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.

When doctors and scientists want to see inside a body, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful tool. MRI can noninvasively capture detailed images of the body’s muscles, organs, and bones. It can monitor blood flow to generate a map of brain activity. And with new sensors developed by bioengineers at MIT, MRI can track the kinds of molecules that make our brains and bodies work.

In the May 13 issue of the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, a team led by Alan Jasanoff, the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Brain Sciences and Human Behavior at MIT, reports on their new sensors, which can brighten or dim MRI signals in response to specific molecular targets. The probes are designed to amplify the effect that each target molecule has on MRI signal, dramatically improving sensitivity over previous small-molecule sensors. Jasanoff, who is also an associate investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, says the approach his team used should enable the development of MRI sensors that detect neurotransmitters and other important molecules in the brain.

“We want to be able to measure distinct chemical signals like neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and metabolites as they fluctuate across the whole brain,” Jasanoff says. “These chemicals are important ingredients in neural computations, and we want to use the types of probes that we developed to detect these signals dynamically.”

Jasanoff explains that researchers have struggled to use MRI to sensitively detect small molecules in the brain because the amount of any given neurochemical is low. Sensors can be designed to change the brightness of an MRI signal in the presence of specific molecules — but it takes a lot of contrast agent to achieve this. If every molecule of contrast agent needs its own target molecule to activate it, low concentrations of the target molecule limit the sensors’ visibility in an MRI scan. “The signal change that you see in the imaging will be very modest,” Jasanoff says. “It won’t let us detect physiological events.”

The Jasanoff team’s new sensors, whose development was led by postdoc Sayani Das and graduate student Jacob Cyert Simon, overcome this problem. To generate a greater signal change in response to target molecules, the researchers designed probes in which a single target molecule impacts not one contrast agent, but many.

To achieve this, Das and Simon packaged an MRI contrast agent inside tiny sacs called liposomal nanoparticles. Each nanoparticle is packed with many molecules of gadolinium, a magnetic material that brightens the MRI signal that arises from hydrogen atoms in water. Inside their protective sacs, gadolinium has no effect on MRI signal, unless water molecules can easily get in and out.

Das and Simon built water channels into the walls of their gadolinium-filled nanoparticles, engineering them so that their opening depends on the presence or absence of a target molecule. When the channels open, more water enters and the gadolinium brightens the local MRI signal, lighting up that spot in a scan.

The researchers call their target-responsive sensors liposomal nanoparticle reporters, or LisNRs (pronounced “listeners”). They designed LisNRs that let water in only in the presence of their target molecule. The water channels in these nanoparticles stay blocked until they encounter their target, which can knock aside a channel-blocking bit of protein. 

Once the channel blocker is displaced, water enters and MRI signal brightens. They also made LisNRs that dim the MRI signal in the presence of the molecule they are designed to detect. These have a channel that stays open until the target molecule comes along and blocks it, keeping water out. Jasanoff lab members Vinay Sharma, Samira Abozeid, and Gregory Thiabaud played key roles in understanding and optimizing these interactions, and collaborators in the laboratory of Masayuki Inoue at the University of Tokyo helped the group engineer channels with higher potency.

In experiments led by postdoc Miranda Dawson, Jasanoff’s team used their LisNRs to detect a molecule called biotin in the brains and bodies of living rats, illustrating the probe’s amplifying effects. “We showed that we could detect micromolar-scale levels of biotin with about tenfold greater sensitivity than we would have if we’d used a more conventional, one-to-one type sensing approach,” Jasanoff says. He adds that the team’s modeling suggests that with further development, they may be able to achieve even greater sensitivity gains.

The group showed that the new sensors can be delivered systemically, reaching various organs and spreading throughout the brain. This makes them promising tools for brain-wide imaging, as well as imaging targets in the peripheral nervous system or other tissues.

A next step will be engineering LisNRs that respond to the specific neurochemicals that Jasanoff and his team hope to study. “There are something like 100 neurochemicals in the brain that we’d love to detect, in principle,” he says. They’ll start with dopamine and glutamate — two important and relatively abundant molecules that mediate communications between neurons.

This research, including support for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students involved in the work, was funded, in part, by Lore Harp McGovern, the Yang Tan Collective at MIT, the K. Lisa Yang Brain-Body Center at MIT, the Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at MIT, and the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics at MIT.

Aiming to transition away from fossil fuels and avert the worst consequences of climate change, world leaders aspire to achieve net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But actions to meet such targets and minimize adverse impacts on lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure are not one-size-fits-all; they will require different approaches in different places. 

To better understand the patchwork causes and effects of the climate crisis and elements of viable solutions to it, researchers in MIT’s Living Climate Futures (LCF) initiative — 20 MIT faculty and affiliates from across the Institute — collaborate with frontline communities in diverse physical and socioeconomic landscapes around the world. 

Funded by the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC) and based at the MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS), LCF is a multi-disciplinary research hub and community of practice; focuses on how climate change impacts people’s everyday lives; and creates knowledge and research collaborations with community organizations. 

At MIT on April 23-25 — just after Earth Day — LCF showcased several of these collaborations at its second Living Climate Futures Symposium, which brought together community environmental organizations with MIT researchers and students to explore how climate change challenges and responses to them are playing out in locations from New England to Mongolia. 

“Across the next two days, we’ll have conversations about community-based work and scholarly research that’s aimed at understanding the structural causes and social effects of climate change as it’s experienced in people’s everyday lives,” said MIT professor of anthropology and MITHIC faculty co-lead Heather Paxson in remarks at the start of the first full day of the conference. “I’m really excited for this symposium, and for where Living Climate Futures can go from here.”

Resisting environmental harm: Confronting data centers

A session on data centers, energy concerns, and community health in Greene County in Western Pennsylvania highlighted how stakeholders are attempting to proactively avert long-term threats to the environment and public health in and beyond their neighborhoods. Nicholas Hood, senior organizer at the Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ), which has worked to improve policy and regulations on fossil fuel extraction and use in the region since 1994, described local environmental and health impacts of these activities, including fracking, which has increased water pollution, asthma, and lymphoma. “We have coal mines, these old oil wells, and fracking on top of that, and now we’re going to add data centers,” he said. “So, ask yourself, do you think we want that?”

CCJ community advocate Jason Capello noted that market forces compel data center developers to build as cheaply as possible in places where they believe the population is unlikely to raise concerns about adverse environmental and health impacts. These impacts include pollution from on-site water-based cooling systems, diesel generators and mini-power plants that run on natural gas, and fine particulate matter-linked illnesses such as childhood asthma, heart attacks, stroke, and lung disease. But in a subsequent presentation, Livia Garofalo, a cultural and medical anthropologist on Data and Society’s Trustworthy Infrastructures team in Philadelphia, showed that many communities have pushed back against data center project proposals. “Through protests, canvassing, petitions, and public hearings, communities have been able to resist and even stop data center projects,” she said. 

To help communities resist or limit the impact of proposed data center projects, Michael Cork, a postdoc in biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, described a tool he has developed to estimate emissions, model how pollution would spread, estimate who will be exposed, and assess likely health and economic impacts. To further explore how communities can respond to such projects, MIT associate professor of anthropology Amy Moran-Thomas and Stanford University postdoc Anjuli Jain Figueroa facilitated an educational game conceived by Northeastern University associate professor of sociology and health science Sara Wylie. 

The game helped teach participants how often-overlooked community stakeholders can negotiate community benefit agreements (CBAs), or plans that specify project developers’ commitments to address their concerns and provide local improvements such as jobs and affordable housing. Gathered around several tables, symposium participants worked together to identify potential pros, cons, and trade-offs of allowing a data center to be built in a fictitious community. Offering another avenue for community advocacy, Moran-Thomas also moderated a workshop led by public anthropologist Ieva Jusionyte on how to write op-eds that inspire change.

Repairing environmental harm: More than a matter of money

A session on global perspectives and methodologies for potential climate reparations focused on the context for and definition of the term. Veronica Coptis, senior advisor at Taproot Earth, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization, described her view of climate justice as a movement about reducing not only excessive greenhouse gas emissions, but also changing the systems that have produced them, all while building a world where everyone can live, rest, and thrive in the places they love. “[Taproot Earth’s] mission is building power and cultivating solutions with frontline communities to advance climate justice through Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, and democracy,” said Coptis.

Eliane Lakam, global policy and partnerships specialist at Taproot Earth, described a two-decades-long process, sparked by Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of marginalized communities on the U.S. Gulf Coast, that led to a Global Climate Reparations Working Statement at the Global Climate Reparations Governance Assembly of 200 climate leaders in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2024.

Urban agriculture: Reclaiming and revitalizing degraded land

A session on advancing urban agriculture in a changing climate featured a panel of four organizational representatives of various growing spaces in Greater Boston, many of which were formerly vacant lots and garbage dumps that were repurposed as farms and gardens. The panel included Sabrina Pilet-Jones, urban farm manager at Haley House; Cecilia Del Cid, director of food justice and youth programs at GreenRoots; Olivia Golden, urban agriculture educator at UMass Extension; and Matthew Ellison, assistant farm manager at the Urban Farming Institute. 

The panelists showed how their efforts to grow food locally in an urban setting are challenging past and ongoing environmental inequality in myriad ways. These include preserving and expanding green spaces, increasing access to fresh produce, empowering their communities to become actively engaged in how their food is grown, building community connection and pride, and inspiring young people to grow food in their neighborhoods. They framed their organizations’ youth education programs as gateways for enabling the transfer of knowledge from elders to young people, promoting a strong work ethic and healthy lifestyles, and identifying pathways to livelihoods that address food access and sustainability. To provide participants with an opportunity to learn about urban agriculture and do some volunteer farm labor, the symposium offered a field trip to The Food Project in Roxbury. 

Rural and urban adaptation: Responding to a changing climate

A session on climate change as a place-based phenomenon explored how communities are responding to a changing climate on Mongolian grasslands, in the greater Southwestern United States, and along the Boston Harbor. 

Munkh-Erdene Gantulga, a PhD candidate in geography at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, described his studies at the National University of Mongolia on how pastoralists at two field sites are protecting their livelihoods as more-frequent severe weather events increase livestock mortality and pasture degradation. Perceiving climate change as a lack of rainfall, hotter temperatures, and inadequate grass growth, herders at the two sites are either migrating to greener pastures or applying three strategies: not milking their animals so as to boost survival of mothers and their offspring; selling off parts of their herds; or specializing in more climate-resilient animals, such as camels. A separate screening of the film “If Only I Could Hibernate” dramatized the environmental and economic obstacles faced by youth in Mongolia. 

Breanna Lameman, an Indigenous data sovereignty doctoral scholar and graduate research associate at the University of Arizona, and Nekai Eversole, wildlife biologist and program lead with Climate Change Program - Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife, described how traditional Diné ecological knowledge and innovative technologies are helping Navajo Nation communities to adapt to hotter temperatures, long droughts, and harsher soil conditions. Lameman cited Diné concepts of restoring balance and maintaining kinship with the natural world as essential to the local response. “This reminds us that the plants, animals, water, and soils are relatives, not resources, and that we all need to work together,” she said. “Watching the stars, observing the winds, the plant cycles, and animal behaviors, really helps us predict seasonal shifts better than any app out there.” Eversole noted that this mindset is combined with innovative technologies ranging from hydroponics to wetland restoration structures. A separate screening of the film “Climate Voices” and Q&A with director Leslie Jonas, MLK Jr. Visiting Scholar and Elder Eel Clan member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, explored perspectives from Native experts and climate scientists working on the front lines.

Elisa Guerrero, community engagement manager at the Stone Living Lab and Sustainable Solutions Lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston, highlighted two examples of adaptation measures to protect vulnerable Boston Harbor infrastructure from sea-level rise, coastal storms, and storm surges: testing seawalls designed to mimic natural habitat for how well they slow down wave action and preserve marine biodiversity, and monitoring salt marshes to better understand the factors that degrade and promote their health. A separate Stone Living Lab tour enabled symposium participants to visit a living seawall, nature-based flood protection infrastructures, and a community-based flood sensor project as Boston tries to address rising sea levels.

Training the next generation in community-oriented research

In addition to highlighting LCF’s role as a research hub linking MIT researchers and students with community organizations in the United States and around the world, the symposium also sought to draw attention to efforts to train the next generation in this approach. The Saturday session “Experiential Learning, ‘Anthro-Engineering,’ and Learning to Do Community-Oriented Research” showcased some of the interdisciplinary classes that LCF supports. MIT students who participated in these classes engaged in activities ranging from building chicken coops with a Boston farming collective while learning about urban agriculture to exploring how to decarbonize the steel industry in Pittsburgh and Southeast Chicago while creating well-paying green jobs to spending time in Ulaanbaatar’s ger districts (informal residential areas) while working with Mongolian collaborators on non-coal methods for heating homes. 

Student panelists shared highlights from their learning experiences through presentations, activities, artwork, and written accounts from their travel notebooks.

“People have always been part of why I chose to study engineering,” said nuclear engineering PhD student Alina Jugan. “But learning how to integrate a human perspective, and one that accounts for multitudes of realities, is essential. The first step in making a solution is learning what the real problem is and how people experience it. This is what ‘Anthro-Engineering’ teaches us.”

Panel and symposium co-organizer Laura Frye-Levine, a research scientist at the MIT Anthropology Section and affiliate of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, concurred. “In building relationships in place-based contexts, the students on this panel demonstrate the value of engaging with social and cultural expertise in addressing climate change,” she said. “These projects are fantastic examples of collaborations that hold promise for MIT’s approach to developing climate solutions.”

Lessons in resilience from frontline community groups 

In a session entitled “Xa xah Xechnging: A Sacred Obligation in a Time of Climate Chaos,” panelists from Se’Si’Le and Children of the Setting Sun Productions — two Indigenous-led environmental organizations from the U.S Pacific Northwest that have collaborated with LCF on experiential learning activities — described how they draw upon cultural, spiritual, scientific, legal, and other resources in their efforts to heal and restore the planet amid political and corporate opposition. At the core of their work is a perspective in which everything has a spirit, and is thus worthy of love, honor, respect, dignity, pride, and compassion.

Sundance chief Rueben George, a board member of Se’Si’Le, recounted how this perspective energized the campaign he led against the development of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, a fossil fuel megaproject on Tsleil-Waututh Nation territories in British Columbia. “We just shared facts about what it is, and we led with our culture,” said George, who is also chair of Salish Elements, an Indigenous-run company that produces green hydrogen. “That’s the biggest, most important thing, is we always led with our culture.”

At an earlier session, representatives of organizations that participated in the 2022 Living Climate Futures symposium, ranging from GreenRoots to Se’Si’Le, said that they draw strength from the wisdom of ancestors, a growth mindset, and communal bonds among people who seek a better future for the places they call home. Kurt Russo, co-executive director of Se’Si’Le, noted: “I come back to the indomitability of the human spirit.”

Additional photos can be viewed here.

You will never catch Krystal Montgomery running to class. Literally. She is that fast.

The MIT senior — a Course 6-3 (Computer Science and Engineering) major and Course 4 (Design) minor — was recently named the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference Women’s Track Athlete of the Week — for the second time. Montgomery ran a national top 10 time in the 800 meters at the Friar Invitational in Providence, Rhode Island, in April. Her time of 2:10.67 was the fastest Division III runner in the field, ranking her eighth nationally. She beat that time with a personal best (2:09.51) at the FIRE Meet hosted by Williams College in early May. 

Montgomery also runs the 400 meters or 800 meters on the relay team; last year, she and her teammates were national champions in the 4x400m race, which helped MIT win its first NCAA Division III Outdoor National Championship. 

Her success running at MIT was hard-fought. After a stellar undergraduate first year and earning a place at the NCAA Division III finals, she suffered an injury at the NCAA Division III Indoor Championships. Unable to compete at the start of her second year, the increasing demands of her coursework and interviewing for internships took a toll.

“Sophomore year was super tough, academically,” says Montgomery. “I think the mental load affected my athletic performance. I was thinking that I would quit after my sophomore year and just focus on school. Then I started dropping times and thought that maybe I could improve if I just stuck it out.”

What Montgomery found was a new way to focus on herself that positively impacted her work on and off the track.

“It’s definitely been a journey of learning how to be more mentally tough throughout the last four years,” she says. “I think that has kind of helped both my academic and athletic performances. My junior year was great. I just kept pushing myself and continued to drop my times. I kind of learned how to balance my life. I prioritized sleeping and eating and tried not to be too stressed about schoolwork so I could lock in on race day.”

Supporting creative energy

Montgomery says she was a “pretty crafty person” before attending MIT. The former president of her high school’s chapter of Girls Who Code, she knew she was going to major in computer science. It was her love for building, making, and creating that led her to explore design courses. In her first year, Montgomery took her first design class 4.021 (Design Studio: How to Design), with Paul Pettigrew. 

“That was an amazing experience because I got to use the workshops and the labs in the architecture department,” she says. “It was just crazy to have all these materials at my fingertips that I could build with. I learned how to laser cut; spray paint; powder coat; and cut metal, wood, and fabric. I found it all really interesting, and what I made encouraged me to take more of these classes.”

Montgomery says she realized that pursuing her interest in design while majoring in computer science would allow her to foster her “creative energy” throughout her time at MIT.

In her junior year, Montgomery took class 4.031 (Design Studio: Objects and Interaction) with associate professor of the practice in architecture Marcelo Coelho. She enjoyed it so much she took another of Coelho’s courses, 4.043 (Design Studio: Interaction Intelligence) — twice.

The course provides a foundation in technical skills such as physical prototyping, coding, collecting data, and deploying neural network models. The end result is developing interactive prototypes that can be deployed and experienced by real users. Montgomery enjoyed the process of working with a new group of classmates and partnering to create a prototype in each class. 

“[Coelho’s] classes have been a great combination of designing a physical object and learning how to code, which brought in my computer science background,” says Montgomery. “It gave me the opportunity to combine both fields creatively.”

Moving forward

Montgomery says she hasn’t fully wrapped her head around the fact that her time at MIT is ending. It’s all been good: friends, clubs, courses. 

“My last two years, I chose to focus on memories instead of being stressed over a lot of things,” she says. “I feel like I chose each of the things I did intentionally, so I put my time in things that I’ll carry with me past college.”

Before Commencement, Montgomery will join her teammates in her final meet: the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track and Field Championships. At last year’s championships, Montgomery and her teammates took first place in the women’s 4x400m relay. 

After Commencement, Montgomery will move to Austin, Texas to work as a software developer at Apple, and she will keep competing in track as an unattached athlete, potentially transitioning to marathons later in her career. 

“I’ve seen a lot of post-grads from MIT continue to train and compete in track meets and perform even better than they did in college,” says Montgomery. “I don’t know when I’ll make the switch to longer-distance running. For now, the sweet spot is the 800 meters.”

The 2025 Internet Crime Report was published a few weeks ago, but I only just saw it.
Lots of interesting statistics.

Press release. News articles.

The White House is reviewing EPA’s rollback of some Biden-era standards for some coal- and gas-fired power plants.

The senior Senate Democrat wants a training manual for judges to include a chapter on climate change.

Members of the task forces said the department has stopped communication, saying DOE has "gone dark" on the committees.

Nationally prominent Resilient Florida has spent $1.8 billion since 2021 on flood protection. But it faced a huge cut in state funding.

Gov. Kathy Hochul secured a significant loosening of the state’s emissions reduction requirements and some modest changes to utility rate making.

Brussels must require tech companies to disclose data centers’ energy and water use, the European Environment Agency says.

Companies transporting pharmaceuticals, food and high-value technology goods such as microchips are particularly vulnerable to temperature, humidity and delays.

"Other mountainous regions of the world ... have all experienced a steep decline in snow cover but not at the rate that we saw in the Greek mountains," a snow hydrologist said.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 27 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02644-7

Climate debates often frame individual behaviour and systems change as distinct pathways to action. We suggest that social change arises from individuals’ agency within their roles in societal systems, and that this agency should be actively leveraged to achieve meaningful climate change mitigation.

An EFF analysis of millions of searches of Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) data by police has uncovered a troubling pattern: in the absence of a warrant requirement to search ALPR databases, law enforcement agencies have moved beyond specific investigations to use these surveillance networks for virtually any whim.

Our findings suggest that the absence of a warrant requirement has fostered a culture of unrestricted access to sensitive location data, allowing agencies to leverage that data beyond the scope of specific criminal investigations.

As a refresher: Law enforcement agencies lease or purchase camera systems from Flock Safety and then mount them by the side of the road and at intersections to document every vehicle that passes, including the plate, make, model, color and distinguishing characteristics, along with the date, time and location of where it was seen. 

Law enforcement's talking points—often scripted by the company itself—trumpet their role in solving high-stakes crimes. But the data reveals a different story. What they're not saying is that ALPRs are also frequently used for extremely low-level investigations, such as verifying whether a student lives within a particular school zone. In some cases, police have even used this tech to conduct employment background checks and investigations into loud music complaints. Recently, a motorcyclist was even targeted for simply holding a cell phone while riding.

The reach of this ALPR surveillance is amplified by the nature of the indiscriminate sharing these technologies encourage. Most agencies choose to share broadly, often as part of a nationwide pool, making it common for a single city's system to be searched hundreds of thousands of times each month. By analyzing these "network audit logs," privacy advocates and journalists have uncovered evidence of the technology being used to surveil protesters, abortion-seekers, immigrants, and even ethnic Roma populations. 

While these high-profile abuses are shocking, the more mundane uses are also problematic, signaling a massive, unchecked mission creep that has turned an alleged “crime-fighting” tool into a universal tracker of everyone’s movements. 

Residency Checks

School systems in the U.S. conduct "residency verification" investigations of their parents or guardians to ensure enrolled children live in the district. To carry out these checks, some school districts have enlisted law enforcement officers for help, leveraging ALPR databases to track the comings and goings of families across the region. 

Buford City Schools in Georgia, which serves only about 6,000 students, illustrates the scale of this prying. Between January 2025 and March 2026, school police ran more than 375 searches where officers listed school residency verification, or simply "RV," as the reason for the search. That accounts for more than half of all ALPR searches in that period, and in those three months of 2026, three-quarters of all searches were related to residency verification. 

School officials stand by the searches. "[B]ecause Buford City Schools is a highly sought-after district, we experience ongoing challenges with residency fraud," a spokesperson told Appen Media, which shared the email with EFF. "Flock Safety is one of the tools we use to verify residency and protect the integrity of the Buford City School System for families who live within the district."

A search of ALPR data will show a lot more than whether a family lives within the right zone. In these Buford cases, officers ran some searches across more than 5,800 different networks nationwide. Every time a plate is searched, it can reveal personal information about a family: when they go to the doctor, when they go to worship, when they go out at night, and where they travel on vacation. None of that is the school district's business, and these searches are a huge invasion of privacy. 

While Buford was by the far the most prolific, it wasn't the only agency to run school residency checks. For example, Delhi Township Police Department (DTPD) in Ohio ran 35 searches related to students in five schools in a three-month period during spring 2025, and similarly stood by the practice, citing a warning given to parents that submitting a false statement of residency may be a felony. 

After EFF sent an inquiry to DTPD, the agency conducted a brief investigation and found that "these searches were not done to verify residency upon submission, but to investigate cases where it was believed the form was filled out with false information." DTPD did not say what kind of evidence was required to establish suspicion before an ALPR query, nor did it offer information on how many of these investigations turned out to be justified. 

However, the official told EFF: "in response to your inquiry, the department will be implementing a change to how these queries are documented in the Flock system and internally, to increase accountability and help avoid any confusion moving forward."

Other agencies that ran school residency searches include Cortland Police Department in Ohio and Lincoln Police Department in Alabama. Several agencies also ran searches with "residency," "residency investigation" or "residency verification" as the reason, but that could refer to a number of public services. These agencies include Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi, Fairfield County Sheriff's Office in South Carolina, Manteno Police Department in Illinois, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and Mora County Sheriff's Office in New Mexico. 

Background Checks

Few people would imagine that applying for a government job would open you up to an ALPR search. Yet, several law enforcement agencies ran searches through the Flock network related to employment. 

For example:

• Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in Missouri ran six searches across 2,853 networks, documenting "employment" in the reason field.
• Little Elm Police Department in Texas ran 10 searches across 6,306 networks, documenting "EMPLOYMENT" in the reason field.
• Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi ran two searches across more than 6,000 networks documenting "employment background inv" in the reason field.
• Texas City Police Department, Texas ran three searches across 728 networks, documenting "pre employment background" in the reason field. 
• Zion Police Department in Illinois ran a research across 585 networks documenting "Employee Background" in the reason field. 

Davidson Police Department in North Carolina logged a search listed as "Employment Background," but in response to an inquiry from EFF, the chief described this as "poor choice of words by our investigator." He further stated that the agency does not use ALPRs as part of employment background checks, but in this case, the agency shared that a potential violation of a protective order came to light during a background check, hence the reference to it in the search log.

In addition to the agencies mentioned, several agencies ran searches that simply referred to "background check" or "background checks," which could be related to employment or perhaps some other issue, such as a concealed weapons permit, for example. These include Avon Police Department in Indiana, Rockford Police Department in Illinois, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office in California, and Seaford Police Department in Delaware.

Noise Complaints

Many people have probably been irritated at some point or another by a car blasting a deep bassline or even the infamous "whistle tip." Some may have even called the cops to complain about a neighbor’s house party. But that's a far cry from the types of serious crimes that Flock and its customers have claimed that the ALPR systems would be used to solve. 

Yet, EFF identified 26 agencies where officers felt it was appropriate to pry into a driver's life because of a noise complaint, ranging from house parties to loud exhausts to just "music": 

Some of these agencies searched upwards of 6,500 networks’ cameras—the equivalent of launching a nationwide goose chase over a booming subwoofer or a busted muffler. 

When Mission Creep Is Just Plain Creepy

An observant reader of this report may have noticed that Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi ran searches in all three of the categories we reported above.

However, after the city first installed the Flock Safety cameras, the then-police chief told the press that the technology helps solve cases that range from "theft to crimes of violence"—without disclosing that the range would extend much further.

When police and salespeople trot out cherry-picked cases to argue that a mass surveillance technology is an "important" tool,  they obfuscate that it's a convenient shortcut around due process. For serious crimes, police can already go through the standard legal process: making the case to a judge on why they should get a search warrant for location data, whether it's from cell phones or service providers. But police treat ALPR databases as if no such threshold exists, giving them free rein to track a person’s movements without a sliver of judicial oversight.

When police and salespeople trot out cherry-picked cases to argue that a mass surveillance technology is an "important" tool,  they obfuscate that it's a convenient shortcut around due process.

"This is the same as if I put a police officer on the side of the road with a pen and a notepad and he writes down every license plate number that drives by,” the former chief said, repeating a commonly circulated talking point. 

That rhetoric may sound reasonable if we were just talking about a single camera on a street corner, but Ridgeland now operates more than 50 cameras—the equivalent of one for every 500 residents—and maintains access to tens of thousands more. 

If the chief had stood in front of the city’s aldermen and asked for permission to search more than 20,000 cameras so his officers could investigate the high crime of "music," it’s quite unlikely that they would have been nodding their heads along. 

Ridgeland Police Department did not respond to EFF’s requests for comment.

Ten MIT affiliates — including undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni — have accepted Fulbright grants to conduct research in countries across the world. Five other students declined their awards to pursue other opportunities, and another student is still deciding. In total, 16 of MIT’s 30 Fulbright applicants won awards this year. 

Funded by the U.S. Department of State with annual appropriations from Congress, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers year-long opportunities for American-citizen students and recent alumni to conduct independent research, pursue graduate studies, or teach English in over 140 countries. This past February, MIT was recognized by the Fulbright Program as the nation’s No. 1 “Top Producing Institution” among special focus STEM universities. 

MIT students and alumni interested in applying to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program should contact Julia Mongo, Fulbright program advisor, in the Distinguished Fellowships office in Career Advising and Professional Development.

Jessica Chomik-Morales SM ’25 earned her master’s in science writing at MIT, where she previously spent three years as a post-bac cognitive neuroscience researcher in the labs of professors Nancy Kanwisher and Laura Schulz. For her Fulbright in Spain, she will research the science of science communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s Center for Brain and Cognition in Barcelona. Her project will investigate how narrative features in science writing interact with reader characteristics to shape comprehension, trust, and engagement. Chomik-Morales is the creator, host, and producer of “Mi Última Neurona,” an MIT-sponsored Spanish-language neuroscience podcast that has featured more than 60 scientists from Latin America, the United States, and Spain. She is currently producing “Lab Notes on Love,” an audio miniseries for Scientific American. She is committed to making science communication more inclusive, empirically grounded, and emotionally resonant.

Stella Gassman will graduate this month with a BS in biological engineering and a concentration in women’s and gender studies. For her Fulbright year, she will conduct microbiology research at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. At MIT, Gassman researched the vaginal microbiome and mucosal membranes, with a particular focus on bacterial vaginosis. Important moments of her research journey included time at an MGH gynecology clinic and at the FRESH clinical trial site in South Africa, where she gained firsthand perspectives on the human context behind her laboratory samples. Gassman also interned at Pfizer Oncology, developing an in vivo tumor model to test preclinical compounds. She volunteered in the MGH Emergency Department and served on the Biological Engineering Undergraduate Board. After Fulbright, she hopes to attend medical school to bridge scientific discovery and human impact.

Chen Li SM ’25 graduated from MIT with a master’s in system design and management. She has developed generative artificial intelligence tools for patient engagement at Novo Nordisk in Copenhagen through MISTI Denmark and applied AI to help prevent gait freezing in Parkinson’s patients through the MIT–Mexico program. As a research assistant in the MIT Global Teamwork Lab, her thesis used large language models and statistical methods to build a 3D urban design platform to study teamwork behavior. She also served as a teaching assistant for data mining courses at MIT Sloan School of Management and the MicroMasters program. As a Fulbright Iceland-NSF Arctic Research Award recipient, Chen will explore how AI and systems thinking can be applied to support health and well-being in Arctic communities. She plans to pursue a PhD in information and systems science following her Fulbright experience.

Liam Moser will graduate this week with a PhD in geophysics from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences’ MIT-WHOI Joint Program. His research has focused on understanding the structure and dynamics of subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives beneath another, generating the Earth’s largest earthquakes and creating volcanic arcs. During his PhD, Moser helped found the annual MIT-WHOI Geophysics Retreat, promoting interconnectedness between MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). He also taught incoming graduate students in the MIT-WHOI Summer Math Review for five years, organizing the review for the final two years of his PhD. Moser was awarded a Fulbright Iceland-National Science Foundation Arctic Research Award for a postdoctoral fellowship at Reykjavík University, where he will use earthquake recordings to study the structure and dynamics of the Hengill volcano and geothermal area.

Lilia Ould-Hammou is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering with a concentration in controls, robotics, and instrumentation. As a recipient of the Fulbright U.S.-Korea Presidential STEM Initiative Award, she will conduct research at Seoul National University’s Wearable Robotics Laboratory. Her work will involve advancing adaptive exosuit control for balance recovery. She plans to improve her language skills while exploring Korea’s history and culture. At MIT, Ould-Hammou has worked in the d’Arbeloff Robotics Lab on soft modular robotic straps, served as a tutor in the MIT Women’s Technology Program, and competed as a thrower on the MIT track and field team. After her Fulbright fellowship, she will pursue a master’s degree in robotics at Johns Hopkins University.

Bryan Sperry ’23 graduated from MIT with dual bachelor’s degrees in physics and mechanical engineering, focusing on renewable energy systems. Since graduating, he has worked at VEIR as a systems integration engineer, designing superconducting power transmission lines. As a Fulbright Brazil grantee, he will study pathways to improve climate resilience and energy equity in urban power grids alongside the Cenergia Lab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. After Fulbright, he plans to enroll at Columbia University to complete a master’s in urban planning to continue working on urban disaster preparedness.

Sophie Thompson is a senior majoring in chemical engineering. For her Fulbright research in Sweden, she will test the performance of recycled carbon fiber composites at the Swedish School of Textiles in Boras. Thompson has researched natural fiber-reinforced composites for prosthetic socket use in low-resource environments with the Herr Lab in the MIT Media Lab, worked on immunoengineering technology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and interned at the textile recycling startup MacroCycle Technologies. She also completed a summer research internship at the Weizmann Institute in Israel through MISTI. She serves as captain on the MIT lightweight women’s rowing team, and has held leadership roles with the MIT chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, TEDxMIT, and MIT Hillel. After Fulbright, Thompson will pursue a PhD in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago.

Claire Underwood is a senior studying chemical-biological engineering. As a recipient of a Fulbright Portugal award, she will conduct research at the University of Minho in Guimaraes, studying high-throughput fabrication techniques for cell-embedded microtissues with applications in drug discovery. At MIT, Underwood worked in the Hammond and Olsen labs exploring interactions between biology and polymeric systems. For the past two years, she has focused on lipid nanoparticle drug delivery for cancer treatment, and is excited to continue investigating biomaterials and biomimetic systems. She was also a member of the varsity volleyball team and active in her sorority Alpha Phi, Cru, and Athletes in Action. After Fulbright, she will pursue a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sophie Vulpe is a senior majoring in physics and mathematics. Her Fulbright will take her to the Extreme Light Infrastructure-Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) institute in Măgurele, Romania, where she will develop advanced data-processing algorithms for a new monoenergetic gamma ray spectrometer. She looks forward to strengthening her computational and experimental skills and connecting with her Romanian heritage. At MIT, Vulpe worked with Professor Mikhail Ivanov on characterizing black hole quasi-normal modes using tools from the mathematical field of representation theory. Passionate about expanding access to physics through education and outreach, she was co-president of the Undergraduate Women in Physics group, a mentor in the physics mentorship program, and a teaching assistant in the Experimental Study Group. She was also a member of Dancetroupe and the Musical Theater Guild. After Fulbright, Vulpe plans to pursue a PhD in physics. 

Josephine Wang will graduate this month with a BS in computer science. For her Fulbright grant to Switzerland, she will conduct research at EPFL in Lausanne with the NeuroAI Lab. Her work will explore whether brain-inspired language models can develop functionally specialized clusters analogous to cortical organization, and how targeted disruptions to those clusters affect language-related behavior. At MIT, Wang’s research has focused on computational models of cognition, movement, and human behavior. She has most recently worked in the Seethapathi Motor Control Group, where she developed a computer vision pipeline for world-grounded pose estimation in children and examined how computational models can support pediatric gait analysis. Outside of research, Wang enjoys traveling, trying new cuisines, and learning French.

“Avatar,” the highest-grossing film of all time, took viewers to a new world, Pandora, and it advanced filmmaking to its own new world: developing the field of virtual production. 

Leveraging a wide range of technologies such as performance capture, LED virtual environments, and advanced 3D imaging technologies, virtual production is changing the landscape of modern cinema. While millions of people have seen “Avatar,” only a fraction of that number understand the magic behind the scenes. Exposing filmmaking students to this magic is what MIT Media Lab alumnus Daniel Pillis SM ’24 is all about.

“Motion capture, like that in 'Avatar,' bridges real human movement with digital technology,” says Pillis. “In this digital age, and as artificial intelligence becomes more involved in film studios, technology that enables the authenticity of human expression and performance is becoming increasingly important.” 

That is what Pillis, now an assistant professor at Emerson College, teaches his students in his filmmaking courses. To bring the lesson to life, each semester the class travels across the river to MIT, where Emerson undergraduate and graduate students use the capabilities of the MIT.nano Immersion Lab to create their own virtual productions.

Donning full-body motion-capture suits that pair to the 28-camera OptiTrack system in the Immersion Lab, the students become their own avatars — generating virtual characters that dance, fight, or play the guitar like The Beatles. They see their animation data immediately on a computer screen and can change or add to their character’s movements in real time. Later, they take their data back to Emerson to build into short films for their final projects.

“It has been truly gratifying to support this course and to see the curiosity and ingenuity students have brought to the stage,” says Talis Reks, who manages the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. “This class highlights the range of what our lab can offer, extending well beyond research and into art and the performing arts."

The MIT.nano Immersion Lab — there’s really nothing else like it

Pillis first learned about the MIT.nano Immersion Lab during his time as a graduate student in Professor Hiroshi Ishii’s Tangible Media group at the MIT Media Lab. Working with colleague Georine Pierre SM ’24, the two collaborated on a Haitian folklore dance project, creating a motion capture-driven simulation of Haitian folkloric dance traditions, specifically the sacred Yanvalou dance. They built a living archive using the capabilities of the Immersion Lab that let participants dance with an interactive AI-driven ancestral avatar animation.

When he became faculty at Emerson, Pillis knew the Immersion Lab was a perfect fit to elevate his students’ experiences. “The level of high-end film production that the Immersion Lab supports is out of reach for so many students who would benefit from this technology in their practice,” explains Pillis. “The facility is unique, well-equipped, and even accessible to those outside of MIT — there really is nothing else like it in the Boston area.”

With the type of mechanical character animation the Immersion Lab technology allows, the final projects end up light-years beyond what these students thought they could achieve, continues Pillis. And they’re having fun. “They really get into it,” says Reks. “These students are not necessarily trained as actors, but the moment they see themselves as virtual characters, the realistic, granular movement enabled by motion capture, they get fully into performing.”

Rewarding professionalism

In the past two years, over 60 Emerson College students have used the Immersion Lab for Pillis’ class. Emerson undergraduate student Nick Forsch received an EVVY Award nomination for his project. The Emerson version of an Emmy, EVVYs are awarded to students whose projects are judged and selected by a panel of industry experts looking for creativity, quality, and professionalism.

“Being able to use the MIT.nano Immersion Lab really elevated my project,” says Forsch who created “Enter,” a short film about a human transported into a digital world to meet an artificial intelligence. “I was excited to submit it for an EVVY, knowing the technology behind my work was on a professional level.”

Another undergraduate student, Evan Costa, recently created a virtual recreation of The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” capturing a version of each musician’s performance and reconstructing a simulation of 1950s television. Costa will be joining the MIT Learning Engineering and Practice Group, led by principal research scientist John Liu in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, this summer to continue exploring virtual production as an intern.

“Having the opportunity to gather motion-capture data within the Immersion Lab gave me more than advanced technology for my project; it provided insight into an often-unseen world of creativity,” says Costa. “Modern storytelling exists across a wide range of mediums, from film to video games, and witnessing the inner workings of this process has deepened my passion for virtual production.”

In the coming academic year, Pillis and Reks plan to leverage advanced Immersion Lab technologies to teach facial animation, hand and finger tracking, multi-modal data capture, and further advances in interactive generative motion capture as they gear up for the next set of productions.

“I came to MIT Sloan intent on joining a vibrant ecosystem for entrepreneurship and leadership development,” says Alecia Asiamigbe, an MIT Sloan Fellow and MBA student in the MIT Sloan School of Management who is graduating this week.

Before coming to MIT Sloan, Asiamigbe worked as an energy and infrastructure professional with over 20 years of leadership experience, delivering complex energy infrastructure solutions.

It was MIT Sloan’s work to embed sustainability in new ventures that attracted Asiamigbe. Additionally, the MIT Sloan Fellows program gave her the opportunity to earn an MBA in one year. “I was anchored to my choice by the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework and the potential to focus on climate and energy entrepreneurship.”

Currently, Asiamigbe is working to build out a sustainability-focused venture, Resilient Grid, a renewable energy company that aims to convert organic waste into sustainable natural gas able to produce reliable, dispatchable renewable power in fuel import-dependent markets. Its modular systems reduce reliance on imported fuels, lower energy costs, and stabilize grids where solar and wind alone are insufficient. By capturing methane, diverting waste from landfills, and producing useful byproducts, it delivers measurable impact across energy security, emissions reduction, and circular economic development.

“My work in sustainability is deeply rooted in my need to give back to the community and to be an agent for systems-level change. We must solve the dual challenge of providing access to opportunities to innovate and build for those not currently in the loop, while also stopping the damage currently being done to the planet. Knowing that we want better for our grandchildren, what will we do differently?”

The following photo gallery provides a snapshot of what a typical day for Asiamigbe has been like at MIT.

Not identifying people based on their use of Wi-Fi routers, but identifying people using Wi-Fi signals.

This is accomplished through what is known as WiFi sensing, or the use of WiFi signals to infer information about a physical environment. When radio signals like WiFi travel through a space, they interact with the objects and people around them. Those signals can be reflected, scattered, or absorbed. By analyzing how the signal is expected to behave compared with how it is actually received, researchers can infer details about the surrounding environment...

The Trump administration has swept away climate change policies, Democrats are focused on energy costs, and environmental groups have gone quiet.