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.”
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.”
MIT engineers have developed a new system that helps pesticides adhere more effectively to plant leaves, allowing farmers to use fewer chemicals without sacrificing crop protection, reports Michigan Farm News. The new technology “adds a thin coating around droplets as they are being sprayed onto a field, increasing the stickiness of pesticides by as much as a hundredfold.”
“A breakthrough from MIT researchers and AgZen, a spinoff company, is making agricultural spraying more efficient—cutting pesticide waste, lowering costs, and reducing environmental impact,” reports Rural Radio Network. “The technology works with existing sprayers, eliminating the need for costly equipment changes. In field tests, it doubled product retention on crops like soybeans and kale. AgZen’s spray-monitoring system, RealCoverage, has already helped farmers reduce pesticide use by 30 to 50 percent, and the new coating could improve efficiency even further.”
Materials World Magazine reporter Sarah Morgan spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new material that can reduce the hazardous materials produced during aluminum manufacturing. “Our membrane, which has a positively charged coating, repels aluminum while letting the less positively-charged sodium ions pass through,” explains undergraduate student Trent Lee. “This process allows us to concentrate and recover aluminum, so it can be put back into the production process instead of being wasted.”
24M, an MIT startup, has been named to Fast Company’s list of the most innovative companies in the energy space for 2025, reports Alex Pasternack. The company “has been developing a portfolio of battery technologies designed to make batteries that are safer, cheaper, cleaner, and longer-lasting,” explains Pasternack. “Its technologies include a semisolid electrode for conventional and novel battery chemistries, which gives the battery more energy density and requires fewer materials, and a unique separator that monitors the cell and helps prevent the aberrations that cause shorts and fires.”
MIT scientists have developed a new programmable fiber that can be stitched into clothing to help monitor the wearer’s health, reports Stephen Beech for FOX 28 News. “The gear has been tested by U.S. Army and Navy personnel during a month-long winter research mission to the Arctic,” Beech notes.
MIT engineers have manufactured a programmable computer fiber that can be woven into clothing and used to help monitor the wearer’s vital signs, reports Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica. “The long-term objective is incorporating fiber computers into apparel that can sense and respond to changes in the surrounding environment and individual physiology,” Ouellette notes.
New Scientist reporter Alex Wilkins spotlights how MIT researchers have created a “computer that can be stitched into clothes, made from chips that are connected in a thread of copper and elastic fiber.” U.S. Army and Navy members will be testing the use of the fiber computer to help monitor health conditions and prevent injury during a monthlong mission to the Arctic. Prof. Yoel Fink explains: “We’re getting very close to a point where we could write apps for fabrics and begin to monitor our health and do all kinds of things that a phone, frankly, cannot do.”
In a letter to The Guardian, Research Scientist Florian Metzler, Research Affiliate Matt Lilley and their colleagues highlight the important advancements being made in cold fusion research. “Cold fusion could result in spectacular technologies. But we are convinced that the way forward requires rigorous, open-source scientific investigation, not more claims,” they write. “In many ways, cold fusion’s time has come. Advances in theory and experiment have made the LENR field eminently actionable.”
Graduate student Chase Hartquist speaks with Engineeringness reporter Hassan Ahmed his work developing a “universal law governing network fracture energy, providing a unifying framework for understanding material toughness across a wide range of material types.” Hartquist explains: “Our discovery also directly impacts the emerging field of architected materials, whose inherent structures drive their unique performance characteristics.” He adds: “By studying and optimizing performance in this class of materials, we can better understand the extent to which this law can apply generally in cutting-edge material design for many practical applications.”
Prof. Jeffrey Grossman speaks with NBC Boston’s Carla Rojo about his new class, “Coffee Matters: Using the Breakerspace to Make the Perfect Cup,” which explores the science behind the perfect cup of joe. The course combines chemistry and coffee science to provide students “a hands-on experience to fuel their curiosity.”
Boston Globe reporter Adelaide Parker spotlights “Coffee Matters: Using the Breakerspace to Make the Perfect Cup,” a new course Prof. Jeffrey Grossman brewed up to provide students a hands-on experience with materials science in action. “The role of understanding materials … is broader than just our department,” explains Grossman. “You need physics and biology and chemistry to understand materials and how to make them, and then all these other engineering disciplines to do the engineering.” He envisions the Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s new Breakerspace lab as somewhere students from all majors can “get excited about understanding materials.”
MIT Profs. Angela Belcher, Emery Brown, Paula Hammond and Feng Zhang have been honored with National Medals of Science and Technology, reports Michael T. Neitzel for Forbes. Additionally, R. Lawrence Edwards '76 received a National Medal of Science and Noubar Afeyan PhD '87, a member of the MIT Corporation, accepted a National Medal on behalf of Moderna. The recipients have been awarded “the nation’s highest honors for exemplary achievements and leadership in science and technology,” explains Neitzel.
Researchers at MIT have developed a “new type of transistor using semiconductor nanowires made up of gallium antimonide and iridium arsenide,” reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “The transistors were designed to take advantage of a property called quantum tunneling to move electricity through transistors,” explains Knapp.