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Working to automate nuclear plant operations

For nuclear to be considered as a viable clean energy source, it has to be competitively priced and economical to produce. Lauren Fortier, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), is helping the cause by developing remote operation protocols for autonomous control of nuclear plants. After an undergraduate degree in materials […]

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Following the questions where they lead

Ever since she was a child playing on her family’s farmland in Wisconsin, Bailey Flanigan was guided by her own selective, yet wide-ranging, curiosity. Describing her young self as spirited and a bit unruly, she directed her energies to everything from building booby traps to doing experimental construction projects to exploring an intense interest in

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Helping AI models to meet the real world

Systems using artificial intelligence to enhance forecasting, planning, and decision-making in businesses have been proliferating in recent years, but in many cases, they lack the detailed, specific information about the organization itself, limiting the usefulness of those tools. Devavrat Shah, a principal investigator at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), faculty member with the

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When silence is safer: a review and decision-theoretic framework for LLM abstention in healthcare

Large language models (LLMs) are designed to generate answers to user prompts, which often drives them to respond even when uncertainty is high, information is incomplete, or a refusal would be more appropriate. In healthcare, this tendency can be dangerous: confidently stated but inaccurate medical advice can cause significant harm, making the ability to abstain

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Building AI models that understand chemical principles

Among all of the possible chemical compounds, it’s estimated that between 1020 and 1060 may hold potential as small-molecule drugs.Evaluating each of those compounds experimentally would be far too time-consuming for chemists. So, in recent years, researchers have begun using artificial intelligence to help identify compounds that could make good drug candidates. One of those researchers is MIT

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Games people — and machines — play: Untangling strategic reasoning to advance AI

Gabriele Farina grew up in a small town in a hilly winemaking region of northern Italy. Neither of his parents had college degrees, and although both were convinced they “didn’t understand math,” Farina says, they bought him the technical books he wanted and didn’t discourage him from attending the science-oriented, rather than the classical, high

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Improving understanding with language

When she was a child, MIT senior Olivia Honeycutt would spend summers on her grandparents’ farm in rural Alabama outside Birmingham. The practical and cultural differences between farm and city life became more pronounced by comparison. “Life and the way we lived it slowed down on the farm,” she says. “It was a nice change

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A philosophy of work

What makes work valuable? Michal Masny, the NC Ethics of Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in the MIT Department of Philosophy, investigates the role work plays in our lives and its impact on our well-being. Masny sees numerous benefits to work, beyond a paycheck. It’s a space for people to develop excellence at something, make a social contribution, gain

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Working to advance the nuclear renaissance

Today, there are 94 nuclear reactors operating in the United States, more than in any other country in the world, and these units collectively provide nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. That is a major accomplishment, according to Dean Price, but he believes that our country needs much more out of nuclear energy, especially

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Seeing sounds

Growing up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his passion for creating music. “There are no bands in Mexican public schools,” he says. While some families could pay for instruments and lessons, others, like Salcedo’s, were less fortunate.“I’ve always loved music,” he continues. “I was a listener.” Salcedo, the Alex Rigopulos (1992)

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