In the Media

MIT researchers have developed BIOSENTER, a soft robot inspired by the movement of snakes, “designed to navigate the twists and turns of the small intestine [that] could perform real-time imaging, deliver drugs, and take biopsies deep within the digestive tract,” reports Inside Precision Medicine. “The robot’s tube-like body contains four inflatable chambers that can expand or contract in different combinations, allowing the robot to move forward and bend in different directions. A hollow central channel allows the robot to carry endoscopic tools, including a camera for imaging, a fluid sprayer for drug delivery, and clips for collecting tissue samples or removing small polyps.” 

Arcaea, a biotech beauty company founded by CEO Jasmina Aganovic ‘09, has partnered with the actress and producer Jennifer Lawrence to develop mes°, a new haircare brand, reports Flavio Gomez for the Los Angelos Times. “A TED Talk by Aganovic, an MIT-trained chemical and biological engineer exploring how biology can open new possibilities in beauty, prompted the two to connect and eventually develop the brand,” notes Gomez. “Instead of treating each [hair] concern as an isolated problem, the brand looks to biology for ways to address it.”  

Writing for Fortune, MIT Innovation Fellow David Siegel SM ’86, PhD ’91, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques examine the timeline of the current investment boom in AI infrastructure. “The market may already have overbuilt relative to the payback window that data center financing assumes. Much of what corporate America spends on AI today funds exploratory pilots,” Siegel, Sonnenfeld and Henriques note. “A pullback to reassess is not only the likely next step, but a healthy one.”  

MIT researchers have designed LUCID, a thin, flexible and implantable device “that pairs a slow-release drug reservoir with tiny ultrasound transducers, aiming to help prevent glioblastoma from coming back after surgery,” writes Munis Raza for Interesting Engineering. “The transducers generate ultrasound waves right at the tip of the needle, helping drug molecules diffuse farther into [brain] tissue after release,” notes Raza. “Doctors could implant the device during surgery and let it gradually release drugs to kill remaining tumor cells.” 

A team of astronomers, including scientists from MIT, have developed Lumina, a complex computer simulation that “shows how the first galaxies, stars and other astral phenomena developed and evolved over the ensuing millennia,” reports Eric Lagatta for USA Today. “Lumina's simulations begin around 45 million years after the ‘Big Bang,’ when the universe is still ensconced in a cosmic dark age, as neutral hydrogen shrouded the universe, preventing light and other forms of radiation from traveling,” writes Lagatta. “The simulation covers a massive patch of the early universe, spanning about 1.6 billion light-years, as phenomena like dark matter, gas and stars form and grow.” 

Live on GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” hosted by Edgar B. Herwick III, Prof. Adam Berinsky joins Boston Globe reporter Aaron Pressman and Kate Gage from the Cooperative Lab Project for a conversation about the impact of AI on the 2026 midterm elections. Berinsky notes that in the runup to the midterms, voters “need to be careful about what they are paying attention to. I think we want to separate out what is new to AI and what is just communication in general,” says Berinsky. “In elections where margins are tens of thousands of votes in states that can determine the presidency, even really small effects matter.”  

Research Scientist Judah Cohen joins Fox News to discuss the potential for a historic, massive polar vortex disruption, or early season weakening, that “could send atmospheric impacts rippling across the planet in the weeks or even months to come.” Cohen says, “this will, I think almost undoubtedly, be the largest, earliest disruption of the polar vortex on record. What the impacts could be on a regional basis is really hard to know. Everything is possible. Traditionally it [the disruption] is thought to bring colder and snowier weather to the eastern U.S. about two weeks after the event kind of peaks, but in recent history that has not been the case.”  

Prof. Suraj Cheema joins Edgar B. Herwick, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss the functionality and global development of computer chips. “The know-how of how to make these chips is very specialized,” says Cheema. “Imagine there’s 100 steps in the process, not just that printer that costs a few $100 million, just all these other kinds of steps that go along with it. We have 20 million transistors in this little chip. We want them all to work. They all have to work [for the chip to function].”  

Prof. Gary Gensler speaks with “Bloomberg Surveillance” hosts Tom Keene and Paul Sweeney about how the current AI investment boom may impact the U.S. economy. “You can be positive about the technology and still say our capital markets tend to overfund in exuberance,” says Gensler. “I think that we will have a deceleration of this AI boom, and then some form of a reversal in the next 18 to 30 months. And the question really, to me, is a little bit about timing: when and then how deep it [the deceleration] is. I think the depth of it is going to be dependent on how much debt is in the system, where it is [and] who holds it.”  

Senior Research Scientist Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab discusses generational differences in aging and achieving life milestones for a Fortune article by reporter Nick Lichtenberg. Currently, “we’re creating new life stages, or we’re extending life stages that used to be done in short order,” says Coughlin. “The real generation gap is about expectations. Not only do [generations] expect to live longer, but they expect to live better.” 

Undergraduate student Melody Chen, a former MIT Research Science Institute Scholar, has been named in the 2026 class of U.S. Presidential Scholars, writes Forbes’ Michael T. Nietzel. “This year’s group consists of 161 outstanding high school seniors, who were selected for their accomplishments in academics, the arts, and career and technical education fields as well as for commitments to community service and leadership,” notes Nietzel. “Being named a U.S. Presidential Scholar is considered one of the nation’s most prestigious academic awards for high school graduates.”  

Prof. Eric Klopfer, co-chair of MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training, speaks with Newsweek’s Amanda Greenwood and Hollie Silverman about homework in an era of AI. “Students need experience to understand and regulate their AI behaviors,” says Klopfer. “They need to learn how it can augment, rather than replace, their learning, and decide how to use it.”  

The Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney spotlights the “Bounce juggler (W.C. Fields),” a machine modeled after the comedian W.C. Fields, on display at the MIT Museum, that juggles three metal balls and was created by the late Prof. Claude Shannon SM ’40, PhD ’40. “It’s one thing to be known as ‘the father of information theory,’ as Shannon is. His work in mathematics, electrical engineering, cryptography, and computer science was that important,” writes Feeney. “But Shannon was also a chess player, unicyclist, juggler, and inventor. Shannon combined his talent for engineering and imagination with his love of humor and juggling in the ‘Bounce juggler.’”  

Prof. Charles Stewart III, director of MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, speaks to NPR’s “Morning Edition” about the surge in early voting among Americans in the midterm elections. The surge is reflecting “the enthusiasm of voters, but also, I think it has to be understood that a lot of this activity is also generated by the campaigns, getting out and motivating their voters to get to the polls or to return their mail-in-ballots,” says Stewart. “The political science research suggests that people who are voting early would have voted on Election Day had that mode not been available to them.” 

Forbes reporter Marshall Shepherd highlights the Probabilistic Bias Correction tool, a new AI system developed by MIT researchers that could extend weather forecasting predictability beyond two weeks.