News

The scholar-warrior: How Erik Lin-Greenberg bridges academia and Air Force intelligence

June 6, 2025

At a time when the U.S. Department of Defense increasingly grapples with emerging technologies and their implications for national security, Erik Lin-Greenberg ’09, SM ’09 occupies a rare position at the intersection of theory and practice.The MIT political scientist and lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve recently assumed command of the 820th Intelligence […]

The math of politics and power

June 6, 2025

Every day, students at MIT come together to learn, work, play, and form communities large and small. Community Spotlight stories are intended to provide a glimpse inside the Institute’s classrooms, labs, and other gathering places to show how people come together, and how they share what it means to be part of MIT’s community of […]

Animation technique simulates the motion of squishy objects

June 6, 2025

Animators could create more realistic bouncy, stretchy, and squishy characters for movies and video games thanks to a new simulation method developed by researchers at MIT. Their approach allows animators to simulate rubbery and elastic materials in a way that preserves the physical properties of the material and avoids pitfalls like instability. The technique simulates […]

Scene at MIT: Reflecting on a shared journey toward MIT PhDs

June 5, 2025

“My wife, Erin Tevonian, and I both graduated last week with our PhDs in biological engineering, a program we started together when we arrived at MIT in fall 2019. At the time, we had already been dating for three years, having met as classmates in the bioengineering program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign […]

Highlights from MIT’s first-ever Artfinity festival

June 4, 2025

When people think of MIT, they may first think of code, circuits, and cutting-edge science. But the school has a rich history of interweaving art, science, and technology in unexpected and innovative ways — and that’s never been more clear than with the Institute’s latest festival, Artfinity: A Celebration of Creativity and Community at MIT. After […]

Teaching AI models what they don’t know

June 3, 2025

Artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT provide plausible-sounding answers to any question you might ask. But they don’t always reveal the gaps in their knowledge or areas where they’re uncertain. That problem can have huge consequences as AI systems are increasingly used to do things like develop drugs, synthesize information, and drive autonomous cars. Now, the […]

MIT students and postdoc explore the inner workings of Capitol Hill

June 2, 2025

This spring, 25 MIT students and a postdoc traveled to Washington, where they met with congressional offices to advocate for federal science funding and specific, science-based policies based on insights from their research on pressing issues — including artificial intelligence, health, climate and ocean science, energy, and industrial decarbonization. Organized annually by the Science Policy […]

Eight with MIT ties win 2025 Hertz Foundation Fellowships

June 2, 2025

The Hertz Foundation announced that it has awarded fellowships to eight MIT affiliates. The prestigious award provides each recipient with five years of doctoral-level research funding (up to a total of $250,000), which gives them an unusual measure of independence in their graduate work to pursue groundbreaking research. The MIT-affiliated awardees are Matthew Caren ’25; April Qiu Cheng […]

Mary Robinson urges MIT School of Architecture and Planning graduates to “find a way to lead”

May 30, 2025

“Class of 2025, are you ready?” This was the question Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, posed to the graduating class at the school’s Advanced Degree Ceremony at Kresge Auditorium on May 29. The response was enthusiastic applause and cheers from the 224 graduates from the departments of Architecture and […]

Hank Green urges the Class of 2025 to work on “everyday solvable problems of normal people”

May 29, 2025

An energetic OneMIT Commencement ceremony today featured calls for MIT’s newest graduates to have a positive impact on society while upholding the Institute’s core values of open inquiry and productive innovation. “Orient yourself not just toward the construction and acquisition of new tools, but to the needs of people,” said science communicator Hank Green, in […]