Prof. Anette “Peko” Hosoi and Andy Harland of Loughborough University lace up their shoes to chat about how runners can optimize their marathon performance with Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s Curiosity Desk. The Boston Marathon “is an iconic race and it is challenging for a lot of different reasons,” Hosoi notes. “Boston starts on a downhill, so you feel great…but if you are not managing your energy by the time you get to Heartbreak Hill at mile 20 you are going to be suffering.”
MIT researchers have developed a new traffic navigation system that more accurately reflects travel time by including parking data, reports Catherine Parotta for Boston 25. “What we can do is figure out if you’re best off trying this parking lot first, even if it’s farther than the closest parking lot,” explains Prof. Cathy Wu. Graduate student Cameron Hickert adds that: “We hope that this can help people make better decisions."
Prof. Richard Binzel speaks with CBS Boston about the success of the Artemis II mission and the future of space exploration. "It's exciting we have humans back in space again," Binzel shared. "It's a real test of a spaceflight system. Surviving reentry and landing safely. That's the real accomplishment here. Showing we can go to the moon but also come back safely."
Jennifer Eagen of WCVB-TV highlights MIT Space Week, an annual series of events across MIT focused on space exploration and the space industry. Eagan notes that one of the themes for this year’s event is the space economy. "Having humans land on the moon, having built a base on the moon, learning how to operate there so eventually we can go to Mars," said keynote speaker Terry Virts, former commander of the International Space Station. "I would love to see all those things happen that would be a huge success for America and for the world, for all of humanity."
MIT researchers have developed an ultrasound wristband that can transmit a user’s motions to a robotic hand or a virtual environment, reports Mack Degeurin for Popular Science. “Volunteers wearing the device could direct the robotic hand to grab tennis balls, make hand signs, and even play notes on a piano,” Degeurin explains. “That same technique can also be applied to digital environments, which means future wearers could control a phone screen without ever touching it, or interact with virtual reality in ways that feel more immersive.”
A new study by Prof. Daniel Varon and his colleagues has found that “parts of the U.S. may be emitting much more of one of the most potent greenhouse gases than previously thought,” reports Julia Jacobo for ABC News. “Satellite observations suggest that methane emissions in urban areas may be ‘widely underestimated’ – up to 80% higher than noted in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Greenhouse Gas Inventory,” explains Jacobo.
According to the 2026 QS World University Rankings, MIT has been earned a No. 1 global ranking in 12 subject areas, including chemical engineering; chemistry; civil and structural engineering; computer science and information systems; data science and artificial intelligence; electrical and electronic engineering; engineering and technology; linguistics; materials science; mechanical, aeronautical, and manufacturing engineering; mathematics; and physics and astronomy, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
A study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has taken a deeper look at the “brief, frustrating moments after a bad night’s sleep when you simply can’t focus,” reports Bill Murphy for Inc. “The study suggested that the brain is juggling competing priorities,” explains Murphy. “During sleep, it performs what amounts to internal housekeeping, including fluid movement linked to clearing metabolic waste. During waking hours, it prioritizes attention and responsiveness. When sleep is cut short, those maintenance processes don’t disappear. Instead, they begin to intrude into waking life in short bursts, and attention drops at the same time.”
Designboom reporter Kat Barandy spotlights how a new video “traces the technical process behind ‘Remembering the Future,’ the woven work by Janet Echelman at the MIT Museum.” The piece, which was developed during Echelman’s MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST) residency in collaboration with Prof. Caitlin Mueller, “uses braided fibers to translate climate data into a suspended artwork.” The MIT Museum operates, in the words of Museum Director Michael John Gorman, as “a playground for ideas, as a living lab.”
While excavating “a small room inside a lavish home in ancient Pompeii,” researchers from MIT found the walls were covered with Egyptian blue paint, a bright blue pigment estimated to “have cost more than half the annual salary of a Roman foot solider,” reports Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian Magazine.
Nature reporter Rachel Fieldhouse spotlights graduate student Lauren 'Ren' Ramlan’s work integrating the video game Doom into her research. Ramlan used “Escherichia coli bacteria to display a few frames of Doom,” explains Fieldhouse. “She attached a fluorescent protein to the bacterial cells that could be turned on or off, making them act like black and white pixels on a screen. She then translated and compressed the first few frames of Doom into black-and-white versions that matched the plate growing the cells. Ramlan says the project shows what living things can be engineered to do, and that bacteria are probably not suitable for computing or displaying images.”
Luana Lopes Lara '18 and Tarek Mansour '18, MNG '19, co-founders of prediction market firm Kalshi, have been named to the Forbes World’s Youngest Billionaires list, reports Simone Melvin for Forbes.
Researchers from MIT and other institutions uncovered the use of a “prized synthetic pigment imported from ancient Egypt” that was used to paint the walls of a home in ancient Pompeii, reports James Imam for The Times. “The quality of the decoration is unbelievable… It’s very rare, even unique, to find a completely blue sacrarium,” says Prof. Admir Masic. “These owners were really very, very wealthy.”
Researchers at MIT have developed an “AI-driven optimization method that works like ‘ChatGPT for spreadsheets’ – a tabular foundation model designed to handle spreadsheet-style data common in engineering design problems,” reports Gene Marks for Forbes. “The AI system identifies which design variables matter most and focuses search efforts on those, making problem solving less cumbersome,” writes Marks.
Prof. Sara Beery speaks with Smithsonian Magazine reporter Mike Bock about the benefits of AI use in ecological research. “There’s an increasing need to build strong machine learning skills directly in the ecological community,” says Beery. “These students don’t need to be AI researchers. But they do need access to the skills to apply these techniques to their research problems.”