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.

In a rare combined cybersecurity/squid post, a twenty-nine-year-old squid proxy bug can leak HTTP requests.

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

Blog moderation policy.

In my first weeks as Executive Director of EFF, I’ve been reminded every day how consequential this moment is in determining what kind of future we will have.

We are on the edge. What each one of us steps up to do – with our expertise, energy, and resources – will determine whether our future is one of openness, security, and fundamental rights, or one controlled through fear, surveillance, and centralized power.

I am proud to take the torch and help lead our EFF community forward at this pivotal time in history. And we need you in the fight.

Right now, we are celebrating an important U.S. Supreme Court win in Chatrie v. United States that reaffirmed our right to privacy in our location data and will help curb one flank of supercharged government surveillance. But in another case, the Court overturned 90 years of precedent limiting executive power and rubber-stamped the President’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter. The U.S. government also issued a chilling directive to Anthropic to prohibit the company from allowing foreign nationals to access its newest technology – then rescinded it two weeks later. And legislation limiting access to social media is advancing in many places around the world.

Each headline is different, but they tell one story: Many of the threats that once seemed hypothetical are now reality, and EFF’s work to ensure technology supports rights, justice, freedom, and innovation for all people has never been more critical. Governments and large corporations possess surveillance capabilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Ever greater concentrations of power are shaping speech, creativity, markets, and democratic institutions. Governments are increasingly seeking to control the internet and people’s ability to access information and communicate freely. Our community’s work is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives.

I am also mindful that the United States marked its 250th anniversary last week and that this week is EFF’s 36th birthday. Anniversaries, like leadership changes, naturally invite reflection on where we are in history and challenge us to look ahead. What does it mean for a democracy, founded in an analog age, to survive in the digital world?

It is also an opportunity to ask how our EFF community can be even stronger, so we can help bring more people into the work of making sure technology serves everyone.

I began my career in public-interest work in Silicon Valley at the height of the 1990s dotcom boom, working at some of the earliest nonprofit “digital divide” programs that provided community access to computers and the internet, because I have always believed in the power of technology to create greater opportunity for all, not just profit for a few. I have dedicated my career to public interest technology because I am driven to see technology’s promise realized in my lifetime, and there is no other organization in the world that can do more to meet this moment and build a future where technology truly works for people than EFF.

These are perilous times. It is also a moment of extraordinary possibility. The future of AI has not been written and we can work together to get it right. We can make sure our laws reflect the needs of the modern digital age. We can build the technologies that empower rather than marginalize communities.

For me, the work starts with recognizing that digital rights are not a siloed policy issue. We must fight and win on the digital terrain to organize, speak freely, access healthcare, find work, receive an education, and participate fully in democracy. We can and must reject a false choice between innovation and civil liberties, and build power across movements to make sure technology truly works for people.

This challenge is what EFF was purpose-built to tackle. When EFF was founded in 1990, the World Wide Web did not yet exist, cell phones were the size of bricks, and EFF’s founders understood something remarkably prescient: Technology and civil liberties would become inseparable.

Now we all live digital lives, and the important digital rights issues that EFF has worked on since 1990 have become kitchen-table issues all around the world. EFF’s founders understood that how technology is built, developed, used, and controlled deeply intersects with rights, justice, freedom, and democracy.

EFF’s unique combination of world-class lawyers, activists, and public interest technologists pursue change simultaneously in the courts, legislatures, companies, and our communities, and pierce through false choices. This integrated, intersectional approach, grounded in deep legal, policy, and technical expertise, is a linchpin in fighting and winning against some of the most powerful forces in the world – both governments and trillion-dollar companies.

We defend people against unlawful government data collection and challenge license plate and face surveillance in our communities. We shape AI law and policy to protect civil liberties and support creativity and innovation. We push companies to strengthen encryption, fight to ensure you have the right to own what you buy, and build public interest technologies like Privacy Badger and Certbot that millions of people rely on every day.

This work matters because it all answers the same question: Will technology empower or control us?

As I look ahead, there are major battles on the horizon. We must:

• Challenge increasingly sophisticated government and corporate surveillance systems that endanger our rights, democracy, safety and security
• Preserve strong encryption and online anonymity
• Ensure AI is developed and used in ways that respect fundamental rights and works for those who build it, use it, and are affected by it
• Confront the concentrations of power that limit access to new creativity and defend the rights of developers to build and innovate

To meet these challenges, we must not only utilize the powerful levers of successful litigation, smart policy interventions, and effective public interest technology tools. We must also build a broader movement that recognizes that fights on the digital terrain are integral to all our fights for rights and justice – from civil rights and immigrants’ rights to reproductive rights, disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, workers' rights, economic justice, and more. Together, our EFF community can help broaden the public conversation about technology's role in society and continue building the collective power necessary to shape the future rather than react to it.

I have hit the ground running, working with EFF’s exceptional staff and Board and starting to meet many of you in the broader EFF community. Every conversation has reinforced my confidence that our community is uniquely prepared for the work ahead. I’m looking forward to meeting more of you at my first EFFecting Change livestream on August 12 with Cory Doctorow, and hope this conversation is just the beginning of finding new ways to work together. Please stay tuned for additional in-person events with me around the country this fall.

As we celebrate EFF's birthday, I am energized by all the opportunities ahead for us to build on EFF’s strong foundation and make it even mightier. And we need you and others in the fight. Please renew your membership, become a recurring monthly supporter, and introduce someone new to EFF by snagging them a gift membership.

Everything we accomplish—every lawsuit, every policy victory, every public interest technology tool, every campaign—is possible because people like you are committed to ensuring technology strengthens freedom, privacy, creativity, and opportunity for everyone.

The future we want and need will be built by people and movements working together to ensure technology empowers rather than oppresses.

Let’s build that future together.

This post is part 2 in a series about automated content moderation. Read the first post here.

When whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked a set of documents from Meta in 2020, among the revelations was a jarring statistic: The company’s algorithms designed to detect terrorist content incorrectly deleted nonviolent Arabic-language content 77 percent of the time, while failing to detect hate speech under the company’s own policies in many instances. Meta’s own transparency report released later that year demonstrated similar findings. Five years later, researchers in the region report that overzealous moderation remains a problem, while paths to remedy have all but collapsed.

Where these systems are faltering in Arabic, they’re positively failing in less-resourced languages. As a 2025 report from the Center for Democracy and Technology found, labeled datasets in certain languages and dialects such as Maghrebi Arabic and Kiswahili contain inconsistencies, bias, and inaccuracies due to the limited hiring of annotators who actually speak the languages as well as shifts in the languages themselves. An investigation into ChatGPT’s outputs in several low-resource languages demonstrates the depth of problem.

But language disparities are just one of several concerns as automated moderation becomes more widespread. From the systemic suppression of content from Palestine to the repeated misclassification of LGBTQ+ content as adult or explicit material, these varied examples demonstrate the risks of overreliance on automated moderation—and the need for stronger safeguards.

Transparency, Cultural Competence, Appeals

As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, automated systems can process content at a scale that humans never could, potentially enabling better moderation at scale and alleviating the psychological load on ill-paid moderators whose jobs require them to view incredibly disturbing content. But automated systems also reproduce existing biases, struggle to understand context, and often make mistakes that disproportionately affect journalists, activists, artists, and other vulnerable and marginalized communities.

As Rachel Griffin wrote in 2023, “Perfectly accurate moderation is not only technically out of reach but intrinsically impossible.” Despite those intrinsic flaws, there is a great deal companies, policymakers, and civil society can do to help ensure that highly-automated systems operate in ways that respect human rights, minimize predictable harms, and provide meaningful accountability when they fail. If companies are going to continue relying on automation to moderate users’ speech—and there is little reason to believe they won’t—then accountability must evolve alongside these technologies.

That evolution can start with committing to the Santa Clara Principles 2.0. These principles, first outlined in 2020 and re-launched in 2021 after substantial international input, reflect the needs and expectations of the global community and specifically address automation. The first Foundational Principle states:

Companies should ensure that human rights and due process considerations are integrated at all stages of the content moderation process, and should publish information outlining how this integration is made. Companies should only use automated processes to identify or remove content or suspend accounts, whether supplemented by human review or not, when there is sufficiently high confidence in the quality and accuracy of those processes. Companies should also provide users with clear and accessible methods of obtaining support in the event of content and account action. 

Drawing on the Santa Clara Principles 2.0, international human rights standards, and years of research documenting the shortcomings of automated moderation, we propose eight recommendations for policymakers thinking about regulation and companies deploying AI-assisted content moderation systems.

1. Automated technologies should help, not replace, human moderators. For example, automated systems can help flag and prioritize content for review, while humans can interpret context, handle sensitive cases, and refine system performance.
2. Companies must be transparent about when and how automation is used in content decisions.
3. Companies must regularly audit their automated systems for bias, with particular attention to low-resource languages, vulnerable and marginalized communities, and conflict zones.
4. Users must have the ability to appeal, and to provide context when they believe human or automated moderation decisions have wrongfully removed their content. Appeals should be promptly evaluated and decided by human moderators.
5. Companies should regularly assess the human rights impact of their moderation decisions, and issue public statements of the results
6. If they rely on third-party vendors, companies should carefully (and regularly) audit those vendors for compliance with these same principles
7. Lawmakers should avoid promoting and passing legislation that effectively or explicitly mandates automated moderation systems
8. Policymakers should also refrain from attempting to dictate platforms technical and design choices to favor or disfavor particular expression.

These recommendations understand that automated content moderation isn’t just a technical problem for clever engineers and product teams to solve. Because content moderation shapes public discourse and fundamental rights, its design and oversight must respond to the concerns of policymakers, civil society, independent researchers, and the communities most affected by these systems.

This is the second post in a 2-part series on automated content moderation. Read the first post here.

In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong—shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it—the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities… and maybe also to the general public.

Think of these systems as automated speed cameras, but on steroids. Only they’ll enforce not just speed limits, but any other rule you can imagine. And you won’t receive a ticket weeks later by mail; you’ll be informed about and fined for your violation immediately...

California’s insurance commissioner is trying to weaken Consumer Watchdog as it fights a plan to help property insurers in the state.

Fossil fuel companies had tried to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed by a woman whose mother died during the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome.

A group of insurgent Democrats have won House primaries in recent weeks. They could have a major impact on how the party deals with the environment.

EPA chief Lee Zeldin proposed key changes to a nitrogen oxides emissions rule — but will also leave numerical standards in place.

The state Public Utility Commission voted unanimously Thursday to adopt rules aimed at avoiding cascading power outages.

The initiative has evolved over more than a decade from its origins as a Twitter feed and blog.

U.S. warns Britain against replicating the EU’s controversial regime.

Rome has warned that Brussels’ environmental criteria will lock out entire sectors from the bloc’s funds.

Brussels would be undermining billions in investments if it waters down the policy next week, Sweden’s EU minister tells POLITICO.

The coast's fisherfolk are increasingly turning to tourism, ecosystem restoration and other conservation-based businesses, reinventing their relationship with the sea.

Last week, the House voted on the KIDS Act, a disjointed package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package combines a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), with several other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Different parts of the bill pressure online services to impose different age-gating schemes, using different standards. EFF opposed this bill, along with many of our members and supporters.

Take action

Tell Congress: no internet age-gates

The bill passed the House, 267-117. It now heads to the Senate, where its fate remains uncertain. But this fight is not over. Even if you took our earlier action to contact the House, we need you to reach out to your Senators today. 

The KIDS Act Will Lead to Mandatory Age Checks 

Many of the bills in the KIDS Act share the same premise: that children and teenagers should have different experiences online than adults. In practice, that requires websites and apps to determine who is under 18—and who isn’t. That’s where the problems with the KIDS Act start. 

EFF certainly supports giving all users better privacy and safety tools online. But those protections should not, and do not need to, come at the expense of privacy or free expression. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the tradeoff the KIDS Act makes.

There is no way to determine a user’s age online that is both privacy protective and accurate. Some age verification processes may rely on collecting government-issued ID, while others may use biometric scans. Others will use algorithms to guess a user’s age based on facial images or online behavior. But no matter the method, every system demands users hand over sensitive personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. And then, once that valuable data is collected, it can be leaked, hacked, or misused. In fact, we’ve already seen several breaches of age verification providers.

The Bill Still Regulates Online Speech

The revised KOSA language within the KIDS Act still pressures companies to police lawful speech online. Platforms must “establish, implement, maintain, and enforce” policies that address content like gambling or the use of alcohol or cannabis. This encourages platforms to broadly restrict speech on these topics, which could include a teen seeking advice on a parent’s gambling problem or searching for substance abuse recovery resources. When platforms are required to create and enforce content moderation policies that regulators can sue them over, they will often err on the side of deleting speech. 

Protect Privacy For Everyone

There is a better way to protect young people online. Instead of encouraging a complicated system of age checks, more monitoring, and more restrictions on access to information, Congress could finally pass a strong, comprehensive privacy law that benefits all users. A great place to start would be to ban behavioral advertising that tracks us across the web—again, for users of all ages. 

We urge the Senate to oppose the KIDS Act and instead focus on a strong, bipartisan privacy package for all users. 

Take action

Tell the senate to reject the kids act

Users are always seeking more control over their social networking experience to make it better, whether to improve privacy or enhance flexibility. Interoperability between social networking platforms like Facebook and TikTok has so many benefits that solve those issues.  

Say you’re on multiple platforms because you have friends you follow on different networks, but you’ve decided to choose one platform with better privacy practices. With interoperability, you could switch and still interact with friends who remain on larger platforms. It could also enable independent apps with better privacy controls and more user choice. These are the untapped possibilities that could benefit users in the European Union under the 2022 Digital Markets Act (DMA).  

Yet, the European Commission, in its first review of the DMA, announced in April it had decided not to extend the DMA’s interoperability mandate to social networking and didn’t give a deadline or a timeline for enforcing that part of the Act. The Commission said “there is no clear demand” from users and businesses for social networking interoperability and, in any case, it’s too technically complex at the moment. Meanwhile, the Big Tech platforms that have been slow-walking interoperability over the last two years, erecting a myriad of hurdles for users seeking more freedom to choose other platforms, get a pass.

This is a huge disappointment and a missed opportunity by the Commission. Interoperability dismantles one of the biggest barriers faced by users who want to leave the tech giants’ platforms: the choice between changing to a platform you prefer or staying behind on a platform where all your friends, communities, and customers are.

The DMA, which went into force in 2024, aims to foster more choices for European Union users and encourage competition and innovation by forcing so-called gatekeeper platforms like Meta, Apple, and Google, to open their ecosystems to competitors. The regulation does a great deal to foster the integration of competing services and devices with the ecosystems of very large online platforms that act as gatekeepers. It even requires interoperability for messaging services, despite the significant technical and privacy challenges involved.

So, it’s odd that the Commission is using complexity as a shield against taking on social networking interoperability. The internet already runs on complex interoperable systems. Approaches like ActivityPub, the decentralized networking protocol behind the “Fediverse,” which gave rise to decentralized networks like Mastodon, already exist. The DMA shouldn’t mandate a specific protocol, but it can require meaningful interoperability outcomes.

The argument that there’s no real demand for social networking interoperability also falls flat. Users want the ability to move across platforms, choose the content they’d like to see from platforms, and not be tied down to a single platform. But there’s no way to get there—the platforms are doing little to open their social networking ecosystems. And now you have the DMA’s enforcer saying it’s not going to make them change. Demand for alternatives won’t materialize at scale until users see real progress towards interoperability, something the Commission has the power to do.

Having decided there’s little demand and too much complexity to proceed with mandating social networking interoperability, the Commission said it “will continue to monitor and assess how these services evolve.” This wait-and-see-posture only hurts users and strengthens and further entrenches Big Tech incumbents.

The DMA is supposed to center on the rights of technology users and be the pathway to an internet experience where you decide which software runs on your devices, where it’s easy to find the best products and services, and where you can leave a platform for a better one without forfeiting your social relationships.

Meanwhile, Big Tech is also resisting the DMA’s openness requirements. For example, Apple is supposed to be opening up iOS devices to rival app stores. Yet, the smartphone giant’s plan for opening its App Store levies junk fees and onerous conditions on app makers and is effectively impossible for any competitor to use.

It’s not just Apple pushing back against DMA enforcement. Meta's response is a “pay for privacy “system, in which users who do not consent to Meta’s surveillance will have to pay to use the service, or be blocked from it. Whether their plan complies with the DMA remains under review.

Nowhere in the DMA does it say social networking companies get to install a toll booth for users seeking to benefit from privacy rights the regulation grants them. The future EU Digital Fairness Act is another opportunity to protect users from such practices by declaring them unfair.

The Commission has responded to these developments with investigations, preliminary rulings, and fines. Meanwhile, users are missing out on greater choice and flexibility in how they communicate and connect online.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loons, gulls, puffins, and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can plunge in water to swim after prey, and leap back into the air to fly away. 

Inspired by these naturally aquatic aviators, engineers at MIT and EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, have designed a robot that can swim underwater, then flap out of the water to continue flying through air, much like diving birds. 

The “flapping-wing aerial-aquatic vehicle,” or FAAV, weighs less than 300 grams (about half a pound) and is designed to help scientists study the mechanics that enable diving birds to fly through air and water. 

The robot has a central body, or fuselage; two flexible, flapping wings; and a steerable tail. The wings and tail can be swapped out for different sizes. In experiments carried out in a water tank and at a local lake, the engineers identified combinations of wing size, flapping frequency, and tail angle that enable the robot to smoothly transition from swimming through water to breaking through the surface to flying through the air.

Their results, which appear today in the journal Science, could help scientists understand how diving birds adapt their flight mechanics to move through air and water — mediums with very different physical properties. The design could also launch a new class of aerial-aquatic drones and vehicles. The researchers envision such winged robots could be deployed in oceanography to fly to and sample from aquatic regions that would otherwise be too dangerous for traditional ocean vessels to access.

“Our dream vision is for oceanographers, marine biologists, and members of coastal communities to launch this robot from a boat, or from shore, and it would fly close to the area of interest, such as an iceberg or a port facility, or over a pod of whales,” says Raphael Zufferey, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “It would dive into the water to take a measurement or collect a sample, and fly back to deliver the data at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Then it could go back out to dive for more.” 

Zufferey is the lead author of the new study, which includes co-authors from EPFL and Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington.

Flight mechanics

At MIT, Zufferey heads up the AURA Lab, where he and his students engineer aerial and aquatic vehicles inspired by biomechanics in nature. The robots they build are small in size and designed to unobtrusively explore and monitor the health of oceans and waterways. 

For their new work, the team aimed to design a vehicle that can fly in the air and underwater. Any such vehicle would have to adapt to and transition between two very different substances. Water is 1,000 times denser than air, and moving through one or the other requires very different mechanics. Or so people might assume.

“You have to do some adaptation to make that transition work. But there’s a solution that exists in nature,” Zufferey says. “Birds like puffins can fly very fast through the air, and can dive and swim through water at speeds of 3 meters per second. They’re able to do pretty amazing things. So we knew is was possible. Just no one had tried this in a mobile robotic system.”

To get an idea for how diving birds fly, the team looked through the scientific literature and pulled together available data on puffins, petrels, kingfishers, and other diving birds. They observed that smaller birds flap their wings around 10 times per second when flying through air, and around four times per second when swimming through water. Larger birds have a slightly lower flapping frequency through both air and water due to their wider wingspans. 

With the biomechanics of birds in mind, the team developed a winged robot designed to flap at similar frequencies to that of actual diving birds. 

Making the leap

The new robot roughly resembles a bird, with a body, two wings, and a tail. The body contains a battery and waterproof electric motor that drives a crankshaft, which in turn pumps the wings up and down at preset frequencies. The wings are made of thin membranes that are coated with hydrophobic nanoparticles to help wick away water. And the tail is motorized, enabling it to change its angle to help the robot fly up or dive down. 

The wings can be swapped out for different sizes. The researchers fabricated and tested three sets of wings: small (60 centimeters wide), medium (80 centimeters), and large (100 centimeters). They carried out experiments first in a small water tank, then in Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

In their tests, they placed the robot underwater, about half a meter below the surface. They programmed the wings to flap at certain frequencies and the tail to pitch at certain angles throughout the robot’s flight. They then observed under what conditions the robot successfully swam up toward the surface, out of the water and into the air. 

The robot flew multiple flights with different wing sizes, flapping frequencies, and tail angles. Overall, the team found the robot was able to reliably fly, swim, and transition between water and air when it flew with medium-sized wings. Flexibility in the wings is key; the wings need to be flexible enough to minimize flapping amplitude in water and also firm enough to keep the robot aloft in the air. 

The researchers also found the robot could swim through water at speeds of almost 1 meter per second when it flapped with a frequency of around 5 herz, or five flaps per second. The robot could fly through the air at around 6 meters per second, when flapping at a similar frequency. The speeds and flapping frequencies of the robot were similar to that of actual diving birds. 

To make the leap from water to air, they found the robot should be pitched at 70 degrees — a relatively steep angle that keeps the robot’s wingtips from touching the water’s surface as it flaps up and into the air. Any steeper, and the robot would tip back into the water.

Interestingly, this combination of wing size, flap frequency, and tail pitch enabled the robot to swim underwater, launch off the surface, and fly, without something that many diving birds require: feet. When birds such as puffins and ducks take off from the water’s surface, they paddle their feet, along with flapping their wings and pitching their tails. Surprisingly, Zufferey and his colleagues found that, at least in robotics, the act of flying out of water doesn’t necessarily require a paddling maneuver. 

“If you look at birds, most birds need to paddle at the surface to take off. And the question was, do we need the same for robots? And it turns out we don’t,” Zufferey says.

Going forward, the team is improving the design of the wings to enable them to turn in addition to flapping up and down. They will also test the robot’s performance under turbulent conditions, such as swimming out of choppy waters and flying through wind. Then, they hope to deploy the vehicle to help answer questions in ocean science.

“One of the major challenges in ocean science is collecting data both frequently and across many locations, which is something this robot could do in the future,” Zufferey says. “You could send this out not just every week, but every hour. It could fly out at high speeds, dive in fly back, deliver its data, and go back out, multiple times.”

This work was supported, in part, by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship grant.

In southwestern Bangladesh, where extreme heat and severe tropical cyclones threaten the lives of millions of people, a new kind of climate refuge has opened its doors.

At the Baradal Aftab Uddin Collegiate School in the Satkhira district, the Jameel Observatory Climate Resilience Early Warning System Network (Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet) opened its first “adaptation fortress,” a solar-powered community shelter designed to protect residents from extreme heat and tropical storms.

A year-round refuge

When the heat arrives in southwestern Bangladesh, people have traditionally looked for relief under the shade of trees or near bodies of water. Now, during heatwaves, temperatures can reach 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit), levels at which shade is no longer enough.

A school by day and refuge from disaster, the adaptation fortress transforms the traditional concept of a cyclone shelter into a permanent year-round community resilience hub.

The facility offers residents protection from two of the region’s fastest-growing climate threats. During government-declared heat emergencies, it can host up to 200 people in four air-conditioned rooms supplied with clean drinking water. As a cyclone shelter, it can accommodate up to 500 people in additional rooms.

For the 30 million residents in southwestern Bangladesh, caught in a compounding cycle of cyclones and record-breaking heatwaves, the fortress represents something larger: a shift from reacting to disasters to preparing for them.

From forecast to fortress

That shift is the founding premise of the Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet project, which develops climate-resilience solutions that help vulnerable communities prepare for and adapt to life-altering conditions. 

The opening of the adaptation fortress marks a milestone for the project, and for MIT’s broader climate mission. Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet was one of MIT's five Climate Grand Challenges flagship projects, selected to translate climate research into tangible solutions for underserved communities facing some of the world’s most urgent climate threats. 

The project started in 2022 with Community Jameel and a research team at MIT led by Elfatih Eltahir, the H.M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with John Aldridge, assistant leader of the Human Resilience Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Deborah Campbell, senior staff scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  

Working in collaboration with BRAC International, a Bangladesh-founded nonprofit organization, the project combines advanced climate and socioeconomic forecasting with practical adaptation solutions. The adaptation fortress extends the project’s mission from forecasting climate threats to building permanent protection against them.

“When we launched the Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet, our goal was to close the gap between what climate science tells us is coming and what communities can actually do about it,” says Eltahir. “The adaptation fortress is that idea made concrete. Our models project more intense heatwaves for this region, and now residents of Satkhira have a place built to withstand them.”

The project’s climate modeling gives the fortress its urgency. Developed over decades in Eltahir’s research group, the models predict increasingly intense heatwaves across southwestern Bangladesh in the years ahead — dangerous heat layered on top of the cyclone risks they already endure. 

That same evidence shaped who gets through the door first. A priority access list focuses on those the heat endangers most: the elderly, people with respiratory conditions such as asthma, expectant mothers and mothers with infants, and students of the Baradal school.

Built to outlast the grid

The building was designed to weather climate shocks. A rooftop solar array powers the building as its primary energy source, with a battery backup that keeps it fully operational during grid outages. Solar grid-based air conditioning units combat extreme heat, and windows of glass encased in iron protect against breakage while sealing in the cool air.

The facility also integrates rainwater harvesting to mitigate the severe salinity that plagues local groundwater, and is designed to help cover its own upkeep. A net-metering interface allows surplus electricity generated during low-occupancy periods to be sold back to the national grid, creating a circular revenue stream that funds long-term maintenance.

The fortress is built with the community. A school committee oversees day-to-day operations and emergency protocols in partnership with BRAC, formalized through a signed memorandum of understanding to ensure long-term sustainability. The facility is supported by a comprehensive user guide translated into Bangla to empower local management.

Engineered to scale 

The Satkhira adaptation fortress is a pilot, and will be rigorously assessed. Remote sensors will track temperature, humidity, and power consumption. The findings will directly inform a second adaptation fortress planned for a secondary school in the Jashore district, where construction is scheduled to begin before the end of 2026.

If the evidence supports the model’s effectiveness, the concept could ultimately scale to as many as 1,250 fortresses across southwestern Bangladesh.

“From the start, our vision for this project has been a capability that could extend far beyond any single community,” says Campbell. “The adaptation fortress is a model we can learn from and refine in Satkhira, then carry to the many other places facing these same compounding climate threats.”

The work is supported by Community Jameel for Jameel Observatory CREWSnet, and by MIT Climate Grand Challenges.

The path to launching and growing a startup can be full of twists and turns. For a budding entrepreneur, gaining perspective from those who have already experienced the journey can be incredibly valuable, and highly inspirational. 

“There are so many amazing entrepreneurial stories among our alumni. We want to bring those stories to our students and our community and build networks with our incredible alumni founders,” says John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor and head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE). “Through the Founder’s Journey class and other new programs, we want to cultivate interest in entrepreneurship among our students and expand opportunities to bring MechE-born technologies to the world.” 

According to a 2015 report on MIT’s global entrepreneurial impact, there are more than 30,000 active companies founded by MIT alumni worldwide, employing some 4.6 million people. Marina Hatsopoulos SM ’93, founding CEO of Z Corp., an early market leader in 3D printing, said one of the aims of the course was to show students they don’t need to reinvent everything. “So much of this has been done before. I want them to understand that this is a well-trod path.” 

Class 2.S977/2.S979 (Founder’s Journey: Launching and Scaling Hardware Startups) explores real-life challenges of startups focused on building and scaling hardware technologies. First held in spring 2025, the inaugural class invited students to “find and activate their entrepreneurial energy” through the lens of challenges faced by founders and their teams at various stages in development of new hardware-focused companies — ranging from fundraising to supply chain development, and much more. 

Each week of the class was structured around a key challenge faced during the development and growth of a hardware startup, presented by the instructors and guest speaker. The speakers were founders of companies in robotics, energy, 3D printing, consumer products, and other frontier technologies. Students engaged through preparing questions for the speakers and participating in follow-on discussions and reflective exercises throughout the semester. 

Ken Zolot, senior lecturer at MIT, and Hatsopoulous co-led the class and developed it along with Hart. Hart, who was among the alumni speakers in the course’s first iteration, also spoke to the class about his experience as a co-founder of VulcanForms, which began through collaboration with fellow co-founder Martin Feldmann MEng ’14. 

The other alumni speakers included Mick Mountz (Kiva/Amazon); Jon Hirschtick (Solidworks/Onshape); Max Lobovsky (Formlabs); Elise Strobach (Aeroshield); Greg Mark (Markforged); Seemantini Nadkarni (Coalesenz); Eran Egozy (Harmonix); Renuka Babu (DOTS Technology); Davide Marini (Inkbit); Loewen Cavill (Amira); and Colin Angle (iRobot).

Colin Angle ’89, SM ’91, co-founder of iRobot

Colin Angle ’89, SM ’91, co-founder and former CEO of iRobot, now CEO and co-founder of Familiar Machines and Magic, identified a passion for building things early on. 

“This idea that you can create something from nothing, that you can have an idea and not just draw it, but build it and make it real, is something I’ve always loved,” he says. “MIT had such a strong, hands-on ethos, and that really, powerfully resonated.”

While living in the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity house at MIT, Angle watched several companies get their start (by his count, five multimillion-dollar companies were started by his fraternity brothers during his time in the house). Seeing others do it helped to demystify the process. 

He started iRobot in his living room, beginning at first not with a product concept, but a grand vision. “We’re supposed to have robots. So, if not us, who? And if not now, when? It was a magical day.” 

iRobot may be best known for the Roomba, an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, but through the years the company also sent robots to Afghanistan (saving thousands of lives with the Pack Bot tactical mobile robot) and explored the Great Pyramid in Giza live on National Geographic. 

“The joy I have taken from my entrepreneurial journey has been the ability to build bigger things, from building teams to building a company capable of building something far beyond what I could have ever imagined doing myself … we created inventions that no one thought possible, simply because we believed we could.”

Elise Strobach SM ’17, PhD ’20, CEO and co-founder of AeroShield

Elise Strobach SM ’17, PhD ’20 is CEO and co-founder of AeroShield Materials. The company, co-founded with Kyle Wilke PhD ’19 and Aaron Baskerville-Bridges SM ’20, MBA ’20, develops super-insulating transparent window inserts with technology based on transparent silica aerogels developed by Strobach while she was completing her PhD in Professor Evelyn Wang’s lab.

“I wasn’t thinking of myself as an entrepreneur at that time, but looking back, that’s definitely where that seed was planted,” says Strobach. As entrepreneurs, she says, “We have the … freedom to find the best problem to solve and to continue to seek the best way to solve that problem.”

Aerogels, which were first invented almost 100 years ago and were first commercialized by NASA to insulate equipment in space, had a hazy blue tint that limited their use in certain applications. The aerogel material created by Strobach and her team is completely see-through, creating a variety of new everyday applications. The company recently achieved another milestone, with their work on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

“You don’t have to know everything to start. You just have to know that this is what you want to do and just get started.”

Maxim Lobovsky SM ’11, CEO and co-founder of FormLabs

Maxim Lobovsky SM ’11 was already working on 3D printers when he came to MIT to study at the MIT Media Lab. As he was finishing his master’s degree, he saw an opportunity to build something new.  

Lobovsky, with fellow Media Lab graduates David Cranor SM ’11 and Natan Linder SM ’11, founded Formlabs, a developer and manufacturer of 3D printing technology. The trio set out to build a professional-level 3D printer, but a significant cost reduction and one that would be easier to use than what was then available on the market. At a time when 3D printers could cost $100,000 or more, Formlabs’ product started around $3,000.

“We definitely built Formlabs in a classic, disruptive innovation path,” Lobovsky says. They achieved the cost reduction through several different ways, including replacing technology developed in the 1980s with modern consumer electronics components like the laser diodes that were developed for Blu-ray Disc players, and with “just a lot of clever engineering.” 

It was a long grind to raise the first round of funding, he says. The team participated in MIT’s 100K competition and pitched their idea to many potential investors (with limited success, initially). Their big break came in the form of an overheard conversation. 

“As someone who is naturally introverted, shy engineer … a really important lesson [was] that, sometimes, you can get lucky,” he says. “Sometimes talking loudly at a restaurant is actually a good way to get things going.” 

Lobovsky and one of his co-founders were having dinner with a potential investor at Legal Seafoods in Harvard Square. The pitch to the initial investor didn’t go well, but Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Software and an early pioneer in the PC industry overheard the conversation, and he ended up leading Formlabs’ first round of funding. 

Today, Formlabs is the largest supplier of professional stereolithography and selective laser sintering 3D printers in the world. 

Jon Hirschtick ’83, SM ’83, co-founder of SolidWorks and Onshape

Jon Hirschtick ’83, SM ’83, co-founder of SolidWorks and Onshape, says the first time he can remember thinking about starting a company was when he was an undergraduate. 

“I had heard about startups, and it sounded like a lot of things that I was drawn to … a sense of being able to realize your vision, express yourself; a sense of excitement, of making money, and even the idea of a chaotic environment,” he says. 

Hirschtick has spent over four decades building computer-aided design (CAD) software, starting as an intern at MIT in 1981 and continuing that work today. “I thought, ‘hey, the world could use this software.’ It’ll be a better place with the software that I envisioned.”

He refers to CAD as a meta product design. “We’re designing a product that other people use to design products, and that’s just really cool to me.” 

“I think startups just fit me,” he says. “The excitement, the idea of trying to solve a lot of problems at the same time. MIT is a place of problem-solving ... and a startup is a place where there’s lots of problems to solve.” He adds that a lot of big companies are doing new things, but “startups are always doing things.”

He says most anything today that is a manufactured product is modeled in CAD first. “If you’re interested and excited by product development, then building a CAD system lets you get involved in the world’s product development.”

“Nobody knows for sure when they start a company whether it’s going to be successful or not. If it were, if there was a way of knowing for sure, then there wouldn’t be all these classes in entrepreneurship. They’d just tell you the secret. There’s always risk. Visions and hallucinations, they look and feel the same. You only find out which is which once you really try to realize them.”

A version of this story appears in the 2026 issue of MechE Connects, the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s magazine.