Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS)

Margaret Hamilton, “who led the 100-person team [at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab] that wrote the onboard software for the Apollo missions, guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to a safe landing on the moon,” died on Sept. 30, reports Trip Gabriel for The New York Times. “Her skills led to her promotion to director of software engineering on the project, which developed the two 70-pound onboard computers for the Apollo flights: one in the command module, which carried the astronauts from Earth, and the second in the lunar module, which set down on the moon’s surface,” writes Gabriel. 

With help from an artificial intelligence algorithm, MIT researchers have formulated heat-resistant mRNA COVID vaccines that “remain stable even when stored at room temperature for up to a year, or at nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit for two months,” writes Nancy Lapid for Reuters. The heat resistance shots “would lower costs and make them [COVID vaccines] available in regions where ultra-cold storage is not possible,” Lapid notes.  

Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava highlights MIT spinout Liquid AI, which is building “liquid neural networks that process data more efficiently and don’t need expensive chips stored in data centers.” Shrivastava writes, “Liquid AI’s models are small enough that they can run directly on laptops and phones. There’s no cost to host them.”  

In a piece republished by Scientific American, reporter Manon Bischoff highlights MIT researchers proving in 2024, that “many newer games in the Super Mario series are mathematically maximally complex and therefore contain unsolvable problems.” “We don’t know how to prove that a game is fun,” says Prof. Erik Demaine, a co-author of the research. “But we can prove that it’s hard and that maybe gives some insight into why it’s fun.”  

MIT researchers have developed Ataraxos, an AI system capable of winning the challenging game Stratego. The system could one day help decision makers with real-world problems that involve hidden information, reports Jacek Krywk for Ars Technica. “Board games have fixed rules and clear winners, while real-world problems like negotiations, financial markets, or military conflicts usually don’t,” writes Krywk. “But the Ataraxos team argues the gap is smaller than it looks, since tackling any real problem starts with building a simplified model of it.” 

Prof. Samuel Madden joins Tiziana Dearing, host of WBUR’s “Morning Edition,” to discuss the findings of MIT’s Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training. “Cognitive surrender is the idea that people come to rely too heavily on these AI tools for their learning and they start outsourcing the critical thinking and the development of the foundational tools they think they need to succeed in life, to these AI tools,” says Madden. “It’s not just writing, but we see this [cognitive surrender] in our courses as well.”  

Prof. Asu Ozdaglar, head of MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and graduate student Julia Schneider ‘26 speak to Spectrum News about MIT’s new Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making major. “Now is definitely the time to study more AI, not less,” says Schneider. “What we need is a bunch of people that are focused and excited and passionate about deeply understanding why these models do what they do.” She adds: “Ultimately I want to work on technology that ends up helping people.”  

Prof. Dylan Hadfield-Menell speaks to The Boston Globe’s Joshua Miller about his concerns with the current state of AI systems and how they are optimized. “The parts [of AI systems] that are imitating the ways that humans use language, those parts of the systems actually are quite correctable. They’re still pretty unpredictable, but they do seem quite flexible,” says Hadfield-Menell. “On the other hand, there’s reinforcement learning, task-focused behavior, that can often be quite sticky. They [AI systems] seem to really want to push towards task completion.” He adds: “If you have a powerful optimization-driven system pointed at some goal, it can often do a lot of unexpected things that can have a lot of impact.” 

Prof. Shafi Goldwasser and Prof. Vinod Vaikuntanathan founded the Institute for Responsible Superintelligence (RESI), “to develop mathematical principles and protocols to ensure AI models behave as intended,” writes Aaron Pressman for The Boston Globe. “You patch them [AI models] up, you test them, you patch them to make sure that they can perform to the best ability, but also not do damage,” says Goldwasser. “That’s probably not enough attention, given the fact that these things are going to become what we call super intelligent.” 

Good Owners-dogGPT, a chatbot guide designed for dog parents that wasco-founded by alumni Darin Bellisario PhD ‘15 and Raja Rajcic ’20, is featured by The Boston Globe’s Marcela García. “What happens today when [dog owners] go looking for information? They go to Google,” says Bellisario. “You find dozens of videos and blog posts and articles that are either contradictory or outdated or inaccurate, or whatever the algorithm or the ranking wants to show you.” 

MIT researchers have discovered that carefully timed bursts of ‘pink noise’ strengthened the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, which clear waste from the brain, during sleep, writes reporter Sarah Rahal for The Boston Globe. “It’s very important for us to test: Does this work in people who may be either much older or who may be showing signs of the beginnings of a neurological disorder,” says Prof. Laura Lewis. 

Prof. Justin Solomon joins GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk" to explain the Navier-Stokes problem and the significance of this longstanding challenge being solved by an AI platform. “There are concerns and there’s excitement,” says Solomon. “Obviously, working on the Navier-Stokes equations and other open problems shows that these AI tools are capable of assisting with proofs, or at least counter examples in this particular case, of really hard questions that have been open for centuries.” 

For The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jennifer Hiller spotlights Xcimer Energy, a fusion startup that is developing technology to defend against drones and other threats, founded by alumni Conner Galloway M.S. ‘09 and Alexander Valys ‘08. “We realized that no one was actually pursuing the approach to fusion that we thought was going to work, and so ultimately that’s what led to Xcimer,” says Valys.  

A new study by MIT researchers found that  “sleeping while listening to bursts of pink noise…seems to boost the flow of fluid through the brain, and so might enhance the clearance of waste products that are linked to conditions like Alzheimer’s disease,” writes New Scientist’s Carissa Wong. “The researchers hope to test whether the technique can slow cognitive decline in people during normal ageing, mild cognitive impairment – a condition that often precedes dementia – and the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” notes Wong.

The Financial Times’ Anjana Ahuja highlights Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia and Senior Postdoctoral Associate Vardhman Kumar’s work developing injectable “mini livers,” tissue grafts that could “take on some of the life-saving functions of liver cells: helping with blood clotting, detoxifying the bloodstream and breaking down medicines. The injectable grafts, they suggest, could also be used as a bridging treatment while patients wait for a transplant, with booster injections able to dial up the dose,” writes Ahuja.