is defined — also spoke of experiencing discrimination, a phenomenon Esposito corroborated in interviews with lawmakers from the West.
“She had this incredible access to the highest level of politics in the country,” Ziblatt observed. “And she used it to engage politicians in these long conversations about what it means to be German.”
Next up for Esposito is a master’s in public policy at the Hertie School in Berlin, where she’ll have the opportunity to complete public policy internships while perfecting her German. “By the time I finish at Hertie, I want to be fluent,” Esposito said.
Longer term, she hopes to earn a Ph.D. in political science. “Honestly, my dream position would be to do what Professor Ziblatt does now,” she said. “But I’m also interested in the public policy side of things. I’d love to be the ambassador to Germany. I would be thrilled to work for the State Department. I would like to use my German no matter what.”
Dangers come but dangers also go, and when they do, the brain has an “all-clear” signal that teaches it to extinguish its fear. A new study in mice by MIT neuroscientists shows that the signal is the release of dopamine along a specific interregional brain circuit. The research therefore pinpoints a potentially critical mechanism of mental health, restoring calm when it works, but prolonging anxiety or even post-traumatic stress disorder when it doesn’t.
“Dopamine is essential to initiate fear extinction,” says Michele Pignatelli di Spinazzola, co-author of the new study from the lab of senior author Susumu Tonegawa, Picower Professor of biology and neuroscience at the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics within The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.
In 2020, Tonegawa’s lab showed that learning to be afraid, and then learning when that’s no longer necessary, result from a competition between populations of cells in the brain’s amygdala region. When a mouse learns that a place is “dangerous” (because it gets a little foot shock there), the fear memory is encoded by neurons in the anterior of the basolateral amygdala (aBLA) that express the gene Rspo2. When the mouse then learns that a place is no longer associated with danger (because they wait there and the zap doesn’t recur), neurons in the posterior basolateral amygdala (pBLA) that express the gene Ppp1r1b encode a new fear extinction memory that overcomes the original dread. Notably, those same neurons encode feelings of reward, helping to explain why it feels so good when we realize that an expected danger has dwindled.
In the new study, the lab, led by former members Xiangyu Zhang and Katelyn Flick, sought to determine what prompts these amygdala neurons to encode these memories. The rigorous set of experiments the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that it’s dopamine sent to the different amygdala populations from distinct groups of neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA).
“Our study uncovers a precise mechanism by which dopamine helps the brain unlearn fear,” says Zhang, who also led the 2020 study and is now a senior associate at Orbimed, a health care investment firm. “We found that dopamine activates specific amygdala neurons tied to reward, which in turn drive fear extinction. We now see that unlearning fear isn’t just about suppressing it — it’s a positive learning process powered by the brain’s reward machinery. This opens up new avenues for understanding and potentially treating fear-related disorders, like PTSD.”
Forgetting fear
The VTA was the lab’s prime suspect to be the source of the signal because the region is well known for encoding surprising experiences and instructing the brain, with dopamine, to learn from them. The first set of experiments in the paper used multiple methods for tracing neural circuits to see whether and how cells in the VTA and the amygdala connect. They found a clear pattern: Rspo2 neurons were targeted by dopaminergic neurons in the anterior and left and right sides of the VTA. Ppp1r1b neurons received dopaminergic input from neurons in the center and posterior sections of the VTA. The density of connections was greater on the Ppp1r1b neurons than for the Rspo2 ones.
The circuit tracing showed that dopamine is available to amygdala neurons that encode fear and its extinction, but do those neurons care about dopamine? The team showed that indeed they express “D1” receptors for the neuromodulator. Commensurate with the degree of dopamine connectivity, Ppp1r1b cells had more receptors than Rspo2 neurons.
Dopamine does a lot of things, so the next question was whether its activity in the amygdala actually correlated with fear encoding and extinction. Using a method to track and visualize it in the brain, the team watched dopamine in the amygdala as mice underwent a three-day experiment. On Day One, they went to an enclosure where they experienced three mild shocks on the feet. On Day Two, they went back to the enclosure for 45 minutes, where they didn’t experience any new shocks — at first, the mice froze in anticipation of a shock, but then relaxed after about 15 minutes. On Day Three they returned again to test whether they had indeed extinguished the fear they showed at the beginning of Day Two.
The dopamine activity tracking revealed that during the shocks on Day One, Rspo2 neurons had the larger response to dopamine, but in the early moments of Day Two, when the anticipated shocks didn’t come and the mice eased up on freezing, the Ppp1r1b neurons showed the stronger dopamine activity. More strikingly, the mice that learned to extinguish their fear most strongly also showed the greatest dopamine signal at those neurons.
Causal connections
The final sets of experiments sought to show that dopamine is not just available and associated with fear encoding and extinction, but also actually causes them. In one set, they turned to optogenetics, a technology that enables scientists to activate or quiet neurons with different colors of light. Sure enough, when they quieted VTA dopaminergic inputs in the pBLA, doing so impaired fear extinction. When they activated those inputs, it accelerated fear extinction. The researchers were surprised that when they activated VTA dopaminergic inputs into the aBLA they could reinstate fear even without any new foot shocks, impairing fear extinction.
The other way they confirmed a causal role for dopamine in fear encoding and extinction was to manipulate the amygdala neurons’ dopamine receptors. In Ppp1r1b neurons, over-expressing dopamine receptors impaired fear recall and promoted extinction, whereas knocking the receptors down impaired fear extinction. Meanwhile in the Rspo2 cells, knocking down receptors reduced the freezing behavior.
“We showed that fear extinction requires VTA dopaminergic activity in the pBLA Ppp1r1b neurons by using optogenetic inhibition of VTA terminals and cell-type-specific knockdown of D1 receptors in these neurons,” the authors wrote.
The scientists are careful in the study to note that while they’ve identified the “teaching signal” for fear extinction learning, the broader phenomenon of fear extinction occurs brainwide, rather than in just this single circuit.
But the circuit seems to be a key node to consider as drug developers and psychiatrists work to combat anxiety and PTSD, Pignatelli di Spinazzola says.
“Fear learning and fear extinction provide a strong framework to study generalized anxiety and PTSD,” he says. “Our study investigates the underlying mechanisms suggesting multiple targets for a translational approach, such as pBLA and use of dopaminergic modulation.”
Marianna Rizzo is also a co-author of the study. Support for the research came from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science, the HHMI, the Freedom Together Foundation, and The Picower Institute.
© Image courtesy of the Tonegawa Lab/Picower Institute
Dangers come but dangers also go, and when they do, the brain has an “all-clear” signal that teaches it to extinguish its fear. A new study in mice by MIT neuroscientists shows that the signal is the release of dopamine along a specific interregional brain circuit. The research therefore pinpoints a potentially critical mechanism of mental health, restoring calm when it works, but prolonging anxiety or even post-traumatic stress disorder when it doesn’t.
“Dopamine is essential to initiate fear extinction,” says Michele Pignatelli di Spinazzola, co-author of the new study from the lab of senior author Susumu Tonegawa, Picower Professor of biology and neuroscience at the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics within The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.
In 2020, Tonegawa’s lab showed that learning to be afraid, and then learning when that’s no longer necessary, result from a competition between populations of cells in the brain’s amygdala region. When a mouse learns that a place is “dangerous” (because it gets a little foot shock there), the fear memory is encoded by neurons in the anterior of the basolateral amygdala (aBLA) that express the gene Rspo2. When the mouse then learns that a place is no longer associated with danger (because they wait there and the zap doesn’t recur), neurons in the posterior basolateral amygdala (pBLA) that express the gene Ppp1r1b encode a new fear extinction memory that overcomes the original dread. Notably, those same neurons encode feelings of reward, helping to explain why it feels so good when we realize that an expected danger has dwindled.
In the new study, the lab, led by former members Xiangyu Zhang and Katelyn Flick, sought to determine what prompts these amygdala neurons to encode these memories. The rigorous set of experiments the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that it’s dopamine sent to the different amygdala populations from distinct groups of neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA).
“Our study uncovers a precise mechanism by which dopamine helps the brain unlearn fear,” says Zhang, who also led the 2020 study and is now a senior associate at Orbimed, a health care investment firm. “We found that dopamine activates specific amygdala neurons tied to reward, which in turn drive fear extinction. We now see that unlearning fear isn’t just about suppressing it — it’s a positive learning process powered by the brain’s reward machinery. This opens up new avenues for understanding and potentially treating fear-related disorders, like PTSD.”
Forgetting fear
The VTA was the lab’s prime suspect to be the source of the signal because the region is well known for encoding surprising experiences and instructing the brain, with dopamine, to learn from them. The first set of experiments in the paper used multiple methods for tracing neural circuits to see whether and how cells in the VTA and the amygdala connect. They found a clear pattern: Rspo2 neurons were targeted by dopaminergic neurons in the anterior and left and right sides of the VTA. Ppp1r1b neurons received dopaminergic input from neurons in the center and posterior sections of the VTA. The density of connections was greater on the Ppp1r1b neurons than for the Rspo2 ones.
The circuit tracing showed that dopamine is available to amygdala neurons that encode fear and its extinction, but do those neurons care about dopamine? The team showed that indeed they express “D1” receptors for the neuromodulator. Commensurate with the degree of dopamine connectivity, Ppp1r1b cells had more receptors than Rspo2 neurons.
Dopamine does a lot of things, so the next question was whether its activity in the amygdala actually correlated with fear encoding and extinction. Using a method to track and visualize it in the brain, the team watched dopamine in the amygdala as mice underwent a three-day experiment. On Day One, they went to an enclosure where they experienced three mild shocks on the feet. On Day Two, they went back to the enclosure for 45 minutes, where they didn’t experience any new shocks — at first, the mice froze in anticipation of a shock, but then relaxed after about 15 minutes. On Day Three they returned again to test whether they had indeed extinguished the fear they showed at the beginning of Day Two.
The dopamine activity tracking revealed that during the shocks on Day One, Rspo2 neurons had the larger response to dopamine, but in the early moments of Day Two, when the anticipated shocks didn’t come and the mice eased up on freezing, the Ppp1r1b neurons showed the stronger dopamine activity. More strikingly, the mice that learned to extinguish their fear most strongly also showed the greatest dopamine signal at those neurons.
Causal connections
The final sets of experiments sought to show that dopamine is not just available and associated with fear encoding and extinction, but also actually causes them. In one set, they turned to optogenetics, a technology that enables scientists to activate or quiet neurons with different colors of light. Sure enough, when they quieted VTA dopaminergic inputs in the pBLA, doing so impaired fear extinction. When they activated those inputs, it accelerated fear extinction. The researchers were surprised that when they activated VTA dopaminergic inputs into the aBLA they could reinstate fear even without any new foot shocks, impairing fear extinction.
The other way they confirmed a causal role for dopamine in fear encoding and extinction was to manipulate the amygdala neurons’ dopamine receptors. In Ppp1r1b neurons, over-expressing dopamine receptors impaired fear recall and promoted extinction, whereas knocking the receptors down impaired fear extinction. Meanwhile in the Rspo2 cells, knocking down receptors reduced the freezing behavior.
“We showed that fear extinction requires VTA dopaminergic activity in the pBLA Ppp1r1b neurons by using optogenetic inhibition of VTA terminals and cell-type-specific knockdown of D1 receptors in these neurons,” the authors wrote.
The scientists are careful in the study to note that while they’ve identified the “teaching signal” for fear extinction learning, the broader phenomenon of fear extinction occurs brainwide, rather than in just this single circuit.
But the circuit seems to be a key node to consider as drug developers and psychiatrists work to combat anxiety and PTSD, Pignatelli di Spinazzola says.
“Fear learning and fear extinction provide a strong framework to study generalized anxiety and PTSD,” he says. “Our study investigates the underlying mechanisms suggesting multiple targets for a translational approach, such as pBLA and use of dopaminergic modulation.”
Marianna Rizzo is also a co-author of the study. Support for the research came from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science, the HHMI, the Freedom Together Foundation, and The Picower Institute.
© Image courtesy of the Tonegawa Lab/Picower Institute
By Adj Asst Prof Maria Monica Wihardja from the Dept of Southeast Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, at NUS; and Ms Midzuki Low, Analyst in the Industry Research Dept at Mizuho Bank based in Singapore
Classic fables like Goldilocks and the Three Bears that feature anthropomorphised animals, or animals with human traits, have entertained children for centuries while aiming to teach moral values. But just how effective are these stories in instilling virtues?
NUS psychologist Associate Professor Ding Xiao Pan, along with her students Cleo Tay, Chua Yu Juan and Joey Cheng from NUS Psychology, carried out an experiment involving more than 200 Singaporean children aged three to six to determine if such moral tales are effective in teaching children honesty.
Assoc Prof Ding Xiao Pan noted that children’s books that feature anthropomorphised animals are very common in everyday life. She said, “Honesty is an important virtue, so we are seeking effective ways to foster it in young children. Most existing studies have been conducted in Western societies and often feature animals that many children in Singapore may not be familiar with, such as raccoons. Therefore, we sought to explore whether featuring animals they were more familiar with can most effectively support the development of honesty in our children.”
In the study, each child was instructed not to peek at a laptop screen while sitting in a room alone and unsupervised. However, most children would turn around and peek at the screen, unable to resist the temptation. After the experimenter came back the room, each of them was read a different version of the moral story, George Washington and the Cherry Tree, in which Little George, the protagonist, chops down his father’s favourite cherry tree and confesses to his wrongdoing when confronted. In each version, the protagonist was portrayed either as a human, an elephant, a rat or a ‘control condition’, where the human protagonist opts not to confess to his wrongdoing.
Researchers then asked the children if they had peeked at the screen to measure if the type of protagonist influenced their honesty.
They found that for children aged three to four, the effectiveness of moral stories differed based on the type of character, with human characters having more of an effect on honesty than stories with anthropomorphised characters. In contrast, how the protagonist was portrayed had no effect on the honesty of children aged five to six.
Another interesting finding was that portraying the protagonist as a disliked character, such as a rat, rather than a preferred character, such as an elephant, was less effective at promoting honesty than using a human protagonist.
“The study’s findings are useful in helping us understand how children relate to and are influenced by the portrayal of characters in stories, and how we can modify classic moral stories to maximise their usefulness at promoting honesty and other values,” said Assoc Prof Ding.
Read more about the study here.
By Adj Asst Prof Maria Monica Wihardja from the Dept of Southeast Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, at NUS; and Ms Midzuki Low, Analyst in the Industry Research Dept at Mizuho Bank based in Singapore
By Dr Sue-Anne Toh, Adj Assoc Prof at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; and Dr Prashanth Subramanian, Region Medical Lead for ASEAN, Korea, Australia and New Zealand at Boehringer Ingelheim
The Munarra Centre for Regional Excellence, an Indigenous-led educational centre in Shepparton,has been shortlisted in the 2025 Victorian Architecture Awards.
As the world struggles to reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, India has pledged to do its part, and its success is critical: In 2023, India was the third-largest carbon emitter worldwide. The Indian government has committed to having net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.
To fulfill that promise, India will need to decarbonize its electric power system, and that will be a challenge: Fully 60 percent of India’s electricity comes from coal-burning power plants that are extremely inefficient. To make matters worse, the demand for electricity in India is projected to more than double in the coming decade due to population growth and increased use of air conditioning, electric cars, and so on.
Despite having set an ambitious target, the Indian government has not proposed a plan for getting there. Indeed, as in other countries, in India the government continues to permit new coal-fired power plants to be built, and aging plants to be renovated and their retirement postponed.
To help India define an effective — and realistic — plan for decarbonizing its power system, key questions must be addressed. For example, India is already rapidly developing carbon-free solar and wind power generators. What opportunities remain for further deployment of renewable generation? Are there ways to retrofit or repurpose India’s existing coal plants that can substantially and affordably reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? And do the responses to those questions differ by region?
With funding from IHI Corp. through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Yifu Ding, a postdoc at MITEI, and her colleagues set out to answer those questions by first using machine learning to determine the efficiency of each of India’s current 806 coal plants, and then investigating the impacts that different decarbonization approaches would have on the mix of power plants and the price of electricity in 2035 under increasingly stringent caps on emissions.
First step: Develop the needed dataset
An important challenge in developing a decarbonization plan for India has been the lack of a complete dataset describing the current power plants in India. While other studies have generated plans, they haven’t taken into account the wide variation in the coal-fired power plants in different regions of the country. “So, we first needed to create a dataset covering and characterizing all of the operating coal plants in India. Such a dataset was not available in the existing literature,” says Ding.
Making a cost-effective plan for expanding the capacity of a power system requires knowing the efficiencies of all the power plants operating in the system. For this study, the researchers used as their metric the “station heat rate,” a standard measurement of the overall fuel efficiency of a given power plant. The station heat rate of each plant is needed in order to calculate the fuel consumption and power output of that plant as plans for capacity expansion are being developed.
Some of the Indian coal plants’ efficiencies were recorded before 2022, so Ding and her team used machine-learning models to predict the efficiencies of all the Indian coal plants operating now. In 2024, they created and posted online the first comprehensive, open-sourced dataset for all 806 power plants in 30 regions of India. The work won the 2024 MIT Open Data Prize. This dataset includes each plant’s power capacity, efficiency, age, load factor (a measure indicating how much of the time it operates), water stress, and more.
In addition, they categorized each plant according to its boiler design. A “supercritical” plant operates at a relatively high temperature and pressure, which makes it thermodynamically efficient, so it produces a lot of electricity for each unit of heat in the fuel. A “subcritical” plant runs at a lower temperature and pressure, so it’s less thermodynamically efficient. Most of the Indian coal plants are still subcritical plants running at low efficiency.
Next step: Investigate decarbonization options
Equipped with their detailed dataset covering all the coal power plants in India, the researchers were ready to investigate options for responding to tightening limits on carbon emissions. For that analysis, they turned to GenX, a modeling platform that was developed at MITEI to help guide decision-makers as they make investments and other plans for the future of their power systems.
Ding built a GenX model based on India’s power system in 2020, including details about each power plant and transmission network across 30 regions of the country. She also entered the coal price, potential resources for wind and solar power installations, and other attributes of each region. Based on the parameters given, the GenX model would calculate the lowest-cost combination of equipment and operating conditions that can fulfill a defined future level of demand while also meeting specified policy constraints, including limits on carbon emissions. The model and all data sources were also released as open-source tools for all viewers to use.
Ding and her colleagues — Dharik Mallapragada, a former principal research scientist at MITEI who is now an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular energy at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a MITEI visiting scientist; and Robert J. Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design and former deputy director of MITEI for science and technology — then used the model to explore options for meeting demands in 2035 under progressively tighter carbon emissions caps, taking into account region-to-region variations in the efficiencies of the coal plants, the price of coal, and other factors. They describe their methods and their findings in a paper published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.
In separate runs, they explored plans involving various combinations of current coal plants, possible new renewable plants, and more, to see their outcome in 2035. Specifically, they assumed the following four “grid-evolution scenarios:”
Baseline: The baseline scenario assumes limited onshore wind and solar photovoltaics development and excludes retrofitting options, representing a business-as-usual pathway.
High renewable capacity: This scenario calls for the development of onshore wind and solar power without any supply chain constraints.
Biomass co-firing: This scenario assumes the baseline limits on renewables, but here all coal plants — both subcritical and supercritical — can be retrofitted for “co-firing” with biomass, an approach in which clean-burning biomass replaces some of the coal fuel. Certain coal power plants in India already co-fire coal and biomass, so the technology is known.
Carbon capture and sequestration plus biomass co-firing: This scenario is based on the same assumptions as the biomass co-firing scenario with one addition: All of the high-efficiency supercritical plants are also retrofitted for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology that captures and removes carbon from a power plant’s exhaust stream and prepares it for permanent disposal. Thus far, CCS has not been used in India. This study specifies that 90 percent of all carbon in the power plant exhaust is captured.
Ding and her team investigated power system planning under each of those grid-evolution scenarios and four assumptions about carbon caps: no cap, which is the current situation; 1,000 million tons (Mt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which reflects India’s announced targets for 2035; and two more-ambitious targets, namely 800 Mt and 500 Mt. For context, CO2 emissions from India’s power sector totaled about 1,100 Mt in 2021. (Note that transmission network expansion is allowed in all scenarios.)
Key findings
Assuming the adoption of carbon caps under the four scenarios generated a vast array of detailed numerical results. But taken together, the results show interesting trends in the cost-optimal mix of generating capacity and the cost of electricity under the different scenarios.
Even without any limits on carbon emissions, most new capacity additions will be wind and solar generators — the lowest-cost option for expanding India’s electricity-generation capacity. Indeed, this is observed to be the case now in India. However, the increasing demand for electricity will still require some new coal plants to be built. Model results show a 10 to 20 percent increase in coal plant capacity by 2035 relative to 2020.
Under the baseline scenario, renewables are expanded up to the maximum allowed under the assumptions, implying that more deployment would be economical. More coal capacity is built, and as the cap on emissions tightens, there is also investment in natural gas power plants, as well as batteries to help compensate for the now-large amount of intermittent solar and wind generation. When a 500 Mt cap on carbon is imposed, the cost of electricity generation is twice as high as it was with no cap.
The high renewable capacity scenario reduces the development of new coal capacity and produces the lowest electricity cost of the four scenarios. Under the most stringent cap — 500 Mt — onshore wind farms play an important role in bringing the cost down. “Otherwise, it’ll be very expensive to reach such stringent carbon constraints,” notes Ding. “Certain coal plants that remain run only a few hours per year, so are inefficient as well as financially unviable. But they still need to be there to support wind and solar.” She explains that other backup sources of electricity, such as batteries, are even more costly.
The biomass co-firing scenario assumes the same capacity limit on renewables as in the baseline scenario, and the results are much the same, in part because the biomass replaces such a low fraction — just 20 percent — of the coal in the fuel feedstock. “This scenario would be most similar to the current situation in India,” says Ding. “It won’t bring down the cost of electricity, so we’re basically saying that adding this technology doesn’t contribute effectively to decarbonization.”
But CCS plus biomass co-firing is a different story. It also assumes the limits on renewables development, yet it is the second-best option in terms of reducing costs. Under the 500 Mt cap on CO2 emissions, retrofitting for both CCS and biomass co-firing produces a 22 percent reduction in the cost of electricity compared to the baseline scenario. In addition, as the carbon cap tightens, this option reduces the extent of deployment of natural gas plants and significantly improves overall coal plant utilization. That increased utilization “means that coal plants have switched from just meeting the peak demand to supplying part of the baseline load, which will lower the cost of coal generation,” explains Ding.
Some concerns
While those trends are enlightening, the analyses also uncovered some concerns for India to consider, in particular, with the two approaches that yielded the lowest electricity costs.
The high renewables scenario is, Ding notes, “very ideal.” It assumes that there will be little limiting the development of wind and solar capacity, so there won’t be any issues with supply chains, which is unrealistic. More importantly, the analyses showed that implementing the high renewables approach would create uneven investment in renewables across the 30 regions. Resources for onshore and offshore wind farms are mainly concentrated in a few regions in western and southern India. “So all the wind farms would be put in those regions, near where the rich cities are,” says Ding. “The poorer cities on the eastern side, where the coal power plants are, will have little renewable investment.”
So the approach that’s best in terms of cost is not best in terms of social welfare, because it tends to benefit the rich regions more than the poor ones. “It’s like [the government will] need to consider the trade-off between energy justice and cost,” says Ding. Enacting state-level renewable generation targets could encourage a more even distribution of renewable capacity installation. Also, as transmission expansion is planned, coordination among power system operators and renewable energy investors in different regions could help in achieving the best outcome.
CCS plus biomass co-firing — the second-best option for reducing prices — solves the equity problem posed by high renewables, and it assumes a more realistic level of renewable power adoption. However, CCS hasn’t been used in India, so there is no precedent in terms of costs. The researchers therefore based their cost estimates on the cost of CCS in China and then increased the required investment by 10 percent, the “first-of-a-kind” index developed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Based on those costs and other assumptions, the researchers conclude that coal plants with CCS could come into use by 2035 when the carbon cap for power generation is less than 1,000 Mt.
But will CCS actually be implemented in India? While there’s been discussion about using CCS in heavy industry, the Indian government has not announced any plans for implementing the technology in coal-fired power plants. Indeed, India is currently “very conservative about CCS,” says Ding. “Some researchers say CCS won’t happen because it’s so expensive, and as long as there’s no direct use for the captured carbon, the only thing you can do is put it in the ground.” She adds, "It’s really controversial to talk about whether CCS will be implemented in India in the next 10 years.”
Ding and her colleagues hope that other researchers and policymakers — especially those working in developing countries — may benefit from gaining access to their datasets and learning about their methods. Based on their findings for India, she stresses the importance of understanding the detailed geographical situation in a country in order to design plans and policies that are both realistic and equitable.
© Image courtesy of the researchers.
As the world struggles to reduce climate-warming carbon emissions, India has pledged to do its part, and its success is critical: In 2023, India was the third-largest carbon emitter worldwide. The Indian government has committed to having net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.
To fulfill that promise, India will need to decarbonize its electric power system, and that will be a challenge: Fully 60 percent of India’s electricity comes from coal-burning power plants that are extremely inefficient. To make matters worse, the demand for electricity in India is projected to more than double in the coming decade due to population growth and increased use of air conditioning, electric cars, and so on.
Despite having set an ambitious target, the Indian government has not proposed a plan for getting there. Indeed, as in other countries, in India the government continues to permit new coal-fired power plants to be built, and aging plants to be renovated and their retirement postponed.
To help India define an effective — and realistic — plan for decarbonizing its power system, key questions must be addressed. For example, India is already rapidly developing carbon-free solar and wind power generators. What opportunities remain for further deployment of renewable generation? Are there ways to retrofit or repurpose India’s existing coal plants that can substantially and affordably reduce their greenhouse gas emissions? And do the responses to those questions differ by region?
With funding from IHI Corp. through the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), Yifu Ding, a postdoc at MITEI, and her colleagues set out to answer those questions by first using machine learning to determine the efficiency of each of India’s current 806 coal plants, and then investigating the impacts that different decarbonization approaches would have on the mix of power plants and the price of electricity in 2035 under increasingly stringent caps on emissions.
First step: Develop the needed dataset
An important challenge in developing a decarbonization plan for India has been the lack of a complete dataset describing the current power plants in India. While other studies have generated plans, they haven’t taken into account the wide variation in the coal-fired power plants in different regions of the country. “So, we first needed to create a dataset covering and characterizing all of the operating coal plants in India. Such a dataset was not available in the existing literature,” says Ding.
Making a cost-effective plan for expanding the capacity of a power system requires knowing the efficiencies of all the power plants operating in the system. For this study, the researchers used as their metric the “station heat rate,” a standard measurement of the overall fuel efficiency of a given power plant. The station heat rate of each plant is needed in order to calculate the fuel consumption and power output of that plant as plans for capacity expansion are being developed.
Some of the Indian coal plants’ efficiencies were recorded before 2022, so Ding and her team used machine-learning models to predict the efficiencies of all the Indian coal plants operating now. In 2024, they created and posted online the first comprehensive, open-sourced dataset for all 806 power plants in 30 regions of India. The work won the 2024 MIT Open Data Prize. This dataset includes each plant’s power capacity, efficiency, age, load factor (a measure indicating how much of the time it operates), water stress, and more.
In addition, they categorized each plant according to its boiler design. A “supercritical” plant operates at a relatively high temperature and pressure, which makes it thermodynamically efficient, so it produces a lot of electricity for each unit of heat in the fuel. A “subcritical” plant runs at a lower temperature and pressure, so it’s less thermodynamically efficient. Most of the Indian coal plants are still subcritical plants running at low efficiency.
Next step: Investigate decarbonization options
Equipped with their detailed dataset covering all the coal power plants in India, the researchers were ready to investigate options for responding to tightening limits on carbon emissions. For that analysis, they turned to GenX, a modeling platform that was developed at MITEI to help guide decision-makers as they make investments and other plans for the future of their power systems.
Ding built a GenX model based on India’s power system in 2020, including details about each power plant and transmission network across 30 regions of the country. She also entered the coal price, potential resources for wind and solar power installations, and other attributes of each region. Based on the parameters given, the GenX model would calculate the lowest-cost combination of equipment and operating conditions that can fulfill a defined future level of demand while also meeting specified policy constraints, including limits on carbon emissions. The model and all data sources were also released as open-source tools for all viewers to use.
Ding and her colleagues — Dharik Mallapragada, a former principal research scientist at MITEI who is now an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular energy at NYU Tandon School of Engineering and a MITEI visiting scientist; and Robert J. Stoner, the founding director of the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design and former deputy director of MITEI for science and technology — then used the model to explore options for meeting demands in 2035 under progressively tighter carbon emissions caps, taking into account region-to-region variations in the efficiencies of the coal plants, the price of coal, and other factors. They describe their methods and their findings in a paper published in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development.
In separate runs, they explored plans involving various combinations of current coal plants, possible new renewable plants, and more, to see their outcome in 2035. Specifically, they assumed the following four “grid-evolution scenarios:”
Baseline: The baseline scenario assumes limited onshore wind and solar photovoltaics development and excludes retrofitting options, representing a business-as-usual pathway.
High renewable capacity: This scenario calls for the development of onshore wind and solar power without any supply chain constraints.
Biomass co-firing: This scenario assumes the baseline limits on renewables, but here all coal plants — both subcritical and supercritical — can be retrofitted for “co-firing” with biomass, an approach in which clean-burning biomass replaces some of the coal fuel. Certain coal power plants in India already co-fire coal and biomass, so the technology is known.
Carbon capture and sequestration plus biomass co-firing: This scenario is based on the same assumptions as the biomass co-firing scenario with one addition: All of the high-efficiency supercritical plants are also retrofitted for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technology that captures and removes carbon from a power plant’s exhaust stream and prepares it for permanent disposal. Thus far, CCS has not been used in India. This study specifies that 90 percent of all carbon in the power plant exhaust is captured.
Ding and her team investigated power system planning under each of those grid-evolution scenarios and four assumptions about carbon caps: no cap, which is the current situation; 1,000 million tons (Mt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which reflects India’s announced targets for 2035; and two more-ambitious targets, namely 800 Mt and 500 Mt. For context, CO2 emissions from India’s power sector totaled about 1,100 Mt in 2021. (Note that transmission network expansion is allowed in all scenarios.)
Key findings
Assuming the adoption of carbon caps under the four scenarios generated a vast array of detailed numerical results. But taken together, the results show interesting trends in the cost-optimal mix of generating capacity and the cost of electricity under the different scenarios.
Even without any limits on carbon emissions, most new capacity additions will be wind and solar generators — the lowest-cost option for expanding India’s electricity-generation capacity. Indeed, this is observed to be the case now in India. However, the increasing demand for electricity will still require some new coal plants to be built. Model results show a 10 to 20 percent increase in coal plant capacity by 2035 relative to 2020.
Under the baseline scenario, renewables are expanded up to the maximum allowed under the assumptions, implying that more deployment would be economical. More coal capacity is built, and as the cap on emissions tightens, there is also investment in natural gas power plants, as well as batteries to help compensate for the now-large amount of intermittent solar and wind generation. When a 500 Mt cap on carbon is imposed, the cost of electricity generation is twice as high as it was with no cap.
The high renewable capacity scenario reduces the development of new coal capacity and produces the lowest electricity cost of the four scenarios. Under the most stringent cap — 500 Mt — onshore wind farms play an important role in bringing the cost down. “Otherwise, it’ll be very expensive to reach such stringent carbon constraints,” notes Ding. “Certain coal plants that remain run only a few hours per year, so are inefficient as well as financially unviable. But they still need to be there to support wind and solar.” She explains that other backup sources of electricity, such as batteries, are even more costly.
The biomass co-firing scenario assumes the same capacity limit on renewables as in the baseline scenario, and the results are much the same, in part because the biomass replaces such a low fraction — just 20 percent — of the coal in the fuel feedstock. “This scenario would be most similar to the current situation in India,” says Ding. “It won’t bring down the cost of electricity, so we’re basically saying that adding this technology doesn’t contribute effectively to decarbonization.”
But CCS plus biomass co-firing is a different story. It also assumes the limits on renewables development, yet it is the second-best option in terms of reducing costs. Under the 500 Mt cap on CO2 emissions, retrofitting for both CCS and biomass co-firing produces a 22 percent reduction in the cost of electricity compared to the baseline scenario. In addition, as the carbon cap tightens, this option reduces the extent of deployment of natural gas plants and significantly improves overall coal plant utilization. That increased utilization “means that coal plants have switched from just meeting the peak demand to supplying part of the baseline load, which will lower the cost of coal generation,” explains Ding.
Some concerns
While those trends are enlightening, the analyses also uncovered some concerns for India to consider, in particular, with the two approaches that yielded the lowest electricity costs.
The high renewables scenario is, Ding notes, “very ideal.” It assumes that there will be little limiting the development of wind and solar capacity, so there won’t be any issues with supply chains, which is unrealistic. More importantly, the analyses showed that implementing the high renewables approach would create uneven investment in renewables across the 30 regions. Resources for onshore and offshore wind farms are mainly concentrated in a few regions in western and southern India. “So all the wind farms would be put in those regions, near where the rich cities are,” says Ding. “The poorer cities on the eastern side, where the coal power plants are, will have little renewable investment.”
So the approach that’s best in terms of cost is not best in terms of social welfare, because it tends to benefit the rich regions more than the poor ones. “It’s like [the government will] need to consider the trade-off between energy justice and cost,” says Ding. Enacting state-level renewable generation targets could encourage a more even distribution of renewable capacity installation. Also, as transmission expansion is planned, coordination among power system operators and renewable energy investors in different regions could help in achieving the best outcome.
CCS plus biomass co-firing — the second-best option for reducing prices — solves the equity problem posed by high renewables, and it assumes a more realistic level of renewable power adoption. However, CCS hasn’t been used in India, so there is no precedent in terms of costs. The researchers therefore based their cost estimates on the cost of CCS in China and then increased the required investment by 10 percent, the “first-of-a-kind” index developed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Based on those costs and other assumptions, the researchers conclude that coal plants with CCS could come into use by 2035 when the carbon cap for power generation is less than 1,000 Mt.
But will CCS actually be implemented in India? While there’s been discussion about using CCS in heavy industry, the Indian government has not announced any plans for implementing the technology in coal-fired power plants. Indeed, India is currently “very conservative about CCS,” says Ding. “Some researchers say CCS won’t happen because it’s so expensive, and as long as there’s no direct use for the captured carbon, the only thing you can do is put it in the ground.” She adds, "It’s really controversial to talk about whether CCS will be implemented in India in the next 10 years.”
Ding and her colleagues hope that other researchers and policymakers — especially those working in developing countries — may benefit from gaining access to their datasets and learning about their methods. Based on their findings for India, she stresses the importance of understanding the detailed geographical situation in a country in order to design plans and policies that are both realistic and equitable.
© Image courtesy of the researchers.
Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer
Alvin Powell
Harvard Staff Writer
A collection of features and profiles covering Harvard University’s 374th Commencement.
An encounter with grief during summer camp set Jett Crowdis on the path to a medical career.
While a Harvard undergraduate, Crowdis — who will graduate from Harvard Medical School this spring — served as a counselor at a camp for children whose parents have cancer. There, he met a 9-year-old boy whose father had died of pancreatic cancer just weeks before.
It was “a sad opportunity to be with someone going through such a challenging time in their life,” Crowdis said. “In later years, I got a chance to talk with him a bit more about his experience and he opened up about it.”
Before that experience, Crowdis knew he liked science, but wasn’t sure the best way to make a career of it. His experience at Camp Kesem, run by a national organization with chapters at several colleges, put a human face on the medical needs he knew were out there.
“My favorite aspect of research is when I get to ask questions that no one else has asked, with data that no one else has.”
“That was the first time that I got to be with someone through a very challenging experience in their life and just listen to what they were experiencing,” Crowdis said. “That was very meaningful to me. I realized that was something that I wanted in a future career, and I think medicine naturally merged that with my interest in science.”
Crowdis, who grew up in Florida, entered Harvard College thinking he would study molecular biology, but during his sophomore summer he worked in the lab of Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professor of Cell Biology Joan Brugge, who encouraged him to learn coding in order to better analyze his research results. Crowdis spent a summer teaching himself the Python coding language and began taking computational biology courses in the fall.
“I just absolutely loved it,” Crowdis said.
Crowdis graduated from the College in 2019 but made the decision to apply to medical school late. He took two gap years in the lab of Associate Professor of Medicine Eliezer Van Allen, also a Camp Kesem alum. Van Allen’s lab at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute seeks to use computational biology to analyze genomic data from cancer patients, probe cancer’s molecular origins, investigate resistance to cancer therapies, and use genomics to guide clinical decision-making.
Crowdis used his computational skills to advance projects in the Van Allen lab, analyzing data from a prostate cancer genomic study. He was the first author of a Cell Genomics paper that highlighted the benefits of a broad-based experimental framework that engaged study participants as partners who freely share biological samples, clinical information, and details of their cancer experience. The work showed that the model, called the Metastatic Prostate Cancer Project, could break down barriers to treatment and care.
“My favorite aspect of research is when I get to ask questions that no one else has asked, with data that no one else has,” Crowdis said. “That’s the core aspect of research that I love the most, really, the exploration.”
After Crowdis entered HMS in the fall of 2021, he kept in touch with Van Allen, continuing work on some projects. When he expressed an interest in learning immunology, Van Allen connected Crowdis with Arlene Sharpe, Harvard’s Kolokotrones University Professor. In the Sharpe lab, Crowdis investigated how a technique called checkpoint blockade that harnessed the immune system to fight cancer can go wrong, causing potentially dangerous adverse reactions.
“He’s very thoughtful, very interested and engaged, he’s a critical thinker,” Van Allen said. “That’s a pretty unique combination to have. He really wants to be as critical and as keen as he possibly can.”
Though he has amassed considerable research experience, Crowdis is still exploring how large a role that research will play in his career. He matched with Yale New Haven Hospital and will head there after Commencement to begin a residency in internal medicine. The move will also give him a chance to rejoin his wife, Sruthi Muluk, a Harvard College classmate now in an obstetrics and gynecology residency at the University of Connecticut.
“It’s fascinating,” Crowdis said of internal medicine, “and also gives you time to sit and be with patients in the same way that I enjoyed the process at Kesem.”
Adam Cohen.
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer
Yahya Chaudhry
Harvard Correspondent
A team of Harvard researchers have unveiled a way to map the molecular underpinnings of how learning and memories are formed, a groundbreaking new technique expected to offer insights that may pave the way for new treatments for neurological disorders such as dementia.
“This technique provides a lens into the synaptic architecture of memory, something previously unattainable in such detail,” said Adam Cohen, professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics and senior co-author of the research paper, published in Nature Neuroscience.
Memory resides within a dense network of billions of neurons within the brain. We rely on synaptic plasticity — the strengthening and modulation of connections between these neurons — to facilitate learning and memory.
A combination of fluorescent labeling and cutting-edge microscopy allowed the researchers to illuminate synaptic behavior at unprecedented resolution.
Credit: Pojeong Park
Synapses, or the junctions where neurons communicate, lay the groundwork for every memory we form, from a childhood melody to a loved one’s face to what we ate for breakfast.
In their new paper, the team detailed their new technique, dubbed Extracellular Protein Surface Labeling in Neurons (EPSILON), which focuses on mapping the proteins vital for the transmission of signals across synaptic connections in the brain.
These specific proteins are called AMPARs and are considered key players in synaptic plasticity, the process that allows the brain to adapt and reorganize itself in response to new information.
Utilizing sequential labeling with specialized dyes, EPSILON enabled the researchers to monitor these proteins’ movements at high resolutions. Traditionally, understanding such detailed microscopic phenomena has required more invasive methods. Using EPSILON to observe AMPARs’ behavior in neurons represents a significant scientific advance.
This work was undertaken by several members of Cohen’s lab, including Harvard Griffin GSAS student Doyeon Kim and postdoctoral scholars Pojeong Park, Xiuyuan Li, J. David Wong-Campos, He Tian, and Eric M. Moult, as well as scientists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
A combination of fluorescent labeling and cutting-edge microscopy allowed the researchers to illuminate synaptic behavior at unprecedented resolution. The technique’s precision was akin to shining a spotlight on some of the brain’s most intricate functions, allowing the team to monitor the synaptic interactions critical for learning.
As synaptic changes of specific memories came into view with greater clarity, patterns started to reveal rules governing how the brain decides which synapses to make stronger or weaker when storing a memory.
Prior research into synaptic processes often lacked such granularity, making EPSILON’s insights particularly valuable for future explorations into diseases like Alzheimer’s, marked by synaptic dysfunction that results in memory and learning impairment.
As synaptic changes of specific memories came into view with greater clarity, patterns started to reveal rules governing how the brain decides which synapses to make stronger or weaker when storing a memory.
“Our most important breakthrough is our method that can map the past history of the synthetic plasticity in the living brain,” Kim said. “We can look at the history of the synaptic plasticity, studying where and how much of the synaptic potentiation has happened during a defined time window during the memory formation.
“By mapping the synaptic plasticity over time at multiple time points, we can truly map the dynamics of the synapses,” Kim added. “We’ll also be able to apply this to different kinds of memories that have different patterns of synaptic plasticity.”
The technique’s first application has already yielded intriguing results. By applying EPSILON to study mice undergoing contextual fear conditioning — a process that helps animals associate a neutral context with a fear-inducing stimulus — researchers were able to demonstrate a correlation between AMPARs and the expression of the immediate early gene product cFos, a signal that tells us when brain cells are active.
These findings suggest that AMPAR trafficking is closely linked to enduring memory traces, or engrams, within the brain, where specific neurons become activated following learning experiences.
Cohen credits the significant and sometimes unexpected role basic science can play in fueling progress with enabling their study to succeed.
“The HaloTag technology, which is used to label proteins, was based on a gene discovered in 1997 by a group of scientists in Ireland who were studying a soil bacterium, which had an unusual ability to break down pollutants,” Cohen said. “It’s a generations-long arc from the basic research characterizing the natural world to making discoveries that can make human health better. We really need to support the entire arc to make progress.”
Looking forward, Cohen is eager to see how EPSILON can be further applied to study numerous cognitive phenomena and potentially improve therapeutic strategies targeting memory impairments.
“We’ve already distributed the molecular tool to labs around the world who are now starting to use these tools to explore how synaptic strength is regulated in their favorite question and context,” he said.
This work was partially supported the National Institutes of Health.
Denison House Chinese girls basketball team, 1931.
O.H. Steir
Sy Boles
Harvard Staff Writer
Among the artifacts on display in a new exhibition at the Schlesinger Library are photos of Ainu and Visayan women who were displayed as “living exhibits” at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
The women’s names are not known. Their images have survived because they were included in the archives of Jessie Tarbox Beals, one of America’s first female photojournalists. But their stories are now being revisited as part of “Illuminate: Contextualizing Asian American Women’s Stories Through the Archives.”
“Asian American history is oftentimes invisible, given the population and the history,” said Victor Betts, the curator for collections on ethnicity and migration at the Schlesinger Library. “It’s pushed to the margins. That’s also reflected in the archives.”
Ainu woman and child at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Jessie Tarbox Beals, Courtesy Schlesinger Library
Visayan girls at the 1904 World’s Fair.
Jessie Tarbox Beals, Courtesy Schlesinger Library
The exhibition, on display through January, presents materials spanning 150 years and asks viewers to examine their own assumptions about Asian and Asian American women’s roles in history.
The show was created in conjunction with a spring undergraduate course called “Asian American Women’s History in the Schlesinger Library,” which Betts co-taught with Erika Lee, Bae Family Professor of History and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library.
“It’s a model of co-teaching and co-creation, of research and learning, that we hope will serve as a model for other classes,” Lee said.
Students used the archival material to consider the ways Asian and Asian American women have been forgotten, made hypervisible, or both, as were the women displayed at the World’s Fair.
“We had a whole week on erasure,” Lee said, laughing. “Like, where are they?”
Christian D. Topinio ’27 researched Beals’ photos for his final project.
“[The women] were objects to study, potentially objects of cultural curiosity,” Topinio said. “There’s a really interesting idea in these photos where you’re ascribing colonial hierarchies among these people, buttressing colonial hierarchies abroad.”
Betts said that in more contemporary collections, Asian American women tell their own stories on their own terms, like the donated archives of famous chefs and cookbook authors Grace Zia Chu and Madhur Jaffrey.
“Other women, earlier in history, in the 19th and 20th centuries, didn’t have that luxury,” he said. So he and the students went looking.
Sophia Wang ’25 researched the 1874 court case of Ah Fong, a Chinese woman who was detained at the Port of San Francisco. She and about 20 other detained women and girls, age about 17 to 28, filed writs of habeas corpus on their own behalf.
Their legal action also contributed to the 1875 Supreme Court case Chy Lung v. Freeman, in which the court ruled that only Congress, not states, had the power to regulate immigration.
“As someone who’s Chinese American and whose parents immigrated to the United States, when I read her case, I was in tears,” Wang said. “They were legal pioneers, although their stories still remain untold.”
Although there was little concerted effort to collect and preserve Asian American women’s stories at the time, archivists found Asian American women’s stories throughout local history and Harvard’s history.
Siok-An Chiu Wu, Wai Tsu New Kuo, and Manik Kosambi appear in Radcliffe College yearbooks in 1919 and 1922.
Manik Kosambi was the first South Asian woman to graduate from Radcliffe.
The exhibit places Asian American women’s photos, political posters, comic books, and zines in the context of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese American internment, the Civil Rights era, and anti-Asian violence in the years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Betts wanted to play with the exhibit’s title, “Illuminate,” as part of the display. He commissioned artwork by Greater Boston Taiwanese-American artist Shaina Lu to accompany the archival material. Her translucent illustrations, placed over the windows, allow sunlight to filter into the gallery.
Betts is working to expand Schlesinger’s collections of Asian and Asian American women’s materials. But for now, he said, what’s missing is part of the point. It’s an opportunity to ask why Asian American women’s stories have been marginalized in the first place, and how our understanding of American history would change if they weren’t.
“Asian American history is American history,” Betts said, “and so it should have the same level of seriousness and value that we understand U.S. history, collectively, to have.”
“Illuminate: Contextualizing Asian American Women’s Stories through the Archives” is on display through Jan. 23 in the Lia and William Poorvu Gallery of Schlesinger Library.
MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart has announced that Vice Provost for the Arts Philip S. Khoury will step down from the position on Aug. 31. Khoury, the Ford International Professor of History, served in the role for 19 years. After a sabbatical, he will rejoin the faculty in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS).
“Since arriving at MIT in 1981, Philip has championed what he calls the Institute’s ‘artistic ecosystem,’ which sits at the intersection of technology, science, the humanities, and the arts. Thanks to Philip’s vision, this ecosystem is now a foundational element of MIT’s educational and research missions and a critical component of how we advance knowledge, understanding, and discovery in service to the world,” says Barnhart.
Khoury was appointed associate provost in 2006 by then-MIT president Susan Hockfield, with a double portfolio enhancing the Institute’s nonacademic arts programs and beginning a review of MIT’s international activities. Those programs include the List Visual Arts Center, the MIT Museum, the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST), and the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT). After five years, the latter half of this portfolio evolved into the Office of the Vice Provost for International Activities.
Khoury devoted most of his tenure to expanding the Institute’s arts infrastructure, promoting the visibility of its stellar arts faculty, and guiding the growth of student participation in the arts. Today, more than 50 percent of MIT undergraduates take arts classes, with more than 1,500 studying music.
“Philip has been a remarkable leader at MIT over decades. He has ensured that the arts are a prominent part of the MIT ‘mens-et-manus’ [‘mind-and-hand’] experience and that our community has the opportunity to admire, learn from, and participate in creative thinking in all realms,” says L. Rafael Reif, the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and MIT president emeritus. “A historian — and a humanist at heart — Philip also played a crucial role in helping MIT develop a thoughtful international strategy in research and education."
“I will miss my colleagues first and foremost as I leave this position behind,” says Khoury. “But I have been proud to see the quality of the faculty grow and the student interest in the arts grow almost exponentially, along with an awareness of how the arts are prospering at MIT.”
Stream of creativity
During his time as vice provost, he partnered with then-School of Architecture and Planning (SAP) dean Adèle Santos and SHASS dean Deborah Fitzgerald to establish the CAST in 2012. The center encourages artistic collaborations and provides seed funds and research grants to students and faculty.
Khoury also helped oversee a significant expansion of the Institute’s art facilities, including the unique multipurpose design of the Theater Arts Building, the new MIT Museum, and the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building. Along with the List Visual Arts Center, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year, these vibrant spaces “offer an opportunity for our students to do something different from what they came to MIT to do in science and engineering,” Khoury suggests. “It gives them an outlet to do other kinds of experimentation.”
“What makes the arts so successful here is that they are very much in the stream of creativity, which science and technology are all about,” he adds.
One of Khoury’s other long-standing goals has been to elevate the recognition of the arts faculty, “to show that the quality of what we do in those areas matches the quality of what we do in engineering and science,” he says.
“I will always remember Philip Khoury’s leadership and advocacy as dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences for changing the definition of the ‘A’ in SHASS from ‘and’ to ‘Arts.’ That small change had large implications for professional careers for artists, enrollments, and subject options that remain a source of renewal and strength to this day,” says Institute Professor Marcus Thompson.
Most recently, Khoury and his team, in collaboration with faculty, students, and staff from across the Institute, oversaw the development and production of MIT’s new festival of the arts, known as Artfinity. Launched in February and open to the public, the Institute-sponsored, campus-wide festival featured a series of 80 performing and visual arts events.
International activities
Khoury joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1981 and later served as dean of SHASS between 1991 and 2006. In 2002, he was appointed the inaugural Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS.
His academic focus made him a natural choice for the first coordinator of MIT international activities, a role he served in from 2006 to 2011. During that time, he traveled widely to learn more about the ways MIT faculty were engaged abroad, and he led the production of an influential report on the state of MIT’s international activities.
“We wanted to create a strategy, but not a foreign policy,” Khoury said of the report.
Khoury’s time in the international role led him to consider ways that collaborations with other countries should be balanced so as not to diminish MIT’s offerings at home, he says. He also looked for ways to encourage more collaborations with countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and parts of the Middle East.
Future plans
Khoury was instrumental in establishing the Future of the Arts at MIT Committee, which was charged by Provost Barnhart in June 2024 in collaboration with Dean Hashim Sarkis of the School of Architecture and Planning and Dean Agustín Rayo of SHASS. The committee aims to find new ways to envision the place of arts at the Institute — a task that was last undertaken in 1987, he says. The committee submitted a draft report to Provost Barnhart in April.
“I think it will hit the real sweet spot of where arts meet science and technology, but not where art is controlled by science and technology,” Khoury says. “I think the promotion of that, and the emphasis on that, among other connections with art, are really what we should be pushing for and developing.”
After he steps down as vice provost, Khoury plans to devote more time to writing two books: a personal memoir and a book about the Middle East. And he is looking forward to seeing how the arts at MIT will flourish in the near future. “I feel elated about where we’ve landed and where we’ll continue to go,” he says.
As Barnhart noted in her letter to the community, the Future of the Arts at MIT Committee's efforts combined with Khoury staying on through the end of the summer, provides President Kornbluth, the incoming provost, and Khoury with the opportunity to reflect on the Institute’s path forward in this critical space.
© Photo: Jeffrey Schifman
What would a behind-the-scenes look at a video generated by an artificial intelligence model be like? You might think the process is similar to stop-motion animation, where many images are created and stitched together, but that’s not quite the case for “diffusion models” like OpenAl's SORA and Google's VEO 2.
Instead of producing a video frame-by-frame (or “autoregressively”), these systems process the entire sequence at once. The resulting clip is often photorealistic, but the process is slow and doesn’t allow for on-the-fly changes.
Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Adobe Research have now developed a hybrid approach, called “CausVid,” to create videos in seconds. Much like a quick-witted student learning from a well-versed teacher, a full-sequence diffusion model trains an autoregressive system to swiftly predict the next frame while ensuring high quality and consistency. CausVid’s student model can then generate clips from a simple text prompt, turning a photo into a moving scene, extending a video, or altering its creations with new inputs mid-generation.
This dynamic tool enables fast, interactive content creation, cutting a 50-step process into just a few actions. It can craft many imaginative and artistic scenes, such as a paper airplane morphing into a swan, woolly mammoths venturing through snow, or a child jumping in a puddle. Users can also make an initial prompt, like “generate a man crossing the street,” and then make follow-up inputs to add new elements to the scene, like “he writes in his notebook when he gets to the opposite sidewalk.”
The CSAIL researchers say that the model could be used for different video editing tasks, like helping viewers understand a livestream in a different language by generating a video that syncs with an audio translation. It could also help render new content in a video game or quickly produce training simulations to teach robots new tasks.
Tianwei Yin SM ’25, PhD ’25, a recently graduated student in electrical engineering and computer science and CSAIL affiliate, attributes the model’s strength to its mixed approach.
“CausVid combines a pre-trained diffusion-based model with autoregressive architecture that’s typically found in text generation models,” says Yin, co-lead author of a new paper about the tool. “This AI-powered teacher model can envision future steps to train a frame-by-frame system to avoid making rendering errors.”
Yin’s co-lead author, Qiang Zhang, is a research scientist at xAI and a former CSAIL visiting researcher. They worked on the project with Adobe Research scientists Richard Zhang, Eli Shechtman, and Xun Huang, and two CSAIL principal investigators: MIT professors Bill Freeman and Frédo Durand.
Caus(Vid) and effect
Many autoregressive models can create a video that’s initially smooth, but the quality tends to drop off later in the sequence. A clip of a person running might seem lifelike at first, but their legs begin to flail in unnatural directions, indicating frame-to-frame inconsistencies (also called “error accumulation”).
Error-prone video generation was common in prior causal approaches, which learned to predict frames one by one on their own. CausVid instead uses a high-powered diffusion model to teach a simpler system its general video expertise, enabling it to create smooth visuals, but much faster.
CausVid displayed its video-making aptitude when researchers tested its ability to make high-resolution, 10-second-long videos. It outperformed baselines like “OpenSORA” and “MovieGen,” working up to 100 times faster than its competition while producing the most stable, high-quality clips.
Then, Yin and his colleagues tested CausVid’s ability to put out stable 30-second videos, where it also topped comparable models on quality and consistency. These results indicate that CausVid may eventually produce stable, hours-long videos, or even an indefinite duration.
A subsequent study revealed that users preferred the videos generated by CausVid’s student model over its diffusion-based teacher.
“The speed of the autoregressive model really makes a difference,” says Yin. “Its videos look just as good as the teacher’s ones, but with less time to produce, the trade-off is that its visuals are less diverse.”
CausVid also excelled when tested on over 900 prompts using a text-to-video dataset, receiving the top overall score of 84.27. It boasted the best metrics in categories like imaging quality and realistic human actions, eclipsing state-of-the-art video generation models like “Vchitect” and “Gen-3.”
While an efficient step forward in AI video generation, CausVid may soon be able to design visuals even faster — perhaps instantly — with a smaller causal architecture. Yin says that if the model is trained on domain-specific datasets, it will likely create higher-quality clips for robotics and gaming.
Experts say that this hybrid system is a promising upgrade from diffusion models, which are currently bogged down by processing speeds. “These models are way slower than LLMs [large language models] or generative image models,” says Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor Jun-Yan Zhu, who was not involved in the paper. “This new work changes that, making video generation much more efficient. That means better streaming speed, more interactive applications, and lower carbon footprints.”
The team’s work was supported, in part, by the Amazon Science Hub, the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Adobe, Google, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, and the U.S. Air Force Artificial Intelligence Accelerator. CausVid will be presented at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in June.
© Image: Alex Shipps/MIT CSAIL, using AI-generated images from the researchers.
For the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), 2025 marks a decade of translating groundbreaking research into tangible solutions for global challenges. Few examples illustrate that mission better than NONA Technologies. With support from a J-WAFS Solutions grant, MIT electrical engineering and biological engineering Professor Jongyoon Han and his team developed a portable desalination device that transforms seawater into clean drinking water without filters or high-pressure pumps.
The device stands apart from traditional systems because conventional desalination technologies, like reverse osmosis, are energy-intensive, prone to fouling, and typically deployed at large, centralized plants. In contrast, the device developed in Han’s lab employs ion concentration polarization technology to remove salts and particles from seawater, producing potable water that exceeds World Health Organization standards. It is compact, solar-powered, and operable at the push of a button — making it an ideal solution for off-grid and disaster-stricken areas.
This research laid the foundation for spinning out NONA Technologies along with co-founders Junghyo Yoon, a former postdoc in Han’s lab, and Bruce Crawford MBA ’23, to commercialize the technology and address pressing water-scarcity issues worldwide. “This is really the culmination of a 10-year journey that I and my group have been on,” said Han in an earlier MIT News article. “We worked for years on the physics behind individual desalination processes, but pushing all those advances into a box, building a system, and demonstrating it in the ocean ... that was a really meaningful and rewarding experience for me.” You can watch this video showcasing the device in action.
Moving breakthrough research out of the lab and into the world is a well-known challenge. While traditional “seed” grants typically support early-stage research at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 1-2, few funding sources exist to help academic teams navigate to the next phase of technology development. The J-WAFS Solutions Program is strategically designed to address this critical gap by supporting technologies in the high-risk, early-commercialization phase that is often neglected by traditional research, corporate, and venture funding. By supporting technologies at TRLs 3-5, the program increases the likelihood that promising innovations will survive beyond the university setting, advancing sufficiently to attract follow-on funding.
Equally important, the program gives academic researchers the time, resources, and flexibility to de-risk their technology, explore customer need and potential real-world applications, and determine whether and how they want to pursue commercialization. For faculty-led teams like Han’s, the J-WAFS Solutions Program provided the critical financial runway and entrepreneurial guidance needed to refine the technology, test assumptions about market fit, and lay the foundation for a startup team. While still in the MIT innovation ecosystem, Nona secured over $200,000 in non-dilutive funding through competitions and accelerators, including the prestigious MIT delta v Educational Accelerator. These early wins laid the groundwork for further investment and technical advancement.
Since spinning out of MIT, NONA has made major strides in both technology development and business viability. What started as a device capable of producing just over half-a-liter of clean drinking water per hour has evolved into a system that now delivers 10 times that capacity, at 5 liters per hour. The company successfully raised a $3.5 million seed round to advance its portable desalination device, and entered into a collaboration with the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, where it co-developed early prototypes and began generating revenue while validating the technology. Most recently, NONA was awarded two SBIR Phase I grants totaling $575,000, one from the National Science Foundation and another from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Now operating out of Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts, NONA has grown to a dedicated team of five and is preparing to launch its nona5 product later this year, with a wait list of over 1,000 customers. It is also kicking off its first industrial pilot, marking a key step toward commercial scale-up. “Starting a business as a postdoc was challenging, especially with limited funding and industry knowledge,” says Yoon, who currently serves as CTO of NONA. “J-WAFS gave me the financial freedom to pursue my venture, and the mentorship pushed me to hit key milestones. Thanks to J-WAFS, I successfully transitioned from an academic researcher to an entrepreneur in the water industry.”
NONA is one of several J-WAFS-funded technologies that have moved from the lab to market, part of a growing portfolio of water and food solutions advancing through MIT’s innovation pipeline. As J-WAFS marks a decade of catalyzing innovation in water and food, NONA exemplifies what is possible when mission-driven research is paired with targeted early-stage support and mentorship.
To learn more or get involved in supporting startups through the J-WAFS Solutions Program, please contact jwafs@mit.edu.
© Photo courtesy of Nona Technologies Inc.
The National University of Singapore (NUS) today announced the launch of NUS Sustainable Futures (NUS SF), a whole-of-university initiative bringing together expertise from across its research ecosystem to advance interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations in addressing climate change challenges. Permanent Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment Mr Stanley Loh launched this new initiative as Guest-of-Honour.
As climate change challenges become more complex and global, solutions to address these challenges will need to cut across disciplines, sectors and geographies. As such, NUS SF will adopt a mission-driven, problem-solving approach by converging NUS researchers to collaborate across sustainability domains, as well as with stakeholders including industry and government partners both locally and across Asia.
Additionally, NUS SF will round out efforts by the University and its key partners in developing and delivering continuing education training programmes rooted in climate, conservation and sustainability science and actionable research. The aim is to help professionals in the sustainability sector chart meaningful career transitions and equip them with the domain knowledge to address critical policy issues and meet regulatory requirements.
NUS will invest S$10 million to support three research focus areas as well as the NUS Sustainability Academy under NUS SF. To date, NUS SF has helped NUS researchers secure external funding of around S$5 million for low carbon energy system and other sustainability-related research. It aims to raise additional funding from the Government and industry partners over the next 12 months.
NUS SF is led by Professor Koh Lian Pin, NUS Vice President (Sustainability and Resilience) and Chief Sustainability Scientist. Helming the University’s sustainability agenda, Prof Koh oversees and champions sustainability-related research at NUS, tackling the twin planetary crises of climate change and biodiversity loss, through a whole-of-university strategy that bridges academia with policymakers, industry and civil society. He is also the Director of the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, as well as the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Conservation.
Prof Koh said, “Today’s launch of NUS Sustainable Futures is just the beginning – with seed funding from the University to support cross‑pillar research projects, and capacity building through our Sustainability Academy. Driven by Public‑Private‑People partnership, NUS Sustainable Futures is our blueprint to build a greener, more resilient, and low‑carbon future.”
Key pillars of NUS Sustainable Futures
Research in NUS SF will centre around strategic Sustainability Missions which will investigate wide-ranging Sustainability Challenges that will be tackled by Sustainability Communities through partnerships.
(i) Sustainability Missions
Currently, nearly one in three NUS faculty conducts sustainability-related research ranging from green hydrogen innovations for climate change mitigation, to nature-based and engineered solutions for coastal protection and adaptation, and sustainable redevelopment strategies for urban resilience. The University hopes to leverage this momentum to deepen its environmental impact while fostering greater collaboration across different disciplines, sectors and geographies.
NUS SF has identified three focal areas that had risen in salience over the last decade. In response, it will converge researchers in STEM, the social sciences and policy domains across NUS, as well as industry, government, philanthropic and civil society partners, to anticipate and identify emerging sustainability challenges, and develop cross-cutting programmes or solutions to address these challenges.
One of the focal areas pertains to energy sustainability and resilience, particularly in tropical and urban settings, as the world transits to a low-carbon economy. This will be led by Professor Lee Poh Seng, Co-Director of the NUS Energy Solutions Hub under NUS SF and Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the College of Design and Engineering (CDE).
Another focal area is on advancing technological innovations and nature-based solutions to address climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. This will be led by Associate Professor L. Roman Carrasco, Co-Director of Initiatives for Climate, Oceans & Nature under NUS SF, and Deputy Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Science.
The third focal area is to enhance urban resilience and sustainability in Singapore and the ASEAN region. This will be led by Associate Professor Yuan Chao, Co-Director of Integrative Urban Solutions under NUS SF, and Deputy Head (Research) of the Department of Architecture at CDE.
(ii) Sustainability Academy
Today, NUS offers a diverse spectrum of more than 800 sustainability-centric undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education and training (CET) courses. Building upon this, the new Sustainability Academy ― a collaborative effort between NUS SF and the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education ― will curate and develop a holistic suite of CET courses, from across NUS faculties and schools, to prepare the workforce in Singapore and the region for a low-carbon economy. These courses cover sustainability topics such as climate, nature, energy and green finance.
The Sustainability Academy will offer a new Professional Certificate in Carbon Services and Trading comprising a series of three courses which will be held in June, August and September 2025. The Professional Certificate seeks to support the national agenda of developing Singapore into a carbon services and trading hub by equipping professionals to take on new and emerging roles in carbon markets. It is developed after validation and in collaboration with industry professionals and government agencies such as the Singapore Economic Development Board and Enterprise Singapore.
Under a new partnership with the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, the Academy has also refreshed the curriculum for its signature Climate Change and Sustainability 101 Course for Public Officers. To support the public sector’s current and future sustainability efforts while upskilling its workforce, the course has been expanded to include additional topics on green supply chain and procurement, water sustainability as well as waste recycling.
(iii) Sustainability Plaza
The Sustainability Plaza will showcase NUS’ sustainability research and thought leadership, and help facilitate engagements between the University with industry, government and other stakeholders in exploring partnership and entrepreneurial opportunities. It will also coordinate the hosting of distinguished visitors to NUS; facilitate participation of NUS researchers in major international and national sustainability events; and organise outreach events and social engagements with stakeholders.
NUS Sustainable Futures Forum
Themed “Accelerating science translation through Public-Private-People partnership”, the NUS Sustainable Futures Forum was held on 6 May 2025 in conjunction with the launch of NUS SF. A partner event of Ecosperity Week 2025, the forum featured four insightful panel discussions which mirror the key pillars of NUS SF:
For more information on the forum, please visit https://www.nus.edu.sg/research/research-capabilities/nus-sustainable-futures/Forum-cum-Launch-Event-2025.
As the saying goes, time is money. That’s certainly evident in the transportation sector, where people will pay more for direct flights, express trains, and other ways to get somewhere quickly.
Still, it is difficult to measure precisely how much people value their time. Now, a paper co-authored by an MIT economist uses ride-sharing data to reveal multiple implications of personalized pricing.
By focusing on a European ride-sharing platform that auctions its rides, the researchers found that people are more responsive to prices than to wait times. They also found that people pay more to save time during the workday, and that when people pay more to avoid waiting, it notably increases business revenues. And some segments of consumers are distinctly more willing than others to pay higher prices.
Specifically, when people can bid for rides that arrive sooner, the amount above the minimum price the platform can charge increases by 5.2 percent. Meanwhile, the gap between offered prices and the maximum that consumers are willing to pay decreases by 2.5 percent. In economics terms, this creates additional “surplus” value for firms, while lowering the “consumer surplus” in these transactions.
“One of the important quantities in transportation is the value of time,” says MIT economist Tobias Salz, co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s findings. “We came across a setting that offered a very clean way of examining this quantity, where the value of time is revealed by people’s transportation choices.”
The paper, “Personalized Pricing and the Value of Time: Evidence from Auctioned Cab Rides,” is being published in Econometrica. The authors are Nicholas Buchholz, an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University; Laura Doval, a professor at Columbia Business School; Jakub Kastl, a professor of economics at Princeton University; Filip Matejka, a professor at Charles University in Prague; and Salz, the Castle Krob Career Development Associate Professor of Economics in MIT’s Department of Economics.
It is not easy to study how much money people will spend to save time — and time alone. Transportation is one sector where it is possible to do so, though not the only one. People will also pay more for, say, an express pass to avoid long lines at an amusement park. But data for those scenarios, even when available, may contain complicating factors. (Also, the value of time shouldn’t be confused with how much people pay for services charged by the hour, from accountants to tuba lessons.)
In this case, however, the researchers were provided data from Liftago, a ride-sharing platform in Prague with a distinctive feature: It lets drivers bid on a passenger’s business, with the wait time until the auto arrives as one of the factors involved. Drivers can also indicate when they will be available. In studying how passengers compare offers with different wait times and prices, the researchers see exactly how much people are paying not to wait, other things being equal. All told, they examined 1.9 million ride requests and 5.2 million bids.
“It’s like an eBay for taxis,” Salz says. “Instead of assigning the driver to you, drivers bid for the passengers’ business. With this, we can very directly observe how people make their choices. How they value time is revealed by the wait and the prices attached to that. In many settings we don’t observe that directly, so it’s a very clean comparison that rids the data of a lot of confounds.”
The data set allows the researchers to examine many aspects of personalized pricing and the way it affects the transportation market in this setting. That produces a set of insights on its own, along with the findings on time valuation.
Ultimately, the researchers found that the elasticity of prices — how much they change — ranged from four to 10 times as much as the elasticity of wait times, meaning people are more keen on avoiding high prices.
The team found the overall value of time in this context is $13.21 per hour for users of the ride-share platform, though the researchers note that is not a universal measure of the value of time and is dependent on this setting. The study also shows that bids increase during work hours.
Additionally, the research reveals a split among consumers: The top quartile of bids placed a value on time that is 3.5 times higher than the value of the bids in the bottom quartile.
Then there is still the question of how much personalized pricing benefits consumers, providers, or both. The numbers, again, show that the overall surplus increases — meaning business benefits — while the consumer surplus is reduced. However, the data show an even more nuanced picture. Because the top quartile of bidders are paying substantially more to avoid longer waits, they are the ones who absorb the brunt of the costs in this kind of system.
“The majority of consumers still benefit,” Salz says. “The consumers hurt by this have a very high willingness to pay. The source of welfare gains is that most consumers can be brought into the market. But the flip side is that the firm, by knowing every consumer’s choke point, can extract the surplus. Welfare goes up, the ride-sharing platform captures most of that, and drivers — interestingly — also benefit from the system, although they do not have access to the data.”
Economic theory and other transportation studies alone would not necessarily have predicted the study’s results and various nuances.
“It was not clear a priori whether consumers benefit,” Salz observes. “That is not something you would know without going to the data.”
While this study might hold particular interest for firms and others interested in transportation, mobility, and ride-sharing, it also fits into a larger body of economics research about information in markets and how its presence, or absence, influences consumer behavior, consumer welfare, and the functioning of markets.
“The [research] umbrella here is really information about where to find trading partners and what their willingness to pay is,” Salz says. “What I’m broadly interested in is these types of information frictions and how they determine market outcomes, how they might impact consumers, and be used by firms.”
The research was supported, in part, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the National Science Foundation.
© Credit: MIT News; iStock
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