The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority moves hundreds of thousands of people across Greater Boston each day—thanks to a vast system of buses, trains, and ferries that depends on coordination among thousands of employees. In this storied transit system, history runs deep: The Green Line still passes through the country’s oldest subway tunnels, built beneath the […]
A photogenic green-eyed Russian Blue named Petra might just be the world’s most sequenced cat. Petra was rescued from an animal shelter in Reno, Nevada, by Charlie Lieu, MBA ’05, SM ’05, a data whiz, serial entrepreneur, investor, and cofounder of Darwin’s Ark, a community science nonprofit focused on pet genetics. Since becoming Lieu’s furry
Launching from the Lab: Building a Deep-Tech StartupBy Lita Nelsen ’64, SM ’66, SM ’79, former director of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, and Maureen StancikBoyce, SM ’91, SM ’93, PhD ’95, with Sophie Hagerty MIT PRESS, 2026, $35 Empty Vessel: The Story of the Global Economy in One BargeBy Ian Kumekawa, lecturer in historyPENGUIN RANDOM
In the horticultural world, some vines are especially grabby. As they grow, the woody tendrils can wrap around obstacles with enough force to pull down fences and trees. Inspired by vines’ twisty tenacity, engineers at MIT and Stanford University have developed a robotic gripper that can snake around and lift a variety of objects and
Vine-inspired robot fingers can reach out and grab someone Read More »
Antibody treatments for cancer and other diseases are typically delivered intravenously, requiring patients to go to a hospital and potentially spend hours receiving infusions. Now Professor Patrick Doyle and his colleagues have taken a major step toward reformulating antibodies so that they can be injected with a standard syringe, making treatment easier and more accessible.
Reformulated antibodies could be injected for easier treatment Read More »
Researchers at MIT and Microsoft have used artificial intelligence to create molecular sensors that could detect early signs of cancer via a urine test. The researchers developed an AI model to design short proteins that are targeted by enzymes called proteases, which are overactive in cancer cells. Nanoparticles coated with these proteins, called peptides, can
As people age, their immune function weakens. Owing to shrinkage of the thymus, where T cells normally mature and diversify, populations of these immune cells become smaller and can’t react to pathogens as quickly. But researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute have now found a way to overcome that decline by temporarily programming cells
In the vision disorder amblyopia (or “lazy eye”), impaired vision in one eye early in life causes neural connections in the brain’s visual system to shift toward supporting the other eye, leaving the amblyopic eye less capable even if the original impairment is corrected. Current interventions don’t work after infancy and early childhood, when the
MIT researchers have developed a new method for designing 3D structures that can spring up from a flat sheet of interconnected tiles with a single pull of a string. The technique could be used to make foldable bike helmets and medical devices, emergency shelters and field hospitals for disaster zones, and much more. Mina Konaković
Just pull a string to turn these tile patterns into useful 3D structures Read More »
For the last few years, the AI world has followed a simple rule: if you want a Large Language Model (LLM) to solve a harder problem, make its Chain-of-Thought (CoT) longer. But new research from the University of Virginia and Google proves that ‘thinking long’ is not the same as ‘thinking hard’. The research team
