With music and merriment, MIT celebrates the upcoming inauguration of Sally Kornbluth

MIT’s campus spilled over with good cheer yesterday during a community-wide celebration marking the upcoming inauguration of MIT President Sally Kornbluth on Monday.

In a day of activities that truly had something for everyone, MIT community members and their families enjoyed an array of student performances, amusement park rides, exhibits hosted by MIT’s departments and labs, and plenty of food.

“It’s a historic moment — a lot of change could happen from here forward,” senior Anjali Sinha said. “We’re welcoming a new person into the community, so it’s really a joyous occasion.”

The family-friendly event primarily took place in Killian Court, Hockfield Court, and the buildings in between — though people could be seen sporting balloon hats and enjoying sweets in nearly every building on campus. Hundreds of people braved the (mostly wrong) rain forecast to attend.

“It’s really cool to see everybody come out and celebrate together, as well getting to see all of the different student groups showcase their talents and what they’ve been working hard on,” senior Anjali Singh said. “There’s just a lot of energy, and having events like this helps balance out the work we do.”

Underneath a football field-sized tent on Killian Court, community members took in dance and musical performances from student groups and tried their hands at minigolf, mandala sand art, and cornhole. Kids led their parents around a jungle gym of inflatable tubes, fluorescent swings, and seesaws. People perused the food stands lining the perimeter of the tent and came together at large tables in the center of the action. Music and the scent of popcorn radiated out of the tent from all sides.

“I love how it’s bringing the community together, not just MIT, but I think there’s a lot of locals here as well,” Darsh Grewal, a junior, said. “There’s a lot to do, a lot of free food — which is always great for the students. It’s really showcasing how diverse MIT is, which is great as well.”

Hockfield Court also featured a stage with student performances and activities that came across as half carnival, half research fair. Community members hopped from an arcade area to pinwheel-making stations and T shirt giveaways. People got massages next to biomarker demonstrations. Real dogs sniffed curiously at a mini robotic cheetah.

Outside the tent, Hockfield Court was all carnival. Lined by food trucks serving up street corn, ice cream, and cupcakes, the area offered amusement park rides and face painting stations. Acrobatic performers and a woman on stilts moved effortlessly across the lawn.

The hallways and buildings between the courts also featured clues of the fun outside, with people double-fisting baked goods and the sounds and smells of the tents lingering. Travelers stopped at demonstrations by MIT’s Glass Lab and explored an exhibit in MIT’s Compton Gallery, which showcased student projects. A third stage in Lobby 13 played Caribbean music and a fourth in Lobby 10 played a sampling of musical styles. For once the Banana Lounge was empty.

Across all of the activities, community members conveyed a sense of excitement for Kornbluth’s arrival at MIT.

“Especially after Covid, a day like this is very important,” Research Affiliate Seth Riskin said. “I’m pleased to see so many people come out. People want to connect, and it’s a nice occasion for that. An inauguration is a time of promise, vision, and future, and we all wanted to celebrate that.”

Later that evening, a free concert in Kresge Auditorium showcased the talent and creativity of the roughly 100 performers who make up the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble, the MIT Wind Ensemble, and the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble. Titled “We Are the Forest: Music of Resilience and Activism,” and featuring the three student ensembles plus several MIT faculty and visiting artists, the event delivered a “sonic awakening” about the plight of the Amazon and urgency of the global climate crisis.

Many of the pieces were developed as part of cultural exchanges between the MIT musicians and local communities in Puerto Rico and Brazil. In a rousing performance that ended with musicians and audience members stomping their feet with the music, saxophonist Miguel Zenón and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble reprised “En Pie De Lucha,” composed by Zenón in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in Puerto Rico. The group also performed the piece during a visit to Puerto Rico in 2019, in which they spent a week performing and participating in workshops on Puerto Rican culture and STEM topics.

Saturday’s concert was part of a project created by MIT Sounding Co-Director Frederick Harris Jr. called Hearing Amazônia—The Responsibility of Existence. The project led to a trip in March, organized with assistance from graduate student Talia Khan ’20, that brought over 80 MIT musicians to the Brazilian Amazon, where they met with indigenous communities, sharing music and other types of knowledge. That visit culminated in an event at the famous Teatro Amazonas opera house, featuring the MIT students and artists, local musicians from Manuas, and vocalist Djuena Tikuna, a member of the Tikuna People, Brazil’s largest indigenous Amazonian ethnic group.

Tikuna also performed at the MIT concert Saturday, leading Nós Somos A Floresta — Eware (Reflections on Amazonia) based on lyrics from a traditional song of the Tikuna people. The stage was packed as Tikuna, accompanied by clarinetists Anat Cohen and Evan Ziporyn, percussionist David Rosado Ortiz, and all three student ensembles, delivered a heartfelt performance while a slideshow of photos by Diego Janatã played in the background. Other performers throughout the evening included vocalists Sara Serpa and Laura Grill Jaye.

“Tonight we celebrate,” said Agustín Rayo, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, in remarks at the event. “We celebrate our new president, the artistry of our students, the power of collaboration and cultural exchange, and the unique ability of music to draw our attention to the natural world and our relationship to it.”

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President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea visits MIT

President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea visited MIT on Friday, participating in a roundtable discussion with Institute leaders and faculty about biomedical research and discussing the fundamentals of technology-driven innovation clusters. 

South Korea, Yoon noted in his remarks, has highly regarded educational institutions, hospitals, and research facilities, along with robust legal and business systems. However, he added, the country still aims to develop the kind of biomedical innovation cluster exemplified by the Kendall Square area in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a confluence of established and startup firms, academic research, and agile investment capital has created a world center of bioscience work. 

“We need [clusters] to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts,” Yoon said during the event, held in the MIT.nano building. 

Yoon’s visit included a look at the Cryo-Electron Microscopy Facility in MIT.nano, which enables nearly atom-level evaluation of the structures of molecules and numerous other organic materials. It also featured presentations from MIT faculty, with a follow-up discussion among the participants. 

“I hope the Republic of Korea can benchmark what you are doing,” Yoon told the MIT participants, in remarks translated to the audience. “I know that won’t happen overnight.”

Yoon made the visit in the midst of a six-day state visit to the U.S., which included a formal White House state dinner this week hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden. The trip was aimed at further strengthening what is now a 70-year alliance between the two countries, with both security and economic topics on the agenda.

The visit to MIT was hosted by Richard Lester, associate provost for international activities and the Japan Steel Industry Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thomas Schwartz, the Boris Magasanik Professor of Biology at MIT, initiated the visit by showing Yoon the microscopy facility. Yoon then proceeded to the roundtable discussion, which was moderated by Chandrakasan.

Lester welcomed Yoon to MIT, saying it was a “great honor” to have him at the Institute. 

For his part, Yoon offered remarks to formally start the discussion, noting among other things that “boosting investments in science and technology” on an ongoing basis was “extremely important” to his government. 

Six MIT professors spoke to Yoon about different aspects of biotechnology and enhancing innovation. Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, outlined the model of research-driven biotech startups he has helped create in recent decades. The group of about 40 firms Langer has helped found includes Moderna, the high-profile Covid-19 vaccine developer. Such ventures have had global impact, while changing the local cityscape around MIT. 

“It’s been remarkable to see the area around MIT transform,” Langer said, while suggesting that South Korean work in the field was clearly on the rise. “There is a lot of interest in biotechnology companies in [South] Korea,” Langer also noted. 

Dina Katabi, the Thuan and Nicole Pham Professor at MIT, explained how AI could be used to better diagnose some serious illnesses, including Parkinson’s, by using new tools to assess brain activity and its relationship to the potential for disease formation. “We can innovate in medicine, once you have such data,” she said. 

In some cases, new biotech tools are being deployed against familiar contagions. James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science, discussed how he and colleagues are using AI tools to develop new medicines that could be used against increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacterial illnesses. Without new advances, Collins said, such illnesses could kill 10 million people a year by 2050. 

“We’re using AI models not only to discover but to design new antibiotics,” Collins said. “We think collaboration across nation-states, as well as universities worldwide, is really going to be needed to address this crisis.”

In response to prepared questions from the South Korea delegation, MIT faculty also talked about an array of topics pertaining to research and development and innovation.

Collin Stultz, the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as well as co-director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and associate director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES), talked about developing talent in the biomedical field.

“Cultivating innovation in this space requires educating scholars who not only have technical expertise but have a real understanding of the biological and biomedical questions that are the most pressing,” Stultz said, noting that HST students work in hospital settings. “A hallmark of the HST program is not only to get specialized training in particular fundamental engineering or science disciplines … but also [to go] very deep into our actions with the medical community.”

Kwanghun Chung, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and a core member of IMES, was asked to talk about the different components making up a successful innovation ecosystem. He noted that the process was analogous to seeding many things in nature, in order to create extensive growth. His remarks drew a response from Yoon, who added, “I realize such a forest doesn’t happen overnight.” 

Giovanni Traverso, the Karl Van Tassel Career Development Professor, showed Yoon models of small drug-delivery systems he and his colleagues have developed, demonstrating, for instance, how such devices attach to their targets properly.

In addition to Yoon, the participants from South Korea included Lee Jong Ho, minister of science and ICT; Choi Sang Mok, senior secretary to the president for economic affairs; Songyee Yoon PhD ’00, a member of the MIT Corporation and president and chief strategy officer of NCSOFT, a Korean gaming company; and Kim Young Tae, Seoul National University Hospital president and CEO.

Lee, who at the start of his career was a postdoc at MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory, called the MIT visit a “very meaningful opportunity” to discuss trends and strategies, in a statement released by the South Korean government after the event. 

Yoon was elected as president in March of 2022. He grew up in Seoul, graduated from Seoul National University after studying law, and has had a lengthy career as a prosecutor. Yoon served as the country’s prosecutor general from 2019 to 2021. 

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J-PAL North America announces six new evaluation incubator partners to catalyze research on pressing social issues

J-PAL North America, a regional office of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), has announced six new partnerships with government agencies and leading nonprofits through the State and Local Evaluation Incubator and the Housing Stability Evaluation Incubator, launched in August 2022. These collaborators span the contiguous United States and represent a wide range of social policy areas. 

Over the next several months, organizations will work with J-PAL North America staff and affiliated researchers to design a randomized evaluation of one of their policies or programs. Randomized evaluations, in which participants are randomly assigned to either receive the program in question or “treatment as usual,” are unique in their ability to demonstrate the causal impact of a program. The goal of these evaluation incubators is to help organizations generate and utilize evidence to answer critical policy questions on state and local efforts to reduce poverty or addressing homelessness and housing stability.

Three collaborators aim to reduce homelessness and foster housing stability. One Roof, the coordinating agency for central Alabama’s Continuum of Care, seeks to evaluate the efficacy of a new risk assessment questionnaire for individuals experiencing homelessness upon engaging with the Coordinated Entry (CE) system. Jennifer Harrell, director of coordinated entry at One Roof, shares that “the CE program serving Central Alabama hopes to use the locally driven, evidenced-based data results learned from the randomized evaluation to begin the redesign process of the CE system to bring about more equitable housing outcomes for folks experiencing homelessness.”

The Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia (LASEV) provides legal services to low-income Virginians. “LASEV is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with J-PAL to develop evidence-based strategies in response to the eviction crisis facing the low-income families in our service area,” says Grants Manager Holly Yates. Through the Housing Stability Evaluation Incubator, LASEV will design an evaluation to assess the impact of providing legal information and reminders to individuals and families facing eviction. 

Washington’s Pierce County Human Services (PCHS) plans to assess the impact of their Eviction Prevention program, which provides wraparound case management, financial counseling, and funds to low-income households who are behind on rent. Heather Moss, director of PCHS, explains that “this evaluation of our program will help the county understand how best to use our limited resources to help neighbors at risk of losing their housing.”

The remaining collaborators operate in distinct and important policy areas: procedural justice, transportation, and income assistance. In California, the Anaheim Police Department aims to evaluate two officer training programs — wellness and procedural justice — to assess their impact on community trust. Deputy Chief of Police Rick Armendariz explains that their goal “is to provide training for our officers that helps them deal with their difficult, complex, and stressful job, while understanding the importance of developing a strong relationship with the community they serve.” On the topic of procedural justice specifically, the Anaheim Police Department hopes that their evaluation can inform policing policy more widely.

Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) plans to pilot and evaluate a guaranteed basic income program for low-income families with children. “Evaluating new and existing government programs provides data decision-makers can use to make government as efficient and effective as possible,” says Weston Merrick, a senior manager in the Results Management unit at MMB. “This particular project seeks to understand the impact of a guaranteed basic income pilot program on income, public assistance use, health, and housing stability in a large Minnesota county.”

King County Metro, the transportation services provider for the greater Seattle, Washington, area, is looking to evaluate their new on-demand transportation service for travelers with disabilities. Carrie Cihak, metro program project director, shares her excitement about participating in the State and Local Evaluation Incubator, noting that the engagement “empowers King County Metro decision-makers with evidence on the questions that matter most to us. Partnering with J-PAL will ensure our communities gain maximum benefit from innovative mobility solutions.”

By designing rigorous evaluations of their programs through the State and Local and Housing Stability Evaluation Incubators, collaborators have the potential to not only understand their impacts, but maximize their effectiveness. J-PAL North America and its partners are excited about using these findings to inform their practices and better support their constituents. Findings from these projects are also expected to contribute to broader policy lessons across this array of sectors.

Individuals interested in learning more can contact Mera Cronbaugh for questions about the State and Local Evaluation Incubator and Laina Sonterblum for inquiries related to the Housing Stability Evaluation Incubator.

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Astronomers detect the closest example yet of a black hole devouring a star

Once every 10,000 years or so, the center of a galaxy lights up as its supermassive black hole rips apart a passing star. This “tidal disruption event” happens in a literal flash, as the central black hole pulls in stellar material and blasts out huge amounts of radiation in the process.

Astronomers know of around 100 tidal disruption events (TDE) in distant galaxies, based on the burst of light that arrives at telescopes on Earth and in space. Most of this light comes from X-rays and optical radiation.

MIT astronomers, tuning past the conventional X-ray and UV/optical bands, have discovered a new tidal disruption event, shining brightly in infrared. It is one of the first times scientists have directly identified a TDE at infrared wavelengths.

What’s more, the new outburst happens to be the closest tidal disruption event observed to date: The flare was found in NGC 7392, a galaxy that is about 137 million light-years from Earth, which corresponds to a region in our cosmic backyard that is one-fourth the size of the next-closest TDE.

This new flare, labeled WTP14adbjsh, did not stand out in standard X-ray and optical data. The scientists suspect that these traditional surveys missed the nearby TDE, not because it did not emit X-rays and UV light, but because that light was obscured by an enormous amount of dust that absorbed the radiation and gave off heat in the form of infrared energy.

The researchers determined that WTP14adbjsh occurred in a young, star-forming galaxy, in contrast to the majority of TDEs that have been found in quieter galaxies. Scientists expected that star-forming galaxies should host TDEs, as the stars they churn out would provide plenty of fuel for a galaxy’s central black hole to devour. But observations of TDEs in star-forming galaxies were rare until now.

The new study suggests that conventional X-ray and optical surveys may have missed TDEs in star-forming galaxies because these galaxies naturally produce more dust that could obscure any light coming from their core. Searching in the infrared band could reveal many more, previously hidden TDEs in active, star-forming galaxies.

“Finding this nearby TDE means that, statistically, there must be a large population of these events that traditional methods were blind to,” says Christos Panagiotou, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “So, we should try to find these in infrared if we want a complete picture of black holes and their host galaxies.”

A paper detailing the team’s discovery appears today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Panagiotou’s MIT co-authors are Kishalay De, Megan Masterson, Erin Kara, Michael Calzadilla, Anna-Christina Eilers, Danielle Frostig, Nathan Lourie, and Rob Simcoe, along with Viraj Karambelkar, Mansi Kasliwal, Robert Stein, and Jeffrey Zolkower of Caltech, and Aaron Meisner at the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.

A flash of possibility

Panagiotou did not intend to search for tidal disruption events. He and his colleagues were looking for signs of general transient sources in observational data, using a search tool developed by De. The team used De’s method to look for potential transient events in archival data taken by NASA’s NEOWISE mission, a space telescope that has made regular scans of the entire sky since 2010, at infrared wavelengths.

The team discovered a bright flash that appeared in the sky near the end of 2014.

“We could see there was nothing at first,” Panagiotou recalls. “Then suddenly, in late 2014, the source got brighter and by 2015 reached a high luminosity, then started going back to its previous quiescence.”

They traced the flash to a galaxy 42 megarparsecs from Earth. The question then was, what set it off? To answer this, the team considered the brightness and timing of the flash, comparing the actual observations with models of various astrophysical processes that could produce a similar flash.

“For instance, supernovae are sources that explode and brighten suddenly, then come back down, on similar timescales to tidal disruption events,” Panagiotou notes. “But supernovae are not as luminous and energetic as what we observed.”

Working through different possibilities of what the burst could be, the scientists were finally able to exclude all but one: The flash was most likely a TDE, and the closest one observed so far.

“It’s a very clean light curve and really follows what we expect the temporal evolution of a TDE should be,” Panagiotou says.

Red or green

From there, the researchers took a closer look at the galaxy where the TDE arose. They gathered data from multiple ground- and space-based telescopes which happened to observe the part of the sky where the galaxy resides, across various wavelengths, including infrared, optical, and X-ray bands. With this accumulated data, the team estimated that the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy was about 30 million times as massive as the sun.

“This is almost 10 times larger than the black hole we have at our galactic center, so it’s quite massive, though black holes can get up to 10 billion solar masses,” Panagiotou says.

The team also found that the galaxy itself is actively producing new stars. Star-forming galaxies are a class of “blue” galaxies, in contrast to quieter “red” galaxies that have stopped producing new stars. Star-forming blue galaxies are the most common type of galaxy in the universe.

“Green” galaxies lie somewhere between red and blue, in that, every so often they produce a few stars. Green is the least common galaxy type, but curiously, most TDEs detected to date have been traced to these rarer galaxies. Scientists had struggled to explain these detections, since theory predicts that blue star-forming galaxies should exhibit TDEs, as they would present more stars for black holes to disrupt.

But star-forming galaxies also produce a lot of dust from the interactions between and among stars near a galaxy’s core. This dust is detectable at infrared wavelengths, but it can obscure any X-ray or UV radiation that would otherwise be picked up by optical telescopes. This could explain why astronomers have not detected TDEs in star-forming galaxies using conventional optical methods.

“The fact that optical and X-ray surveys missed this luminous TDE in our own backyard is very illuminating and demonstrates that these surveys are only giving us a partial census of the total population of TDEs,” says Suvi Gezari, associate astronomer and chair of the science staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, who was not involved in the study.  “Using infrared surveys to catch the dust echo of obscured TDEs … has already shown us that there is a population of TDEs in dusty, star-forming galaxies that we have been missing.”

This research was supported, in part, by NASA.

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MIT engineers “grow” atomically thin transistors on top of computer chips

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips. But semiconductor chips are traditionally made with bulk materials, which are boxy 3D structures, so stacking multiple layers of transistors to create denser integrations is very difficult.

However, semiconductor transistors made from ultrathin 2D materials, each only about three atoms in thickness, could be stacked up to create more powerful chips. To this end, MIT researchers have now demonstrated a novel technology that can effectively and efficiently “grow” layers of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials directly on top of a fully fabricated silicon chip to enable denser integrations.

Growing 2D materials directly onto a silicon CMOS wafer has posed a major challenge because the process usually requires temperatures of about 600 degrees Celsius, while silicon transistors and circuits could break down when heated above 400 degrees. Now, the interdisciplinary team of MIT researchers has developed a low-temperature growth process that does not damage the chip. The technology allows 2D semiconductor transistors to be directly integrated on top of standard silicon circuits.

In the past, researchers have grown 2D materials elsewhere and then transferred them onto a chip or a wafer. This often causes imperfections that hamper the performance of the final devices and circuits. Also, transferring the material smoothly becomes extremely difficult at wafer-scale. By contrast, this new process grows a smooth, highly uniform layer across an entire 8-inch wafer.

The new technology is also able to significantly reduce the time it takes to grow these materials. While previous approaches required more than a day to grow a single layer of 2D materials, the new approach can grow a uniform layer of TMD material in less than an hour over entire 8-inch wafers.

Due to its rapid speed and high uniformity, the new technology enabled the researchers to successfully integrate a 2D material layer onto much larger surfaces than has been previously demonstrated. This makes their method better-suited for use in commercial applications, where wafers that are 8 inches or larger are key.

“Using 2D materials is a powerful way to increase the density of an integrated circuit. What we are doing is like constructing a multistory building. If you have only one floor, which is the conventional case, it won’t hold many people. But with more floors, the building will hold more people that can enable amazing new things. Thanks to the heterogenous integration we are working on, we have silicon as the first floor and then we can have many floors of 2D materials directly integrated on top,” says Jiadi Zhu, an electrical engineering and computer science graduate student and co-lead author of a paper on this new technique.

Zhu wrote the paper with co-lead-author Ji-Hoon Park, an MIT postdoc; corresponding authors Jing Kong, professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) and a member of the Research Laboratory for Electronics; and Tomás Palacios, professor of EECS and director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL); as well as others at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Ericsson Research. The paper appears today in Nature Nanotechnology.

Slim materials with vast potential

The 2D material the researchers focused on, molybdenum disulfide, is flexible, transparent, and exhibits powerful electronic and photonic properties that make it ideal for a semiconductor transistor. It is composed of a one-atom layer of molybdenum sandwiched between two atoms of sulfide.

Growing thin films of molybdenum disulfide on a surface with good uniformity is often accomplished through a process known as metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). Molybdenum hexacarbonyl and diethylene sulfur, two organic chemical compounds that contain molybdenum and sulfur atoms, vaporize and are heated inside the reaction chamber, where they “decompose” into smaller molecules. Then they link up through chemical reactions to form chains of molybdenum disulfide on a surface.

But decomposing these molybdenum and sulfur compounds, which are known as precursors, requires temperatures above 550 degrees Celsius, while silicon circuits start to degrade when temperatures surpass 400 degrees.

So, the researchers started by thinking outside the box — they designed and built an entirely new furnace for the metal-organic chemical vapor deposition process.

The oven consists of two chambers, a low-temperature region in the front, where the silicon wafer is placed, and a high-temperature region in the back. Vaporized molybdenum and sulfur precursors are pumped into the furnace. The molybdenum stays in the low-temperature region, where the temperature is kept below 400 degrees Celsius — hot enough to decompose the molybdenum precursor but not so hot that it damages the silicon chip.

The sulfur precursor flows through into the high-temperature region, where it decomposes. Then it flows back into the low-temperature region, where the chemical reaction to grow molybdenum disulfide on the surface of the wafer occurs.

“You can think about decomposition like making black pepper — you have a whole peppercorn and you grind it into a powder form. So, we smash and grind the pepper in the high-temperature region, then the powder flows back into the low-temperature region,” Zhu explains.

Faster growth and better uniformity

One problem with this process is that silicon circuits typically have aluminum or copper as a top layer so the chip can be connected to a package or carrier before it is mounted onto a printed circuit board. But sulfur causes these metals to sulfurize, the same way some metals rust when exposed to oxygen, which destroys their conductivity. The researchers prevented sulfurization by first depositing a very thin layer of passivation material on top of the chip. Then later they could open the passivation layer to make connections.

They also placed the silicon wafer into the low-temperature region of the furnace vertically, rather than horizontally. By placing it vertically, neither end is too close to the high-temperature region, so no part of the wafer is damaged by the heat. Plus, the molybdenum and sulfur gas molecules swirl around as they bump into the vertical chip, rather than flowing over a horizontal surface. This circulation effect improves the growth of molybdenum disulfide and leads to better material uniformity.

In addition to yielding a more uniform layer, their method was also much faster than other MOCVD processes. They could grow a layer in less than an hour, while typically the MOCVD growth process takes at least an entire day.

Using the state-of-the-art MIT.Nano facilities, they were able to demonstrate high material uniformity and quality across an 8-inch silicon wafer, which is especially important for industrial applications where bigger wafers are needed.

“By shortening the growth time, the process is much more efficient and could be more easily integrated into industrial fabrications. Plus, this is a silicon-compatible low-temperature process, which can be useful to push 2D materials further into the semiconductor industry,” Zhu says.

In the future, the researchers want to fine-tune their technique and use it to grow many stacked layers of 2D transistors. In addition, they want to explore the use of the low-temperature growth process for flexible surfaces, like polymers, textiles, or even papers. This could enable the integration of semiconductors onto everyday objects like clothing or notebooks.

“This work made an important progress in the synthesis technology of monolayer molybdenum disulfide material,” says Han Wang, the Robert G. and Mary G. Lane Endowed Early Career Chair and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California, who was not involved with this research. “The new capability of low thermal budget growth on an 8-inch scale enables the back-end-of-line integration of this material with silicon CMOS technology and paves the way for its future electronics application.”

This work is partially funded by the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, the National Science Foundation Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, Ericsson, MITRE, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the U.S. Department of Energy. The project also benefitted from the support of TSMC University Shuttle.

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Robert Armstrong: A lifetime at the forefront of chemical engineering research and education

Robert C. Armstrong, the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering who has been the director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) since 2013 and part of MITEI’s leadership team since its inception in 2007, has announced that he will retire effective June 30. At that time he will have completed 50 years on the MIT faculty.  

Armstrong plans to continue to work at 10 percent capacity, focusing on research projects on which he serves as principal investigator and also advising a number of graduate students.

“Working at MIT has been a great honor and privilege for me,” says Armstrong. “Nowhere else can I imagine having had the opportunity to work with such exceptional students and colleagues and to have a ‘job’ that makes me want to get up every day to see what I can do to help humanity with its great challenges.”

Armstrong joined the founding MITEI leadership team with Ernest Moniz, now the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems emeritus and special advisor to the MIT president. When Moniz left MIT in 2013 to become U.S. secretary of energy, Armstrong was named MITEI director.

“MITEI has enabled us to leverage MIT’s great talent base to make significant advances in energy research, education, and outreach,” says Armstrong. “This is an incredibly important and exciting time in energy, and there is much to be done in envisioning and implementing an energy transition that mitigates the worst impacts of climate change, provides energy justly and equitably to those around the world without access or with inadequate access, and improves security of energy supply. I have been honored to do this work with amazing colleagues at MITEI and throughout MIT, and I will be cheering that team on, as it races to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.”

MIT Vice President for Research Maria Zuber will form a search committee to select the new MITEI director. Zuber has worked closely with Armstrong since she became vice president for research in 2012.

“Anyone who knows Bob knows that he is soft-spoken, but a person of deep conviction,” says Zuber. “He is a master of complexity, an admired educator, a respected leader, and a terrific colleague. During his decade as director, Bob has focused the MIT Energy Initiative on the urgent, daunting challenge of transforming the global energy system to respond to the climate crisis. In the last couple of years, Bob led the creation of MITEI’s Future Energy Systems Center, reflecting his keen understanding that an effective climate response requires integrated analysis and a systems approach — there is no one-fix-all solution. I congratulate Bob on a remarkable career, and I thank him for his half-century of dedicated service to MIT.”

Armstrong joined the MIT faculty in 1973 after earning his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. A native of Louisiana, he earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech. He served as chair of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering from 1996 until joining MITEI in 2007. 

“In his 50 years at MIT, Bob has been a truly dedicated educator, researcher, and leader in our department, the Institute, and the field of chemical engineering,” says Paula T. Hammond, Institute professor and the head of the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering — a successor to Armstrong in that role. “During his time as head, he expertly expanded the breadth and depth of the department’s research and academics while maintaining its high level of excellence. He has served as a thoughtful and proactive mentor to so many of our faculty members, as well as a dedicated teacher and advocate for modernizing chemical engineering curriculum. We are extremely fortunate to have profited from his scholarship and leadership over the past several decades and will continue to benefit thanks to his vision and work toward the future of chemical engineering and energy.”

In 2008, Armstrong was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering, based on his research into non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, his leadership in chemical engineering education, and his co-authoring of influential chemical engineering textbooks. He became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.

He received the 2006 Bingham Medal from The Society of Rheology, which is devoted to the study of the science of deformation and flow of matter, as well as the Founders Award (2020), the Warren K. Lewis Award (2006), and the Professional Progress Award (1992), all from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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Speedy robo-gripper reflexively organizes cluttered spaces

When manipulating an arcade claw, a player can plan all she wants. But once she presses the joystick button, it’s a game of wait-and-see. If the claw misses its target, she’ll have to start from scratch for another chance at a prize.

The slow and deliberate approach of the arcade claw is similar to state-of-the-art pick-and-place robots, which use high-level planners to process visual images and plan out a series of moves to grab for an object. If a gripper misses its mark, it’s back to the starting point, where the controller must map out a new plan.  

Looking to give robots a more nimble, human-like touch, MIT engineers have now developed a gripper that grasps by reflex. Rather than start from scratch after a failed attempt, the team’s robot adapts in the moment to reflexively roll, palm, or pinch an object to get a better hold. It’s able to carry out these “last centimeter” adjustments (a riff on the “last mile” delivery problem) without engaging a higher-level planner, much like how a person might fumble in the dark for a bedside glass without much conscious thought.

The new design is the first to incorporate reflexes into a robotic planning architecture. For now, the system is a proof of concept and provides a general organizational structure for embedding reflexes into a robotic system. Going forward, the researchers plan to program more complex reflexes to enable nimble, adaptable machines that can work with and among humans in ever-changing settings.

“In environments where people live and work, there’s always going to be uncertainty,” says Andrew SaLoutos, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Someone could put something new on a desk or move something in the break room or add an extra dish to the sink. We’re hoping a robot with reflexes could adapt and work with this kind of uncertainty.”

SaLoutos and his colleagues will present a paper on their design in May at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). His MIT co-authors include postdoc Hongmin Kim, graduate student Elijah Stanger-Jones, Menglong Guo SM ’22, and professor of mechanical engineering Sangbae Kim, the director of the Biomimetic Robotics Laboratory at MIT.

High and low

Many modern robotic grippers are designed for relatively slow and precise tasks, such as repetitively fitting together the same parts on a a factory assembly line. These systems depend on visual data from onboard cameras; processing that data limits a robot’s reaction time, particularly if it needs to recover from a failed grasp.

“There’s no way to short-circuit out and say, oh shoot, I have to do something now and react quickly,” SaLoutos says. “Their only recourse is just to start again. And that takes a lot of time computationally.”

In their new work, Kim’s team built a more reflexive and reactive platform, using fast, responsive actuators that they originally developed for the group’s mini cheetah — a nimble, four-legged robot designed to run, leap, and quickly adapt its gait to various types of terrain.  

The team’s design includes a high-speed arm and two lightweight, multijointed fingers. In addition to a camera mounted to the base of the arm, the team incorporated custom high-bandwidth sensors at the fingertips that instantly record the force and location of any contact as well as the proximity of the finger to surrounding objects more than 200 times per second.

The researchers designed the robotic system such that a high-level planner initially processes visual data of a scene, marking an object’s current location where the gripper should pick the object up, and the location where the robot should place it down. Then, the planner sets a path for the arm to reach out and grasp the object. At this point, the reflexive controller takes over.

If the gripper fails to grab hold of the object, rather than back out and start again as most grippers do, the team wrote an algorithm that instructs the robot to quickly act out any of three grasp maneuvers, which they call “reflexes,” in response to real-time measurements at the fingertips. The three reflexes kick in within the last centimeter of the robot approaching an object and enable the fingers to grab, pinch, or drag an object until it has a better hold.

They programmed the reflexes to be carried out without having to involve the high-level planner. Instead, the reflexes are organized at a lower decision-making level, so that they can respond as if by instinct, rather than having to carefully evaluate the situation to plan an optimal fix.

“It’s like how, instead of having the CEO micromanage and plan every single thing in your company, you build a trust system and delegate some tasks to lower-level divisions,” Kim says. “It may not be optimal, but it helps the company react much more quickly. In many cases, waiting for the optimal solution makes the situation much worse or irrecoverable.”  

Cleaning via reflex

The team demonstrated the gripper’s reflexes by clearing a cluttered shelf. They set a variety of household objects on a shelf, including a bowl, a cup, a can, an apple, and a bag of coffee grounds. They showed that the robot was able to quickly adapt its grasp to each object’s particular shape and, in the case of the coffee grounds, squishiness. Out of 117 attempts, the gripper quickly and successfully picked and placed objects more than 90 percent of the time, without having to back out and start over after a failed grasp.

A second experiment showed how the robot could also react in the moment. When researchers shifted a cup’s position, the gripper, despite having no visual update of the new location, was able to readjust and essentially feel around until it sensed the cup in its grasp. Compared to a baseline grasping controller, the gripper’s reflexes increased the area of successful grasps by over 55 percent.

Now, the engineers are working to include more complex reflexes and grasp maneuvers in the system, with a view toward building a general pick-and-place robot capable of adapting to cluttered and constantly changing spaces.

“Picking up a cup from a clean table — that specific problem in robotics was solved 30 years ago,” Kim notes. “But a more general approach, like picking up toys in a toybox, or even a book from a library shelf, has not been solved. Now with reflexes, we think we can one day pick and place in every possible way, so that a robot could potentially clean up the house.”

This research was supported, in part, by Advanced Robotics Lab of LG Electronics and the Toyota Research Institute.

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Ingestible “electroceutical” capsule stimulates hunger-regulating hormone

Hormones released by the stomach, such as ghrelin, play a key role in stimulating appetite. These hormones are produced by endocrine cells that are part of the enteric nervous system, which controls hunger, nausea, and feelings of fullness.

MIT engineers have now shown that they can stimulate these endocrine cells to produce ghrelin, using an ingestible capsule that delivers an electrical current to the cells. This approach could prove useful for treating diseases that involve nausea or loss of appetite, such as cachexia (loss of body mass that can occur in patients with cancer or other chronic diseases).

In tests in animals, the researchers showed that this “electroceutical” capsule could significantly boost ghrelin production in the stomach. They believe this approach could also be adapted to deliver electrical stimulation to other parts of the GI tract.

“This study helps establish electrical stimulation by ingestible electroceuticals as a mode of triggering hormone release via the GI tract,” says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the senior author of the study. “We show one example of how we're able to engage with the stomach mucosa and release hormones, and we anticipate that this could be used in other sites in the GI tract that we haven’t explored here.”

Khalil Ramadi SM ’16, PhD ’19, a graduate of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at the New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering and the director of the Laboratory for Advanced Neuroengineering and Translational Medicine at NYU Abu Dhabi, and James McRae, an MIT graduate student, are the lead authors of the paper, which appears today in Science Robotics.

Electrical stimulation

The enteric nervous system controls all aspects of digestion, including the movement of food through the GI tract. Some patients with gastroparesis, a disorder of the stomach nerves that leads to very slow movement of food, have shown symptomatic improvement after electrical stimulation generated by a pacemaker-like device that can be surgically implanted in the stomach.

Doctors had theorized that the electrical stimulation would provoke the stomach into contracting, which would help push food along. However, it was later found that while the treatment does help patients feel better, it affected motility to a lesser degree. The MIT team hypothesized that the electrical stimulation of the stomach might be leading to the release of ghrelin, which is known to promote hunger and reduce feelings of nausea.

To test that hypothesis, the researchers used an electrical probe to deliver electrical stimulation in the stomachs of animals. They found that after 20 minutes of stimulation, ghrelin levels in the bloodstream were considerably elevated. They also found that electrical stimulation did not lead to any significant inflammation or other adverse effects.

Once they established that electrical stimulation was provoking ghrelin release, the researchers set out to see if they could achieve the same thing using a device that could be swallowed and temporarily reside in the stomach. One of the main challenges in designing such a device is ensuring that the electrodes on the capsule can contact the stomach tissue, which are coated with fluid. 

To create a drier surface that electrodes can interact with, the researchers gave their capsule a grooved surface that wicks fluid away from the electrodes. The surface they designed is inspired by the skin of the Australian thorny devil lizard, which uses ridged scales to collect water. When the lizard touches water with any part of its skin, water is transported by capillary action along the channels to the lizard’s mouth.

“We were inspired by that to incorporate surface textures and patterns onto the outside of this capsule,” McRae says. “That surface can manage the fluid that could potentially prevent the electrodes from touching the tissue in the stomach, so it can reliably deliver electrical stimulation.”

The capsule surface consists of grooves with a hydrophilic coating. These grooves function as channels that draw fluid away from the stomach tissue. Inside the device are battery-powered electronics that produce an electric current that flows across electrodes on the surface of the capsule. In the prototype used in this study, the current runs constantly, but future versions could be designed so that the current can be wirelessly turned on and off, according to the researchers.

Hormone boost

The researchers tested their capsule by administering it into the stomachs of large animals, and they found that the capsule produced a substantial spike in ghrelin levels in the bloodstream.

“As far as we know, this is the first example of using electrical stimuli through an ingestible device to increase endogenous levels of hormones in the body, like ghrelin. And so, it has this effect of utilizing the body's own systems rather than introducing external agents,” Ramadi says.

The researchers found that in order for this stimulation to work, the vagus nerve, which controls digestion, must be intact. They theorize that the electrical pulses transmit to the brain via the vagus nerve, which then stimulates endocrine cells in the stomach to produce ghrelin.

Traverso’s lab now plans to explore using this approach in other parts of the GI tract, and the researchers hope to test the device in human patients within the next three years. If developed for use in human patients, this type of treatment could potentially replace or complement some of the existing drugs used to prevent nausea and stimulate appetite in people with cachexia or anorexia, the researchers say.

“It’s a relatively simple device, so we believe it's something that we can get into humans on a relatively quick time scale,” Traverso says.

The research was funded by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the Division of Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi, a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, Novo Nordisk, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT.

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New black hole images reveal a glowing, fluffy ring and a high-speed jet

In 2017, astronomers captured the first image of a black hole by coordinating radio dishes around the world to act as a single, planet-sized telescope. The synchronized network, known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), focused in on M87*, the black hole at the center of the nearby Messier 87 galaxy. The telescope’s laser-focused resolution revealed a very thin glowing ring around a dark center, representing the first visual of a black hole’s shadow.

Astronomers have now refocused their view to capture a new layer of M87*. The team, including scientists at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, has harnessed another global web of observatories — the Global Millimeter VLBI Array (GMVA) — to capture a more zoomed-out view of the black hole.

The new images, taken one year after the EHT’s initial observations, reveal a thicker, fluffier ring that is 50 percent larger than the ring that was first reported. This larger ring is a reflection of the telescope array’s resolution, which was tuned to pick up more of the super-hot, glowing plasma surrounding the black hole.

For the first time, scientists could see that part of the black hole’s ring consists of plasma from a surrounding accretion disk — a swirling pancake of white-hot electrons that the team estimates is being heated to billions of degrees Celsius as the plasma streams into the black hole at close to the speed of light.

The images also reveal plasma trailing out from the central ring, which scientists believe to be part of a relativistic jet blasting out from the black hole. The scientists tracked these emissions back toward the black hole and observed for the first time that the base of the jet appears to connect to the central ring.

“This is the first image where we are able to pin down where the ring is, relative to the powerful jet escaping out of the central black hole,” says Kazunori Akiyama, a research scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory, who developed the imaging software used to visualize the black hole. “Now we can start to address questions such as how matter is captured by a black hole, and how it sometimes manages to escape.”

Akiyama is part of an international team of astronomers who present the new images, along with their analysis, in a paper today in Nature.

An expanded eye

To capture images of M87*, astronomers used a technique in radio astronomy known as very-long-baseline interferometry, or VLBI. When a radio signal passes by Earth, such as from a black hole’s plasma emissions, radio dishes around the world can pick up the signal. Scientists can then determine the time at which each dish registers the signal, and the distance between dishes, and combine this information in a way that is analogous to the signal being seen by one very large, planet-scale telescope.

When each radio telescope is dialed to a specific frequency, the array as a whole can focus in on a particular feature of the radio signal. The EHT’s network was tuned to 1.3 millimeters — a resolution equivalent to seeing a grain of rice in California, from Massachusetts. At this resolution, astronomers could see past most of the plasma surrounding M87* and image the thinnest ring, thereby accentuating the black hole’s shadow.

In contrast, the GMVA network works at a slightly longer wavelength of 3 millimeters, giving it a slightly lower angular resolution. With this focus, the array could resolve a pumpkin seed, rather than a grain of rice. The network itself consists of about a dozen radio telescopes scattered around the United States and Europe, mostly located along the east-west axis of the Earth. To make a truly planet-sized telescope able to capture a far-off radio signal from M87*, astronomers had to expand the array’s “eye” to the north and south.

To do so, the team involved two additional radio observatories: the Greenland Telescope to the north, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to the south. ALMA is an array of 66 radio dishes located in Chile’s Atacama Desert. MIT Haystack scientists, including Principal Research Scientist Lynn Matthews, worked to phase, or synchronize, ALMA’s dishes to work as one powerful and essential part of the GMVA network.

“Having these two telescopes [as part of] the global array resulted in a 
boost in angular resolution by a factor of four in the north-south direction,” Matthews says. “This greatly improves the level of detail we can see. And in this case, a consequence was a dramatic leap in our understanding of the physics operating near the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy.”

Tuning in

On April 14 and 15 of 2018, astronomers coordinated the telescopes of the GMVA, along with the Greenland and ALMA observatories, to record radio emissions at a wavelength of 3 millimeters, arriving from the direction of the M87 galaxy. Scientists then used several imaging-processing algorithms, including one developed by Akiyama, to process the GMVA’s observations into visual images.

The resulting pictures reveal more plasma surrounding the black hole, in the form of a larger, fluffier ring. The astronomers could also spot plasma trailing up and out from the central glowing ring.

“The exciting thing is, we still see a central dark area enclosing the black hole, but we also start to see a more extended jet, stemming from this central ring,” Akiyama says.

The astronomers hope to pin down more properties of the black hole’s plasma, such as its temperature profile and composition. For this, they plan to tune the EHT and GMVA to new resolutions. By observing M87* at multiple wavelengths, they can then construct a layered picture, and a more detailed understanding of black holes and the jets they generate.

“If something major happens in the world, you might tune in to both AM and FM to assemble a ‘complete picture’ of the event,” says Geoffrey Crew, a Haystack research scientist who works to support ALMA and the EHT. “This is no different. You might think of the EHT M87* image being made in FM, and this result coming from AM.  Both tell a story, and together it is a better story.”

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MIT Solve names Hala Hanna as new executive director

MIT Solve has announced Hala Hanna as its new executive director. Solve is a marketplace for social impact innovation with a mission to drive innovation to solve world challenges.

Hanna has more than 15 years of experience working across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, with the purpose of creating a more equitable and sustainable world. She spent the last six years at MIT Solve, where she helped build the initiative into a global community. 

Solve uses open innovation challenges to find the most promising tech-based social entrepreneurs worldwide, with a focus on underserved communities. Solve then provides them support to scale their impact. Within the Solve community, an ecosystem that includes nearly 100 organizations spanning industries and sectors, MIT Solve has run more than 60 global and custom challenges. Solve’s challenges have received nearly 16,000 submissions, from innovators based in more than 180 countries. Solve has selected over 260 Solver teams who reach over 170 million lives globally, and facilitated over $60 million in funding to help innovators scale and drive lasting impact. 

Before joining MIT Solve, Hanna was director of strategy and impact at the World Economic Forum. Her experience includes working with the World Bank and the United Nations, advising senior officials on reform and donor engagement. Her work experience spans the Middle East, North America, Europe, and Africa. Hanna has also held numerous advisory roles, including with U.N. Women and U.N. initiatives, and the Brussels-based Women Political Leaders. Hanna holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, a master’s in international development from American University, and a bachelor's degree in economics from the American University of Beirut. 

“Hala's appointment as executive director is a testament to her passion for supporting innovators from all over the world, her dedication to creating a better planet, and her ability to inspire those around her,” says Cynthia Barnhardt, MIT provost and Solve Steering Committee president. “Under Hala’s leadership, I am confident that Solve will reach new heights in driving innovation to solve our world’s most pressing challenges.”

“At the core of MIT Solve's work is the belief that complex global challenges can be addressed by unlocking and supporting human ingenuity everywhere,” says Hanna. “This mission is both inspiring and essential. I am truly honored to serve as executive director, and excited to harness the power of Solve’s global community to create a more sustainable and inclusive world for generations to come.”

Hanna's first public engagement will be during Solve at MIT May 4 on the MIT campus.

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A simple paper test could offer early cancer diagnosis

MIT engineers have designed a new nanoparticle sensor that could enable early diagnosis of cancer with a simple urine test. The sensors, which can detect many different cancerous proteins, could also be used to distinguish the type of a tumor or how it is responding to treatment.

The nanoparticles are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that are excreted in the urine. Analyzing these DNA “barcodes” can reveal distinguishing features of a particular patient’s tumor. The researchers designed their test so that it can be performed using a strip of paper, similar to an at-home Covid test, which they hope could make it affordable and accessible to as many patients as possible.

“We are trying to innovate in a context of making technology available to low- and middle-resource settings. Putting this diagnostic on paper is part of our goal of democratizing diagnostics and creating inexpensive technologies that can give you a fast answer at the point of care,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

In tests in mice, the researchers showed that they could use the sensors to detect the activity of five different enzymes that are expressed in tumors. They also showed that their approach could be scaled up to distinguish at least 46 different DNA barcodes in a single sample, using a microfluidic device to analyze the samples.

Bhatia is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Nanotechnology. Liangliang Hao, a former MIT research scientist who is now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, is the lead author of the study.

DNA barcodes

For several years, Bhatia’s lab has been developing “synthetic biomarkers” that could be used to diagnose cancer. This work builds on the concept of detecting cancer biomarkers, such as proteins or circulating tumor cells, in a patient’s blood sample. These naturally occurring biomarkers are so rare that it’s nearly impossible to find them, especially at an early stage, but synthetic biomarkers can be used amplify smaller-scale changes that occur within small tumors.

In previous work, Bhatia created nanoparticles that can detect the activity of enzymes called proteases, which help cancer cells to escape their original locations, or settle into new ones, by cutting through proteins of the extracellular matrix. The nanoparticles are coated with peptides that are cleaved by different proteases, and once these peptides are released into the bloodstream, they can then be concentrated and more easily detected in a urine sample.

The original peptide biomarkers were designed to be detected based on small engineered variations in their mass, using a mass spectrometer. This kind of equipment might not be available in low-resource settings, so the researchers set out to develop sensors that could be analyzed more easily and affordably, using DNA barcodes that can be read using CRISPR technology.

For this approach to work, the researchers had to use a chemical modification called phosphorothioate to protect the circulating DNA reporter barcodes from being broken down in the blood. This modification has already been used to improve the stability of modern RNA vaccines, allowing them to survive longer in the body.

Similar to the peptide reporters, each DNA barcode is attached to a nanoparticle by a linker that can be cleaved by a specific protease. If that protease is present, the DNA molecule is released and free to circulate, eventually ending up in the urine. For this study, the researchers used two different types of nanoparticles: one, a particle made from polymers that have been FDA-approved for use in humans, and the other a “nanobody” — an antibody fragment that can be designed to accumulate at a tumor site.

Once the sensors are secreted in the urine, the sample can be analyzed using a paper strip that recognizes a reporter that is activated by a CRISPR enzyme called Cas12a. When a particular DNA barcode is present in the sample, Cas12a amplifies the signal so that it can be seen as a dark strip on a paper test.

The particles can be designed to carry many different DNA barcodes, each of which detects a different type of protease activity, which allows for “multiplexed” sensing. Using a larger number of sensors provides a boost in both sensitivity and specificity, allowing the test to more easily distinguish between tumor types.

Disease signatures

In tests in mice, the researchers showed that a panel of five DNA barcodes could accurately distinguish tumors that first arose in the lungs from tumors formed by colorectal cancer cells that had metastasized to the lungs.

“Our goal here is to build up disease signatures and to see whether we can use these barcoded panels not only read out a disease but also to classify a disease or distinguish different cancer types,” Hao says.

For use in humans, the researchers expect that they may need to use more than five barcodes because there is so much variety between patients’ tumors. To help reach that goal, they worked with researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard led by Harvard University Professor Pardis Sabeti, to create a microfluidic chip that can be used to read up to 46 different DNA barcodes from one sample.

This kind of testing could be used not only for detecting cancer, but also for measuring how well a patient’s tumor responds to treatment and whether it has recurred after treatment. The researchers are now working on further developing the particles with the goal of testing them in humans. Glympse Bio, a company co-founded by Bhatia, has performed phase 1 clinical trials of an earlier version of the urinary diagnostic particles and found them to be safe in patients.

In addition to Bhatia, Hao, and Sabeti, the study’s co-authors include Renee T. Zhao, Nicole L. Welch, Edward Kah Wei Tan, Qian Zhong, Nour Saida Harzallah, Chayanon Ngambenjawong, Henry Ko, and Heather E. Fleming.

The research was funded by the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute, a Core Center Grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute, the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, and a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Cancer Institute.

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Learner in Afghanistan reaches beyond barriers to pursue career in data science

Tahmina S. was a junior studying computer engineering at a top university in Afghanistan when a new government policy banned women from pursuing education. In August 2021, the Taliban prohibited girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade. While women were initially allowed to continue to attend universities, by October 2021, an order from the Ministry of Higher Education declared that all women in Afghanistan were suspended from attending public and private centers of higher education.

Determined to continue her studies and pursue her ambitions, Tahmina found the MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) and was accepted to its Certificate in Computer Science and Data Science program in 2022.

“ReACT helped me realize that I can do big things and be a part of big things,” she says.

MIT ReACT provides education and professional opportunities to learners from refugee and forcibly displaced communities worldwide. ReACT’s core pillars include academic development, human skills development, employment pathways, and network building. Since 2017, ReACT has offered its Certificate in Computer and Data Science (CDS) program free-of-cost to learners wherever they live. In 2022, ReACT welcomed its largest and most diverse cohort to date — 136 learners from 29 countries — including 25 learners from Afghanistan, more than half of whom are women.

Tahmina was able to select her classes in the program, and especially valued learning Python — which has led to her studying other programming languages and gaining more skills in data science. She’s continuing to take online courses in hopes of completing her undergraduate degree, and someday pursuing a masters degree in computer science and becoming a data scientist.

“It’s an important and fun career. I really love data,” she says. “If this is my only time for this experience, I will bring to the table what I have, and do my best.”

In addition to the education ban, Tahmina also faced the challenge of accessing an internet connection, which is expensive where she lives. But she regularly studies between 12 and 14 hours a day to achieve her dreams.

The ReACT program offers a blend of asynchronous and synchronous learning. Learners complete a curated series of online, rigorous MIT coursework through MITx with the support of teaching assistants and collaborators, and also participate in a series of interactive online workshops in interpersonal skills that are critical to success in education and careers.

ReACT learners engage with MIT’s global network of experts including MIT staff, faculty, and alumni — as well as collaborators across technology, humanitarian, and government sectors.

“I loved that experience a lot, it was a huge achievement. I’m grateful ReACT gave me a chance to be a part of that team of amazing people. I’m amazed I completed that program, because it was really challenging.”

Theory into practice

Tahmina was one of 10 students from the ReACT cohort accepted to the highly competitive MIT Innovation Leadership Bootcamp program. She worked on a team of five people who initiated a business proposal and took the project through each phase of the development process. Her team’s project was creating an app for finance management for users aged 23-51 — including all the graphic elements and a final presentation. One valuable aspect of the boot camp, Tahmina says, was presenting their project to real investors who then provided business insights and actionable feedback.

As part of this ReACT cohort, Tahmina also participated in the Global Apprenticeship Program (GAP) pilot, an initiative led by Talanta and with the participation of MIT Open Learning as curriculum provider. The GAP initiative focuses on improving diverse emerging talent job preparedness and exploring how companies can successfully recruit, onboard, and retain this talent through remote, paid internships. Through the GAP pilot, Tahmina received training in professional skills, resume and interview preparation, and was matched with a financial sector firm for a four-month remote internship in data science.

To prepare Tahmina and other learners for these professional experiences, ReACT trains its cohorts to work with people who have diverse backgrounds, experiences, and challenges. The nonprofit Na’amal offered workshops covering areas such as problem-solving, innovation and ideation, goal-setting, communication, teamwork, and infrastructure and info security. Tahmina was able to access English classes and learn valuable career skills, such as writing a resume.

“This was an amazing part for me. There’s a huge difference going from theoretical to practical,” she says. “Not only do you have to have the theoretical experience, you have to have soft skills. You have to communicate everything you learn to other people, because other people in the business might not have that knowledge, so you have to tell the story in a way that they can understand.”

ReACT wanted the women in the program to be mentored by women who were not only leaders in the tech field, but working in the same geographic region as learners. At the start of the internship, Na’amal connected Tahmina with a mentor, Maha Gad, who is head of talent development at Talabat and lives in Dubai. Tahmina met with Gad at the beginning and end of each month, giving her the opportunity to ask expansive questions. Tahmina says Gad encouraged her to research and plan first, and then worked with her to explore new tools, like Trello.

Wanting to put her skills to use locally, Tahmina volunteered at the nonprofit Rumie, a community for Afghan women and girls, working as a learning designer, translator, team leader, and social media manager. She currently volunteers at Correspondents of the World as a story ambassador, helping Afghan people share stories, community, and culture — especially telling the stories of Afghan women and the changes they’ve made in the world.

“It’s been the most beautiful journey of my life that I will never forget,” says Tahmina. “I found ReACT at a time when I had nothing, and I found the most valuable thing.”

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Eight from MIT elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2023

Eight MIT faculty members are among more than 250 leaders from academia, the arts, industry, public policy, and research elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 19.

One of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies, the academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Members contribute to academy publications, as well as studies of science and technology policy, energy and global security, social policy and American institutions, the humanities and culture, and education.

Those elected from MIT in 2023 are:

• Arnaud Costinot, professor of economics;
• James J. DiCarlo, the Peter de Florez Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the MIT Quest for Intelligence;
• Piotr Indyk, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science;
• Senthil Todadri, professor of physics;
• Evelyn N. Wang, the Ford Professor of Engineering (on leave) and director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy;
• Boleslaw Wyslouch, professor of physics and director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and Bates Research and Engineering Center;
• Yukiko Yamashita, professor of biology and core member of the Whitehead Institute; and
• Wei Zhang, professor of mathematics.

“With the election of these members, the academy is honoring excellence, innovation, and leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments. We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good,” says David W. Oxtoby, president of the academy.

Since its founding in 1780, the academy has elected leading thinkers from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Maria Mitchell and Daniel Webster in the 19th century, and Toni Morrison and Albert Einstein in the 20th century. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.

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Vaccine printer could help vaccines reach more people

Getting vaccines to people who need them isn’t always easy. Many vaccines require cold storage, making it difficult to ship them to remote areas that don’t have the necessary infrastructure.

MIT researchers have come up with a possible solution to this problem: a mobile vaccine printer that could be scaled up to produce hundreds of vaccine doses in a day. This kind of printer, which can fit on a tabletop, could be deployed anywhere vaccines are needed, the researchers say.

“We could someday have on-demand vaccine production,” says Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “If, for example, there was an Ebola outbreak in a particular region, one could ship a few of these printers there and vaccinate the people in that location.”

The printer produces patches with hundreds of microneedles containing vaccine. The patch can be attached to the skin, allowing the vaccine to dissolve without the need for a traditional injection. Once printed, the vaccine patches can be stored for months at room temperature.

In a study appearing today in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers showed they could use the printer to produce thermostable Covid-19 RNA vaccines that could induce a comparable immune response to that generated by injected RNA vaccines, in mice.

Jaklenec and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute, are the senior authors of the study. The paper’s lead authors are former MIT postdoc Aurelien vander Straeten, Morteza Sarmadi PhD ’22, and postdoc John Daristotle.

Printing vaccines

Most vaccines, including mRNA vaccines, must be refrigerated while stored, making it difficult to stockpile them or send them to locations where those temperatures can’t be maintained. Furthermore, they require syringes, needles, and trained health care professionals to administer them.

To get around this obstacle, the MIT team set out to find a way to produce vaccines on demand. Their original motivation, before Covid-19 arrived, was to build a device that could quickly produce and deploy vaccines during outbreaks of diseases such as Ebola. Such a device could be shipped to a remote village, a refugee camp, or military base to enable rapid vaccination of large numbers of people.

Instead of producing traditional injectable vaccines, the researchers decided to work with a novel type of vaccine delivery based on patches about the size of a thumbnail, which contain hundreds of microneedles. Such vaccines are now in development for many diseases, including polio, measles, and rubella. When the patch is applied to the skin, the tips of the needles dissolve under the skin, releasing the vaccine.

“When Covid-19 started, concerns about vaccine stability and vaccine access motivated us to try to incorporate RNA vaccines into microneedle patches,” Daristotle says.

The “ink” that the researchers use to print the vaccine-containing microneedles includes RNA vaccine molecules that are encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles, which help them to remain stable for long periods of time.

The ink also contains polymers that can be easily molded into the right shape and then remain stable for weeks or months, even when stored at room temperature or higher. The researchers found that a 50/50 combination of polyvinylpyrrolidone and polyvinyl alcohol, both of which are commonly used to form microneedles, had the best combination of stiffness and stability.

Inside the printer, a robotic arm injects ink into microneedle molds, and a vacuum chamber below the mold sucks the ink down to the bottom, making sure that ink reaches all the way to the tips of the needles. Once the molds are filled, they take a day or two to dry. The current prototype can produce 100 patches in 48 hours, but the researchers anticipate that future versions could be designed to have higher capacity.

Antibody response

To test the long-term stability of the vaccines, the researchers first created an ink containing RNA that encodes luciferase, a luminescent protein. They applied the resulting microneedle patches to mice after being stored at either 4 degrees Celsius or 25 degrees Celsius (room temperature) for up to six months. They also stored one batch of the particles at 37 degrees Celsius for one month.

Under all of these storage conditions, the patches induced a strong luminescent response when applied to mice. In contrast, the luminescent response produced by a traditional intramuscular injection of the luminescent-protein-encoding RNA declined with longer storage times at room temperature.

Then, the researchers tested their Covid-19 microneedle vaccine. They vaccinated mice with two doses of the vaccine, four weeks apart, then measured their antibody response to the virus. Mice vaccinated with the microneedle patch had a similar response to mice vaccinated with a traditional, injected RNA vaccine.

The researchers also saw the same strong antibody response when they vaccinated mice with microneedle patches that had been stored at room temperature for up to three months.

“This work is particularly exciting as it realizes the ability to produce vaccines on demand,” says Joseph DeSimone, a professor of translational medicine and chemical engineering at Stanford University, who was not involved in the research. “With the possibility of scaling up vaccine manufacturing and improved stability at higher temperatures, mobile vaccine printers can facilitate widespread access to RNA vaccines.”

While this study focused on Covid-19 RNA vaccines, the researchers plan to adapt the process to produce other types of vaccines, including vaccines made from proteins or inactivated viruses.

“The ink composition was key in stabilizing mRNA vaccines, but the ink can contain various types of vaccines or even drugs, allowing for flexibility and modularity in what can be delivered using this microneedle platform,” Jaklenec says.

Other authors of the paper are Maria Kanelli, Lisa Tostanoski, Joe Collins, Apurva Pardeshi, Jooli Han, Dhruv Varshney, Behnaz Eshaghi, Johnny Garcia, Timothy Forster, Gary Li, Nandita Menon, Sydney Pyon, Linzixuan Zhang, Catherine Jacob-Dolan, Olivia Powers, Kevin Hall, Shahad Alsaiari, Morris Wolf, Mark Tibbitt, Robert Farra, and Dan Barouch.

The research was funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the Belgian American Educational Foundation, Wallonia-Brussels International, the Bodossaki Foundation, the Onassis Foundation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

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Studying consciousness without affecting it

Studies of consciousness often run into a common conundrum of science — it’s hard to measure a system without the measurement affecting the system. Researchers assessing consciousness, for instance as volunteers receive anesthesia, typically use spoken commands to see if subjects can still respond, but that sound might keep them awake longer or wake them up sooner than normal. A new study not only validates a way to assess consciousness without external stimulation, it also finds that it may be more precise.

“We want to measure when people make the transition from conscious to unconscious, and vice versa, but as soon as you ask someone to do something, which is the classic way of assessing this, you’ve now influenced them and disrupted the process,” says Christian Guay, lead author of the study in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. Guay is a research affiliate at the Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, and an anesthesiologist and critical care fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). “We think that conscious state transitions are interesting because they are very dynamic in the brain, but the neural mechanisms mediating these transitions aren’t fully understood, in part because of how we are assessing the transitions.”

Moreover, Guay is part of a collaboration with coauthors and former colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri to test whether a method of closed loop acoustic stimulation can augment the effects of dexmedetomidine-mediated sedation. For that reason, too, they needed a method of assessing consciousness that didn’t require sounds that could confound the results.

So the team found a different, little-used approach first described in 2014 by sleep researchers. Before the infusion began, they instructed their 14 volunteers to squeeze a force sensor with their hand whenever they breathed in and release it when they breathed out. Then the drug started flowing. When subjects stopped performing the “breathe-squeeze task,” they were judged to have lost responsiveness, and when they resumed after dosing tapered off, they were judged to have regained responsiveness. Importantly, after the initial instruction there was no ongoing external stimulation from the researchers. The task was internally prompted.

All along, the researchers recorded the subjects’ brain rhythms using 64 electrodes around the scalp. They observed telltale patterns of dexmedetomidine effects — for instance a decline in ~10Hz “alpha” rhythm power in the occipital region followed by an increase in power of much slower “delta” waves as people lost responsiveness, and then a reversal of that when they woke up. Because of their approach, they didn’t see artifacts of auditory stimulation that disrupted those patterns in a previous study that used sound to measure consciousness in people receiving the same anesthetic. Moreover, estimates of drug concentration in the brain during the two studies suggest that the breathe-squeeze method detected loss of responsiveness at lower concentrations of the drug than the sound-stimulation method, suggesting it is more sensitive.

“This approach for assessing loss and recovery of consciousness removes the significant confound of the conventional external stimulus that is typically used,” says study co-senior author Emery N. Brown, Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience in The Picower Institute at MIT as well as an anesthesiologist at MGH and Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. “We are eager to apply the technique in our studies of other anesthetics.”

At MIT and MGH, Brown is leading a new initiative, the Brain Arousal State Control Innovation Center (BASCIC), to better unify anesthesiology and research into the neuroscience of the brain’s arousal systems so that they can each inform and improve each other, and spawn new clinical innovations. Guay, who is a member of the effort, notes that as researchers achieve a better understanding of the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, they could help treat insomnia better, and if they understand the process of waking better they might be able to improve the chances of coma reversal. Improving methods of assessing consciousness transitions are key to those efforts.

In addition to Guay and Brown, who is a faculty member in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, the study’s other authors are Darren Hight, Guarang Gupta, MohammadMehdi Kafashan, Anhthi Luong, Michael Avidan, and Ben Julian Palanca.

Funding for the study came from the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University. Brown’s MIT lab is supported, in part, by The JPB Foundation.

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Exploring new sides of climate and sustainability research

When the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) launched its Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program in fall 2022, the goal was to offer undergraduate students a unique way to develop and implement research projects with the strong support of each other and MIT faculty. Now into its second semester, the program is underscoring the value of fostering this kind of network — a community with MIT students at its core, exploring their diverse interests and passions in the climate and sustainability realms.

Inspired by MIT’s successful SuperUROP [Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program], the yearlong MCSC Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program includes a classroom component combined with experiential learning opportunities and mentorship, all centered on climate and sustainability topics.

“Harnessing the innovation, passion, and expertise of our talented students is critical to MIT’s mission of tackling the climate crisis,” says Anantha P. Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and chair of the MCSC. “The program is helping train students from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to be effective leaders in climate and sustainability-focused roles in the future.”

“What we found inspiring about MIT’s existing SuperUROP program was how it provides students with the guidance, training, and resources they need to investigate the world’s toughest problems,” says Elsa Olivetti, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and MCSC co-director. “This incredible level of support and mentorship encourages students to think and explore in creative ways, make new connections, and develop strategies and solutions that propel their work forward.”

The first and current cohort of Climate and Sustainability Scholars consists of 19 students, representing MIT’s School of Engineering, MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, School of Science, School of Architecture and Planning, and MIT Sloan School of Management. These students are learning new perspectives, approaches, and angles in climate and sustainability — from each other, MIT faculty, and industry professionals.

Projects with real-world applications

Students in the program work directly with faculty and principal investigators across MIT to develop their research projects focused on a large scope of sustainability topics.

“This broad scope is important,” says Desirée Plata, MIT’s Gilbert W. Winslow Career Development Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, “because climate and sustainability solutions are needed in every facet of society. For a long time, people were searching for a ‘silver bullet’ solution to the climate change problems, but we didn’t get to this point with a single technological decision. This problem was created across a spectrum of sociotechnological activities, and fundamentally different thinking across a spectrum of solutions is what’s needed to move us forward. MCSC students are working to provide those solutions.”

Undergraduate student and physics major M. (MG) Geogdzhayeva is working with Raffaele Ferrari, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, and director of the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate, on their project “Using Continuous Time Markov Chains to Project Extreme Events under Climate.” Geogdzhayeva’s research supports the Flagship Climate Grand Challenges project that Ferrari is leading along with Professor Noelle Eckley Selin.

“The project I am working on has a similar approach to the Climate Grand Challenges project entitled “Bringing computation to the climate challenge,” says Geogdzhayeva. “I am designing an emulator for climate extremes. Our goal is to boil down climate information to what is necessary and to create a framework that can deliver specific information — in order to develop valuable forecasts. As someone who comes from a physics background, the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program has helped me think about how my research fits into the real world, and how it could be implemented.”

Investigating technology and stakeholders

Within technology development, Jade Chongsathapornpong, also a physics major, is diving into photo-modulated catalytic reactions for clean energy applications. Chongsathapornpong, who has worked with the MCSC on carbon capture and sequestration through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), is now working with Harry Tuller, MIT’s R.P. Simmons Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials. Louise Anderfaas, majoring in materials science and engineering, is also working with Tuller on her project “Robust and High Sensitivity Detectors for Exploration of Deep Geothermal Wells.”

Two other students who have worked with the MCSC through UROP include Paul Irvine, electrical engineering and computer science major, who is now researching American conservatism’s current relation to and views about sustainability and climate change, and Pamela Duke, management major, now investigating the use of simulation tools to empower industrial decision-makers around climate change action.

Other projects focusing on technology development include the experimental characterization of poly(arylene ethers) for energy-efficient propane/propylene separations by Duha Syar, who is a chemical engineering major and working with Zachary Smith, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering; developing methods to improve sheet steel recycling by Rebecca Lizarde, who is majoring in materials science and engineering; and ion conduction in polymer-ceramic composite electrolytes by Melissa Stok, also majoring in materials science and engineering.

“My project is very closely connected to developing better Li-Ion batteries, which are extremely important in our transition towards clean energy,” explains Stok, who is working with Bilge Yildiz, MIT’s Breene M. Kerr (1951) Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “Currently, electric cars are limited in their range by their battery capacity, so working to create more effective batteries with higher energy densities and better power capacities will help make these cars go farther and faster. In addition, using safer materials that do not have as high of an environmental toll for extraction is also important.” Claire Kim, a chemical engineering major, is focusing on batteries as well, but is honing in on large form factor batteries more relevant for grid-scale energy storage with Fikile Brushett, associate professor of chemical engineering.

Some students in the program chose to focus on stakeholders, which, when it comes to climate and sustainability, can range from entities in business and industry to farmers to Indigenous people and their communities. Shivani Konduru, an electrical engineering and computer science major, is exploring the “backfire effects” in climate change communication, focusing on perceptions of climate change and how the messenger may change outcomes, and Einat Gavish, mathematics major, on how different stakeholders perceive information on driving behavior.

Two students are researching the impact of technology on local populations. Anushree Chaudhuri, who is majoring in urban studies and planning, is working with Lawrence Susskind, Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, on community acceptance of renewable energy siting, and Amelia Dogan, also an urban studies and planning major, is working with Danielle Wood, assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics and media arts and sciences, on Indigenous data sovereignty in environmental contexts.

“I am interviewing Indigenous environmental activists for my project,” says Dogan. “This course is the first one directly related to sustainability that I have taken, and I am really enjoying it. It has opened me up to other aspects of climate beyond just the humanity side, which is my focus. I did MIT’s SuperUROP program and loved it, so was excited to do this similar opportunity with the climate and sustainability focus.”

Other projects include in-field monitoring of water quality by Dahlia Dry, a physics major; understanding carbon release and accrual in coastal wetlands by Trinity Stallins, an urban studies and planning major; and investigating enzyme synthesis for bioremediation by Delight Nweneka, an electrical engineering and computer science major, each linked to the MCSC’s impact pathway work in nature-based solutions.

The wide range of research topics underscores the Climate and Sustainability Program’s goal of bringing together diverse interests, backgrounds, and areas of study even within the same major. For example, Helena McDonald is studying pollution impacts of rocket launches, while Aviva Intveld is analyzing the paleoclimate and paleoenvironment background of the first peopling of the Americas. Both students are Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences majors but are researching climate impacts from very different perspectives. Intveld was recently named a 2023 Gates Cambridge Scholar.

“There are students represented from several majors in the program, and some people are working on more technical projects, while others are interpersonal. Both approaches are really necessary in the pursuit of climate resilience,” says Grace Harrington, who is majoring in civil and environmental engineering and whose project investigates ways to optimize the power of the wind farm. “I think it’s one of the few classes I’ve taken with such an interdisciplinary nature.”

Perspectives and guidance from MIT and industry experts

As students are developing these projects, they are also taking the program’s course (Climate.UAR), which covers key topics in climate change science, decarbonization strategies, policy, environmental justice, and quantitative methods for evaluating social and environmental impacts. The course is cross-listed in departments across all five schools and is taught by an experienced and interdisciplinary team. Desirée Plata was central to developing the Climate and Sustainability Scholars Programs and course with Associate Professor Elsa Olivetti, who taught the first semester. Olivetti is now co-teaching the second semester with Jeffrey C. Grossman, the Morton and Claire Goulder and Family Professor in Environmental Systems, head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and MCSC co-director. The course’s writing instructors are Caroline Beimford and David Larson.  

“I have been introduced to a lot of new angles in the climate space through the weekly guest lecturers, who each shared a different sustainability-related perspective,” says Claire Kim. “As a chemical engineering major, I have mostly looked into the technologies for decarbonization, and how to scale them, so learning about policy, for example, was helpful for me. Professor Black from the Department of History spoke about how we can analyze the effectiveness of past policy to guide future policy, while Professor Selin talked about framing different climate policies as having co-benefits. These perspectives are really useful because no matter how good a technology is, you need to convince other people to adopt it, or have strong policy in place to encourage its use, in order for it to be effective.”

Bringing the industry perspective, guests have presented from MCSC member companies such as PepsiCo, Holcim, Apple, Cargill, and Boeing. As an example, in one class, climate leaders from three companies presented together on their approaches to setting climate goals, barriers to reaching them, and ways to work together. “When I presented to the class, alongside my counterparts at Apple and Boeing, the student questions pushed us to explain how can collaborate on ways to achieve our climate goals, reflecting the broader opportunity we find within the MCSC,” says Dana Boyer, sustainability manager at Cargill.

Witnessing the cross-industry dynamics unfold in class was particularly engaging for the students. “The most beneficial part of the program for me is the number of guest lectures who have come in to the class, not only from MIT but also from the industry side,” Grace Harrington adds. “The diverse range of people talking about their own fields has allowed me to make connections between all my classes.”

Bringing in perspectives from both academia and industry is a reflection of the MCSC’s larger mission of linking its corporate members with each other and with the MIT community to develop scalable climate solutions.

“In addition to focusing on an independent research project and engaging with a peer community, we've had the opportunity to hear from speakers across the sustainability space who are also part of or closely connected to the MIT ecosystem,” says Anushree Chaudhuri. “These opportunities have helped me make connections and learn about initiatives at the Institute that are closely related to existing or planned student sustainability projects. These connections — across topics like waste management, survey best practices, and climate communications — have strengthened student projects and opened pathways for future collaborations.

Having a positive impact as students and after graduation

At the start of the program, students identified several goals, including developing focused independent research questions, drawing connections and links with real-world challenges, strengthening their critical thinking skills, and reflecting on their future career ambitions. A common thread throughout them all: the commitment to having a meaningful impact on climate and sustainability challenges both as students now, and as working professionals after graduation.

“I've absolutely loved connecting with like-minded peers through the program. I happened to know most of the students coming in from various other communities on campus, so it's been a really special experience for all of these people who I couldn't connect with as a cohesive cohort before to come together. Whenever we have small group discussions in class, I'm always grateful for the time to learn about the interdisciplinary research projects everyone is involved with,” concludes Chaudhuri. “I'm looking forward to staying in touch with this group going forward, since I think most of us are planning on grad school and/or careers related to climate and sustainability.”

The MCSC Climate and Sustainability Scholars Program is representative of MIT’s ambitious and bold initiatives on climate and sustainability — bringing together faculty and students across MIT to collaborate with industry on developing climate and sustainability solutions in the context of undergraduate education and research. Learn about how you can get involved.

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