Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS)

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. 

Addis Energy, a startup co-founded by Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang is using the earth “as a chemical reactor to make ammonia in a cleaner way,” reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. The team identifies “rocky formations underground with large amounts of iron,” explains Knapp. “Then they inject those rocks with water, nitrogen and a chemical catalyst. That causes the oxygen in the water to bind with the iron in the rocks—making rust—freeing the hydrogen, which reacts with nitrogen to form ammonia.” 

Fortune reporter Orianna Rosa Royle spotlights Luana Lopes Lara '18, co-founder of Kalshi, a company that allows users to bet on the outcome of events, such as “elections, sports matches, and pop culture happenings.” Rosa Royle details Lopes Lara’s journey establishing Kalshi with her co-founder Tarek Mansour ’18, MNG ’19. 

Fox Business host Stuart Varney spotlights MIT’s new Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making (AI+D) major, which has quickly become, “the second most popular undergrad major at MIT.” 

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.” 

Luana Lopes Lara ’18 and Tarek Mansour ’18, MNG ’19 co-founded Kalshi, a company that allows “users to bet on the outcome of future events such as elections, sports games and pop culture happenings,” reports Alicia Park for Forbes. Lopes Lara chronicles her journey from her time on stage as a professional ballerina in Austria to her years as a student at MIT to her entrepreneurial ambitions.

New York Times reporter Natasha Singer spotlights MIT’s new Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making major (AI+D), which is aimed at teaching students to “develop AI systems and study how technologies like robots interact with humans and the environment.” Asu Ozdaglar, head of EECS and the deputy dean of academics for the Schwarzman College of Computing, shares that: “Students who prefer to work with data to address problems find themselves more drawn to an AI major.” 

Prof. Sara Beery spoke at TED Radio Hour about her work developing Inquire, an AI tool aimed at supercharging ecosystem conservation that is trained on millions of photos captured by citizen scientists, reports GBH. “Under the hood, what we’re doing is we’re developing AI models that can learn and understand similarities between images and scientific language,” explains Beery. 

Wall Street Journal reporters Robbie Whelan and Amrith Ramkumar spotlight Lisa Su '90, SM '91, PhD '94, chair and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices, and her impact leading the company into the center of the global AI race. “At the heart of Su’s strategy is her belief that there is ‘insatiable demand’ for computing power, and that as the market for AI grows, the companies offering the best and most reliable AI infrastructure will thrive,” they write. 

Wall Street Journal reporter Angel Au-Yeung spotlights Anysphere, an AI startup founded by Michael Truell '21, Sualeh Asif '22, Arvid Lunnemar '22, and Aman Sanger '22. “The company makes an AI tool that learns a developer’s coding style to help autocomplete, edit and review lines of code,” writes Au-Yeung. 

Michael Truell '21, Sualeh Asif '22, Arvid Lunnemar '22, and Aman Sanger '22 co-founded Anysphere, an AI startup developing Cursor, an AI coding tool that “allows engineers to use AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI to write and edit entire chunks of code as well as identify and fix bugs,” reports Rashi Shrivastava for Forbes. 

Prof. Anand Natarajan speaks with CNN reporter Lisa Eadicicco about the promise of quantum computing. “The big hope is that a quantum computer can simulate any sort of chemical or biological experiment you would do in the lab,” says Natarajan. He adds that quantum computing could be very influential for cryptography and cybersecurity, as it could be used to break codes. “That’s also a major motivation, to make sure that our adversaries cannot do it and that we have this capability.” 

Prof. Laura Lewis speaks with New Scientist reporter Grace Wade about the importance of sleep research. Lewis notes that understanding the dynamics of how the brain transitions into sleep could help lead to new treatments for insomnia. “With sleep onset, it has been really difficult for us to find that moment,” says Lewis, where brain mechanisms drive the transition to sleep. “If we knew when that was, then we could start to say, what is the brain region or circuit that is making somebody fall asleep?” 

Prof. Tess Smidt and incoming Prof. Lindsey Raymond have been named Schmidt Sciences 2025 AI2050 Early Career Fellows, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes. The AI2050 project is “aimed at advancing the capacity of artificial intelligence to tackle an evolving list of 10 ‘hard problems,’ involving major scientific questions, technical issues, and risks associated with revolutionary technology,” explains Nietzel. 

A new study from researchers at MIT shows that lack of focus after a poor night’s sleep often corresponds with a surge of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, which usually flows while we’re asleep. “We like to think we’re in control—that willpower, caffeine, and determination can overcome a missed night of sleep,” writes Bill Murphy Jr. for Inc. “However, this research suggests otherwise. When your brain needs to clean itself, it’s going to find a way to do it, whether you’re ready for it or not.”