In the Media

GBH Curiosity Desk host Edgar B. Herwick III comes to MIT for a scoop of science, daring Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero to embark on a twisty challenge: describing his work in the field of twistronics in the amount of time it takes to eat a soft serve outside the Eastern Edge Food Hall. “We were just curious,” says Jarillo-Herrero of the inspiration for his work. “We have never been able to change the angle between materials. Whenever you explore or look at something where you’ve never been able to do it, interesting things are going to happen.” 

Prof. Raphael Zufferey and his colleagues developed a winged robot that can swim underwater and fly through the air, writes New York Times reporter K.R. Callaway. The robot was inspired by data from nearly 100 species of diving birds. “There was a very good chance that this [design] would have not been possible at all,” says Zufferey. “I took that risk because I believed that if birds could do it, with good engineering we might also be able to.” 

USA Today reporter Anthony Thompson explains that researchers from MIT, UMass Amherst and the Center for Coastal Studies have found evidence of invasive Manila clam reproduction at multiple sites from Boston Harbor to Cape Cod. "We do need more research to understand the Manila clam’s potential effects on the shellfishing industry and ecological communities," says Research Scientist Carolina Bastidas. "There could also be positive impacts." 

Fast Company’s Adele Peters spotlights “Project Obsidian,” a new geothermal power plant developed by MIT spinout Quaise Energy. The findings of former Senior Research Engineer Paul Woskov helped Quaise develop their tech. “Paul’s epiphany was realizing that if we can use the same energy to heat plasmas to millions of degrees Celsius to get fusion, why not use that for heating and drilling through rock at a much more modest temperature?” says Matthew Houde, Quaise co-founder.  

The Guardian’s David Kohn points to a study by Prof. Siniša Hrvatin that proposes targeting the preoptic area of the brain to induce torpor (a hibernation-like state) as a solution for astronauts to survive long term space travel. “Key aspects of the circuit appear to be conserved across different animals,” says Hrvatin. “I think we can use it to modify metabolism.” 

Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Washington Post reporter Benjamin Guggenheim about his views on advancing AI, and how the technology might impact the labor market over the next decade. “What we saw at the end of ‘25 and the beginning of ‘26 was an acceleration. I think the agentic AI models are certainly much better in terms of a number of tasks, such as coding and other sort of simple cognitive tasks,” says Acemoglu. 

Writing for the Financial Times, Prof. Carlo Ratti makes the case that “the answer to imperfect peer review is better peer review, not political supervision.” Ratti shares: “Replacing scientific judgment with political alignment risks undermining the very engine of discovery. Faced with the risk that a project could be cancelled when the political weather turns, the rational researcher abandons the ambitious idea for the safe one.” 

MIT researchers have created a new building design model that could enable engineers to construct buildings and bridges that use less materials, writes Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli. “Traditional topology optimization essentially starts with a blank space and tries to figure out at each point in this blank space: ‘Should there be material,’ ‘should there not be material’ from an efficiency standpoint,” says Prof. Josephine Carstensen. “Our approach populates the space with a bunch of lines that are instead candidates for ‘should there be material’ or ‘should there not be material.’ By using this line approach, we have the opportunity to have more control.” 

Scientific American’s Joseph Howlett highlights how Lecturer Franco Rossi helped discover the name of ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” which was inscribed in a 1,000-year-old chamber beneath Guatemala. “Rossi showed how the markings on a particular scrap of plaster could be seen as a sort of celestial chronology; the team then reconstructed how the scraps’ symbols tabulated the time it took for planets such as Mars and Venus to come back to the same position, relative to the sun,” writes Howlett.  

In an opinion piece for the Boston Globe, Research Scientist Jim Aliosi advocates for reliable public bus service along Blue Hill Avenue in Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood. “Each day more than 30,000 riders use one of the bus routes using Blue Hill Avenue, and each day they collectively lose 3,000 hours of precious time due to traffic congestion and impediments like double parking,” writes Aliosi, “Bus rapid transit will change all that in this decade.”  

Lecturer Franco Rossi is spotlighted by National Geographic reporter Taylor Mitchell Brown for deciphering the name of ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox,” found inscribed in the mural room at the Maya site of Xultún in Guatemala. “You can look at some of these texts forever, and it won't click,” says Rossi. “Then, one day you see it, and it just clicks.” 

In a Science article by reporter Laura Martín Agudelo, Lecturer Franco Rossi delves into the discovery of the autograph of the ancient Maya mathematician, Sak Tahn Waax, or “White-Chested Fox” in Xultun, Guatemala. “[T]here’s good evidence for codex book production [at Xultun],” says Rossi. “So if there’s going to be a name … this would be the most logical place.” 

As an alternative to sticky electrode pads, Visiting Research Scientist Ankan Dutta helped develop a safe and reliable polymer electrode that can be painted right onto the skin to track muscle activity, heart rate, and brain waves with 95.1% consistency, explains Gizmodo reporter Matthew Phelan. “[E]lectrodes can be designed with cartoon patterns, which may reduce anxiety and improve acceptance among pediatric users by making EP [electrophysiology] monitoring less intimidating,” the researchers suggest.  
 

Writing for the Observer, Michael John Gorman, director of the MIT Museum, points to the 1976 Cambridge Experimentation Review Board, a group of citizens tasked with weighing the risks and benefits of DNA splicing technology, as a solution to modern debates over AI. “The dominant assumption in the AI debate is that there are only two options: reckless acceleration or fearful prohibition,” writes Gorman. “Cambridge in 1976 proved there is a third path, and that it runs through the public rather than around it.” 

Bloomberg’s Daniel Moss features a paper by Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. David Autor that finds lower birthrates and aging populations between 1970 and 2020 have increased the average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per worker. “Our findings challenge the prevailing pessimism: lower birth rates, and the aging and shrinking populations they have produced, have raised rather than lowered GDP per worker during these decades,” says Acemoglu.