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.

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Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02708-8

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Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02720-y

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Nature Climate Change, Published online: 24 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02700-2

How global temperatures change after net-zero emissions are reached is highly uncertain. Here the authors constrain this response and find that net-zero GHG emissions lead to multi-century cooling of at least 0.6 °C.

Police departments across the country are lining up to launch drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs, and hundreds have cleared a necessary hurdle toward making deployment a reality, expanding aerial surveillance and data collection even in areas patrol officers typically can't reach.

As of February 2026, over 1,000 public safety agencies—including police, fire, and other emergency management agencies—had received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) waivers needed to automate drone operations and launch a DFR program, according to a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release listing agencies that have obtained Part 91 waivers since the FAA streamlined and sped up the process in April 2025.

The changes led to a massive increase in the number of waivers issued. Only 976 DFR waivers had been granted since the first DFR program launched in 2018 through April 2025, according to an FAA representative. The agency issued more waivers between April 2025 and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined.

A map illustrating the locations of police departments and other public safety agencies that have received Part 91 waivers, making it possible for them to launch drone-as-first-responder programs. (This map image links to Google Maps, which is governed by Google's privacy policy)

The new FAA process for waivers and the rush of police departments to obtain them signifies a shift in law enforcement's use of drones: from human-operated aerial surveillance to AI-based autonomous drone use. 

Typically, a drone operator is only permitted to fly in areas that can still be seen by the pilot, and that drone pilot needs to be certified under FAA Part 107. To fly drones “Beyond Visual Line of Sight” (BVLOS) requires additional approval from the FAA, as do flights above 200 feet, due to the risk of colliding with planes and other aircrafts. Without such approval, an officer could not pilot a drone from a desk inside a building and fly it to a call across the city because they could not possibly have line of sight on the drone. 

FAA rules for police drones also required a human operator to manually fly the device to a scene, but DFR technology has become a more common and more automated police technology. DFR programs increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to automate drone flights from launchpads placed around the city, often atop municipal buildings, and make it possible for one drone operator to “fly” multiple devices at once. Though not every police department that has received BVLOS has launched a DFR program yet, by going through this process, every department on this list has signified it has strong enough interest to clear the necessary regulatory hurdles.

Police departments and the companies that sell DFR equipment claim that these drones make it easier for officers to establish “situational awareness” of a scene before they arrive. Early drone adoption centered on similar claims, particularly related to high-risk situations like vehicular accidents or incidents involving an armed suspect. However, these kinds of situations may make up only a small portion of deployments, which often occur in response to low-risk calls for service related to unhoused people, mental health concerns, and loud music, as a Government Technology analysis of the system in Chula Vista, California, found. 

DFR programs have become important sources of revenue for companies like Flock Safety and Axon, the latter of which reported that its DFR platform has become one of the company’s fastest growing sectors. Axon is also known for products like the TASER and the Fusus camera system that lets police integrate viewing of public and private cameras. 

Footage from drone flights is streamed back to a police office, and it can be stored, shared, and analyzed like other video. Turning drone footage into fodder for automated license plate reader (ALPR) networks, for example, requires very little additional software, and Flock Safety was quietly able to turn its drones into “flying ALPRs” last year. 

The normalization of police DFR programs jeopardizes privacy in communities across the country. As flying cameras, drones can capture footage from areas typically inaccessible to a casual patrol officer—backyards, roofs, through windows—at distances that leave subjects of surveillance completely unaware of the spy in the sky. A recent leak of drone footage from the San Francisco Police Department illustrated the ease with which surreptitious drone flights could observe innocent individuals for minutes without them realizing it. EFF's Atlas of Surveillance contains a list of police departments with drones, including those with DFR programs.

While daytime DFR use grows, police departments are exploring other ways to expand overhead surveillance. In October 2024, the Campbell Police Department in California announced it had received the first FAA approval for BVLOS operations at night, claiming it was the “first to incorporate radar technology with electro-optical sensors to enhance airspace monitoring, enabling a single remote pilot to safely deploy drones both day and night.”  

As communities consider drone use, it’s crucial that they have a say in whether the program is acquired at all, not just how it's run once purchased. Throughout the process, police should be transparent with the community and comply with local regulations about its adoption.

Many cities provide portals that log the flight paths and reasons for each drone flight, often in real time, an important transparency practice. In California, under AB 481, police departments are required to provide advance notice of intent to acquire drones, establish policies before they’re procured, and provide annual updates on their uses—giving communities and city councils the opportunity, before any contract is signed, to weigh in or object to the acquisition itself. 

For police departments and communities considering drone use, clear policies on appropriate use, transparency around deployment, and regular re-evaluation—including the choice to discontinue a program that isn't working—are all vital for protecting people’s privacy and security. 

In Professor Anna-Christina Eilers’ research group, mentorship happens through small, meaningful gestures: thoughtful feedback on a draft, a check-in after a rough week, and a readiness to help when things get tough. For her students, these everyday moments have become a defining feature of her approach.

An observational astrophysicist, Eilers studies how the universe evolved from its earliest beginnings. Her research investigates the formation and growth of black holes across cosmic time, particularly during the “cosmic dawn,” when the first stars, galaxies, and quasars illuminated the young universe.

Working alongside her in this field, graduate students describe a mentor who pairs high expectations with genuine attentiveness, encouraging both scientific independence and a strong sense of community. This approach has earned Eilers recognition through MITs Committed to Caring initiative — a student-driven program honoring exemplary mentorship within the graduate community.

Showing up in the everyday moments

Students say one of Eilers’ defining qualities is her consistency. No matter how busy her schedule, they know they can count on thoughtful feedback, productive meetings, and regular conversations about both research and broader career development. While those practices may sound routine, her mentees emphasize that they are anything but guaranteed within many academic spaces.

“As Christina's advisees,” two students wrote in their joint nomination, “we are both extremely grateful for the professional and emotional support we constantly receive. She always keeps an eye out for us.”

Eilers’ support takes many forms. Students describe an advisor who carefully reads every draft, provides timely and detailed feedback, and creates space for conversations that extend beyond immediate research questions. 

Students also reflect on the manner in which Eilers celebrates their wins alongside them. “She brings our favorite desserts to group meetings when we publish a paper,” shared one nominator. 

Her attentiveness becomes especially meaningful when challenges arise. Students note that she regularly checks in on them and does not hesitate to step in when research collaborations become difficult or obstacles threaten to slow their progress. Rather than leaving them to navigate those situations alone, she helps identify solutions before small problems become larger ones.

For Eilers, building a successful research group means cultivating connections among its members as well as producing strong science.

One of the group’s traditions takes place whenever a member returns from a conference or research visit. The traveler brings back a small treat — cookies, chocolates, or another local specialty — to share during the next group meeting. Along with the snacks comes a conversation about the talks they attended, the researchers they met, and the ideas they brought home.

The tradition transforms an individual trip into a shared opportunity for learning, with new perspectives becoming part of the group’s collective conversation. These exchanges work to not only reinforce a sense of community, but also to expose students to research and ideas beyond their own projects.

Through moments like these, students develop both as researchers and as colleagues who celebrate one another’s successes and learn from one another's discoveries. 

Remembering the person behind the researcher

One of Eilers’ most consistent pieces of advice has little to do with coursework or research.

“I always recommend to incoming graduate students to find a hobby outside of work that they enjoy, and ideally where they interact with people they don’t work with,” she says.

She believes maintaining interests beyond the lab helps students sustain both their curiosity and their perspective. “Graduate school can be all-consuming,” she says, reflecting on her own experiences. “It's easy to let your research become your entire identity.”

This same philosophy shapes her mentorship: successful researchers are also people with lives, relationships, and interests beyond their work. Making space for those parts of life helps students build careers that are both ambitious and sustainable.

Eilers traces her approach to the advisors who shaped her own career.

“I was very fortunate to have had — and continue to have — several mentors who have challenged me scientifically and supported me along the way," she says. “They modeled how to pursue excellent research without losing sight of the importance of personal connection and integrity.”

Her students see these values reflected within the group environment. They are encouraged to tackle ambitious questions while developing the confidence to think independently, but they know that guidance is available when they need it. 

In their nominations of Eilers, students describe an advisor who is present in both the ordinary and the difficult moments — someone who notices when support is needed, advocates for her students, celebrates their successes, and builds a community where students consistently feel seen. 

Through this steady commitment, Eilers demonstrates that care is not separate from academic excellence. Rather, it creates the conditions that allow excellence to flourish.

MIT researchers are set to contribute to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Genesis Mission, with 15 collaborative projects among those selected for funding under Genesis Phase I, DOE announced Wednesday.

The Genesis Mission, a national initiative, intends to build “the world’s most powerful integrated science discovery platform” by incentivizing cross-sector collaborations that leverage AI, supercomputing, quantum systems, and advanced scientific instruments to accelerate breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery, and national security.

“MIT researchers are proud to be leading and contributing to projects under the Genesis Mission, in vital areas of research that support national priorities,” says Ian A. Waitz, MIT’s vice president for research. “The Genesis Mission represents a fantastic opportunity to catalyze the power of universities, industry, and the U.S. national laboratories to advance science, technology, and innovation for the benefit of the nation and the world.”

The DOE announced the initial projects during its Genesis Summit in Washington on Wednesday. The research funding to MIT is pending completion of negotiations toward an award agreement for each project. In phase I, funded project teams will work to demonstrate research workflows that integrate AI with scientific investigation, and to rigorously evaluate the scientific merit of their approach.

Projects under the Genesis Mission are collaborative by design; teams must draw on the expertise of researchers from academia, industry, and/or the national laboratories. Among the selected phase I projects with MIT involvement are those that aim to develop powerful quantum sensors to help explain fundamental questions about the universe; advance knowledge of chemical-free methods to extract rare earth elements; model the behavior of plasma in fusion tokamaks and future fusion reactors; develop digital twins for fusion magnet systems; exploit the self-assembly of biomolecules to design materials with targeted properties; generatively design rotating blades for machinery systems; and more. Phase I projects that identify promising pathways toward transformative capabilities at scale may be considered by DOE for further Genesis Mission funding.

Six of the selected projects are to be led by MIT principal investigators (PIs):

• AI-Driven Discovery of Electrochemical Separation Methods for Rare Earth Elements
  MIT lead: Martin Bazant (Department of Chemical Engineering, ChemE), Chevron Professor in Chemical Engineering and professor of mathematics
   
• AI for Learning Missing Constitutive Structure in Fracture Models
  MIT lead: Laurent Demanet (Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences), professor of applied mathematics in the Department of Mathematics and co-director of the MIT Center for Computational Science and Engineering
   
• AI-Driven Quantum Sensing for Precision Tests of Fundamental Physics
  MIT lead: Ronald Garcia Ruiz (Laboratory for Nuclear Science, LNS), associate professor of physics and Thomas A. Frank (1977) Career Development Professor
   
• Multi-Agent Inverse Design of Block Polypeptoids Into Hierarchical Nanostructures
  MIT lead: Bradley Olsen (ChemE), Alexander and I. Michael Kasser (1960) Professor
   
• CATALYST: Core Accelerated Trajectories with Augmented Learning bY Sim-to-experiment Transfer
  MIT lead: Cristina Rea (Plasma Science and Fusion Center), principal research scientist and division head for data science
   
• Multi-Modal and Multi-Facility Application of the FM4NPP Foundation Model: Silicon Trackers and Electron Colliders
  MIT lead: Gunther Roland (LNS), professor of physics and division head for experimental nuclear and particle physics

MIT researchers are expected to participate in another nine selected projects led by other institutions, companies, and labs:

• Framework for Optimized Rotating Blade Design Using Generative Engineering (FORGE)
  Project lead: GE Vernova Advanced Research Center
  MIT lead: Faez Ahmed (Department of Mechanical Engineering), associate professor of mechanical engineering and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor
   
• Superconducting Polychronous Computation Near Criticality
  Project lead: Argonne National Laboratory
  MIT lead: Karl Berggren (Research Laboratory of Electronics), the Julius A. Stratton Professor in Electrical Engineering and Physics
   
• Scalable Agentic Digital Twins for Autonomous Precision Facilities
  Project lead: Texas A&M University
  MIT lead: Ronald Garcia Ruiz (LNS)
   
• Agentic AI for Real-Time Expedited Discovery from High-Complexity EIC Data Streams
  Project lead: Purdue University
  MIT lead: Philip Harris (LNS), associate professor of physics
   
• Self-Driving Discovery and Co-Design of MXene Memristors for 3D Compute-in-Memory Systems
  Project lead: Northeastern University
  MIT lead: Ju Li (Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, NSE), the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor in Power Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering
   
• A-WILD: AI-driven Workflows for Intelligent Lab Discovery
  Project lead: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)
  MIT lead: Ju Li (NSE)
   
• A Foundational Generative AI Framework to Advance Water-Energy Security
  Project lead: LBNL
  MIT lead: Haruko Wainwright (NSE), Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies, assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering, and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering
   
• An AI-Driven Platform for HLW Repository Design and Analysis with Digital Twins, GIS Data Integration, and Surrogate Models
  Project lead: LBNL
  MIT lead: Haruko Wainwright (NSE)
   
• Toward Physics-Informed Digital Twins for Fusion Magnet Systems
  Project lead: LBNL
  MIT lead: Holger Witte (LNS), associate director of MIT’s Bates Research and Engineering Center.

“The extraordinary response to this Genesis Mission application process demonstrates that America’s scientific community is ready to reimagine how discovery happens,” said DOE Under Secretary Darío Gil SM ’00 PhD ’03, in the DOE’s announcement. “Through the Genesis Mission, we are bringing together the nation’s leading researchers, institutions, and technology partners to build the next generation of scientific capability. We look forward to seeing these teams demonstrate new research workflows that accelerate discovery and reveal what is possible when AI and science advance together.”

A complete list of the first Genesis Mission projects selected for award negotiations is available from the U.S. Department of Energy.

New paper: “Encryption and Globalization 15 Years Later: End-to-End Encryption and the Third Round of the ‘Going Dark’ Debate“:

Abstract: This Article updates and expands on 2012 research on encryption and globalization, analyzing what the authors call “Round 3” of the Going Dark Debate: the current controversies over end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Governments around the world have proposed, and in some cases enacted, laws limiting E2EE for law enforcement and national security purposes.

This Article explains the underlying technologies and market developments for a law and policy audience to assess those proposals critically. The Article proceeds in three parts tracking three rounds of the Going Dark Debate. Round 1 covers the Crypto Wars of the 1990s, when U.S. export controls on strong encryption ultimately fell in 1999. Round 2 covers the period roughly 2010 to 2015, when encryption-in-transit became widespread but lawful access remained available through cloud providers, giving rise to what the authors called a “golden age of surveillance” rather than a period of going dark. Round 3 addresses the current debate over E2EE, where no entity between sender and recipient can read the plaintext...

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