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

Scientific American reporter Bob Henderson spotlights how graduate student Jiaruo Li and Prof. Riccardo Comin are developing a new device for storing digital data using “an exotic kind of magnetism discovered in the same lab the previous year to make the device faster and more energy-efficient than any competing technology.” 

Prof. Xuanhe Zhao speaks with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about his team’s work developing an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real time and can communicate device these motions to a robot or a virtual environment. “For the future of human society, humanized robots will do lots of different work for us. For that work, we need a dexterous robotic hand,” explains Zhao. “We believe this ultrasound wristband, based on variable imaging, could be the future of really knowing the human hand motions.”

Prof. Daron Acemoglu joins Slate’s “Money Talks” podcast to explain his research into pro-worker technologies and how we can not only avoid the AI job apocalypse but also improve workers’ lives by shifting the goal of AI from automation to collaboration. “Artificial intelligence is quite different than human intelligence,” says Acemgou. “And when two things are different, a natural way to combine them is in a complimentary way, not try to replace everything that one does with one type of intelligence using the other type of.”

President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif joins Rob Schmitz of NPR’s All Things Considered about how the U.S. can regain its edge as the global leader in science and innovation. Reif makes the case for investing in basic research in the country, and finding “a way so that the innovative ideas coming out of our labs don't end up in another country like China, that we develop them here by giving them a longer runway for them to materialize and make an impact.”

Prof. Susan Solomon joins Rachel Feltman on Scientific American’s Science Quickly podcast to discuss her experience researching the cause and solution for the Antarctic ozone hole in the 1980s. “Amazingly, we can show, with 95 percent confidence, now the Antarctic ozone hole is beginning to heal,” says Solomon, who published a paper on that topic last year. “That was a real incredible moment for me…I was there in 1986, and in 2026 I saw this paper appear that actually shows that we can be confident we’re seeing recovery.”

A new study from MIT researchers shows that plants can ‘hear’ rain coming. “Plants have external sensing resulting from cellular structures called statoliths, which shift and settle at the bottom of plant cells, while assisting the organisms in detecting changes in stability and position,” reports Rob Taub for NewsNation.

Prof. Shu-Heng Shao was one of 15 recipients of the New Horizon Prizes, a Breakthrough Prize that is awarded to early-career physicists and mathematicians. “Shao worked alongside other researchers to develop the theory of “generalized symmetries” in quantum field theory, which helped create a “new language” of possibilities in the field beyond the traditional understanding of symmetries,” reports Bryan Hecht for The Boston Globe.

In discussion with Deni Ellis Bechard for Scientific American, Prof. Emeritus Rodney Brooks shares his thoughts on a robot that ran a half marathon faster than a human. “When you see a performance of an AI system or a robot on one thing, that fools us into thinking that it has the same general competence as a human,” says Brooks. “And that’s a mistake people make.” 

Prof. Andrew Lo speaks with with Greg Iacurci at CNBC about using AI for personal finances. “One of the things about [large language models] that I find particularly concerning is that no matter what you ask it, it’ll always come back with an answer that sounds authoritative, even if it’s not,” said Lo. ″[People] should be using AI for financial planning — but it’s how they use it that’s important.” 

Prof. Thomas Malone and his colleagues at MIT Sloan have developed a way to analyze work, which may help predict which jobs are likely most vulnerable to AI. The researchers found that “AI mainly threatens workers who manage information. But not all of them,” writes Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Malone noted that some industries demand human empathy, a sense of ethics, and a knack for teamwork. That’s why he thinks health care jobs are relatively safe.” 

MIT scientists have developed a new model, dubbed "PlanetWaves," that predicts wave behavior on different planets, showing that the "smallest gust of wind on Titan could generate huge, roiling waves across seas of hydrocarbons," reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “PlanetWaves is far more than a novel simulator,” writes Paul. “Calculating fluid behaviors on distant planets and moons could help inform engineers building new spacecraft and probes.”