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.

House Science Chair Brian Babin wants to ensure "rigorous oversight" is applied to companies that seek to alter the atmosphere.

Lone Star State officials are scrambling to get ready for projects that serve artificial intelligence, but a draft water outlook skips the subject.

Electric cars are expected to reach 30 percent of vehicle sales this year.

Insurers lack crucial detail about homes such as roof condition. In half of the homes surveyed by Moody's, insurance was mispriced.

Rep. Kathy Castor is still confident she can stay in Congress despite redistricting meant to push her out.

"It cannot be as bad as we thought, but it cannot be as good as we hoped,” said a climate researcher.

Urban camps are scaling back activities for children due to burdensome safety plan requirements, and rural camps are closing due to uncertainty.

The market for carbon credits has come under intense scrutiny in recent years after a series of projects were found to have exaggerated their climate benefits.

The startup said it was impossible to secure "conditions necessary to obtain the financing required" to proceed with the project.

Among all of the possible chemical compounds, it’s estimated that between 1020 and 1060 may hold potential as small-molecule drugs.

Evaluating each of those compounds experimentally would be far too time-consuming for chemists. So, in recent years, researchers have begun using artificial intelligence to help identify compounds that could make good drug candidates. 

One of those researchers is MIT Associate Professor Connor Coley PhD ’19, the Class of 1957 Career Development Associate Professor with shared appointments in the departments of Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. His research straddles the line between chemical engineering and computer science, as he develops and deploys computational models to analyze vast numbers of possible chemical compounds, design new compounds, and predict reaction pathways that could generate those compounds. 

“It’s a very general approach that could be applied to any application of organic molecules, but the primary application that we think about is small-molecule drug discovery,” he says.

The intersection of AI and science

Coley’s interest in science runs in the family. In fact, he says, his family includes more scientists than non-scientists, including his father, a radiologist; his mother, who earned a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry before going to the MIT Sloan School of Management; and his grandmother, a math professor.

As a high school student in Dublin, Ohio, Coley participated in Science Olympiad competitions and graduated from high school at the age of 16. He then headed to Caltech, where he chose chemical engineering as a major because it offered a way to combine his interests in science and math.

During his undergraduate years, he also pursued an interest in computer science, working in a structural biology lab using the Fortran programming language to help solve the crystal structure of proteins. After graduating from Caltech, he decided to keep going in chemical engineering and came to MIT in 2014 to start a PhD.

Advised by professors Klavs Jensen and William Green, Coley worked on ways to optimize automated chemical reactions. His work focused on combining machine learning and cheminformatics — the application of computation methods to analyze chemical data — to plan reaction pathways that could make new drug molecules. He also worked on designing hardware that could be used to perform those reactions automatically. 

Part of that work was done through a DARPA-funded program called Make-It, which was focused on using machine learning and data science to improve the synthesis of medicines and other useful compounds from simple building blocks.

“That was my real entry point into thinking about cheminformatics, thinking about machine learning, and thinking about how we can use models to understand how different chemicals can be made and what reactions are possible,” Coley says.

Coley began applying for faculty jobs while still a graduate student, and accepted an offer from MIT at age 25. He received a mix of advice for and against taking a job at the same school where he went to graduate school, and eventually decided that a position at MIT was too enticing to turn down.

“MIT is a very special place in terms of the resources and the fluidity across departments. MIT seemed to be doing a really good job supporting the intersection of AI and science, and it was a vibrant ecosystem to stay in,” he says. “The caliber of students, the enthusiasm of the students, and just the incredible strength of collaborations definitely outweighed any potential concerns of staying in the same place.”

Chemistry intuition

Coley deferred the faculty position for one year to do a postdoc at the Broad Institute, where he sought more experience in chemical biology and drug discovery. There, he worked on ways to identify small molecules, from billions of candidates in DNA-encoded libraries, that might have binding interactions with mutated proteins associated with diseases.

After returning to MIT in 2020, he built his lab group with the mission of deploying AI not only to synthesize existing compounds with therapeutic potential, but also to design new molecules with desirable properties and new ways to make them. Over the past few years, his lab has developed a variety of computational approaches to tackle those goals. 

“We try to think about how to best pair a challenge in chemistry with a potential computational solution. And often that pairing motivates the development of new methods,” Coley says. One model his lab has developed, known as ShEPhERD, was trained to evaluate potential new drug molecules based on how they will interact with target proteins, based on the drug molecules’ three-dimensional shapes. This model is now being used by pharmaceutical companies to help them discover new drugs.

“We’re trying to give more of a medicinal chemistry intuition to the generative model, so the model is aware of the right criteria and considerations,” Coley says.

In another project, Coley’s lab developed a generative AI model called FlowER, which can be used to predict the reaction products that will result from combining different chemical inputs. 

In designing that model, the researchers built in an understanding of fundamental physical principles, such as the law of conservation of mass. They also compelled the model to consider the feasibility of the intermediate steps that need to take place on the pathway from reactants to products. These constraints, the researchers found, improved the accuracy of the model’s predictions.

“Thinking about those intermediate steps, the mechanisms involved, and how the reaction evolves is something that chemists do very naturally. It’s how chemistry is taught, but it’s not something that models inherently think about,” Coley says. “We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make sure that our machine-learning models are grounded in an understanding of reaction mechanisms, in the same way an expert chemist would be.”

Students in his lab also work on many different areas related to the optimization of chemical reactions, including computer-aided structure elucidation, laboratory automation, and optimal experimental design.

“Through these many different research threads, we hope to advance the frontier of AI in chemistry,” Coley says.

Justin Solomon, associate professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), has been appointed associate dean of engineering education in the MIT School of Engineering, effective July 1.

In this new role, Solomon will focus on advancing innovation in engineering education across the school. He will help shape new pedagogical approaches in the context of an AI-enabled world and will explore experiential, hands-on, and other modes of learning. Working closely with academic departments, Solomon will serve as a thought partner in integrating AI into curricula and will help facilitate interdisciplinary and shared teaching opportunities across departments and other schools. He will also play a key role in helping the school implement relevant recommendations from the Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training. 

Solomon will explore opportunities to build industry collaborations, including new models for internships and industry-engaged learning on campus. Collaborating with department heads and the School of Engineering leadership team, he will also support faculty in designing new courses and evolving existing programs to meet emerging opportunities in engineering.

“Justin’s interdisciplinary approach will be especially valuable as we continue to evolve engineering education to meet new opportunities and challenges. His extensive experience applying AI across a wide range of domains will help each academic department thoughtfully integrate AI and new educational models into their curricula,” says Paula T. Hammond, dean of the School of Engineering and Institute Professor. “I look forward to the vision and perspective he will bring to the school’s leadership team.”

A dedicated educator, Solomon has played a central role in shaping computing education at MIT. He is a key contributor to the Common Ground for Computing, where he co-teaches the core class 6.C01 (Modeling with Machine Learning: From Algorithms to Applications) with Regina Barzilay, the Delta Electronics Professor in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and affiliate faculty member at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. Within EECS, he teaches 6.7350 (Numerical Algorithms for Computing and Machine Learning) as well as 6.8410 (Shape Analysis). He is also the founder of the Summer Geometry Initiative, a six-week program that introduces students to geometry processing through intensive training, collaboration, and research experiences.

Solomon’s dedication to teaching and helping students has been honored with various awards, including the EECS Outstanding Educator Award and the Burgess (1952) and Elizabeth Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching. He is the author of “Numerical Algorithms,” a textbook that presents a modern approach to numerical analysis for computer science students.

Solomon is a principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where he leads the Geometric Data Processing Group. His research sits at the intersection of geometry and computation, with applications spanning computer graphics, autonomous navigation, political redistricting, physical simulation, 3D modeling, and medical imaging. He is also a core faculty member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, contributing to research that advances the foundations and applications of artificial intelligence.

His scholarly contributions have been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the 2023 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award for exceptional contributions in teaching, research, and service. In 2025, he was named a Schmidt Polymath, supporting interdisciplinary research across areas such as acoustics and climate that rely on large-scale simulation of physical systems.

Solomon joined the MIT faculty in 2016. He previously held an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Princeton University’s Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Stanford University. While studying at Stanford, he also worked as a research assistant at Pixar Animation Studios.

For years, civil society organizations, workers, journalists, and human rights experts have warned that major technology companies risk enabling grave human rights abuses when they provide cloud computing, AI, and surveillance infrastructure to governments implicated in violations of international and humanitarian law. While many companies pay lip service to evaluating customers and contracts for human rights implications (lip service Exhibit A: Palantir!), too often those processes fail to provide any meaningful accountability when their standards are not met or are simply ignored. But recent developments at Microsoft suggest that accountability for failing to uphold the human rights standards that a company itself sets, even if incomplete, is possible. 

According to recent reporting, Microsoft’s Israel chief has departed amid an escalating ethical controversy surrounding the company’s business relationships with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The move follows months of scrutiny, internal dissent, and sustained pressure from inside the organization along with press and civil society, especially after a report by The Guardian revealed that Microsoft technologies were used in systems connected to mass surveillance and military targeting operations in Gaza in ways that appeared to violate Microsoft’s own standards. This did not happen overnight.

In September 2025, Microsoft reportedly suspended certain services after initial investigations raised serious concerns about how its cloud and AI infrastructure may have been used. That alone distinguished Microsoft from many of its peers. Rather than simply dismissing mounting concerns or hiding behind vague claims of neutrality, Microsoft appeared to recognize that providing technology in conflict settings creates real human rights responsibilities. Now, after additional investigation and continued public scrutiny, it appears the company has taken another step, one that should send a strong signal to others that violating Microsoft’s human rights commitments could cost you your job. This is important. 

There is still much more Microsoft should do, of course. The company has yet to fully disclose the scope of its findings, explain exactly which services were suspended, or clarify what safeguards remain in place to prevent its technologies from contributing to human rights abuses in the future. We shouldn’t have to infer the connection between this employment action and the company’s investigation. 

Just prior to reports that Microsoft had fired its Israel Country General Manager, EFF joined Access Now, Amnesty International, Fight for the Future, and 7amleh in a joint May 7, 2026 letter to Microsoft leadership calling on the company to publicly release the findings of its investigation, suspend business relationships tied to serious human rights abuses, and implement meaningful safeguards to prevent its technologies from contributing to further harm. The letter detailed allegations regarding Microsoft’s reported provision of Azure cloud and AI services to Israeli military and intelligence units involved in surveillance and targeting operations, while also pressing the company to take concrete human rights due diligence measures going forward. Those demands remain urgent, even as Microsoft appears to be taking some of the steps we urged.

But even as we push for more, it is important to recognize when a company takes steps in the right direction. Because this is what it means to put human rights commitments into practice. It means acknowledging that human rights policies are not just branding exercises or transparency reports. It means accepting that companies providing cloud infrastructure and AI services have responsibilities when credible evidence emerges that their technologies may be enabling violations of international law. And it means taking concrete action when those risks become known.

The allegations facing Microsoft are serious. Human rights organizations and investigative reporting have documented claims that Microsoft Azure services were used by Israeli military and intelligence units to process large-scale surveillance data, support AI-assisted targeting systems, and sustain military cloud infrastructure during the war in Gaza. The concerns raised extend beyond ordinary business risk; they implicate potential complicity in violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Faced with these allegations, Microsoft could have chosen the path many tech companies take: deny everything, attack critics, suppress worker dissent, and continue business as usual. Instead, the company appears to have begun responding to the evidence.

Technology companies are not powerless bystanders. Cloud providers and AI companies make choices every day about who gets access to their infrastructure, under what conditions, and with what oversight. When companies claim to uphold human rights principles, those commitments should have operational consequences. Too many companies, in both international and domestic policing contexts, provide technology to institutions that violate people’s human rights and civil liberties, then fall back on the claim that they are merely providing a service that their customers can use how they see fit. This is an ethical failing that falls short of most companies’ publicly expressed commitments. Microsoft’s recent actions suggest that sustained public pressure, worker organizing, investigative journalism, and civil society advocacy can force even the world’s largest technology companies to respond.

Google and Amazon should especially see this as a clear example to follow. Both companies also provide services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and have faced years of criticism over those contracts and services, including from EFF. Yet neither has demonstrated the level of responsiveness or accountability that Microsoft has shown. If Microsoft can suspend services, investigate allegations, and make leadership changes amid mounting evidence and ethical concerns, then other cloud giants can no longer pretend that meaningful action is impossible.

The technology industry has spent years insisting that ethics and human rights matter. The real test has always been whether those principles survive when profits, government contracts, and geopolitical pressure are on the line. Microsoft’s recent steps are not the end of that story, but they may mark the beginning of what real accountability can look like.

We’re looking at you, Amazon and Google. If Microsoft can do it, why can’t you?

Urbanization in the Asia-Pacific region of the world is occurring at an alarmingly rapid pace, with more than 2.2 billion people now living in cities in the region, and an additional 1.2 billion projected to migrate to cities by 2050, according to a February 2026 report from the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Asian Development Bank, and the U.N. Development Program.

Such rapid growth places stress on nearly every aspect of urban areas, including housing, drinking water and sewage sources, roads and other transportation modes, and often results in environmental degradation and an increased vulnerability to climate-related disaster. But the situation also presents opportunities for doing things differently by deploying improved urban planning and management approaches, economic development strategies, as well as innovative technologies in real estate development and investment.

With a keen awareness of this ongoing urbanization and the pressures it brings, the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE) within the MIT School of Architecture and Planning established the MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative (AREI) in 2022. The AREI mission is to serve as a platform for collaborative research, education, and industry engagement that will help urban areas across the Asia-Pacific region and the Gulf Corridor adapt to these ongoing challenges and allow their growing populations to thrive.

The AREI is co-directed by Professor Siqi Zheng, faculty director of the CRE and director of the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, and James Scott MS ’16, a lecturer who is director of industry and professional programs for the CRE and director of the MIT Real Estate Transformation Lab.

“Imagine a region building the equivalent of a Boston every 40 days,” says Zheng, the STL Champion Professor of Urban and Real Estate Sustainability. “Asia is not just urbanizing. It’s redefining city life on a planetary scale.

“Drawing on MIT CRE’s deep roots in the region — more than half of international students in our MSRED program hail from Asia, and we have a robust 40-year alumni network spanning the Asia-Pacific countries and Gulf Corridor countries of West Asia — the AREI will naturally extend MIT’s role as a global convening point for real estate thought leaders.”

The initiative’s work will center on three pillars tailored to Asia’s urban needs: sustainable cities and real estate, urban vibrancy and dynamics, and technology and innovation.

Zheng is a leading scholar of sustainable urban development, real estate markets, and environmental quality, with particular expertise in China and Asia. She currently serves as president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and is a former president of the Asia Real Estate Society. Her research, which has appeared in leading journals across urban and real estate economics, environmental science, and urban studies, examines the tensions and synergies between fast urbanization and quality of life in cities, and how cities can develop their resilience against future uncertainties. She is now coauthoring a book with Matthew Kahn titled, “The Triumph of Asian Cities: Growth, Risk and Resilience in the 21st Century” (Harvard University Press).

Co-director Scott specializes in technology and innovation in the built environment. While attending MIT as a graduate student, his focus quickly moved in this direction. He has since played a pivotal role in advancing innovation and adoption of technology across some of the largest and most forward-thinking real estate organizations. Much of his work now is in PropTech, an inclusive phrase referring to new technologies in all areas of real estate, including financing, construction, sales, and materials lifespan, among others. His focal areas are Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and other West Asian countries.

Scott credits the quick uptake of new PropTech for helping advance the speed of development in these regions.

“The sheer scale and pace of development across the Asia-Pacific and Gulf Corridor regions is extraordinary, from landmark projects like the Burj in Dubai to the transformative mega-developments in Saudi Arabia and the remarkable urban expansion seen in cities like Beijing and Shanghai over the past 10 to 15 years,” Scott says.

“Boston, by contrast, reflects a more incremental but equally important model of urban evolution,” he says. “The difference is not one of ambition, but of tempo and scale, and it underscores the diverse ways cities around the world are driving innovation in the built environment. This also highlights how the AREI can foster two-way learning across different development contexts, creating a platform for shared insights between rapidly evolving markets and more incremental urban ecosystems.”

In addition to its MIT headquarters, the initiative has two regional hubs — one in Tokyo, the other in Dubai, with a third planned for Hong Kong. The hubs will serve as loci for regional research, as well as provide a means of organizing the CRE’s many alumni in these areas for professional opportunities. For this reason, successful alumni have been selected to head each of the hubs.

Taka Kiura MS ’00 is director of the Toyko hub. After working for the global real estate development firm Heitman for more than 20 years, Kiura last year founded Base-K, a real estate and venture capital investment firm. He also is CEO and founder of HyStat, an investment firm that backs and accelerates the adoption of next-generation technologies.

The Dubai Hub is directed by Ocean Saleem Jangda MS ’25, who works on development innovation partnerships at Majid Al Futtaim Properties, one of the largest mixed-use developers in the Gulf Region.

This spring, Zheng is co-taught course 15.S67 (Special Seminar in Management) in the MIT Sloan-CRE Real Estate Lab. The course, co-taught with Hong Ru, a visiting associate professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management, deployed interdisciplinary student teams to work on applied projects, one of which is in Singapore. Zheng also has partnered with MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives, a program under the MIT Center for International Studies, that is offering student internships with the AREI Hong Kong hub next January.

Another of the steps in the directors’ goal of coalescing CRE alumni in these areas will be organized by Ryan Othman, who will return to Saudi Arabia following completion of his master’s this month to launch his real estate development business in mid-sized market residential and industrial projects.

Othman, who also holds a BS in civil engineering and an SM in finance, will lead an MSRED/AREI trek to introduce next year’s MSRED students to alumni and other business and government officials in Saudi Arabia. “The MIT’s master’s in real estate development is the oldest in the country,” he says. “It’s a powerful program with an amazing alumni network, which I’d like to help expand.”

“Asian cities have become the defining arena for global economic growth, environmental change, and human welfare in the 21st century,” Zheng explains. “Their future depends on durable, place-based infrastructure, real estate investments shaped by regional integration, human capital, and how these cities interact with each other and the rest of the world.

“The outcome of this incredible growth will largely determine global living standards and environmental consequences for the remainder of this century. I believe the MIT Asia Real Estate Initiative is a great platform for the MIT community to make its intellectual contribution to these mega-dynamics.” 

Senior MBA student Patrick Yeung came to MIT Sloan School of Management wanting to be surrounded by a community of builders. 

“I come from a consulting background, which has its own strengths and gives you a specific toolkit, but I felt like I was not very technical, and so I wanted to be surrounded and inspired by people who had that knowledge and experience,” he says.

“MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative provides a great platform to help a generalist like myself become more specialized in this space, whether it be the Sustainability lunch series that they run every Thursday, the annual conference that gets organized, or the class catalog that aligns with the Sustainability Certificate.”

Yeung eventually hopes to join a climate tech scale-up to help formalize the business and scale, using what he’s learned at MIT Sloan to make a real impact.

“I've come to appreciate the systems thinking approach to sustainability that MIT Sloan has, especially in the context of the tech and lab-scale tech spinout ecosystem that MIT more broadly has. The technology is obviously an important piece of both climate mitigation and adaptation, but we will also need other techno-economic regime changes to be able to truly change our planet for the better — that takes policy and legal changes, that takes leadership and courage, and ultimately it takes a willingness to fail, over and over, in order to iterate.”

The following photo gallery provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Yeung has been like as an MIT student.

The Haystack 37m Telescope has been a landmark in radio astronomy and radar studies of the solar system since its first light in 1964. Over the following four decades, it supported NASA's Apollo landings on the moon, made planetary radar maps of the surface of Venus, contributed to experimental tests of Einstein's general relativity, supported the development of VLBI, and conducted foundational studies of quasars and star-forming regions. 

Recently, the Haystack 37m Telescope — a 37-meter radio and millimeter-wavelength antenna at MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts — made its return to front-line astronomical research following an extended period of system upgrades. These observations reconnect this instrument with its long tradition of scientific discovery and open a new chapter.

On Dec. 8, 2025, Haystack scientists observed the supermassive black hole system at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87) using a technique called very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) that links telescopes across continents to achieve extraordinary resolution. These observations mark the return of one of America's most storied radio telescopes to its historical scientific and educational mission.

The observations targeted the powerful jet of energy and matter launched from M87’s central black hole, M87*. This jet, driven by a black hole six-and-a-half billion times the mass of our sun, extends thousands of light years into intergalactic space and is one of the most energetic phenomena in the known universe. 

Previous international campaigns, namely those led by the Event Horizon Telescope, have imaged the black hole's immediate “shadow.” The Haystack 37m Telescope observations, performed in collaboration with the telescopes of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Greenland Telescope (GLT), help to probe the larger-scale structure of the jet, investigating how energy is transported far beyond the black hole's vicinity. Understanding this process is central to explaining how supermassive black holes shape the galaxies that surround them.

“The Haystack 37m Telescope’s exceptional sensitivity enables the intercontinental telescope array to detect faint emission from around the distant M87* black hole,” says Paul Tiede, principal investigator of the M87 study. “In tandem with the GLT and the VLBA, Haystack is helping create the first multifrequency movies of M87*’s faint jet, greatly improving our understanding of black hole physics.”

The upgraded Haystack 37m Telescope opens multiple new lines of research. At MIT, Saverio Cambioni and Richard Teague of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) plan to use the instrument within MIT’s Planetary Defense Project to measure asteroid sizes and shapes, characterizing objects that could pose a hazard to Earth and deepening our understanding of the solar system’s formation. Associate Professor Brett McGuire of the Department of Chemistry plans to search for complex organic molecules in space, work that speaks to the question of how the chemical precursors to life arise.

“We are thrilled to provide the research community with a powerful telescope at a time where few such instruments are available,” says Jens Kauffmann, principal investigator of the Haystack 37m Telescope Astronomy Program, who uses the telescope to study the formation of stars and their planets. “Even more exciting are the prospects this generates for the next generation of astronomers. Hands-on training opportunities on world-class research telescopes have become exceptionally rare worldwide, and now we can offer this singular advanced workforce development program right here in Massachusetts.”

Student involvement with the Haystack 37m Telescope has already resumed: Undergraduate interns at Haystack Observatory played an active role in developing the telescope’s control systems and data analysis algorithms. This work exemplifies Haystack’s role as a hands-on research and training environment where students contribute directly and gain practical experience with a frontline research instrument.

The return to research-focused observations is the result of more than 10 years of careful, sustained work. From 2010 to 2014, the Haystack 37m Telescope underwent a major upgrade and refurbishment that enhanced its ability to observe at millimeter wavelengths. This work was primarily done to improve the antenna’s capability as a space radar. The dish now primarily serves U.S. government agencies in that capability, and astronomy was temporarily a secondary activity. 

But work to restore the telescope's science capability never stopped. Initial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2015 modernized systems for data analysis and radio signal processing. The first successful engineering-oriented VLBI experiments with the new dish were conducted at the same time. Additional NSF funding in 2019, provided in the context of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT) program, enabled a more general and sustained effort to upgrade receiver equipment and computing systems. Support from private donors to Haystack also aided in this longer-term effort.

Several recent developments, particularly in 2025, proved significant. With support from MIT's Jarve Seed Fund for Science Innovation, scientists and engineers removed lingering technical limitations with astronomy systems and expanded the telescope's scientific reach. Other funding for projects led by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory enabled the M87 campaign and commissioning of the next-generation digital back end, a highly advanced signal-processing system developed for the ngEHT. Together, these advances made the December 2025 observations possible. MIT Haystack Observatory is now pursuing support from both private and federal sources for further improvements under the Haystack 37m Telescope Astronomy Program.

“The upgraded Haystack 37m Telescope empowers MIT students and researchers to pursue fundamental questions relating to our origins and our solar system,” says Richard Teague, professor at MIT EAPS. “With privileged access to such a powerful facility, we can undertake ambitious observational programs previously impossible to schedule. This is the beginning of what we expect will be an exciting era of new discoveries with the Haystack 37m Telescope.”

Using a powerful single-molecule imaging method they developed, a research team from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has unveiled a dynamic view of how some cancer-related proteins interact in living cells. 

The technique relies on highly stable nanoparticle probes that brightly illuminate individual molecules for long periods of time. The researchers used their method to observe, for the first time, individual receptors as they move around the cell membrane, attaching to and then letting go of other receptors to alter signaling within the cell.

Described in the journal Cell, the work demonstrates the method’s potential for investigating other receptors and molecules, and for improved drug screening to better understand the effects of therapeutics on living cells.

“With our photostable probes, we can map out the entire lifespan of these molecules in their native environment and see things that have never been observable before,” says study leader Sam Peng, a Broad Institute core institute member and assistant professor of chemistry at MIT.

Molecular movies

Peng’s method solves a problem with existing contrast agents used in single-molecule tracking, such as dyes. Under the laser light that’s used to excite these dyes, they burn out after a few seconds in a phenomenon known as photobleaching, which means that scientists could only use them to take a few snapshots of cell receptors, and not follow them over the entirety of the signaling process.

For a longer and richer view, Peng’s lab developed long-lasting probes, known as upconverting nanoparticles, which emit signals that remain stable under laser excitation. The nanoparticles contain rare-earth ions that continue to luminescence for minutes, hours, and potentially years. In addition, by altering the type and doses of the ions, scientists can engineer probes emitting in many different colors, enabling tracking of many targets in a single experiment.

In the current study, the researchers aimed to uncover new biology by focusing on the EGFR family of cell receptors, which have been linked to several kinds of cancer. They collaborated with EGFR experts Matthew Meyerson and Heidi Greulich of the Broad’s Cancer Program. They knew that EGFR receptors need to pair up, or “dimerize,” in order to initiate signaling within the cell, but they wanted to learn more about the dynamics of these pairings — what the receptors partner with, how long they stay together, and how they find new partners.

For a better and more sustained look at the receptors, the research team customized their upconverting nanoparticles to tag EGFR and related receptors HER2 and HER3, which are linked to cancer, and used them to track the molecules in living human cells.

A new view of protein pairings

In this study, Peng and his team observed that, when activated with a stimulating molecule, EGFR receptors can pair up and stay dimerized for several minutes, something not observable using traditional dyes. Excessive and prolonged dimerization can lead to too much cell growth and cancer.

A microscopy video shows upconverting nanoparticles tagged to EGFR receptors (labeled pink and green), which track individual receptors as they dimerize. Image courtesy of the researchers.

When the EGFR molecules carried cancer-related mutations, the dimers became more stable, with the more stabilizing mutations linked to more potent cancers in people. In addition, the mutated receptors could form stable dimers even without an external stimulus prompting them to dimerize. The finding helps explain how EGFR mutations can lead to uncontrolled cell growth and cancer, and could inform efforts to target this process therapeutically.

The team discovered several other new and surprising details about how HER2 and HER3 form stable pairings with themselves, which helps illuminate the role of these molecules in related cancers.

When the research team tagged all three receptor types in one experiment, they observed a vibrant scene with receptors navigating the cell surface, finding partners, unpairing, and then finding new partners, over and over again.

Beyond shedding light on EGFR biology, the scientists hope that collaborators in other fields will apply their method to ask new scientific questions about other proteins of interest. “We think this technique could be transformative for studying molecular biology, because it enables dynamic biological processes to be observed with high spatiotemporal resolution over unprecedented timescales,” says Peng.

They are also planning to explore the method’s use in studying the mechanism of drug action, to reveal how potential therapeutics alter individual molecules over time. In addition, they will continue to improve their methods, such as making the probes smaller, brighter, and able to emit more colors.

“We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”-Meta Internal Document on face recognition software for smart glasses, 2025

It’s unsurprising that a company would plan to release yet another privacy-invasive product. What is surprising is that they think we aren’t watching. You can help us keep them in check.

JOIN EFF

Meta isn't the only company actively eroding your privacy. We found that Google has broken its promise to some users to inform them about government surveillance. And Palantir is completely failing to live up to its purported human rights commitments.

Corporations bear responsibility for violating user trust and human rights, and EFF is holding them accountable with your support.

Watching the Watchers

We're suing DHS and ICE to reveal their efforts to unmask online critics, creating privacy-enhancing free software, and pushing for stronger privacy laws for everyone. This is all thanks to over 30,000 EFF members—a community you can join today.

Claw back your privacy with EFF's new member t-shirt!

We’ve seen collective action rein in companies and bring them back on track to protect users. With you by our side, we can do it again.

Join EFF today and be part of the community making this work possible.

____________________

EFF is a member-supported U.S. 501(c)(3) organization. We've received top ratings from the nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator since 2013! Your donation is tax-deductible as allowed by law.

Not by name, but Laurie Anderson quotes me in one of the tracks of her new album:

My favorite quote is from a cryptologist who said “If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology and you don’t understand your problems.”

Also in interviews:

“Of course, it’s ridiculous, outrageous, blah, blah, blah,” Anderson says about the ad. ‘But, I mean, my favorite quote on this is from a cryptologist who said, ‘If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology ­ and you don’t understand your problems.’ And I think I’m completely on board with that.”...

The nation’s largest builder of wind and solar projects is moving into the heart of the data center boom with its plans to acquire Virginia’s Dominion Energy. It could affect energy prices and the environment.