MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - On Campus and Around the world

Writing for The Daily Caller, Jesse Hamel Executive MBA ’25 - a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, an AC-130 gunship combat aviator, a former Air Force Special Operations Command drone squadron commander and founder of VICTUS Technologies - makes the case for the Department of War sponsoring graduate-level education and fellowships at MIT. “The talent base and the operational seriousness of MIT made VICTUS possible,” Hamel writes. “My time on [the MIT] campus from 2023 through 2025 reinforced that view. As a veteran, I encountered respect for my service alongside some of the most demanding technical and academic standards I have ever faced.” 

Sloan Senior lecturer Ben Shields speaks with GBH reporter Rafael Nam about why tickets for the World Cup opening match have not yet sold out. “The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is,” says Shields. 

Moving Health, a D-Lab spinout founded by MIT students, tackles maternal mortality in rural Ghana by decreasing transport time to hospitals. CNN reporter Maya Baylis highlights how Moving Health’s tricycle ambulances were designed to navigate narrow, rough roads in areas where ambulances are scarce or impractical. “Sometimes the biggest barrier to surviving a medical emergency isn’t the lack of hospitals,” says Emily Young ‘18, CEO and co-founder of Moving Health, “it’s being able to get there in time.”

Prof. Richard Binzel goes interstellar and chats with Boston Globe reporter Nick Stoico about the science behind the meteor that exploded over Cape Cod Bay recently, noting that the event offered a rare opportunity for people to connect with a phenomenon that usually goes unnoticed. “It’s great when people find a connection to the greater universe,” said Binzel. “It’s a great perspective to think beyond the surface of the Earth.”

Using an ordinary fridge magnet to control a microrobot might sound like fiction, but a team of MIT researchers engineered a technique to 3D-print magnetically activated robots and other materials that could be used in medicine and more. MIT graduate students Andrew Chen and Rachel Sun joined Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s Curiosity Desk to discuss their work and inspiration. Sun explains that ultimately, they’re “trying to develop these materials for everyday uses that push the frontiers of what’s possible and how we can help people in society.” 

MIT engineers have developed a “two-in-one propulsion system that can fuel both traditional chemical thrusters and electrical thrusters, combining speed and power with slower, more precise maneuverability for small satellites,” reports Passant Rabie for Gizmodo. “The new propulsion system would allow small satellites to carry both thrusters using the same propellant, opening the door for cheaper, smaller spacecraft to explore beyond Earth orbit,” Rabie explains. 

The Economist reports on the growing popularity of ingestible sensors, including work at MIT where researchers are using the devices to “sense internal conditions and act on what they find.”  The MIT team “received $66m from ARPA-H, a federal grant system that pushes high-risk, transformative health-care technology, to develop ingestible devices for the oral delivery of mRNA treatments.” 

In a series of papers published in the Journal of Plasma Physics, researchers from MIT, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) and other universities were able to validate the science and feasibility behind CFS’ plans to build a 400-megawatt fusion power plant, reports Timothy Gardner for Reuters.