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.

LGBTQ+ communities are facing an escalating wave of censorship and targeted surveillance, but we can push back through mutual solidarity. Join us live to learn how safer virtual spaces get built, how platform policies and government pressure are reshaping the digital landscape, and what platform accountability actually looks like. Our panel will share ideas for direct action and concrete strategies you can bring back to your community. Whether you’re an activist, an ally, or just paying attention, this conversation is for you. Join the livestream online followed by live Q&A.

EFFecting Change Livestream Series:
LGBTQ+ Solidarity Against the Tide of Surveillance
Wednesday, June 17th
9:00 am - 10:00 am Pacific - Check Local Time
Livestream followed by Q&A

This event is LIVE and FREE!

About the Speakers

Paige Collings
As a lawyer, digital policy activist and community organizer, Paige works to dismantle systems of oppression and advance collective liberation. Her work focuses on highlighting how state surveillance and corporate restrictions stifle marginalized communities and perpetuate historic injustices and harm. She has worked with activists across the globe to facilitate systemic change by speaking truth to power and creating spaces for alternative imaginations; and her writing on digital justice has been featured in Wired, Politico, Teen Vogue, the Daily Beast and more.

Jillian C. York
Jillian is EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression, based in London. Her work examines state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture and human rights, with a focus on historically marginalized communities. At EFF, she organizes coalitions, writes about and researches topics related to freedom of expression, leads the Speaking Freely interview series, and contributes to various other areas of the organization's work. Jillian is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism (Verso, 2021), a contributor to several academic volumes, and has written for MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, and WIRED, among others. She is also a visiting professor at the College of Europe Natolin in Warsaw, and a regular speaker at global events.

Soatok Dreamseeker
Soatok Dreamseeker is a gay furry security engineer. He blogs about applied cryptography on his blog, Dhole Moments, and is developing key transparency to enable end-to-end encryption on the Fediverse. His puns are 100% whole groan.

Luísa Franco Machado
Luísa Franco Machado is an award-winning international expert in digital rights and data justice. She has also been a technical advisor in data governance and AI ethics for governments, NGOs, and international organizations worldwide, including the UN, OECD.AI, GIZ, and others. Luísa has carried on policy research at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Sciences Po Paris on the intersection between technology and socio-economic development. In 2022, the United Nations recognized them as a global Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) among more than 6,500 advocates. In 2025 she was featured in Apolitical's Government AI 100 list as a rising star.

A proposed FCC rule would kill burner phones: phones whose accounts are not attached to a particular person.

The FCC plans to do this by legally forcing the country’s telecoms to store a wealth of personal information about essentially all phone customers, including a government issued identification number and their physical address, alarming privacy advocates and civil rights activists who compare the measures to those from authoritarian countries where it can be difficult to buy a mobile phone plan without giving up your identity.

The proposed change would drastically shake up how people obtain phone plans in the U.S., and have all sorts of privacy and cybersecurity knock-on effects. The FCC is proposing the data collection partly as a way to combat scammers, with telecoms being required to collect other information on business and foreign customers like the intended use case of their bulk phone plan purchase and their IP address. But the changes would mean telecoms collect data on all new and renewing customers, and the FCC provides a long list of other things that the collected data could help authorities with...

Some allies of the president say the administration is sending mixed signals on EPA’s bid to dismantle greenhouse gas regulation.

Regulators questioned Xcel's push for new gas infrastructure while also paying for electrification.

Cyprus tabled amendments to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism at a meeting of EU finance ministers at the European Council.

The U.K. government promised a “revolution” to clean the skies of harmful emissions. Now some of Labour’s own members of Parliament are fed up with the costs and delays.

"Indirect greenhouse gases," together with heat-absorbing black carbon, are responsible for about 15 percent of global warming to date, according to an analysis.

The process could kick off as soon as the end of this year, with a sale likely to take place in 2027, officials said.

In a hospital or at home, temperatures are usually taken using an oral or forehead thermometer, but these do not always accurately reflect the core body temperature. Measuring core temperature from within the body could make it easier to determine whether someone is sick, and whether they’re at risk of spiking a dangerous fever.

To make it more feasible to obtain core body temperature measurements, MIT engineers have developed an ingestible sensor that can send continuous temperature updates from the GI tract. 

The sensor is shaped like a tiny blueberry, 6 millimeters in diameter and 4 millimeters in height. That makes it much smaller than existing ingestible temperature sensors, which are more difficult to swallow and pose a potential risk of obstructing the GI tract.

“A sensor like this gives us the ability to monitor infections and identify them early,” says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. “That’s very relevant, particularly for at-risk populations like people who are immunosuppressed from chemotherapy treatments or immunosuppressive drugs.”

Ingestible sensors could also enable more accurate temperature measurements for fertility tracking, and for monitoring people during anesthesia.

Traverso and Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT’s provost and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, are the senior authors of the new study. MIT postdoc Saransh Sharma is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Electronics.

Ingestible electronics

A handful of ingestible temperature sensors have become commercially available in recent years, but most are the size of a multivitamin or slightly larger, making them more challenging to swallow. Their size can also increase the risk of obstructing the GI tract.

Those capsules tend to be large due to the complex circuits they include, which require a great deal of power. That power is provided by relatively large, on-board batteries that make up much of the bulk of the capsule.

The MIT team wanted to design sensors that could measure temperature accurately, but at a much smaller size.

“The reason for them to be small is safety,” Traverso says. “We want something that is so small that the risk of any blockage or obstruction is highly mitigated, and also so that it can be easily ingested.”

To create a smaller device, the researchers set out to reduce the size of all of the main components — the temperature-sensing circuit, the antenna that relays temperature data, and the battery.

For the circuit, they created their own customized circuit that can fit onto a 1-square-millimeter silicon chip. To reduce the chip’s power consumption, the researchers designed an oscillator based on leakage current — the small current that flows through a circuit when it’s off. The frequency of this current varies depending on the temperature of the chip’s surroundings.

This circuit, which can detect temperature with an accuracy of 0.01 degrees Celsius, requires very little power — about 10 nanowatts. This means that it can be powered with a 1.55-volt coin cell battery, which is 4.8 millimeters in diameter and about 1.6 millimeter thick.

The new design further cuts energy consumption by using a communication strategy known as backscattering. This approach allows most of the power requirements to be outsourced to an external antenna that is located outside the body, within a foot or two of the sensor. The external antenna emits an ultra-high-frequency radio wave, which is then modulated by a tiny antenna within the sensor and sent back to the external antenna. By interpreting the changes in the radio wave, the external antenna can calculate the temperature value.

“We combined all of these different pieces together — the silicon chip, the battery, and the antenna — and we made it into an ingestible capsule, which is the smallest ingestible capsule that we have seen for temperature-sensing paradigms,” Sharma says. 

The internal antenna sends out a temperature reading once every second, allowing for continuous monitoring of temperature.

Tiny thermometers

The researchers envision that this kind of sensor could be useful in several scenarios, including monitoring infection and observing patients during and after anesthesia. Anesthesia often disrupts the body’s normal temperature regulation mechanisms, which can put patients at risk of hypothermia.

This type of device could also be used at home, for monitoring fevers in children, or measuring core body temperature as a marker of ovulation, for fertility purposes. It could also be useful for monitoring athletes, soldiers, or anyone else who might be exposed to extreme temperatures. 

To explore these possible uses, the researchers tested the sensors in animals while they were under anesthesia, and found that they could accurately detect and transmit temperature information. They also obtained accurate readings from animals that were awake and actively moving.

The researchers are now working on combining the temperature sensor with other sensors that could measure vital signs such as heart rate. They hope to begin testing these types of sensors in clinical trials within the next few years. 

If proven effective for people in high-risk situations, Traverso believes such sensors could become widely used by anyone who needs to monitor their temperature. 

“I think this could replace all thermometers, because it’s the most accurate way of taking temperature,” he says. “If we have miniature systems that can be easily swallowed and give very accurate data that’s superior to the current data, I think it can be helpful in so many ways.”

Other authors of the paper include Yubin Cai, Injoo Moon, Zhenming Yang, Peter Chai, Niora Fabian, Kailyn Schmidt, Alison Hayward, Andrew Pettinari, Maria Platero, Benedict Laidlaw, and Ashley Guevara.

The research was funded by the 711th Human Performance Wing, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which notes that the views and conclusions contained in this article are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States government.

This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

• I’m giving a keynote at Cybernation 2026 in Berlin, Germany, on June 24, 2026.
• I’m speaking at the Potsdam Conference on National Cybersecurity at the Hasso Plattner Institut in Potsdam, Germany. The event runs June 24–25, 2026, and my talk will be the evening of June 24.
• I’m participating in a panel discussion at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs in Vienna on Thursday, June 25, 2026.
• I’m speaking at the Digital Humanism Conference in Vienna, Austria, on Friday, June 26, 2026...

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets US intelligence agencies collect communications from foreigners abroad without a warrant, and routinely sweeps in Americans’ emails, messages, and calls in the process.

The authority for this program is set to expire Friday, June 12th, 2026, at midnight. As we wrote earlier this week, Congress has been kicking the ball down the road for months now—temporarily postponing the expiration of the mass surveillance authority Section 702 of FISA in hopes that some consensus on a longer reauthorization could be reached. 

EFF has said for decades, every time this program is up for renewal: Section 702 should require a warrant before the Federal Bureau of Investigation can look at digital communications collected from Americans. If not, we should let the whole thing expire. And this time, it has, at least for a little while. 

Ironically, we have Bill Pulte to thank for this (probably temporary) reprieve. Earlier this month, Trump on Tuesday named Pulte – currently director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – to replace current DNI Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month. As has been widely reported, Pulte lacks any intelligence, military, or congressional experience. Senate Democrats responded by refusing to move forward with their version of a bill to reauthorize Section 702. Similarly, the House refused to approve even a short-term renewal of the program. 

However, the potential for abuse of this program is not limited to one individual or one administration. And if Congress is this concerned about one particular individual having access to Americans’ most sensitive information, the responsible thing to do is to put more transparency, accountability, and oversight into the structure of this program. 

Members on both sides of the aisle understand this. As we have seen several times this year already, the appetite for reform is stronger than ever. We hope to continue to see strong bipartisan opposition in Congress to renewing Section 702 without a warrant requirement for backdoor searches. Until then, the authority for this program should remain expired. 

This fluid pump was inspired by the way squids propel themselves through the water.

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.

MIT leadership has in the strongest terms rejected antisemitism and taken thoughtful and steadfast action to prevent it, to promote student-wellbeing, to respond to complaints raised by community members, and to address policy violations. 

Examples of actions MIT has taken since 2023 to address concerns of antisemitism

• MIT President Sally Kornbluth and other senior leaders have sent multiple campus-wide letters and video messages condemning reports of antisemitism on campus. 
• Prior to October 7, MIT joined the Hillel Campus Climate Initiative, which helps universities build awareness of and take action against antisemitism. Learnings from that engagement continue to guide MIT’s campus response. 
• MIT increased security around campus, including at the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life building, which houses MIT Hillel.
• MIT participated in the Brandeis Leadership Symposium on Antisemitism in Higher Education.
• MIT created multiple opportunities for training, education, and dialogue, e.g.: 
  • American Jewish Committee training on antisemitism for Academic Council, which comprises the Institute’s senior leadership 
  • ADL training on antisemitism for MIT’s Bias Response Team 
  • Institute-level educational programming, including an event featuring Professor Pamela Nadell—director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University and a scholar of antisemitism in America
• The Institute updated, publicized, and enforced its policies on protests and demonstrations and posters/displays.
• MIT helped create and provided financial support for two years of weekly lunches focused on supporting MIT’s Jewish community.
• MIT provided support for the faculty-created MIT-Kalaniyot program, which brings Israel-based faculty and postdocs to MIT with the intent of building and strengthening ties between Israeli researchers and the MIT community.
• The Institute established a cross-functional team with representatives from the Institute Discrimination and Harassment Response Office (IDHR), Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), Division of Student Life, Human Resources, and the Office of General Counsel to promptly and fairly triage reports of antisemitism and other forms of bias relating to the conflict in the Middle East. 
• Instituted disciplinary proceedings for policy violations stemming from campus protests and related activities, which resulted in significant sanctions for a number of students, including suspensions, expulsions, and numerous individual bans from being on campus, as well as permanent derecognition of a student organization. 
• And MIT established a Title VI coordinator.

Student discipline process improvements

Apart from individual student discipline cases as described above, MIT conducted a holistic review of its student discipline process, which resulted in a number of policy and procedure changes, including: 

• The senior administration has a more direct role in reviewing significant student discipline cases, with the Vice Chancellor for Student Life regularly conferring with the Chair of the Committee on Discipline (COD) and participating in hearing panels in serious cases. 
• The role of the Senior Associate Dean of Student Conduct and Community Standards has been enhanced and elevated, reporting directly to the Vice Chancellor for Student Life. 
• A more streamlined process allows the Chair of the COD to take action in response to noncompliance with previous COD sanctions.
• Additional sanctions were added to the COD Rules, giving the COD a broader range of tools to address student misconduct.
• Enhanced training on discriminatory harassment were made available to COD members. 

Over the last couple years, MIT has experienced a significant decline in the number of reports of student misconduct arising out of allegations of antisemitism or other forms of bias based on religion or ethnic/national origin. 

Courts have dismissed lawsuits claiming antisemitism at MIT

As a result of MIT’s actions, including specifically some of those described above, federal courts have dismissed claims of antisemitic harassment and discrimination asserted against MIT under Title VI. In doing so, the courts have acknowledged the escalating steps MIT has taken to promote a safe, inclusive community for its Jewish community members. For example, in a unanimous decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals holding that MIT satisfied its Title VI obligations, the Court noted:   

• “As the protest gatherings occurred over the course of seven months, culminating in the Kresge Lawn encampment, MIT took an escalating series of actions aimed at calming the turmoil without violence… Even if we accept plaintiffs' position that some conduct of some protestors was antisemitic, that would not provide a Title VI pretext for requiring MIT to eliminate the protests entirely. In that respect, by managing the situation so as to avoid escalation and violence, MIT was much more effective than plaintiffs claim.” 
• “[A]ny reasonable school administrator in MIT's position could have reasonably surmised that its progressively evolving responses prevented the on-campus conflict from exploding into real violence between October 2023 and May 2024.”

Importantly, MIT took these steps to protect the MIT community even while the Court concluded that much of the campus protest activity at MIT amounted to legally protected expression and not a violation of Title VI: 

• “This absence of consensus reflects ongoing debate as to the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism – debate that our constitutional scheme resolves through discourse, not judicial fiat. Indeed, the debate on occasion has been formal and high profile…We decline to interpret Title VI as arming either side of that debate with the powers of a censor.”

2026 Quality of Life survey results

Jewish student sentiment has significantly improved and is now higher than the general MIT student population. 

Below are data from the spring 2026 Quality of Life survey, a community-wide survey administered every two years to better understand the lives of faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars, and students. The data reflect responses from those who selected “Judaism” as their religion, alone or in part (respondents were able to select more than one religion).

Overall, how satisfied are you being a student at MIT? 
(Percentages are a sum of respondents who selected “very satisfied” + “somewhat satisfied”)

Jewish Undergraduates:
2024: 87%
2026: 97% (compared to 86% for all undergraduate students) 

Jewish Graduate Students:
2024: 78%
2026: 94% (compared to 88% for all graduate students)

I feel that I belong at MIT. 
(Percentages are a sum of respondents who selected “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree”)

Jewish Undergraduates
2024: 83%
2026: 92% (compared to 80% for all undergraduate students)

Jewish Graduate Students 
2024: 70%
2026: 79% (compared to 79% for all graduate students)

Notably, not a single Jewish undergraduate respondent in 2026 disagreed with the statement “I feel that I belong at MIT.”

In winter 1997, at age 60, when many researchers might be looking forward to retirement, Harriet Latham Robinson SM ’61, PhD ’65 was pursuing a faculty position as the chief of microbiology and immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. 

She got the job. 

There, she would also co-found GeoVax, a biotechnology company, based on her preclinical research, including work on developing an HIV-1 vaccine. 

Often, as the only woman in a room throughout much of her career, and in the still-developing and male-dominated field of molecular biology, her colleagues were referred to as “doctor” or “professor” at scientific symposia and committee meetings. 

“In contrast,” she recalls, “I was Harriet.”

Becoming a scientist

Robinson was born in 1938, the second of four children, to a mother, Ruth, and a father, Allen, from Ohio and Connecticut, respectively. After finishing grammar school, she attended the Girls’ Latin School, a public magnet school for college-bound young women. Although the school offered only two classes in science — one semester of chemistry and a health class — Robinson credits her time there for inspiring a lifelong love of learning, especially history and languages. 

“At our 50th and 60th high school reunions, I was struck by what my Girls’ Latin school classmates had done with their lives,” she says. “We had become not only wives, mothers, teachers, and nurses we were supposed to become, but also physicians, lawyers, professors, politicians, and businesswomen.” 

Robinson pursued her undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College, where she intended to study political science. After an introductory biology course, however, she switched her major. Despite the shift, a love of languages persisted: Robinson took Russian and, the summer after her senior year of college, served as a Russian-English speaking guide at the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow. Despite mounting tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, she served again in a similar role from September 1961 to January 1962 for a traveling transportation exhibition in Russia and Ukraine, where she was stationed by a Ford Thunderbird, wearing a TWA stewardess uniform.

“We were true entertainment, as well as education, and I worked to do my best to answer questions about America,” she says. “I was most surprised by the pride the Russian people took in the post-World War II accomplishments of their country.” 

Robinson might not have had a career in science at all had it not been for a dean at Radcliffe College who recognized Robinson’s interest in science. Robinson had thought it appropriate, as a young lady, to pursue marriage and to only further her education to become a teacher or nurse. Seeking permission to take chemistry instead of education courses to fulfill requirements for getting a teaching degree, she was referred to a dean who considered it perfectly appropriate for a young woman to pursue another career. Robinson recalls that the dean declared, “My dear, you want to be a scientist.” 

The foundation for a career

Robinson was soon accepted at MIT and was offered a fellowship to teach in an introductory biology lab to help pay her way. She returned from Moscow just five days before the start of a master’s program in biochemistry. In the Department of Biology at MIT, there were only a handful of women, no female faculty, and few ladies’ rooms in 1959. 

It was there that she met Walter “Wally” J.K. Tannenberg, a onetime partner but lifelong friend and companion, an MD taking courses at MIT. He wasn’t “at all taken aback by my becoming an educated woman,” Robinson says. He taught her to ski, and they sailed his lightening, the Ondine, in circles around Robinson’s parents’ comparatively slow motor sailor, the Palometa. 

Their breakup just before the winter holidays in 1963 precipitated her reentry to graduate school, to pursue her thesis work in the lab of Jim Darnell; she threw herself into studies to sit a qualifying exam less than a month after reentry. 

“A Bell Labs physicist who had just joined the Darnell Lab opined that any concept in biology could be mastered in two weeks,” Robinson says. “Much to everyone’s amazement, I not only passed my qualifying exam, but did much better than expected.”

It was at the University of California at Berkeley during her postdoctoral work that she met her husband. Although the marriage would not last the test of time, Robinson and her husband were blessed with three boys, each 13 months apart.

Robinson knew that she wanted to take time away from her career to stay home with her children before they entered primary school. As a graduate student at MIT, to prepare for both having a career and pursuing motherhood, Robinson hired a housekeeper and committed to being in the lab for only a typical 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workday. If she were to compete with her male counterparts and be with her children, she needed to be able to get things done while working short hours. 

Robinson successfully completed her thesis work in just over two years.

“The difference between bearing children and rising up professional ladders is that you can start up the professional ladder after you are 40,” she advises. “Such is more problematic for having children.”

Robinson’s thesis work at MIT concerned how DNA, which is identical in all cells of an organism, produces different cell types from the same genetic blueprint. She explored this question through the lens of messenger RNA, a gene product that determines which DNA sequences are expressed in a cell. Later, her work on cancer-causing viruses in chickens would help lay the groundwork for gaining insight into genes that can cause tumors to form. 

“In contrast to becoming a wife, becoming a PhD from MIT did not falter, but rather provided me with the foundations for a career I loved in which I used molecular biology and chickens to study the genetic basis of cancer and pioneered the use of DNA as a new method of vaccination,” Robinson says.

Cancer-causing viruses

Robinson, supported by an National Science Foundation fellowship, pursued postdoc training at the University of California at Berkeley, in the lab of Harry Rubin. The Rubin Lab specialized in work on a virus known to cause cancer: the Rous sarcoma virus, which causes rapid tumor onset when introduced into chickens. RNA, it had recently been discovered, was the underlying genetic cause of tumors developing in chickens exposed to the Rous sarcoma virus. It cannot, however, do this deadly work without co-infection with something called a helper virus — in this case, avian leukosis virus. 

Both Rous sarcoma virus and its helper viruses were retroviruses, which can make DNA copies from RNA sequences, a departure from the previously accepted dogma that DNA is only transcribed into RNA, and not the other way around.

Robinson joined the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research in 1977, where she continued research on Rous helper viruses and had the opportunity to run her own lab for the first time. In 1998, she was recruited to be a professor of pathology at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. While there, she conducted pioneering studies on the use of DNA for vaccination and worked on developing an AIDS vaccine. 

In 1999, she moved again, this time to step into the role of chief of microbiology and immunology at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, where she began testing her candidate HIV vaccines in primates. While at the University of Massachusetts and Emory, Robinson and her lab used DNA vaccines, both with and without a poxvirus booster vaccine provided by Bernie Moss at the National Institutes of Health, to immunize animals against influenza, HIV, measles, and Ebola.

“From the early days of DNA vaccines, I had wanted to start a company to help move DNA vaccines from bench to bedside,” she says. 

Thus, GeoVax, short for “Georgia Vaccines,” was born. Robinson co-founded it with Don Hildebrand in 2001 after her move to Yerkes; Robinson would serve as chief scientific officer and a member of the board of directors during her tenure at the company. 

GeoVax successfully moved Robinson’s candidate AIDS vaccine into human clinical trials. These trials were stopped due to the generally poor performance of HIV vaccines in clinical trials, compared to the outstanding therapeutic potential of more recently developed anti-HIV drugs. GeoVax, however, continues to work on vaccines for Mpox, Covid-19, and Ebola, and has expanded its scope to include a cancer treatment.  

A well-deserved retirement 

After rounds of good-natured roasting from colleagues at Emory University and GeoVax, Robinson retired and has been enjoying returning to Palo Alto, California, where her oldest son, Bill, and his wife now live. 

Ultimately, Robinson hopes that her story can encourage everyone, especially young women, not to let pursuing a challenging and enriching career prevent them from realizing the dream of having a family.

“I have had a wonderful life, far exceeding what I ever could have anticipated,” Robinson says. “I have had international adventure, the romance of a man who truly loved me, the joy of motherhood, and the warmth, wonder, and adventure of family and friends, and last, but not least, the exhilaration of a career in molecular biology.”

Let no one accuse Bernie Sanders of ducking the big questions. Writing in the New York Times last week, the senator asked: “Will the future of humanity be determined by a handful of billionaires who have promoted and developed AI, with virtually no democratic input, who stand to become even richer and more powerful than they are today?”

We agree entirely that this is one of the most potent questions facing global democracy today. Our book, Rewiring Democracy, surveys the emerging uses for and impacts of AI in democracy around the world and reaches the same conclusion: that the most urgent risk posed by AI is the ...

Scientists at a climate law conference said they will continue to study how corporate pollution leads to stronger heat waves, hurricanes and other disasters.

The order stopped short of requiring the agency to implement the program.

The Energy Department is giving millions to a company partially led by a far-right activist and telecom executive to build the nation’s first coal-fired power plant since 2013.

The California Air Resources Board is under pressure to stabilize the nascent market for carbon capture after the loss of federal grants, but critics say the proposed rules could incentivize risky projects.