The tenured engineers of 2026
Ten faculty members have been granted tenure in five units across MIT’s School of Engineering.
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
When it comes to predicting people’s preferences, it pays to consider “the power of three”
MIT researchers provide a major upgrade to the nearly century-old idea of random utility models.
MIT affiliates win 2026 Hertz Foundation Fellowships
The fellowships in applied sciences, engineering, and mathematics recognize doctoral students who are pursuing solutions to the most pressing challenges in science and technology.
To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
A new kernel called Fractal gives researchers a cleaner view of what’s happening inside a processor, and has already surfaced previously unknown behavior in Apple’s M1.
Teaching AI agents to ask better questions by playing “Battleship”
MIT researchers use the classic game as a test bed for AI agents, finding a small AI model can outperform the biggest ones at 1 percent of the cost.
MIT researchers teach AI models to interpret charts
The new ChartNet training dataset could improve the accuracy of vision-language models that help analyze business trends or interpret scientific figures.
Justin Solomon appointed associate dean of engineering education
MIT faculty member in electrical engineering and computer science to focus on innovation in engineering education and new pedagogical approaches.
MIT student Jack Carson named 2026 Udall Scholar
The Udall Foundation identifies and rewards future leaders in tribal public policy, Indigenous health policy, and the environment.
Method for stress-testing cloud computing algorithms helps avoid network failures
The “MetaEase” technique provides a heads-up to potential scenarios that could cause long wait-times or outages.
It took 40 years for technology to catch up to this zipper design
An old patent from MIT Professor Bill Freeman inspired the new “Y-zipper,” a three-sided fastener that snaps gear, robots, and art into shape at the push of a button.
MIT affiliates awarded 2026 Guggenheim Fellowships
Afreen Siddiqi, Kathleen Thelen, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan, along with alumna Kate Manne, are appointed to the 2026 class of “trail-blazing fellows.”
The MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab launches to shape the future of AI and quantum computing
Building on a long-standing MIT–IBM collaboration, the new lab will chart the convergence of AI, algorithms, and quantum computing.
Enabling privacy-preserving AI training on everyday devices
A new method could bring more accurate and efficient AI models to high-stakes applications like health care and finance, even in under-resourced settings.
MIT scientists build the world’s largest collection of Olympiad-level math problems, and open it to everyone
New dataset of 30,000-plus competition math problems from 47 countries gives AI researchers a harder test — and students worldwide a better training ground.
Teaching AI models to say “I’m not sure”
A new training method improves the reliability of AI confidence estimates without sacrificing performance, addressing a root cause of hallucination in reasoning models.