MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

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.” 

In an effort to better understand how protein language models (PLMs) think and better judge their reliability, MIT researchers applied a tool called sparse autoencoders, which can be used to make large language models more interpretable. The findings “may help scientists better understand how PLMs come to certain conclusions and increase researchers’ trust in them," writes Andrea Luis for The Scientist. 

Researchers at MIT have developed magnetic transistors, “which could enable faster and more energy-efficient semiconductors,” reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. “Researchers have been trying to use magnets this way for years, but the materials used so far haven’t been optimal for computing functions,” explains Knapp. “That changed after experimenting with chromium sulfur bromide, which replaces the silicon in a conventional microchip and enables the transistors to be switched on and off with an electric current.” 

According to the U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2025-2026, MIT has been named the No. 2 best university in the United States, reports Madison Lucchesi for Boston.com. 

MIT has been named the second best university in the United States, according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings for 2025-2026, reports Alan Blinder for The New York Times. 

U.S. News & World Report has named MIT the number two best university in the United States for 2025-2026, reports Emily Sweeney for The Boston Globe. The rankings “evaluated more than 1,700 colleges and universities in the United States, using up to 17 measures of academic quality and graduate success,” adds Sweeney. 

MIT has been named the number two college in the United States in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking, reports Alia Shoaib for Newsweek. “U.S. News & World Report ranks more than 1,700 colleges using a weighted formula that considers factors such as graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, academic reputation, financial resources and student selectivity,” explains Shoaib. 

Financial Times reporter Melissa Heikkilä spotlights how MIT researchers have uncovered evidence that increased use of AI tools by medical professionals risks “leading to worse health outcomes for women and ethnic minorities.” One study found that numerous AI models “recommended a much lower level of care for female patients,” writes Heikkilä. “A separate study by the MIT team showed that OpenAI’s GPT-4 and other models also displayed answers that had less compassion towards Black and Asian people seeking support for mental health problems.” 

Dishita Turakhia SM '17, SMArchS '17, PhD '24 speaks with Huffpost reporter Brittany Wong to explore how people are using AI technologies. “Early adopters may help expand the creative boundaries of these technologies, but those who enter later, sometimes with more caution, often bring a critical lens that leads to more sustainable applications,” says Turakhia. 

Boston Globe reporter Jon Chesto spotlights the kickoff event for the new MIT-GE Vernova Energy and Climate Alliance, which will “fund research initiatives, fellowships, and other programs with an eye toward improving energy technologies and decarbonization.” GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik emphasized that he has been impressed with the passion and talent for clean-tech among the students at MIT and other universities. “I started these discussions with the objective that we should inspire future leaders to come into our industry and ideally come to our company,” Strazik said. “They’ve probably inspired us more than we’ve inspired them.”

Prof. Regina Barzilay speaks with Newsweek reporter Katherine Fung about the how hospitals around the world around increasingly adopting new technologies. “Countries with a centralized healthcare system, or centralized healthcare records, can do a much better job because they have so much data and so much ability to monitor what AI tools are doing," says Barzilay. 

Boston Globe reporter Yogev Toby spotlights the Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow program (MEET), an MIT initiative that brings together Israeli and Palestinian high school students to provide education in “computer science and innovation while promoting intercultural dialogue.” The program was designed to serve as a way to “bridge the social, economic, and ideological divide through innovation and entrepreneurship,” Toby explains. “The idea is to create connection and understanding through shared professional interests, dialogue, and teamwork.”

CNN visits the lab of Prof. Kevin Chen to learn more about his group’s work developing a bee-like robot that can flap its wings up to 400 times a second and flip and hover, and a grasshopper-inspired robot that can hop 20 centimeters into the air in terrains ranging from grass to ice. Chen and his colleagues hope the insect-inspired robots could one day help with tasks like artificial pollination or search and rescue operations. Insects have “evolved for millions of years. There’s a lot to be learned from insect motion, behavior and structure," Chen explains.

Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi speaks with Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about her work uncovering issues with bias and trustworthiness in medical AI systems. “I love developing AI systems,” says Ghassemi. “I’m a professor at MIT for a reason. But it’s clear to me that naive deployments of these systems, that do not recognize the baggage that human data comes with, will lead to harm.”

Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL and “one of the world’s foremost thinkers on the intersection of machines and artificial intelligence,” shares her views on the promise of embodied intelligence, which would allow machines to adapt in real-time; the development of AI agents; and how the US can lead on the development of AI technologies with Aaron Mak of Politico. “The U.S. government has invested in energy grids, railroads and the internet. In the AI age, it must treat high-performance compute, data stewardship and model evaluation pipelines as public infrastructure as well,” Rus explains.