MIT faculty, alumni receive 2025-26 American Physical Society honors
Two faculty and six additional alumni win top APS awards and prizes; four faculty and 12 additional alumni named APS Fellows.
Department
Physics
Multitasking quantum sensors can measure several properties at once
The devices represent a key step toward practical quantum sensing, with applications in biomedical sensing, materials characterization, and more.
Physicists zero in on the mass of the fundamental W boson particle
The team’s ultra-precise measurement confirms the Standard Model’s predictions.
Electrons in moiré crystals explore higher-dimensional quantum worlds
MIT physicists have discovered 3D “moiré crystals” that simulate four-dimensional quantum materials to a T.
Two physicists and a curious host walk into a studio…
On GBH’s new show The Curiosity Desk, MIT LIGO researchers revel in the beauties of fundamental discovery science and MIT astronomers talk planetary defense.
“Near-misses” in particle accelerators can illuminate new physics, study finds
Physicists discovered new properties of the strong force by analyzing what happens when light-speed particles skim by each other.
QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 12 subjects for 2026
The Institute also ranks second in seven subject areas.
3 Questions: On the future of AI and the mathematical and physical sciences
Professor Jesse Thaler describes a vision for a two-way bridge between artificial intelligence and the mathematical and physical sciences — one that promises to advance both.
How Joseph Paradiso’s sensing innovations bridge the arts, medicine, and ecology
From early motion-sensing platforms to environmental monitoring, the professor and head of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences has turned decades of cross-disciplinary research into real-world impact.
New catalog more than doubles the number of gravitational-wave detections made by LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observatories
The latest crop of space-time wobbles includes a variety of heavy, fast-spinning, and lopsided colliding black holes.
MIT faculty, alumni named 2026 Sloan Research Fellows
Annual award honors early-career researchers for creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments.
Terahertz microscope reveals the motion of superconducting electrons
For the first time, the new scope allowed physicists to observe terahertz “jiggles” in a superconducting fluid.
MIT engineers design structures that compute with heat
By leveraging excess heat instead of electricity, microscopic silicon structures could enable more energy-efficient thermal sensing and signal processing.
Study: The infant universe’s “primordial soup” was actually soupy
MIT physicists observed the first clear evidence that quarks create a wake as they speed through quark-gluon plasma, confirming the plasma behaves like a liquid.
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero wins BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award
MIT physicist shares 400,000-euro award for influential work on “magic-angle” graphene.