Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi and Monica Agrawal PhD '23 speak with Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray about the risks on relying solely on AI for medical information. “What I’m really, really worried about is economically disadvantaged communities,” says Ghassemi. “You might not have access to a health care professional who you can quickly call and say, ‘Hey… Should I listen to this?’”
Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Boston Globe reporter Ken Mahan about how a disrupted polar vortex (PV) could impact weather in the United States in the coming weeks. “The PV has been doing its best Mr. Fantastic impression, stretching and compressing continuously,” allowing frigid air to escape southward, Cohen explains. “If we (New England) do receive colder weather, but not quite the cold we experienced in late January, again from this larger PV disruption, it will be either late February and early March.”
Prof. David Karger speaks with GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz about the rapid development of new AI tools, the need for generative AI regulation, and the importance of transparency when it comes to AI-generated content. "I think we need to involve more entities, more people, more sources in the fact-checking process,” says Karger. “We need to figure out how to ensure that the fact checking can propagate into the platforms, even though the platforms are not doing the fact checking themselves.”
Prof. Kevin Chen and his colleagues have developed a bee-like robot that can assist with farming practices, such as artificial pollination without damaging crops, reports Claire Turrell for Offrange. “Chen’s robot bee, which is tethered to a power source, is currently limited to flying between plastic flowers in the lab, but the robot engineer can see its potential,” explains Turrell. “Bees are doing great in terms of open-field farming,” says Chen. “But there is one potential type of pollination I think we can consider in the longer term, which is indoor farming,”
Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with USA Today reporter Doyle Rice about how the polar vortex and cold Siberian air could impact weather across the U.S. in February. Cohen noted that some of the cold weather being felt on the East Coast of the U.S. is "coming from Siberia and that is contributing to the extremity of the cold since Siberia is the source of the coldest air of the Northern Hemisphere in winter.”
Prof. Giovanni Traverso and his colleagues developed a new technique that could one day be used to help protect cancer patients from the side effects of radiation therapy, reports Elie Dolgin for Science. The researchers found that providing brief pulses of a protein called “damage suppressor,” or Dsup could “shield injected tissues from radiation. They also found no evidence of acute toxicity with repeat doses, which bodes well for short-term use in clinical settings—for example, to protect nearby tissues during radiation treatment for a cancer,” Dolgin explains.
Graduate student Stephen Casper speaks with Wired reporter Matt Burgess about the rise of “deepfake video abuse and its role in nonconsensual intimate imagery generation.” “This ecosystem is built on the back of open-source models,” says Casper. “Oftentimes it’s just an open-source model that has been used to develop an app that then a user uses.”
MIT researchers have developed a new smart pill that could be used to help doctors track treatment more accurately, and ensure patients stay on their medication schedule, reports Kurt Knutsson for Fox News. “If you or a loved one relies on critical medication, this kind of technology could add an extra layer of safety,” Knuttson explains. “It may reduce guesswork for doctors and ease pressure on patients who manage complex treatment plans.”
Writing for The Conversation, Research Scientist Judah Cohen and Mathew Barlow of UMass Lowell examine how the polar vortex and moisture from a warm Gulf of Mexico created a monster winter storm that brought freezing rain, sleet and snow to large parts of the U.S. “Some research suggests that even in a warming environment, cold events, while occurring less frequently, may still remain relatively severe in some locations. One factor may be increasing disruptions to the stratospheric polar vortex, which appear to be linked to the rapid warming of the Arctic with climate change,” they write. “A warmer environment also increases the likelihood that precipitation that would have fallen as snow in previous winters may now be more likely to fall as sleet and freezing rain.”
Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with New York Times reporter Eric Niiler about his work linking increased severe winter weather in the United States to the stretching of the polar vortex. “We’ve shown in multiple papers now that the occurrence of the weak polar vortex is increasing in frequency, and the times when the polar vortex is strong or circular it’s happening less frequently,” says Cohen.
Fast Company reporter Adele Peters spotlights Electrified Thermal Solutions, an MIT startup that has developed a new “thermal battery” that could be used to help power factories manufacturing energy-intensive materials like steel and cement. “The battery uses power from the grid to heat its custom bricks when electricity is cheap,” explains Peters. “When a factory needs hot air later, it’s provided by the superheated bricks.”
In an interview with Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe, Research Scientist Judah Cohen highlights his work understanding the “complex relationship between global climate change, polar vortex behavior, and extreme mid-latitude weather.” Cohen explains that: “In our research, we have demonstrated that polar vortex stretching events have accelerated in the era of accelerated Arctic change. Climate change in general, but Arctic change in particular, is favorable for forcing these events.
Research Scientist Judah Cohen explores the relationship between stretched polar vortex events and extreme weather in the United States, reports Andrew Freedman for CNN. “On the southern flanks of the polar vortex, over the US and Asia, and under that where that stretching is happening, there’s been an increase in severe winter weather,” says Cohen. “I’m not saying any one weather event is attributed to climate change, but I do think it loaded the dice here.”
Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Associated Press reporter Caleigh Wells to explain how winter storm conditions can vary geographically. Farther south, “the snowflakes form, they fall and then they meet a warm layer, a layer above freezing, and they will melt,” explains Cohen. “But then there’s another layer near the surface that’s below freezing again, so they will refreeze before they hit the ground.”
Research Scientist Judah Cohen speaks with Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein about how warm Arctic waters and cold continental land have led to a stretched polar vortex, leading to a massive winter storm that will impact a large swath of the country. According to Cohen, “as far back as October 2025, changes in the Arctic and low sea ice were setting up conditions for the kind of stretched polar vortex that brings severe winter weather to the U.S.,” writes Borenstein.