Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity. 

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

The material’s unique magnetic properties also allow for transistors with built-in memory, which would simplify circuit design and unlock new applications for high-performance electronics.

“People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics. We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research,” says Chung-Tao Chou, an MIT graduate student in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Physics, and co-lead author of a paper on this advance.

Chou is joined on the paper by co-lead author Eugene Park, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Julian Klein, a DMSE research scientist; Josep Ingla-Aynes, a postdoc in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Jagadeesh S. Moodera, a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics; and senior authors Frances Ross, TDK Professor in DMSE; and Luqiao Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as others at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The paper appears today in Physical Review Letters.

Overcoming the limits

In an electronic device, silicon semiconductor transistors act like tiny light switches that turn a circuit on and off, or amplify weak signals in a communication system. They do this using a small input voltage.

But a fundamental physical limit of silicon semiconductors prevents a transistor from operating below a certain voltage, which hinders its energy efficiency.

To make more efficient electronics, researchers have spent decades working toward magnetic transistors that utilize electron spin to control the flow of electricity. Electron spin is a fundamental property that enables electrons to behave like tiny magnets.

So far, scientists have mostly been limited to using certain magnetic materials. These lack the favorable electronic properties of semiconductors, constraining device performance.

“In this work, we combine magnetism and semiconductor physics to realize useful spintronic devices,” Liu says.

The researchers replace the silicon in the surface layer of a transistor with chromium sulfur bromide, a two-dimensional material that acts as a magnetic semiconductor.

Due to the material’s structure, researchers can switch between two magnetic states very cleanly. This makes it ideal for use in a transistor that smoothly switches between “on” and “off.”

“One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right material. We tried many other materials that didn’t work,” Chou says.

They discovered that changing these magnetic states modifies the material’s electronic properties, enabling low-energy operation. And unlike many other 2D materials, chromium sulfur bromide remains stable in air.

To make a transistor, the researchers pattern electrodes onto a silicon substrate, then carefully align and transfer the 2D material on top. They use tape to pick up a tiny piece of material, only a few tens of nanometers thick, and place it onto the substrate.

“A lot of researchers will use solvents or glue to do the transfer, but transistors require a very clean surface. We eliminate all those risks by simplifying this step,” Chou says.

Leveraging magnetism

This lack of contamination enables their device to outperform existing magnetic transistors. Most others can only create a weak magnetic effect, changing the flow of current by a few percent or less. Their new transistor can switch or amplify the electric current by a factor of 10.

They use an external magnetic field to change the magnetic state of the material, switching the transistor using significantly less energy than would usually be required.

The material also allows them to control the magnetic states with electric current. This is important because engineers cannot apply magnetic fields to individual transistors in an electronic device. They need to control each one electrically.

The material’s magnetic properties could also enable transistors with built-in memory, simplifying the design of logic or memory circuits.

A typical memory device has a magnetic cell to store information and a transistor to read it out. Their method can combine both into one magnetic transistor.

“Now, not only are transistors turning on and off, they are also remembering information. And because we can switch the transistor with greater magnitude, the signal is much stronger so we can read out the information faster, and in a much more reliable way,” Liu says.

Building on this demonstration, the researchers plan to further study the use of electrical current to control the device. They are also working to make their method scalable so they can fabricate arrays of transistors.

This research was supported, in part, by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. The work was partially carried out at the MIT.nano facilities.

It’s nasty, but it requires physical access to the computer:

The exploit, named YellowKey, was published earlier this week by a researcher who goes by the alias Nightmare-Eclipse. It reliably bypasses default Windows 11 deployments of BitLocker, the full-volume encryption protection Microsoft provides to make disk contents off-limits to anyone without the decryption key, which is stored in a secured piece of hardware known as a trusted platform module (TPM). BitLocker is a mandatory protection for many organizations, including those that contract with governments...

Automakers are concerned that a little-noticed regulatory tweak could eventually force them to quadruple their electric vehicle production.

The Trump administration told a federal court that it's considering intervening in a case by the NAACP and Southern Environmental Law Center against the billionaire's company xAI.

It's cheap and easy, and supporters see plug-in solar as a way to drive a bigger cultural shift around renewable energy. But obstacles remain.

The state-chartered insurer of last resort continues to expand. But a slowing growth rate suggests market improvements, officials say.

Although he holds stock in oil and gas companies that would be affected by the decision, Justice Samuel Alito doesn’t have holdings in the companies in this specific appeal.

The Trump administration is working to undo the 2024 greenhouse gas standards for coal- and gas-fired power plants.

Aerosols reduced global solar generation by 5.8 percent in 2023, researchers said.

According to data collected by farming advocates, more than 600 of the states's 6,500 farms reported nearly $40 million in damage.

The proposal, due Tuesday, still offers EU producers a partial climate reprieve, but plans to weaken the carbon levy have been dropped.

The decision is the latest blow to international efforts to combat global warming.

A startup making emergency housing cheaper and faster to deploy won this year’s MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition on May 12.

Uplift Microhome is building reusable, modular housing units to provide housing on demand to people affected by natural disasters and other emergencies. Each of the company’s homes has its own batteries and water reservoir, allowing them to quickly be transported and placed off-grid.

“Every year, millions of Americans are displaced by natural disasters,” said co-founder Charlie Nitschelm, who is in MIT’s Leaders for Global Operations program, earning a master’s in engineering and an MBA. “If they're lucky, they can stay with friends or family. If they’re not so lucky, they could end up in a homeless shelter. But disasters aren’t just two-week problems. It takes months, sometimes years, to get back to what life was like before. Bottom line: We lack dignified and affordable housing after disasters.”

Uplift Microhome was one of seven teams chosen to pitch at the final event, which took place inside a packed Kresge Auditorium. Each team got five minutes to pitch their startups before a few minutes of questioning from judges.

This year’s competition started in April with more than 80 applications. The program’s judges selected 16 teams to compete in the semifinal before whittling that number down to the finalist teams for Tuesday’s event.

“This competition isn’t just about one big night,” $100K managing director and MIT Sloan School of Management student Celine Christory said. “It’s a year-long journey for our organizers and students. It kicks off with the ‘Pitch’ event in December, moves to ‘Accelerate’ in March, and culminates in the ‘Launch’ event.”

In the pitch that won the $100,000 Danny Lewin Grand Prize, Nitschelm said it takes an average of four months for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to deploy single-use housing after a disaster. That’s because these homes require power and utilities in addition to extensive foundation preparation.

“As a result, less than 1 percent of survivors actually receive a physical home,” Nitschelm said. “The rest get a check and are told to go figure it out. This isn’t just our opinion. The Department of Homeland Security audited FEMA and recommended providing a cost-effective housing alternative that allows disaster survivors to stay close to their home.”

Uplift’s homes can be transported on the back of a tractor trailer and deployed using a standard forklift. In addition to its battery and water reservoir, the homes feature self-leveling bases that allow them to be deployed on uneven terrain.

“That dramatically simplifies delivery, installation, and deactivation to the point where you can economically recover, refurbish, and redeploy the unit,” says co-founder Trevor O’Leary, a student at Harvard Business School.

The company has already built a home and believes it can manufacture each unit at a cost similar to the cheapest tractor trailer while delivering housing in hours. The company expects the marginal cost of reusing each unit to be an order of magnitude less expensive than current solutions. Down the line, it plans to deploy homes to combat housing insecurity, for seasonal workers and during construction projects. It plans to manufacture its homes in the United States.

The second-place $50,000 David T. Morgenthaler Founder’s Prize was awarded to the startup Mohan, which is using generative artificial intelligence to map the Earth’s subsurface in three dimensions. The company is deploying its technology to help mining companies decide where to drill, starting by targeting copper deposits.

“Everyone is talking about AI and chips, but no one is talking about what they sit on: copper,” said co-founder Hongze Bo, a PhD student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “Every cable, GPU, and data center depends on copper. By 2030, we’re going to be 4 million tons of copper short. But we don't know where the next deposit is. Today we just drill and hope.”

The core of Mohan’s technology is a diffusion AI model that iteratively removes noise from subsurface data to create underground scans. The company also develops its own subsurface data.

“We built a full, 3D subsurface model using generative AI,” explained Bo. “It’s the same technology behind [image generation tools] Sora and Midjourney.”

The third place $5,000 prize went to Iceberg Systems, which is using autonomous AI agents to predict how risk cascades across the economy. The company invented a new class of AI systems at MIT that coordinates millions of AIs to simulate how risks emerge through interaction. It has been working with the Department of Energy.

“Iceberg simulates behaviors across millions of market participants, from brokers to consumers to institutions, to simulate and predict how shocks cascade through their interactions and create systemic risk in the economy,” says co-founder and MIT PhD student Ayush Chopra.

The $5,000 Audience Choice Prize went to Pixology, an agentic AI platform that creates on-brand, sponsor-ready sports content to help monetize live moments.

The other finalists that presented at this year’s event were:

• NeuralPhysics, which is building foundation physics models and agents for hardware design simulation and manufacturing;
• DesignFlownAI, a design intelligence app embedded in computer-aided design software to give engineers insights in real time; and
• Auto Lab, an autonomous AI platform that helps teams build better models faster. 

The $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is one of MIT’s annual flagship entrepreneurial events. It began more than 30 years ago when a group of students, along with the late Ed Roberts, who was the founder and chair of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, decided to start a startup pitch competition.

The prize started at $10,000 then grew to $50,000 before reaching today’s $100,000 grand prize. Past participants include HubSpot, Akamai, and Lightmatter.

In addition to the prizes, teams received mentorship from venture capitalists, serial entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and attorneys; funding for prototypes; business plan feedback; and more.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 18 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02658-1

The authors consider connectivity—specifically, the functional effectiveness of climate connectivity (FECC)—under climate change. Under high emissions (SSP5-8.5), FECC is projected to decline across 77% of the global land area by 2061–2080, risking ecological isolation and subsequent biodiversity loss.

Article about the bigfin squid.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

MIT graduate students are working with leaders from the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia to explore strategies for economic development, infrastructure, and innovation during wartime conditions.

As part of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) spring course 11.S941 (Innovating in Ukraine), DUSP hosted a delegation of five Ukrainian leaders from Vinnytsia, a city region of 400,000 people located approximately 280 kilometers from Kyiv in central Ukraine. The course, taught by professor of the practice Elisabeth Reynolds, is a practicum in which students work with a “client” for the semester on specific projects or issues the city would like to address and provide a final report or deliverable.

The city of Vinnytsia, which had two representatives on the trip, has focused on building out its “innovation ecosystem” across key parts of its economy. Amid the ongoing war with Russia, the country has accelerated its long-time expertise in information technology in both civilian and military contexts. Examples include the digitalization of government services, such that many services are accessible by cellphone through the e-governance app Diia, as well as the development of a rapidly evolving drone industry.

The 13 graduate students, who draw from the School of Architecture and Planning and the MIT Sloan School of Management, as well as Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Graduate School of Design, have worked with members of the city government and Vinnytsia National Technical University on a range of projects focused on the city’s future growth. The projects include developing an agro-food cluster to facilitate Ukraine’s integration into the European Union; transportation and logistics to support economic growth in the city and enhance its role as a regional hub; improving the city’s and country’s electronic waste management; and developing the city’s creative and entrepreneurial talent to retain and attract workers.

While in Cambridge for the week, the visitors and students toured a number of places and organizations that engage in innovation. A trip to Boston City Hall to meet with Kairos Shen, Boston’s chief city planner and a former professor of the practice at the MIT Center for Real Estate, highlighted the ways in which the built environment can facilitate activities and interactions to foster a more innovative city. Tours of the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, Greentown Labs in Somerville, and MassChallenge in Boston provided examples of the myriad ways the region supports entrepreneurs through shared workspace, incubators, and network development.

“We are very interested in partnering with some of these organizations,” said Dmitry Sofyna, CEO and co-founder of WINSTARS.AI, an R&D center in Ukraine focused on AI applications. “We want to transform Ukraine from a major player in engineering and scientific outsourcing into a hub for creating large-scale tech companies in defense, medicine, and energy.” Vinnytsia is currently building Crystal Technology Park, one of the largest technology parks in Ukraine.

Usually during a practicum, students travel to the host location to spend a week during Independent Activities Period (IAP) or spring break learning about the city or region. In the case of the collaboration with Vinnytsia — an outgrowth of the MIT-Ukraine initiative and the Ukraine Community Recovery Academy, with which DUSP has been working for two years — the students are unable to travel to Ukraine due to the war. With the help of a generous alumnus, DUSP instead brought the Ukrainian delegation to Cambridge so that there could be in-person exchange between the students and the Vinnytsia partners.

“It’s been an amazing trip,” said Yanna Chaikovska, director of Vinnytsia’s Institute for Urban Development. “We are planning for the future because that is what we must do. Ukraine has faced many challenges in the past and always worked in small and big ways to move forward. MIT is helping us do this.”

Nick Durham, a joint DUSP/MIT Sloan master’s student, added: “I am continually inspired by the resilience of the Ukrainian people and how they are finding creative ways to build a better future. In many ways, Ukrainian innovation is serving as a model for reimagining industries and complex economic systems.”

The collaboration reflects a broader effort within DUSP to engage with cities facing complex economic and geopolitical challenges through applied, practice-based research. Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, spoke of this effort during a panel discussion with the Ukrainian visitors, noting that “with so much conflict in the world today, SA+P must create new ways to help cities rebuild, whether in Ukraine or elsewhere.” 

That there is tremendous potential for nanotechnology to transform cancer detection and treatment is a vision that has guided faculty at the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine through its first 10 years. 

On April 9, the center gathered researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, industry collaborators, and members of the public at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research galleries to celebrate a milestone anniversary and reflect on its journey.

“Our purpose has always been clear: to empower discovery and community in nanomedicine at MIT,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, faculty director at the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

“A decade in, we are seeing that vision materialize not just in publications, but in our community, our startups, and ultimately, in patients whose lives are being changed,” Bhatia told an audience of about 150 gathered in person for the celebration.

The event featured an overview of the Marble Center by Bhatia and a perspective on nanomedicine by Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor and faculty member at the Marble Center. 

A panel on translational nanomedicine followed the talks. It was moderated by Susan Hockfield, president emerita and professor of neuroscience at MIT, and included Noor Jailkhani, former MIT postdoc in the laboratory of the late MIT professor of biology Richard Hynes and CEO, co-founder and president of Matrisome Bio; Peter DeMuth ’13, chief scientific officer at Elicio Therapeutics; Vadim Dudkin, founding chief technology officer at Soufflé Therapeutics; and Viktor Adalsteinsson ’15, co-founder of Amplifyer Bio and director of the Gerstner Center for Cancer Diagnostics at the Broad Institute.

A decade of impact in nanomedicine

Established in 2016 through a generous gift from Kathy and Curt Marble ’63, the Marble Center brings together leading Koch Institute faculty members and their teams to focus on grand challenges in cancer detection, treatment, and monitoring through miniaturization and convergence — the blending of the life and physical sciences with engineering, a core concept fueling multidisciplinary research at the Koch Institute. 

At the center’s founding, Bhatia and Langer were joined by five additional faculty members: Daniel G. Anderson, professor of chemical engineering and member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science; Angela M. Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor in the departments of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering; Michael Birnbaum, professor of biological engineering; Paula T. Hammond, Institute professor and dean of the School of Engineering; and Darrell J. Irvine, who is now professor and vice-chair at the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

“Over the past decade, the center and its member laboratories have trained close to 500 researchers. Among them, 109 have become faculty in 79 clinical and research universities. We also have worked in close collaboration with clinical and industry partners to produce the results you are seeing today,” said Tarek Fadel, associate director of the Marble Center and director of strategic alliance at the Koch Institute. 

“Twenty-three startup companies have emerged from Marble Center laboratories during that time with companies such as Cision Vision, Soufflé Therapeutics, Orna Therapeutics, Matrisome Bio, Amplifyer Bio, Gensaic, among several others that hold so much promise for the early detection of disease and drug delivery,” Fadel added.

The Marble Center has launched several topical programs aimed at trainee development and industry engagement. At monthly seminars, trainees at the Marble Center lead an open forum on emerging issues in their fields. The Convergence Scholars Program, which was originally launched in 2017 to further the development of postdocs beyond the laboratory bench, is now a competitive award program offered to postdocs at the Koch Institute. Through an industry affiliate program, the center worked closely with several key players in the field of nanoscience. Industry collaborators mentor trainees and participate as judges in an annual poster symposium. 

More recently, MIT-wide grants have catalyzed new collaborations: In 2023, the Global Oncology in Nanomedicine grant supported a project on leveraging AI-based approaches to speed the development of RNA vaccines and other RNA therapies. The project was led by Giovanni Traverso, the Karl Van Tassel (1925) Career Development Professor and a professor of mechanical engineering.

From lab to clinic: Lessons in nanomedicine translation

Panelists at the anniversary event shared candid reflections on the often messy, but exhilarating process of turning their ideas into commercial technologies. 

DeMuth described how Elicio Therapeutics, whose core technologies originated from his graduate research in Irvine’s group, harnesses the natural power of the lymph nodes to generate enhanced immune responses against tumors. The amphiphile platform uses the body’s natural albumin transport system to “shuttle” medicines into the lymph nodes, boosting immune cell activation. Elicio is now advancing their platform through a Phase 2 trial in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and colorectal cancer.  

Jailkhani co-founded Matrisome Bio with Bhatia and Hynes. Matrisome Bio is pioneering a new class of therapies, small protein binders called nanobodies that deliver potent payloads directly to the extracellular matrix of tumors and metastases while sparing normal tissues. Matrisome Bio is currently testing radioligand modalities with their targeting platform for the treatment of cancer. 

Adalsteinsson co-founded Amplifyer Bio with Bhatia and J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. (1921) and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and associate director of the Koch Institute, with the goal of developing priming agents for liquid biopsy. Priming agents injected before a blood draw transiently slow the clearance of cell-free DNA from the bloodstream, thus allowing up to 100-fold more tumor DNA to be recovered for liquid biopsy applications. While injection for medical diagnostics has been done for decades in the context of imaging scans, Amplifyer Bio’s approach would be the first of its kind in the field of liquid biopsy.

Dudkin described Soufflé Therapeutics’ vision to enable targeted delivery with receptor-mediated uptake to any type of cell in the human body. Soufflé Therapeutics is working to engineer cell-specific ligands to deliver siRNA-based medicines that are precise and transferred across the cell membrane to their target, by combining proprietary technologies for identification of cell-specific receptors, ligand optimization, and potent siRNA engineering. 

Panelists stressed that successful translation requires complex choices. While platform technologies can theoretically address many cancer problems, startups must focus on specific indications and clinical modalities to succeed in resource-limited, commercial settings. While the academic lab offers freedom to explore multiple applications, commercialization demands strategic narrowing of scope. 

Reproducibility during scale-up emerged as another critical consideration: Founders building platform companies must demonstrate not only that their technology works, but that their underlying discovery is reproducible and robust enough to support a business. All panelists agreed that thinking about manufacturability early in research, rather than as an afterthought, significantly improves a startup’s path to the clinic. Highlighting tension between selecting cutting-edge approaches and managing their inherent regulatory risks, they recommended minimizing risk by leveraging established processes and chemistries that have already been validated in approved drugs.

Finally, panelists highlighted the importance of institutional collaborations, particularly with centers like the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine. These partnerships offer access to collaborative, mission-driven researchers who can push technological boundaries, while startups maintain focus on narrow clinical applications. Panelists emphasized that faculty collaborators, such as at the Marble Center, often provide “big sky thinking” that explores new directions and applications that complement the company’s core mission.

The next chapter in nanomedicine at MIT

As the Marble Center enters its second decade, the community is focused on expanding collaborations, leveraging advances in computation and other intersecting disciplines, and exploring new disease indications. 

“The next 10 years will be defined by our ability to leverage insights gained at the nanoscale to push the boundaries of precision medicine. The Marble Center is in a unique position to do just that, as we evolve this incredible community at MIT to be a global hub for nanomedicine research,” said Bhatia. 

Bhatia also announced that in June, the Marble Center will launch a new grant, Integrated Nanoscale Sensing, Imaging, and Health Technologies (INSIHT), aimed at advancing new imaging and sensing technologies for precision medicine. 

Similarly, panelists expressed optimism about nanomedicine’s transformative potential, centered on precision medicine. The field, they argued, will focus on minimizing side effects while opening previously unavailable therapeutic windows — enabling treatments that are fundamentally more targeted and effective. This precision could render many currently untreatable diseases manageable, or even curable, while also enabling in some cases the repurposing of drugs that failed in earlier clinical contexts. 

“Ten years ago, Sangeeta, Tyler Jacks, and the Marble Center community had a vision” said Matthew Vander Heiden, director of the Koch Institute and Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology. 

“Today, that vision is creating a place where bold ideas turn into transformative advances that can help cancer patients and non-cancer patients as well. It is exciting to see this momentum in nanomedicine at MIT and what will happen in the coming decade.” 

One day after the announcement of a ceasefire between the United States and Iran, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) outlined the implications of the war in the Middle East on the global energy system and the world’s economy, offering his expertise to an MIT audience.

“This is the largest energy crisis we’ve ever had in the world,” Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said at the MIT Energy Initiative’s (MITEI) Earth Day Colloquium on April 8. Birol put the current disruption of the world’s energy markets into historical perspective, shared what he believes will be the long-term impacts of this war — even in the best-case scenario where the ceasefire paves a path toward peace — and emphasized the need to create a more sustainable, resilient system moving forward.

In 1973, and again in 1979, there were oil crises that led the world economy into recession, with many countries — especially those with developing economies — spiraling into debt. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a natural gas crisis. “The current crisis, the amounts of oil and gas we’ve lost, is bigger than all those three put together,” Birol stated. According to data received two hours before the seminar, Birol confirmed that 80 energy facilities in the Middle East had been damaged, with over one-third of those having been severely damaged.

The IEA has played a significant role in the global response to the war. “Our job is to have a real-world impact,” said Birol. Earlier in the conflict, after making clear to policymakers and members of the press the scale of the problem at hand, the IEA turned to its member countries — which are required to have significant oil stock reserves — to bring their reserves to the market. “Since the disruption was so big, we brought all the countries together, which is not easy,” Birol said. “We released 400 million barrels of oil, which is the highest we have ever done. This calmed markets and put downward pressure on prices.” The IEA also released a suite of recommendations for conserving oil quickly, many of which countries around the world are already implementing, said Birol.

The implications of this crisis are far-reaching, and will vary in severity depending on how long the war lasts and how quickly normal operations resume afterwards — which could take some time, considering the extent of the damage to the Middle East’s energy infrastructure, Birol said.

Birol explained the more immediate impacts of the war on the gas industry. Although the natural gas industry has presented itself as a reliable, affordable, and flexible energy source, Birol highlighted that the two major gas crises in the last four years have brought that assertion into question.

“Is [natural gas] still reliable? Is it still flexible? Is it still affordable? After these two big crises, the natural gas industry needs to work hard to regain its brand,” he said.

Birol also outlined three potential outcomes that this shift may bring to the renewable energy sector. First, there is historical precedent for building up nuclear power plants in response to the oil crises of the 1970s. “Around 45 percent of nuclear power plants operating today were built as a response to those crises,” said Birol. He believes there will be another large push for nuclear power, including small nuclear reactors.

Second, renewables may be the biggest beneficiaries of this situation, he said. “In Europe, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the renewable annual installations increased by a factor of three,” he said.

Third, especially in Asia, we will likely see an increase in the market penetration of electric vehicles, Birol said. This is especially important to note because Asia is the center of current oil demand growth, but the adoption of more electric vehicles could have an impact on that, he suggested. Previous crises have also led to car manufacturers improving the fuel efficiency of their cars.

“The energy security premium will be a factor of the energy trade in the future, in addition to the cost of energy,” said Birol, speaking to the longer-term effects on the global energy market. “Countries will be more careful now with whom they are trading.”

Addressing the current crisis also necessitates changes to our energy system going forward, according to Birol. He explained that the entire global economy is being held hostage by the 50 kilometers of the Strait of Hormuz, which is a critical path not only for oil and gas shipments, but for materials used to make fertilizer, which are needed to feed the world’s population, and materials such as helium, which are needed to manufacture products like cell phones.

“I'm afraid that after this is finished, some of the countries will come back faster because they have stronger financial muscles, better engineering capabilities, and better technologies, whereas other countries will suffer,” he said. “It will be, in my view, not easy for the global economy. I believe who will be suffering under this economic damage will be mainly developing countries.”

The burden on developing countries will not only come in the form of energy prices, but also lasting impacts on fertilizer consumption, food security, and food prices, which Birol emphasized is a global problem. “What should be the response to have a more secure, but also more sustainable, future for everybody?” he asked.

Birol suggested the best possible outcome to the current global energy and economic disruption would be if the ceasefire leads to a peaceful settlement of the war. Still, this “best possible outcome” includes significant risk for much of the world.

If there is a settlement of peace, Birol said he expects oil and the gas production in the region to restart. He noted that there are about 200 fully laden oil tankers and 15 loaded liquid natural gas ships that could leave the Gulf fairly quickly if the Strait of Hormuz fully reopens.

“But I don’t think that in a very short period of time we will go back where we were before the war,” Birol said. “And this may keep the prices at elevated levels. This is surely not good news, especially in the emerging world. I would be surprised if we don’t see significant inflationary pressures in Asian developing countries, in Africa, and in Latin America,” Birol said. “In addition to that, the petrochemical industry, fertilizers, we will discover how important those commodities are for the supply chains we have … I expect a bit of volatility in the markets.”

This speaker series highlights energy experts and leaders at the forefront of the scientific, technological, and policy solutions needed to transform our energy systems. Visit the MIT Energy Initiative’s events page for more information on this and additional events. The series will return this fall.

Some AI-based video age-verification checks can be fooled with a fake mustache.

A geoengineering company would use tiny specks of silica to block sun rays — and make billions of dollars.