School of Engineering

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.” 

Venti Technologies – a company co-founded by MIT researchers and alumni – has been named one of the most innovative companies in the Asia-Pacific region for Fast Company’s 2025 roundup of top companies, reports Katerina Barton. The company focuses “on autonomous technologies for industrial use—specifically in low-speed environments like ports, airports, and warehouses,” explains Barton. “The company’s suite of special-purpose algorithms is designed to optimize cargo container transportation and works with a wide range of vehicles, allowing the AI-enabled technology to move varying weight loads and distances through complex spaces and changing routes.” 

Prof. Dava Newman, director of the MIT Media Lab and former NASA deputy director, speaks with Blake Burman of NewsNation’s The Hill about how long-duration stays in space can affect the human body and how NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will reacclimate to Earth’s gravity. “Gravity is something! When you haven’t been in gravity” for nine months, Newman explains, “it’s going to take a week or two, it takes a month until you really get your motor control back. So just slow adaptation now.” 

MIT researchers have developed a new method to grow artificial muscles for soft robots that can move in multiple directions, mimicking the iris of an eye, reports Mrigakshi Dixit for Interesting Engineering. The researchers developed a new technique called “stamping” to create “an artificial iris-like structure,” Dixit explains. “For this, they 3D-printed a tiny stamp, patterned with microscopic grooves. This stamp is then pressed into a soft hydrogel to create a blueprint for muscle growth.”

Researchers at MIT have discovered how “greenhouse gases are impacting Earth’s upper atmosphere and, in turn, the objects orbiting within it,” reports Grace Snelling for Fast Company. “If we don’t take action to be more responsible for operating our satellites, the impact is that there are going to be entire regions of low Earth orbit that could become uninhabitable for a satellite,” says graduate student William Parker.

[Originally in Spanish] MIT researchers have developed a new technique to educate robots by increasing human input, reports Uriel Bederman for TN Tecno.  “We can’t expect non-technical people to collect data and fine-tune a neural network model," explains graduate student Felix Yanwei Wang. "Consumers will expect the robot to work right out of the box, and if it doesn’t, they’ll want an intuitive way to customize it. That’s the challenge we’re addressing in this work."

MIT has been named among the top-performing intuitions in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024, reports The Economic Times. MIT ranks “first in 12 subjects, maintaining its stronghold in fields like engineering, technology, and computer science,” explains Economic Times. 

Writing for Fast Company, graduate student Sheng-Hung Lee and Devin Liddell of Teague highlight four types of AI technologies that could aid senior citizens in their homes. “To better understand how seniors want AIs and robots to help in their homes, we asked them,” they write.  “We recruited seniors from the MIT AgeLab’s research cohort—each around 70 years old and in the early stages of retirement—and then engaged in wide-ranging conversations about their aspirations and fears about these technologies.”

Prof. Seth Lloyd speaks with Fast Company reporter Sam Becker about quantum computing firm D-Wave and their recent work successfully simulating “the properties of magnetic materials.” Lloyd explains: “The D-Wave result shows the promise of quantum annealers for exploring exotic quantum effects in a wide variety of systems.” 

MIT researchers have discovered that increased greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s upper atmosphere can “potentially cause catastrophic satellite collision in low-Earth orbit,” reports Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “When the thermosphere contracts, the decreasing density reduces atmospheric drag — a force that pulls old satellites and other debris down to altitudes where they will encounter air molecules and burn up,” Dorminey explains. “Less drag therefore means extended lifetimes for space junk, which will litter sought-after regions for decades and increase the potential for collisions in orbit.”  

Researchers from MIT have “identified genes that the tuberculous bacteria rely on to survive and spread,” reports Allison DeAngelis for STAT. “Until now, very little was known about how tuberculous bacteria survived temperature changes, oxygen levels, humidity, and other environmental factors during the journey from one person’s lungs to another’s,” explains DeAngelis. 

WCVB spotlights MIT course 2.984: The Art and Science of Time Travel, taught by Prof. Seth Llyod and lecturer Michele Reilly, which explores time travel and other physical paradoxes. “The course idea came from both knowing science fiction authors and understanding what physicists can do when they try to think in an artistic way,” says Reilly. 

MIT researchers have found that high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere may increase the risk of satellite collisions, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for Grist. “The environment is very cluttered already. Satellites are constantly dodging right and left,” says graduate student William Parker. “As long as we are emitting greenhouse gases, we are increasing the probability that we see more collision events between objects in space.” 

Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein writes that MIT scientists have found that climate change could “reduce the available space for satellites in low Earth orbit by anywhere from one-third to 82% by the end of the century, depending on how much carbon pollution is spewed.” Graduate student William Parker explains: “We rely on the atmosphere to clean up our debris. There’s no other way to remove debris. It’s trash. It’s garbage. And there are millions of pieces of it.”

A new study by MIT researchers finds that “climate change could threaten the future use of satellites and significantly reduce the number of spacecraft that can safety orbit Earth,” reports Julia Jacobo for ABC News. The researchers found “global warming is causing space debris to linger above the planet for longer periods of time, leaving less space for functioning satellites and posing a growing problem for the long-term use of Earth’s orbital space,” Jacobo explains. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions doesn't just help us on Earth, it also has the potential to protect us from long-term sustainability issues in space,” explains graduate student William Parker.