A study by MIT researchers finds “using scrubbers to treat exhaust from heavy fuel oil may offer environmental performance on par with, and in some areas superior to, burning low-sulfur fuels in maritime shipping,” reports Hassan Ahmed for Engineeringness. “The research provides data that could help policymakers and industry leaders better assess the comparative costs and benefits of available fuel options,” explains Ahmed.
Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School produced two new papers about the impact of a specific cytokine, or immune molecule, known as IL-17, on the brain when you’re sick. “Cytokines are well-known players in the immune response, helping to control inflammation and coordinate the responses of other immune cells,” reports Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. “A growing body of evidence suggests that some cytokines also influence the brain, leading to behavioral changes during illness.”
A team of researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School are “deciphering the action of small immune system proteins in the brain and showing how, by exciting or inhibiting populations of neurons, they modulate anxiety and social behaviors,” writes Soline Roy of Le Figaro.
Graduate students Chuck Downing and Zhichu Ren PhD '24 highlight the potential uses of AI in the research process, reports Amanda Heidt for Nature. “I didn’t know much going in, but I learnt quite a bit, and so I use these deep dives all the time now,” says Downing on using deep-research tools when approaching unfamiliar topics. “It’s better than anything else I’ve used so far at finding good papers and in presenting the information in a way that I can easily understand.”
Kodiak Brush '17 speaks with Fast Company reporter Jesus Diaz about his work tackling football helmet design. The Apache helmet Brush designed for Light Helmets is the “lightest on the market—and yet it has achieved the highest safety score ever recorded by Virginia Tech’s independent helmet testing lab.” Diaz notes that for Brush, “success isn’t measured by sales figures or accolades—it’s about changing how people think about football safety and avoiding traumatic brain injuries.”
Graduate student Will Parker joins USA Today’s The Excerpt host Dana Taylor to discuss his research on the impact of climate change on space satellites. “We're seeing a cooling effect in the upper atmosphere where most of our satellites are operating, and because of that cooling effect, we're seeing that the entire atmosphere is contracting, so it's retreating away from low Earth orbit where we rely on that atmosphere for drag on our satellites,” explains Parker. “The effect of that retreat, that shrinking of the atmosphere, is that it's not doing as good a job at cleaning out low Earth orbit, and again, we rely on that cleaning force because we have no other way to remove most of this debris.”
Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, speaks with Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto about the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance. “A great amount of innovation happens in academia. We have a longer view into the future,” says Chandrakasan. He adds that while companies like GE Vernova have “the ability to get products out quickly to scale up, to manufacture, we have the ability to think past the short-term. ... It’s super smart of them to surround themselves with this incredible talent in academia. That will allow us to make the kind of breakthroughs that will keep U.S. competitiveness at its peak.”
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new robot aimed at assisting first-responders called SPROUT (short for Soft Pathfinding Robotic Observation Unit), reports WHDH. The robot has a built-in camera and motion sensors so that first responders could “scope out a site, before sending rescue teams in to save survivors.” The robot operates with a “soft, air-inflated tube that unfolds into small spaces,” explains WHDH. “It can maneuver around sharp corners in disaster zones.”
Biology graduate Katharine Dexter McCormick, SB 1904, a philanthropist, a pivotal force in the fight for women's suffrage and chief funder of the science that led to the birth control pill, is included in the New York Times’ Overlooked series, which features obituaries of “remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.” Rejecting societal conventions, McCormick “successfully challenged a rule that female students had to wear hats at all times, arguing that they posed a fire hazard in the science labs,” writes Katharine Q. Seelye.
Jon Arizti Sanz PhD '24 and postdoctoral associate Ren Hao Soon have been named to the 2025 cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. “This year’s class of 32 fellows are all recent PhDs who’ve been identified as some of the most outstanding early-career scientists in the world,” explains Nietzel.
Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber spotlights a paper by Prof. David Autor that finds import tariffs have had little effect on job creation and preservation in the U.S., particularly in parts of the country with tariff-protected industries. Autor and his colleagues found “manufacturing employment didn’t increase, though it also didn't fall (other research found that U.S. companies had a hard time selling more products abroad, which may help explain why manufacturers didn't add jobs),” Weber explains. “Worse than that, retaliatory tariffs from trading partners led to job losses, especially in agriculture.”
“AT MIT innovation ranges from awe-inspiring technology to down-to-earth creativity,” notes Chronicle during a visit to campus to peek behind the scenes at the innovations underway at the Institute. Classes taught by Prof. Erik Demaine are a “mix of rigorous math and creative collaboration,” host Anthony Everett explains, highlighting how Demaine’s work in computational origami has found its way into practical applications in such fields as medicine, architecture and space exploration. “I think origami provides a really powerful tool for making transformable shapes,” Demaine relates.
Chronicle visits MIT to learn more about how the Institute “nurtures groundbreaking efforts, reminding us that creativity and science thrive together, inspiring future advancements in engineering, medicine, and beyond.” Prof. Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov discuss their planetary defense efforts aimed at identifying small asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, and Prof. Canan Dağdeviren demonstrates her work developing ultrasound devices to detect the earliest stages of breast cancer. “Big ideas have a way of breaking out of conventional boundaries," says Chronicle host Anthony Everett, "just part of what makes MIT one giant laboratory of groundbreaking ideas."
The US Air Force has renewed a longstanding contract for the continued operation of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, reports Don Seiffert for Boston Business Journal. Lincoln Laboratory’s research is “essential to a robust defense sector and to addressing the rapidly evolving nature of world conflict,” says Ian Waitz, MIT’s vice president for research. “Its rapid prototyping has saved the lives of U.S. service members and supported responses to domestic crises.” He adds that research at Lincoln also “goes to the private sector, enhancing both the nation’s technological advantage and its manufacturing prowess.”
Chronicle visits Prof. Skylar Tibbits and the Self-Assembly Lab to see how they are embedding intelligence into the materials around us, including furniture, clothing and buildings. Prof. Caitlin Mueller and graduate student Sandy Curth are digging into eco-friendly construction with programmable mud by “taking a low-cost material and a really fast manufacturing system to make buildings out of very, very low climate impact materials.” Says Tibbits: “MIT is a really wild place, and most people know of it for its technical expertise…But what I am really inspired by is on the creative end, the design spectrum. I think the mix of those two is super special.” He adds: “We can ask the right questions and discover new science, and we can also solve the right problems through engineering.”