National Science Foundation (NSF)

PhD student Adriana Schulz was co-lead on AutoSaw, which lets nonexperts customize different items that can then be constructed with the help of robots.

Custom carpentry with help from robots

CSAIL’s robotic system minimizes dangerous sawing, helps users customize furniture.

February 28, 2018

MIT researchers have developed a light-sensitive protein that can be embedded into neuron membranes, where it emits a fluorescent signal that indicates how much voltage a particular cell is experiencing. This could allow scientists to study how neurons behave, millisecond by millisecond, as the brain performs a particular function.

Seeing the brain's electrical activity

Fluorescent sensor allows imaging of neurons' electrical communications, without electrodes.

February 26, 2018

Scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and elsewhere have now demonstrated that photons can be made to interact — an accomplishment that could open a path toward using photons in quantum computing, if not in light sabers.

Physicists create new form of light

Newly observed optical state could enable quantum computing with photons.

February 15, 2018

A new special subject, 1.S992 (Agricultural Microbial Ecology) from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, took a group of undergraduate students to Israel over MIT’s Independent Activities Period to learn cutting-edge techniques used to study microbial communities.

A microbial approach to agriculture

A new special subject, Agricultural Microbial Ecology, takes students to Israel.

February 14, 2018

Electron microscope images of marine bacteria infected with the non-tailed viruses studied in this research. The bacterial cell walls are seen as long double lines, and the viruses are the small round objects with dark centers.

New type of virus found in the ocean

The unusual characteristics of these abundant, bacteria-killing viruses could lead to evolutionary insights.

January 24, 2018

Postdoc Kathryn Kauffman and former guest researcher Aidong Ruan process ocean water samples at Canoe Cove in Nahant, Massachusetts. The researchers were observing how microbial communities change over time in a particular location.

Microbial communities demonstrate high turnover

New research provides insight into the behavior of microbial communities in the ocean.

January 18, 2018

Roxbury Community College Chemistry and Biotechnology Professor Kimberly Stieglitz (left) discusses her summer research at MIT with JoDe M. Lavine, Bunker Hill Community College Professor and Chairperson of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Department, during the annual Summer Scholars Poster Session on Aug. 3. Stieglitz worked in the lab of AMAX Career Development Assistant Professor in Mater...

MIT collaboration enriches community college experience

More than half of Roxbury, Bunker Hill, students with summer lab experience at MIT go on to earn a four-year degree.

January 2, 2018

MIT researchers found a more dramatic decline in organic aerosol across the U.S. than previously reported, which may account for more lives saved than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency anticipated in a 2011 report on the Clean Air Act and amendments. The study found that the decline is likely due to human behaviors.

Cleaner air, longer lives

Research shows the Clean Air Act was likely responsible for a dramatic decline in atmospheric organic aerosol.

December 25, 2017

Maker education — an open-ended, process-driven, youth-centered learning approach — has grown in popularity in K-12 education over the past decade, but assessing its outcomes has been challenging.

MIT Teaching Systems Lab to address assessments in maker education

Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant, TSL will collaborate with Maker Ed to improve school-based assessment practices in maker-centered education.

December 19, 2017

DNA loops create what Whitehead Institute researchers call “insulated neighborhoods” for genes and their promoters and enhancers.

Rethinking transcription factors and gene expression

Study shows that, like proteins, genomes must fold appropriately to function properly and that some transcription factors provide the structural support.

December 7, 2017

Artist’s conceptions of the most-distant supermassive black hole ever discovered, which is part of a quasar from just 690 million years after the Big Bang. It is surrounded by neutral hydrogen, indicating that it is from the period called the epoch of reionization, when the universe's first light sources turned on.

Scientists observe supermassive black hole in infant universe

Findings present a puzzle as to how such a huge object could have grown so quickly.

December 6, 2017

MIT engineers have devised a 3-D printing technique that uses a new kind of ink made from genetically programmed living cells.

Engineers 3-D print a “living tattoo”

New technique 3-D prints programmed cells into living devices for first time.

December 5, 2017

To evaluate infants’ intuition regarding what other people value, researchers showed them videos in which an agent (red bouncing ball) decides whether it’s worth the effort to leap over an obstacle to reach a goal (blue cartoon character).

How badly do you want something? Babies can tell

Ten-month-old infants determine the value of a goal from how hard someone works to achieve it.

November 23, 2017

$MIT physicists have invented a new technique to cool atoms into condensates, which is faster than the conventional method and conserves a large fraction of the original atoms.$

A faster way to make Bose-Einstein condensates

Method of laser cooling may speed up investigations into magnetism and superconductivity.

November 23, 2017

“You’re rolling the dice every year,” says professor Kerry Emanuel. “And we believe the odds of a flood like Harvey are changing.” Pictured is an aerial view of Houston during the Hurricane Harvey flooding.

Texas’ odds of Harvey-scale rainfall to increase by end of century

Study finds state’s annual risk of extreme rainfall will rise from 1 to 18 percent.

November 13, 2017

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