Making machines that can listen

The crack of a bat accompanied by a roar from the crowd can capture a baseball fan’s attention, even if they miss seeing the home run. Humans may be visual creatures, but we also perceive the world around us by listening to it. 

To improve artificial perception, MIT Professor Paris Smaragdis SM ’97, PhD ’01 seeks to make machines that can hear and understand sound even better than humans.

A machine with super-human hearing could rapidly pinpoint the location of a traffic accident by listening for squealing tires and crunching metal, or identify when an industrial drill might break while it is boring through dense bedrock to dig a geothermal well.

“I like to say that I do the same thing the computer vision folks do, but instead I do it for hearing,” says Smaragdis, a professor with joint appointments in the Music and Theatre Arts program of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the School of Engineering and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. 

His research group explores areas like machine learning for sound source separation, smart devices that can augment the audio surroundings of humans, and better tools to help people understand, manipulate, analyze, and create music.

“Having had a musical background, I’ve been interested in examining these ideas. What does it take to make machines understand sound? There is a huge domain of applications for machines that can listen,” says Smaragdis, who joined MIT in 2025.

A musical prelude

Smaragdis, who grew up in Greece, began playing classical guitar at a young age. He enjoyed playing traditional pieces but reached a turning point in his musical journey when his father brought home a small synthesizer.

“That little synthesizer had a function that allowed you to make your own sounds, and I became completely captivated by the possibilities,” he says.

Synthesizers were taking a more prominent place in pop music during the 1980s, adding to his fascination with the technology.

As he advanced through school, Smaragdis wanted to study music made with synthesizers. But this was not an educational path offered by the more traditional European conservatories at the time.

Instead, he enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, into a program where he could explore the use of computers and synthesizers to shape and manipulate sound.

“With computers and synthesizers, I could make new sounds that have never been heard before,” he says.

At the same time, Smaragdis became immersed in jazz fusion. He declared bass as his major at Berklee since it would allow him more opportunities to play with jazz ensembles.

“I found the bass to be sonically more interesting than the guitar. It was a more unexplored domain, and I’ve always gravitated toward unexplored domains,” he says.

That interest in the unexplored carried over into his coursework. He and mentor Richard Boulanger, a professor of electronic production and design, created new tools to help people use computers to write, produce, and enhance music. 

Through his studies at Berklee, Smaragdis embarked on a collaborative project with Professor Barry Vercoe (who passed away in 2025) at the MIT Media Lab to create software synthesizers for music creation. Building on that project, Smaragdis pursued graduate studies in Vercoe’s group, where he completed his master’s degree and PhD, followed by a postdoc.

“In the Media Lab, I got exposed more to the computer part of computer music. That’s where my attention shifted a bit. Now I really wanted to make computers that could understand sound,” he says.

Tuning in to unexplored domains

At that time, many students in the Media Lab were using signal processing techniques to help machines handle sound. Smaragdis chose a less explored approach — machine learning — to separate himself from the pack.

He found that training machine-learning models to understand sound offered advantages that couldn’t be attained with traditional signal processing techniques.

“Over time, it became really clear to me that we need to teach computers how to listen. We can’t just tell them how to listen. If anything, we don’t even know how we humans listen,” he says. “We don’t have a vocabulary to explain what it means to listen, or how to tell the difference between a cat’s meow and the sound of a violin.”

After finishing his postdoc, Smaragdis began a career at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, where he worked on artificial intelligence systems that could scan video soundtracks and understand what is happening on screen. 

“What if you record an entire soccer game, but you only want to watch the highlights? In computer vision, it is very difficult to identify what a highlight is. But on the other hand, if you only listen to the sounds, then when the crowd goes crazy you would know that something interesting is happening,” he says.

That system was eventually incorporated into electronic devices, including a personal video recording system Mitsubishi was developing at the time, and into traffic monitoring systems and cell phones.

Smaragdis later joined Adobe, where he created the audio research team that built user-friendly tools to help artists, musicians, and producers manipulate sound without needing a lot of expertise.

“As we did that work, I kept coming up with deeper technical problems that needed to be resolved. I jumped into academia to address that itch,” he says.

Smaragdis joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he and his group incorporated the latest machine-learning techniques into audio-processing systems.

One of the technologies they developed utilized neural networks for separating individual sounds from audio mixtures. That project caught the attention of the team working on the 2021 documentary mini-series “The Beatles: Get Back.”

The production team enlisted Smaragdis to help clean up some archival Beatles recordings.

“That was a very different way of audio processing than what I was doing in academia. Now, I had to do something that sounded good but didn’t necessarily have to look good on paper. We didn’t have a formula we could optimize,” he says.

Every recording involved different challenges. For instance, in one clip John Lennon was playing music while Paul McCartney was horsing around, reading headlines from newspapers and making fun of George Harrison.

“We were trying to come up with a technological solution that could help us do everything, as opposed to addressing each problem on its own,” he says.

His contributions helped the team win an Emmy Award for sound editing for a nonfiction or reality program, in 2022.

A concerted effort

After 15 years at the University of Illinois, Smaragdis decided to join the faculty at MIT to tackle the thorny, interdisciplinary problems that were emerging in the field. 

His group now focuses on two main areas. For one, they develop systems that make computers more useful tools for musicians. 

One project in this area is enabling machines to understand how to listen to music, so they can provide constructive feedback to musicians.

“We want to enhance the toolbox a musician has. We don’t want to use computers to replace musicians,” he says.

On the other side, his group focuses on the fundamental tools scientists and artists alike can use to process, analyze, and manipulate audio.

For instance, his team has recently been exploring algorithms that allow sophisticated signal processing where traditional frames of reference, such as sampling rates, frame sizes, or context-windows, are not fixed — or even defined. 

That implies different computational structures that are yet unexplored, despite their potential for more efficient processing, Smaragdis says.

“That requires rethinking a lot of the basics, but once you have that ability, you can start getting much more flexible and more powerful systems,” he adds.

They also explore ways to incorporate the latest techniques, like large language models, into speech recognition and audio enhancement.

“AI is an immensely powerful tool, but I don’t think we have found the ideal way to use it for sound and music yet,” he says.

He also enjoys mentoring students and helping them materialize their visions for research projects.

Since few of his students have experience using computation in sound, he emphasizes hands-on lessons so they see and hear how to transform equations into something tangible.

Smaragdis still feels a thrill from making music, whether with a computer or a more traditional instrument. Off campus, he tries to play jazz bass whenever he can find the time, and enjoys exploring the rich musical community of Boston with his wife and 15-year-old son.

Outside the musical realm, he plays and coaches underwater hockey — a sport where players wear diving masks and use sticks to push a heavy puck across the bottom of a pool toward their opponent’s goal. He coached the underwater hockey team at the University of Illinois, and is hoping to revive the MIT underwater hockey club soon and start hosting tournaments on campus.

While underwater hockey may be a lesser-known sport, it fits with Smaragdis’ lifelong interest in pursuing the underexplored.

“I’ve always like doing things that were different from what everyone else was doing. If you can create a new sound that no one has heard before, what does that mean about your ability to create new things? I still find these questions completely fascinating,” he says.

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Learner collaborates with MIT peers to develop book of AI insights

Like many leaders today, Prabha Jha has been feeling the significant impact artificial intelligence is having on business operations. While the rapid evolution of the technology can bring fear, uncertainty, and confusion, Jha chose a different response: excitement. She began asking herself, “How do I become part of this once-in-a-lifetime thing?” 

Jha holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology from the University of Calcutta and earned her MBA while working at Verizon, where she continues to build her career. As she looked for an educational opportunity to engage more deeply with AI, MIT quickly emerged as a natural choice. 

Growing up, Jha viewed MIT as “the mecca for anybody who is in engineering and technology,” so she naturally turned to the Institute when seeking an opportunity to learn about AI. Unlike other programs that took place fully online, MIT xPRO’s AI for Senior Executives stood out to Jha primarily because it offered an in-person component that allowed her to meet and connect with peers. 

Jha decided to take the leap. She acknowledges that the program was a significant investment of both time and money, but ultimately views it as one of “the best decisions [she] made” — one she “would do all over again if [she] had to.” The experience gave Jha the opportunity she was looking for to invest in herself and strengthen her skills in AI. It also provided her with invaluable professional relationships and the confidence to develop multiple AI solutions for Verizon. Putting those news skills and relationships to work, she co-wrote, with some of her peers, “The AI Anthology,” a collection of AI insights designed to support other leaders navigating similar challenges with AI. 

An unexpected learning obstacle

Jha’s learning journey wasn’t without its curveballs, though. Just two months before she was set to complete the program, she spent two weeks in the hospital with a severe infection and was unable to graduate with her original cohort. With the help of MIT staff, she joined the next cohort, giving her an unexpected opportunity to spend another five days on campus with 100 brand-new peers. 

“You just never know what curveball life can throw and what it might be there for,” Jha says.

What initially felt like a setback turned into an unexpected benefit. Jha valued the opportunity to meet new people and spend more time on campus. She also appreciated that just six months later, the program’s content had already been refreshed. Those additional “five days of immersion” became a vital part of Jha’s learning journey, giving her and her peers more time to collaborate face-to-face and learn from one another. 

“I think it was eye-opening to be able to meet so many people with diverse backgrounds and geography, and then we connected at the human level,” she says. 

Jha particularly valued that sense of connection in the context of learning about AI, a field that, she acknowledges, comes with fears, vulnerabilities, and difficult questions. Learning alongside peers with different professional and cultural backgrounds gave her new perspectives and added another dimension to the experience. Jha estimates that “30 percent of what I was learning was from the program, material, and professor [while] 70 percent was my peers and the interactions.”

Peer discussions spark an idea

The idea that would change the trajectory of Jha’s time in the program came during a “salon gathering” at the home of Manolis Kellis, a professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. As students shared personal stories about their experiences with AI, one story in particular stayed with Jha: that of one of her peers, whose motivation to explore AI solutions stemmed from her work to find a cure for her mother’s Alzheimer's disease and dementia. 

At that moment, Jha realized that AI is personal. She still “gets goosebumps thinking of that moment where AI really became human and a connecting point.”

She saw the value in capturing these diverse perspectives and experiences with AI that go beyond operational efficiency and revenue growth, and wanted to continue the conversation beyond the program. Jha expressed to her peers an interest in capturing these stories and connections in a book. One year later, Jha and 20 other leaders released “The AI Anthology,” a collection of essays examining the influence AI has had across industries and across society. 

One of the biggest takeaways from the AI for Senior Executives program — and one that Jha hopes readers will take from her book — is the importance of thinking differently. 

Jha believes leaders may be missing a fundamental shift: “We are still kind of stuck in this traditional measurement of success,” she says. “We cherish revenue; we like cost-cutting and time-saving, and converting them to dollars.” 

While Jha acknowledges this mindset makes sense in corporate America, she believes leaders must move beyond it in order to find more empowerment through AI and its capabilities. She notes that future generations are already asking different questions, including: “What can I get in the quality of my life?” and “How can I use my time in a way that is fulfilling for me early on?” 

The future of embracing AI for business and a better world 

Jha recognizes that AI adoption is not optional for businesses, and that everyone must learn about and embrace it. At the same time, she is a steadfast believer in AI’s ability to create a better world. Instead of viewing AI as a foregone burden, she sees it as a “transformation unlike any other” that is providing us with the opportunity to overcome insecurity, adapt and grow, and invest in ourselves. 

In her work at Verizon, Jha takes seriously the company’s role as “a brand name for reliable, quality service” providing “critical infrastructure” to groups, such as first responders or children, who depend on their services. This responsibility comes with a privileged obligation to participate in and protect society, and Jha finds it empowering that AI can help enable this. In her own experience, she’s appreciated the ability to accelerate progress and impact, when she may have previously needed to rely on a larger team. 

So, what’s next for Jha? Currently, she is working on a new initiative focused on supporting small and medium-sized businesses that are navigating AI implementation. Her goal is to help them understand what tools they need, how AI fits into their specific operational model, and how they can measure success, so they can focus on their strengths as a business and how they can drive value. 

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MIT student leaders: Q&A with Angeline Peng, a leader in the Addir Fellows Interfaith Dialogue Program

Angeline Peng doesn’t come from a strong faith tradition, but she is a big believer in the power of discussion. In her role with the Addir Fellows Interfaith Dialogue Program at MIT, she convenes and leads regular, small-group interfaith conversations to help other students — and herself — grapple with big questions.

The Addir Fellows Program was started in 2005 through a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is now supported by MIT’s Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life. The program has maintained a steady focus on “sharing spiritual values and experiences, not just opinions,” says MIT Chaplain Thea Keith-Lucas.

A fourth-year math major, Peng sees deep connections between what she’s learning in class and the Addir Program. Here, she describes her work with the program, the link between faith and logic, and how she believes discussing big questions changes people.

Q: What is the Addir Fellows program?

A: It’s an interfaith dialogue club. “Addir” comes from the Sumerian word for “bridge,” and that's what we're here to do — build bridges between people from different walks of life. 

We meet every week in small groups of five to eight people. The groups start off with what we call our “spiritual autobiographies.” As much as we can, everyone gives a description of where they're coming from. After that, every week we pick a topic and discuss it. 

We try to balance faith traditions in the small groups. The biggest limiting factor is scheduling. That turns out to be really complicated. 

Q: What’s your own spiritual autobiography?

A: My family is atheist. I was born in Singapore, which is very multicultural, and we moved to Lehi, Utah, when I was 10. Utah is very homogeneous; most people in my neighborhood were part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Sometimes in high school I would ask friends about their beliefs, but college was the first time I could really explore. 

At some point I realized it's important to know myself better, to understand and have my own principles. Exploring different religions is an attempt — and I am still building this — to understand what I think is important, what I value, what I think is right, and what I think is wrong. 

Getting insight from different faith traditions is really helpful. I believe different religions, or different approaches to religion, are all interpretations of universal truth — and so exploring from all kinds of perspectives will give me a better understanding of what that could mean. 

I'll say, I'm not too sure about it yet. I don't know if there's some kind of universal good, or bad, or whatever. But I do think there are some kernels in everything. 

Q: Who participates? Does the program bring together a range of faith traditions?

A: When I signed up for my first Addir event, I met grad students and undergrads from just about everywhere. It was very refreshing, like — “Wow! I didn't know there were all these people here!” At MIT, you can end up in a kind of bubble. You know people from your dorm or your major. This program’s different.

The people come from a wide spectrum of traditions and backgrounds. Also, we have quite a lot who are somewhat agnostic or less extreme in their beliefs. 

A big part of why people sign up for Addir is they want to listen to other people and learn. Sometimes, this means they don't talk as much. I do my best to instigate — play devil’s advocate and push at people's ideas. I believe that’s part of my job.

Q: Do you think participants feel pressure to speak “for” their faiths?

A: I wouldn't say anyone is trying to represent their faith, because there are so many facets of just one faith anyway. When there are questions, everybody gives an answer like, “This is what I think.” Sometimes people will bring up a text and say, “It says this, and this is how I interpret it, or this is how certain people in my life interpret it.” That can be really helpful.

Also, I wouldn't say we’re focused on just religion. A lot of people are just trying to find their way in life, whether it’s through spiritual or secular questions. In my small groups, we've talked quite a bit about what we can do to just be a better person; exploring different aspects of that, and dealing with more everyday stuff like regrets, guilt, pleasure, pain, punishment. Obviously, religion can help you with answers. 

I like to think: How can we answer those questions as a group, in that room, in that moment? The answers might be different for everyone, but if we can hear what other people think, maybe we can get insight and be persuaded into believing something new. 

Q: How does the mathematician in you come out during these conversations? 

A: I think part of why I do math is spiritual, so they're connected in that sense. It all relates to how I want to live my life. Some people describe doing math like making art — they're in pursuit of beauty and some deeper truth. I think math is really pretty, and there's a lot of beauty in the truth. 

One of the great tools of mathematics is that it teaches you how to abstract and understand which details are just details, and what are the core ideas. Doing a lot of math helps me stay objective, abstracting away things that are less important. 

Q: Can it be difficult to reconcile issues of faith and logic? 

A: You have to always believe in something. It's like picking your axioms. You start with faith in something, and from there you can extrapolate away what you think.  

It can be very difficult. Gödel's incompleteness theorem says you can't prove everything with any set of axioms. You can choose whatever set of axioms you like, and it either is incomplete or inconsistent; incomplete, as in you can't prove every statement is either true or false, and inconsistent in that you will at some point prove that something is both true and false. So you can't have both. But we want both! 

Mathematicians live with the incomplete, and this is probably true for any belief system. Some people are deeply unhappy not knowing the answer, and some people are more OK with it. I tend to be very OK with it. 

Q: Do you think this program changes people?

A: Definitely. Over time, people's opinions really do change. We all have the more “press-ready” opinions we give to others. Even in Addir, it's got to be half or two-thirds of the year before I feel comfortable talking about everything I really believe. This program is genius because you actually become friends by the end. 

To actually care about another person — as a person, outside of what they believe — is really a function of time. You need to be together and have this dialogue for a while. When there’s conflict, finding solutions is very situation-dependent, and maybe not possible. But eventually, you get to know each other. You can talk about controversial issues or opinions that maybe you were scared of sharing before. It's so nice to have this space as your opinion is changing. 

Because of Addir, maybe one person learns a little bit, and they go back to their own group of people and share that perspective. And when they share it, someone else learns. I'm a big proponent of let's try to change things locally — very locally; person by person — and maybe we can spread that positivity. 

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Secure keys strengthen protected military satellite communications

At any given moment, a U.S. Air Force pilot may be maneuvering an aircraft mid-mission, a U.S. Navy officer resurfacing a submarine after weeks undersea, or a U.S. Army technician offloading drone data in a combat zone. Each operation depends on satellite communications (satcom) and, specifically, on cryptographic keys that allow terminals to communicate securely while keeping adversaries locked out.

At the scale of modern operations, managing these keys is a technical challenge. Every terminal needs to have the right keys at the right time, quickly and securely, and if any keys are compromised, they need to be refreshed without leaving out devices that may be offline, disconnected, or under attack.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers have now solved this challenge with the Protected Anti-Jam Tactical Satcom (PATS) Key Management System (KMS) Prototype. This new architecture enables keys to refresh rapidly across terminals dispersed worldwide, even in contested or bandwidth-constrained environments.

"We're enabling the nation to achieve highly assured, highly available communications. Even when adversaries know where forces are operating and are trying to stop them from communicating, they're unable to do so, because we've built in smarts across this entire system to keep talking,” says Joseph Sobchuk, a principal investigator of the PATS KMS Prototype program and researcher in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group.

This architecture is being adopted as the cryptographic backbone of the U.S. Space Force's next-generation satcom system, PATS. The KMS Prototype serves as the gold-standard reference implementation for the industry-built operational KMS, which will be integrated across the PATS ecosystem, encompassing satellites, user terminals on military platforms, and ground-based communication hubs.

Developed under sponsorship of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), the KMS Prototype reflects Lincoln Laboratory's end-to-end approach to technology development, from shaping the core key-management concepts to putting them into practice in a prototype to transitioning a technical baseline to government and industry. For this transitioned innovation, the SSC and Lincoln Laboratory team received a 2025 R&D 100 Award, recognizing the KMS Prototype among the year’s most impactful new technologies.

Managing key challenges

Cryptographic keys are foundational to secure communications. These keys, strings of random characters used by cryptographic algorithms, help protect communications by encrypting data and supporting protected transmission patterns, such as frequency hopping. Without key protection, the communications sent and received by terminals are more susceptible to eavesdropping and interference.

Historically, operators manually uploaded keys to terminals before missions. More recently, some systems have supported over-the-air key updates, but bandwidth constraints, security concerns, and operational complexity have limited real-time, wide-scale refresh.  

"Key management is the linchpin that turns advanced, anti-jam hardware and waveforms into a usable mission capability," says Roger Khazan, leader of the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group. "Without a scalable way to deliver the right keys to the right systems at the right time, protected satcom cannot operate reliably across a dynamic force."

One primary threat to satcom is signal jamming, where adversaries flood specific frequencies with noise. To resist jamming, PATS uses frequency hopping, in which signals jump rapidly between frequencies in a pattern that looks random to anyone without the key. This hopping only works when every legitimate terminal holds current keys and stays in sync. Keeping all those terminals correctly keyed is the KMS's job. "Designing a system to handle that coordination efficiently, without breaking the conversation, is incredibly difficult," Sobchuk says.

Maintaining synchronization becomes even more critical when devices are compromised. Terminals share keying material so they can communicate as a group and follow protected hopping patterns. If an adversary captures a device, such as a downed drone, and extracts its keys, the exposure can extend beyond that one device. Depending on what keying material is exposed, an adversary may gain access to protected communications or help a jammer follow the hopping pattern. Restoring security means refreshing keys for legitimate terminals — including those that may be offline or operating in contested conditions — while locking the captured device out.

But here's the catch: To send new keys, you need to establish a secure link to terminals, and to establish a secure link, terminals need valid keys. This situation creates a long-standing "chicken-or-egg" problem for key management.

Solving the chicken-or-egg problem

Lincoln Laboratory's solution is a hybrid key distribution method using a "pull-and-push" approach. Each month, each terminal "pulls" a package of keys tailored to that terminal over the satcom link. Then, daily, the satellite "pushes" a smaller key to every terminal. The monthly keys encrypt the daily keys, creating layered security. The daily key determines the unpredictable frequency-hopping patterns. Even if an adversary captures today's key, tomorrow's will be different, and encrypted to exclude them.

"This way of sending keys hadn't existed before," Sobchuk says, adding that Lincoln Laboratory researchers have been pioneering this key-management technology for more than a decade. "The combination of pull and push, monthly and daily, is the magic behind all of it."

This hybrid approach also solves the issue of leaving out devices that were disconnected during a key refresh. For instance, if a submarine submerges for six months, it can request keys for the entire period in advance. Even if keys are refreshed while it's offline, the submarine can immediately reconnect when it resurfaces because the monthly keys provide access to the daily key.

"Submarine crews want to log on to the satellite and talk right away, not wait to get back to shore for new keys. They want to turn on their system and have it work," Sobchuk says.

Monthly and daily key broadcasts must reach thousands of devices spanning the globe. To enable this large-scale sharing, the team adapted theoretical algorithms from academia to create the first operational-scale implementation of broadcast encryption for such a protected satcom application. Broadcast encryption is a method for securely sending information to many users at once. These algorithms encrypt each daily key using just a small subset of keys instead of separately encrypting the daily key for every terminal. This implementation preserves communication bandwidth that would otherwise be consumed just by sending keys.

"The point isn't just stronger cryptography. It's making secure communications usable at operational scale, in contested conditions, without imposing a crippling burden on the warfighters and operators who depend on them," says Sean O'Melia, an assistant leader in the Secure Resilient Systems and Technology Group.

Transitioning to operations

Lincoln Laboratory has transitioned the KMS Prototype to multiple government and industry partners developing PATS components across service branches. To facilitate this coordination, the team has supported dozens of integration events and produced in-depth technical documentation. The prototype is allowing developers to test and validate their components while defense contractors build the operational version of KMS.

The laboratory's work is also enabling contractors to achieve National Security Agency (NSA) certification of end cryptographic units (ECUs), the hardware devices within a terminal that transmit, receive, or store keys. Last year, the first PATS ECU — the space-hub ECU that goes on the satellite — earned NSA certification. Achieving this certification is an arduous process requiring proof that the design, implementation, and supporting processes are all secure.

After years of work, the team is grateful to have helped lay a foundation for the future of secure satcom, both through the KMS Prototype and the larger PATS technical vision, Khazan says. The effort brought together expertise from across the laboratory’s Cyber Security and Information Sciences Division and Communication Systems Division.

"PATS KMS is the kind of problem Lincoln Laboratory was built to solve: high-risk research, rigorous engineering, and transition into a national-security capability. Working with Space Systems Command and the PATS community, our team helped turn advanced key-management ideas into a technical baseline that industry can build on and the government can use. The result is a more-resilient satcom architecture that can scale across a complex operational ecosystem," he says.

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Origami-based construction method yields lightweight, load-bearing structures on architectural scales

MIT researchers developed a new type of origami-based construction method that could be used to build complex structures that are cheaper and easier to assemble, and use less material than those built with some conventional techniques.

This scalable system simplifies the process of designing lightweight, rigid structural shells from modular components that can be fabricated from flat sheets of material and then folded into shape. 

The units are connected to build a larger lattice structure using simple tools and a foolproof assembly process. They form a strong, load-bearing structural shell that doesn’t need interior support columns.

This method could be particularly well-suited for disaster relief shelters that can be rapidly fabricated and shipped efficiently as flat panels, then set up quickly by workers at the site of an earthquake or flood. It could also be used to develop strong, lightweight components for airplanes or modular robots, or architectural elements like sound-dampening panels and building facades.

The researchers’ technique can generate structures that are many times stiffer than those made using some other forms of structural origami, while requiring only about two-thirds as much material. This could make it a more sustainable form of construction.

In addition to developing small prototypes, the researchers demonstrated the scalability of this approach by fabricating a room-sized folded aluminum sculpture that was recently hung at the Boston Public Library as an exhibition inaugurated for the annual Fab Lab Conference and Symposium.

“This work shows that the power of digital manufacturing can go beyond personal fabrication projects and start touching the real world, enhancing the way we design houses and large structures. We are demonstrating structural origami on building scales,” says Alfonso Parra Rubio, a graduate student in the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) at MIT and lead author of a paper on this method.

He is joined on the paper by Riccardo Foschi, a researcher at the University of Bologna in Italy; Rupert Maleczek, a senior scientist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria; Tomohiro Tachi, a professor at the University of Tokyo; and senior author Neil Gershenfeld, an MIT professor and the director of the CBA. The research appears in the International Journal of Solids and Structures.

Lightweight, rigid components

The researchers drew inspiration from the folded tessellations developed by the artist and scientist Ron Resch in the 1960s. Resch employed repeating patterns of polygonal unit cells to create complex 3D structures (like a honeycomb). 

But rather than creating a shape from one folded piece of material, like Resch’s tessellations, the researchers fabricate unit cells that are folded individually and connected to form the 3D structure.

By designing individual building blocks, they can simplify the fabrication process and create more complex shapes.

While working in the Tachi lab, Parra Rubio developed a method for combining two tripod-shaped unit cells from a Resch tessellation into a building block that has zero degrees of freedom, which means it is completely rigid and locked in place. 

These rigid building blocks can be connected into a network of interwoven beams that form a 3D structure with extremely high stiffness and stability, but very light weight.

“This helps us build strong structures while minimizing the amount of material we are using,” Parra Rubio explains.

But it would be enormously challenging to manually design polygonal building blocks that will form a structure that meets a user’s constraints.

To simplify the process, Parra Rubio joined forces with CBA graduate student Erik Strand to develop an automated solver that designs a series of manufacturable unit cells that will form the user’s desired structure. These design files can be fed to a CNC milling machine that automatically cuts the building blocks from flat sheets of material, like aluminum. 

“On the computational part, we break this big problem down into many small subproblems. Now, we solve each cell independently to make sure that it is foldable, and then we globally assemble them after that,” Strand says.

Simplified assembly

Builders fold the individual units into shape and assemble them into a finished structure using only hand tools, like screwdrivers. 

The assembly process does not require any large-scale welding equipment, which could make it simpler, faster, and cheaper than some other forms of construction. In addition, the unit cells are designed so they adjust naturally into their correct shape as the structure is assembled. 

“The way the unit cells are designed, the structure can only exist in one configuration. The connection is the same everywhere, even though each unit cell is different,” Parra Rubio says.

Simulations indicated that this method yields structures about 3.5 times stiffer than those made with some other origami-based techniques, while using less material. In addition, the resulting structures could be strong enough for some architectural applications, Parra Rubio adds. 

To demonstrate the versatility of this approach, the researchers assembled a 23-foot sculpture from pieces of folded aluminum that was hung from the ceiling of the atrium in the Boston Public Library. A team with no professional construction experience built the entire structure in a matter of days, Parra Rubio says.

“It was really fun to work on something at such a quick pace where the theory was really meeting a practical use for it. We had to think a lot about how we could tweak the design to achieve each objective,” Strand says.

In the future, the researchers want to test this approach in larger, architectural structures. They also want to explore the use of unit cells with more complex geometries, which could offer greater strength or stiffness, and develop a user-friendly design interface. 

“This work shows that folding metal is a method that is ready to be used for building structures. We can do it big enough and strong enough, now that we can bring it out of the lab and to the construction site,” Gershenfeld says.

“Within the architecture, engineering, and construction industry, complex structures are often delivered through a fragmented sequence of handoffs between design, engineering, fabrication, and construction teams, with each transition creating opportunities for miscoordination, rework, and loss of design intent. By embedding geometric, structural performance, and assembly intelligence directly into each module, Rubio’s approach maintains a seamless digital thread from design through erection, enabling unprecedented customization while ensuring precise execution,” says James Coleman, SM ’14, MArch ’14, cofounder of SumPoint, a project installation specialty firm. 

Coleman works on design for fabrication and erection of complex architectural projects, and was not involved with this research.

This research was funded, in part, by the Center for Bits and Atoms Research Consortia, the University of Bologna in Italy, and the Austrian Research Agency.

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Hashim Sarkis to step down as dean of the School of Architecture and Planning

Hashim Sarkis will step down as dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) at the end of June 2027. During his 12 years as dean, Sarkis elevated the school’s role and impact by creating new academic centers, adding more support for students, and, quite visibly, moving into a new home in MIT’s renovated Met Warehouse building. 

To an unusual degree, these achievements are interconnected: The Met Warehouse, dedicated this month, features innovative and expanded spaces for education, research, and public engagement. The building enables SA+P to add programs, host interdisciplinary work, and stage events of Institute-wide interest. 

Sarkis, the Elizabeth and James Killian (1926) Professor at MIT, and a professor of architecture and urban planning, also led the Institute’s “One Community = One Campus” planning project from 2016 to 2018, which conceptualized MIT as a contiguous urban space. The report helped MIT add sustainable infrastructure as well as new buildings, from dormitories to the theater arts and music buildings — and now the Met Warehouse. 

For Sarkis, providing more support for SA+P students is as important as any other accomplishment. The school will provide full tuition support in multiyear graduate programs, starting with new students in the fall of 2027. 

“I do believe education is a right for every student,” Sarkis says, when asked to cite the most meaningful changes he has helped enact. 

In a letter to the MIT community, Provost Anantha Chandrakasan wrote that Sarkis had crafted “a remarkable tenure as dean,” one that has “advanced a distinctive role for SA+P within MIT: connecting technology to society through design, planning, making, and creative practice.”

Sarkis, a lauded architect who has published widely and runs an international design practice, became dean in January 2015. He will take a sabbatical in the 2027-28 academic year, then return as a professor and head of the MIT-LUMA Lab. 

In his letter to the community, Chandrakasan also announced the formation of a search committee to identify the next dean of SA+P. The 17-person committee is being chaired by Justin Steil, professor of law and urban planning in DUSP.

The “transformative power of design”

MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning is a broad-ranging place, encompassing the Department of Architecture; the Department of Urban Studies and Planning; the MIT Media Lab, which is home to the graduate program in Media Arts and Sciences; the Center for Real Estate; the program in Art, Culture, and Technology; the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism; and the Morningside Academy for Design. One of the hallmarks of Sarkis’ tenure has been the growth of existing interdisciplinary programs at SA+P and the development of new ones. In 2016, a gift from the Leventhal family expanded the Center for Advanced Urbanism, established in 2013, and renamed it in honor of Norman B. Leventhal ’38. The center enables research and hands-on projects addressing complex design and planning challenges in cities globally. 

During Sarkis’ tenure, MIT also introduced an undergraduate minor in design in 2016 and relaunched its bachelor of science in art and design in 2018, expanding opportunities for students across the Institute. The school also established DesignX, an accelerator supporting entrepreneurship in design and the built environment.

In 2020, MIT launched the Mobility Initiative, bringing together researchers from across the Institute to examine the future of transportation and mobility. Led by Professor Jinhua Zhao, now head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the initiative connects research in transportation, technology, urban planning, and policy.

In 2022, with support from the Morningside Foundation, the Institute founded the Morningside Academy for Design (MAD), an interdisciplinary design center allowing for campus-wide collaboration. And in 2024, with support from the LUMA Foundation, SA+P launched the MIT-LUMA Lab, which works across a wide range of fields, including design, science, technology, and art, to explore solutions for climate-based and other environmental challenges.

In a different vein, SA+P also collaborated with the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing this year to establish the MIT and HPI AI and Creativity Hub (MHACH), which aims to further work in design and computing at a time of rapid expansion for AI applications. 

Three of these centers — LCAU, MAD, and MIT-LUMA Lab — are located in the transformed Met Warehouse building, a leading example of adaptive reuse in architecture and engineering. The huge brick edifice, which initially had tiny window slits bringing in minimal light, was used for about a century as a storage facility, until 2015, when MIT began exploring other possibilities for the building.

By 2018, the concept of moving SA+P into the Met Warehouse had gained traction, with Sarkis publicly telling MIT News, “It’s about really creating a design hub for MIT on the campus. ... Moving does not address just the school’s aspirations, but MIT’s aspirations.” 

After working with the Cambridge Historical Commission, the project architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, replaced large segments of brick wall with glass sheets, added skylights, and reconfigured the interior, which now has multiheight design studios, modular classrooms and common spaces, an auditorium, public galleries, a large entrance lobby with a café, and building-long corridors on all floors. For almost a decade, Sarkis served as the key driver of the project — and was an advocate for adaptive reuse, rather than creating a new building requiring a greater carbon footprint. 

“I think it sends a very good message that this vanguard school of architecture, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is moving into a historic building and adapting it for the future,” Sarkis told MIT News this summer. 

At the building’s formal dedication ceremony on Oct. 1, MIT President Sally Kornbluth called the Met Warehouse “a testament to the transformative power of design, which has been central to MIT from the very beginning.” She also heralded it as a model for education, noting that future learning in many fields may call for “exactly like the kind of hands-on, in-person, collaborative problem-solving the new Met was made for. … It’s also primed to help the rest of MIT meet the moment.”

The many sources of design and democracy

Sarkis grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, with a childhood interest in architecture. His views about the civic applications of design have long had many sources. He received his BA in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1987, then earned an MA in 1989 and PhD in 1995, in architecture, from Harvard University. At Harvard, his PhD work included political philosophy, as he studied with legal theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger and philosophers Hilary Putnam and John Rawls, among others. 

Sarkis was a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design from 1998 until he joined MIT in 2015. He has published widely, including the 2003 book “Circa 1958: Lebanon in the Pictures and Plans of Constantinos Doxiadis.” He edited the 2002 volume “CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital and the Mat Building Revival,” and co-edited, with Eric Mumford, the 2008 volume “Josep Lluís Sert: The Architect of Urban Design, 1953-1969.” He is also co-author, with Roi Salguiero Barrio and Gabriel Kozlowski, of the 2020 book, “The World as an Architectural Project.” 

In 1998, Sarkis also established his practice, HashimSarkis Studios, which has offices in Lebanon and Massachusetts. Among his best-known works are the Byblos Town Hall in Lebanon, completed in 2016, which features three volumes rising above a glass-enclosed ground floor, to represent and help constitute the transparency needed for democratic government. His first major project, Housing for the Fishermen of Tyre, also in Lebanon, was cited as one of the most significant buildings of the century in the “Phaidon Atlas of 21st-Century World Architecture.”

During his upcoming sabbatical, Sarkis will work on a variety of projects in locations including Venice, Egypt, and Armenia. 

In addition to his many duties as dean, Sarkis served as the curator of the Venice Biennale’s 2021 International Architecture Exposition. The exhibition’s theme was a question Sarkis has long contemplated: “How Will We Live Together?” Featuring work conceptualized at many scales, the exhibition displayed projects by 112 designers from 46 countries and was critically acclaimed; The New York Times called it “a case study for how to begin to tackle such questions.”

A dose of optimism

Sarkis’ seriousness of purpose as SA+P dean has long meshed with what he has called a “quirky” sense of humor, in the MIT vein. In 2016 he served as a judge for the “Crossing the Charles” competition, in which dozens of inventive MIT-designed watercraft floated across the Charles River to mark the 100th anniversary of MIT’s move from Boston to Cambridge. A parade also unfolded on the bridge carrying Massachusetts Avenue across the river. 

In an echo of those events, last month SA+P organized its own procession into the Met Warehouse, complete with costumes gesturing at the Bucentaur, the boat that in 1916 carried MIT’s charter across the river. The procession was conceptualized and directed by MIT Professor Azra Akšamija, and developed in collaboration with many students, faculty, and staff. 

Meanwhile, when it comes to the experience of having other architects redesign the Met Warehouse, Sarkis quips, “I learned to be a client.” 

More seriously, talking about high points of his tenure as dean, Sarkis quickly calls the organized visioning process for the Met Warehouse “inspiring,” adding, “We needed a common framework, and faculty were able to project forward and identify it.” The building, Sarkis emphasizes, helps reinforce what he believes is central and distinctive about design work at the Institute: “the MIT model of conducting research and education at the same time.” 

In the face of current challenges confronting education, Sarkis steadfastly stuck with the Met Warehouse project, helping complete it while continuing to build up the School of Architecure and Planning and solidifying MIT’s place at the leading edge of design. That may be a larger sign that such progress remains possible. 

“Optimism is integral to our fields,” Sarkis says. 

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At New York Climate Week 2026, MIT connects with a global network

Each year, Climate Week NYC brings together more than 100,000 people in more than 1,000 events across the city to discuss climate challenges, explore solutions, and spur action. Participants come from industry, academia, philanthropy, nonprofits, government, and finance and venture capital. And this year, the mix included a strong, cross-campus presence from MIT.

The MIT community could be seen multiple days during Climate Week, with appearances by Evelyn Wang, vice president for energy and climate, at the official opening ceremony discussing artificial intelligence and the climate equation; an event co-hosted by MIT and the Bezos Earth Fund on climate innovation; and 14 sessions organized by the MIT Climate Project and eight MIT departments, labs, centers, and initiatives — including the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS), the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, the Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), MIT Lincoln Laboratory, MIT Open Learning, the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (INM), the MIT Climate Policy Center, and the Priscilla King Gray (PKG) Center for Social Impact.

“The MIT Climate Project is a whole-of-MIT mobilization, but no single institution can deliver the climate solutions the world needs — from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to adapting to a changing climate and building more-resilient communities and systems,” said Wang, who is also the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “Climate Week New York is important because it convenes the range of stakeholders and sectors that must work together to confront these challenges. When we connect the MIT community with this global network, we uncover powerful possibilities to strengthen not only our own efforts, but the world’s capacity for change.”

One location, numerous events

Climate Week NYC was held Sept. 21-27 at venues across Manhattan and other New York boroughs. Utilizing multiple spaces at the Dream Downtown Hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, the MIT coalition attracted more than 700 attendees for events ranging from small, private conversations to workshops and panel presentations.

Larger sessions included “The Future of Data Centers: Technologies to Change the Paradigm.” “Data centers are at an inflection point, facing interconnected technical, operational, economic, and community constraints that demand cross-sector dialogue and innovation,” says Gang Chen, the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering and faculty director of the Climate Project at MIT.

Chen, who leads the Data Centers of the Future frontier for the Climate Project, convened a panel of experts across research and industry to address technologies that can change the paradigm. “Technology can't solve all the challenges we’re facing with data centers, but technology has a significant role to play in shaping a future role that is more sustainable and better for the communities that are home to these facilities,” Chen says. “This session was a productive conversation on data center challenges and the potential solutions to overcome them.” 

The workshop “Next-Generation Super Pollutant Solutions: Challenges and Opportunities,” hosted by Jesse Kroll, a faculty director and lead for the Super Pollutants frontier for the Climate Project, convened speakers from the Environmental Defense Fund, Spark Climate Solutions, and across MIT labs and initiatives. 

Accounting for nearly half of all global anthropogenic warming to date, super pollutants currently lack viable solutions for adequate abatement. Many super pollutants have shorter atmospheric lifespans than carbon dioxide, with solutions providing an “emergency brake” to decrease peak warming in our lifetimes. Investments in tackling super pollutants can generate economic benefits, including lowering health-care costs and increasing productivity, and require cross-disciplinary teams to develop and advance the next-generation solutions to meaningfully address super pollutant emissions. 

“Super pollutant mitigation is getting a lot of attention as an ‘emergency brake’ for near-term climate warming. But a huge fraction of our super pollutant emissions simply cannot be mitigated with current technologies and approaches,” said Kroll, the Peter de Florez Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Our session focused on the innovation — technical and otherwise — needed to tackle these hard-to-abate pollutants.”

Other events included:

• “2026 State of Supply Chain Sustainability Report” with the MIT CTL
• “Building Flood Resilience” with MIT Lincoln Laboratory
• “Climate Communication for Impact” from the MIT Climate Project
• “Climate Impact Founder and Funder Connect” with the PKG Center for Social Impact
• “Educating Tomorrow's Climate Leaders: An MIT Perspective” from the MIT Climate Project
• “Trading for Food Security in a Changing Climate” with J-WAFS 
• “Industrial Decarbonization: Pathways to Productivity and Growth” with MIT INM
• “Mobilizing Climate Knowledge for Action” with MIT Open Learning
• “Rethinking Climate Innovation” from the MIT Climate Project
• “What is Sectoral Acceleration and How Do We Fund It” with the Sloan Sustainability Initiative
   

Rethinking the climate innovation pipeline with the Bezos Earth Fund

A critical climate challenge is moving from breakthrough technology to real-world impact at scale. MIT and the Bezos Earth Fund brought together leaders from industry, venture capital, government, academia, philanthropy, and startups to explore solutions for a stronger innovation pipeline. 

A panel of MIT faculty and alumni spinout leaders Asegun Henry, Seonghoon Woo, Ariel Furst, and Assil Halimi, moderated by Ray Rothrock, venture capitalist and life member of the MIT Corporation, explored the period between a promising scientific invention and commercial deployment. For many breakthroughs that can benefit climate and nature, that journey requires more early-stage science and engineering research, specialized testing infrastructure, validation, patient capital, and pathways to demonstration and pilot projects.

“A breakthrough in the lab is not yet impact in the world. For climate and energy technologies, we need to think about the entire journey — from discovery and invention through validation, commercialization, and deployment — and build better pathways through the gaps along the way,” Wang said in a conversation with Tom Taylor, Bezos Earth Fund president and CEO. 

Tapping into global nexus to find and scale solutions

New York Climate Week is a global nexus for climate, where the connections required to develop, test, and scale potential solutions form. Across the board, MIT sessions addressed the need for solutions to be large in magnitude, technically feasible, and contextually realistic. 

 “Even when a technology is low-cost, it doesn’t mean it will diffuse naturally or get widely adopted,” said Claire Walsh, global director of policy and communications at MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. “Frontier technologies are often more expensive to start, so that means it’s even more important for scientists and engineers to think about end user adoption, and their incentives and constraints, from the start.”

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