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.

The School of Science welcomed 11 new faculty members in 2024.

Shaoyun Bai researches symplectic topology, the study of even-dimensional spaces whose properties are reflected by two-dimensional surfaces inside them. He is interested in this area’s interaction with other fields, including algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, geometric topology, and dynamics. He has been developing new tool kits for counting problems from moduli spaces, which have been applied to classical questions, including the Arnold conjecture, periodic points of Hamiltonian maps, higher-rank Casson invariants, enumeration of embedded curves, and topology of symplectic fibrations.

Bai completed his undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University in 2017 and earned his PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 2022, advised by John Pardon. Bai then held visiting positions at MSRI (now known as Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute) as a McDuff Postdoctoral Fellow and at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, and he was a Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia University. He joined the MIT Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor in 2024.

Abigail Bodner investigates turbulence in the upper ocean using remote sensing measurements, in-situ ocean observations numerical simulations, climate models, and machine learning. Her research explores how the small-scale physics of turbulence near the ocean surface impacts the large-scale climate. 

Bodner earned a BS and MS from Tel Aviv University studying mathematics and geophysics, atmospheric and planetary sciences. She then went on to Brown University, earning an MS in applied mathematics before completing her PhD studies in 2021 in Earth, environmental, and planetary science. Prior to coming to MIT, Bodner was a Simons Society Junior Fellow at New York University. Bodner joined the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) faculty in 2024, with a shared appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Jacopo Borga is interested in probability theory and its connections to combinatorics, and in mathematical physics. He studies various random combinatorial structures — mathematical objects such as graphs or permutations — and their patterns and behavior at a large scale. This research includes random permutons, meanders, multidimensional constrained Brownian motions, Schramm-Loewner evolutions, and Liouville quantum gravity. 

Borga earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from the Università degli Studi di Padova, and a master’s degree in mathematics from Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (USPC), then proceeded to complete a PhD in mathematics at Unstitut für Mathematik at the Universität Zürich. Borga was an assistant professor at Stanford University before joining MIT as an assistant professor of mathematics in 2024.

Linlin Fan aims to decipher the neural codes underlying learning and memory and to identify the physical basis of learning and memory. Her research focus is on the learning rules of brain circuits — what kinds of activity trigger the encoding and storing of information — how these learning rulers are implemented, and how memories can be inferred from mapping neural functional connectivity patterns. To answer these questions, Fan’s group leverages high-precision, all-optical technologies to map and control the electrical charges of neurons within the brain.

Fan earned her PhD at Harvard University after undergraduate studies at Peking University in China. She joined the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences as the Samuel A. Goldblith Career Development Professor of Applied Biology, and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory as an investigator in January 2024. Previously, Fan worked as a postdoc at Stanford University.

Whitney Henry investigates ferroptosis, a type of cell death dependent on iron, to uncover how oxidative stress, metabolism, and immune signaling intersect to shape cell fate decisions. Her research has defined key lipid metabolic and iron homeostatic programs that regulate ferroptosis susceptibility. By uncovering the molecular factors influencing ferroptosis susceptibility, investigating its effects on the tumor microenvironment, and developing innovative methods to manipulate ferroptosis resistance in living organisms, Henry’s lab aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the therapeutic potential of ferroptosis, especially to target highly metastatic, therapy-resistant cancer cells.

Henry received her bachelor's degree in biology with a minor in chemistry from Grambling State University and her PhD from Harvard University. Following her doctoral studies, she worked at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and was supported by fellowships from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research and the Ludwig Center at MIT. Henry joined the MIT faculty in 2024 as an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and was recently named the Robert A. Swanson (1969) Career Development Professor of Life Sciences and a HHMI Freeman Hrabowski Scholar.

Gian Michele Innocenti is an experimental physicist who probes new regimes of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) through collisions of ultra relativistic heavy ions at the Large Hadron Collider. He has developed advanced analysis techniques and data-acquisition strategies that enable novel measurements of open heavy-flavor and jet production in hadronic and ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions, shedding light on the properties of high-temperature QCD matter and parton dynamics in Lorentz-contracted nuclei. He leads the MIT Pixel𝜑 program, which exploits CMOS MAPS technology to build a high-precision tracking detector for the ePIC experiment at the Electron–Ion Collider.

Innocenti received his PhD in particle and nuclear physics at the University of Turin in Italy in early 2014. He then joined the MIT heavy-ion group in the Laboratory of Nuclear Science in 2014 as a postdoc, followed by a staff research physicist position at CERN in 2018. Innocenti joined the MIT Department of Physics as an assistant professor in January 2024.

Mathematician Christoph Kehle's research interests lie at the intersection of analysis, geometry, and partial differential equations. In particular, he focuses on the Einstein field equations of general relativity and our current understanding of gravitation, which describe how matter and energy shape spacetime. His work addresses the Strong Cosmic Censorship conjecture, singularities in black hole interiors, and the dynamics of extremal black holes.

Prior to joining MIT, Kehle was a junior fellow at ETH Zürich and a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Ludwig Maximilian University and Technical University of Munich, and his PhD in 2020 from the University of Cambridge. Kehle joined the Department of Mathematics as an assistant professor in July 2024.

Aleksandr Logunov is a mathematician specializing in harmonic analysis and geometric analysis. He has developed novel techniques for studying the zeros of solutions to partial differential equations and has resolved several long-standing problems, including Yau’s conjecture, Nadirashvili’s conjecture, and Landis’ conjectures.

Logunov earned his PhD in 2015 from St. Petersburg State University. He then spent two years as a postdoc at Tel Aviv University, followed by a year as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2018, he joined Princeton University as an assistant professor. In 2020, he spent a semester at Tel Aviv University as an IAS Outstanding Fellow, and in 2021, he was appointed full professor at the University of Geneva. Logunov joined MIT as a full professor in the Department of Mathematics in January 2024.

Lyle Nelson is a sedimentary geologist studying the co-evolution of life and surface environments across pivotal transitions in Earth history, especially during significant ecological change — such as extinction events and the emergence of new clades — and during major shifts in ocean chemistry and climate. Studying sedimentary rocks that were tectonically uplifted and are now exposed in mountain belts around the world, Nelson’s group aims to answer questions such as how the reorganization of continents influenced the carbon cycle and climate, the causes and effects of ancient ice ages, and what factors drove the evolution of early life forms and the rapid diversification of animals during the Cambrian period.

Nelson earned a bachelor’s degree in earth and planetary sciences from Harvard University in 2015 and then worked as an exploration geologist before completing his PhD at Johns Hopkins University in 2022. Prior to coming to MIT, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ontario, Canada. Nelson joined the EAPS faculty in 2024.

Protein evolution is the process by which proteins change over time through mechanisms such as mutation or natural selection. Biologist Sergey Ovchinnikov uses phylogenetic inference, protein structure prediction/determination, protein design, deep learning, energy-based models, and differentiable programming to tackle evolutionary questions at environmental, organismal, genomic, structural, and molecular scales, with the aim of developing a unified model of protein evolution.

Ovchinnikov received his BS in micro/molecular biology from Portland State University in 2010 and his PhD in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Washington in 2017. He was next a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow at Harvard University until 2023. Ovchinnikov joined MIT as an assistant professor of biology in January 2024.

Shu-Heng Shao explores the structural aspects of quantum field theories and lattice systems. Recently, his research has centered on generalized symmetries and anomalies, with a particular focus on a novel type of symmetry without an inverse, referred to as non-invertible symmetries. These new symmetries have been identified in various quantum systems, including the Ising model, Yang-Mills theories, lattice gauge theories, and the Standard Model. They lead to new constraints on renormalization group flows, new conservation laws, and new organizing principles in classifying phases of quantum matter.

Shao obtained his BS in physics from National Taiwan University in 2010, and his PhD in physics from Harvard University in 2016. He was then a five-year long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before he moved to the Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook University as an assistant professor in 2021. In 2024, he joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor of physics.

Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer in adults, and its consequences are usually quick and fatal. After receiving standard-of-care treatment (surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy), fewer than half of patients will survive longer than 15 months. Only 5 percent of patients survive longer than five years.

Researchers have explored immune checkpoint inhibitors as an avenue for boosting glioblastoma survival rates. This type of immunotherapy, which has proven effective against a range of tumor types, turns off a molecular switch that prevents T cells from attacking cancer cells. The patient’s own immune system is then able to clear the tumor. 

However, glioblastoma is unusually resistant to attack by T cells, rendering immune checkpoint inhibitors ineffective. The culprit is a different immune cell, macrophages, which have been recruited to tumors, where they support tumor growth while suppressing the ability of T cells to infiltrate and attack tumors.

A team of researchers led by Forest White at the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research used sophisticated immune profiling tools to map out how macrophages evolve from a first-line defense against cancer and other pathogens into a shield that protects the glioblastoma tumor — as well as how the tumor cells themselves are transformed by the encounter.

“Looking at the co-evolution of both cell types is key,” says White, who is also the Ned C. (1949) and Janet C. (Bemis) Rice Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering. “It’s a little bit like what happens when a new family moves into a neighborhood: The family members’ lives change, but so do the social dynamics of the people around them. Whether you’re mixing people or cells, you won’t be able to predict how they will interact, even if you know both well.”

“By looking at what happens when macrophages move into the tumor, we can observe changes to both types of cells that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to see,” says Yufei Cui, a PhD candidate in the White Laboratory. “We were able to identify new targets for both glioblastoma and macrophages that could be used to develop therapies that, when delivered in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors, more effectively treat glioblastoma.”

The study, appearing recently in Cancer Research, includes Stefani Spranger, associate professor of biology and member of the MIT Koch Institute, and Darrell Irvine, former member of the Koch Institute and now professor at the Scripps Research Institute.

As in other cancers, macrophages play a pivotal role in glioblastoma development and resistance to immune therapies. In laboratory models, inhibiting the activity of tumor-associated macrophages has been found to slow glioblastoma growth, but that success has not translated to studies of human patients. While the overall strategy of targeting glioblastoma-associated macrophages is promising, new targets — derived from models that more accurately reproduce the cell interactions in patient tumors — need to be identified.

One approach to discovering such targets is a specialty of the White lab: profiling cells’ immunopeptidomes — the repertoires of antigens presented on the surfaces of cancer cells, macrophages, and many other types of cells. Surface-presenting antigens are a window into the internal state of the cell: The antigens derive from proteins produced as the cell carries out different functions and responds to its environment. By binding to surface antigens, T cells and other immune cells can monitor cells for dysfunction and respond to them. 

The White lab has developed sophisticated methods for immunopeptidome profiling, combining methods such as liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to isolate cell surface antigens — in this case, from glioblastoma and macrophage cells cultured in isolation and together — and quantifying changes in expression over time. The researchers identified over 800 peptides in macrophages that either increased or decreased in expression when cultured with glioblastoma cells. Peptides with the biggest gains in expression under co-cultivation derived from 33 source proteins, mostly related to cytokine signaling that promotes tumor aggression and suppresses immune response to tumors.

Antigen presentation on glioblastoma cells was also transformed by interactions with macrophages. These antigens were associated with Rho GTPase, a signaling protein that belongs to Ras, a class of proteins that is mutated in 30 percent of all cancers. Changes in Rho GTPase expression predispose cells to developing hallmark traits of cancer, such as prolonged cell longevity, abnormal growth, and metastasis. Antigen profiles of co-cultured glioblastoma cells revealed over 40 Rho GTPase-associated antigens with increased expression compared to tumor cells cultured in isolation.

Researchers compared antigen expression changes in co-cultured macrophage and glioblastoma cells to immunopeptidome profiles of mouse models and human tumor samples, finding that patterns observed in cell culture translated to animal models and, potentially, to patients.

Researchers selected six antigens showing increased expression in either glioblastoma cells or macrophages to test as therapeutic targets, developing an mRNA-based immunostimulatory therapy for each antigen. After treating mice with glioblastoma, tumors showed significantly slowed growth overall and, in a few cases, were completely eradicated. 

In future work, the team plans to use their immunopeptidome profiling techniques to characterize co-cultured dendritic cells, which retrieve proteins from cancer cells and presents them to T cells as antigens, as well as to explore antigen presentation of cells in live models of glioblastoma.

“This study demonstrates the promise of profiling cell surface antigens,” says Cui. “With quantitative accuracy and cell type resolution, our approach could be used to design improved immunotherapies against many cancer types and other diseases,” says Cui.

This work was supported, in part, by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the MIT Center for Precision Cancer Medicine. 

A massive wave of public comments just told the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO): don’t shut the public out of patent review.

EFF submitted its own formal comment opposing the USPTO’s proposed rules, and more than 4,000 supporters added their voices—an extraordinary response for a technical, fast-moving rulemaking. We comprised more than one-third of the 11,442 comments submitted. The message is unmistakable: the public wants a meaningful way to challenge bad patents, and the USPTO should not take that away.

The Public Doesn’t Want To Bury Patent Challenges

These thousands of submissions do more than express frustration. They demonstrate overwhelming public interest in preserving inter partes review (IPR), and undermine any broad claim that the USPTO’s proposal reflects public sentiment. 

Comments opposing the rulemaking include many small business owners who have been wrongly accused of patent infringement, by both patent trolls and patent-abusing competitors. They also include computer science experts, law professors, and everyday technology users who are simply tired of patent extortion—abusive assertions of low-quality patents—and the harm it inflicts on their work, their lives, and the broader U.S. economy. 

The USPTO exists to serve the public. The volume and clarity of this response make that expectation impossible to ignore.

EFF’s Comment To USPTO

In our filing, we explained that the proposed rules would make it significantly harder for the public to challenge weak patents. That undercuts the very purpose of IPR. The proposed rules would pressure defendants to give up core legal defenses, allow early or incomplete decisions to block all future challenges, and create new opportunities for patent owners to game timing and shut down PTAB review entirely.

Congress created IPR to allow the Patent Office to correct its own mistakes in a fair, fast, expert forum. These changes would take the system backward. 

A Broad Coalition Supports IPR

A wide range of groups told the USPTO the same thing: don’t cut off access to IPR.

Open Source and Developer Communities 

The Linux Foundation submitted comments and warned that the proposed rules “would effectively remove IPRs as a viable mechanism for challenges to patent validity,” harming open-source developers and the users that rely on them. Github wrote that the USPTO proposal would increase “litigation risk and costs for developers, startups, and open source projects.” And dozens of individual software developers described how bad patents have burdened their work. 

Patent Law Scholars

A group of 22 patent law professors from universities across the country said the proposed rule changes “would violate the law, increase the cost of innovation, and harm the quality of patents.” 

Patient Advocates

Patients for Affordable Drugs warned in their filing that IPR is critical for invalidating wrongly granted pharmaceutical patents. When such patents are invalidated, studies have shown “cardiovascular medications have fallen 97% in price, cancer drugs dropping 80-98%, and treatments for opioid addiction becom[e] 50% more affordable.” In addition, “these cases involved patents that had evaded meaningful scrutiny in district court.” 

Small Businesses 

Hundreds of small businesses weighed in with a consistent message: these proposed rules would hit them hardest. Owners and engineers described being targeted with vague or overbroad patents they cannot afford to litigate in court, explaining that IPR is often the only realistic way for a small firm to defend itself. The proposed rules would leave them with an impossible choice—pay a patent troll, or spend money they don’t have fighting in federal court. 

What Happens Next

The USPTO now has thousands of comments to review. It should listen. Public participation must be more than a box-checking exercise. It is central to how administrative rulemaking is supposed to work.

Congress created IPR so the public could help correct bad patents without spending millions of dollars in federal court. People across technical, academic, and patient-advocacy communities just reminded the agency why that matters. 

We hope the USPTO reconsiders these proposed rules. Whatever happens, EFF will remain engaged and continue fighting to preserve  the public’s ability to challenge bad patents. 

I have long maintained that smart contracts are a dumb idea: that a human process is actually a security feature.

Here’s some interesting research on training AIs to automatically exploit smart contracts:

AI models are increasingly good at cyber tasks, as we’ve written about before. But what is the economic impact of these capabilities? In a recent MATS and Anthropic Fellows project, our scholars investigated this question by evaluating AI agents’ ability to exploit smart contracts on Smart CONtracts Exploitation benchmark (SCONE-bench)­a new benchmark they built comprising 405 contracts that were actually exploited between 2020 and 2025. On contracts exploited after the latest knowledge cutoffs (June 2025 for Opus 4.5 and March 2025 for other models), Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and GPT-5 developed exploits collectively worth $4.6 million, establishing a concrete lower bound for the economic harm these capabilities could enable. Going beyond retrospective analysis, we evaluated both Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5 in simulation against 2,849 recently deployed contracts without any known vulnerabilities. Both agents uncovered two novel zero-day vulnerabilities and produced exploits worth $3,694, with GPT-5 doing so at an API cost of $3,476. This demonstrates as a proof-of-concept that profitable, real-world autonomous exploitation is technically feasible, a finding that underscores the need for proactive adoption of AI for defense...

Antibody treatments for cancer and other diseases are typically delivered intravenously, because of the large volumes that are needed per dose. This means the patient has to go to a hospital for every treatment, where they may spend hours receiving the infusion.

MIT engineers have now taken a major step toward reformulating antibodies so that they can be injected using a standard syringe. The researchers found a way to create solid particles of highly concentrated antibodies, suspended in a solution. These particles carry enough antibodies that only about 2 milliliters of solution would be needed per dose.

This advance could make it much easier for patients to receive antibody treatments, and could make treatment more accessible for patients who have difficulty coming into a hospital, including older people.

“As the global population ages, making the treatment process more convenient and accessible for those populations is something that needs to be addressed,” says Talia Zheng, an MIT graduate student who is the lead author of the new study.

Patrick Doyle, the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, is the senior author of the open-access paper, which appears in Advanced Materials. MIT graduate student Lucas Attia and Janet Teng ’25 are also authors of the study.

Highly concentrated antibodies

Therapeutic antibody drugs such as rituximab, which is used to treat some cancers, consist of antibodies suspended in a water-based solution. In addition to cancers, antibodies are also used to treat infectious diseases, as well as autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Because the antibody solutions are formulated at low concentrations (10 to 30 milligrams of antibody per milliliter of solution), patients need to be given at least 100 milliliters per dose, which is much too large to be injected using a standard syringe. To decrease this volume to the point where it could be injected, the antibody concentration would need to be at least 300 milligrams per milliliter, but that would make the solution much too thick to be injected.

“You can’t concentrate existing formulations to these concentrations,” Doyle says. “They’ll be very viscous and will exceed the force threshold of what you can inject into a patient.”

In 2023, Doyle’s lab developed a way to generated highly concentrated antibody formulations by encapsulating them into hydrogel particles. However, that process requires centrifugation, a step that would be difficult to scale up for manufacturing.

In their new study, the researchers took a different approach that allows them to create droplets suspended in an emulsion, similar to oil and vinegar. In this case, droplets containing antibodies dissolved in a watery solution are suspended in an organic solvent called pentanol.

These droplets can then be dehydrated, leaving behind highly concentrated solid antibodies — about 360 milligrams of antibody per milliliter of solution. These particles also include a small amount of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a polymer that helps stabilize the particles.

Once these solid particles form, the organic solvent surrounding them is removed and replaced with an aqueous solution (water containing dissolved salts and small amount of stabilizing polymer), similar to the solution now used to infuse therapeutic antibodies.

This assembly process can be done rapidly using a microfluidic setup and does not require centrifugation, which should allow it to be scaled up much more easily using emulsification devices compliant with GMP (good manufacturing practice) regulations.

“Our first approach was a bit brute force, and when we were developing this new approach, we said to it’s got to be simple if it’s going to be better and scalable,” Doyle says.

Injectable particles

The researchers showed that they could control the size of the particles — from about 60 to 200 microns in diameter — by changing the flow rate of the solutions that make up the droplets.

Using particles 100 microns in diameter, they tested the injectability of the solution using a mechanical force tester. Those studies showed that the force needed to push the plunger of a syringe containing the particle solution was less than 20 newtons.

“That is less than half of the maximum acceptable force that people usually try to aim for, so it’s very injectable,” Zheng says.

Using a 2-milliliter syringe, a typical size for subcutaneous injections, more than 700 milligrams of the target antibody could be given at once — enough for most therapeutic applications. The researchers also showed that their formulations remained stable under refrigeration for at least four months.

The researchers now plan to test their antibody particles for therapeutic applications in animal models. They are also working on scaling up the manufacturing process, so they can make enough for large-scale testing.

The research was funded by the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Lisa Su ’90, SM ’91, PhD ’94, a leading executive in the semiconductor industry and head of the company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), will deliver the address at the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, May 28.

As chair and CEO of AMD, Su has transformed the company, which is now a global leader in high-performance and AI computing. In addition to designing industry-leading CPUs and the specialized GPUs that enable AI applications, AMD technology is the foundation of many of the world’s most advanced supercomputers and high-performance computing systems. The company continues to work on next-generation hardware and open software that will accelerate the adoption of AI, which Su has described as the most transformational technology of our time.

Su has maintained a close relationship with MIT since her days as a student. She was the speaker at the 2017 doctoral hooding ceremony, and in 2018 she established the Lisa Su Fellowship Fund. She served on the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Visiting Committee for 10 years. In 2022, Building 12, which houses MIT.nano, was named in her honor.

“Long before she led the spectacular turnaround of AMD and lent her name to MIT’s world-class nano facility, Lisa Su was an MIT student who inspired and mentored her classmates. During her PhD studies, she created instructions that guided generations of student researchers in using some of the Institute’s most advanced equipment,” says MIT President Sally Kornbluth. “Lisa is renowned for her intellectual rigor, boldness, and originality, and we're absolutely thrilled that she has agreed to deliver the Commencement address to our graduates this year.”

“MIT has always held a special place in my life and career, and I’m thrilled to accept the invitation to speak at Commencement,” Su says. “The Class of 2026 will be graduating at an exciting time, as AI transforms our world and expands what is possible, and I look forward to celebrating them as they prepare to share their skills and ideas with the world.”

Born in Taiwan, Su grew up in Queens, New York. After earning bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from MIT, she worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale Semiconductor, then joined AMD in 2012. In her current position, Su is a member of a small group: Only about 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs.

“Lisa Su has embraced MIT’s ‘mind and hand’ motto over the course of her career, first with important scientific discoveries in semiconductor design and engineering, and later as an extraordinary business executive leading the delivery of innovative products that play an essential role in the modern digital economy. We are very fortunate that she has agreed to share some of the lessons learned on her journey,” says Jim Poterba, the Mitsui Professor of Economics and chair of the Commencement Committee.

“Dr. Lisa Su is an inspiration to the MIT community for the way she combines exceptional engineering and leadership with meaningful, far-reaching impact in computing and countless other fields,” senior class president Heba Hussein says. “Her journey embodies the spirit of MIT, and the Class of 2026 is incredibly excited to welcome her at Commencement as we step into the world carrying the same MIT values!”

“I am excited to hear from someone that I know we can all learn something from. I think all MIT students respect the ‘lock-in’ that must have been required to achieve all that she has, with AMD and beyond,” says Alice Hall, president of the Undergraduate Association.

“Dr. Su is a world leader in manufacturing technologies and personifies MIT's values. As an alum, she has shared many experiences with current students, and I look forward to hearing about how these experiences shaped her successful career,” says Teddy Warner, president of the Graduate Student Council.

Su has received many honors including two named for MIT alumni: the Global Semiconductor Association’s Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award and the Robert N. Noyce Medal. She was named TIME’s 2024 CEO of the Year and has been recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and Fortune's Most Powerful People in Business. She received the 2024 Bower Award for Business Leadership and the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Committee for Economic Development (CED). Su is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

Su joins notable recent MIT Commencement speakers including science communicator Hank Green (2025); inventor and entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan (2024); YouTuber and inventor Mark Rober (2023); Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (2022); lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson (2021); and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral William McRaven (2020). 

In announcing the U.S. had seized an oil tanker off Venezuela on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said of its crude, “We’ll keep it, I guess.”

The young people argued in a petition filed with the Montana Supreme Court that lawmakers are flouting a 2024 ruling that determined state energy laws infringed on their constitutional rights.

Large power consumers will need 225 gigawatts of electricity over the next five years, testing the state's abililty to quickly add generation.

The effects were stronger among children living in cities, poorer households and places with less access to clean water, new research finds.

Property insurers want to bar trees and shrubs next to many buildings. The Los Angeles Fire Department says that's unreasonable.

The narrow draft regulations set an August timeline for businesses to report carbon emissions.

Revenues from the program have fallen flat in the last few auctions, threatening to leave lawmakers with a $1.8 billion shortfall next year.

The “environmental omnibus” will cut back rules on pollution reporting and waste management.

Facing American opposition, the EU has opted to scale back rules intended to ensure companies adhere to ESG standards.

Capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants is an important strategy in the efforts to reduce the impact of global climate change. It’s used in many industries, including the production of petrochemicals, cement, and fertilizers.

MIT chemical engineers have now discovered a simple way to make carbon capture more efficient and affordable, by adding a common chemical compound to capture solutions. The innovation could cut costs significantly and enable the technology to run on waste heat or even sunlight, instead of energy-intensive heating.

Their new approach uses a chemical called tris — short for tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane — to stabilize the pH of the solution used to capture CO2, allowing the system to absorb more of the gas at relatively low temperature. The system can release CO2 at just 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) — a dramatic improvement over conventional methods, which require temperatures exceeding 120 C to release captured carbon.

“It’s something that could be implemented almost immediately in fairly standard types of equipment,” says T. Alan Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering Practice at MIT and the senior author of the study.

Youhong (Nancy) Guo, a recent MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of applied physical sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Chemical Engineering.

More efficient capture

Using current technologies, around 0.1 percent of global carbon emissions is captured and either stored underground or converted into other products.

The most widely used carbon-capture method involves running waste gases through a solution that contains chemical compounds called amines. These solutions have a high pH, which allows them to absorb CO2, an acidic gas. In addition to traditional amines, basic compounds called carbonates, which are inexpensive and readily available, can also capture acidic CO2 gas. However, as CO2 is absorbed, the pH of the solution drops quickly, limiting the CO2 uptake capacity.

The most energy-intensive step comes once the CO2 is absorbed, because both amine and carbonate solutions must be heated to above 120 C to release the captured carbon. This regeneration step consumes enormous amounts of energy.

To make carbon capture by carbonates more efficient, the MIT team added tris into a potassium carbonate solution. This chemical, commonly used in lab experiments and found in some cosmetics and the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, acts as a pH buffer — a solution that helps prevent the pH from changing.

When added to a carbonate solution, positively charged tris balances the negative charge of the bicarbonate ions formed when CO2 is absorbed. This stabilizes the pH, allowing the solution to absorb triple the amount of CO2.

As another advantage, tris is highly sensitive to temperature changes. When the solution full of CO2 is heated just slightly, to about 60 C, tris quickly releases protons, causing the pH to drop and the captured CO2 to bubble out.

“At room temperature, the solution can absorb more CO2, and with mild heating it can release the CO2. There is an instant pH change when we heat up the solution a little bit,” Guo says.

“Potassium carbonate is one of the holy grail solvents for carbon capture due to its high chemical stability, low cost, and negligible emissions,” says David Heldebrant, an associate professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at Washington State University, who was not involved in the study. “I believe this electrochemical tris-promoted potassium carbonate solvent system has a lot of promise for the field of carbon capture, especially since the researchers have been able to improve on the energetics by regenerating at atmospheric pressure, as compared to vacuum-assisted regeneration, which is normally done.”

A simple swap

To demonstrate their approach, the researchers built a continuous-flow reactor for carbon capture. First, gases containing CO2 are bubbled through a reservoir containing carbonate and tris, which absorbs the CO2. That solution then is pumped into a CO2 regeneration module, which is heated to about 60 C to release a pure stream of CO2.

Once the CO2 is released, the carbonate solution is cooled and returned to the reservoir for another round of CO2 absorption and regeneration.

Because the system can operate at relatively low temperatures, there is more flexibility in where the energy could come from, such as solar panels, electricity, or waste heat already generated by industrial plants.

Swapping in carbonate-tris solutions to replace conventional amines should be straightforward for industrial facilities, the researchers say. “One of the nice things about this is its simplicity, in terms of overall design. It’s a drop-in approach that allows you to readily change over from one kind of solution to another,” Hatton says.

When carbon is captured from industrial plants, some of it can be diverted into the manufacture of other useful products, but most of it will likely end up being stored in underground geological formations, Hatton says.

“You can only use a small fraction of the captured CO2 for producing chemicals before you saturate the market,” he says.

Guo is now exploring whether other additives could make the carbon capture process even more efficient by speeding up CO2 absorption rates.

The authors acknowledge Eni S.p.A. for the fruitful discussions under the MIT–Eni research framework agreement.

This blog also appears in our Age Verification Resource Hub: our one-stop shop for users seeking to understand what age-gating laws actually do, what’s at stake, how to protect yourself, and why EFF opposes all forms of age verification mandates. Head to EFF.org/Age to explore our resources and join us in the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet.

One of the most common refrains we hear from age verification proponents is that online ID checks are nothing new. After all, you show your ID at bars and liquor stores all the time, right? And it’s true that many places age-restrict access in-person to various goods and services, such as tobacco, alcohol, firearms, lottery tickets, and even tattoos and body piercings.

But this comparison falls apart under scrutiny. There are fundamental differences between flashing your ID to a bartender and uploading government documents or biometric data to websites and third-party verification companies. Online age-gating is more invasive, affects far more people, and poses serious risks to privacy, security, and free speech that simply don't exist when you buy a six-pack at the corner store.

Online age verification burdens many more people.

Online age restrictions are imposed on many, many more users than in-person ID checks. Because of the sheer scale of the internet, regulations affecting online content sweep in an enormous number of adults and youth alike, forcing them to disclose sensitive personal data just to access lawful speech, information, and services. 

Additionally, age restrictions in the physical world affect only a limited number of transactions: those involving a narrow set of age-restricted products or services. Typically this entails a bounded interaction about one specific purchase.

Online age verification laws, on the other hand, target a broad range of internet activities and general purpose platforms and services, including social media sites and app stores. And these laws don’t just wall off specific content deemed harmful to minors (like a bookstore would); they age-gate access to websites wholesale. This is akin to requiring ID every time a customer walks into a convenience store, regardless of whether they want to buy candy or alcohol.

There are significant privacy and security risks that don’t exist offline.

In offline, in-person scenarios, a customer typically provides their physical ID to a cashier or clerk directly. Oftentimes, customers need only flash their ID for a quick visual check, and no personal information is uploaded to the internet, transferred to a third-party vendor, or stored. Online age-gating, on the other hand, forces users to upload—not just momentarily display—sensitive personal information to a website in order to gain access to age-restricted content. 

This creates a cascade of privacy and security problems that don’t exist in the physical world. Once sensitive information like a government-issued ID is uploaded to a website or third-party service, there is no guarantee it will be handled securely. You have no direct control over who receives and stores your personal data, where it is sent, or how it may be accessed, used, or leaked outside the immediate verification process. 

Data submitted online rarely just stays between you and one other party. All online data is transmitted through a host of third-party intermediaries, and almost all websites and services also host a network of dozens of private, third-party trackers managed by data brokers, advertisers, and other companies that are constantly collecting data about your browsing activity. The data is shared with or sold to additional third parties and used to target behavioral advertisements. Age verification tools also often rely on third parties just to complete a transaction: a single instance of ID verification might involve two or three different third-party partners, and age estimation services often work directly with data brokers to offer a complete product. Users’ personal identifying data then circulates among these partners. 

All of this increases the likelihood that your data will leak or be misused. Unfortunately, data breaches are an endemic part of modern life, and the sensitive, often immutable, personal data required for age verification is just as susceptible to being breached as any other online data. Age verification companies can be—and already have been—hacked. Once that personal data gets into the wrong hands, victims are vulnerable to targeted attacks both online and off, including fraud and identity theft.

Troublingly, many age verification laws don’t even protect user security by providing a private right of action to sue a company if personal data is breached or misused. This leaves you without a direct remedy should something bad happen. 

Some proponents claim that age estimation is a privacy-preserving alternative to ID-based verification. But age estimation tools still require biometric data collection, often demanding users submit a photo or video of their face to access a site. And again, once submitted, there’s no way for you to verify how that data is processed or stored. Requiring face scans also normalizes pervasive biometric surveillance and creates infrastructure that could easily be repurposed for more invasive tracking. Once we’ve accepted that accessing lawful speech requires submitting our faces for scanning, we’ve crossed a threshold that’s difficult to walk back.

Online age verification creates even bigger barriers to access.

Online age gates create more substantial access barriers than in-person ID checks do. For those concerned about privacy and security, there is no online analog to a quick visual check of your physical ID. Users may be justifiably discouraged from accessing age-gated websites if doing so means uploading personal data and creating a potentially lasting record of their visit to that site.

Given these risks, age verification also imposes barriers to remaining anonymous that don't typically exist in-person. Anonymity can be essential for those wishing to access sensitive, personal, or stigmatized content online. And users have a right to anonymity, which is “an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Even if a law requires data deletion, users must still be confident that every website and online service with access to their data will, in fact, delete it—something that is in no way guaranteed.

In-person ID checks are additionally less likely to wrongfully exclude people due to errors. Online systems that rely on facial scans are often incorrect, especially when applied to users near the legal age of adulthood. These tools are also less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds, for users with disabilities, and for transgender individuals. This leads to discriminatory outcomes and exacerbates harm to already marginalized communities. And while in-person shoppers can speak with a store clerk if issues arise, these online systems often rely on AI models, leaving users who are incorrectly flagged as minors with little recourse to challenge the decision.

In-person interactions may also be less burdensome for adults who don’t have up-to-date ID. An older adult who forgets their ID at home or lacks current identification is not likely to face the same difficulty accessing material in a physical store, since there are usually distinguishing physical differences between young adults and those older than 35. A visual check is often enough. This matters, as a significant portion of the U.S. population does not have access to up-to-date government-issued IDs. This disproportionately affects Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and individuals with disabilities, who are less likely to possess the necessary identification.

We’re talking about First Amendment-protected speech.

It's important not to lose sight of what’s at stake here. The good or service age gated by these laws isn’t alcohol or cigarettes—it’s First Amendment-protected speech. Whether the target is social media platforms or any other online forum for expression, age verification blocks access to constitutionally-protected content. 

Access to many of these online services is also necessary to participate in the modern economy. While those without ID may function just fine without being able to purchase luxury products like alcohol or tobacco, requiring ID to participate in basic communication technology significantly hinders people’s ability to engage in economic and social life.

This is why it’s wrong to claim online age verification is equivalent to showing ID at a bar or store. This argument handwaves away genuine harms to privacy and security, dismisses barriers to access that will lock millions out of online spaces, and ignores how these systems threaten free expression. Ignoring these threats won’t protect children, but it will compromise our rights and safety.

MIT researchers have developed a new fabrication method that could enable the production of more energy efficient electronics by stacking multiple functional components on top of one existing circuit.

In traditional circuits, logic devices that perform computation, like transistors, and memory devices that store data are built as separate components, forcing data to travel back and forth between them, which wastes energy.

This new electronics integration platform allows scientists to fabricate transistors and memory devices in one compact stack on a semiconductor chip. This eliminates much of that wasted energy while boosting the speed of computation.

Key to this advance is a newly developed material with unique properties and a more precise fabrication approach that reduces the number of defects in the material. This allows the researchers to make extremely tiny transistors with built-in memory that can perform faster than state-of-the-art devices while consuming less electricity than similar transistors.

By improving the energy efficiency of electronic devices, this new approach could help reduce the burgeoning electricity consumption of computation, especially for demanding applications like generative AI, deep learning, and computer vision tasks.

“We have to minimize the amount of energy we use for AI and other data-centric computation in the future because it is simply not sustainable. We will need new technology like this integration platform to continue that progress,” says Yanjie Shao, an MIT postdoc and lead author of two papers on these new transistors.

The new technique is described in two papers (one invited) that were presented at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. Shao is joined on the papers by senior authors Jesús del Alamo, the Donner Professor of Engineering in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Dimitri Antoniadis, the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT; as well as others at MIT, the University of Waterloo, and Samsung Electronics.

Flipping the problem

Standard CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chips traditionally have a front end, where the active components like transistors and capacitors are fabricated, and a back end that includes wires called interconnects and other metal bonds that connect components of the chip.

But some energy is lost when data travel between these bonds, and slight misalignments can hamper performance. Stacking active components would reduce the distance data must travel and improve a chip’s energy efficiency.

Typically, it is difficult to stack silicon transistors on a CMOS chip because the high temperature required to fabricate additional devices on the front end would destroy the existing transistors underneath.

The MIT researchers turned this problem on its head, developing an integration technique to stack active components on the back end of the chip instead.

“If we can use this back-end platform to put in additional active layers of transistors, not just interconnects, that would make the integration density of the chip much higher and improve its energy efficiency,” Shao explains.

The researchers accomplished this using a new material, amorphous indium oxide, as the active channel layer of their back-end transistor. The active channel layer is where the transistor’s essential functions take place.

Due to the unique properties of indium oxide, they can “grow” an extremely thin layer of this material at a temperature of only about 150 degrees Celsius on the back end of an existing circuit without damaging the device on the front end.

Perfecting the process

They carefully optimized the fabrication process, which minimizes the number of defects in a layer of indium oxide material that is only about 2 nanometers thick.

A few defects, known as oxygen vacancies, are necessary for the transistor to switch on, but with too many defects it won’t work properly. This optimized fabrication process allows the researchers to produce an extremely tiny transistor that operates rapidly and cleanly, eliminating much of the additional energy required to switch a transistor between off and on.

Building on this approach, they also fabricated back-end transistors with integrated memory that are only about 20 nanometers in size. To do this, they added a layer of material called ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide as the memory component.

These compact memory transistors demonstrated switching speeds of only 10 nanoseconds, hitting the limit of the team’s measurement instruments. This switching also requires much lower voltage than similar devices, reducing electricity consumption.

And because the memory transistors are so tiny, the researchers can use them as a platform to study the fundamental physics of individual units of ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide.

“If we can better understand the physics, we can use this material for many new applications. The energy it uses is very minimal, and it gives us a lot of flexibility in how we can design devices. It really could open up many new avenues for the future,” Shao says.

The researchers also worked with a team at the University of Waterloo to develop a model of the performance of the back-end transistors, which is an important step before the devices can be integrated into larger circuits and electronic systems.

In the future, they want to build upon these demonstrations by integrating back-end memory transistors onto a single circuit. They also want to enhance the performance of the transistors and study how to more finely control the properties of ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide.

“Now, we can build a platform of versatile electronics on the back end of a chip that enable us to achieve high energy efficiency and many different functionalities in very small devices. We have a good device architecture and material to work with, but we need to keep innovating to uncover the ultimate performance limits,” Shao says.

This work is supported, in part, by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Intel. Fabrication was carried out at the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories and MIT.nano facilities. 

Age verification laws are proliferating fast across the United States and around the world, creating a dangerous and confusing tangle of rules about what we’re all allowed to see and do online. Though these mandates claim to protect children, in practice they create harmful censorship and surveillance regimes that put everyone—adults and young people alike—at risk.

The term “age verification” is colloquially used to describe a wide range of age assurance technologies, from age verification systems that force you to upload government ID, to age estimation tools that scan your face, to systems that infer your age by making you share personal data. While different laws call for different methods, one thing remains constant: every method out there collects your sensitive, personal information and creates barriers to accessing the internet. We refer to all of these requirements as age verification, age assurance, or age-gating.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this onslaught of laws and the invasive technologies behind them, you’re not alone. It’s a lot. But understanding how these mandates work and who they harm is critical to keeping yourself and your loved ones safe online. Age verification is lurking around every corner these days, so we must fight back to protect the internet that we know and love. 

That’s why today, we’re launching EFF’s Age Verification Resource Hub (EFF.org/Age): a one-stop shop to understand what these laws actually do, what’s at stake, why EFF opposes all forms of age verification, how to protect yourself, and how to join the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet. 

Why Age Verification Mandates Are a Problem

In the U.S., more than half of all states have now passed laws imposing age-verification requirements on online platforms. Congress is considering even more at the federal level, with a recent House hearing weighing nineteen distinct proposals relating to young people’s online safety—some sweeping, some contradictory, and each one more drastic and draconian than the last.

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is.

The rest of the world is moving in the same direction. We saw the UK’s Online Safety Act go into effect this summer, Australia’s new law barring access to social media for anyone under 16 goes live today, and a slew of other countries are currently considering similar restrictions.

We all want young people to be safe online. However, age verification is not the silver bullet that lawmakers want you to think it is. In fact, age-gating mandates will do more harm than good—especially for the young people they claim to protect. They undermine the fundamental speech rights of adults and young people alike; create new barriers to accessing vibrant, lawful, even life-saving content; and needlessly jeopardize all internet users’ privacy, anonymity, and security.

If legislators want to meaningfully improve online safety, they should pass a strong, comprehensive federal privacy law instead of building new systems of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion.  

What’s Inside the Resource Hub

Our new hub is built to answer the questions we hear from users every day, such as:

• How do age verification laws actually work?
• What’s the difference between age verification, age estimation, age assurance, and all the other confusing technical terms I’m hearing?
• What’s at stake for me, and who else is harmed by these systems?
• How can I keep myself, my family, and my community safe as these laws continue to roll out?
• What can I do to fight back?
• And if not age verification, what else can we do to protect the online safety of our young people?

Head over to EFF.org/Age to explore our explainers, user-friendly guides, technical breakdowns, and advocacy tools—all indexed in the sidebar for easy browsing. And today is just the start, so keep checking back over the next several weeks as we continue to build out the site with new resources and answers to more of your questions on all things age verification.

Join Us: Reddit AMA & EFFecting Change Livestream Events

To celebrate the launch of EFF.org/Age, and to hear directly from you how we can be most helpful in this fight, we’re hosting two exciting events:

1. Reddit AMA on r/privacy

Next week, our team of EFF activists, technologists, and lawyers will be hanging out over on Reddit’s r/privacy subreddit to directly answer your questions on all things age verification. We’re looking forward to connecting with you and hearing how we can help you navigate these changing tides, so come on over to r/privacy on Monday (12/15), Tuesday (12/16), and Wednesday (12/17), and ask us anything!

2. EFFecting Change Livestream Panel: “The Human Cost of Online Age Verification”

Then, on January 15th at 12pm PT, we’re hosting a livestream panel featuring Cynthia Conti-Cook, Director of Research and Policy at the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience; Hana Memon, Software Developer at Gen Z for Change; EFF Director of Engineering Alexis Hancock; and EFF Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji. We’ll break down how these laws work, who they exclude, and how these mandates threaten privacy and free expression for people of all ages. Join us by RSVPing at https://livestream.eff.org/.

A Resource to Empower Users

Age-verification mandates are reshaping the internet in ways that are invasive, dangerous, and deeply unnecessary. But users are not powerless! We can challenge these laws, protect our digital rights, and build a safer digital world for all internet users, no matter their ages. Our new resource hub is here to help—so explore, share, and join us in the fight for a better internet.