Research

Prof. Neha Narula speaks with Bloomberg reporters Scarlet Fu and Tim Stenovec about the financial, technological and regulatory risks associated with the rise in GENUIS-compliant stablecoins’ transition to mainstream use. “This is going to apply to more than just stablecoins,” says Narula. “This is going to apply to all tokenized assets. We have to think about the decentralized blockchains behind them. All blockchains are not created equal and right now there’s no indication for how users or stablecoin issuers or other market participants should think about these different blockchains.” 

Research scientist Judah Cohen served as a panelist for the Boston Globe’s “The Reshaping of New England’s Seasons: What’s Happening to Our Weather?” event, reports Ken Mahan for The Boston Globe. Cohen and his fellow panelists discussed New England weather, sharing insights and answering questions from community members. 

Graduate student Clarke Cyrus and his colleagues have developed “the Anemoia Device,” a physical machine that “uses a generative AI model to analyze an archival photograph, describe it in a short sentence, and, following the user’s own inputs, convert that description into a unique fragrance,” reports Grace Snelling for Fast Company. “Generative AI usually starts with a blank prompt,” says Clarke. “The dials replace that with a physical, easy-to-understand grammar. You’re not trying to ‘say the right thing’ to an algorithm, it’s more akin to tuning an instrument." 

 Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg reporter David Westin about the shift toward automation in the workforce and the impact on workers. “There are many ways for us to use AI,” says Autor. “It’s incredibly flexible, malleable, plastic technology. You could use it to try to automate people out of existence. You could also use it to collaborate with people to make them more effective. But I also think that it depends on how we invest, how we build out those technologies.” 

A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has found a correlation between addiction and eye care, reports Hadley Barndollar for MassLive. “The study found nearly half of the patients with opioid use disorder being treated for the eye infection were eligible to initiate medication-assisted treatment,” explains Barndollar. “But medications were only initiated when an addiction consult occurred, highlighting how much more eye doctors responding to emergency rooms can offer patients beyond vision care.” 

Jerry Lu MFin ’24 speaks with Fast Company reporter Grace Snelling about his work developing a new AI tool that can be used to help figure skaters land their jumps and Olympic audiences better understand just how challenging a quadruple Axel is. “Some of the artistic sports were missing this data-driven storytelling ability—if you watch hockey on TV, it looks slow, but if you watch it in person, it looks fast,” Lu explains. 

Prof. Angela Belcher and Prof. Sangeeta Bhatia chat with Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s The Curiosity Desk about their efforts aimed at improving diagnostics for ovarian cancer. “We now know that ovarian cancer doesn’t originate in the ovaries. About 80% of the time, ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes, but it can sit there as this precancerous lesion,” explains Belcher. “There’s new technologies that can be invented and developed to detect it much earlier, because if it’s detected earlier…there’s such an opportunity to make an impact.”  

A new study by Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues has found a solar system that contradicts the patterns commonly “seen across the galaxy and in our own solar system,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. The study offers “some of the first evidence for flipping the script on how planets form around the most common stars in our galaxy,” says Seager. “Even in a maturing field, new discoveries can remind us that we still have a long way to go in understanding how planetary systems are built.”  

Researchers at MIT have “developed a new technique that enables large language models to learn new skills and knowledge without forgetting their past capabilities,” reports Ben Dickson for Venture Beat. “Their technique, called self-distillation fine-tuning (SDFT), allows models to learn directly from demonstrations and their own experiments by leveraging the inherent in-context learning abilities of modern LLMs,” explains Dickson. “Experiments show that SDFT consistently outperforms traditional supervised fine-tuning (SFT) while addressing the limitations of reinforcement learning algorithms.” 

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a compact magnetic mixer to prevent clogs and uneven tissue in 3D bioprinting, reports Aamir Khollam for Interesting Engineering. The device called “MagMix,” works to “keep bio-inks uniform throughout the entire printing process,” writes Khollam. 

USA Today reporter Dinah Voyles Pulver spotlights Research Scientist Judah Cohen’s research studying how weather systems and climate patterns are related to the increase in Arctic blasts and deep freezes this winter. 

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.

Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with New York Times reporter Eric Niiler about his research studying “how global warming might also be causing colder winters in the eastern United States.” Cohen says “It’s weird what’s going on now in the stratosphere. These stretching events happen every winter, but just how the pattern is stuck is really remarkable.” 

MIT researchers have developed a system that uses recycled plastic to 3-D print plastic trusses, reports Alex Knapp for Forbes. The trusses could "support more than 4,000 pounds—exceeding typical building standards," Knapp explains. "The bonus? This took less than an hour to manufacture."

Prof. Olivier de Weck speaks with Forbes reporter Alex Knapp about the challenges and opportunities posed by building data centers in space. Data centers are “physically secure from intrusion and environmentally friendly once operational,” says de Weck. “Essentially, the three primary resources required on Earth—land, power, and cooling—are available ‘for free’ in space after the initial launch and deployment costs are covered.”