Sybil, a new AI tool developed by researchers from MIT and Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, “analyzes a single CT scan and generates a risk score predicting the likelihood of developing lung cancer over a period of up to six years,” reports Ivan Rodriguez for WCVB-TV. “In 2023, researchers reported that Sybil achieved an accuracy rate of 86% to 94% in distinguishing high-risk patients from low-risk patients within a year.”
Donlyn Lyndon, a former MIT professor who also served as head of MIT’s Department of Architecture and was known for his work designing an icon of modern architecture on a bluff in Northern California, has died at age 90, reports Penelope Green for The New York Times.
A new tool developed by MIT researchers could help violin designers test how an instrument might sound when certain dimensions or properties are changed without even pulling out a bow, reports Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica. The researchers crafted a virtual violin, “a computer simulation tool that can capture the precise physics of the instrument and even reproduce a realistic sound of a plucked string,” Ouellette explains.
Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, speaks with NPR’s Allison Aubrey about his team’s work developing the Longevity Preparedness Index, which is aimed at helping people create a comprehensive plan for aging. “We want to look at all those big and little things that we take for granted in life," Coughlin says. "We may expect things won't change, but when a big life transition comes along — whether it's retiring from a profession, a death or unexpected sickness — many people have unintentionally ignored some of the very decisions that could help us thrive.”
Cambridge Day reporter Zoe Beketova, a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, visits Prof. Xuanhe Zhao’s lab to get a hands-on look at the group’s ultrasound wristband that can map movements of the human body using sound waves, part of the group’s work aimed at changing “how we gather information from inside the body.” Says Zhao: “The mission of my lab is really merging humans with machines and AI. We believe there’s a huge opportunity [with] this interface.”
Forbes contributor Michael T. Nietzel spotlights the 120 new members and 25 international members elected by the National Academy of Sciences for 2026. Several MIT faculty members – including Professors Michale Fee, Gareth McKinley, Keith Nelson, Bengt Holmstrom and Catherine Wolfram – were selected.
Prof. Kate Brown speaks with Zoe Matthews of GBH about growing interest in urban gardening. Matthews highlights Brown’s course about cooperative agriculture at MIT, during which “her students produced an accessible how-to guide on starting an urban farm.”
Fortune reporter Preston Fore spotlights Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s remarks warning against using AI technologies to replace entry level jobs. “How else are people going to learn to do the job except via on-the-job learning and training apprenticeship?” said McAfee. “That’s how you learn to do difficult knowledge work is by helping somebody who’s good at that with the routine stuff. And when we put too much automation in that too quickly, we lose that apprenticeship ladder.”
Reporting for CNN, Caleb Hellerman spotlights how MIT computer scientists developed an AI program called Sybil that can “‘look’ at a single CT scan and generate a ‘risk score’ corresponding to the likelihood of the person developing cancer over any period up to six years.”
It may sound fishy, but Prof. Benedetto Marelli and postdoc Giorgio Rizzo have developed a method to up-cycle seafood waste into a coating for seeds that could help plants better withstand drought, while also creating more nutritious and sustainable crops. “It all starts with the idea that we need to find new ways to grow food and, in particular, find new ways to decrease the amount of fertilizers we use,” says Marelli.
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 Acemoglu. “And when two things are different, a natural way to combine them is in a complimentary way.”
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.”
President Emeritus L. Rafael Reif writes for The Boston Globe that with the advent of transformative AI, there is an urgent need for “a bilateral conversation between Washington and Beijing, focused on the shared dangers these technologies pose to each nation and to global stability. Both governments must work toward agreed guardrails, defining not just how this technology should be used but where it must never be applied. Red lines need to be defined, established, and agreed upon.”
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.”
Researchers at MIT have found that plants can sense the sound of rain before the water reaches them. “The sound of rain spurs rice seeds to sprout up to 40 percent faster than they would otherwise,” writes K.R. Callaway for Scientific American. “The results mark the first direct evidence that plants sense the sound of the world around them and respond to it.”