Research Laboratory of Electronics

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. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero was named a winner of the 2026 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for his “foundational work that established the field of twistronics,” reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. Nietzel explains that when using twistronics, "scientists can induce new properties in materials without changing their basic composition."

Prof. William Oliver speaks with Scientific American reporter Adam Becker about the future of quantum computing. “Quantum computing is real, it’s happening, and it’s going to take time,” Oliver says. “It’s going to take engineering, and there’s still science to do as well. It’s not all buttoned up.” He adds that, in the future, we will be using quantum computers "to better understand, from a scientific standpoint, the world around us.”

Graduate student Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao and his colleagues have developed insect-sized robots to assist with artificial pollination as bee populations decline, reports Maria Simon Arboleas for Euractiv. “The tiny drones, lighter than a paperclip, can fly at speeds of up to two meters per second for more than 1,000 seconds, while performing complex maneuvers such as repeated backflips,” writes Arboleas.

Prof. Kevin Chen and his colleagues have developed a bee-like robot that can assist with farming practices, such as artificial pollination without damaging crops, reports Claire Turrell for Offrange. “Chen’s robot bee, which is tethered to a power source, is currently limited to flying between plastic flowers in the lab, but the robot engineer can see its potential,” explains Turrell. “Bees are doing great in terms of open-field farming,” says Chen. “But there is one potential type of pollination I think we can consider in the longer term, which is indoor farming,” 

Prof. Jonathan How and graduate student Yi-Hsuan (Nemo) Hsiao speak with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about their latest work developing an aerial microrobot that is “agile enough complete 10 consecutive somersaults in 11 seconds, even when wind disturbances threatened to push it off course.” Hsiao explains that: “This work demonstrates that soft and microrobots, traditionally limited in speed, can now leverage advanced control algorithms to achieve agility approaching that of natural insects and larger robots, opening up new opportunities for multimodal locomotion.” 

In a roundup of the biggest tech breakthroughs of 2025, Forbes reporter Alex Knapp spotlights how MIT engineers developed magnetic transistors, a “discovery [that] could enable faster and more energy-efficient semiconductors.”

A study by MIT researchers examining the carbon emissions of self-driving cars found that “the power required to run one billion driverless vehicles driving for one hour per day could consume as much energy as all existing data centers in the world,” reports Claire Brown for The New York Times. Graduate student Soumya Sudhakar explains that another big unknown is how autonomous vehicles could change the way people travel, adding to the uncertainty over the overall long-term emissions outlook for self-driving cars. 

MIT is “taking a quantum leap with the launch of the new MIT Quantum Initiative (QMIT), reports State House News reporter Katie Castellani. “There isn't a more important technological field right now than quantum with its enormous potential for impact on both fundamental research and practical problems,” said President Sally Kornbluth during the launch event. “QMIT will help us to ask the right questions, identify the most critical problems and create a roadmap for developing quantum solutions that are both transformative and accessible.” 

Prof. Kevin Chen and his colleagues have designed a tiny, insect-sized aerial microrobot that is “faster and more acrobatic than any of its predecessors,” reports Phie Jacobs for Science. The device, “which measures just 4 centimeters across and weighs less than a paperclip, flies almost five times faster and accelerates twice as quickly as existing microrobots,” explains Jacobs. “It can also execute sharp turns while enduring 160-centimeter-per-second wind gusts and—perhaps most impressively—can complete 10 consecutive somersaults in 11 seconds.” 

The Advanced LIGO Documentary Project commemorates the life and legacy of Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics and “LIGO’s heart and soul.” Said Weiss of the significance of detecting gravitational waves: "The discovery isn't the measurement of the gravitational waves…it's the black holes. That's absolutely spectacular... that this exists, and if you see a couple more, then you could say something about the universe. It's something new that we're going to be able to say about the universe. It's spectacular. To me, that's the big discovery."

Writing for Physics Today, Prof. Yang Shao-Horn, Research Scientist Sokseiha Muy and their colleagues explain the limitations and concerns surrounding lithium-ion battery technology while highlighting the potential of solid-state batteries as an alternative. “Although solid electrolytes can significantly boost a battery’s energy density by minimizing the battery’s volume, the greatest gains come from replacing conventional graphite anodes with higher-capacity, low-electric-potential alternatives,” they write. 

Researchers at MIT have discovered “the most direct evidence to date of unconventional superconductivity in ‘magic-angel’ twisted trilayer graphene (MATTG), reports Aman Tripathi for Interesting Engineering. “This finding is a crucial step in the global search for room-temperature superconductors, often referred to as the ‘Holy Grail’ of physics,” writes Tripathi. 

Graduate student Chung-Tao (Josh) Chou speaks with Tech Briefs reporter Andrew Corselli about his work developing a magnetic transistor that could lead to more energy-efficient circuits. “People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics,” says Chou. “We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research.”

Prof. Steve Leeb and graduate student Daniel Monagle speak with Tech Briefs reporter Edward Brown about their work “designing an energy management interface between an energy harvesting source and a sensor load that will give the best possible results.” Monagle notes that in the future they hope to make the system “smaller so that it can fit in tight places like inside a motor terminal box. But beyond that we want to take advantage of AI tools to design techniques for minimizing the energy used by the system.”